NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  An instant later the forklift slammed head-on into the SUV, the propane fuel cylinder clamped across its front end exploding with a loud roar, an orange gout of flame rising up and up around the rider to envelop him in his seat.

  Flat on his stomach, superheated air blowing over him in a wave, Deeks propped himself off the ground with both hands, looked up, saw a fiery cocoon swirling around both totaled vehicles.

  Then Kensi was kneeling over him, bracing him in her arms, helping him to a sitting position.

  “You okay, Deeks?” she said over the loud crackle of the blazing vehicles.

  He was silent, seemingly oblivious to her, gazing past her into the distance.

  “Deeks?” she said in a concerned tone. And waved a hand in front of his eyes to see if he could track it. “Are you with me?”

  He opened his mouth, closed it. Brought his eyes to her face. Then finally nodded.

  “The Metroline train,” he rasped. “It isn’t there.”

  “What?”

  As he angled his chin in the direction he’d been staring, she turned to look across the blacktop at the siding… and froze.

  He was right.

  The train was gone.

  * * *

  The shooting outside lasted only a minute or two before the explosion shook the tunnel, sending rivulets of dirt and concrete down from the ceiling.

  Drew looked at Alysha, confusion spreading across his face. They were still crouched in front of the brick wall.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But we should get out of here.”

  “Yes,” she said, and returned his flash. “I’ll stay right behind you.”

  He nodded. “We’ll be fine,” he said, turning the light back the way they’d come.

  She glanced down at the floor as they stood, snatching up one of the bricks he’d pulled from the wall moments before.

  “Better hang onto me.” He reached behind himself for her hand. “I don’t want to chance us getting sep—”

  Alysha smashed the brick against his temple with such force the rotted clay cracked in her grip, sending pieces flying off around her. The blow crumpled him to the tunnel floor.

  As he fell onto his face, she bent to take the flash from his loosened fingers, then brought what was left of the brick down on his head again.

  “Never trust,” she whispered into his bloodied ear. The jagged fragment of the brick resembled a broken tooth in her hand.

  After a moment she stood up, let its fragments drop to the floor, and ran toward the main passage.

  * * *

  “Sam, G… give me your position,” Kensi shouted over the Bluetooth.

  Callen checked the Challenger’s GPS display as Sam stitched through traffic with his foot heavy on the gas. He could hear sirens in the background over their phone connection, hear others screaming closer by, see black smoke spindling into the cloudless sky up ahead.

  “We’re on one-five, maybe a quarter mile from the Main Street turnoff,” he said. “Should be with you any minute… what’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain later,” she said. “Listen… there’s an L.A.-inbound Metroline train. I think it’s been hijacked.”

  Sam exchanged glances with Callen. Then the telltale chopping of helicopters drew his gaze toward the upper portion of the windshield. Two LAPD birds were zipping south overhead toward Piggyback.

  “You know where it is right now?” Callen asked.

  “No. It pulled out of the yard sometime in the past few minutes,” Kensi said. “I don’t think the uranium’s onboard… again, later on that. We—”

  “Guys, this is Eric,” Beale cut in from HQ. “Can everyone hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Sam said. “What is it?”

  “The Metrolink’s operations center has realtime tracking of all their trains,” Eric said. “I’m patched into its system and can toss you their feed—”

  “Eric, forget the feed,” Callen said. “Where the hell’s that train?”

  “It just shot past Union Station and Santa Fe Springs. I mean, it’s really plowing along.”

  “What’s next on the line?”

  “The last three stops are Buena Park, Fullerton, and—”

  Silence.

  “Eric? You still with us?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry. I just realized the last stop’s Anaheim… Angels Stadium.”

  Callen shot Sam a look.

  “The Rail Series game,” he said.

  * * *

  “Zero-Two-One, this is Chief Dispatcher Popowich. I am instructing you to halt the train. I repeat, you are ordered to halt the train at once. Do you copy?”

  Tomas ignored the new voice on the radio and looked out the cabin window, his hands steady on the controls. He had pushed the lever to Run 8, speeding up to almost eighty miles-per-hour—the fastest the Metroline train could travel over the short, old stretch of rail south of Buena Park without certain derailment. Fullerton was the next stop, and Angels Stadium no more than eight miles beyond it.

  The target was minutes off. He’d alerted Matous to his progress and let him know they were proceeding without the uranium. With law enforcement personnel descending on the area, he would see for himself that stealth was no longer an option.

  “Zero-Two-One, come in. You are in breach of approved movements along the route. Can you goddamned HEAR me, Zero-Two-One?”

  Tomas peered up the track, already able to see Fullerton’s platforms ahead of him… but that wasn’t all he saw. Glancing skyward, he discerned two LAPD helicopters flanking the train, the sun sparking off their windshields as they kept heated pace.

  It occurred to him that the police would even now be clearing the station at Anaheim. They might not know everything about the original plan, but their arrival at Piggyback Yard meant they knew enough to order an evacuation—and probably cut off service to the line. That meant the death toll would be smaller than hoped for.

  Still, the bombs Matous and his men carried were tremendously powerful, their explosive yield beyond anything the authorities might expect—sufficient to wipe a full city block out of existence. The hostages on the train, and anyone near the platforms in the stadium’s parking lot would be incinerated. Whether casualties numbered in the hundreds, a thousand, or more, the day wouldn’t be forgotten.

  Tomas snatched up the handset and raised it to his lips.

  “I hear you, Dispatch,” he said calmly now. “The train will pull into Anaheim without interference.”

  “That isn’t possible, Zero-Two-One. Permission to enter the station is denied. An automatic block has been established and you are to comply with all signals—”

  “No,” Tomas said. “The operator is dead and the train no longer in your control.”

  “What? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Dispatch, listen to me. We have over fifty hostages. Men, women, children. Try to stop us and they will die.”

  “You can’t do this—”

  “We can do whatever we please,” Tomas said. He felt light and floaty, his muscles somehow relieved of tension. “Know this action is taken in the name of the unavenged victims of Medz Yeghern, the Great Crime against the Armenian people.”

  Tomas heard the dispatcher say something in response, but his words no longer registered. The sounds coming out of the radio speakers seemed faint and distant, like the imaginary wash of waves a child might hear holding a conch shell to his ear.

  Lowering the handset into its cradle, he turned down the radio’s volume, thinking he’d done almost everything he needed to do.

  He would soon reach the station. The rest was up to Matous.

  23

  The stadium’s parking lot was jammed with vehicles and game goers as Sam turned in from East Katella Avenue at 5:50 P.M., discreetly flashing his badge at the uniformed cops deployed to guard the entrance.

  It was now about an hour before first pitch, and with tens of thousands already in the ballpark, and droves more still a
rriving from every part of Metro Los Angeles, NCIS and its partner security agencies had held off on putting the area into lockdown. The authorities did not want the crowds surging everywhere at once. Therein lay chaos and mass hysteria.

  Instead they had decided to keep a lid on the situation—for the present. The platform outside the stadium had been cleared, and service on the entire line suspended due to what was being called a “police action.” But everyone in the grandstands would stay in the grandstands. The ticketholder gates remained open, the lot was open to arriving cars, and copious amounts of chile dogs, nachos, and short rib sandwiches were being served up in the concourses and food courts. The game would go on as scheduled unless developing circumstances pointed toward a clear and present threat to the fans in attendance. Let anything slip, alert even a single smartphone-tapping person to the situation, and you could count on the news spreading like wildfire over social media.

  It was, of course, impossible to hide the influx of LAPD officers in patrol cars, the SWAT vans and trucks, the bomb dogs and wheeling surveillance choppers. But in an age when the possibility of terrorist attack was a constant, the public had come to expect an escalated police presence at major events.

  Driving slowly in from the parking lot’s entrance, Sam and Callen could see the stadium across the lot to their right, the railroad tracks to their left, and the foot ramp leading up to the commuter platform just ahead on that same side. People all around them were swarming from the parked vehicles to the outfield gate.

  “The bunch that took the train might have an advance team waiting here,” Sam said, looking around. “I think we split up. One of us stays in the lot. The other waits on the platform.”

  “Agreed,” Callen said. “Who goes where?”

  Sam shrugged absently, still peering out the windshield. He took one hand off the steering wheel and fished a quarter out of his pants pocket.

  “Heads or tails?” he asked.

  “Heads.”

  Sam flipped the coin, caught it, and slapped it onto his wrist.

  “Tails,” he said, glancing down at it.

  Callen looked at him. “So how’s that matter, since neither of us said where he wanted to go?”

  Sam shoved the quarter back into his pocket, turning into an available space.

  “Let’s start over,” he said. “You take the ramp. I take the platform.”

  Callen grunted and scanned the parking lot.

  “You’re gonna need some fan gear to blend in,” he said. “I don’t see any venders around.”

  Sam quietly eyed the people around them. After a moment he nodded toward a tall, overweight guy in a team jersey and baseball cap. He was getting out of his car with a teenaged boy and carrying a clear bag of snacks.

  “Who said anything about venders?” he said, and opened his door.

  Callen watched him move briskly up to the guy, exchange a few words with him, then reach for his wallet and slip him some cash.

  Seconds later, Sam hurried back to the car with his cap, jersey and bag of snacks.

  “Brought you some garbage calories,” he told Callen, dangling the bag outside his open window.

  Callen snatched it from his hand.

  “Thanks, big boy,” he said. “What’d you tell him?”

  “Undercover security, pay a hundred for your gear.”

  Callen nodded. “Slick,” he said.

  Sam pushed the baseball cap over his head, removed his windbreaker, and tossed it into the car. Then he shrugged into the jersey and adjusted it over his holstered SIG.

  “I look okay?”

  “Like a hundred bucks.”

  Sam smiled a little.

  “A quarter gets you nowhere these days,” he said, and started toward the railroad platform.

  Callen watched as Sam jostled through the crowd toward the railroad station, presented his ID to a small group of cops at the bottom of the ramp, and went jogging past them onto the platform.

  Then his face grew sober. Quickly reaching for his doorhandle, he exited into the lot.

  * * *

  As Callen left the Challenger, a white Savana passenger van drove past him through the lot, then backed into a spot several cars down.

  Parking the van directly opposite the ramp to the station platform, Matous stared out the windshield from behind its wheel, taking quick count of the police at the bottom of the ramp.

  There were four of them, all carrying standard issue sidearms.

  Anticipate changes. Adjust.

  He would neutralize them with a single move. There just couldn’t be any missteps. While that was true before the original plan was scrapped, his window of opportunity had shrunk drastically. It was too small now for even the smallest mistake.

  He looked over at Gaspar, then half-turned in his seat so he could see Davit and Narem behind him.

  “On your toes,” he said. “We’ll have seconds once the train pulls into the station.” He paused. “Those police can’t and won’t know what hit them.”

  All three nodded their heads, but Gaspar’s seemed too quick, too stiff, as though his fear of looking indecisive had far outpaced his confidence.

  That wasn’t good, Matous thought. But he’d known going in that his cousin wasn’t the most solid of the men.

  He studied him a moment, then straightened in his seat to look at the police by the ramp, dropping his hand to feel the weapon concealed under his warmup jacket.

  The train would be approaching the station by now. He had no time to worry about Gaspar’s strength or weakness, or second guess himself about his enlistment. No time to let his attention be diverted for any reason. He needed to fix the mission in his mind and not stray from its execution for an instant.

  The only thing left was to wait for Tomas’s signal and act…

  Act without chance of mercy, he thought, making sure there were no survivors.

  * * *

  In the operator’s cabin, Tomas saw the platform rushing up on him and gripped the throttle.

  “Yuri,” he said into his headset. “Are all the passengers accounted for?”

  “Yes,” Yuri confirmed. “They’re under my eye.”

  Tomas nodded, working the levers to slow the streaking train.

  “Hold on—this won’t be gentle,” he said, and went roaring into Anaheim station.

  * * *

  The train came in fast.

  In the cab car’s lower level, Yuri barely managed to keep his legs under him as it juddered wildly over the tracks. Standing with his ghost gun on the hostages, fighting to hold it steady, he saw Petros almost fall onto his face before bracing himself against the side of the car.

  Then the train finally screeched to a halt, pulling even with the front of the platform. Screams tore through the passenger compartment—men and women, all of them screaming as it took a hard, final lurch. Yuri saw the mother with the two little boys clutch both of them to her chest as she whiplashed violently back and forth in her seat.

  “Damn you, you’re out of your heads!” This from the scruffy, bearded man who’d been herded in from the fifth car. Seated in the aisle near Petros, he started pushing to his feet. “Let us go!”

  Yuri steadied his weapon on him, pointing it down the length of the car. He’d been thinking the man might be drunk or hung over.

  “Stay put,” he said. “I’m warning you.”

  The man glowered at him, half off the seat now. “Screw you. I—”

  Petros triggered his weapon, a short, tight burst at the man’s chest that dropped him in a lifeless heap.

  More screams, then. The two boys crying out at the top of their lungs, their mother whispering to them in Spanish, pulling them closer as she tried to calm them.

  Yuri stared at Petros across the aisle, a silently questioning expression on his face.

  Petros caught the look and shrugged.

  “I had enough of his mouth,” he said. “He was a dead man anyway.”

  Yuri’s eyes bored into h
is. “All right,” he said tightly. “Never mind. We—”

  Tomas’s voice in his earpiece interrupted him.

  “Yuri,” he said. “What’s going on down there?”

  He kept looking at Petros. There was no point escalating the problem. “A minor flare-up from a hostage,” he said. “It’s finished.”

  The briefest of pauses. Then he heard Tomas exhale into his microphone.

  “All right, get ready,” he said. “I’m about to open the doors.”

  * * *

  “Matous,” Tomas said over their radio link. “Zhamanakn e.”

  For perhaps five seconds after receiving that signal in their ancestral tongue, Matous sat with his eyes on the police guarding the ramp. There was a crush of people in the parking lot aisle between his van and their post, within a few feet of the platform where the train had come howling in. He would plow right through them.

  Zhamanakn e.

  It is time.

  Matous started to recite the Lord’s Prayer, as he had dozens of times before in action with the 1st MSOB. Then he checked himself.

  He would not bring God into this fight. Instead, he glanced into the rearview at Davit and Narem and gave them a slight nod.

  Zhamanakn e.

  Shifting the van into drive, he took hold of the steering wheel and pushed his foot down on the gas.

  The van growled forward before anyone in the crowd knew what was happening. Bodies flew everywhere as it tore into them, people knocked into the air, blood splashing the windshield. Arms and legs flailed bonelessly amid the terrified screams. Two of the four police officers at the ramp were directly in the van’s path, and Matous rammed its front end into them, crushing them instantly before he stamped on the brake. The other two stunned cops pulled out their guns in defense, shouting for people to run, trying to rapidly gather their wits and provide cover.

  Matous would not give them a chance.

  He threw open his door, stepping out of the van with his bomb pack on, simultaneously slipping his ghost gun from under his jacket. The others exited at the same instant, Davit on his side, Gaspar and Narem to his right, all four of them striding rapidly toward the ramp in near lockstep, pouring automatic fire at the cops and whoever else was in their path.