by Diane Capri
Which was when she knew for sure.
He was deliberately trying to push her into the path of the train.
Her heart rate picked up to almost a hundred beats a minute.
Car vs. train? No contest.
The car would be a mangled mess.
The car’s driver, if she didn’t die of fright, would be killed.
The Mini slid forward, pushed from behind by the big Shogun.
She inhaled deliberately and exhaled fast, trying to think past the panic.
The SUV kept pushing, but the Fiat rested between the two vehicles.
The Shogun’s off-center angle was awkwardly connected to the left of the Mini’s center.
The SUV’s asymmetric force twisted the small car sideways as it moved.
The Mini turned almost ninety degrees.
The SUV was no longer pushing her car forward onto the tracks.
The driver adjusted his attack.
With a crunch of gears, the Shogun quickly reversed a few feet and then angled around to bring the Shogun up against the Mini’s passenger door.
The locomotive sounded its air horn. A long blast. The train moved slowly through the urban area, but it was still a thousand times the mass of the Mini.
The SUV’s engine screamed and its radiator grille crushed against the Mini’s passenger door.
Jess kept both feet on the brake pedal. The Mini bounced as it skipped across the tarmac toward the barriers.
She braced for the car to roll over.
The Mini smashed through the crossing barrier almost sideways. She heard the scraping of metal, and the SUV’s tires scrabbling for grip.
The Mini bucked and rocked wildly.
She clutched the door handle. The Mini’s wheels bounced over the first of the tracks, which jerked her hand away from the door.
The train’s air horn sounded. Blast after blast. Louder and louder.
The horn’s tone fell as the train slowed, but it gave her little comfort. Even a slow impact would crush the tiny car.
The Mini had been turned so its front bumper pointed directly at the train.
Jess saw the train’s engine bearing down.
The locomotive was enormous. Square and unforgiving. Sparks fairly poured from under its wheels as the engineer attempted to stop.
Her heart slammed against her chest.
She stabbed the Mini’s start button and the motor burst into life.
The Mini’s relentless slide came to an abrupt stop.
The tiny car was tilted at an angle. The wheels on one side had dug into the rut beside the track.
The SUV slithered past the Mini, metal grinding.
She caught a flash of the monstrous beast as it headed across the tracks.
She was close enough now to see rust and peeling paint on the locomotive’s front. The sound of metal squealing on metal was deafening as the engineer applied the brakes, attempting to stop the heavy train.
The train had insufficient stopping distance.
She felt like a deer in headlights. Her eyes widened. The big locomotive was about to hit her head on.
“Move, Kimball, move!” she shouted.
She shoved the Mini into reverse and stomped on the accelerator again and again, fighting the wheel to lever the tires clear.
The train’s air horn sounded again, raising her blood pressure to near-bursting.
After three tries, the Mini lurched sideways, popping out of the rut.
She spun the wheel, keeping her foot on the accelerator pressed it all the way to the floor.
The Mini hurtled across the street in front of the industrial units, and she stomped on the brake to avoid hitting the far curb.
The train pounded past.
Metal ground on metal as the driver put everything into slowing the behemoth.
Sparks flew in all directions like fireworks.
The squeal was louder than dragon nails on a giant chalkboard.
The ground shook, and even though she kept a death grip on the steering wheel, her hands shook, too.
Her arms were locked rigid, and her mouth hung open as she watched the carriages pass, each one moving ever more slowly.
Passengers gaped from the windows. Despite the battered Mini’s unusual position on the road, they weren’t staring at her.
She steadied her breathing and looked around for the SUV.
The Mitsubishi sat thirty feet from her on the wrong side of the road.
The driver stood beside the big Shogun, arms outstretched, holding a big black gun.
Pointed directly at her.
She’d survived the train only to be killed by a maniac with a gun?
Not a chance.
She revved the Mini and slung it around the Shogun.
The Mini’s steering wheel shook. The wheels were damaged and not running true, but Jess kept her foot down hard.
She recognized the crisp sound of gunfire.
The side window behind her burst, showering the Mini’s interior with glass.
She accelerated along the empty road.
The car pulled to the left and she leaned her weight against the pull, fighting to travel straight.
She glanced down at the speedometer. Her eyes widened. She was doing eighty.
In the rearview mirror, she saw the Shogun turning around. The SUV was a lumbering beast compared to the Mini. As long as he had no accomplices, she would easily outrun him.
The steering wheel shook wildly, rocking her in her seat. She eased off the accelerator a fraction. If something broke now, she’d be a sitting target. The shooter’s aim was surely good enough to hit her.
The road angled right, hiding her from the gunman’s view.
She braked hard, took a right off the main road, and looped around the block. She slowed to a stop beside a building where she could watch the main road without being noticed.
A few minutes later, the Shogun sailed by, engine still screaming to bring the SUV’s weight up to speed.
The driver’s face pressed forward, searching for her through the windshield.
If he found her, he’d surely finish the job he’d started.
She waited, the car in gear and her foot hovering over the accelerator, checking through the shattered rear window, her heart pounding painfully through each passing second.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Friday, August 19
1:20 p.m. CET
Zorita, Spain
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Minutes passed. The Shogun didn’t come back. The shooter could have made it to the freeway by now. He’d be long gone.
Could she possibly be that lucky?
She sank back in her seat, and waited until her hands stopped shaking. The monstrous metal front of the locomotive was vivid in her mind. The big train had come way too close to being the last thing she ever saw.
When she could stand without collapsing, she assessed the damage to the sturdy little Mini Cooper.
The rear of the vehicle was seriously dented and deformed. But the crumple zone had done its job. The energy of the impact with the big Shogun seemed to have been diffused without damage to the integrity of the car.
The passenger side was dented and scraped, and the front alloy wheel was a mess. Mercifully, the car’s high-tech run flat tires were tougher than normal tires. They had retained their shape, enabling her to get away.
She grinned, insanely grateful for the little car’s fighting spirit. Her next big story would be all about the heroic Mini Cooper, if she could talk her boss into running it.
She drove carefully back to the railroad crossing, keeping her speed under thirty.
The scene was chaotic. The train had come to a stop with its carriages blocking the junction. Cars lined up on either side waiting to cross, and their passengers were milling around, trying to figure out what happened. Two police cars were parked on the far side, their lights flashing.
Passengers on the train were hanging out of the windows, trying
to find out what had caused the emergency stop.
She shivered. If it had been a freight train, it would never have slowed enough to give her time to escape.
She shoved the thought to the back of her mind, and parked on the hard shoulder. Several people recognized the beat-up Mini, and pointed. As she walked the length of parked cars, rumors spread in front of her.
She made straight for one of the policemen. He left organizing the milling crowd to the others, and studied her as she approached.
“Someone tried to push me in front of the train,” she said.
He frowned, and held up his hand. “Wait, wait.”
He spoke rapid fire Spanish into his radio, and a few moments later a man in a white shirt and black slacks ducked between the carriages. He beckoned to Jess, and ducked back to the other side of the carriages.
Jess followed, keeping her head low under the couplings. The mass of metal above her head an ominous reminder of what she had escaped.
Several officers were taking photographs and collecting samples. The man in the white shirt was inspecting tire marks where the Mini had been pushed sideways and the Shogun’s wheels had spun.
“Someone in an SUV tried to push me in front of the train,” she said to the man in the white shirt.
“So I see,” he said in clear English. He held out his hand. “Subinspector Pablo Garza, and you are?”
“Jessica Kimball. I was in my car, waiting at the barrier when a Mitsubishi Shogun drove into the back of me and pushed my car onto the tracks.”
“You’re American?”
“Yes.”
“Tourist?”
“I came to see someone.”
“The person in the Shogun?”
“No. I have no idea who the driver was. I didn’t get a good look.”
“Did you cut them off? Drive in front of them?”
“No. I pulled out from de tapeos, drove to here and stopped at the barrier. They just attacked me.”
“Forgive me, but people don’t just attack anyone. There’s always a reason.”
“It wasn’t road rage. There was a Fiat behind me, and the Shogun behind him. We were all stopped for almost a minute before the Shogun decided to shove me in front of this train.”
“You drove off.”
“I was in the middle of the tracks. I managed to start my car and back out,” she pointed, “over there.”
“And the Shogun drove off?”
“No. He pointed a gun at me, so I went around him and drove away. He tried to follow, but I got away and doubled back. He went straight by. Probably onto the dual carriageway.”
He nodded. “We have a helicopter searching.”
“He’s probably gone already.”
Pablo shrugged. “We will search anyway.” He looked up and down the length of the train. “You were lucky.”
“That wasn’t the first thought to cross my mind.”
He grunted his agreement. “But as you stand here now?”
She laughed. “Yes. I guess I was lucky.”
A man in a blue uniform stepped off the train and stood between Jess and Garza. He had a conversation with the subinspector which involved a good deal of arm waving.
Garza took one more look around the tracks, and nodded. The man in blue thanked the subinspector, and walked back to the locomotive.
Garza shouted instructions to the officers around the crossing. People were pushed back behind the broken remains of the barrier.
The locomotive’s air horn sounded twice, and the train started to move. The wheels squealed and the couplings clanked as they took up the strain. The train moved away at a walking pace.
The noise made hearing impossible. Garza waited with his arms crossed until the last of the carriages had rolled by.
He remained in the middle of the crossing. His officers held back the waiting lines of traffic.
He tilted his head. “Who did you come to visit?”
“Debora Elden.” Jess didn’t see any point in trying to hide the name.
Garza stared at her. “An unusual name for Spain, yet it is the second time I have heard it today.”
Jess narrowed her focus on the man. “Is she okay?”
“I have no idea. I was asked to interview her today.”
“Why?”
“I am an officer of the Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, so obviously it was police business. Equally obvious, I am not at liberty to discuss it.”
He looked between the carriages at Jess’s Mini. “Your car is okay?”
“It’s covered in dents, but it drives.”
“One of my men will take it.”
“I need it.”
“Forgive me, Ms. Kimball. Someone just pushed you in front of a train and tried to shoot you when you escaped. Your embassy, your government, and more likely your press would have what I believe you call a field day if I did not take your safety seriously.”
He was right. She had no weapon, and even if she did, if her assailant wanted to take a shot at her, she was completely exposed.
“What do you have in mind?”
“In the near term you will be safe at our station while we conduct enquiries.”
“And in the longer term?”
“Perhaps you will have to leave Zorita.”
“I need to talk to Debora Elden.”
“And why is that?”
She stared at him. She knew she was about to ratchet up his unwanted interest, but he would find out eventually, and honesty always was the best policy.
“I’m a journalist investigating an explosion in America. Debora Elden’s ex-boyfriend is the prime suspect.”
“Really? And you didn’t think to tell me this?”
He clucked his tongue against his teeth, and pointed at the tire marks. “Tell me what happened here one more time then we will go to the station.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Friday, August 19
1:30 p.m. CET
Zorita, Spain
Kale let forth a torrent of obscenities and expletives until his throat was sore.
He had failed.
He didn’t care about the likely snide comments from Sánchez. He didn’t care about his pay. He didn’t care about professional pride.
He just hated losing.
Hated, hated, hated losing.
He picked the jammed Skorpion from the seat, threw it into the passenger footwell, and repeated his obscenities.
She should have been easy to kill. One good shot. That was all he needed. Pushing her car onto the tracks was an impulse, and impulses were the downfall of winners. And he was a winner. Time and time again, planning had made him a winner.
He slowed the Shogun and parked it on a quiet street.
He picked up the Skorpion and tucked it into a flammable canvas bag and placed it on the seat.
Behind the passenger seat was a gallon of gas in a plastic container. He emptied it over the rear carpet and upholstery.
He opened all the windows for maximum oxygen, and dangled a slow fuse from the driver’s seat into the gas.
He lit the fuse, closed the door, and walked away.
He took a left at the end of the street and ran to catch a bus.
Standing on the steps of the bus, he heard the thump of an explosive start to his gasoline fire. He paid the fare with the anger in his blood still raging, even beyond the heat of the fire.
He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know when, but Jessica Kimball would die young.
He would make damn sure of that.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Friday, August 19
1:45 p.m. CET
Zorita, Spain
Hadlow wandered along the side of the railway tracks, hands resting in his pockets, pulse elevated, working through events in his head. What had he missed?
He glanced back at his car, waiting in the line of vehicles held up by a train stopped in the middle of the crossing. No one was going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.
The morning
began badly and went downhill from there.
He’d followed Elden from her home to the airport well before dawn. For the first time since this assignment started, Hadlow wasn’t the only one following her. He spotted the six-foot-tall man with blond hair and glasses within the first two minutes.
His face was friendly enough, but his shoulders and the muscles in his neck suggested serious menace was packed into his jacket, along with the unmistakable bulge of a gun. Hadlow tagged every contact with a name for ease of reference. This one was Rock.
As soon as he had the chance, Hadlow snapped photos of Rock until he got one shot clear enough to run through facial recognition.
Rock carried himself like a soldier. Along with his build and the gun, Hadlow marked him as ex-military. The relaxed smile was a practiced fake, meant to belie the kind of training that made him formidable.
But Rock’s training wasn’t special ops. He’d displayed several examples of the kind of ham-handed surveillance no covert operative would employ. He stood on open street corners, stared way too long, and he jogged to catch up to his target as quickly as possible. Any good operative applied patience and a longer stride to achieve better results.
Elden boarded a business jet before sunrise. From a distance, he’d peered through binoculars to identify the tail number.
Fifteen minutes later, Hadlow acquired the flight plan. The pilot chose a reasonably direct route to a small airfield two-thousand miles south in Chad, a landlocked country in Central Africa.
Hadlow assumed this flight plan was a subterfuge, just like the last one. Hadlow had used the pilot’s formal plan for Elden’s previous flight, but the aircraft never arrived at the planned destination.
In the two-week gap since Elden had last traveled on the jet, Nash had earned some of his fat salary. He’d made arrangements to record the jet’s radar track on subsequent trips. This was the first chance to deploy the device.
Hadlow requested a private jet to follow Elden immediately. Nash refused. “Sorry. Not in the budget this time, Hadlow,” he’d said, with unmistakable malice in his tone.
Hadlow refused to protest the stupid decision, which meant he was forced to wait until Elden’s jet landed. Only then would he know where she’d set down. At which point he could follow in a commercial plane. And make the best of conditions on the ground.