“Well,” Alex said above the noisy wind, “that worked even better than I thought.”
“Yes,” Svetlana agreed. “But once again, we lost his gun.”
“Oh damn! He had one on him, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Svetlana reached out and pulled the door shut. “It was strapped across his chest.”
Alex got up and helped Svetlana to her feet. “Well, next time we’ll make sure to snatch the firepower.”
Svetlana grinned at her. “Da,” she said. “The third time is the charm.”
* * * *
But Karl’s demise wasn’t quite so easy.
Unlike Mako and Spiro, Karl was a mature professional—a squad leader in the former Shadows who’d passed the stage of his youth where he could be distracted by lust or baubles. He was a killer, yes—he’d once set fire to a kindergarten in Grozny—but not a careless one, and when the two cousins failed to return from their mission to hunt down the American girl, he didn’t go charging down train car corridors like some panicky boy scout leader.
He made some assessments, then went forward to inform Bojan that he was going to reconnoiter after Mako and Spiro, and that should he also fail to return, Major Kreesat should go to full battle stations. He was a dedicated warrior, and also comfortable, if things went badly, with the amount his aging mother would get from his high-risk life insurance policy.
As he began his patrol through the first two sleeping cars, he unholstered his .45 caliber PPZ, checked that a round was seated, and held it by his right thigh as he walked, trigger finger poised on the guard. The palm of his left hand rested on the hilt of a Dawson battle blade, tucked in a belt scabbard above his left hip, and the dark brown eyes below his fire red locks flicked from right to left like an oscillating radar dish. Unlike Mako and Spiro, he did not assume that this American girl would be easy to take, simply because of her gender. He had learned that the hard way, having sparred many times with Amina.
When he reached the Second Class dining car and found it empty, he began to walk faster—that is, until the girl he was hunting appeared at the other end of the car. She faced him fully—the description matched perfectly—and when she spun around and charged the other way, he almost charged after her. But then he realized that was exactly what she wanted—an ambush.
He raised his pistol, kept the barrel trained on her receding form, and strolled slowly, until he stopped at one of the dining car booths on the left and looked down, where Svetlana was crouched and clutching a large, black, cast iron frying pan from the galley. She cringed and looked terribly embarrassed, not to mention mortally frightened. He smiled and looked triumphant, as he turned the heavy pistol toward her and started squeezing the trigger.
Then a heavy hardware hammer came spinning through the air, cart-wheeling from the spot where the Morgan girl had run off into the coupling. It barely missed Karl’s head as he ducked. It shattered a Tiffany lamp on a table behind him, and he jerked his pistol away from Svetlana and fired a shot at the hammer’s source; the report so loud that it cracked a window in the car.
Svetlana instantly forgot her own safety when she realized Karl was shooting at Alex. She jumped up from the floor of the booth, gripped the frying pan two-handed and yelled something as she started swinging. But Karl jinked to the right and side-kicked her hard in the belly, sending her smacking into the booth window, where she slid to the floor.
By that time Alex was on him. She charged him straight on, reaching him in three long leaps. First priority: control the weapon. She deflected the PPZ barrel with her bladed left hand, gripped the slide, and spun left and backwards into his trunk as her right hand chopped down from above. It joined with her left and she snapped the handgun outboard, breaking his trigger finger inside the guard.
Karl yelled and punched her in the left side of her face, which made her see an entire galaxy of stars and lose her grip on the pistol, but his gun hand was useless and the weapon went clattering away somewhere. With Alex still pressed back into his chest, Karl wrapped his left forearm around her throat and locked it there with his right, but she lifted her right foot as high as she could and stomped down onto his right instep. He yelled again as she shattered the delicate foot bones, and his throat lock loosened enough for her to squeeze her head down and out of his powerful forearms and spin to face him.
Alex tried to kick Karl in the groin. Karl blocked her kick with a left forearm strike and ham-handed her in the face with his pain-laced right. Alex hit him full force with an uppercut palm into the base of his nose. Karl took it like the beast that he was and managed to grab his Dawson and rip it from its scabbard, but Alex kicked it away before he had a grip on it, and the blade went spinning off to Karl’s left and nearly impaled Svetlana, who was finally getting up from the floor.
Then Karl had had enough. He gripped Alex at the front top of her sweater with both fists, spun to the left and lifted her completely off the floor, flipping her through the air in a Jujitsu throw and slamming her onto her back on a dining table. The blow spewed the air from her lungs and she was stunned by the shock to her spine, but then she saw him above her and he was fumbling at the small of his back for something.
She spun like a top on the table, launched her legs up and smacked them together on both sides of his head, sending thunder through his eardrums. She locked her ankles behind his neck, squeezing her muscled thighs to crush him, but he turned his beet red face and bit her in the inner flesh. She howled and pulled down with all her weight and she saw that he had his backup blade in his left fist—he was going to skewer her right there like some sacrificial lamb.
In one remarkable motion, she jerked her torso up, reached for her right boot, drew her Benchmade ceramic knife and stabbed as hard as she could into his brain through his left eye.
Alex lay there on the table for a solid sixty seconds, just breathing. Svetlana had crawled out from the booth, and even though Karl was thoroughly dead on the floor, and gory, she was still clutching her frying pan. Alex spoke to her, though she was looking up at the ceiling and rubbing her inner thigh gently.
“I guess I didn’t plan that too well,” Alex said.
“Well, it worked out all right in the end,” Svetlana said.
“He bit me.”
“Yes, but I would have bitten you too, Alex. You are very dangerous.”
“I mean he really bit me.”
“I will find you some ice.” Svetlana pulled herself to her feet. She was still wearing the stripper’s dress, but she’d found a pair of sneakers somewhere.
“We’ll have to drag him into the bathroom at the end of the car,” Alex decided. “And we’ll have to figure out how to lock it from the inside, maybe stuff some chewing gum in the key lock.”
“But why?” Svetlana asked as she looked down at Karl, who was staring up at the ceiling with one lifeless eye, the other embedded with Alex’s blade right up to the bloody hilt. “He is thoroughly dead.”
“I know, but I don’t want any of the kids on the train to see him. They’ll need therapy for years.”
“So will I,” Svetlana said as she turned her gaze to Alex on the table.
“Well, maybe we’ll go together,” Alex offered.
“Yes,” Svetlana said with a smile. “I think perhaps we both have father issues.”
CHAPTER TEN
Kozlov’s plea from the locomotive’s intercom sent Alex sprinting to the back of the train.
She wasn’t surprised that Kreesat would use him this way. After all, the old man was a hostage, being forced to employ his scientific talents to rain fire and brimstone on the world. Plus, he’d obviously just found out that his precious daughter was still alive, and that he might be able to save her. It was also obvious that he was reciting some sort of a script, but the tone of his voice emanating from the ceiling speakers was wrenching as he implored his daughter to break with this “female impe
rialist American spy,” and come forward to survive and live in peace with her father once more.
But that wasn’t what sent Alex hustling full tilt on a quest for some serious hardware. It was the screams and whimpers of women and children in the background of Kozlov’s speech, and the old man’s trembling warning that if she and Svetlana did not appear forthwith, Major Kreesat was going to start executing these passengers one by one. And just to smear some more foul icing on the cake, Kozlov also relayed that Kreesat had given Washington and Moscow one more hour to pay up, after which nuclear warheads would be in play. At least he was speaking in English so Svetlana didn’t have to translate.
Still in the Second Class dining car—after she and Svetlana had stuffed Karl’s corpse into the bathroom—Alex instinctively made to open a line to Linc via her ear comm when she remembered the damn thing wasn’t working. She couldn’t call Linc or Zeta, and they couldn’t call her. Her cell phone was useless as well, as were any sorts of communications devices aboard the train, except for the satcom gear being used by Kreesat up forward. It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t need verbal encouragement; she needed a squadron of Delta Force operators, or …
Oh no …
That’s when it hit her, right after Kozlov stopped talking and the intercom went silent again. She and Svetlana had stood there frozen in their tracks, listening intently, but now Alex spun on the Russian woman and gripped her shoulders hard.
“What is it, Alex?” Svetlana winced.
“The passengers.”
“Yes, I know. He is going to hurt some of them, that demon.”
“No, Svetlana. All the passengers. Don’t you realize what must be happening now?”
“What?”
“He’s threatening both Washington and Moscow with your father’s satellite. But Moscow’s closer, and they know he’s on this train.”
“How would they know that, Alex?”
“Because my bosses know it, and they’ve told the Russian Federation by now.”
“Yobtvoyumaht!”
“Yes, whatever that means. The Russians are going to attack this train, probably with a squadron of fighter bombers. That’s what I’d do. Anything to stop him.”
“Oh my God.” Svetlana’s eyes brimmed up. “All these poor passengers.”
“That’s right.” Alex gripped Svetlana’s shoulders even harder. “But I’m guessing it’s worse. Do you know how your father thinks?”
“What do you … ? I don’t understand.”
“How he thinks, as a scientist, as a planner.”
“He is very clever, and he plays much chess.”
“Then that satellite is going to have redundant systems.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means that once it’s been triggered to attack, it doesn’t need someone on the ground controlling it. That person, in this case your father, can be dead and it’ll still destroy its targets.”
Svetlana hung her head in shame, as if she were somehow responsible for all of it. “Yes, this would make sense.”
“Jesus,” Alex gasped. “It’s got a dead man’s switch.”
And that’s when she took off for the rear of the train, with Svetlana tumbling after. She ran through Second Class sleeping berths, another dining car, then a line of Third Class cars where the Siberian and Chinese passengers were huddled upon hard slat benches—their canvas duffels and bulging luggage overflowing from the overhead racks.
Alex pushed on into the caboose, which was currently nothing but an unoccupied rolling workshop, with most of the tools unrecognizable except to a veteran train mechanic.
“What are we looking for, Alex?” Svetlana skidded to a stop behind her, gasping for breath from the chase.
“That!” Alex pointed up at a six-foot long railroad pike that was mounted on iron hooks, high up on a wall above a work table.
“What is it?”
“Fairly certain it’s a de-coupler.” Alex jumped up on the work bench and reached up for the pike, discovering that it weighed about sixty-five pounds. “Holy moly!”
In a minute, the two women were running back toward the front of the train—Svetlana behind Alex, holding onto the waistband of her jeans—the long iron pike bouncing on their bruised shoulders. They weaved back through the Second Class dining car, nearly slipping on a patch of Karl’s blood before Alex reached down and snatched up the hardware hammer from the floor. They came through the door to the coupling and let the pike down as quietly as they could.
“What are we doing now, Alex?” Svetlana asked breathlessly.
“We’re going to amputate the rest of the train from the front. No more hostages for that scum bucket Kreesat.”
“This is very smart!” Svetlana grinned.
“There!” Alex pointed at a spot in the middle of the floor. Svetlana dropped to her knees and started slashing at the carpet with the Dawson knife she’d recovered from Karl. As soon as she’d gotten some strips of it loose, Alex dug her nails in and started ripping it back to expose the floorboards. Svetlana handed her the hammer and Alex jammed the claws down between two boards and started hauling back and splitting wood.
After a minute she could see the tracks rushing below like an escalator gone crazy, and right down there was the train coupling—connecting the dining car to the next forward sleeper, and, beyond that, the cargo car. It was huge and round, like two enjoined iron fists, and it looked much like the couplings she remembered from her dad’s train set when she was still a child. She got down closer and peered at the locking pin and its heavy chain, then glanced over at the heavy pike where it lay on the floor.
Yes! Just crank that pin out with the steel teeth at the bottom, then spear the coupling right there and haul back on it. Too easy!
Svetlana started pushing the heavy pike over toward Alex, because she couldn’t lift it alone. But then she dropped her end and jumped up.
“Oh no, we forgot something!” she said. “I return!” Before Alex could stop her, the young woman ran back through the coupling door and into the dining car.
Alex hauled the pike towards her, until the blade end was hovering over the hole. She got behind it and gripped the head of it, a bulbous iron palm grip, but she knew she had to be very careful not to lose control of it. If it dropped down below … game over.
“This game is over, American mystery girl,” said Bojan. “Put that tool down.”
She looked up. A man was standing there, one she’d never seen before. He was tall and rock-face handsome, with thick blond hair and a ponytail. He was holding a large automatic in his right hand, but it was down alongside the seam of his black pants. His arrogant Hollywood grin told her he didn’t regard her as much of a threat.
“My instructions are to bring you to my commander, alive or dead.” He raised the pistol and aimed it at Alex’s chest. “I do not care which, so put that tool down now.”
Alex hesitated. She already had the pike up at a forty-five degree angle. If she could just spear it straight down maybe it would somehow crack the coupling open and the locking pin would snap. She could save all those people on the rest of the train, even if she didn’t make it herself.
“I am out of patience.” Bojan’s smirk went out like a light and he took aim at Alex’s heart.
A blinding flash exploded in the chamber. Alex winced and ducked as Bojan flew backwards, slammed into the coupling door and slid down—leaving a smeared trail of blood on the glass. His pistol bounced on the carpet next to his twitching leg as Alex spun around to see Svetlana, who had also slammed into the fuselage beside the other access door and slid down on her rump. She was rubbing the back of her head, and Karl’s massive .45 caliber pistol was lying near one of her feet. She had killed Bojan with it, but it had also knocked her flat on her ass.
“That is what I forgot,” she said to Alex. “It is a very big and
powerful gun.”
“Yes it is,” Alex said. “And you made the first shot count.”
Svetlana was about to respond, when she stared over Alex’s shoulder. Her eyes went wide and the blood drained from her face. Alex snapped her head around, already knowing who she was about to see.
“I am going to cause you great suffering for this,” Maxim Kreesat said in a curdling growl. He was standing above Bojan’s body while holding a large handgun on them, and his expression was murderous. “I worked with this man for a decade. He was like a brother to me. And I am also assuming that you are the reasons I have not heard from the rest of my men.”
Alex and Svetlana remained frozen like ice sculptures, saying nothing.
“Get on your knees and put your hands behind your heads,” Kreesat ordered. “And while you are doing that, you can think about the futures you shall never have.”
* * * *
Peter Conley was flying “nap-of-the-earth” at a hundred and forty knots and thirty feet above the deck.
This wasn’t unusual, except that he was flying a Russian Ansat light utility multirole helicopter, a machine he’d never seen before. There had been a number of helos parked on the apron back at the Irkutsk airport, including a nice looking Bell 212, but only the Ansat had the keys in the ignition. Conley had stuck his head in the cockpit, frowned at the instruments all marked up in Cyrillic, but then spotted the shiny key in the slot and said, “Beggars can’t be choosers,” and jumped in and cranked it up.
Now he was careening along at treetop level, with Morgan strapped into the copilot’s seat and Linc in the back hanging on for dear life. They were all wearing headsets and boom mikes, and Linc had just started looking around madly for a barf bag.
“You sure you know what you’re doing with this thing?” Morgan asked as he squinted through the gray haze of a rising dawn, trying to spot any sign of the train.
“Come on, Cobra. You know I can fly pretty much anything that’ll leave the ground, right?”
Dark Territory Page 9
