“How bad?” Wolf asked.
“Bad. We’re right outside of Del Mar, beside the cliffs overlooking the ocean. This car is leaning over. When I looked out the window, I could see the car with the women was on its side and I don’t think it’s stable.”
“Do you know why we crashed?” Wolf pushed himself off the floor, giving a quick glance to his arm. Griff thrust a towel that he had found from the café at Wolf so that he could staunch the bleeding.
“We were going too fucking slow for it to cause something this bad. It’s got to be an explosion. We could have unfriendlies.” Griff whispered the last part.
“Fuck.”
Wolf pulled out his phone and pressed a number on his speed dial. He waited.
He looked at Griff. “She’s not answering.”
He placed another call.
“Tex? Amtrak train crash to San Diego. Caroline and I are on it. She’s in another car.” He cocked his head.
“Is her tracker still on-line?” He waited.
He breathed out a sigh of relief. “Okay, get them here. It’s going to be a cluster for emergency workers to get to us. We’re not near the highway, right?” He looked at Griff for confirmation.
Griff nodded.
“Okay, Tex, I need them stat.” He hung up.
As one unit, the men turned and surveyed the interior of the café car. There were five people other than themselves. One man was already helping a woman. They looked like they were going to be okay. The older Vietnamese gentleman who ran the diner was currently trying to apply pressure to another man who had a deep gash on his forehead. The last passenger in the car was a woman who was lying against the wall of rail car. She didn’t look injured. Griff crouched down next to her.
“Are you okay ma’am?”
“Did we crash?” she asked softly. Her brown eyes were wet with tears.
“Yes. Are you okay?”
“Can you get me off the train? I want to get off the train.” She gripped Griff’s arm.
“Ma’am, I need you to remain calm. Help is on the way.” He’d already called nine-one-one, as had many others.
“Ma’am, do you have your phone?”
She grabbed her purse, and pulled out her phone, then she nodded.
“Why don’t you call your family and tell them that you’re all right? My friend and I are going to go look for other people who are injured, okay?”
She wasn’t paying him any attention, instead she was already dialing. He looked at Wolf. They needed to get to the car where the women were. There was no exit on the bottom level of the dining car like there had been on the one the women were on. If they wanted to get to the women, they would need to go upstairs and go through the passageway, but the electrical wasn’t working.
“We need to climb out the window.” Griff pointed to the big window that overlooked the ocean. It was severely cracked, and had actually broken in one corner. It was made of safety glass.
“People, I need you to move away from the window!” Wolf yelled as he strode over to the jumbled mess that was once the café. He picked the sturdy steel microwave up off the floor. It was still plugged into the wall socket, and he yanked the cord. He took the appliance and hurled it at the cracked window. It crashed through, bringing in the fresh ocean air.
The woman who had been talking on her phone screamed. “What are you doing?”
“Ma’am, we need to get out to help the people on the other car,” Wolf answered.
Without being asked, the man who ran the diner was beside Wolf and Griff with a handful of towels.
“Here, put these down over the glass, so you don’t cut yourselves when you climb out of the window.”
“No need,” Griff said. “This is safety glass.” He pushed the entire piece out of its moorings in one big chunk. He climbed out first, and was surprised to see two lanky young men in wet suits making their way up over the rise of the cliff. It took a brief second for it to register with him that they had probably been surfing when they had heard or seen the crash and came to help.
“Hey! Are you okay?” The first one was a blonde kid who couldn’t be more than sixteen.
“Yeah. We’re headed over to that car,” Wolf pointed to the car that was on its side. Griff got his first good look at it and his stomach dropped.
Wolf grabbed his arm. “There was definitely an explosion.” They could see smoke coming from the two cars further up the track. But the one that Griff was interested in was on its side, and part of it had been sheared off like someone had taken a gigantic can opener to it. But the thing that scared the shit out of him was that it was literally teetering on the edge of a fucking cliff. Granted it wasn’t the highest cliff in the world, but if you were in that damn thing and it fell the hundred feet to the sand below, you would die.
Griff and Wolf started towards the railroad car.
“Mister. Don’t you want to wait for the emergency workers?” one of the kids asked.
Griff knew that it was going to be complicated for the first responders to get to this area, because it was not accessible by road.
“My wife is on that train,” Wolf ground out, never breaking stride.
As they got closer, they perused the metal wreckage.
“What do you think?” Wolf asked.
Just then, the railcar shifted as sand fell away from underneath the weight of the passenger car. Griff winced as he heard the screams inside.
“If we go underneath and try to climb through a window, the train could shift again and we’d be flatter than a pancake.” Griff said.
“I concur.” Wolf found a handhold on the back of the railcar to start climbing. Griff followed. Soon they were on top of the damaged train. From that vantage point they could see that there was an opening from near the back. It was small, but they should be able to work their way in.
“We need to stay near the edge. Away from the cliff side.” Griff said.
Wolf nodded. His face was grim. Both of them were in mission mode, despite the fact that women they cared about were inside.
They ran across the far edge, furthest from the cliff, and headed towards the part that had been cut open. Griff felt sweat trickling down his back. When they got to the opening, Griff wondered how in the hell they were going to fit. Not only was it tight, the steel was sharp as hell.
Wolf pulled out his smart phone and used it as a flashlight. “Looks like a six meter drop, but the seats have unbolted, so it’s not a good landing.” Griff peered over his shoulder, scouting the terrain. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Wolf asked.
Griff swallowed. There were three people lying in the wreckage. It was clear that two of them were dead. One might still be alive. Even though this was the upper deck of the train, this was not the part of the train where the women had been seated, thank God.
Griff peeled out of his jacket, and placed it over the edge of the steel, so they wouldn’t cut themselves as they leaned over the sides. “I’ll go in first. You can lower me down. I’ll move what I can, so it’s a better landing when I help you down.”
“Affirmative.”
“Hey!” Griff looked up and he saw the first young surfer coming towards him, and he could swear he was holding rope. “I thought you could use this.”
Griff recognized it immediately. It was a surfboard leash that the surfers used to connect their ankles to their boards, so that when they crashed they could recover their boards.
“Perfect, thanks.”
“I called my brother, he and some of his teammates from Coronado are coming to help.”
Griff looked at the teenager as he wrapped the leash around his wrist. “Who’s your brother?”
“Mason Gault, he’s a SEAL.”
“Small world.” Wolf said as he smiled grimly. “I called my team too.”
“I’m Billy,” the teenager said. He looked at the hole in the train car. “It’s kind of small. I can fit. I’ll go down first.”
“No,” Griff and Wolf said
in unison.
“You’re going to help me lower Griff down into the hole. Then you’re going to wait up here and direct others to where we went in as they get here.”
As soon as he was clear of the wreckage, he took out his cell phone so that he could use it as a flashlight. Wolf was good, he lowered him at a slow and steady pace. Griff straddled one of the overturned seats, thankful that it was vacant. His right foot hit something, and he saw it was a suitcase.
He unwrapped the leash from his wrist, and immediately looked around. It was dark in the car, but he saw two other flashes of light. “Miranda? Caroline?”
“Griff?” It was Miranda.
“Are you all right?”
“I am. Susan is injured. I haven’t found Caroline.”
“We’re coming.”
“Help! Help me!” It was a man’s voice.
“We’re coming, Sir.” Griff responded. Wolf had pulled up the leash. Griff moved the seat out of the way. He also cleared the suitcase and a metal luggage rack out of the way.
Wolf rappelled down.
Griff had already checked out the third person who had looked to be unconscious. He hadn’t survived.
“Griff?” Miranda yelled again. “Do you see the light?”
“Yes, we’re coming.”
“Caroline! Answer me!” Wolf’s voice reverberated through the space. They were met with silence. After ten seconds passed, a cacophony of voices raised, a chorus of people calling for help. Wolf and Griff looked at one another, knowing that they were needed. Griff felt for the big man, knowing that his first priority was finding his wife.
As they started forward, there was a thud behind them. They both turned, and they saw Billy.
“I told you not to come down here. You needed to tell people where we were,” Wolf reprimanded the teenager harshly.
“There’s a helicopter hovering up there. He saw me. He knows I went inside. I can help. I’ve taken first aid classes.” Griff saw the boy looking at the dead body. Even in the dim light it was clear that he was having a hard time dealing with it. But then he straightened up and looked at the two SEALs. “Seriously, I can help.”
“Follow us, and be careful where you step.” Griff said.
Wolf carefully climbed over one of the seats.
“Can you help me up?” A hand raised up behind the next seat they came across. Wolf carefully pulled an older African American man to his feet.
“Are you okay, Sir?”
“I’m in one piece. I just need a few minutes to catch my breath, then I can help. The train’s slipping, right?” Griff nodded.
“Yes sir, it’s slipping.”
“Well, let’s start evacuating.”
Griff figured it had been fifteen minutes since the crash happened. They were maybe three miles outside of Del Mar. Rescue workers should be on-site at any moment. As if his mind had conjured it, he heard the faint sound of sirens, hopefully they had figured out a way to get close to the train tracks over the embankments. Except maybe for the Serrano Valley, he didn’t know of any place worse that this crash could have happened.
The three of them moved slowly and carefully. They didn’t want to step on anyone as they made their way towards Miranda and, hopefully, Caroline.
“Please, my husband needs help!” a woman called from the right. Wolf flashed his light over to see an older couple huddled near a wall. It was obvious the man was bleeding from a steel rod sticking out of his abdomen. She was trying to stem the blood with her hands.
“Billy, open some luggage and find something to staunch the blood,” Griff ordered.
Griff looked at Wolf, who was hesitating. “I’ve got this Wolf, you go on ahead.”
“Thanks,” the big man said as he continued forward.
“Will this work?” Bill was holding up a sweatshirt as he moved towards the couple.
“Perfect.” Griff pulled out his utility knife, but Billy already had his out and was cutting the sweatshirt into strips. The kid had his shit together.
As they knelt down beside the injured man, Billy leaned into whisper to Griff. “Should we pull out the metal?”
Griff examined it. “No, it will just cause more bleeding. Put compresses around it.”
The train gave a slow lurch and steel screeched.
“Oh God, we’re going to die,” the woman moaned.
“Everything’s going to be fine. There’s a helicopter overhead. They’re coming for us.” Griff assured the woman. He started to get up.
“Don’t leave us,” she begged, as she grabbed his wrist.
“Ma’am, I’ll stay with you. They need to go see to other passengers.” It was the older man from before.
“Thank you, Sir,” Griff said, and he got up as he patted the woman’s shoulder. Suddenly there was pounding on the wall of the train car.
Cries echoed inside as people jolted in fear. Griff yelled out, “Ladies and Gentlemen. Please calm down. That is the sound of the rescue workers outside. They’re just getting things in place to help us out.”
Lord, he hoped he wasn’t lying.
He gripped Billy’s shoulder. “Call your brother. Find out his ETA.”
Griff waited while Billy made the call.
“Mason! Where are you?” The kid put it on speaker.
“We’re fourwheeling it past Jaden’s van towards the train track. We’ve spotted the helicopter. Fuck, Billy, we can see smoke, you’re not near the train are you?”
Billy didn’t answer, and Griff took the phone from him.
“Mason? This is Griffin Porter. Your brother is on the train despite Wolf’s and my order’s to stay off the goddamn thing. He’s providing aid to the injured. The car we’re on is on its side and near the cliff and is slipping. We need equipment to help steady it.”
“You need to evacuate,” Mason said in a calm voice.
“Agreed, but it’s a mess. We’ve barely found a quarter of the passengers on the top floor of this car, we haven’t even made it to the bottom floor. I have Wolf Steel with me. What’s your ETA?”
“I’ve surfed that beach with Billy, we should be there in five more minutes. There’s another truck behind us. They’ve been tailing us since we left Coronado. Now that you said Wolf is with you, I would bet those are his teammates.”
Griff felt a burst of hope for the first time since the crash had occurred. His teammates were currently deployed, otherwise he would have called them. He knew Mason because one of his former teammates was now a member of Mason’s Midnight Delta team. Now he knew everybody had a chance.
Chapter Four
“Oh, my God, Caroline!”
No wonder Caroline hadn’t been able to hear her. She was hanging out of one of the broken windows. It almost looked like she had been trying to crawl out of the train.
“Miranda, did I hear you call Caroline’s name?”
“Wolf?” She turned her light towards his voice. He was a few yards away, climbing over wreckage. “Yes, I found her. She’s partially covered by this seat, and it looks like she tried to climb out a window.”
Tufts of seagrass surrounded Caroline’s torso, and the scent of the ocean wafted inside the railcar. “I can’t tell how badly she’s injured, because her head and shoulders are outside.”
“I’ll be right there.”
She still needed to find the baby. She could be anywhere under the debris. She heard a crash, then a scream. She turned her light to see what had made the noise.
“Is everyone all right? What happened?” It was Griff’s voice.
“I’m fine.” A woman answered. “It was a luggage rack and suitcase that fell. It scared me.”
Miranda could hear Jeremy crying now, and Susan started singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’ to distract him. Suddenly a hand touched her shoulder and she jumped.
“Whoa there, it’s me,” Wolf said. “Where’s Caroline?”
Miranda pointed her phone towards Caroline’s prone figure. She was pretty sure she’d seen her breathing, b
ut she couldn’t get to her because of the seat.
Wolf sucked in a deep breath at the sight of his wife. Then he lifted the seat as if it weighed nothing, and knelt beside Caroline. Slowly he began to pull her back into the railcar, doing his best to support her head and neck as he did. Miranda didn’t realize she had been holding her breath until she saw Caroline’s eyes flicker.
Her lips moved. Miranda was pretty sure that she formed the name, “Matthew.”
“I’m here Ice. I’ve got you.” His hands were taking inventory of her body. She moaned in pain as he ran his hands over her ribs.
She must have said something, or tried to, because he put his ear to her mouth and then responded. “I’d never give up hope. You know better than that,” he said fervently.
She shook her head.
“Don’t move, Ice. You’ve got broken ribs.”
“Down there,” Caroline moved her arm, pointing to the window. She gasped in pain. “Hope.”
Miranda finally understood what she was saying. She was talking about the baby. Hope must be outside the train.
Miranda dove down beside where Caroline was lying.
“Careful! Don’t jostle her.”
“I’m not. I need to look outside.” Miranda stuck her head out the window, trying to push the glass out.
“What are you doing?” Wolf demanded.
Miranda kept looking right, then left. Finally she spotted a little pink tennis shoe that was attached to a miracle.
“Hope?”
The baby was curled up in the fetal position, her eyes open and glassy, sand covering her little face.
“Hope. Answer me, please, sweetie. Your mama is worried about you.” The child just continued to stare at nothing.
Screeeech. The sound was deafening, as the train slid ever closer towards the cliff. Miranda watched in horror as the outside of the train hovered above the fragile body of the child. Two feet of space separated Hope from the thousands of tons of metal. The train lurched again.
“Oww.” Miranda’s shoulder was slammed into the glass of the window. She felt it tear through her blouse and cut into the flesh of her upper arm.
“Are you okay, Miranda?” Wolf asked.
“I’m fine.”
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Hope (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Midnight Delta Book 7) Page 3