so hard that Robie thought he would leave his privates behind. But he gritted his teeth and clung to the woman. She rotated the throttle to maximum and roared off down the road.
“Where to?” Robie shouted in her ear as the wind whipped them both.
“Not here,” she yelled back.
They drove for what seemed like hours, and finally ditched the bike behind an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of a small town. They walked into the town, which was made up of decrepit buildings and mom-and-pop stores.
The sun was starting to rise. Robie looked over at Reel, now revealed in the coming dawn. She was dirty, disheveled. As was he.
She looked straight ahead, the anger on her face almost painful to see.
“I’m sorry about Gwen,” said Robie.
Reel didn’t answer him.
An Amtrak train station loomed ahead. It was just a tired-looking old brick building on a raised platform with a slender ribbon of track next to it. A few people were sitting on wooden benches waiting for their early morning ride to somewhere.
Reel went inside and paid cash for two tickets. She came back out and handed one to Robie.
“Where to?” he asked.
“Not here,” she said.
“You keep saying that. But it doesn’t really tell me anything.”
“I’m not prepared to have this discussion yet.”
“Then get prepared as soon as this ride is over,” said Robie.
He walked down the platform and leaned against the wall, looking in the direction from which they had come.
How did they follow me? How did they know?
There wasn’t anybody. I could swear there wasn’t anybody who could have known.
In his pocket was his Glock. He gripped it with one hand. He had a strong feeling that things were not safe yet.
He was still holding both the bag from the tunnel and his knapsack. He glanced over at Reel. She was just standing there next to the tracks.
Robie assumed she was thinking about Gwen lying dead back there.
Ten minutes later he heard the train coming. It came to a stop with a long screech of brakes and release of hydraulic pressure. He and Reel boarded the middle car.
This was not the Acela bullet train. The car looked like it had been in service since Amtrak was created in the early seventies.
They were the only passengers on this car. There was a single attendant, a sleepy-looking black man in a uniform that didn’t fit him very well. He yawned, took their tickets, stuck them to the back of their seats, and told them where the café car was located if they were hungry or thirsty.
“The conductor will be along at some point to take your tickets,” he said. “Enjoy the ride.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Robie, while Reel just stared straight ahead.
As the train rolled out of the station the attendant walked up the aisle and disappeared into the next car, probably to make his spiel to the few passengers there.
Robie and Reel settled down in their seats, he at the window, she at the aisle. Robie had put both bags at his feet.
Minutes passed and he said, “So where are we going?”
“I’ve booked us through to Philly, but we can get off at any stop in between.”
“What’s in your bag besides grenades?”
“Things we might need.”
“Who was the old guy in the photo with you?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“Why not the friend?”
She glanced at him in mild reproach. “Too easy. If I’d done that, do you think they would have left the photo for you to see? They’re an intelligence agency, Robie, so you have to assume they have some degree of it to exercise.”
“So the friend?”
“Give me a few minutes. I’m trying to deal with the loss of another friend, maybe my last one.”
Robie was about to push her, but then something told him not to.
The loss of a friend. I can relate to that.
“Did you dig that tunnel?”
She shook her head. “It was already there. Maybe bootleggers. Maybe some criminal owned it and that was his escape hatch. When I bought the place and found it I made Cabin 17 my hideaway for that very reason.”
“Good thing you did.”
She looked away. She obviously didn’t want to talk anymore.
“You want something to eat or drink?” he asked a few minutes later as the train started to slow. They were probably approaching another podunk station where a few more sleepy people would climb aboard.
“Coffee, nothing to eat,” she said curtly, still not looking at him.
“I’ll get some stuff, just in case you change your mind.”
He walked up the aisle and kept going until he reached the café car. There was one person ahead of him, a woman dressed in a jean skirt, boots, and a tattered coat. She gathered up her coffee, pastries, and a bag of chips and headed on her way. She stumbled as the train slid into the station and stopped.
Robie helped right her and then stepped up to the counter. The uniformed man behind it was about sixty with a full gray beard and small narrow eyes behind thick glasses.
“What can I get you, sir?” he asked Robie.
Robie looked at the offerings on the menu board behind the counter. “Two coffees, two muffins, and three packs of peanuts.”
“Just brewing a fresh pot. Coming up.”
“No hurry.” Robie turned and looked out the window. This station looked even smaller than the one at which they had boarded. He couldn’t even see the name of the place, although he assumed it had to be posted somewhere.
The next moment he forgot about that.
At the far side of the station, its bumper hanging out just far enough that he could see it, was a black Range Rover.
Robie looked at the few passengers getting on. One was an old woman carrying her belongings in a pillowcase.
Another was a teenage girl with a battered suitcase.
The last passenger was a black man in his forties. He was dressed in not overly clean bib overalls and falling-apart work boots, and he had a dirty knapsack slung over one shoulder.
Robie did not like to stereotype, but none of the new passengers looked like patrons of the Range Rover brand.
When the man behind the counter turned to him with two fresh cups of coffee, Robie was gone.
CHAPTER
59
GUN OUT, Robie reentered the train car. He looked down the aisle. Reel was still in her seat, but she looked stiff, unnatural.
Robie looked around. He saw no obvious breach points.
He looked back at Reel, squatted low, and moved forward, prepared to fire in an instant. He cleared each row of seats until he got to Reel and looked up at her.
Only it wasn’t her.
It was a man.
With his throat cut.
Robie glanced down. Her bag was gone.
Where was Reel?
A voice called out softly, “Robie, over here.”
He glanced up. Reel was at the rear of the train car.
“We have company,” she said.
“Yeah, that one I’d figured out,” replied Robie. “Where did he come from?” he asked, gesturing to the dead man.
“Rear door. Advance guard, I guess.”
“They should have sent more guards,” noted Robie.
“He was tough to kill. Very well trained.”
“I’m sure.” Robie looked around. “The train’s not moving. Station’s not that big. All passengers should have gotten on by now.”
“You think they’ve commandeered the train?”
“Wouldn’t bet against it. They’ll do a car-by-car search.”
“The dead guy was trying to call in that he’d spotted me. But he never made it.” She looked around. “Got a plan?”
Before Robie could answer the train started to move.
“What do you think that’s about?” asked Reel.
“Too many quest
ions in the station, maybe. They want to be rolling through the country when they hit us.”
“Toss us out on the fly?”
“After they make sure we’re dead.”
“So, again, got a plan?”
Robie looked behind him. The attendant who had greeted them hadn’t come back. He might be dead too.
Robie raced up the aisle to a small storage closet located at one end of the car and grabbed a large metal bowl from inside it. He rushed into the small bathroom compartment, turned on the water, and filled up the bowl. Then he emptied half the bowl of water in front of each of the connecting doors into their train cars. He rubbed the slickened metal floor with his foot and came away satisfied.
Then Robie looked at the dead man.
Reel joined him and said, “He had no creds. No ID, nothing.”
“Missing personnel, missing equipment.”
“Is that what DiCarlo told you?” asked Reel.
“Yes.”
“The apocalypse scenario has been a long time in preparation, Robie.”
“I’m starting to see that.”
He climbed up on a seat and squatted down.
Reel did the same.
“You left, me right,” said Robie, and Reel replied, “Copy that.”
A few seconds later armed men came racing in from both directions. It was a designed pincers move, to trap Reel and Robie between two flanks and catch them in a crossfire they could not withstand.
Only they had not counted on a slippery floor.
Three of the men went down hard and slid along the floor, while a fourth staggered around trying to regain his balance.
Reel and Robie popped out from the hidden spots and opened fire, Robie right, Reel left. Nine seconds later four men lay dead, their blood turning the floor and walls crimson. The other men retreated to the cars bracketing this one.
Robie looked at Reel. “How fast do you think we’re going?”
She looked out the window. “Fifty, maybe a little more. These old bangers don’t get much above sixty.”
Robie looked at the terrain outside. All trees. “Still too fast,” he said, and Reel nodded.
Robie glanced to his left and then back at her. “Where’s your bag?”
“I stashed it here.” She pulled it out from between two of the seats.
“Got any flash-bangs in there?”
“Two of them.”
He looked at one of the connecting doors between the cars through which the men had retreated. It was metal but with a glass window. Then he ran over to a control panel built into one wall in the car’s vestibule. He ripped it open and took a few seconds to see what was available.
While he was doing that Reel snagged both flash-bangs from her bag.
“You ever jumped off a moving train before?” he asked, looking up from his work.
“No. You?”
He shook his head. “I figure at sixty, we have no chance. At thirty our odds improve some.”
“Depends on what we jump into,” said Reel, who was already clicking keys on her phone. She brought up their current location.
“Body of water coming up on the left in about two miles.”
“Could be harder than dirt depending on how we hit.”
“We stay here we die.”
Robie hit a button and the left-side door slid open. Cool air rushed in.
“They won’t be waiting long,” said Reel, looking at each doorway.
“No. We need to take care of that.”
She handed him a pair of earplugs, which he pushed deeply into his ears. She did the same with her ears. Then she passed him one of the flash-bangs.
“Give me a countdown,” she said.
Reel went to the middle of the car, drew her pistol, and waited.
“Five-four-three-two-one” called out Robie.
Reel fired to the left, shattering the glass on the door leading to the train car in front of them. She gripped the flash-bang, engaged it, and threw it through the opening. She whirled and shot out the glass in the window to the rear. The bullet was followed by the second flash-bang, which Robie tossed through the new opening. Robie crouched down and covered his face and his ears as both flash-bangs detonated within seconds of each other.
Screams came from the other train cars.
Reel, who had ducked down a split second before the flash-bangs went off, raced back down the aisle and joined Robie.
He engaged the emergency braking system. They were thrown for ward as the train’s brakes caught. They righted themselves, faced the open door, and looked at each other. They were both breathing hard.
“How fast are we going?” Reel asked.
“Still too fast.”
He glanced out the door. “Water’s coming up.”
The train was slowing, yet it took a long time for something that big to reduce its speed. But they were out of time.
Shots were starting to rip through the train car as their opponents recovered.
“Gotta go.” Robie gripped her hand as the train slowed even more.
“Robie, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Don’t think, just do.”
They jumped together.
It seemed to Robie that they stayed in the air a long time. When they landed, they hit soft mud, not water. The one thing they couldn’t have accounted for was a summer drought that had extended into fall and had lowered the lake’s water level by about four feet. When they hit the wet dirt, Robie and Reel rolled and tumbled along about twenty feet past their first impact.
The train was already out of sight around a bend. But at some point the brakes would bring the million-pound-plus behemoth to a stop.
Robie slowly sat up. He was covered in mud and slime. His clothes were ripped and he felt like an entire NFL team had jumped on him.
He looked over at Reel, who was starting to slowly get up. She looked as bad as he did and probably felt worse. Her pants and shirt were torn too.
Robie managed to stand and stagger over to the knapsack, which had separated from him on impact.
Reel groaned. “Next time I’m staying and just shooting it out.”
Robie nodded. There was a pain in his right arm. It felt funny. He worried that he had broken it, but it didn’t feel broken, just...funny.
As Reel walked over to him he rolled up his shirtsleeve, exposing his burn.
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