He indicated two routes on the map.
“The first one comes in over mostly low population areas, including these two chain lakes. Then they follow this road. St. Margaret’s Bay Road. Or another lake, Chocolate Lake it’s called, and then they fly up the length of the cove, where they’re essentially running parallel to the rail tracks. They can swerve overland to the train anytime they feel like it, if they time their approach correctly. But I don’t think that’s the way they would come.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Lyons said. “It would be only slightly less high profile than if they flew right into the city itself. I don’t think they would get any secrecy that way. The only real advantage is the proximity to the tracks.”
“Right,” Schwarz said. “So this way.”
With a slash of his finger across the page he indicated the second approach route. It came in from the southeast, over largely undeveloped land.
“If they come in from the ocean, and they cut over Herring Cove, they’ve got several miles of almost empty land to fly over before they make a quick bank to the northeast, when they’re within just a mile of the tracks. If their timing is good, they’ll find themselves on top of the train as it makes the turn in the same direction, and at that point the train is already slowing down on approach to the station in Point Pleasant.”
“Easy pickings,” Blancanales said.
“Yeah,” Lyons agreed. He glanced at the GPS map on his tablet computer. Blancanales was bringing them at a leisurely pace to the point in Purcell’s Cove where the railroad made that turn, and he thought he could even glimpse the tracks beyond some of the large homes and university buildings on the waterfront. He turned to look behind him at the wooded lands on the other side of the cove.
“That way. That’s where they’ll come from, if you’re right, Gadgets.”
“It’s just a guess,” Schwarz said. “I’m not married to the idea.”
Lyons nodded. “Good enough for me. Let’s keep a kind of patrol going back and forth from this point to offshore of the island itself. We’ll keep it slow and casual.”
Lyons touched his headset and updated the mission controller at Stony Man Farm
“There is no indication that the attack is going to be on the train,” Barbara Price reminded him.
“But our intelligence is pretty damned vague on this,” Lyons responded.
“Agreed,” Price said. “There are several shuttle trains that make the run from the airport to the resort dock throughout the day. It depends on the arrival schedule. But if I were going to attack the train, I’d want to go after the vacationers who come in on the run from Toronto. Much more high profile.”
Even as she was speaking, Lyons spotted the movement of a train a mile away from where they sat on the water. It was moving at a slow pace through the mostly high-end residential district of the city, and slowed further to take the turn away from the water. It was a short train. A small engine and a single passenger car emblazoned with the logo of the Blackrock Resort.
“We’re seeing one of those shuttles now,” Lyons reported. “What time’s the Toronto train expected?”
“Rail traffic control says it’s already in queue on the tracks, maybe five miles from your position,” Price confirmed. “I guess it’s a couple of minutes early. It has slowed to five miles an hour outside Windsor. That’s a standard practice. Railroad traffic control’s usually very skilled at juggling trains to make the most efficient use of high-traffic lines. It should hit the junction in twenty-five minutes. By then the shuttle that you see now will have offloaded its passengers and be clear about the final leg of the track.”
When Barbara Price described the train staging itself by slowing to five miles per hour outside Windsor, a small town to the northwest, Lyons felt some alarm. He exchanged glances with Blancanales and Schwarz as he enabled the conference mode on his headset.
“Sounds like an ideal opportunity for the attackers,” Lyons said.
“Maybe,” Price said. “Maybe not. It’s well wooded in the vicinity. That would deter a close-proximity aircraft approach.”
“Not really,” Schwarz said. “Rail lines keep a good margin of cleared land alongside their tracks. From what we know about these aircraft and their maneuverability, they could get in and make their strike without a problem.”
“We’re keeping an eye on it,” Price said. She wasn’t reassuring.
“We’ll keep listening,” Lyons snapped. He was irritated. For a man like him, who preferred to find a target and strike it hard and fast, all this sitting around was maddening.
“We can’t be in two places at once,” Blancanales said.
“Somebody sure the hell should’ve been there,” Lyons said.
Their headsets came to life every few minutes with the voice of Barbara Price reporting no activity. Everything normal with the incoming passenger train from Toronto. Blancanales allowed their pleasure craft to drift slowly on the lapping waters of Purcell’s Cove until they ceased their back-and-forth circuits. They didn’t want to look like they were on patrol. They took up station offshore of the track turn, and quiet tension grew on the boat.
Lyons found himself gritting his teeth, anticipating an attack to come that his team would be unable to stop. They were not equipped to take down aircraft or to protect passenger rail—or, if the attack bypassed the railroad entirely, to protect an entire island and three hundred visiting vacationers.
Able Team was good, but they weren’t miracle workers.
The airport shuttle rolled into view, took the curve and vanished behind the large houses, then accelerated slightly until it was gone from central Halifax. Over their headsets, Price reported that the Quebec passenger train had switched track at the junction and was now headed into the city.
They saw another train, and Lyons knew it was not the train in question.
“Cargo train,” Schwarz reported. “On the adjacent rails. Heading to the seaport.”
Listening in, Price confirmed, “We see it on the rail traffic control system. Strictly cargo. It won’t impact the running of the passenger train. They run on more or less independent rail logistics once they reach the city congestion.”
Lyons felt the tension in his brow. Information from Price didn’t seem to tell him much of anything, but there was something in his gut that made him more alert. What little intelligence they had said that the target was the resort. They’d only assumed that the resort’s passenger line might be a target. It was a reach as it was. It seemed unreasonable to expect a convenient cargo train to be involved.
“There’s the passenger train,” Blancanales said, almost mumbling.
Lyons could see the second train moving at an easy pace along the tracks, alongside the slower-moving, more heavily burdened cargo train. It always seemed somehow reckless to see two massive trains running alongside each other with just a few feet of clearance between them. These two had an arm’s length of distance between them, but at their slow speeds, moving in essentially the same direction, there seemed to be no danger.
So what was he worried about?
Carl Lyons was, he realized, worried about something.
And so was Blancanales.
And Schwarz was pacing now, in the tight quarters of the deck of the pleasure craft, watching the pair of trains moving at an almost leisurely pace around the perimeter of Halifax. Turning his head, he watched the other shore, where his own theories had suggested that an attack stealth plane might emerge. And he looked up Purcell’s Cove, the alternate route. And then he looked back at the trains.
He saw nothing. His agitation only seemed to grow.
Lyons knew exactly how he was feeling. “Stony?” he barked.
“Yes, Able?” Price responded.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. No sign of alert or alarms. Anything on your end, Able?” she asked, an inquisitive note in her voice, as if she could read something of their mood.
Lyons was on his fee
t. He was doing Schwarz’s routine now—looking at the trains, across the cove, up the waterway.
“There’s something,” he said.
“The island?” Price asked.
Blancanales was keeping an eye on the island through a pair of field glasses. “Nothing.”
Lyons’s mind was spinning. There were hundreds of people on the island. There was security staff there. If the attack came on the island, there would be plenty of people to sound an instant alarm.
Why did he think the aircraft would come here? he demanded of himself. When had he even come to the conclusion that the target was the train?
The long snake of the cargo train had started around the corner at a near crawl. The passenger train was moving slightly quicker, still meandering down the long length of the cargo train. He could make out the Blackrock logo on the passenger cars in the rear. They looked polished and new against the faded paint on the old tank cars of the cargo train.
“Stony,” Lyons snapped. “The cargo train’s pulling a lot of damned fuel. How come it’s not going to the Imperial oil center across the water?”
“There are a lot of reasons they could need fuel on this side of the water,” Schwarz suggested.
“I’m pulling up the manifest,” Price responded. “Heating oil, diesel, nothing exceptional. Not a special order. This is a scheduled delivery for the seaport.”
“Scheduled,” Lyons said.
“Yeah,” Blancanales said, turning his binoculars to the sky low over the opposite shore. Then he spun to look up the waterway. There was nothing.
And then, there it was. The small aircraft seemed to float peacefully out from over the trees on the opposite shore of Purcell’s Cove. It came from the southeast, just as Schwarz had predicted it would. It came out at under a hundred feet, so low it agitated the treetops, and was on top of them even as Carl Lyons got the first words out of his mouth.
“Incoming, Stony. They’re targeting the fuel.”
The small white jet took no notice of Able Team or any of the craft on the water. It banked sharply and the pilot seemed to hit the brakes, causing it to wobble over the water and almost flutter over the treetops of the Maplewood Estates on the Halifax shore. Lyons thought for a moment that he was going to see this thing flop to the ground. Somehow the pilot kept the plane in the sky, or maybe it was the sophisticated electronics that controlled its operations. The low-flying jet managed to line itself up on the same trajectory as the rail lines after they made their curve and headed to the ports.
As careless as the flying looked, it also looked to Carl Lyons as if the timing had been perfect. As it slowed above the side-by-side trains, something flashed from the belly of the plane and slammed into the ground not a yard away from the tracks. It burst apart, caving in the steel tank car with a flash of fire. Clear liquid burst from the tank car, and then it was lost behind buildings.
“Get us there,” Lyons snapped at Blancanales.
Before he could finish speaking, the pleasure craft jumped forward and Lyons had to grab on to a rail to keep from tumbling to the deck. His eyes remained locked on the place where the burst tank car would be. He expected at any moment to see a flash of light and billowing smoke. There was nothing, and the small, quiet plane had zipped away and out of sight.
“It tagged a tank car on the cargo train,” he reported quickly to Price.
“Stony, they knew the passenger train and the cargo train were coming in at the same time. They’re going to take out the passenger train by blowing the fuel on the cargo train.”
“Understood,” Price responded.
“We lost the plane. It doesn’t look like their first attack scored the way they wanted it to. No signs of an explosion.”
“They will come back,” Blancanales said.
“Can you get a fix on them?” Lyons demanded.
“Nothing yet,” Price said. “We’re trying to pin them down.”
Lyons’s grip on the handrail tightened as Blancanales steered their pleasure craft at a private dock in front of a large old home facing the water’s edge. Blancanales kept the throttle down until the last moment, then cut the engines and twisted the wheel, sending up a massive spray of water as the craft lurched broadside. It was enough to slow it down before slamming into the dock—almost. The dock tipped and some wooden parts cracked noisily, and the members of Able Team were already leaping onto the planks and hustling to the shore.
They sprinted across the dense, dark green lawn, and one of the several back doors of the mansion flew open. A towering figure in a suit jacket and a perfectly knotted tie stormed across a large brick patio, waving a telephone. Lyons and Blancanales ignored him, but Schwarz chose that moment to free the hardware strapped on his back. The well-dressed man with the telephone took one look at the bulky, high-tech-looking weapon and changed his attitude in a hurry. He was backing up with his hands in the air as Schwarz followed the others around the side of the mansion.
They ran across the front lawn and across a road that took them to the tracks, where the huge, snakelike cargo train was still moving slowly. Lyons had no difficulty stepping up onto one of the boxcar ladders, hardly feeling the change in acceleration. The thing was moving at just a couple of miles an hour. Maybe it was already coming to a stop. The others clambered onto the boxcar roof alongside him, peering ahead with binoculars.
A hundred yards ahead they could see the broken shell of the tank car. There was no sign of fire.
Through his field glasses Lyons could read the legend on the broken tank car. “Blended chemicals?” he read aloud.
Schwarz cursed. “That could be anything.”
He sniffed the air. A laboratory-like pungency had just enveloped them.
“Smells like shit,” Schwarz said.
“At least it’s not flammable,” Blancanales responded.
“Maybe not, but those are,” Lyons said, training his field glasses on a long line of nearly identical tank cars coming up behind them. “Ethanol.” He redirected his binoculars to the front. “Ethanol and diesel. Most of those tanks look flammable. We got lucky the first time.”
The voice of Barbara Price came through their headsets. “Able Team, any sign of our plane?”
“Yes,” Blancanales said. “They’re heading in for another attack. Coming in over Halifax Harbour. Heading south-southwest. They’re lined up on the trains, Stony. They’re going to try to hit the tanks in front and take out the resort train at the same time.”
Lyons had spotted the gray glimmer of the incoming stealth jet and had come to the same conclusion. The plane had done a three-sixty out over the water, passed dangerously close over the tops of the loading cranes at Ocean Terminal Pier 23, and was drifting down to treetop level for another close-proximity strike at the freight car tankers. Lyons blinked behind his binoculars, trying to get a read on the thing. It was almost invisible against the cloudy sky, and watching it come from head-on meant he couldn’t even judge the speed. But he knew exactly where it would strike. One hundred and fifty yards ahead of them, a large cluster of black tankers traveled alongside the polished wooden passenger cars of the Blackrock train.
His mind flirted for an instant with the possibility of striking the plane before it could attack the train again, but there was no way.
All three of them were lining up their weapons on the incoming stealth jet. Carl Lyons acquired his target and held it there. He saw the burst of rounds from the belly of the jet. He saw them strike the ground alongside the freight train tanks, and he heard the crack of opening metal. Suddenly the stealth jet became brilliantly contrasted against an ugly orange ball of rising fire and black smoke.
Carl Lyons exhaled and allowed that new reality to flow away from him.
In another moment he would be able to process that information. In a moment he would think about an explosion of tank cars ripping apart the train he was standing on. In a few more seconds he would allow himself to consider what might have happened to the passenger train
cars that had been adjacent to the explosion and allow himself to consider the consequences to this part of the city of Halifax if there was a chain reaction of exploding ethanol tanks.
But now he had a target that he would not fail to tag. The jet was gaining altitude away from the explosion, but it was still moving slow and low by jet standards, and Lyons thought he just might get it.
He triggered the M-203. The round sped across open air and passed twenty feet below the suddenly banking aircraft.
He’d missed.
“Fuck!” Lyons exploded. “Gadgets!”
Schwarz was already firing.
And he wasn’t missing.
* * *
THE U.S. ARMY DESIGNATED it the XM-25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement. They shortened it to CDTE. Even that was too much of a mouthful. The Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan who fielded the weapon for the first time called it simply the Punisher. It was the first “smart” weapon made for the average grunt. It was a shoulder-fired grenade rifle with a laser range finder to acquire the target. The gun’s computer also sensed temperature and air pressure, factored in the ballistic of the grenade and fed the data into a microchip inside the 25 mm round itself. The result was a weapon that could fire as far as seventy meters and find a stationary target with uncanny precision.
All of which helped Hermann Schwarz not at all when targeting a fast-moving aircraft, which was why he was using point-detonating rounds. Schwarz triggered the CDTE and watched the 25 mm high-explosive antitank round zip underneath the ascending jet.
Schwarz adjusted his aim but was distracted by the trajectory of the first round. The weapon was powerful and fast, and they were using live fire in a metropolitan area. The heat round was supposed to be smart enough to know that it had missed its target and blow itself up after a certain distance traveled. The rounds had worked as expected during test firing at Stony Man Farm. For some reason, Schwarz had a feeling in his gut that this time around the CDTE would do what it was supposed to do.
Perilous Skies (Stony Man) Page 9