Both guards and prisoners alike pulled back, moving toward the large wooden buildings, while Linc continued to thin the ranks of terrorists, one shot—one kill—at a time. He made the ones carrying weapons his priority.
Cabrillo raced the Pig down on the camp like a rally driver dashing for the finish line. Next to him, Murph fought to keep the aiming reticle of the Pig’s onboard missiles locked on one of the terrorists’ trucks. He got tone and fired.
The rocket screamed off the rails, carving an erratic path through the air, and exploded against the truck’s cab, snapping its chassis in half so it rose up like a ship that had been torpedoed.
The blast further corralled the frightened prisoners closer to the building, while the guards were rushing back to their tents where many had left their automatic weapons.
The Pig was a hundred yards from the camp when the freshly armed terrorists started running from the tents, brandishing their AKs and firing long strings of rounds in random directions. Up in the Pig’s cupola, Linda watched them over the sights of her M60 machine gun. The weapon bucked in her arms, slamming into her shoulder like the business end of a jackhammer, but her aim never wavered.
The ground around the running gunmen came alive as rounds blew into their midst. Men fell, clutching at horrendous wounds, some struck by their own comrades who had whirled at this new threat and opened fire indiscriminately.
“He’s had enough time,” Juan yelled over the snarling engine. “Take out the command tent.”
Cabrillo’s plan had two goals. The first was to rescue as many of the prisoners as he could because he wasn’t sure if the Libyan military would take the time to discern friend from foe. He wasn’t even sure of their definition of those terms at this point. The second objective was to get as many terrorists as possible away from their training camp before the main attack. If Fiona Katamora was really there, then every gunman engaged at the mine was one less gunman trying to kill her before she was rescued.
This was why Linc had been told specifically to let the mine’s garrison commander contact the training camp on the radio. They needed him to raise the alarm. But now that he had . . .
Mark put a missile through the command tent’s front flap at just the right angle for it to hit the ground before it flew through the far side. The canvas rose up on a blossoming column of flame, and the piles of military gear stacked outside were blown flat by the concussion. The tent caught fire like flash paper and turned to ash that fell to the ground like dirty snow.
They were deep into the camp now. Above Juan and Murph, Linda continued to work the M60, taking out clusters of guards and using the tracer rounds to keep the prisoners moving toward the stockyard where the terrorists stored their railcars and train engines.
Cabrillo could tell that the guards’ will had been broken by the sudden and furious assault. Many of them were running down into the mine or over the ridge and into the desert. Fifty or more prisoners were huddled against the side of the old mine office building. A gunman suddenly reared up from behind a bulldozer. He had a perfect bead on the defenseless men and women and an RPG-7 lifted to his shoulder.
Murph flipped the controls from missiles to gun, and the .30 cal under the Pig’s snout chattered. The terrorist went down, but not before he fired his rocket-propelled grenade. The five-pound missile made it less than ten feet from the tube before it inexplicably exploded in midair.
“Damn, Linc,” Juan said in awe, “was that you?”
“It’s all a matter of knowing how to read them,” Linc replied. He would later admit that he was shooting at the terrorist and the rocket flew into his bullet.
Juan whipped the Pig around the side of the building, braking hard so the big truck slid onto a set of tracks, its tail resting just a couple of feet from a boxcar with a handwheel on its roof for brakemen to mechanically slow the antique rolling stock. The track was a good foot narrower than the Pig’s tires. Juan searched the dash for a second and found the control that could alter the vehicle’s ground clearance by pulling in the wheels on articulated suspension joints.
He had to jockey the truck back and forth, as the wheels drew inward, until they were resting directly on the rails, and there was a full two feet of open space between the chassis and the crushed-rock ballast on the ground.
With another button, Juan deactivated the automatic tire-inflation system and then jumped from the cab. “Mark, Linda, get busy,” he called over the tactical radio. “Linc, cover them. Fodl, with me.”
He grabbed up a REC7 assault rifle, and had the FN Five-seveN pistol in his hand when he hit the ground. He fired at the left-side tires. The truck’s weight made them go flat instantly, and, just like that, the steel rims were cradled around the rails, with the rubber acting as extra grip. He couldn’t prevent a satisfied smile. Mating the Pig to the railroad tracks had been the cornerstone of his plan.
He ran for the corner of the building as his new Libyan friend clambered out of the Pig still wearing his prisoner’s rags. Across the compound, he could see a few guards hunting for targets, but for the moment no one was paying the detainees any attention.
A couple of them who were pressed against the building looked at Juan fearfully when they saw his weapon. Then Fodl appeared at his side.
“Come with us,” Fodl told them with an aura of command that didn’t surprise the Chairman. “These people are here to help.”
A few of the emaciated prisoners stared back at him uncertainly. “Go. That is an order.”
Like a breached levee, the few heading toward the railcar that Linda held open turned into a flood. Cabrillo stood at the corner, sweeping the compound for any interested guards. If any looked their way, he put them down, while next to him Fodl waved in more of his people. A group of women appeared from under the overturned serving tables and raced for the building, only to have someone open fire at them from their flank. One of the women went down before Juan could counterfire, hammering home a steady burst into a pyramid of crates from where the shots had originated.
The other women helped the injured girl to her feet, supporting her under her arms and making her almost hopscotch to safety.
“Bless you,” one of them said to Juan as they passed around the building and into protective cover.
Another prisoner paused at Juan’s side. He gave the man a passing glance and then returned to scanning the compound. The prisoner touched Juan’s sleeve, and he looked at him more carefully. He wasn’t an Arab like all the others. His hair and face were pale, although his skin was burned raw by the sun.
“You Chaffee?” Juan asked.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You’ve got Alana Shepard to thank for your rescue.”
Chaffee sagged with relief. “Thank God. We were told last night she was shot for trying to escape.”
“Are you in any condition to fight?”
The CIA agent tried to pull himself erect. “Give me a gun and watch me.”
Juan pointed to where Mark Murphy was securing the old boxcar to the Pig’s rear tow hooks. From this distance, the train car looked massive and the chain as thin as a silver necklace, but there was nothing he could do about it. “Report to that guy over there. He’ll take care of you.”
“Thank you.”
Cabrillo looked at his watch. Eight minutes since the first shot fired. They had less than ten more before a horde of gunmen arrived from the training camp, and just an hour until the Libyan military arrived and opened fire on anything that moved.
Prisoners continued to stream toward the railcar, and no matter how Juan tried to urge them to hurry they just couldn’t. They were so far gone from their ordeal that even the offer of freedom couldn’t make their bodies move faster than a painful shuffle. He could almost hear his watch ticking.
Glancing over his shoulder, Juan watched them climb into the train, each one pausing when he or she was inside to help the next in line.
It wasn’t his watch Juan thought he heard. It was the
rhythmic whomp-whomp-whomp of an approaching helicopter. George Adams was still twenty minutes out. It had to be the terrorists’ Mi-8.
It didn’t matter that the train car was full anyway, and only one old woman was struggling to make it to the railhead from across the compound, while behind her tents and equipment burned, sending columns of smoke into the pinking sky.
Time had run out.
TWENTY-THREE
When bullets peppered the ground in the old woman’s wake, Cabrillo was slapping home a fresh magazine into the underside of his assault rifle. He hadn’t expended the first, so there was no need to cock the weapon.
To Juan, at this moment, the more than one hundred people crowded into the boxcar didn’t matter. Only the old woman.
It was perhaps a fault in his logic, a synapse that fired a little off. He made no distinction between the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. At that moment, her life meant as much to him as all the others.
He broke cover and fired from the hip, laying down a blistering barrage that silenced the terrorist’s gun. The woman had frozen in place. Deer caught in headlights, flashed through Juan’s mind.
He reached her in a dozen long strides, ducking as he approached so he could scoop her up over his left shoulder without pausing. She was a solid one hundred and eighty pounds, despite the starvation diet, and must have tipped the scales at two-fifty before her ordeal. Juan staggered under the weight, his wounded leg almost buckling. The woman gave a startled yelp but didn’t struggle, as Cabrillo started back for the building, running awkwardly, half turning to watch their rear, his rifle held one-handed.
The woman suddenly screamed. Juan twisted back. A guard had appeared out of nowhere. He was armed only with a club, a suicide charge, but Cabrillo’s rifle was still pointed in the wrong direction. As he spun, the old woman’s feet missed the guard’s head by inches, and when Juan came around to get his REC7 aimed the woman used his momentum to fire a solid punch to the guard’s chin an instant before the club crashed down on her exposed neck.
The terrorist staggered back and was starting forward again when a round from Linc in the loading tower drilled him to the ground.
“Lady,” Juan panted in Arabic, “you’ve got a right cross like Muhammad Ali.”
“I always thought George Foreman had a better punch,” she replied.
He almost dropped her when he started to laugh. He dumped her into the boxcar and nodded to Linda to slam the rolling door closed. “Murph, you set?” he called over the radio.
The sound of the approaching chopper grew by the second.
“I’m good to go.”
“Linc, get ready. We’re rolling in thirty seconds.”
On his way to the passenger’s seat, Mark Murphy flattened the Pig’s right-side tires. It took him two shots each despite the point-blank range. Linda had already helped Fodl into the rear cargo compartment, and Greg Chaffee stood with his head and torso thrust out of the open top hatch.
Juan threw himself into the driver’s seat. Ahead of them loomed a diesel-electric locomotive, a huge machine capable of hauling strings of ore cars up and down the mountain. He would have been concerned about it following them, but its engines were cold and would take at least a half hour to get running at temperature.
Max Hanley had designed the Pig with a twenty-four-gear transmission. Juan dropped it into low range and selected the lowest of the four reverse gears. Pressing his foot to the accelerator, he felt and heard the engine revs build while the twin turbos screamed. The railcar behind them weighed eighteen thousand pounds, according to the faded stencil on its side, and packed within was another five tons of humanity. From a dead stop, he had no idea if he could get such a load moving.
The truck shuddered as the deflated tires slipped against the slick steel rails.
Juan unclipped a safety device attached to the floor shifter and pushed down on a red knob. From the integrated NOS, nitrous oxide flowed into the engine’s cylinders, breaking down in the extreme heat and releasing additional oxygen for combustion.
The Pig didn’t have the torque, as Max had boasted, “to push the Oregon up Niagara Falls,” but the two-hundred-horsepower boost provided by the nitrous oxide was the kick Juan needed to overcome the train’s static inertia.
Starting out at barely a snail’s pace, the Pig started pushing the laden railcar along the track, and each foot gained increased their speed fractionally. The digital speedometer on the dash ticked to one mile per hour, and had reached three when the train began to pass under the skeletal support frame of the old coal-loading station where Linc had made his sniper’s nest.
When the Chairman had radioed they were ready to go, Linc had climbed down from the top of the rusted conveyor belt and stood poised over the open mouth of a coal chute straddling the tracks. The leading edge of the car rolled into view, and he dropped through space, landing and tumbling in one smooth motion. The coaling station had been designed for low-slung hopper cars, not the tall, boxy freight car, and as he pressed himself up to get to his feet he spotted the razor-sharp edge of another coal chute about to slice his head off.
He dropped flat, the chute passing an inch above his nose, and he remained perfectly still as they accelerated under a dozen more. Only when they had cleared the rusted bulk of the loading station did he dare draw a breath. “I’m aboard,” he radioed.
“Good,” Juan answered. “You’ve got more time behind the wheel of this thing. Get your butt down here and drive.”
For the first mile out of the mine, the ground was dead level, and the Pig was accelerating smoothly, so Juan hit the cruise control and unlimbered himself from his seat. In the cargo bed, he stuffed extra magazines for his Barrett REC7 into his pant pocket. “How are you two holding up?” he asked Alana and Fodl without looking at them.
“You have given me hope for the first time in six months,” the Libyan replied. “I have never felt better.”
“Alana?” he asked, finally able to give her his attention. He’d strapped a double holster around his waist for a pair of FN Five-seveNs.
“I haven’t done anything to deserve that fedora yet.”
“You’ve done plenty.”
“Ah, who’s driving the train?” Linc asked as he lowered himself past Greg Chaffee and spotted Juan.
“First corner isn’t for another half mile or more. We do this exactly like we talked about and we should make it. Oh, damn,” Cabrillo said, suddenly remembering something. He ducked his head back into the Pig’s cab. “Mark, the boxcar weighs nine tons. Throw in another five for the people. Math it.”
“I need its dimensions.”
“Guess.”
Mark looked at him, incredulous. “Guess? Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
“ ‘Math it,’ he says,” Mark griped to Juan’s departing form. “ ‘Guess.’ Jeesh!”
Juan climbed out onto the Pig’s roof. He estimated they were up to fifteen miles per hour and continuing to accelerate. So far, so good, he thought briefly before looking up and seeing no sign of the helicopter.
He stepped aft and was bracing himself to leap up onto the boxcar’s roof when Greg Chaffee opened up with the M60. Cabrillo turned to see a camouflaged truck careen toward the stockyard. It was the first of the terrorists from the training camp. There were a dozen holding on to the rails of the truck’s open bed. Their gun barrels bristled.
The road they were on clung to the side of a hill running a little above and parallel to the rail line. Chaffee had been quick with the machine gun, firing at the truck’s tires before the driver had regained full control of the vehicle. Rounds peppered the area near the front tire until it exploded, shedding rubber like a Catherine wheel throws sparks.
The truck swerved when the mangled rim gouged into the soft gravel shoulder. The men in back started to scream as the vehicle tipped further. Still moving dangerously fast, the truck flipped onto its side, skidding down the hill. Some of the terrorists were thrown clear,
others clutched the supports to keep themselves inside when it rolled onto its roof. The cab plowed a furrow into the earth before it flipped again, barrel-rolling violently, sheet metal and men peeling away in a cloud of dust.
A second desert-patrol vehicle appeared before the first had settled back on its ruined undercarriage. The driver of this one caught a break. Greg Chaffee had blown through the last of the ammunition in the belt and stood impotently as Linda showed him how to swap it out. The truck dashed down the hill and braked for cover behind the hulking shadow of the locomotive. The men in the bed opened fire at extreme range, and a few lucky hits were close enough to make Linda and Chaffee duck.
Cabrillo had lost precious seconds watching the spectacle and roused himself with an angry shudder. The boxcar’s roof was four feet above his head, and he needed a running start to launch himself so he hit the edge with his chest. Kicking at the smooth metal sides and straining with his arms, he hauled himself atop the car and looked forward. The first curve was a quarter mile away, and they had sped up to at least twenty miles an hour.
He knew from the map Eric had e-mailed from the Oregon that this was a long, sweeping corner taking the tracks around the very top of this mountain and that the grade started to fall away as soon as they entered it. Twenty miles an hour was okay going in, but if they continued to accelerate eventually they would lose control of the boxcar.
Juan moved all the way to the front of the car where a rusted, four-spoked metal wheel gave him control over the car’s mechanical brakes. In the days before George Westinghouse invented his fail-safe pneumatic-braking system, teams of brakemen would ride atop trains and turn devices like this one to squeeze the pads against the wheels in an uncoordinated and often deadly ballet. Cabrillo prayed as he grasped the wheel that it wasn’t frozen solid by rust, and that after the decades the car had been used on the line there were any brake pads remaining.
Prepared to heave with all his strength, he cursed when the wheel spun freely in his hands. It felt like it wasn’t connected to anything, but then he heard the squeal of metal on metal as the old brakes clamped over the top of the car’s wheels. They worked after all and had been recently greased. Grinning at his luck, he cranked the wheel another half turn, and his elation turned to dismay. The added pressure should have tightened the brake pads further and changed the pitch of the screech coming from the wheels. It didn’t happen.
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