the Devil's Workshop (1999)

by Stephen Cannell

  Sylvia looked at them speculatively, then turned and led them into a small, cluttered office with several radio and phone hookups, which kept the Yardmaster in touch with the trains on her section of track.

  "You hear about the derailment up in the mountains?" Cris asked her.

  "Kinda hard not t'hear about it. Got the whole system futzed," she said, as she led him to the map.

  "Who do you think did it?"

  "Damn F. T. R. A. S. Leastways, that's what the dispatcher's train delay report says." She pointed to a boxed section of the wall map. "This is us, here."

  Cris studied the map, memorized the track configurations, and finally nodded. "Okay, that helps a lot. Thanks for everything," he said, and turned to Stacy. "Okay, dear, time to tie on the feed-bag and find a motel."

  "Such a romantic," Stacy smiled, as they headed to the office door.

  "By the way," Sylvia said, "you aren't fooling anyone."

  Cris turned and faced her.

  "You two aren't married, you're having an affair."

  Cris smiled as he and Stacy stepped out the door of the office and began moving across the pavement.

  Sylvia's eyes were burning holes in their backs.

  "That was cute," Stacy said, "with the little card."

  "A nooner?"

  "She was about to jump on you and rape you. I had to do something."

  He grinned. They turned the corner and were out of Sylvia's sight.

  "Who the hell is Al Kleggman?" she asked.

  "I don't remember. Probably some insurance guy I met back when Kennidi was sick. I had the card in my wallet, so I memorized the number as we were walking up there."

  They arrived at a public park. Cris sat at a wooden picnic table and took a sheet of paper out of his wallet. "You got a pen or pencil?" he asked.

  "Lipstick." She got it out of her backpack and offered it to him.

  He took it and began to draw a map on the back of the piece of paper. "Okay, here's the CSXT Appalachian rail line

  Here's the main pass heading through the Appalachian Mountains; any train going south from New York or Philadelphia or Baltimore has to go on that CSXT line. Unless you detour back up into New Jersey or Pennsylvania, which adds hundreds of miles, this track through the Appalachian Pass is the quickest shot south."

  "What're you getting at?"

  "If Kincaid threw the switch and bounced that manifest train off the tracks up in the mountains, then he had to have a good reason, and it wasn't to steal some apples off an agriculture car."

  "Then what was it?"

  "I've been wondering where the White Train that left Fort Detrick was headed," Cris said. "When I was in the Rangers, I heard that a lot of the nuclear waste was pumped out in Texas. If it's going south, and the Appalachian Pass was blocked, then the only other way to get there is on this Northeast Corridor track here." He added that track to his drawing and labeled it "NEC." Then he put the tip of the lipstick on a place on the NEC track, making an X.

  "What's that?" she asked.

  "Washington, D. C. The route the White Train will most likely take now is through the capital. It's the only other good way to get south." Then he handed the lipstick back to her and they stood in the sunshine looking at Cris's map.

  "But the White Train has soldiers aboard. Ten armed Marines," she finally said, "and two Blackhawk helicopters to fly over it."

  "They're Bell Jet Rangers, but you're right, it's heavily guarded."

  "Could he do that? Could he figure a way to hijack or derail the White Train in D. C., and let all that toxic stuff loose? It would be suicide."

  "Kincaid is a fanatic," Cris said. "Some fanatics live so they can die."

  They stood over Cris's map for a long, thoughtful moment.

  "We've got to stop him," she said.

  Chapter 54

  DETOUR

  The White Train had been on its way up the east face of the Appalachian Pass when they had been radioed and informed of the wreck up ahead. Now they were parked on a siding two miles east of the accident, with the engine idling. The two Bell Jet Rangers had landed in a clearing next to the train, and the Marines had set up an armed perimeter around it.

  Major Adrian Flynn now sat in the small communications office in the troop car, trying to make arrangements to get them on their way. His first call was to Admiral Zoll, who growled at him through the scrambled speakerphone.

  "Get that load outta there, Major," he said. "I don't want you parked. Find a way around."

  Major Flynn looked with dismay at the Marine Captain seated next to him. "Sir, there are only two ways out of here. Unless you want me to go all the way into Pennsylvania, I'm going to have to back this train down twenty miles of track through the mountains, then switch to the NEC track heading into Washington, D. C.

  Because we're a toxic event, I'm going to need to get half a dozen district area track clearances."

  "Then do it. But that stuff has got to get lost. It's still possible that some nosy Senator's gonna hear that the White Train was on base and stop you before you can pump out in Texas. Time is critical here. This stuff can't be just hanging around, waiting for an accident!" Zoll was glaring at the scrambled phone on the conference table in his huge office at Fort Detrick.

  "Yessir," Major Flynn said, and then hung up. He quickly called the area Trainmaster for the Eastern Section and applied for the clearances to run the White Train backward down the mountain into the Brunswick, Maryland, switching yard. Then he began working on the clearances necessary to take the NEC track into Washington. Later, he would get the required clearances for Richmond, down to Atlanta, and on to Texas.

  A little past two P. M. the clearance for Brunswick came through, allowing them to back down out of the mountains. Major Flynn ordered the perimeter guards back up onto the roof of the Train. He radioed the helicopter gunships, and they began to wind up their turbines. The whine of the Bell Jets' engines was drowned out by the locomotive's deep, throaty roar as the White Train's diesel engine powered up.

  Then, in a matter of minutes, the Marines were in position up on the roof and the black gunships were hovering a hundred feet overhead.

  "Ready to roll," the engineer's voice came to Major Flynn through the headset.

  "Okay, let's go," the Major said. Then he felt the troop car lurch, and the White Train was again moving, backing off the siding onto the main track and down the long CSXT grade, descending into Maryland.

  "I'll feel better when we get off this damn mountain," Major Flynn said to the Marine beside him.

  Fannon Kincaid did not have time to look for the perfect car on a spotting sheet. He divided up the twenty men he had left and told them to take sections of the Washington area track and move in pairs. He ordered them to send one man back to alert him when they found an acceptable car. Everybody would regroup in two hours to take stock of things. Then Fannon found a place to rest.

  He chose an open boxcar on the northeast end of the Washington line, which ran directly through D. C., parallel to Interstate 395, and crossed the Potomac near the Pentagon. At that spot, at the intersection of 7th and C Streets, the rail line was only a block from the F. A. A. building. From there the railroad tracks ran south toward Richmond.

  But Fannon was tired; he had gone without sleep for two days. Almost all of his energy had left him. His muscles felt weak, and yet he knew he must go on. He would find a way to strike this one blow for the Lord. Somewhere out of his ranks of unrewarded and discarded Christians would rise a successor. Certainly the successor would not be a man as holy or divine as Fannon, but he would be someone who could carry on in His glorious name.

  His mind was cut loose from all logic, freewheeling above his dreams of glory. 44 The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, but he blesseth the habitation of the just,' " he whispered.

  With that prayer on his lips, Fannon fell into a deep sleep in the still heat of the open boxcar.

  Robert Vail saw the gas tanker car parked
on a siding about half a mile from him. He was with his new partner, Peter Kelly, who had been a Navy explosives expert in the Gulf and was known in the Choir as 44Gas Can Man." His job was to rig the explosives.

  They moved across the ties until they were next to the huge painted tanker with the Texaco star on the side.

  "Looks good," R. V. said, as he glanced up at the mammoth tanker car. Then R. V. picked up a rock and banged the side of the tanker. He listened to the sound that rebounded back at him. " 'Bout half full," he said. "Whatta ya think?"

  "I can rig it so it'll blow the fuckin' paint off that dome over there," Gas Can Man said, pointing off at the Capitol Dome rising from behind a line of trees about a half mile away. "I'll go back, tell Fannon, and get my ammonium nitrate and shaped charges. You wait here, see if you can get the tanker open." Then Gas Can Man moved away at a trot.

  R. V. looked at the tanker car. He knew it was not uncommon for a gas tanker to be dropped inside city limits to wait until the correct delivery dates. What impressed him was that this tanker car was perfectly placed. It was as if God had ordained its location. The Reverend Kincaid would be rewarded at last, he thought. The Christian Choir and the Lord's Desire would make its final statement, and the world would be forced to take heed.

  R. V. patted the side of the tanker, half full of gasoline. He looked at the red hazardous material sign on the end of the car that read: FLAMMABLE.

  "Ain't you a beauty," he said in a whisper, almost as if the tanker possessed the spirit of the Lord. Then he climbed to the top of the hopper and, using a pocket wrench, began to undo the stubborn bolts of the hinged hatch at the top of the car. As he worked, he remembered Fannon's words preached in hushed tones a week before. ' 'Death will precede the armies of the Lord,'' the Reverend had prophesied.

  Chapter 55

  BRIGHT BURNING STAR

  Behold, he cometh,' " Fannon said. He stood atop the Texaco tanker car and watched as Gas Can Man poured two bags of ammonium nitrate into the half-full gas tanker. " 'Every eye shall see him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.' " After he finished reciting from Revelation he stood there in silence, the wind blowing the treetops and his fine silver-gray hair. Gas Can Man had promised that the mixture of ammonium nitrate would magnify the explosion a hundredfold.

  Several of the Choir helped Fannon down from his precarious perch on the tanker car, back onto the ground. He had changed radically in the last seventy-two hours. From gruff and menacing he had become somewhat frail and uncertain. His fists no longer seemed to be powerful weapons attached to lethal muscled arms, but rather like fluttering appendages. It was hard to comprehend so quick and devastating a change in someone who so recently possessed such an inner strength and power that he held them spellbound with his forcefulness.

  Robert Vail and the Gas Can Man had crawled under the Texaco gas tanker and were attaching a radio-detonated shaped charge to the bottom of the car. The charge was pre-wrapped in a metal sheath, and R. V. was securing it to the belly of the tanker with one-inch metal screws. The shield around the charge was fashioned to direct the explosion up through the skin of the car. The concussion of the accelerated gasoline would magnify the impact, as in the blast in Oklahoma City. Gas Can Man said it would obliterate everything within two hundred yards.

  "Is it done yet?" Fannon suddenly demanded, coming out of it and for the moment reclaiming himself from a stuporous haze.

  "Almost," Gas Can Man said.

  In ten minutes they had completed the job, but by then Fannon again seemed lost inside himself. They got out from underneath the tanker and moved across the clearing. R. V. and Gas Can Man had to help the dazed Reverend down the steep grade at the side of the tracks.

  "He sent me. It was promised," Fannon muttered to his escorts. " 41 have sent mine angels to testify unto you.' He has instructed me in his works."

  "We've got to get out of here, Reverend," R. V. said. 4'We've got to get to the roof of the F. A. A. building. We'll take a back stairway up. We can see it from there. We've rented a truck to get us out of town immediately after the explosion, before the winds shift."

  "I'm His Bright, Burning Star," Fannon mumbled, not seeming to hear R. V. "His Apocalypse, His Messenger of the Ages."

  R. V. nodded and pulled on Fannon's arm, trying to get him off the tracks. "Come on, Reverend, we gotta get to a place of safety before the White Train gets here."

  Things are finally working out better, Major Flynn thought. He had just received special track clearances all the way to Richmond. He looked at his watch. They were moving at only twenty miles an hour, and were about to switch to the NEC track that would take the White Train through Washington, D. C. He triggered the headset mike that was hot-linked to the engine cab.

  "How're we doing?" he asked the engineer.

  "We're clear up ahead. I have the Capitol Dome in sight. We're about a minute from the NEC switching junction."

  "Good," Major Flynn said, and flipped over to his "air mike," which connected him to the choppers overhead by ultrahigh frequency. "White Angel to Air One. We're a minute from the NEC switch. This is a previously unscouted line, so be sharp."

  "Roger," the Air Commander said. "We have two tankers and two boxcars sighted up ahead of you. They look normal, but maybe you should call the District Trainmaster and double-check if they're supposed to be there."

  "Roger that," Major Flynn said, then picked up his cellphone and with his other hand began flipping through his Eastern Section Trackmaster's book. He found the District of Columbia Trainmaster's number and called.

  "This is the Military Waste Priority One White Train. We're diverting through your area on the NEC," he told the track warrant officer.

  "Right, we've got you pegged. All clear."

  "We want a siding report for the Northeast Corridor track through D. C., from South Capitol Street to the Potomac River," Major Flynn said.

  "Right. Hang on a minute, I'm changing screens," the dispatcher said, and after a minute he came back on. "We've got one Texaco funnel flow tanker car at Seventh Street. She's about half loaded with petroleum. We have two sided boxcars with pipe fittings, and another tanker at the river full of powdered phosphate."

  "Okay, thanks. We're on our way through. We'll notify you when we clear city limits."

  "Thank you, sir. Standing by," the dispatcher said.

  Major Flynn hung up his cellphone, and hit a button that hot-miked the entire White Train team. "Everything checks out. Be alert. Let's go."

  The engine, which had been moving at quarter speed, accelerated and headed straight through the center of Washington, D. C., pulling two carloads of deadly chemical and biological weapons.

  Before Cris and Stacy left Frederick, Maryland, they called the National Response Center (N. R. C.) and were transferred to the Coast Guard office at Buzzard's Point. The Coast Guard was the federal agency that handled all accident notifications and reportable emergency events for the inland waterways and the rail system on the East Coast. A Lieutenant Commander named Robert McKinley listened patiently as they explained what they thought was about to happen.

  Lieutenant Commander McKinley turned on a tape recorder. "You have firsthand knowledge that a band of F. T. R. A. S are going to attack the White Train going through Washington, D. C.?"

  "Yes," Cris said. Commander McKinley was already looking up the White Train's routing schedule on his HAZMAT computer. He found the Train's icon under "Nuclear Waste Transportation" and clicked "On," quickly accessing the track routing data, which listed the White Train's destination as Midland, Texas, by way of the Appalachian Pass. But the data had not been updated since the derailment in the mountains. Without saying so, McKinley now assumed that the caller on his phone was just another nuclear waste fanatic. The White Train drew a lot of crank calls from "No Nuke" special-interest groups.

  "If you fail to respond, millions of people could die," Cris added, sensing that he had somehow lost the man.

  "We'll inv
estigate your complaint. Who am I speaking with?" the Lieutenant Commander asked, and Cris gave his name and address.

  "Cris Cunningham? Wasn't that some famous West Coast college quarterback about ten years ago?" the Lieutenant Commander asked. Now he was pretty sure he was being jobbed.

  "Look... You gotta get the National Guard to stop that train before it gets on the NEC track."

  "Thanks for the call. We'll look into it," McKinley said, and disconnected, thinking that the fanatics who harassed the movement of the White Train would go to any lengths to detain it.

  After he hung up, Lieutenant Commander McKinley stood in his office and tried to decide how to deal with the warning. He couldn't just ignore it, but he couldn't treat every call with the same level of concern, or he would be calling out the National Guard or FBI three times a day. He made a note to verify the Cunningham address in Pasadena, but concluded there was no need to stir up the "Big Noises" at the FBI or the Pentagon, since his computer indicated the Train wasn't even heading through D. C. To cover his ass, he decided he would add the call to the six-o'clock summary report and monitor the White Train until it arrived in Texas.

  Cris and Stacy rented a car and drove to Washington. It was seventy miles, but it took them only forty-five minutes. On the way, Stacy used her cellphone and tried to get in touch with Wendell Kinney at USC, but he didn't answer. She left a message on his machine to call her immediately.

  Just after two p. M., when they were inside the Beltway, they heard the sound of two helicopters beating the air overhead. Cris pulled to a stop in the middle of traffic, got out, and looked up. People in the cars behind him started shouting and honking. He ignored them as he spotted the two black Bell Jet Rangers, hovering and moving slowly west two blocks away. Then, while he was watching, the two choppers began to pick up speed. Cris assumed they were directly above the White Train, which now seemed to be heading right through Washington. He jumped back into the rental and accelerated away from the horn-honkers.

  Stacy had the city map open, on her knees. "Turn right up ahead on C Street. It goes straight down to the rails and dead-ends," she instructed.