by Sean Ellis
There wasn’t time to work out the finer points. They would have to run alongside the train, as fast as they could manage, pick out a good handhold as the cars passed by, grab on and pull themselves up. An Olympic sprinter, running all out, could easily reach twenty miles an hour and sustain that pace for a few hundred meters. None of them were in that kind of shape, but with adrenaline pumping, he didn’t doubt that they could come close, at least for a minute or so. The train would be moving at about five to ten miles an hour faster, so grabbing on would, in theory, be a little like reaching out from a standstill and snaring someone running by.
Higgins went first, with Annie only a few steps behind him. Kismet too started running along, giving the others a little bit of room. He paid scant attention to their progress, keeping his focus on the task at hand. Further complicating matters was the fact that in order to reach the train, they would have to dart up the sloping side of the rail bed at the last minute, effectively running right at the lumbering train as it moved by. A stumble or an error in judgment of even a few degrees, and they might very well be crushed to death or sliced in half beneath the clattering wheels.
He caught a glimpse of Higgins making his move. The old Gurkha found a previously untapped vein of energy and dashed up the rail bed to grasp the front edge of a flatcar as it rolled by. His grip was fierce enough that the train pulled him off his feet, and for a moment, he was dragged along, his boots bouncing off the gravel, but then with a superhuman heave, he hauled himself up onto the platform where he immediately rolled onto his belly and reached out with both hands to his daughter.
Annie made it look easy. Her lithe form and the vigor of her youth enabled her to almost match the pace of the train for a few seconds, long enough to catch her father’s hands. He lifted her onto the flatcar with the grace of a ballet dancer lifting a ballerina over his head, and then they were gone, whisked from Kismet’s line of sight as the train rolled on.
He quickened his pace, lowering his head as he broke into a full sprint along the base of the rail bed. A container car, with no easy handholds, passed him by, moving almost twice as fast as he. He kept running, biding his time. A second container car passed, and then another.
Not good.
He glanced over his shoulder, afraid that he might be running out of train, but positioned as he was, he just couldn’t tell. Then he saw his chance; a flatbed with some kind of vehicle or large machine was coming up next. As its front corner passed him, he charged up the gravel slope and reached out.
In that moment, the sheer lunacy of what he was doing hit him like a physical blow. He’d done some crazy things in his life, sometimes without any kind of safety net, but this time it felt different. Maybe it was because he was running, exerting himself to the physical limit at a time when he most needed his judgment to be pitch perfect. The exacting nature of what he was attempting filled him with uncertainty, a dread reminder of just how precise his timing would have to be, right at a moment when he most needed to be sure of himself. The thunderous passage of the train car right beside him didn’t help his focus any.
Then his outstretched hand felt something that wasn’t smooth unyielding metal. It was a heavy nylon web belt, one of the tension straps that held the flatbed’s cargo in place. He curled his fingers around it...
And was yanked off his feet.
For an instant, he panicked, struggling to gain his footing while at the same time trying to keep his legs from being swept under the car. In desperation, he flung his other hand up to grasp the strap, even as his feet started to drag and bounce along the gravel slope.
Damn it, he thought. Now I’m screwed.
He dared not let go, but how long could he endure the punishing assault of being dragged by the train. He had to pull himself up, but was he strong enough?
He flexed his biceps, pulling with all his might, but almost immediately, something like liquid fire began to burn in his muscles and he felt them start to fail. In desperation he kicked at the ground moving beneath his feet, trying to propel himself up, just a few inches...
It was enough. He pulled his torso up against the strap and felt the edge of the flatbed against his hips. The instantaneous respite from being dragged restored his confidence, and savoring his success for just a moment, he began working his hands up the length of the strap until he could haul himself the rest of the way up onto the flat bed, where he finally collapsed in exhaustion.
After a few relieved breaths, he rolled onto his side to get a look at his new surroundings. The first thing he saw was an enormous black donut shape more than three feet in diameter—a truck tire—and then he realized that there was another right beside it, and a few feet down, separated by an external fuel tank, there was another pair. As his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, he made out more details of the strange looking vehicle. It had been a while since he’d seen one, but he recognized it right away. It was an M977 A2 Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, the ten-ton capacity, eight-wheel drive, diesel powered workhorse of the US Army.
The train was transporting military hardware, probably vehicles that had been shipped back to the States after seeing action in the Middle East or Afghanistan. It now occurred to him that the other flatbeds he had seen, including the one that Higgins and Annie had mounted, were likewise loaded with HEMTTs or possibly Humvees, all on their way to a motor pool somewhere halfway across the country. The details didn’t really matter much, but the vehicles would be a lot easier to negotiate around than container cars that now separated him from his companions.
He glanced in the direction the train was traveling. There were at least two container cars between him and his friends. Easy or not, it was time to get moving.
He rose and moved alongside the HEMMT, stepping over the tension straps and chains that held it secure to the flatbed, until he reached the front end of the flatbed. In the darkness, he could just make out the heavy steel knuckle that joined this car to the next a few feet below where he stood. About six feet away, across a gap bridged by that coupling, was the container car. He now saw that the container was secured to a flat car just like the truck. Although its massive bulk almost completely filled the moving platform, there was a narrow ledge—about six inches wide—around its perimeter. The ledge was tempting, but the sheet metal walls of the container afforded little in the way of handholds.
He stepped cautiously down onto the coupling, maintaining two-handed contact with the edge of the flatbed car until both feet were firmly planted. Then, with only a single quick step forward, he reached across to grasp hold of the shipping container. From there, it was an easy thing to pull himself up and onto the ledge.
Instead of attempting to traverse along the ledge, he instead used the vertical rods of the containers external door latch like a climbing ladder, and deftly pulled himself up onto the roof.
The wind of the train’s passage blasted him with surprising intensity, ripping at his jacket and stealing the moisture from his eyes. The train was probably only going about thirty miles an hour, but the rush of air was relentless. He stayed low, hugging the slick metal and crawling forward, even though the chance of being blown off his perch was effectively nil. After a few minutes of inching his way along, he reached the far end of the container and another long gap between cars.
With a running start, he probably could have easily leapt to the next roof, but there seemed no pressing reason to tempt fate. Instead, he lowered himself slowly down to the ledge and again stepped cautiously over the coupling.
As he did, something flashed through the air above his head.
He did not see it so much as sense it, and as soon as he looked and saw nothing, his rational mind tried to dismiss the experience. It could have been anything...probably was nothing...but the animal part of his brain—that evolutionary holdover instinct that raised gooseflesh on the back of his neck and set his heart to racing—was unconvinced. Although still moving with painstaking care, he felt a new urgency as he began climbi
ng up the container door.
As soon as his head rose above the roofline, he saw the figures—two of them, white robes whipping furiously about their bodies—striding forward down the length of the car, bent forward in defiance of the headwind. Evidently, Leeds’ goons had seen them hop the train, and at least a few of them had managed to follow suit.
“Damn!” The wind snatched the muttered curse from Kismet’s lips. He inched up onto the roof, staying flat, and drew his Glock from its holster, as the two creeping figures reached the far end of the car. Higgins and Annie were up there somewhere, waiting for him and completely unaware of the trouble headed their way.
He was about to rise to his feet, intent on giving chase, when a strong hand grabbed one of his ankles and yanked him from the roof and into the crushing darkness between the cars.
* * *
Annie widened her stance as the train rocked into a curve and nearly caused her to lose her already tentative footing. She gripped the side of the military truck secured to the flatcar which she and her father had boarded only a few minutes earlier and waited for the sensation to pass.
She gazed once more into the darkness, down the serpentine line of cars behind them, and wondered aloud. “What’s taking him so long?”
They had both seen Kismet make it aboard the train...or to be more precise, they had seen him charge up the sloped rail bed before vanishing from sight. They had continued watching, but he had not reappeared, which probably meant that he was aboard, but could also mean that he had slipped and fallen onto the rails, and been subsequently sliced apart by the steel wheels.
No, she told herself. He made it. We made it, and it wasn’t that hard...so he made it too.
But if he had made it onto the train, where was he?
“We should go look for him,” she decided, shouting to be heard over the din.
Her father gave a perturbed look, but then nodded his assent. With one hand still resting against the exterior of the truck, Annie began moving toward the rear of the train, intent on finding Nick Kismet. She had only gone a few steps however when a strange white shape appeared atop the shipping container on the car behind them. It took a moment for her to register what she was seeing, a moment in which the cloaked figure abruptly launched into the air, white robes fluttering like moth wings, and came down squarely on the flatcar, just a few steps away.
Higgins saw the unexpected arrival and immediately brought the barrel of his rifle around, but before he could attempt to aim the unwieldy weapon, the intruder raised a handgun of his own and let lead fly.
The report of the pistol was muted by the rush of air, sounding about as loud as a door slamming. Annie hit the flat deck and hastily rolled under the tall wheels of the military transport. She expected to hear her father’s rifle thundering as he returned fire, but to her surprise, he hit the deck and rolled beside her, shaking his head in frustration. He gripped her shoulder and then pointed to the forward end of the car. “Go!”
She didn’t argue. Scrambling away on hands and knees, she quickly reached the end of the car. The rush of air moving past caught away most of the sounds from behind her, but there were at least two distinct voices shouting to each other; the gunman wasn’t alone. She gazed ahead, to the next car in the train—another flat car—and mentally rehearsed what she was going to do next.
Like a sprinter off the block, she sprang to her feet and launched herself forward, over the gap between the cars. There was no hesitation in her stride; perhaps on some level she was trying to compensate for her earlier episode of claustrophobia, but she was confident of her ability to make the jump, even working against the train’s forward acceleration. She touched down lightly and caught herself with outstretched palms against the front end of another military truck. She skirted around the vehicle and made for the next car in the line, intent on putting even more space between herself and the gunmen.
A rush of movement and a faint tremor beneath her feet alerted to the presence of another person on the car, and she shrank instinctively against the truck as if trying to melt into its exterior.
“It’s me,” Higgins rasped. “Can’t get a shot. Keep moving.”
He didn’t need to explain it to her. The Kimber was a devastating weapon, but its long barrel made it unwieldy in close quarters, and to make matters worse, it only had a five round magazine. The only option that made any sense was to fall back and find a more defensible position, where the rifle’s lethal accuracy and potency could be used to best advantage. On a linear battlefield like the train, that meant just one thing: get as many cars as possible between themselves and their attackers.
And Nick?
The thought was there before she could stop it from forming, but she pushed it away. Either Kismet was still alive and still in the fight or he wasn’t, but there was nothing she could do to help him right now. She pushed away from the truck and started moving again.
She leapt to the next car and this time kept going, nearly at a full run. She danced over the tie-down straps, but as she reached the forward end of the car, she saw that the next car was different. It had a rectangular silhouette, but there was a platform at its rear surrounded by what looked like a low fence. Adjusting her stride just a little, she made the jump, catching herself on the barrier, and then clambered over it onto the platform. In the darkness, she could just make out a door, but in the moment that she grasped the latch handle, she heard something hit the rail behind her.
She whirled to find her father, clinging to the fence and struggling to regain his footing. Gripping his shoulders, she managed to steady him and then helped him over. When he was safely beside her, he turned and aimed the rifle into the darkness, looking for a target. With a nod, she fell back to the door and tried the handle. The door swung open, spilling light from the interior.
“Got it,” she cried. “Come on.”
Not waiting for a reply, she charged into the car, Higgins right behind her...
The car was full of men—armed men—and as she skidded to an abrupt halt, half a dozen gun barrels swung up to greet her.
* * *
Kismet’s next thought was of pain.
He had flung his arms out instinctively, desperate to grab ahold of something to keep from falling into the gap between the cars or perhaps simply to regain some sense of which way was up. Then, he hit the heavy steel coupling and for a moment, experienced a supernova of pain. The metal knuckle caught him in the abdomen, punching the wind out his sails.
At some primal level, his initial instinctive response saved him, for even as the impact knocked his breath away, his arms curled around the coupling with the intensity of a vise. There was no conscious involvement; agony superseded all voluntary actions. Yet, even as the torment began to recede, a new eruption struck. A blow, then another, not as intense as his crash onto the coupling, but more focused...someone was hitting...no, kicking him.
The unseen assailant that had pulled him from the container was now trying to finish what he’d started.
Even as Kismet made this deductive leap, his desperate grip faltered. He didn’t fall, but under the relentless assault, he felt the metal junction slipping away. He rolled sideways, the metal scraping against his arms as his own weight pulled him down. There was yet another rush of pain as the metal scraped against the insides of his clenched arms and legs, and simultaneously he felt something—the ground probably—slapping at his back, through the thick leather of his jacket.
He caught a breath, finally, and with it came a rush of purpose. He flexed his arms, drawing himself up closer to the coupling and away from the abrasive washboard of railroad ties and gravel. But even as that torment ended, he felt his assailant’s boot strike a glancing blow on his forearm.
In desperation, he let go with his right arm and threw a hand up, hoping to deflect the next kick. His fingers grazed something soft and yielding—fabric, a pant leg perhaps. He grabbed onto it like a lifeline and pulled.
Perhaps because he was in suc
h a dominant position, the move caught his attacker completely off guard. The fabric Kismet grabbed, the white sheet the man had donned both as a way of terrorizing his intended victims and masking his identity, became his death shroud. As Kismet hauled in on the sheet, the man was pulled off balance and pitched forward, into the gap between the cars. Kismet felt something brush against him as the man fell past, and then the sheet was violently ripped from his fingers.
For a moment, he could do nothing more than hang there, struggling to draw each breath but savoring the unexpected victory. But he couldn’t stay where he was; just holding on was sapping his strength fast, and if he didn’t move soon, he’d be joining his vanquished foe. Moreover, he knew that if one of the robed hooligans had made it onto the train, then others probably had as well. In fact, he was almost certain that the noise he’d heard just before the attack had been another of Leeds’ men, jumping between the cars and already moving up the train, looking—he assumed—for Higgins and Annie.
He didn’t hold back the roar of pain and exertion that accompanied his attempt to get back on top of the coupling; any noises he made were drowned out by the squeal and rattle of the train’s wheels against the rails. The effort seemed futile; he would struggle to exhaustion and then simply fall into the darkness when his muscles failed. He might even survive...
No! He kept at it, shifting and squirming until, after a few agonizing seconds stretched out to eternity, he found himself once more atop the coupling. He quickly shifted his grip to the exposed ledge surrounding the shipping container, and began methodically working his way up onto it.
Escaping the jaws of death was like a tonic. The pain in his ribs was nothing more than a dull ache and his fatigued muscles felt revitalized. He quickly shinnied up the latch rods once more, this time keeping his head on a swivel to avoid being taken unawares a second time. When his head breached the plane of the rooftop, he checked in both directions, but the coast was clear so pulled himself the rest of the way up. Then, against his better judgment, he stood, and faced into the relentless wind of the train’s forward passage.
