Meltdown

by Chuck Holton

  Without breaking stride, he turned his head to see the source of the beam. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the blue and red lights bearing down on him.

  Before he could even cuss, an electronically amplified voice tinged with a mountaineer accent commanded, “Hold it right there!”

  Sweeney glanced up ahead. Only fifty yards to the center of the bridge, but it might as well be five hundred.

  The police car was closing in fast. He could hear its supercharged motor roaring up behind him. He’d never make it.

  “Police! Stop where you are. You are under arrest!” The cop’s loudspeaker echoed off the walls of the gorge.

  Then something else echoed back…the sound of the train.

  Sweeney slowed to a jog and looked over the edge. He could see the train’s powerful headlight just passing under the bridge more than eight hundred feet below. Tires screeched behind him as the police car skidded to a halt.

  It couldn’t be over just like this. There was no time to ponder how the police had arrived so quickly. Sweeney pushed himself up onto the concrete railing. He stole a quick glance at the cop just as the man’s Smokey the Bear hat popped above the door of his cruiser.

  “Don’t you do it!” the trooper yelled.

  Sweeney smiled and held his hands high. “You know, my dad used to say that to me a lot. And you know what I’d tell him?”

  He never heard the man’s reply, because he had already stepped off into space.

  The silence swallowed him whole. He was vaguely aware of the dark forms of the metal bridge supports as they flashed by a few feet from his head.

  As he fell through a swirl of mist, he arched his body hard as he’d been trained to do, counting the seconds in his head. A thought flashed unsolicited through his consciousness—What if you just kept counting? In six seconds it would all be over. And then what?

  But Bobby Sweeney didn’t take kindly to thoughts like that—they also reminded him of his fire-and-brimstone preacher father. So he pushed it away and reached for his pilot chute. He gave it a toss and less than a second later felt the pop of his specialized navy blue base-jumping canopy as it pulled him up short.

  Hundreds of people jumped from this bridge every year. Virtually all of them waited until Bridge Day, held each October. Then they could get their picture taken so they could brag about how brave they were.

  But fame did nothing for Sweeney.

  This was the second-highest vehicular bridge in the world. It had cut the time required to cross the New River Gorge by car from forty-five minutes to as many seconds. The logging road below was the only way out for anyone landing at the bottom. That was why most people who jumped illegally got caught—by the time they wound their way back up the treacherous old road, the police would be waiting with open arms at the top.

  But Sweeney wasn’t planning on landing at the bottom. Not exactly, anyway.

  He got his bearings and looked around in the growing light as dawn approached. Below, the New River crashed north along the bottom of the gorge. Tall trees shrouded in early summer foliage looked like a soft coat of fur in the gloom, but Sweeney knew they hid sharp rocks and sheer cliffs, some of which he and Frank had spent the weekend pretending to climb, all the while performing reconnaissance for this moment.

  The traditional landing spot was actually a parking area just below the bridge. He could see it now as a wide gray strip next to the river. Normally it was crammed with buses and soggy rafters, it being the take-out point for guided raft trips down the New. But at this hour, it was empty, which made it a great Plan B.

  The body of the train was almost invisible from this height, even though the moon had not yet dropped below the rim of the gorge. Sweeney let go of one toggle and dropped the NVGs back over his eyes.

  Much better. He steered out over the river for a better look. Jumping before getting to the middle of the bridge had cost him some altitude, but he could still pull it off. There the train was, lumbering along between cliff and cascading water. The engine was well ahead, but the last car had yet to cross beneath the bridge.

  And just there—between his dangling feet, he could make out where the tracks crossed the road to the parking area—the gap in the trees he and Frank had seen earlier.

  He heard sirens. Above and to his left he could see the flashing lights as Officer Smokey’s sports car challenged the hairpin turns that led to the bottom of the gorge. Looking right, he saw another set of police lights descending the old road on that side.

  Gotta hand it to them: they’re persistent.

  Sweeney steered his canopy toward the gap in the trees. He could easily make out the black form of the train rushing by underneath. From the ground it had looked like a piece of cake—the gap was about the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Up here, he remembered he’d never had much of a sweet tooth.

  The gap was coming up fast. Sweeney dumped some air so he’d drop in just past the leading edge of the clearing. He’d get only one shot at this, and overshooting the drop zone would definitely ruin his weekend.

  As he drifted down a hundred feet above the tops of the trees, a draft of cool air drawn down the gorge by the river hit him, pushing his chute back toward the water.

  He wrenched the toggles to try to compensate, but he was now out of alignment. That put Plan B out of the question. Plan C—one he had failed to consider until this moment—was getting strung up in a tree like so much wet laundry until Officer Smokey arrived to take him into custody.

  The rumble of the train mixed with the rushing noise of the river as Sweeney’s boots cleared the tops of the trees. But the train was creating its own air currents—that was something else he hadn’t considered.

  He was coming in sideways. Not good!

  As he passed over the lumbering train, he yanked on both toggles to slow his descent but felt the chute tug forward, threatening to slam him facedown on the speeding cars. He let up, hoping that the forward motion of the canopy would slow to roughly match the speed of the locomotive. And since this wasn’t a passenger train, the two should have been close enough.

  He pulled both toggles again just as his feet touched the metal of the slow-moving car. But the train wasn’t slow enough—the sudden acceleration caused Sweeney to lose his balance and sit down hard.

  But there was nothing there to sit on.

  Adrenaline kicked him in the chest as he fell between two train cars. He threw out his arms by instinct, grabbing at the air. His heels bounced off something metal, and that spun him so he was falling headfirst.

  The ground below was a gray green blur. Sweeney clawed the air in desperation. One gloved hand closed around something solid, and he grunted as the weight of his body tore it out of his grip.

  He fell only a few more feet before the chute caught on something overhead and brought him to a bone-crunching stop that probably shortened him an inch.

  His helmet hovered less than two feet above the ground, which was rushing by with terrifying speed. He couldn’t have breathed if he’d wanted to, but the feeling of something tearing above him gave him more pressing things to worry about.

  He groped for something to grab and found a metal ladder, but the only arm that could reach it had been badly wrenched in the fall. His right shin had been bashed on something too, but at the moment that foot was all that was keeping him from slipping under the lumbering freight car. The chute continued to tear, and he dropped another couple of inches toward the ties.

  In desperation, he slid his good hand along his body until it found the protrusion that had caught his foot, then he grunted through clenched teeth and pulled himself back up on the coupling between the two cars. He sat there trying to catch his breath until one of his shroud lines slid by him, stopping only inches from the ground.

  Bad. Very bad. Sweeney stopped breathing again and snatched the line away from the rushing track, carefully gathering his suspension lines to keep any of them from dropping into the road wheels. If that happened, he’d be jerked
beneath the train and crushed in a heartbeat.

  He gingerly pulled the quick-disconnects on his shoulders, then stood on shaky legs to roll up the rest of his chute. It would have to be repaired, but he didn’t care. The rip would forever remind him of how close death had been.

  He braced himself between the two swaying cars and wondered why he wasn’t more euphoric at being alive. Maybe it was because he had finally grasped the insanity of what he’d just done. His legs were trembling with exertion, and a slug of fear lodged in his gut.

  There’s hooah, and then there’s stupid. And this was way over the line.

  Illuminating the dial on his watch, Sweeney realized that less than four minutes had passed since he had become the first person whom nobody would ever know had jumped from the New River Gorge Bridge onto a moving train. In the dark.

  But instead of elation, he was suddenly very tired. It was all he could do to stay awake for the six-minute ride to Thurmond, West Virginia.

  Have I finally done it—proven once and for all that I have what it takes? How will I know I’ve made it—become the man I want to be? How tough is enough?

  Enough what? He wasn’t sure. But clinging to the greasy frame of that rumbling freight train, he decided that he’d better figure out what he was chasing before it killed him.

  Sweeney picked a spot beside the tracks and leaped from the train. He hit the ground and rolled, hugging his rig to his chest.

  At 0528, Sweeney watched from the bushes as Frank’s Jeep CJ-7 rolled to a stop beside the road. He keyed his mike. “It’s about time you showed up.”

  The radio beeped in his ear. “Shut up and get in.”

  He stood and loped painfully around to the passenger side of the vehicle.

  Frank shook his head. “I’m aiding a wanted fugitive. I can’t believe you did it.”

  Sweeney jumped in and let out a howl. “Believe it, bro. An Alabama boy can survive!”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “Apparently an Alabama boy can’t think of a legal way to celebrate his five-hundredth jump, though.”

  Sweeney just laughed. “Let’s go, Sergeant Bean Counter. Mission accomplished. No problem.”

  He decided to keep the almost-dying-under-a-train part to himself.

  After all, he was good at keeping secrets.

  2

  Kiev, Ukraine. 1300 hours

  MILLIONS WILL DIE.

  Maxim gritted his teeth in disgust. Not at the thought of the deaths, but at the sight of what “independence” had done to the city of Kiev since the last time he’d visited.

  The stocky Chechnyan leaned on the railing that enclosed the tiny balcony of the safe house, four stories above crumbling sidewalks and overgrown unkempt lawns. He wondered why nobody else seemed to get it. Capitalism wasn’t freedom, it was slavery. Communism was no better. When the people of Eastern Europe had thrown off Communism like an old coat and embraced “progress,” they had simply traded one master for another.

  In his studies, he’d learned that both of these systems of government endeavored to separate religion from government. Such a thing was not only heresy, it was stupid—like trying to see without eyes. Both rejected Allah, instead following false and destructive systems that treated the temporal as if it were holy.

  And so they will die.

  Maxim’s younger brother, Kyr, emerged from the run-down flat carrying a stained, olive-drab coat. His pointed nose and almost bloodless face were similar to Maxim’s, but Kyr kept his half-covered by a shock of black hair that hung over his eyes. Maxim doubted if the skinny twenty-two-year-old remembered much of the violence and chaos that had engulfed Chechnya in the 1990s, when the Russian pigs had tried to crush his people—and lost.

  Maxim filled his lungs to capacity, reveling in the strength of his people. They were united under an even greater citizenship—that of the ummah—or the faithful of Islam. Maxim felt secure in the knowledge that Islam would certainly one day rule the world, though he himself would not be there to see it. He let his breath out in a great sigh.

  If we are successful, the new caliphate may be closer than anyone thinks.

  The boy strained his eyes in the direction of Maxim’s stare. “What is it, brother?”

  Maxim laughed cynically. “The incompetence of Communism almost turned all of Europe into a radioactive wasteland in 1986. If Allah had not, in his infinite patience, seen fit to give those corrupt cultures another chance to repent, none of us would be here today.”

  Kyr nodded thoughtfully, but Maxim could tell he was struggling to understand. “Does this trouble you, brother?”

  Maxim ran a calloused hand that was missing two fingers over the black stubble on his jaw. “No. Allah does as he wishes. We were spared then so that we could be his messengers now. It is clear that these wicked people”—he swept his arm to indicate all of Kiev—“will only continue to wallow in shallow commercialism and will never repent, unless we jar them from their self-induced slumber.”

  Kyr dropped his gaze to his own delicate hands, which still clasped the coat. “I wish I could speak as passionately about it as you.”

  This time Maxim’s laugh was genuine. “You need not be eloquent, brother. Simply be obedient.” He wrapped a muscular arm around Kyr’s thin shoulders. “You can start by going to pick up our companions. Their train arrives from Dnepropetrovsk in an hour.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  Maxim dismissed him with a wave of his scarred hand. “Go. You do not need me. I have much planning to do and am waiting for the call from our supplier. Call my mobile when you find them.”

  Kyr tilted his head to peer at him from beneath the shock of greasy black hair. “I need some money for the cab fare.”

  Maxim growled and gave him a ten-hryvnia note. “Take the subway. It’s safe. And use the money you have left to get a haircut. You look like an idiot.”

  Kyr left the apartment, and Maxim turned back to the balcony, deep in thought. Far in the distance, he could just make out the wide Dnieper River, which flowed south from Chernobyl, bisecting Ukraine’s capital city. On the far bank, the sun glinted off the statue of an enormous robed woman, one muscular arm raising a sword high in the air. The titanium figure stood over five hundred feet tall. Its purpose was to celebrate the “victory” of the Soviets in World War II.

  Maxim’s cynical chuckle returned. He couldn’t help it. If he remembered right, the Russians had lost more than twenty million people in the Great Patriotic War.

  If that is what they call victory, they will soon have another great triumph to celebrate.

  Pike County, Alabama

  The throaty rumble of Sweeney’s Harley V-Rod echoed through the pines that lined the long driveway to his grandparents’ farm, announcing his arrival. The late afternoon sunshine in southern Alabama felt good on his face, though it made him sweat beneath his black leather jacket.

  He rolled to a stop at the end of the drive and killed the engine. Beside him was a new white minivan he didn’t recognize. He guessed it belonged to his older brother, Stuart. A sensible car for a sensible man.

  He pulled off his helmet and looked up at the hundred-year-old farmhouse. It was two stories tall, with weathered wooden siding that had needed a paint job for the last two decades or so. It looked the same as the last time he’d seen it, when he’d come home for Granny’s funeral almost two years earlier. In a way, he was glad nobody had painted the house. It felt good to know some things didn’t change.

  He also knew what he would find inside—that wouldn’t have changed either. He could feel the tension in his gut already.

  He sighed. Come on, Sweeney. It’s a wedding. It’s just two days with your family, not Ranger school. At least he’d get to catch up with some old friends from the neighborhood who would doubtless be at the reception. Free food was free food, after all.

  His leather jacket creaked as he set the sleek muscle-bike on its kickstand and headed inside.

  The wooden screen door banged shut as he
stepped across the threshold. The sound and musty smell of the entryway brought back a slew of memories from his childhood, like when he and Stuart killed a copperhead snake with their slingshots and carried it inside to show Granny. The poor woman had screamed like she’d been electrocuted. The screen door had banged hard that day as she chased the two of them back outside. Sweeney grinned at the memory while the clomp of his logger’s boots proclaimed his arrival.

  The first person he saw was his father, sitting in an easy chair in the living room, reading the Troy Messenger. Something else that hadn’t changed much in two decades.

  Lawrence Sweeney looked up from his reading and grimaced at him. “Son, you look like a Hells Angel.”

  And so it begins. “Nice to see you too, Dad.”

  His mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Leave him alone, Lawrence,” she snapped. Then her frown turned on Sweeney. “You’re late, Bobby. Now get over here and give me a hug.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Sweeney walked over and wrapped his arms around the wiry woman. “Hello, Momma.”

  After a few seconds, she pulled back, a scowl still firmly in place on her features. “Now sit down and tell us what’ve you’ve been doing. It must be very important since you haven’t had time to call or write.”

  Great. Guilt appetizers. Mom’s specialty. Sweeney shrugged. “Been traveling a lot.”

  “Well, don’t they have phones in these places? The least you could do is call.” She turned and made for the kitchen without waiting for an answer, muttering like she always did. Something about a respectable job.

  At that moment two identical, brown-headed tornadoes ran around the corner and ambushed him, each one taking a leg and shouting, “Uncle Bobby!”

  Laughing, he noogied each of his twin nine-year-old nephews on their buzz-cut heads. “Bubba and Moose! Who stole your hair? You look like basic trainees!”

  “We’re gonna be Navy Ninjas!” Bubba said.

  Sweeney looked down at them, grinning. “You don’t wanna do that! All the Navy Ninjas get to do is peel potatoes. You want to be Army Rangers!”