by Fritz Galt
Suddenly, he spotted flashing blue lights ahead on the nearly deserted two-lane. Who were the cops after? Him? He had been careful not to break the speed limit or break any rules or laws. Okay, so there was that car theft back in Maine.
And he must have broken God-knows-how-many federal laws just to get back into America.
As he converged on the revolving lights, he realized it was a roadblock. Two squad cars sat perpendicular to his lane, blocking his pickup.
The cops served only as a checkpoint, because as he approached, he realized that both shoulders of the road were open to allow vehicles to pass. Two cars ahead of him slowed down.
At the same time, the caboose raced past, its red lights taunting him as they glared in his eyes.
He had no time to play games with the police. The left shoulder was clear, and he headed for that. In a swirl of dust, he skirted around the checkpoint only to face an oncoming car, its headlights flashing angrily at him.
He pulled a hard turn and fishtailed back into his lane.
Behind him, the cops jumped into their squad cars and set their sirens blaring.
Meanwhile, the train grew smaller ahead of him.
He stepped on the gas and burned a line of rubber onto the pavement. Soon, he was zipping through the night, streaking around slow-moving traffic in his lane.
Despite Ferrar’s frequent, risky forays into oncoming traffic, the cops were gaining steadily on him.
Then bam. A sudden explosion shattered the cab window behind him. Fragments of glass hit the back of his head like a wooden board. The police were firing live ammunition. And they weren’t aiming for his tires. They were shooting directly at him.
His eyes nearly burst from the pain. He could barely see for a moment. Meanwhile, he was careened toward an onrush of more squad cars. They were closing in on him from both directions.
The train rumbled alongside him as he drifted closer and closer to the tracks, dodging the occasional telephone pole.
Suddenly he realized that he was driving parallel to the twin containers with the red tape—the containers that held untold danger to his country. And the train wasn’t going to stop for anything.
He opened his door, jamming it ajar against the onrushing wind with the toe of his shoe. Cop cars sped past him, unwilling to sacrifice themselves by throwing themselves in his way.
He swerved to avoid hitting another telephone pole.
The red tape flapping in the wind was just within reach. He nudged his front wheels closer to the tracks.
Then he noticed a railway crossing sign ahead, a flashing yellow light with no gate to stop traffic. The train was heading across the street at an oblique angle.
He slowed slightly, pulled up beside a bouncing boxcar and caught hold of a rusty ladder affixed to its side. That would do.
Wind tore at his face, nearly suffocating him as he stepped out of his speeding pickup and planted a foot firmly on the first rung of the ladder.
He released his hold of the truck’s door and climbed the metal rungs. He scrambled as fast as he could to avoid the swerving pickup. Its flapping door slammed repeatedly against the train in a shower of sparks. Suddenly, the truck veered away from the train, then back into it, screeching metal against metal. He turned to see it plow into a storefront as the railroad tracks threaded between two buildings.
He pulled himself onto the roof of the speeding boxcar. Metal seams were his only handholds as he flattened himself to avoid bridges with low clearance and low-hanging wires.
Icy pellets of frozen rain began to sting his face. His only protection was a windbreaker and corduroys that he had stolen from a Laundromat as Tray Bolton had transferred the two containers from a ship onto a flatcar in Maine.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to catch his breath in the whipping wind. He was dizzy and needed to focus on something, anything, to moor himself to the world and take account of his predicament.
The image that arose out of his dizziness was the enigmatic, interested face of Bonnie Taylor. The last he had seen of her was on college Graduation Day. It was an image that would be forever etched in his memory.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Was he truly out of his mind? Why was he really after Tray Bolton?
Then he lifted his eyes and squinted at the two containers ahead of him.
He had to decouple the car.
The FBI agents and technicians and a downcast Congressman Connors were settling into the dining room for Lucy’s dessert when Connors received another call.
They assumed their positions and grabbed their earphones. Then Connors picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Ralph, it’s Hank.”
“Yeah, Hank,” Connors said dejectedly to the FBI director. “We’re all listening.”
“Bad news. Ferrar eluded us.”
“What did you expect, that he’d come all this way from Kabul to surrender without a fight?”
“All this way for what reason?” Hank said. “To set off a nuclear bomb?”
“Who said anything about a nuclear bomb?” Connors shot back. “I thought you weren’t buying his story.”
“Well, now that we know what train he’s on, we were able to quickly track down the origins of all the containers onboard.”
“He’s on the train?”
“Long story,” Hank said. “Don’t ask.”
Connors bit his tongue and suppressed a laugh.
“It turns out that two of the containers onboard are owned by a Dutch shipping company, which is neither here nor there. But they originated from Pakistan and traveled through Bahrain— “
“And Canada,” Connors finished.
“That’s right. So, it looks like we might be talking about major weapons here, perhaps a nuclear bomb or two.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you all along,” Connors said with exasperation.
“Let me finish. And for what purpose? Whose plan is this?” Hank asked rhetorically. “Ferrar’s or al-Qaeda’s?”
“I thought your assumption was that Ferrar was working for them.”
“I think it might take more than a few days to untangle all the communications you’ve had with him over the past few days to ascertain where the truth lies.”
“And we don’t have a few days.”
“That’s right. It’s already the evening of December 9th, which gives us two days or less until the strike. So, our only option is to stop the train and confiscate the bombs before Ferrar gets away with them.”
“Don’t you see?” Connors insisted, with a sudden surge of triumph. “He’s already trying to stop the bastards.”
Chapter 16
In his Pennsylvania Avenue office overlooking the White House, Hank Gibson, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had his secretary place a call to Police Chief Stewart Powers, head of the Springfield Ohio Police Department.
“Chief Powers, this is Hank Gibson, at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“We’re awfully sorry we lost your man,” Powers apologized immediately. “God knows we had him within our grasp. He just sorta—”
“Never mind that, sir. I heard the report. What I need now is for your men to bring the train that Ferrar is on to a halt. Stop it at all costs. It might be hijacked, which means it could continue barreling across Ohio until it explodes.”
“Explodes?”
“Yes. As in a nuclear device.”
“Good God. Then we’ll just have to set the railroad signals to stop her.”
Gibson shook his head. “That’s not good enough. She may not respond. You’ll have to set up a roadblock.”
“Roadblock? How do you set up a roadblock for a train? You’d be better off sending up a fighter jet to take her out.”
Gibson allowed a smile. “Look, the point is we want her stopped in order to board her. But we can’t derail her because it might cause leakage.”
“Well, we could shut off the power if she’s electric, o
therwise, we could sidetrack her, but that might end up a dead end, at which point she’d crash.”
“You work it out. I’m dispatching agents right now to Springfield to take away the felons onboard.”
“Okay, Mr. Director. Over and out.”
Hank hung up, not entirely confident that the job would be done right, or could be done at all.
How did one stop a runaway train, anyway? Maybe the Chief was right about the fighter jet.
He lifted the phone and said to his secretary, “Get me the Secretary of Defense.”
Police Chief Stewart Powers was a soft-spoken, round-bellied man, who had just become a grandfather. He loved Springfield, and by gum he was there to protect it, no matter what the feds tried to make him do.
He pondered a wall map in his office. Springfield was a small city, spread for ten miles along the Interstate and the Conrail railroad tracks. The map confirmed what he knew already. There were no switch offs onto other railway lines. The freight train could take only one route, straight through the heart of the business district.
First, he needed to reach Art Gantry, Springfield’s stationmaster.
He consulted a city directory and found the number of the main station.
A ticket clerk answered the phone.
“Get me Art, please. This is the Chief of Police.”
A moment later, a gruff voice came over the line. “Yes, Chief?”
“Listen, Art, we’ve got a commandeered freight train pulling through town.”
“Commandeered?”
“Hijacked, whatever. Right now it’s just entering the eastern end of town.”
“That would be the CSX coke train. I’ve got them on Track 2.”
“Is there any way to contact the engineer so we can stop the train?”
“Sure. I can radio him right away.”
“Good. If that doesn’t work, do you know of a way to stop that train yourself? For instance, is it electric or what?”
“No, it’s diesel. It runs by itself.”
“Can you stop it physically?”
“Not without derailing it or making it rear end another train. First, I’d illuminate my stop signals.”
“Okay, turn on your stop signals. I’ll also try to have my men flag it down. Whatever you do, don’t derail or wreck it.”
“I’ll get on it, Chief. If I get through to the engineer, I’ll patch him through to you.”
“Okay. I’m at the police headquarters number.”
He hung up the phone and stepped out of his fluorescent-lit office into the cubicle area. There, he waved the dispatcher out of his way, slid into his chair and grabbed the microphone that reached all the squad cars in town.
“All points bulletin. This is the chief speaking. All right, team, listen up. The federal government wants us to stop this train, without making it crash. Here’s the plan. I’ve looked over the map, and there are no switches we can set to send the train off course until it reaches Dayton. And we’re definitely not gonna let that happen, so we need you to set up flagmen on Burnett Road and Spring Street. You’ll attempt to flag down the train to make it stop. If it doesn’t stop by Highway 68, then we’ll consider it duly warned. At that point, we’ll attempt to shoot at the engineer and bring the train to a stop. In any event, to protect our citizenry from any risk of ‘hazardous material,’ we don’t want a train wreck here in Springfield.”
He released the transmit button for a moment and studied a map under the glass on the desk.
Then he spoke into the microphone again. “If she hasn’t come to a stop by the entrance to the quarry, you can open fire. Now go to it, team. This is our moment to shine.”
The dispatcher was holding his hand over his phone and waving at him.
He stepped over to the phone. “Yes, who is this?”
In the background, he heard a rumbling cadence coming from the inside of a moving train.
“This is CSX train number K 350 10,” said the flat voice. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop immediately. You have a wanted man onboard, and we need to apprehend him.”
“Oh, a wanted man?” the voice said with a note of amusement. “So that’s what you’re calling me these days. It sounds like a TV show.”
“Have you hijacked the train?”
“I’m just borrowing it for a short ride.”
“Stop her at once. You have dangerous material onboard.”
“Oh, dangerous material? Like what?”
Powers bit his tongue. He would give away no more. “If you don’t stop the train voluntarily, I’ll open fire on you.”
The dispatcher was whispering to him, “He didn’t stop at Burnett. There’s a man on the roof of the train working his way forward. He’s about five cars back of the locomotive. It’s probably Ferrar.”
“We’re attempting to flag you down to stop,” Powers barked. “Now pull the brakes at once.”
“Why don’t you make me,” the voice taunted with a laugh, before signing off.
“Damn it,” Powers spat out, and slammed the receiver down. Who the hell was he just talking to? It didn’t sound like any kind of engineer he knew. “He’s going to plow straight through town.”
He ran back to the detailed map in his office. The next major crossroad would be Spring Street, followed by a long stretch of industrial zone to Highway 68. Then beyond that lay Sugar Grove, a commuter development outside of town where his daughter’s family lived with his newborn granddaughter.
The dispatcher reported in. “Spring Street, sir.”
“Boy, he’s moving fast.”
“Should reach Sugar Grove area in ten minutes at this rate, sir.”
“Is Ferrar still atop the train?”
“Our officers spotted him several cars back of the locomotive, moving forward.”
Powers stood up. “Have our men ready after Sugar Grove. Shoot at the engineer and Ferrar to kill them both. Damn, they’ll outrun us at this rate.”
“After Sugar Grove, we could try to demolish the trestle bridge at the quarry, sir.”
Powers pursed his lips. Not a bad idea. The train would have left his jurisdiction, and his responsibility. Just after Sugar Grove, the tracks crossed a trestle bridge over a deep limestone quarry. With the bridge gone, the train would plummet into the lake at the bottom.
Or it might explode and melt down his daughter’s development like another Three Mile Island.
“Don’t knock over any bridge. Just blast away at the engineer.”
He sat down heavily.
Who did these men think they were, transporting nukes through his town?
George Ferrar staggered forward a few more steps, his feet spread wide, as he swayed back and forth atop the twin containers.
He could not afford to take his eyes off the horizon for long. A low overpass or tunnel could decapitate him in an instant.
Falling to his knees, he unzipped the waterproof waist pouch that he had obtained in Pakistan and removed the small plastic transponder. Fumbling in the wind and darkness, he flipped on the switch so that it began transmitting its homing beacon. Then he removed the adhesive covering and attached the transponder to an indentation in the container’s surface.
Now to try and decouple the car.
As he regained his feet, he was instantly smothered by more wind in his face. Pushing forward step by step, he bent his head down every few seconds to breathe. He inhaled the fumes of a coke oven at a steel mill. That explained the sudden darkness of the landscape. They were passing through industrial wasteland.
He lowered himself onto the wooden planks of the container’s flatbed car.
Below him, the railroad ties and gravel roadbed were a blur illuminated by sparks from the train’s undercarriage. The noise was deafening. The train seemed to exceed a safe speed for the tracks.
He lay down at the end of the car and gripped the edge.
In the darkness, he couldn’t make out the mechanism that coupled the two train ca
rs. Suddenly, decoupling moving train cars seemed like something one could only do in a movie.
He had a better chance of reaching the locomotive and overpowering the engineer.
Leaning over the side of the car, he counted the train cars ahead. He had two boxcars to go before the locomotive. He could make it.
Keeping an eye on the ladder of the boxcar in front of him, he launched himself into space and landed with a resounding clang on the nearest rung.
He moved forward again, sensing for the first time that the sway of the car was slackening off. As the rhythm slowed down, the icy wind also ceased to blast in his face.
For some reason, the train was creeping to a halt.
Within a minute, the brakes hissed, and they had come to a complete standstill in the middle of a grouping of warehouses and shacks, perhaps part of the steel mill.
An image of the rushing ground was still imprinted in his eyes. He began to climb down the front end of the boxcar when he heard a gunshot. It was a single report near the front of the train, perhaps inside the locomotive itself.
He peered forward between the cars and saw the silhouette of a man jumping out of the cab.
The headlights of some vehicle flashed over the train and caught the man full in the face. Before jerking his head back out of sight, Ferrar saw the man’s broad face, strong jaw, lined cheeks and blond hair. It was Tray Bolton.
A second later, Bolton’s footsteps raced past him, his winter boots kicking up gravel.
Ferrar took a chance and peered toward the end of the train. A small forklift truck was lifting the first of the two containers off the train car. It swiveled and set the container onto an eighteen-wheel, tractor-trailer truck.
“Careful,” Bolton shouted. Then a moment later, “Got it?”
“Yes,” a voice came back as the truck’s motor roared to life.
Bolton flew past Ferrar again and jumped into the locomotive.
Moments later, the train cars pulled taut and they began gathering speed. Paralyzed, Ferrar suddenly realized that he had to make a decision: follow the eighteen-wheeler or get to Bolton.