Kahawa

by Donald E. Westlake

  A voice behind him said, in English, “We’re taking over the train.”

  The engineer and fireman were both fairly proficient in English, and they understood that sentence well enough. They spun around and stared in absolute amazement at two white men who had climbed up into the cab on the other side—while the Army officer had distracted them—and who were now standing there with guns in their hands.

  “You—” The engineer couldn’t figure out how to put his astonishment and disbelief into words in any language. “You—You can’t—This is a train!”

  The bigger older one said, “We know it’s a fucking train, fella, and we’re taking it over.”

  The Army officer had now climbed up into the cab, and the fireman said to him, “The Army? What does the Army want with our train?”

  “They’re not Army,” the engineer told him. He’d at least worked out that much.

  “Talk English,” said the older white man.

  The younger one stepped closer to the engineer. “You’ll drive now,” he said. “But slowly.”

  “It would have been a record!” wailed the fireman, the enormity of it coming home to him.

  “Talk English, goddammit!”

  The younger one gestured with his gun at the engineer. “Start now.”

  “Wait for Charlie,” said the officer.

  The older one said, “Fuck Charlie.”

  “No,” said the younger one. “Where is he, Isaac?”

  The officer leaned out the cab window. “He’s climbing on the last car. Give him just a second … okay.”

  “Start.”

  The engineer started. Once again, smoke balls puffed upward; the wheels spun on the track; they caught; the locomotive surged forward. Clang, clang, dang, the couplers crashed all the way down the line as the slack was taken up, and the entire giant snake lunged forward.

  They passed the truck, stopped now on the dirt road beside the track. The driver—he was an Asian—waved and drove away as the train slowly gathered speed.

  The younger one was carefully watching the engineer’s moves. He means to run it himself, the engineer thought. Aloud, he said, “This is foolish, you know. What are you going to do with a train? When we don’t arrive in Jinja, they’ll come looking for us.”

  “Stop now,” the younger one said. “We’re here.”

  They’d traveled perhaps half a mile. “Here?”

  The train was doing barely ten miles an hour, and was very easily stopped. But where was here? An empty stretch flanked by jungle growth, near a level crossing for an abandoned road.

  “Last stop,” the older one said. “Everybody off.”

  The engineer, the fireman, the Army officer, and the older white man all climbed down to the ground, where the older man yelled up, “Don’t fuck up this train now! It’s the only one we got!”

  “I’ve always wanted my own train,” the younger one said, grinning out of the cab at them.

  The other soldier, the one they’d called Charlie, was running along the tops of the cars, leaping the spaces like a deranged impala. The engineer and the fireman looked round, wide-eyed, and here was more astonishment. Just up ahead, the track had been moved! While the rest of the line continued on as before, curving slowly away to the right, this one section had been curved sharply to the left, through a gap in the encroaching shrubbery and out of sight.

  “Stand clear, now,” the older white man said. “We got an amateur up there at the throttle.”

  46

  Lew couldn’t stop grinning. The train seemed to breathe under him, a huge pointing powerful tame beast, waiting for his command. The throttle bar had to be held down to make the beast move; a safety measure, the dead-man’s bar, so that if the engineer had a heart attack the train wouldn’t continue on with nobody at the throttle.

  It had been decided that Lew would drive this part, just in case they had to deal with an engineer of heroic cast, who might try to sabotage the train before it was well hidden. Now Lew touched the bar and felt the beast’s vibration against his palm. He pressed, and the vibration multiplied a hundred times, and through a great rasping roar he heard somebody down there yell, “Easy! Easy! Not so fast!”

  Not so fast? The train wasn’t moving, so he must be spinning the wheels. He released the throttle, and the noise died away, and he settled down to learn this beast, which maybe wasn’t as tame as he’d thought. He hadn’t known he was going fast. He touched the bar again, and this time depressed it very very gently.

  The roar started, but not so angrily. The vibration increased, but not so dramatically. The train moved! Startled, Lew released the throttle, and the train stopped.

  “Will you quit fucking around up there?”

  “Shut up, Frank,” Lew yelled out the window, and put his hand again on the bar.

  The roar. The increasing vibration. A jolt, and once again the train inched forward.

  Lew kept his hand exactly where it was, and the train slowly gathered speed, and from behind him came the diminishing crashes of the couplers losing slack.

  The train was doing at most five miles an hour, with the diverted track just ahead. As he looked down on it from way up in the cab, it seemed to Lew that what they had built was too flimsy, the logs too uncertain a replacement for metal sleepers, the bed too soft, the rails insufficiently spiked into place. It’s a child’s toy, he thought, and I’m bringing a life-size locomotive onto it.

  If it fell over, should he stay with the engine or try to jump clear?

  “Take it slow, Lew! Slow and easy!”

  “Shut up, Frank!”

  The locomotive sagged to the left as they moved down off the regular roadbed. The observers on that side scattered, and the locomotive hesitantly rolled down over a track that had suddenly become all hills and valleys.

  “Don’t stop! Keep moving!”

  “Blow it out your ass, Frank,” Lew muttered. Out ahead, as the locomotive slowly curved through the gap in the wall of shrubbery, he could see the ex-railwaymen and the workers, all expectant and excited, watching this huge black metal monster nose down into their world.

  It was such a short distance from the solid main line to the solid spur line, but now it seemed a million miles long. The entire locomotive was on the temporary track, weaving from side to side as wood and metal groaned and cracked beneath the wheels. The tender followed like an obedient child, much more docile than its parent on the new line. The cars came along like sheep, one after the other, clanking, grinding, wheels screeching where the rails were too close together.

  The locomotive dropped, on the right side, about an inch, lurching as though it had been shot. Lew lost control of the throttle, and when he grabbed to regain it he pressed down too hard. The wheels spun with that grating roaring sound, but then the right side lurched up again and the locomotive lunged forward onto the old spur track like a bear hurling itself away from thin ice.

  That sound was a cheer! Lew looked out of the cab, and on both sides of the locomotive the men were yelling and grinning and clapping and jumping up and down. Even Frank was cheering instead of giving advice, and the former engineer and fireman were surreptitiously grinning at one another. Leaning far out of the cab and looking back and up, Lew could see Charlie about eight cars back, capering on the roof like a mannequin whose strings are pulled by a child.

  Isaac, grinning like a Halloween pumpkin and carrying a walkie-talkie, climbed up into the cab. Pointing at Lew’s own grin, he said, “You’ll crack your face.”

  “So will you.”

  Now it was easy. While the men surged forward to grab for the ladders on the freight cars, climbing aboard for the ride, some going up top to the roofs, some hanging on the sides, Lew eased the locomotive on down the spur track. Smoothly and neatly, it rode the switch that diverted it from the engine shed toward the turntable. Clack went the wheels when they hit the minutely off turntable, and clack again on the other side.

  Isaac said, “You know, that’s a gorge just
ahead.”

  “Oh, I know it.”

  At the end of the regular spur was more temporary track; again the locomotive sagged and hesitated. Lew took his hand off the throttle, and for an agonizing instant the train kept rolling toward the end of the track and the lip of the gorge. But then it faltered, and then it stopped.

  Isaac’s walkie-talkie cleared its throat with scratchy static sounds, then squawked in a parrot’s version of Frank’s voice saying, “Take it on down.”

  Isaac said, “It is on down.”

  “Repeat?”

  “We’re here, Frank, at the end of the track.”

  The walkie-talkie made indignant sounds: “I still got cars up here! I gotta get ‘em off this track! Run the fucking engine into the gorge!”

  Lew said, “Ask him if he wants to ride shotgun.”

  Another Americanism to confuse Isaac. “What?”

  “Never mind. Tell them out there to unhook the cars from the tender. We don’t want the whole train in the gorge.”

  “Right.”

  As Isaac started down out of the cab, Lew said, “And send somebody up with one of those little pieces of rail.”

  “Right.”

  That happened first; a grinning workman clambered aboard, toting a two-foot piece of rail from the dismantled buffer. He stood in the cab, grinning, looking around at everything, and Lew said, “Wanna ride over the cliff in it?” But the man had no English, and after a minute he left.

  Down below, Lew could hear the walkie-talkie skreeking Frank’s impatience, and Isaac calmly answering. Frank wanted the workmen, so Isaac called to them to hurry back up to the main line. Reluctantly they left, looking back, wishing they could watch the locomotive go over the cliff.

  Meanwhile, two of the ex-railwaymen worked at unhooking the lead car from the tender. The other two had climbed to the top of the first two cars to turn the big flat wheels of the hand brakes.

  “All set!”

  Lew had already propped the piece of rail on the cab’s windowsill, and now he lowered it gently onto the throttle bar. The engine roared, the wheels spun, and before he had the thing balanced they were already rolling toward the cliff. Quickly he lifted the rail, but the locomotive wasn’t pulling any weight now, and saw no reason to stop.

  Hell and damnation. Feeling the pull of that gorge, Lew dropped the rail onto the throttle, turned, and dove headfirst out of the moving cab.

  He landed in a lot of sharp nasty branches, rolled over, sat up, and watched the front wheels of the locomotive run off the end of the track and dig a plow-like furrow into the ground.

  The locomotive slowed; it strained; the rear thrusting wheels bit in hard against the rusty rails; the front wheels sliced slowly through that final five feet of earth toward the gorge.

  Isaac had come running, squawky walkie-talkie in hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Just look at that son of a gun.”

  Lew clambered to his feet, and he and Isaac stood and watched the locomotive doggedly commit suicide. It pushed, it strained, the tender patient and obedient behind it, until all at once chunks of earth gave way at the lip of the gorge, and the locomotive shot suddenly forward. “There it goes!” Isaac cried.

  But not yet. Lew had had all the time in the world to climb in a dignified fashion down out of that cab. He and Isaac ran through the scrub to the edge of the cliff as the locomotive ground slowly forward, the front wheels now dangling free in space. The nose very gradually drooped downward, as though the locomotive were reluctant to see where it was going. Then it spurted forward, the front half stuck itself black and huge and defenseless out into the air, the wheels lost their traction on the rails, the rear lifted, the nose turned down, and with a sideways lurch as though acknowledging defeat, the great monster slid over the edge.

  Thruston Bay was narrow and crooked and very deep, almost more a river than a bay, with steep clay cliffs on both sides, covered with tenacious shrubbery. The locomotive, immediately looking tiny and weightless when it was in the air, plummeted straight down, hit the cliff face a glancing blow midway, and then spun crazily the last fifty feet, shaking itself loose of its tender and hitting the water with a huge, satisfying, craterlike splash, into the bull’s-eye of which the tender dropped like an unimportant afterthought.

  There was an underwater explosion when the cold water hit the roaring-hot boiler, and the already roiled surface of the bay seemed to lift in a body, like bread rising. Then the surface ripped apart and the giant cough of the explosion was released, along with a great gout of steam. The steam fled away up into the air, dissipating, and the torn water fell back to form a surface again, which rapidly smoothed itself. The locomotive was gone.

  Lew and Isaac stared at one another, their faces delighted and awed, like children on Christmas morning. “That,” Isaac said, his faint and dazzled voice seeming to come from the tree branches above his head, “that, that was the most satisfying sight I ever did see in my entire life.”

  “What is so beautiful as a falling locomotive?” Slowly nodding, Lew said, “No matter what else happens to me in my life, that made it all worthwhile.”

  “Oh ho ho!” Isaac laughed, staggering backward. He might have gone over the edge himself if Lew hadn’t grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “And Mazar Balim,” Isaac cried through his laughter, “Mazar Balim said don’t volunteer! Ho ho ho ho ho!”

  A sudden thought left Lew stricken. “Oh, my God,” he said.

  Isaac’s laughter cut off. “What’s wrong?”

  “We didn’t take any pictures.”

  Isaac gave that serious consideration, then shook his head. “They wouldn’t have come out. Something like that never does.”

  “You’re right,” Lew said, relieved. “In a photograph, it’s just a toy train.”

  “We have the pictures here,” Isaac said, tapping his head.

  “Forever,” Lew agreed.

  Reluctantly, they turned away from the placid bay, to see the rest of the train rolling slowly toward them. Letting gravity do the work, the ex-railwaymen atop the front two cars turned the brake wheels, making tiny adjustments, permitting that great weight to inch slowly down the gradual slope but not to build up momentum.

  “I hope they know what they’re doing,” Lew said. “After all this, I wouldn’t want to see six million dollars of coffee go crashing into the bay.”

  “We wouldn’t want a camera for that,” Isaac said.

  47

  When the goddam cars at last began to roll forward, Frank knew they’d gotten rid of the locomotive. He’d yelled himself hoarse into that goddam walkie-talkie, and all he got for his efforts was a sore throat. But now at last the cars were moving, though awfully goddam slow.

  Up toward the main line, the work crew was already busily pulling spikes from the temporary track. The engineer and the fireman, trussed with ropes, sat to one side, their backs against trees, and watched with unflagging astonishment. Charlie had been put back to work as Frank’s translator, and was capering around in his usual style, while down the line Young Mr. Balim had been put in charge of the earphones, to spy on the railroad station at Jinja. Frank hated to have to admit that Young Mr. Balim could be useful, but there it was. At least Young Mr. Balim, unlike Charlie, could be counted on to report anything he might hear of interest.

  The cars stopped. That was too soon; most of the last car was still on the rails that had to be moved. Frank yelled into the walkie-talkie, “Move the damn thing!” He waited an eighth of a second and then bellowed, “Is anybody goddam there?”

  It was Lew’s voice that responded, not Isaac’s. “You don’t need the walkie-talkie, I can hear you without it.”

  “Then move the goddam train!”

  “We did. The locomotive’s gone. It was a very pretty sight, Frank.”

  Frank had no time for pretty sights. “I’ve still got wheels on the main line.”

  “The only thing we might do, Frank, is throw the first car over.”

 
“Do it!”

  “We won’t have time to unload it.”

  “One fucking car? Don’t be greedy, throw it over!”

  “It’s done,” Lew promised.

  Shaking his head, Frank stuck the walkie-talkie under his arm like a swagger stick and walked up to where the men were pulling spikes. Every spike was thrown away over the bushes and every log tie would be dragged off out of sight, and all the digging would be smoothed over. If there was time.

  Two of the ex-railwaymen were up at this end of the work. One of them now came over to speak very earnestly at Frank in that goddam Swahili, all the while pointing at the end of the spur track. Probably wanting to know when they could separate that joint. “We’re working on it,” Frank assured him. “I hope to Christ we’re working on it.”

  The cars moved. They stopped. They moved again, inching along, the rear wheels of the last car creeping toward the joint and the start of the rusty spur track. They reached the joint, they flowed over it, they went on another two or three feet, and then they stopped.

  “Now,” Frank said, and the happy ex-railwayman went purposefully to the joint, carrying several tools.

  Frank walked down the track to Young Mr. Balim. “Anything doing?”

  Young Mr. Balim pushed one earphone back onto his head so he could listen simultaneously to Frank and Jinja. “Not a word,” he said. “Most of the calls are about missing freight, not missing trains.”

  “It’s early yet,” Frank said. “They’ll push the panic button, don’t you worry.”

  “The missing train,” said Young Mr. Balim, and smiled. “What a wonderment.”

  “It is kinda nice,” Frank admitted, and looked back up the track to where fifty men were just starting to shuffle the northern rail back to its original position.

  48

  The city of Jinja, population fifty-two thousand, in addition to being the spot where the Nile emerges from Lake Victoria, so that it is therefore a port of some importance, is also a railway hub, an important freight stop on the main east-west line as well as being the western terminus of the northern loop branch line through Mbulamuti. The railroad station at Jinja, as a result, was kept manned all day even under the current reduced level of rail service.