Knight's Late Train

by Gordon A. Kessler

  Slowly, I inched back. “Where is he — where’s Doc?”

  Big Deal stepped over the outside rail, and now stood with one foot in between. “Where do you think?”

  “Come on, you son of a bitch,” I insisted and edged a little farther away. “Where’s Doc.”

  “You shouldn’t be so worried about Doc — what about your kids? Not that you’re going to ever see them again, anyway. As soon as you left Slaughterhouse on your little search and rescue mission, I called an old friend of yours. They told me it’d really make you happy — ADA Edmond Rankle. He was gathering evidence that would have sent you back to prison — had you lived through the terrible rail accident you’re going to have. After shooting you, they won’t be able find the bullet hole in the hamburger when I throw your lifeless body under a moving train.”

  He brought his other foot between the rails and was now standing in front of the stopped freight car’s couple. “Big Deal sees what you’re doing. Don’t move again.”

  “Do you? Okay, I won’t move again.” Then I had second thoughts. I hated this man and wanted to see him dead. Still, I have ways of extracting information from people — and he knew where my kids and Doc were — but I needed him alive to find out.

  “Wait,” I said. “Jump!” I reached for him, and he raised his gun in defense.

  But the huge box car was on him. He turned to it at the last second. Terror flashed in his eyes, as he shot the big steel equipment three times.

  The huge freight car’s coupler punched Big Deal in the gut and shoved him into the steel drawbar of the car he’d been standing beside.

  The knuckles coupled and locked.

  Blood sprayed, but stopped.

  Big Deal’s scream was horrific.

  The couplers had him pinched — smashed between them.

  His eyes bugged. His jaw worked. He dropped the gun. He wailed again, a flesh crawling, agony-filled cry.

  He gazed down at the big couplers piercing his body, pinching off arteries and veins, sealing them from leaking out his life-sustaining blood. He lifted his face and stared at me. Like some kind of trapped bird, he screamed again.

  I’d heard of this happening time and time again. A man gets coupled — pinned between two freight car couplers — and lives … for a short period of time. He might even survive long enough for the emergency personnel to call out the man’s friends and loved ones to bid him farewell — to give him that last kiss goodbye. Then the freight cars are separated, the blood flows and the body’s shock and pain kills the man even before his gushing blood vessels bleed him out.

  This was not something I wanted to see. I stepped up to him.

  We stared at one another for a long moment.

  Seeming unable to form words, he screamed again.

  I reached down and picked up the pistol he’d dropped. It was a Beretta, but only a Model 92F — a 9mm. I like the Italian semi-automatic, but I appreciate a larger caliber. Berettas have weight — make you feel like you’ve got something substantial in your hands when you hold them.

  “Done Deal,” I said and quickly shot him between the eyes.

  At that moment on the adjacent track, the manifest train we’d rode in on began to leave.

  Chapter 17

  Balancing Act

  11:00 PM MST

  After putting the bullet in Big Deal’s brain, the semi-automatic Beretta pistol I’d used had jammed. I had no time to inspect the thing. Hoping it would be an easy fix, I stashed the firearm under my belt in back before I grabbed the handhold of a passing covered hopper car and stepped onto its sill step. The train was already moving about ten miles-per-hour. I swung around to the end ladder, held the buggy bar under my arm and climbed awkwardly to the roof, my injured shoulder getting a real workout. I’d picked a car probably fifty back on the mixed manifest train of hoppers, gondolas, flats and tankers that I’d come in on. Rocking behind me were another ten freight cars before the end.

  On the third track over, the hazmat train had begun to move, as well. But my train had the jump on them.

  I counted two six-axle locomotives and twenty cars in all on Thundertrain. The first twelve were black tankers, and I guessed those were all LP gas cars. Then there was a large box car that was most likely carrying the yellowcake, a white tank car I figured was chlorine gas, another three black LP gas, another yellowcake box, another chlorine gas, and finally a caboose.

  Loaded heavy with LP gas up front, it was obvious they wanted the train to derail at high speed, then accordion together while the LP explodes, the chlorine and explosive-filled yellowcake ramming into the fiery hell and being propelled away from the epicenter for miles and miles.

  From the roof of the covered hopper car, I could see two helicopters. The large CH-47 was just taking off from in front of the yard office and the UH-60 Blackhawk that was nearly destroyed in the gasoline tank car explosion was warming up next to the fuel station that we'd soon pass.

  I could do nothing about the big Chinook from this distance, but I might be able foul up the Blackhawk in some way. I assessed my weapons, or anything like weapons that I might have available. The Beretta had five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. But the weapon’s slide was bent, which kept it from returning completely. I’d been lucky to get the one shot off before it jammed open. The thing would not fire another round in its current condition, and I had no time to repair it. Other than the damaged weapon, all I had was the buggy bar.

  Someone in the Chinook must have seen me, they were speeding in my direction. I sprinted, doing my best to ignore my sore shoulder and foot, across the top of the hopper car, toward the fuel rack and the Blackhawk.

  * * *

  I leap across the end of the hopper, onto the walkway of a tanker and limp-sprint on.

  The Chinook meets me, the big double rotor chopper spinning around to give me a look at the open back ramp.

  The Blackhawk is preparing to take off five cars in front and about 100 feet to the side of the track I’m on.

  Past the middle of the tanker, I see that the next car is also a tanker, but this one doesn’t have a top running board. Without a running board extending out from the roof of the car, it makes an appreciable gap to leap in between it and the next car. Also, without anything to land on except the icy, snow-covered and curved tank surface after landing, it will be very difficult to maintain my balance. If I fall off the moving equipment, I’ll surely land on the rail or the ballast twelve feet below.

  The Chinook is showing me it’s huge, open ass-end — and the .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the ramp.

  I have no choice, and I leap.

  The big, half-inch diameter bullets spit out as I’m midair in a clumsy jump between freight cars. I land on the tanker and slip on the slick surface, as I’d anticipated. Sliding sideways, spread-eagle, I use the bar against the ice for some kind of traction and guidance, bullets snapping overhead. I’m glad they’re being careful not to hit the tanker, because the big .50 caliber full-metal-jacket slugs would easily penetrate the tanker’s shell, and I’m fairly certain it’s a load of liquefied propylene — very combustible stuff.

  But over the side of the rounded top I go, opposite the Chinook, feet first, my hands flat against the tank, attempting to slow my fall.

  My lucky day … my feet find the inch-and-a-half safety railing that’s about four feet above the rail and protects workers from stepping too close to the car. I’ve stopped sliding, and am now standing on it. I sidestep cautiously to the middle ladder of the tank car, temporarily shielded from the view of the Chinook’s heavy machine gunner.

  The mercs in the Chinook seem to think I’ve fallen off completely, and I’m no longer a threat. The big bird flies over and speeds away.

  I move past the ladder and continue sidestepping carefully, my hands still flat on the tank shell, until I reach the end running-board walkway. From there, I assess my next challenge, an open-top hopper loaded with wood poles.

  After climbing t
he end ladder of the hopper car, I push up onto the thick steel top cord and step like a tight-rope walker on the six-inch-wide side wall stiffener, probably fifteen feet above the rail bed.

  Finally to the end, I see that I’m nearing the fuel station and the Blackhawk that’s preparing to leave. The hazmat train is moving slowly beside me on the next track over.

  On the tall box car I’m now facing, there’s no ladder extending to the top and no roof walkway. I toss my pry bar onto the car first and then leap, my arms slamming onto the roof, my torso into the end of the car. But I’m able to find purchase enough on the steel, ribbed roof sheet.

  Climbing on top, I recover my buggy bar and limp-sprint toward the end, hoping to make a last bit of big trouble for my adversaries.

  The Blackhawk is lifting, and about to fly over the train. I know I must throw the bar with all my might, using my running speed to help propel my compact javelin to its target: the UH-60’s big windshield.

  The Blackhawk is over the train, nearly 100 feet away when I reach the end of the box, leap and heave the bar. Even though I toss it high, there’s no way the thing will make the distance to the helo’s cockpit.

  Twisting from the force of my pitch, I fall fifteen feet to an empty wood-decked flat.

  I will land on my back.

  But, as I land, I see my throw wasn’t completely without merit. The bar passes into the helo’s rotor path, making contact with at least one of the Blackhawk’s four rotor blades. It shatters one blade, then another one fragments like a breaking icicle, and the helo tips, spins sideways, does a wild cavort, and crashes back into the diesel fuel rack.

  No pain comes in my back from my landing onto the flatcar’s deck. I only see bright lights, both behind my eyes as well as from the conflagration at the fuelling station. Bright white, yellow flames, smoke and then complete darkness.

  * * *

  I awakened in a fog, the familiar clickety-clack of the train wheels on the rail, a soothing sound before the pain from my back, shoulder and foot jarred me to full awareness. Rows of lights appeared above me, flying by. Like a blanket being yanked off, the lights were gone, and I saw the star-filled night sky. I realized the train had just exited the six-mile-long Moffat Tunnel.

  Hope returned. My train had been leaving before the hazmat train. I might be out in front of it. There was still a chance I could stop Thundertrain. But how? And could I stop it without endangering innocent lives?

  The answer came to me after a couple minutes when I was able to roll painfully to my side, crawl to my feet and drop off the low flatcar as the train slowed for a curve and a crossing.

  Before me on the shoulder of a snow-covered road, a fuel truck was stuck in the snow. I’ve driven semi-trailer trucks before. This one didn’t look that stuck.

  I climbed up onto the driver-side cab step and yanked the door open.

  The driver had been eating a late lunch. His eyes mooned at me, his mouth full of sandwich.

  “I’m getting you out,” I told him.

  He gulped down his mouthful. “Thank God,” he said. “I’ve been sitting here for six hours. You with the state?”

  “No,” I told him. “Get out. I’m getting you out of the truck.” I pulled the startled driver from the cab, and he stumbled into the snow. “Sorry — no time to explain. You’d better get out of here. Run. Get as far away as you can. Fast.”

  Chapter 18

  Kick in the Caboose

  11:30 PM MST

  Doc sat in the caboose, waiting for any opportunity to fight. He’d had enough.

  With his mouth gagged, hands and feet bound tightly and a fabric bag over his head, he could do little but listen and hope to somehow seize a fraction of a second and gain the upper hand.

  It would be impossible. It would be a miracle.

  Before he rammed the hazmat train two nights ago, he’d jumped and was lucky to land in a deep drift. Ol’ Windy and her two remote locomotives had collided with an LP gas tanker eleven cars from the end of the train. They hit with such force that the snow blower consist had driven the LP tanker about fifty feet up a snow-covered slope before it exploded, raining down fiery pieces of steel.

  That was the last thing Doc remembered before being awakened by three men in white camouflage and carrying assault rifles. When the LP gas tanker had been forcefully separated from the rest of the train, it caused the entire train to automatically set its emergency brakes. It had also created a fair-size avalanche from the rocky slope above it that did considerable to douse the huge flames that erupted from the tank car. All the ice and snow had also made even the idea of re-railing and coupling back into the last ten tankers, impossible.

  Once the train’s brake system air pressure was restored on what remained of the hazmat train, it moved on with Doc tied up in the lead locomotive’s toilet. After they made Slaughterhouse Yards, he was transferred to where he was now, the caboose that had been added to the hazmat train.

  Doc had no idea how long he’d been left alone inside the caboose. But try as he may, he was unable to even budge from his seat on the caboose’s side bench. From outside he’d heard explosions, gunfire, helicopters, and excited, loud voices.

  He had to think that somehow, his son Ethan was involved, and he prayed his boy was okay. The police were one thing. The FBI another. The National Guard something different, as well. But Ethan — he was something altogether different. In a fight against overwhelming odds, if Doc was ever in the position to have the choice of a squad of any of the aforementioned groups or Ethan by himself, Doc would have always picked his son.

  When Doc heard the rear door of the caboose open and what sounded like a troupe of people come shuffling in, he hoped an opportunity was about to present itself.

  When the commotion settled, a woman’s voice said, “All right. Listen to me. You are being held captive. You will not be harmed as long as everyone cooperates and this day goes our way. We are not terrorists. We are contractors. We work for pay. We do not want to kill unless we are paid to do it. We have not been paid to harm you. That said, if you get in the way of our jobs — of getting paid, do not expect to live long.

  “Your arms are tightly bound. Two of my men are coming around now to bind your legs, as well. If you need to use the toilet, you might as well do it in your pants. It will be several hours before you’re released, and that’s if we are allowed to complete our job as planned. You will not be released until our job is done.”

  Doc felt the woman’s presence in front of him. “Your woman and your two grandchildren are here and safe, along with Sites and several other hostages. They will not be harmed unless your son does not cooperate.”

  Doc tried to yell to the woman to go straight to Hell, but the words came out in a strangled mumble.

  “That’s not what we need, right now. You see, your son’s creating trouble for us. He’ll never stop us, don’t get me wrong. But he is complicating things enough to where he’s about to get a bunch of innocent people killed — including you and your grandkids. You see, we have other hostages. We don’t need you except to use to convince your son to get out of our way. If using you to stop him doesn’t work, you are just more of the problem, and are unnecessary. Now do you understand?”

  Doc didn’t move or make a sound this time.

  “Good. Now, if I can get him to talk with you, do you think you can convince him that what he’s doing is futile, and that the lives of you, your woman and his own children are a stake?”

  This could be his chance. Doc never lied. He absolutely hated those who did. It was the principal of the thing. He’d always said that if someone put a gun to his head and threatened to put a bullet in his brain if he couldn’t say the sky was yellow instead of blue, he’d rather they pulled the trigger.

  But the gun was not to his head, alone. It was to his Mary’s head. It was to his dear grandchildren’s heads.

  Doc didn’t hear the woman anymore. He heard no voices, no explosions, he couldn’t hear the banging
together of couplers, or the accelerating and humming of the big diesels switch engines in the distance.

  A few minutes later, the caboose jolted and he felt motion. He tried time and again to get lose, to push the gag out of his mouth with his tongue, to twist his hands free. At least fifteen minutes passed before he heard booted feet come to his side and the fabric bag was yanked from his head. A bearded man in white camo utilities grabbed his gag. The guy wrestled it out of Doc’s mouth and let it fall below his chin.

  “You’d better say the right thing,” he said, with an odd sort of English accent. No, it was South African. “Your family’s lives are dependent on what you tell your son.”

  The bearded man held a walkie-talkie radio in front of Doc’s face.

  “Damn it, man,” Doc croaked. “Give me some water. I can’t talk to him …,” he swallowed in a parched throat, “… like this. He’ll think you’ve been beating me up.”

  The bearded South African pulled out a canteen and held it to Doc’s mouth and poured.

  Doc gagged and shook his head. “Come on. I’m an old man. Cut these ties and let me hold the damn thing. I won’t go anywhere. My feet are bound.”

  “No.”

  “Were your orders to have me talk?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And did those orders say anything about not letting me use my hands so that I could drink and sound like I’ve not been abused?”

  The guy set the canteen and the radio down. He pulled out a KA-BAR knife from his waist belt, placed the blade under the zip tie holding Doc’s proffered hands, and sliced it in one quick move.

  Just as quickly, Doc shot up, standing, launching from the bench seat, his head crashing into the man’s chin.

  Doc stood over the man and gazed down at him.

  “Hot damn!” he said. “Ethan would be proud!”

  It was a knockout punch.

  He rubbed his head, thinking the big-headed bastard’s chin should have been cushioned a little by the beard, but he sure couldn’t tell it.