Knight's Late Train

by Gordon A. Kessler

  Damn it! The same shoulder I’d been shot in a couple of months back in LA — and it’d just healed up rather nicely, too.

  I knew I’d find about a dozen quarter-size bruises underneath it when I took it off. I plucked off several 9mm lead slugs that were still embedded in the dense fabric of the vest, realizing how lucky I’d been that Rillie’s Mac 10 hadn’t been chambered with full metal jacket or armor-piercing rounds. But I had no time to further assess my injuries. I smelled smoke.

  After staggering to the top of the stairs I found no trace of John Sites. Smoke poured in from the great room and darkened the ceiling of the den. I went to the opposite side of the den and into the long, hall-like mudroom that stretched from the front of the lodge, near its attached four-car garage, all the way to the back door.

  From the hallway’s front door window, I could see one of the Blackhawk helicopters lift off, while the second chopper warmed up. As the copilot of the second whirlybird stepped through the open cargo bay door and closed it, I saw no passengers inside — only the pilot.

  So far, my team wasn’t doing too well. I’d made a couple of base hits with the guards in the back of the house, but the opposing team probably had the kids and Mary on the first helicopter and most likely Doc accosted somewhere on the hazmat train. They might even have John Sites on that first chopper, as well. And the only ally I thought I had just tried to kill me. I decided it was time to make some points.

  Holding a makeshift bandage to my wounded shoulder, I sprinted to the back door and then out toward the tree line where I’d left my gear. As long as I held my hand firmly against the oven mitt I’d snatched from next to the den fireplace and jammed under my light jacket, it made a minimal, but adequate pressure bandage. I was losing blood, but not yet enough to slow me down.

  After throwing open the pack flap, I yanked out a tube a little over two-and-a-half inches in diameter and two-feet long. As the Blackhawk chopper in the front parking lot lifted off, I extended and armed the LAW rocket launcher, placed it above my right shoulder and adjusted the sites. When the helo came into clear view and passed over the trees about 200 yards out, I aligned the sites. The copilot turned in my direction and, although I couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, I’m sure he was flushed with fear. Been there, done that.

  I imagined the radio communication between helicopters as I aimed. Where’d he come from? He’s got a rocket! Evasive maneuver, now!

  Hoping this weapon had not been tampered with as had my M-4’s ammo magazines, I led the chopper only five yards and aimed high, anticipating they’d pull away from me in an attempt to avoid the small, powerful rocket. As I pushed the trigger button, they made that same evasive maneuver I would have, and I was surprised to see the Blackhawk fire off over a dozen countermeasure flares in addition.

  Silly mercs, I thought, flares are for heat-seekers!

  The first time I fired an M72 Light Anti-Armor Weapon rocket in Marine Corps Infantry training twenty years ago, I nearly shot it into the dirt in front of me. In anticipation of the huge bang and fiery tail that accompanies the 66mm finned projectile, I’d pushed the trigger and leaned forward expecting what I imagined would be considerable recoil. But there had been none since the tube was open in the back, allowing for nearly no back pressure. Luckily, that button takes a firm push. After being reprimanded by the really pissed range coach, my second push launched the rocket. The shot went true and had exploded with an incredible boom, dead center of the stationary target 100 meters away. I’d fired an M72 rocket launcher many times since.

  This was a much longer shot, as well as a moving target, but the rocket streaked to its designated bull’s eye and caught the helicopter in the tail boom behind its cargo bay as it turned away. The explosion tore the boom from the fuselage and, without the stabilizing tail rotor, the chopper began a slow spiral into the pines.

  The fiery explosion that ensued made me smile.

  I turned back to the fire-engulfed lodge, and a flashback ruined my brief mental revelry. I remembered a burning house, my wife Jolene and her parents trapped inside. I remembered I was helpless. I remembered they burned to death.

  In the distance, I heard another helicopter and my thoughts were jolted thinking the Jetranger had been taken. But the dithering roar was of two very large engines on this chopper. Then, about an eight of a mile away, a CH-47 Chinook raised above the tree line, tipped its two large rotors to the north and followed the first Blackhawk.

  I recalled what John Sites had told me: “They’re mercenaries — not just Americans, but … Germans, South Africans, Columbians, French, Russian.”

  What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  While watching the big helicopter speed away, Doc’s beautiful lodge exploded, the force of the conflagration throwing me into the trees.

  Chapter 11

  Eggbeaters Away

  7:30 PM

  I tossed my backpack and ruck sack into the JetRanger helicopter and climbed behind the controls.

  “Specks, you okay?” I asked the old railroader in the back seat.

  He was squinting at me. “Yeah, I think. But why’d you let that little bitch bash my head into the door?”

  So that was what the thump had been when I thought Specks had gone into shock. “Sorry,” I told him and fired up our whirlybird. “I thought she was on our side.”

  “That little shit’s been trouble ever since she showed up four months ago.”

  “Four months?”

  “Yeah. Just after Christmas.”

  “Then she never worked with Doc?”

  “Not to my knowledge. She’s mostly been training in the yards. Your daddy and me haven’t done a job apart since he come up here two years ago.”

  With that info, the foggy picture I’d had of what was happening cleared up considerably.

  “Are you good for a trip to Slaughterhouse Yards?”

  Specks looked out his door window. Above the trees, not far away, were two large streams of smoke.

  “Doc’s B & B?”

  “Yeah, the big fire,” I told him. “The other is one of the mercs’ two helicopters. I think the first one is heading for Slaughterhouse. And, by the way, that Betty Crocker reference was about yellowcake. It’s highly radioactive uranium in powder form.”

  “Then Doc was right,” Specks said. “There really are folks wanting to blow up a train in Denver and kill thousands.”

  “And they’re pros. They seem to have their own little army.”

  “You called ‘em mercs?”

  “Yeah, mercenaries. They’re not domestic terrorists. They’re both American and foreign paramilitary, hired to do a job. Putting fear into the hearts of anyone isn’t their job. They don’t care about that. They’re just in it for the money. No doubt their financiers have a different, more sinister motive.”

  “Mary and the kids?”

  “I couldn’t find them. Rillie said they were okay right before she shot me a dozen times. I think they still have them and they’re on the first chopper.” I gritted my teeth. “Otherwise, they’re dead.”

  “Did you say she shot you twelve times?” Specks leaned up in his seat to look at my left shoulder.

  “Yeah, but I took eleven of them in my ballistic vest.”

  “You hold on there a minute, boy.”

  He scooted out the passenger door and then climbed in front alongside me. After pulling back my jacket and briefly inspecting the wound under the oven mitt, he replaced it and applied pressure.

  “It’s through-and-through,” he said. “But you’ll bleed out if you don’t get it bandaged up better. You sure you’ll make it to Slaughterhouse?”

  “Got to,” I said.

  “Okay, then.”

  On the chopper’s floor, he spotted Rillie’s bra — the one I’d used to cover myself with when Specks first found our helicopter back at the burnt out snow-blower consist.

  Carefully and securely tying the bra around my wounded shoulder, he smile
d at me. “There. That’s one multi-use item, ain’t it?”

  We lifted off, and I kept us close to the treetops.

  “You’re pretty good with a bra, Specks. Where’d you learn that?”

  “I was young, dumb and full of come once, too. Wrote a term paper my senior year in high school about fifteen useful things you can do with a bra. My flat-chested English teacher didn’t like it, and I got kicked out of school. Had to get a GED that summer.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “You shoulda heard the other kids laugh when I read it out loud in class — yeah, it was worth it.”

  I remembered, “And you were a medic in the US Army with Doc, too.”

  My focus changed to a black dot growing larger in the distance coming in from the northeast. “That’s probably the US Marshals. The storm must have passed Denver.”

  “They going to Doc’s?”

  “John Sites called them in.”

  “Where is old John?”

  “Last I saw him, he was back at the lodge barely alive and bleeding on the floor. Just before I got out and the house was totally engulfed in flames, he’d disappeared.”

  “Good ol’ John,” Specks said, shaking his head. “Don’t you want to wait for the marshals?”

  “No,” I told him. “We don’t have time. Besides, they’d have too many questions and they’d take over and push me out. You want to stay?”

  “Think you can handle this better than them?”

  “They’re good at what they do. But, yes. I know I can handle this better than them. I don’t have any rules to follow. I’m betting there’ll be a squad of them going to Slaughterhouse along with a Homeland Security team soon, anyway.”

  Specks pulled an H&K .45 pistol from the ruck sack and was inspecting it. “Like I said, then ….” He chambered a round with the barrel pointed to the ceiling of the chopper. Then he glanced in front of the cocked hammer. “Let’s go!”

  “Better check to make sure it has a firing pin.”

  “I did. It doesn’t.”

  I raised my eyebrows as I looked back at the small, aging man with thick lenses and the semi-automatic sidearm.

  “Don’t worry, son,” Specks said, his eyes enlarged behind his glasses. “I was using one of these before Doc even knew about your mama and the mailman.”

  I chuckled at him. “What do you plan on using it for without a firing pin, a hammer?”

  “Could. But more likely to get the jump on someone, bluff them and take their gun away.”

  “Bluffing’s a dangerous game.”

  “I’m a dangerous man,” he said, then asked, “Who we got back at the yards that’s on our side?”

  “The roads won’t be cleared for a while and air traffic is just starting back up, so I suppose only Chic,” I said. “I know he can handle a magic marker.”

  “You’d be surprised about Chic.”

  “Oh, he surprised me, all right.”

  “Was he wearing that floral sundress again? Totally not the season for it yet.”

  I smiled. “As far as Jones and the railroad cop go, I’d guess they’ll be more inclined to shoot me than they will the terrorists.”

  “Yule’s there? He’s one of your father’s best friends.”

  “That’s not what he said when I came through the door.”

  Specks thought a minute. “That damn Rillie and Big Deal Jones have been up to their shit again. Probably lied to Officer Dye about Doc talking behind his back. That’s what they did last time, and it took a week for me and Doc to straighten it out. That damn ol’ Yule is as gullible as he is hard-headed.”

  “I know the hard-headed part,” I said recalling Rillie’s pipe wrench to his brain bucket. “I heard he killed a hobo last year.”

  “What?” Specks shook his head. “Another one of Wilde and Jones’s fabrications. Yule saved a bo’s life by pulling him outa the way of a train a few months back. That’s all I know about.”

  “Rillie and Doc didn’t have an affair, either, did they?”

  “Boy, if you wasn’t too big to turn over my knee, I’d give you a paddlin’ right now. You know better than to believe that crap about your daddy. He’s a one woman dog. After your mama passed, it took two years for him to even look at another woman.”

  I caught a glimpse of Specks from the corner of my eye. He was genuinely upset with me.

  He continued, “Mary was your mama’s best friend — helped ol’ Doc with your two young’uns and did household chores ever since your mama died. When Doc finally raised his head high enough to see all the good things he had left in the world, she was standin’ right there in front of him, and he fell in love all over again. Don’t get me wrong, he misses your mama terribly. Probably won’t marry again. But he’d never be unfaithful to his Mary.” He shook his head. “Shame on you!”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “I needed that.”

  With my left hand between the seats on the JetRangers collective lever, I twisted the throttle all the way. Within seconds we were tearing over the pines, hugging the treetops at 150 mph.

  We tried our cell phones several times but still didn’t have reception. And the radio only gave me static. I was pretty sure neither issue was caused by the storm, and I wondered if the mercs hadn’t knocked out every comm tower in the state.

  I took out John Site’s cell and tried it and had no reception, as well. His battery was low, and I hoped it would have enough power for me to hear all of his message.

  I touched the Voice Memo button, then punched up John’s last memo. I put the phone on speaker and laid it on my thigh for both of us to hear.

  “John left a message explaining everything he knows.”

  Although the JetRanger III was quieter than most helicopters, Specks had to lean close to listen.

  The message began: “I’m leaving this message in the event I don’t make it. Whoever finds it, get it to Homeland Security right away.

  “Nearly two years ago, Gervase ‘Doc’ Knight got a hold of me about some undercover work he was doing for a man known as Judge Hammer. And after carefully vetting me, the Judge thought it wise that I be Doc’s outside contact.

  “A couple months before that, according to what the Judge told Doc, the CIA intercepted “Internet chatter” leading them to believe a terrorist plot known as “Thundertrain” was being devised. The plotters were wealthy European financiers and Middle Eastern fear-mongers who wanted to keep the US on edge and give “nuclear” an even worse name to Americans. Besides feeding their inherent hatred for America, they felt this would be just one more step to help keep the US dependent on foreign oil. This terrorist plan involved a hazardous material emergency by rail in a major US City. The CIA narrowed it down to Denver, Colorado, and they determined the railroad being exploited was the Colorado Western Express, but they had little else to go on.

  “So Hammer enlisted Doc Knight to investigate. While Doc was snooping and pooping, I checked into the CWE and found out they were in trouble and had been for over a year. Although backed by several very rich investors, it’s mostly a family business. All were growing tired of losing money due to the larger railroads stealing their biggest customers’ business. Ever since the mining along the CWE’s route played out, they’d been struggling.

  “I happen to know one of those investors and he filled me in and kept me updated. My informant told me that when they were about to sell out at a huge loss, the CWE trainmaster named Dill Jones, also being one of the share-holders, surprised the rest of the board, telling them the CWE had won a Federal contract dealing with a secret uranium ore mining operation from a super-rich strike. He’d told them they had to keep it quiet and that the government would send them a $250,000-a-month retainer for service until the mine was up and running. After that, the Feds would follow through with a twenty-year, exclusive deal at standard shipping rates. That contract kept the CWE alive over the past two years, waiting for their big payday. Of course Dill Jones was lying his ass off. It wasn’t the U
S Government he was dealing with. It was the consortium of rich foreigners — ‘Operation Thudertrain’.

  “By the way, Dill Jones’s uncle died in a boating accident just before the railroad supposedly got that big Federal contract. He was on the board and had just married a young Russian he met on the Internet. Dill Jones married the woman two months after his uncle’s death. Speculation has it that Immigration wasn’t going to let her stay in the country unless she was currently married. It all sounded crazy to me, and Dill tried to keep in quiet.

  “In the meantime, Doc heard rumor that an old man had made a discovery in an abandoned and what was thought to be played-out mine in western Colorado. When he looked into it, Doc came across a newspaper account about an old prospector who died only days following his public claim that he’d found the ‘mother lode’ after an earthquake.

  “Doc figured it was the Safe Place Mine reopening because of the unusually high rail traffic setting out and picking up freight cars on that mine’s spur track. They were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies, bringing in mining equipment of all types, rock crushers, large quantities of chemicals, filters, air handlers, conveyors, steel drums, protective clothing and radioactivity monitoring equipment. When he investigated, he uncovered the yellowcake production.

  “Turns out they’d found a super-rich vein of uranium ore. Over the next eighteen months, they mined it, grinded it into particles and extracted the uranium by treating it with leaching chemicals right there in the mine. They knew what they were doing — that process yields a coarse, radioactive powder — stuff known as yellowcake. This particular ore produced an unusually high-yield, as well — over 90 percent pure.

  “Meanwhile, the CIA uncovered Operation Thundertain’s dispersal method from a contact in the Republic of Moldova, where the terrorism financiers were meeting. Their mercenaries and hired workers were packaging the stuff into 400, 55-gallon drums with five pounds of C4 plastic explosive in the center of each drum and then sealing them up tight. They painted the drums yellow and call them ‘Twinkies’ for the obvious reason. But they certainly don’t plan this cream-filled yellowcake to last forever.