Strike a Match 2

by Frank Tayell

  Conner fired. “Got ‘im!” he hissed.

  There was a roar of sound. The ground shook. Fire and smoke billowed up from the prisoner-transport train, hiding the ambushers from sight. Something tugged at Ruth’s leg. Mitchell was pulling her under the carriage as burning shrapnel rained down around them.

  “Can anyone see anything?” Mitchell asked.

  “I’ve no clear target,” Lin said.

  “Then fire at the damned trees!” Mitchell barked.

  The Marines fired short, controlled bursts. Three shots, then three, then three more. The ambushers returned fire, sending bullets back in endless barrage.

  “Incoming!” the corporal barked.

  Ruth saw something streak from the treeline toward the distant locomotive. Mitchell rolled on top of her. There was another explosion, and then there was silence.

  It seemed an age before the pressure on her eased as Mitchell crawled off and pulled himself a little way along the tracks.

  “See anything?” he asked, of everyone and no one.

  “No, sir,” the corporal said.

  “Everyone all right?” Mitchell added, in what was clearly an afterthought.

  There were grunts of affirmation from the Marines. Ruth added one of her own though she wasn’t sure it was true.

  “Was that an RPG?” Mitchell asked.

  “I think so,” the corporal said.

  “What’s…?” Ruth began and found it actually hurt to talk. She opened and closed her mouth, stretching her jaw. “What’s an RPG?”

  “A rocket-propelled grenade,” Mitchell said. “Think of it as one-person artillery. They fired twice. The first must have hit the carriage Fairmont was in. The second hit the locomotive. Corporal, eyes on the treeline.”

  “Sir, what are—” Ruth began, but before she could finish the question, Mitchell had dragged himself out from under the carriage and was running toward the ruined locomotive. He zigged. He zagged. He tried to roll and came back to his feet limping. By the time he reached the train, he was jogging barely faster than a walk with his hand firmly clamped to his side, but no one had shot at him.

  “I’d say it’s safe,” the corporal said.

  “Or they know we’ll think that, and they’re waiting for us to move,” Ruth said.

  “No,” Lin said. “They were after the prisoner, and I’d say they got him.”

  The corporal was right. After Ruth had forced herself to stand and sprint along the empty stretch of track, she’d followed Mitchell to the wrecked carriage. It was split open, almost forming a V pointing toward the woodland. Wreckage was strewn across both the north and southbound sets of rails. Not just wreckage. Ruth stared at an arm, unattached to a body.

  “The grenade must have been on a timer, or… I don’t know,” Mitchell said, looking at the wreckage. “It didn’t explode until after it had entered the carriage. Unless… maybe it wasn’t a rocket, but some other explosive. I hope not. It’s one thing to fire a grenade at a target, another to force their way onto the train, strap explosives to the cage, and then run for it.”

  “But that’s probably what they did, right?” Ruth asked. She was unable to tear her eyes away from the arm still clad in that familiar orange chequered suit.

  “I think so,” Mitchell said. “They really wanted to make sure he was dead. Corporal, check for survivors. Khan, you’re with her. Conner, you’re with me. Corporal, give me your rifle.”

  Mitchell took the weapon, checked the mechanism, then the magazine. “Deering, I want—”

  “I’m with you, sir,” she said.

  Mitchell shook his head, but didn’t argue as he stalked into the woods. Conner took up a position ten feet to his left. Ruth followed, keeping her eyes on the trees and the growing shadows behind them.

  As they moved away from the smouldering train, she thought she could make out another sound, coming from somewhere distant and to the east. It was a little like thunder but, at the same time, it was an entirely unnatural sound. She didn’t think she’d ever heard it before.

  Something shiny caught her eye. She stopped. It was a pile of metal casings. Dozens, hundreds, she wasn’t sure how many. When she glanced up she saw that Mitchell and Conner were still moving, and realised that the sound, whatever it was, had gone.

  The casings were piled around a shallow pit dug into the earth. Ruth turned to look back toward the train. She’d not realised it before, but from this angle she saw that the tracks were curved and that the locomotive had come to a halt on a slight incline rising into the woodland. She could see at least eight miles of rails visible to the south. Her heart sank further as she realised it was an ideal spot for an ambush.

  Mitchell and Conner were a hundred feet away. Ruth didn’t try to catch up. It was clear that Emmitt was gone.

  Careful of each step, she walked through the woods, replaying the ambush, but this time from the attackers’ perspective. A little beyond the firing position she came to a series of drag marks. Had they tried to obscure their footprints? No, because there was a clear heel print to the west. They must have been carrying something. Or someone, she realised when, a little further on, she noticed a cluster of blood drops on the fallen leaves.

  The sniper? Perhaps. But was it Emmitt? She doubted they would be so lucky, and she was sure she’d broken his arm. If not him, then who? It could be anyone. She kept on through the forest, throwing occasional glances back at the train. After another dozen yards, she stopped. She knelt down. The train was still visible. They had dug the pits and must have laid camouflage over the top. Blankets, perhaps, with branches sewn to them. Whatever they were, they’d been taken away.

  Fifty yards further on, Mitchell and Conner had stopped at what looked like a firebreak. The Marine was alert, rifle raised, the barrel tracking left and right. The captain was staring at the ground.

  “Do you see the tracks?” Mitchell asked.

  “Are they wheel marks?” Ruth asked. They were around eight feet apart. The ruts were wider than those left by any horse drawn carriage Ruth had ever seen, and they’d left a pattern of lines and diamonds in the thick mud.

  Mitchell bent down, and picked something up from the mud. As he straightened, he winced.

  “Sir, are you—”

  “I’m fine.” He held out the object he’d picked up. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “No, I don’t…” And then she understood. “That’s rubber. Tyre rubber. I thought I heard something. Was it an engine?”

  “From a truck,” Mitchell said. “Diesel, I suppose.” He looked down at the piece of rubber in his hands. “It’s badly perished, but there’s some of the tread-mark still visible. I don’t know if Isaac—” He stopped and glanced at Conner, but the Marine wasn’t paying them any attention. “In the old-world, they had databases of all the different tyre patterns. If any of those survived, we can check this against them.”

  “And that will tell us what type of car they were driving?” Ruth asked

  “No, the type of tyre will tell us from what vehicle the tyres originally came. From the wheelbase, and number of passengers – you see the footprints over here? From those we know it’s a truck. Taken together that might…” He trailed off. “I’m jumping on a haystack hoping the needle might stick in my foot.” He walked over to the remains of a dull metal barrier at the edge of the road and sat down. He looked more lost than Ruth had ever seen him before.

  “They had time to prepare,” Ruth said. “Did you see the firing positions?”

  “They must have been camouflaged. So, yes, they had time to prepare the firing positions. They drove from Twynham, and that’s the direction in which they’ve driven away. They must have left soon after we did. Which means they’ve cleared a stretch of road here, to this point, where they had those positions prepared.”

  “But how did they know we’d come this way?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” Mitchell said. He stood. “They drove away to the south. How do we find them? We
can’t catch them. Not on foot. So, we go back to the train.”

  “Aren’t we going to gather evidence?” Ruth asked.

  “Later. In this job you focus on the most pressing danger to life. That was the shooters. Now they’ve gone, the evidence will wait until we’ve tended to whatever wounded are left on the train.”

  “They’re all dead?” Mitchell asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Corporal Lin said. “The driver, the lieutenant, everyone. Shot multiple times, or died in the explosion. It looks like at least two were executed.” She shook her head. “All to kill that man. Who was he? You have to tell us. We’ve earned it. These are comrades. Our friends.”

  Mitchell nodded. “He was the assistant to the American ambassador. He sold information to a man named Emmitt. You might have seen his pictures in the paper.”

  “The assassin who tried to kill the Prime Minister?” Lin said. “We were there at the radio broadcast. On duty. We all were.”

  “I see. Well, Fairmont was selling information to Emmitt. After we caught him, he was trading what he knew with us in exchange for a cushy prison sentence. Essentially you were to be his bodyguards as we extracted all the information out of him that we could.”

  “So what did he know?” Lin asked.

  “Something worth doing all this for,” Mitchell said. “As to exactly what, I don’t know. There’s an hour before dark, and I gave instructions at Leicester that no more trains were to be allowed through until dawn. We’re here for the night. Deering, Corporal, check the woods for evidence. Make sure we didn’t miss anything. Conner, Khan, and I will take these two trains. In thirty minutes, or if you hear a shot, come back here. No later.”

  “Understood, sir,” Lin said.

  “Stay close,” Lin said. “If I say run, you do it, understand?”

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Ruth asked.

  “Probably not,” Lin said. “But it isn’t people I’m worried about. There’s lions and bears in these woods. They escaped from zoos soon after the Blackout. It’s why there aren’t many people living around here. Not anymore. Come winter, humans are just another form of food. They’ll probably come for the bodies later.” The corporal spat. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. Where do you want to start?”

  “Oh. Um… I suppose we should start by counting the firing positions,” Ruth said. She started walking toward the woods. “You were on duty during the assassination?” she asked.

  “I was,” Lin said. “I remember you, on the beach. You looked ferocious.”

  “Did I?” Ruth tried to remember the faces of the Marines who’d come running down with Riley and Agent Clarke. “And were your… the Marines, they were all there?”

  “They were. We guessed that this had to be connected when we saw you board the train this morning. Can you make a guess at what the man knew?”

  “It has to be something big, doesn’t it?” Ruth said. “Probably an address of where we’ll find Emmitt. But whatever it is died with him.”

  She came to a halt by the first firing position.

  “How long would it take to dig?” she asked.

  “This?” Lin asked. “An hour. Less.”

  “So it could have been done this morning?”

  “Sure. The time-consuming part would have been finding this spot. Do you see how there’s a clear line of sight of any train coming from the south? They didn’t find this location by luck.”

  There were around a hundred and fifty casings. Ruth pocketed a couple of them. “For fingerprints,” she said.

  “You have some suspects in mind?” Lin asked.

  “Not really, but what else can we do?”

  They found the drag marks and followed them back to a firing position near the woods’ edge.

  “This is where the sniper was,” Lin said.

  “You’re sure?” Ruth asked.

  “Positive.”

  There was a bloodstain against the tree. It was some consolation that one of the attackers had been wounded, if not killed, but not much.

  “Twenty minutes,” Lin said.

  “We can count the fox holes in the morning,” Ruth said. “I want to check the road.” She’d had an idea, and confirmed it half a mile further south.

  “Saw marks, you see?” she said, pointing at a severed tree stump. “They cleared the road of debris. That must have taken a long time. Longer than a couple of hours.”

  “So when did you decide to move the prisoner?” Lin asked.

  “Last night.”

  There was a soft glow near the Mail train’s locomotive. Mitchell was sitting on the steps of the engine’s cab, watching the flames of a wood and coal fire, set by the tracks.

  “They picked this site for an ambush,” Ruth said. “And prepared it. They cleared a road from Twynham to here. That’s got to be at least two hundred miles. That wasn’t done in a day.”

  “No,” Mitchell said, his eyes on the flames.

  “So they were planning on ambushing a different train,” Ruth said.

  “Yes.”

  “But then Emmitt changed his plan because killing Fairmont was more important than… than what?”

  “How did they know our train was coming this way?” Lin asked.

  “The driver of this Mail train is missing,” Mitchell said. “Two of your comrades are unaccounted for. I don’t suspect them,” he added. “I mean that it’s impossible to identify them from the remains. But the missing driver must have brought the Mail train to a halt here on Emmitt’s instructions. Rebecca Cavendish must have told her why keeping to the schedule and sending those telegrams back was important. Or maybe Emmitt deduced it.” He picked up a lump of coal and threw it into the fire. “Too many assumptions! Too many gaps! Too many guesses! What do we know? They drove here from Twynham. That must have been early this morning after Rebecca Cavendish told the driver to come into work. Someone at the embassy must have told Emmitt that we were moving Fairmont. Then what?”

  “That tribe in Leicester,” Ruth said. “The Albion people. They must have been involved. Maybe he got them to delay our train so he could make sure he reached this spot before us.”

  “Albion.” Mitchell stood, and began pacing around the fire, hands gripped behind his back. “Except they didn’t delay our train, did they? But you’re right, he probably did have them working for him. Someone cleared that road, and I can’t imagine Emmitt swinging an axe. How did he get them to help him? I don’t know. The Mail train came to a halt. Emmitt boarded it. Everyone stayed in their seats until the shooting began. When it did, the passengers tried to run. Some made it as far as the doors. One made it out of the train. In the end, they all died. The shooters returned to their positions in the woods and waited until we arrived. They knew we’d come to a stop.”

  “But why didn’t they fire straight away?” Lin asked.

  “Divide and conquer,” Mitchell said. “We had two choices; reverse, or send people to investigate the stalled train. If we’d reversed, they would have used the RPG. As it was, they waited, thus reducing the opposition against them. That meant they were able to come onto the train and confirm Fairmont was killed. Emmitt needed to know that for certain. But why? What did the man know?” He sat down again. “I’ll need the coroner to confirm it, but the sniper got most of the kills. The rest were shot when they went on board. I doubt we’ll ever know whether they allowed Fairmont the mercy of a bullet, but that explosive was probably attached to the cage.”

  “Did any of them die?” Lin asked.

  “Around the train? I don’t think so.”

  “Because that was a train full of Marines. We’re good, sir. Very good, and that means these people had to be better.”

  “I think they knew how many of us there were,” Mitchell said. “They must have done. Perhaps from a spy in Leicester? I don’t know, but you’re right; there are parts to this that don’t make sense. But we will get to the bottom of it.”

  “Why didn’t they stay and kill us?” Conner
asked.

  “I suppose because we’d taken out their sniper,” Mitchell said.

  “They could have flanked us,” Lin said. “There were at least six of them, probably eight, maybe more.”

  “Or used that grenade,” Conner said.

  “The RPG? Yes,” Mitchell said. “I think, perhaps, they only had one grenade and it was more important to destroy the train than kill us.”

  “Why?” Ruth asked.

  “To buy themselves time,” Mitchell said. “If the locomotive hadn’t been destroyed, we could have taken it back to the depot, and sent word across the country. Those surveillance balloons might have spotted a truck driving across the countryside if they’d been told what to look for. Perhaps it wouldn’t have made any difference whatsoever, but whether we are alive or dead clearly doesn’t matter to Emmitt.”

  “How are you going to find him?” Lin asked.

  “We’ll follow the tracks south, see where they begin, and see if we can find the truck. We’ll look for the fuel. It will be bio-diesel, I’m sure of it. There aren’t many places that could have come from. After that, I don’t know.”

  Nor did anyone else.

  Ruth moved closer to the fire. It was barely evening, and still many hours away from night, yet it was already getting cold. She supposed she could go and get some more clothes, but even if her bag hadn’t been destroyed in the explosion, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go into that wrecked carriage.

  There were a few more desultory attempts at conversation, but no one had anything to add. They sat alone with their thoughts, listening to the sounds of the night. The caws. The snuffles. The occasional hoot. Then a whistle.

  “You hear that?” Mitchell said, standing up. The Marines were on their feet, hands reaching for weapons. Before Ruth could do the same, another sharp whistle rent the air.

  A train had arrived, this one from the north, investigating why the Mail train had never arrived.