by Jack Mars
And that made Reid very nervous, though he didn’t let himself show it.
He paused with a span of about twenty feet of foot-tall grass between them, and Strickland did too.
“Agent Steele,” he said. Even his voice sounded young; it was not angry or authoritative, but rather casual. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person.”
“Not ‘agent’ anymore,” Reid corrected. “Just a father looking for his kids.”
“That was my job,” Strickland replied. “At least at first. It can still be. I can find your other daughter, Steele. I want to. But first…”
“How did you find me?” Reid interjected.
“We caught up with the other train. We found Agent Johansson and your daughter Maya. I saw the message that she…” Strickland trailed off, shaking his head. “She’s smart. Obviously strong too. Didn’t take us much to decipher it. I was following the train route when I caught you on radar. I saw your landing lights come on.”
“Then you know that the train will be passing through here shortly.”
“We know,” Strickland said.
“And you know that Sara is on it.”
“Yes.”
“Then let me end this,” Reid pleaded. “Let me find her.”
“By yourself? Against a train?” Strickland smirked. “I’ve heard the stories about you, but man, I didn’t believe them.” His smirk faded. “Look, you’ve already saved one daughter’s life. The Czech police and Interpol are on their way here now. I got here faster. Let us handle this. Step away.”
“Can’t do that,” Reid told him simply.
“You have to do that.”
“Or what?”
Strickland patted his jacket pocket. “I’ve got a pair of bracelets here for you. I’m going to put them on you, and you’re going to sit in that helo while I take care of this train—with backup. With arrests, not murders. The way it’s supposed to be done.”
Maria was right; the young agent was, as she said, a loyal Boy Scout. Not like some of us.
“You have kids, Strickland?” Reid asked.
“No.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve got a niece. She’s seven. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for her.” He looked Reid right in the eye as he added, “But before you ask, no. I wouldn’t go rampaging across Europe and shooting at cops. I’d rely on resources. Agencies. The law.”
So much for commiseration, Reid thought glumly.
Strickland checked his watch. “That’s enough small talk. I know you’re armed. I want you to put whatever you’ve got on the ground, and walk towards me slowly.” He raised his Glock 19, leveling it at Reid. Somehow, even in a firing stance the young agent looked calm, relaxed.
There was no way he could draw on him faster than Strickland could fire. Reid slowly reached for the Ruger and pulled it out, holding it aloft by the barrel with two fingers. “This is all I’ve got.” He dropped it in the tall grass. Then he took careful steps forward, wondering just what the hell he could do to avoid being detained.
“That’s far enough,” Strickland said when Reid was about ten feet away. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and tossed them at Reid. They landed at his feet. “Put these on behind your back.”
Reid balked. “You’re joking. You want me to cuff myself?”
“I told you, I’ve heard the stories. I’m not taking any chances.”
He shook his head. Strickland was smart, careful, and unruffled. I’ll just have to be smarter—and a whole lot less careful. Reid stooped and picked up the handcuffs. He clapped one over his left wrist and clicked it shut.
“Now turn around and…”
Before Strickland could finish, Reid clasped the other cuff around the same wrist and locked it shut, wearing both cuffs on his left arm.
Strickland blinked in shock for a moment, seemingly at an utter loss. “Are… are you serious…? What do you think you’re doing?”
“Sorry. I’m sure Riker told you, I’m not the best at following orders.” It was Reid’s turn to smirk—a genuine smirk, the first one in quite a while.
“Son of a bitch,” Strickland muttered. “I can’t believe you… All right, turn around. Hands on your head.”
Reid did as he was told, turning in place and putting both arms up, elbows out. He heard the rustle of grass as Strickland approached behind him.
“I swear to God, Steele, if you try anything, I will shoot you.”
No you won’t. You’ll have to holster your gun, because you’ll need both hands to unlock the cuffs. He said a small, silent prayer for his body to hold out.
He felt one of Strickland’s hands close around his wrist. He heard the jingle of keys.
“By the way,” Reid said casually. “You can call me Kent. What’s your name?”
One cuff fell away from his wrist as Strickland said, “I really don’t think that’s—”
Reid spun his body to the right, swinging an elbow backward as he did. It connected with the side of Strickland’s face. The young agent grunted as Reid turned fully, raising one leg and planting a solid front kick to the sternum.
Strickland fell into the grass on his back. The keys to the handcuffs jingled again as they flew from his grip. Reid leapt forward, doing his best to ignore the pain in his limbs. He snatched up the Glock 19 and tucked into a roll.
He came up on one knee, both hands around the pistol. Strickland slowly climbed to his feet. He grinned at Reid.
“That was a cheap shot. But what did it get you?”
Reid glanced quickly at the gun and winced. The 19 model was outfitted with Bixby’s biometric scanners—the trigger guard was coded to a specific agent’s fingerprints. The gun was useless to him.
Strickland reached for his ankle holster. Reid hurled the Glock into the darkness and ran forward, intent on tackling the agent before he could free his backup weapon. But the young agent was bluffing. Instead of pulling his gun, he too surged forward, meeting Reid halfway and tackling him with a shoulder to the abdomen.
Reid howled in pain as his feet left the ground. The stab wound on his stomach burned fiercely, undoubtedly busting open yet again as the young agent drove Reid forward and to the ground. Strickland straddled him and jabbed quickly at Reid’s face; try as he might to block the blows, his reactions were too slow. It was all he could do to keep his hands up as he took shot after shot to the jaw and cheeks.
Stars swam in his vision as Strickland grabbed the open cuff and forced Reid’s arm into the air. The pressure on his midsection let up slightly as the young agent tried to roll him over, onto his stomach.
Can’t let him cuff me. Reid pulled back on his arm as hard as he could, shouting again in pain, but Strickland was stronger and healthy. Reid’s right arm was pinned beneath him; his left was being wrenched backward. He couldn’t pull free.
But he wouldn’t expect me to push.
Reid shoved his cuffed arm forward and curled his fingers into a flat fist. He landed a direct shot into Strickland’s throat. A wet choking sound erupted from the young agent as he reeled back.
Reid tugged his right arm free, but it would do him little good. He couldn’t fight Strickland one-on-one. He needed some kind of handicap…
The loose cuff rattled, hanging from his left wrist.
Reid grabbed the open cuff and snapped it around Strickland’s wrist before he could recover from the blow to his throat. For a moment, Strickland simply stared in disbelief, catching his breath.
Then he swung his available fist toward Reid’s chin.
Reid yanked down on his left wrist, throwing Strickland’s balance off, and the blow glanced off his shoulder instead.
Balance, Reid realized. That’s my upper hand.
He quickly pulled his arm up, forcing Strickland’s with it, and then back. The young agent was tugged forward. Reid put up a knee and it met with an abdomen. Strickland responded with an upward swinging elbow that caught Reid right in the chin, forcing his head back. He felt an i
mpact to his sternum and doubled over. His left arm was pulled across his own chest as Strickland maneuvered around behind him, snaking an arm around his neck into a sleeper hold.
Reid tucked his chin down before the arm tightened, protecting his neck for a few precious moments. He brought his arm up around his head, and then yanked down, crouching at the same time. The steel cuff bit into his skin, but he didn’t stop. Free from the attempted chokehold, Reid spun, forced Strickland’s cuffed arm up behind his own back, and wrenched the arm up tight.
Strickland grunted in pain with his arm twisted behind him. Reid kicked at the back of his leg and forced the young agent to the ground, planting a knee firmly into the small of his back.
He reached back with his right arm, keeping the pressure on Strickland’s back, and felt for the ankle holster. Reid pulled loose a silver snub-nosed revolver.
He pressed the barrel to the back of the agent’s head and thumbed back the hammer, breathing hard. “Stop,” he rasped. “Stop, or I will shoot you.”
Strickland made a noise that sounded like he was gasping for breath. No, Reid realized—he was chuckling.
“You idiot,” Strickland said, laughing bitterly. “What are you going to do, drag my corpse around? I dropped the keys. No matter how this shakes out, you’re still my prisoner.”
“Not quite.” Reid took the gun off of Strickland but kept a knee in his back. With his right hand over his left, he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and popped his thumb out of joint.
Pain screamed through his hand, but it was no worse than what he felt in his abdomen or head. He slipped his hand out of the cuff, and then grimaced again as he pushed his thumb back into its socket. It was painful, but it was a trick he’d used at least once before to get out of a bind.
Reid slapped a cuff around Strickland’s left wrist, and then twisted the other arm up and clasped that wrist. Then he slowly got to his feet, keeping the revolver trained on the young agent. Strickland rolled over onto his back with a grunt, his hands cuffed in front of him.
“Get up,” Reid ordered. He did so, grunting as he climbed to his feet.
“That’s a good trick,” Strickland said, panting. “What now?”
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Reid told him.
“I don’t want to be shot.”
“Then stop. Let me get my daughter. It’s all I want.”
“Yeah. I see that,” Strickland said quietly. “But this is my job. It’s my duty. I can’t just let you walk.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but you’re handcuffed and I’ve got a gun.” Reid thought for a moment. “You believe in the law, right? You believe in rules and protocol. But there’s a difference between what we consider just, and what’s right.”
Strickland shook his head. “Right and wrong are subjective. That’s why we have laws and rules—”
“And sometimes,” Reid countered, “the people that make the laws and rules aren’t playing by them. They make them for us. They keep us in line. But these people—the politicians, our leaders, our bosses—they don’t always abide by them.”
“So… what?” Strickland scoffed. “You can break the law, be above it too? Just like them?”
“Yes,” Reid said simply. “If that’s what it takes to bring someone down, then yes. Look, you’re young. There are things in play that you don’t know about and wouldn’t understand. I can’t tell you about them, because… well, frankly, I don’t trust you. But I hope you’ll trust me when I say that I know things that would change your perspective entirely.”
The young man stared at his feet. Reid scrutinized him; he had no reason to believe that Strickland was privy to any information about the conspiracy. If anything, he appeared conflicted as he considered Reid’s words.
He sighed. “Coming up through the ranks, you were like a ghost story. You know that? No one believed it. The things you’ve done. There’d always be someone claiming they were there, that they saw it go down. I still didn’t believe it.” His gaze slowly lifted to meet Reid’s. “I do now. For you to do all this, come all this way, to save your daughter, it’s… it’s not what I would have done.” Strickland shrugged. “But I guess that’s why they tell stories about you.”
A sound reached Reid’s ears in the silence of the grassy field—the chugging engine of a train. Sara. “It’s coming,” he said. “Where’s your backup?”
Strickland frowned. “I don’t know. They should be here by now…”
“It’s just us. Are you going to help me?”
Again he stared down at his feet. “I’m sorry. But no, not like this. I don’t execute people. I can’t do things your way.” He looked up at Reid. “And like I said, I can’t just let you walk, either. The moment that gun is off of me, I’m going to come at you again. So you’re going to have to do something.” Strickland closed his eyes and held his chin high. “You’ve got me dead to rights. You do what you feel you gotta—”
Reid swung a fist in an arc and connected a solid blow just behind the young man’s jaw. Strickland fell limp to the grass, unconscious. Reid shook his hand out; the strike was jarring and painful. When the authorities arrived—if they ever arrived—it would appear that Zero got the drop on him, knocked him out, and cuffed him.
He felt a small pang of remorse for knocking him out; in a strange way, they were kindred spirits, but on opposite sides of the track. He had to admit that he admired the kid’s conviction. In another life, they could have worked together, maybe even have been friends…
The train’s horn blared suddenly, startling Reid. He spun to see the lights of the freight train barreling down the rails not a hundred yards from him. The horn blared again, sounding ominous in the dark field.
Reid’s eyes widened in shock. He hadn’t even realized it—and apparently neither had Strickland—but the silver X4 had landed perpendicular right across the train tracks.
Brakes squealed like nails on a chalkboard as the train attempted to stop in time. Sparks flew up from the rails. But it was already too late; there wasn’t enough track to stop the momentum.
The freight train plowed through the fourteen-million-dollar helicopter, sending steel and fire exploding around it.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Reid leapt into the tall grass and covered his head as the freight train smashed through the Eurocopter. Broken rotors and flaming shards flew over him, showering a fifty-foot radius around the point of impact.
When he dared to look up again, the train was stopped, likely as much from the brakes as the helicopter in its path. It had slowed enough to keep from derailing, but the engine was completely ablaze. The conductor or anyone else in the front-most car was certainly dead.
Reid sprang to his feet, adrenaline pumping in his veins and numbing his pain. Sara was on that train—but so were the traffickers. Emergency personnel would arrive soon from Grodkow, and if he didn’t act fast, he did not believe there would be any girls left to find when they got there.
He quickly counted the cars as he sprinted forward. There were twelve, including the inferno that was the engine. Unlike Maya’s train, only one was a passenger car. It would seem like the logical place to start…
But then he saw the red boxcar, four cars down from the engine. Stenciled on its side was a large 23.
As he made a beeline for it he was vaguely aware of shouting voices. Men, from inside the train. He kept his eyes open and the revolver in his hands—but as he drew near, a heavy door on the boxcar beside it slid open and a Slavic man jumped out, a machine gun in his hands.
Reid froze immediately, standing stock-still in the grass. The blaze of the engine was not far-reaching enough to show him in the darkness, or so he hoped.
It didn’t matter anyway; the trafficker did not even glance in his direction. Instead he hurried to car 23 and threw the door open. He shouted into it in Slovak.
“Out! Come! Now!” The man scrambled up into the boxcar and forced a young woman out—not Sara. Then came a second. F
inally the trafficker appeared again, half-dragging a seemingly unconscious girl with him. He lowered her unceremoniously to the dirt and let her fall to her side.
Where is she? Reid thought desperately. She’s here. I know she’s here. Maya left that message for a reason. She had to be here.
The trafficker shouted at the girls again, nudging them forward with the barrel of his gun. Reid took careful aim with Strickland’s revolver. He was about forty feet out, give or take; not a difficult shot.
He fired once. His shot pulled slightly and struck the Slav in the back left shoulder. The man cried out and fell against the boxcar, spinning with his gun aloft. Reid quickly aimed again and fired, accounting for the pull. The bullet struck the trafficker in the forehead. The two girls he was ushering away fled down the length of the train, vanishing into darkness.
More shouts filled the air as men disembarked from the train.
“Who is shooting?” a voice called out.
“Alexej is down!” someone else called out.
Reid saw shapes emerging and quickly flattened himself in the field again.
“It came from that way! You two, go check! You, get the girls!”
He stayed as still as he could, lying on his stomach in the foot-tall grass. He had to get closer to the train. He had to see for himself into car 23…
A boot crackled over dry grass not ten feet from his location. He dared to glance up enough to see the Slovakian stalking slowly past his position—looking upward, looking for someone standing.
Reid waited until he passed by. Once the man’s back was to him, he crept to his feet. In three quick strides he was upon the Slav, his hands reached for his chin and nape. In one quick jerk he broke the trafficker’s neck and let him fall limply to the field.
He scooped up the machine gun and turned back to the train. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness; he counted four dark shapes, too large to be girls, scurrying along the train’s length, throwing open freight car doors and demanding their cargo come out.
