Fortune Favors

by Sean Ellis

  The lead locomotive’s headlamp cast a cone of illumination out ahead of the train. But the light also revealed dark silhouettes—two human shapes—moving in the foreground, along the top of the train, perhaps a hundred yards meters ahead. He couldn’t tell whether the figures were his companions or more of Leeds’ goon squad, but they were well past the point where Higgins and Annie had boarded. There was only one possible objective in that direction—the locomotive—but he couldn’t fathom why the pair—be they friend or foe—would be headed there. Then he looked behind him, and it all made sense.

  From his elevated position, he could easily make out the rear of train, at least two hundred yards back. Further back, perhaps another two hundred yards he saw the headlights of a vehicle, moving alongside the tracks and bobbing crazily as the driver negotiated the rugged terrain alongside the rail bed.

  Reinforcements, he realized with a growing feeling of dread. Some of their pursuers had made it aboard, but evidently the rest had called for help. There was no way the driver of the approaching vehicle—probably a 4X4 pickup or SUV—would be able to get close enough for his passengers to cross over; he was having a hard enough time just keeping pace.

  That, Kismet realized, was what the two figures advancing toward the locomotive were trying to accomplish.

  Hunching over into the rushing air, he began moving as fast as he dared. He reached the end of the container and deftly climbed down to leap onto the flatbed. The urgency of the situation enabled him to sublimate his instinctive fears, imbuing him with a surefooted decisiveness as he negotiated the obstacles and unhesitatingly crossed between the cars, picking out handholds, climbing onto roofs as if they were merely a maze of obstacles on a child’s playground.

  In a matter of only seconds, he was past the flatcars where he was sure his friends had boarded. There was no sign of them, and he hoped that meant they had found somewhere to hide. He couldn’t take the time to look; if Leeds’ men succeeded in stopping the train, then all hope would be lost. He kept going.

  A long series of box cars sped him along. He was able to jump from one roof to the next without breaking stride. Yet, even as he raced forward, the two figures he pursued dropped out of sight. He kept going, and reached the place where they had vanished a few seconds later.

  The last boxcar in the line was hooked to a locomotive, one of a pair that worked together to pull the train. Kismet hopped over to the platform that ran along the side of the engine, following it to a short stairway that fed into the cab. The interior of the control room was dark and unmanned; the locomotive had been slaved to the lead engine. The engineer would be in the forward locomotive, and that was where Leeds’ men would be headed. A narrow door led out the front of the cab and onto another small ledge, surrounded by a guardrail.

  As he vaulted the rail and landed on the deck at the rear of the lead engine, he caught a glimpse of white fabric, fluttering in the wind, moving along the exterior of the locomotive, just ahead of him. Without slowing, he reached for his holster, but found it empty. His gun was gone; he had probably dropped it during the fall. His kukri however was still sheathed on the opposite side, and he drew it, switching it to his right hand and holding it in a fierce grip as he ran, determined not to lose his last remaining weapon.

  Kismet rounded the corner, gathering his momentum to tackle the sprinting figure...

  Something slammed into his back and sent him reeling. He staggered, rebounding off the blistering hot engine hood and fell back against the protective railing that lined the walkway. In that instant, he caught a glimpse of assailant, a hulking form beneath a now-grubby sheet that had somehow gotten behind him, and was now advancing with undisguised malevolence.

  Kismet tried to get the kukri up but was a heartbeat too slow. The man closed the distance and thrust out his hands, wrapping them around Kismet’s throat, squeezing the life out of him even as he bent him back over the waist high guardrail.

  Kismet’s reaction was automatic. He brought his hands up, intending to fight the chokehold, but the hilt of the Gurkha knife was still locked in his right fist. The blade glanced harmlessly off the attacker’s forearm, but the mere reminder of its presence emboldened Kismet. He broke off his defensive struggle, and immediately went on the offensive with a backhand slash across his foe’s exposed torso.

  The man fell back, his howl of rage audible even over the deafening rumble of the diesel engine. Kismet slashed again, a miss, but enough to drive the man back, staggering, his will to fight evidently leaking away along with the blood that seeped from his wound.

  Kismet broke off the attack and wheeled around, resuming the pursuit of the lone remaining attacker. There was a flash of light as the cab door ahead was thrown open, and then it was gone as the white-robed figure eclipsed the source. He was there a moment later, but instead of charging in blind he stopped to appraise the situation inside the cab.

  The door was still open, and beyond, a shrouded figure brandishing an enormous large bore revolver—possibly a .44 Colt Anaconda or a S&W .500. With a hand cannon like that loose in the cab, he didn’t dare rush the man from behind; a single shot, even a glancing wound to an extremity from one of the Magnum rounds, would be lethal. He didn’t think the gunman planned on killing the train’s engineer, but there was no telling what might happen if he spooked the man.

  “Stop the train,” the man ordered, shouting to be heard over the rumble of the diesel. He shook the pistol meaningfully. “Now!”

  Then again...thought Kismet, hefting the kukri.

  He stepped past the metal threshold and got within an arm’s length of the unsuspecting gunman. Over the man’s shoulder, Kismet saw two men in work clothes—the train’s crew—standing with their hands raised, transfixed by the sight of the enormous gun barrel pointed at them. Kismet’s unexpected appearance was enough to draw the gaze of one man, but probably because he had no idea whether Kismet was friend or foe, his terrified expression did not change. The other man turned to comply with his captor’s orders.

  Kismet drew a deep breath into his battered rib cage, and then with as much forcefulness as he could muster, shouted: “Drop the gun!”

  The white-robed man started to turn, the reaction automatic, his instinctive curiosity greater than his fear of an unknown threat. Kismet had been expecting exactly this reaction, and as soon as he saw the barrel of the revolver waver a few degrees away from the train crew, he brought the butt end of the kukri’s hilt down squarely on the back of the gunman’s head.

  The hilt, two dense pieces of hardwood, riveted through the thick steel tang and capped at one end with an eighth-inch thick layer of metal, slammed into the man’s skull like a hammer, and he crumpled beneath his sheet, deflating to the floor like some kind of fairy tale ghost banished by a happy thought. The heavy Magnum pistol, still clutched in one fist, thumped to the deck without discharging.

  Kismet heaved a relieved sigh and lowered the knife. He made eye contact with each of the men in turn, offering a reassuring nod, then opened his eyes to tell them that they were safe, and that they should under no circumstances stop or even slow the train.

  But the words never left his mouth. Before he could speak, heavy hands clapped down on either shoulder and yanked him back, through the narrow doorway and once more onto the catwalk where he stumbled uncontrollably toward the rear of the engine. A foot lashed out and swept his legs from under him, depositing him in a painful heap on the metal grill of the ledge. Flat on his back, he looked up into the blank white of his attacker’s disguise. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes through the ragged holes in the sheet, but the bloody horizontal slash across the man’s chest identified him as the man Kismet had earlier struggled with; evidently the man had regained his nerve and wanted back into the fight.

  Kismet brought the knife up, and at the same time braced his feet against the walkway, propelling himself backward, away from his foe. The man closed with him, but the distance gave Kismet time to get back to his feet, slashing a
t the air in front of him to drive the man back. It worked, for a few seconds at least, and then the man reached under his shroud and drew his own blade, a big Bowie knife—easily fifteen inches in length—with brass knuckles on the hilt.

  With his nerves already alight from his earlier brush with death, the sight of the heavy blade—a veritable short sword to rival the kukri—didn’t give Kismet the slightest pause. He had survived more than one knife fight in his life—hell, he’d he survived more than one just in the last week—and he doubted very much the redneck under the sheet could make such a boast.

  But then something happened that took the fight out of Kismet. At first it was just a strange sensation, like being pushed forward even though no one was behind him. Then he heard the ominous shriek of metal against metal, and knew what was happening.

  Up in the cab, the engineer, recognizing that something very bad was about to happen, was doing the one thing Kismet desperately needed him not to do. He was stopping the train.

  Kismet launched himself forward, hacking the air in front of him repeatedly and driving his foe back a step before the man even knew what was happening. The man under the sheet was big—football linebacker big—and surprisingly light on his feet, but Kismet could tell by the way he held the Bowie that his first hunch about the man was right; the only thing this man knew about knife fighting was what he saw in movies. He even tried, at one point, to parry Kismet’s blade, like some kind of pirate, fencing with a cutlass. Kismet easily swatted the Bowie down, using the kukri’s forward curve like a hook, and then lashed out with a foot. The kick connected squarely with the man’s gut and sent him reeling backwards where he tripped on the steps and fell halfway through the door to the cab.

  Kismet leaped forward intent on shouting for the engineer to keep the train moving forward, but before he could utter even a syllable, a kick from the supine knife-wielder drove him back. The man was back up in an instant, charging forward with the knife out ahead of him like a lance. Kismet twisted to the side and managed to avoid the blade, but the force behind it—the man’s bulky body—slammed into him and both men crashed into the engine hood and tumbled in a tangled mass of limbs and blades on the walkway.

  Kismet thought he felt something sharp against his arm—a steel edge cutting through the leather sleeve of his jacket, probably the blade of his own kukri which had been torn from his grasp in the collision—but in the desperate unfocused struggle, the only sensation that meant anything at all to him was the persistent shift of his center of gravity as the train squealed to a stop beneath him.

  The hand wielding the Bowie knife suddenly came into view above his head; the man had wrestled his arm free and now had the blade poised right above Kismet’s throat. Both of Kismet’s arms were pinned, immobile beneath the man’s body. All he could do was wrench himself sideways as the knife point came down. Something tugged at his shoulder as the blade ripped through the leather, gouging a shallow furrow in the flesh beneath, but then the blade hit the metal of the walkway and stopped cold. The man had put so much force behind the thrust that the abrupt impact caused the hilt to twist out of his hand. Kismet was only peripherally aware of this fact, but he knew he’d avoided being skewered. Twisting again, he heaved himself and his assailant sideways. As the man resisted, Kismet thrust forward, ramming his forehead into the man’s chin.

  The stab of pain that shot through Kismet’s skull was a small price to pay in exchange for the satisfying crunch of his assailant’s lower jaw cracking and probably breaking. But that minor triumph did little to change the situation. Without his knife, the hulking attacker was left with only the weapons nature had given him—his fists, his body mass, his evidently superior strength—and unlike the knife, he was clearly more familiar with how to use those. Agonized and enraged, the man started raining blows in the direction of Kismet’s exposed face. Kismet, his hands still trapped, could do nothing but raise his head, staying as close to the other man as he could in order to limit the effectiveness of the punches.

  The gamble worked. His assailant, frustrated by his inability to pound Kismet senseless, changed tactics and instead pushed away in an effort to extricate himself from the grappling match. Kismet got his arms free, but just as quickly wrapped his legs around the man’s middle, trapping him in close combat, the same way he’d been instructed all those years ago when learning ground-fighting techniques in the army. Kismet got his right arm around the man’s neck, then caught his right forearm with his left hand and began ratcheting his grip tighter.

  The man continued to struggle ineffectually for a moment, but then seemed to realize what Kismet was doing. He stopped thrashing and instead tried to slide his beefy hands in between his vulnerable throat and Kismet’s headlock.

  The battle seemed to have come to a standstill, with neither man moving an inch. Kismet felt his foe’s squirming fingers working into the notch of his elbow and realized that the man was about to succeed. In desperation, he began twisting his own body back and forth, trying to shake the man, the way a predator shakes its prey in its jaws to break its neck.

  The man roared in fury, a roar that was all the louder for the fact that the squealing of the train’s brakes had subsided to a low rasping. The agonized howl took the last bit of fight out of the man, and a moment later, his struggles ceased as asphyxia bore him down into dark unconsciousness. Kismet held tight a moment longer, fearing that that the sudden capitulation was a ruse, and then heaved the still figure away.

  At that instant, the train lurched to a full stop.

  Lights flashed and bobbed in the darkness alongside the train, heralding the imminent arrival of Leeds’ men. Over the deep rumble of the idling locomotive, Kismet hear the distinctive report of gunfire and knew that, despite his victory in the close-quarters struggle, things were about to get a lot worse.

  On hands and knees, he groped for his knife, found it, and was about to stand up when he became aware of another white-robed figure looming over him. The man that had reached the cab first, the one he’d cold-cocked with the kukri, had evidently recovered from the blow...and recovered his pistol as well. The gaping barrel of the Magnum was pointing straight at Kismet’s face, and as the latter stared back, helpless in defeat, the shrouded man thumbed back the action and tightened his finger on the trigger.

  A shot, then several more...too many too count...thundered in Kismet’s ears.

  But the revolver hadn’t discharged.

  The man with the big gun flinched as bullets ripped into him and then fell against the guard rail.

  In disbelief, Kismet turned toward the source of the shots. Brilliant white light, the beams of a half-dozen or more high intensity LED flashlights, left him nearly blind, but he could just make out the shapes of the advancing group. The men were poised for action, carbines held at the high, ready and trained on him, but they weren’t wearing the makeshift disguises of the bunch that had attacked them at the cemetery. This group wore a different uniform; helmets and body armor, tactical vests with spare magazines and other equipment, all in the distinctive gray and off-white digital camouflage pattern of the United States army’s advanced combat uniform.

  THIRTEEN

  For the next two hours, Kismet barely moved.

  Most of the soldiers had swarmed over the locomotive, ensuring that there were no other hostile elements lurking nearby, but two of their number had remained with him, keeping their M4 carbines raised and ready the whole time. He stayed quiet, and except for a few terse commands, so did they.

  Once the security sweep was complete, an army medic in full battle-rattle arrived on the scene to begin assessing casualties. Ignoring Kismet, he went first to the man that had been carrying the revolver. He used a pair of trauma shears to cut away the man’s disguise, revealing the bland face of a younger than middle-aged man with unkempt hair and a short beard. Kismet surreptitiously watched as the medic checked for a pulse, listened for breath sounds, and then repeated the process twice more before glancing up to the
stone-faced riflemen and shaking his head.

  The man that Kismet had choked out was luckier. Once again, the mask was stripped away, this time to reveal a much younger man, and the medic successfully found a pulse after a few seconds. He moved to the man’s side, giving his security element a better line of fire in case the man came to, and went to work checking for other injuries.

  “Broken jaw,” he mumbled, as if dictating to an unseen secretary. He probed some more, repositioning the kid and mopping up blood to see if minor wounds concealed more severe injuries. “Superficial laceration to the upper chest...a lot of bruising...” He looked up again, addressing one of the other soldiers. “He’ll live, but we should evac him to a local facility.”

  The soldier nodded and, still keeping his carbine raised with one hand, keyed a radio clipped to his vest and relayed the message.

  The medic regarded Kismet with evident apprehension. “I need to check you over.”

  Kismet nodded, but said nothing. As far as the medic and the soldiers were concerned, he was a potentially hostile combatant; any attempt to put them at ease would probably just make them even more suspicious.

  The medic ticked off the list of Kismet’s injuries, mostly bruises and abrasions. He daubed Betadine onto a few of the deeper cuts and used butterfly sutures to close the wound on Kismet’s shoulder. When he was finished, the medic addressed Kismet with a little less reservation. “You should probably get checked out in the ER as well, but Major Russell wants to talk to you first. You okay with that?”