by Fritz Galt
He held onto the freight car as it lurched forward, and soon the train was rocketing across flatlands toward a distant cluster of lights. It looked like a housing development in the middle of nowhere.
FBI Director Hank Gibson sat bolt upright as Secretary of Defense Murrow Hughes reached him over the telephone.
“Okay, Hank,” Hughes intoned coolly. “We’ve scrambled an F-16 Fighting Falcon from nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. He should have the train in his sights in a few minutes.”
“What’s his target?” Hank asked.
“We could aim for the train, or for a bridge that lies just outside of the town of Springfield. It appears to span a rock quarry.”
“First let me get back to the chief of police. Hold on.”
Hank dialed Chief Powers. “Did you stop the train?”
“Weird thing,” Powers said. “It ignored all our flagmen. I talked to the engineer. He said he wouldn’t stop and that we should try to catch him. Creepy sounding guy. So I set up men at the next crossroad and it still hasn’t shown up.”
“When’s it due?”
“Should have been there several minutes ago. Maybe it slowed down. I might have to send my men back up the tracks to see what happened… No, wait.”
The line was muffled for a few seconds while new information came in.
“It’s moving,” Chief Powers reported. “It’s approaching a development called Sugar Grove right now. Gathering speed.”
“Is it going to stop?” Hank asked.
In the background, Powers relayed the question to the field.
“No, sir. It’s not stopping. I gave my force permission to open fire once the train passes the populated area.”
“Understood,” Hank said. He hung up the line to Springfield, Ohio, and returned to the Secretary of Defense.
“The train is proceeding slower now, but gathering speed. I can’t permit any collateral damage, so don’t blow away the train while it’s among houses. Might as well just take out the bridge.”
“Roger that,” the Secretary said. The line clicked dead, leaving Hank Gibson alone to his thoughts. He contemplated the illuminated profile of the White House down the broad avenue.
He couldn’t believe that he had just ordered a military strike against a target on American soil.
Where that bomb was heading, he might never know.
Police Lieutenant Barry Fox and three other officers kneeled behind their squad cars amid corn stubble on the edge of Sugar Grove.
They had given the engineer fair warning. Now the niceties were over. No more red signals. No more flagmen. No more roadblocks. The bastards had it coming.
But where was the train?
At last, Barry heard the distinctive rumble of empty boxcars.
Then he saw the yellow engine and red cars in the distance. It was approaching slowly, its wheels barely grinding away. He felt the agonizingly long wait that car drivers feel at a railway crossing when a train is just barely creeping past.
Finally, he had the side window of the locomotive within his gun sight. The interior lights were off, and he couldn’t make out the engineer.
As the train pulled closer, he realized that it was gaining significant speed. He and his riflemen would have only three or four seconds to take out the engineer.
“Open fire,” he ordered.
So the law enforcement officers did exactly that, shattering the front and side windows, denting the metal door and riddling the cab. The flashes and thundering from the dark, fallow field looked and sounded like a military barrage.
But the train’s progress continued unabated.
“Lieutenant,” an officer shouted as the massive train rumbled past. “I can see a man on the roof of the second car.”
“That’s Ferrar,” Barry shouted. “Gun him down.”
George Ferrar was busy maintaining his balance on the swaying train while choking on the fumes of the locomotive just half a car ahead.
Suddenly over his right shoulder came the roar of a fast-moving jet.
Also to his right, a burst of gunfire erupted from an empty field. A wall of squad cars was outlined in the smoke, as police pumped lead into the locomotive.
Maybe they would get Bolton for him.
But the train continued chugging along. In fact, it was gaining speed. Uneven railway tracks nearly toppled him. He leaned over to cough in the asphyxiating fumes.
Bullets started ripping up the metal boxcar on which he stood fighting for balance.
The police were aiming at him. Hell, he wasn’t the engineer. What could possibly be on their minds?
He fell to the cold, hard surface and hugged the rattling frame. He could just barely keep out of sight of the policemen firing at will from the field. The locomotive’s hot exhaust whipped through his hair. Bullet tips smacked the roof below him, denting the metal under his hands. The surface turned searing hot. Other bullets burst through the sheathing and left smoldering holes just inches from his face.
Ferrar had to change his position, and scrambled forward on hands and knees into the black cloud of diesel smoke.
Suddenly the jet entered his field of vision. From its delta-wing profile and bubble canopy, it appeared to be an F-16 fighter jet streaking out of the night sky, straight for the train.
It was approaching too fast. It would pass by just seconds before the locomotive arrived.
Then a brilliant white flash illuminated the entire landscape. Before him, to either side of the plume of diesel smoke, loomed a deep, black canyon. A red fireball rose hot and blinding directly in front of him. Scraps of metal spun and flew overhead.
He dropped to his stomach once more and forced himself to observe what was happening.
The snout of the locomotive dropped below his line of sight. The sound of its engine diminished as if suddenly muffled.
The F-16’s single glowing tailpipe disappeared among the stars. Gun blasts had ceased from the field.
He was riding a shimmying mechanical beast. Ahead, the burning timbers of some sort of structure fell away. A bridge!
The train was flying off a blown-away bridge into a dark, gaping void.
He wouldn’t follow it there, land in a scrap heap and be buried by tons of metal as more train cars piled on top of him.
Instead, he reversed himself and sprinted toward the back end of the boxcar. At the last second, he veered to the right and threw himself into the dark, still air, the train falling off to his left, his arms flailing to keep him upright.
He looked down. The bottom of the gorge was a distant forty yards below. Straight below looked particularly dark. Metal and wooden beams hit the bottom and flames were instantly extinguished.
He was over water.
He braced himself for impact.
Pointing his feet straight down and holding his crotch, he tightened his buttocks.
The last image from the air was that of a broken, burning trestle and the train arcing downward with him at the same speed.
He hit the water like an I-beam, just beside where the bridge had fallen and just before where train cars had begun to pile up.
The moment he hit the water, he spread out his arms and legs, flapping them wildly to cause resistance before he hit the bottom of the lake.
He needn’t have worried, for he never reached the bottom. Instead, he found himself in frigid, wet stillness. He was weightless and, for a moment, alive.
Chief Stewart Powers stood on the rim of the quarry at Rock Way, Ohio. Forty yards below, he looked into a deep, wide pit of flaming wreckage that floated in a black lake.
“What’s the situation?” he inquired of Lieutenant Barry Fox, the ranking officer on the scene.
Barry pointed to a rescue crew working below on the fringes of the lake. “We’ve recovered one container, sir. If the other has fallen into a deeper recess in the lake bottom, we might not find it for some time. It would require deep water diving equipment to search the lowest part of the quarry.�
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“And what did you find in the container?”
“Pipes, sir. Plain metal tubes. You know, like water pipes for a sewer.”
“That’s just great,” Powers said. “We’ve been spending all our time setting up roadblocks, firing on people, bombing bridges and destroying entire trains for a box of sewage pipes? I can’t wait to tell the Director of the FBI.”
“I thought you’d be relieved, sir.”
“Why’s that?”
“That there was no hazardous material onboard.”
Powers had to agree. All he needed was a little perspective on the events of that evening. Things did not turn out as badly as they might have.
“Did Ferrar turn up?”
“No. Again, he may have died under all that wreckage, and we’ll never know it unless his body bloats up, frees itself and floats to the surface. On the other hand, he just might have managed to escape alive.”
“A fool like that, ramming his truck into a moving train, then trying to walk along the top of train cars. I know a wacko when I see one. He’s watched one too many cop shows on television. How about the engineer?”
“Not recovered either, sir. Actually, the engine is still buried under all that wreckage and water, so I seriously doubt if we’ll turn up any evidence until we get a heavy crane down there.”
“Okay. Good work, son. I’ll wait until you turn something up before I get back to Washington.”
Chief Powers turned away from the glowing sight. He had never seen anything quite so ghastly in his life. An entire freight train half-submerged at the bottom of his town’s limestone quarry.
Yet, Springfield should feel proud. They had just spared the nation another unspeakable act.
Chapter 17
Seated before the Congress’ Joint Intelligence Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, FBI Director Hank Gibson tried to control the quaver in his voice. He was recounting the final heroic moments when the U.S. Air Force teamed with local law enforcement personnel to defeat the al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Ohio.
At the end of the table, CIA Director Lester Friedman listened with satisfaction, nodding from time to time.
Just as Hank delivered his concluding remarks, Congressman Connors stumbled in, late as usual.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” Connors said, dropping his briefcase on the stack of papers before him and opening the latch. “Hank, may I ask you a question or two?” he said, staring straight down at him.
Hank nodded. “It would be my pleasure.”
“Okay, I’ve heard the news reports,” Connors started. “It looks like congratulations are due. But let me clear up a point or two. First, have you recovered the bombs from the train yet?”
“Ah no, sir. If you had been here earlier, you would have heard me testifying that due to the depth of the lake and the amount of wreckage and debris, the authorities on the scene have not yet been able to retrieve any sort of weapons, nuclear or otherwise.”
“What a shame,” Connors said. “Secondly, did you capture George Ferrar?”
“Again, sir, I would refer you to my earlier testimony this morning that we have neither apprehended Ferrar, nor found his remains at this time due to the immense amount of debris.”
Connors closed his briefcase with a smile.
“Can you tell me why you’re grinning, Congressman Connors?” the CIA Director leaned into his microphone and asked.
“Because that means Ferrar is still on the case.”
It was midmorning in Ohio. With one hand draped over the steering wheel of a stolen minivan, Ferrar turned the digital tracking device on. No signal crossed the orange-backlit screen. Damn it.
He immediately turned it off.
Where might the container be?
He reviewed the sequence of events atop the train. He had attached the transponder to the top container, and he had switched on the transponder’s homing beacon. Then the small forklift had taken the container off the train and set it onto a tractor-trailer.
The truck couldn’t be that far away, but he had failed to pick up the signal all morning.
He rubbed the stubble of a beard on his jaw and stared straight ahead out the minivan’s windshield as he sped through Ohio. The train had been heading westward. It seemed logical to assume that the eighteen-wheeler transporting the container would be heading in the same direction as the train.
He had lost an hour and a half of valuable time climbing out of the quarry, scaling its fence and hotwiring a minivan that was parked in the cement company’s parking lot. Perhaps he wasn’t close enough to the truck yet for the signal to pick up.
He checked his speedometer. Seventy miles per hour on a speed limit-enforced Interstate in a stolen vehicle was pushing his luck. He eased off the accelerator slightly.
Highway signs indicated that he was angling toward southern Indiana: Indiana border 35 miles, Indianapolis 259 miles, Springfield, Illinois, 411 miles, St. Louis 635 miles. He couldn’t imagine a possible terrorist target in Indiana except for the Indy 500 Speedway, where half a million spectators gathered for the annual race. But that race wasn’t until May as he recalled, and it was December.
December 10th to be exact.
The next day would bring a cataclysm to rival that of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Surely nothing had that high a profile in the asparagus fields and maple groves of Indiana.
Beyond Indiana lay southern Illinois. Again, no major targets there.
The truck could have changed direction and headed up to Chicago or down to Memphis. He could use a full rack of Carson’s ribs in the Windy City. A plate of blackened catfish in Memphis wouldn’t be all that bad either.
Drowsy from several sleepless nights, he let his attention wander. The idea of Bolton dead in the train crash struck him as somewhat incongruous. Why would Bolton have offloaded the bombs onto a truck only to proceed onward with the train that he surely knew authorities would be tracking?
Nevertheless, chances were high that Bolton didn’t expect an F-16 to strike out of the sky and drop the bridge in front of him.
He picked up his cell phone and punched in Bonnie Taylor’s number in San Francisco. If Tray Bolton were still alive, he might try to contact her.
FBI Director Hank Gibson was just zipping up his pants in a men’s room at the Rayburn House Office Building when his CIA counterpart grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Hank,” Lester Friedman said. “I’m afraid that we might be making a terrible blunder here.”
“Yeah, getting my dick stuck in my zipper would be a problem.”
“I won’t let this go until I see Ferrar dead,” Lester said.
Hank looked down and examined his zipper. All his body parts seemed intact. “We’ve got divers out there right now.”
“That’s not good enough,” Lester said, following him to the sink. “It could take days before they decide there’s nobody down there to find. In the meantime, Ferrar could be out there orchestrating our country’s demise. Remember al-Qaeda’s doomsday prediction? December 11. And that’s tomorrow. I don’t want to tell you how many nuclear power plants, dams, capital buildings, monuments, skyscrapers, stadiums and other dangerous and high profile targets we have spread around this country. We need to find Ferrar.”
Hank stared at Lester in the large wall mirror as he washed his hands. “Well, we are following up on one possible lead.”
“Which is?”
“An employee at the quarry in Ohio reported his vehicle stolen as his shift ended early this morning.”
“And?” Lester asked excitedly.
“Jesus, Lester, calm down,” he said, shaking his hands dry. “You shouldn’t lose sleep over this thing. There are terrorists all over the world plotting the destruction of our republic. Don’t get hung up on one little case that isn’t even yours any longer.” He ripped a couple of paper towels out of the dispenser.
“You’re right. I am losing too much sleep. My wife and I are even worried that with Ferr
ar still unaccounted for, since he killed our son Tray, he might hunt us down next.”
“Nonsense.”
“I know it’s nonsense, but that’s the kind of fear that makes me determined to find him before he commits some atrocity on a Biblical scale.”
Hank wadded up and tossed the paper towels emphatically into the trash. “Well, we’ve got an alert out in several states for any vehicle that fits the description of the missing minivan. Nobody will have ever recovered a stolen minivan in so little time before. I guarantee. I hope the public doesn’t expect this level of service from the FBI every day. But if we do find Ferrar, it may help us to solve the mystery of whose bombs those really were.”
He swung the door open to leave.
Behind him, he heard Lester’s words, “There is no mystery.”
Chapter 18
Bonnie Taylor leaned back during her morning shower. Blonde hair dripping wet, feet together on the shower mat, and face raised upward, she let the hot spray pound away at her ample breasts.
No matter how much sleep she grabbed before another day of work, she still couldn’t alleviate the tension in her body that had all started with the call from Tray two days before.
Just hearing his sonorous voice had created an odd sensation. It had brought back dozens of memories, of high school dates watching the submarine races off the Bar Harbor piers, of campus evenings studying together in Doe Library at UC Berkeley, of his picking her up for Friday night dances, of their frequent tiffs, his raised voice, his blinding jealousy, his humble apologies and of the long nights she spent holding him like a relic of the past when she knew that they had no future together.
After she had read that he was memorialized with a white cross at Arlington National Cemetery, the sound of his voice had produced a secondary effect. Relief. Tray was alive, and still interested in her after those eight years of absence. Those lonesome years of juggling boyfriends, delaying her future and nibbling gingerly at other opportunities. It relieved her to know that a rock from her past was still there to hold onto.