by Ben Coes
* * *
Dewey pulled on the gloves and went to the window. He looked back at Beauxchamps.
“You said you wanted to tag along,” said Dewey. “You’re now part of this. Don’t fuck up. This might not be the way DGSI does it, but it’s the way I do it.”
“You don’t need to worry about me,” said Beauxchamps.
Dewey climbed onto the windowsill and reached up to the roof, lifting himself onto the top of the speeding train.
He heard the window sliding shut beneath him as he clutched the cold steel of the roof.
“COMM check,” he said.
“I got you,” said Tacoma.
“I can hear you,” said Beauxchamps.
“Rob, I’m starting at the car behind the one you’re in, right side.”
Dewey crabbed along the middle of the roof to the next car. He crawled carefully to the right window. He moved down along the slat above the windows, leaning over to see inside the car, looking at passengers. Though the light was dim inside the car, he could see clearly. He moved down the entire length of the car, scanning for passengers.
“Nothing on the right,” he said as snow and wind tore into his face. “Checking the other side now.”
He moved back up the same car, looking for the men who’d been sent to kill him. Again, there was no one, at least no one Dewey suspected enough to send over Conductor Beauxchamps.
“This car’s clear,” said Dewey, moving on hands and knees farther back. “Let’s go to the next car.”
Inside, Beauxchamps walked casually down the length of the rail car, occasionally asking to see a ticket. Tacoma waited near the restroom, pretending to talk on a cell phone.
Dewey scanned two more cars, coming up empty. In the third car, he identified someone immediately.
A short young man was looking around suspiciously. He was olive skinned, with a shaved head. He was about a third of the way down the aisle, in a window seat.
“Mark one,” said Dewey. “Tenth or eleventh row, right side, against the window, bald.”
“Got it,” said Beauxchamps.
Beauxchamps moved casually down the aisle. He eyed the man when he was still several rows away. He started asking for tickets a few rows in front of him.
Behind Beauxchamps, Tacoma moved quickly. He reached inside his parka with his left hand—his off hand—and grabbed a silenced SIG Sauer P226, flipping the safety off with his thumb. The gun was already locked and loaded. He kept the weapon inside the coat, shielding it from view as he came up behind Beauxchamps just as Beauxchamps was leaning in to ask the Arab for his ticket.
“Le billet, monsieur, s’il vous plaît.”
The man nervously handed Beauxchamps his ticket. Beauxchamps scanned it for a brief second.
Tacoma stood still, pretending to be waiting for Beauxchamps to finish. He studied the woman next to the Arab. She was asleep. Quietly, Tacoma raised the weapon and, from behind the jacket, trained it on the man. Just as Beauxchamps handed him his ticket back, Tacoma fired. A dull thwack sounded, though it was drowned out by the steady din of the train. The bullet flew beneath Beauxchamps’s outstretched arm, striking the man in the center of his chest. Tacoma kept moving toward the rear of the car as Beauxchamps leaned over the dead Arab and covered him in the jacket from the floor at his feet.
Dewey kept moving. He was already halfway down the next car by the time Beauxchamps muttered, “All clear.”
He saw no one in the car, either side, but in the car after, near the back, he caught him: a gunman in the second to last row. He had a beard and mustache along with a mop of curly black hair. He wore glasses. He was pretending to read a book, but the man’s eyes scoured the car. Beside the man’s leg, between his thigh and the wall, a handgun was tucked, shielded by the man’s leg and the book. The seat next to him was empty.
“Second to last row,” said Dewey. “Afro, glasses. Watch it, he has a gun next to his leg. I’m going to stay above him just in case. Rob, he’s going to see you if you track. Might want to come at him from the back.”
“Roger that.”
Dewey removed his .45 from his jacket, flipping off the safety, chambering a round, and clutching it in his right hand above the window.
Beauxchamps spotted the man as soon as he entered the car. He was tall—his head and hair stuck up above the seats, illuminated by a reading light.
“Passing you,” whispered Tacoma over commo.
Tacoma walked toward the back of the car, past the gunman, then waited near the rear door, out of the man’s sight line.
Beauxchamps again worked his way down the aisle, asking for tickets, answering the occasional question from a passenger. He started a few rows in front of the man. When he got to him, the man kept reading.
“Le billet, monsieur,” said Beauxchamps.
The Arab continued to read.
“Monsieur,” said Beauxchamps, louder this time, leaning forward.
“Je vous ai déjà donné mon billet,” the Arab snapped.
“Rob,” said Dewey. “He knows.”
Dewey watched from above as the man reached to his pocket, just next to his gun. The man put his hand on the butt of the gun just as Tacoma emerged from the back of the train.
Tacoma stopped at Beauxchamps, pretending to ask him a question, the silenced P226 clutched in his right hand, hot.
“Pardon,” said Tacoma, interrupting Beauxchamps.
Dewey kept his gun trained on the window. The Arab studied Tacoma for a half second, looking momentarily confused, then he swung the gun out from beside him.
Standing in the aisle, looking at Beauxchamps, Tacoma fired—just as the man’s arm swung around. Tacoma’s gun made a dull metallic spit almost indistinguishable from any number of noises made by the train. The bullet tore through the Arab’s heart, then the seat cushion, finally lodging in the wall panel in the next aisle, a few inches from a sleeping man’s knee.
Tacoma turned and continued toward the rear of the train as Beauxchamps leaned over and took the weapon from the dead man’s hand. He pushed the man’s limp neck against the window as the man gurgled his last breath.
“Three down,” said Tacoma. “One to go.”
* * *
Sangar moved ahead, like an ugly wild boar marching slowly through the woods, his short, thick frame taking up most of the aisle. He came to the car before the one where he’d seen the disguised man—a man he believed was Andreas.
He entered the restroom, locking the door. Inside his canvas jacket, beneath his left armpit, was a concealed holster. He removed a pistol: PC-9 ZOAF, an Iranian knockoff of the SIG Sauer P226. Sangar took a silencer from his pants pocket and threaded it into the muzzle, then chambered a round.
Sangar didn’t have a well-thought-out escape plan. He hadn’t even considered his escape. But Sangar, at forty-seven, was one of the most decorated spies in VEVAK history. Had he wasted time planning for escapes and other such nonsense during his violent, highly successful career, he would not have risen so high within the organization. There would be a way out once the chaos ensued. If not, he trusted Abu Paria to figure out how to find him and free him. And if he died—well, he died doing what he loved, what he was meant to do.
He opened the restroom door and moved into the dimly lit railcar, his hand clutching the weapon in the pocket of his coat, looking for the American named Andreas.
* * *
Katie watched as the man entered from the back of the car. Her eyes were nearly shut, her head still, and it was dark. As the man scanned both sides of the aisle, she marked him.
She touched her ear, leaning toward the window in case he looked.
“Rob?”
“What?”
“VEVAK, the incident in Prague three years ago.”
“What about it?”
“The man, the Iranian who killed Roger Berl.”
“Sangar,” whispered Tacoma. “Bardia Sangar.”
“He’s here,” she said. “VEVAK is—”
“Known accomplices,” he said in broken English as he moved the tip of the silencer to Katie’s abdomen. “You are stupid to be on this train.” Then Sangar growled, “Where is he?”
* * *
Tacoma was in the second-to-last car when he heard Sangar’s words over his earbud.
“No!” he said aloud, causing a few people to look up.
Tacoma charged up the empty aisle, sprinting through the car, then passed into the next car. Ahead, a woman was stepping into the aisle—Tacoma leapt onto the arm of the seat behind her and jumped over her, using his hand to shield his head from the wall, then landed and kept running.
He passed through the next two cars and entered the dining car at a gallop. There were only a few diners. A middle-aged woman let out a shriek at the sight of Tacoma, desperately running, as if his life was at stake—
The leg came out of nowhere. One of the tables. It was a hard kick just as Tacoma passed by, a martial kick, striking him in the knee and sending him tumbling to the floor, where he smashed awkwardly into a steel wall.
He looked up as blood gushed from his head down his face, into his eyes. She was tall, with dark hair. She wore tight pants, boots, a black sweater. She clutched a silenced handgun, a gold-hued suppressor sticking out from its end. She stepped closer, standing above Tacoma.
The pain was overwhelming now, and he heard his brain telling his legs to stand up, then telling his arm to sweep the gun around and fire at the woman above him, but he couldn’t move.
“No,” he grunted.
Everything became crimson as his eyes were washed in blood, and then Tacoma heard—amid a rising decibel of voices and screams from passengers—the metallic thwack thwack thwack of the silencer.
72
L’AUBERGE CHEZ FRANÇOIS
GREAT FALLS, VIRGINIA
“Berlin was also a long time ago,” said Flaherty.
“You lost two agents in a nightclub,” said Follett. “They were gunned down. It was blamed on Red Army Faction.”
“Yes,” said Flaherty. “I remember. John Garrity. Pablo Cashen.”
“The satellite was bought from Lockheed’s German subsidiary,” said Follett. “Their head of European sales also died that night at the club.”
Flaherty stood up.
“I don’t remember that part,” he said. “My sense is, you seem to think I had something to do with the satellite and with Order Six. The truth is, I did. But it was a long time ago.”
“Mr. Flaherty, I wanted to ask—”
“I’ll be right back,” said Flaherty. “I’m just going to the restroom.”
In the bathroom, Flaherty splashed cold water on his face. He dried himself off and then stared at his reflection in the mirror.
Flaherty knew he’d handled Follett, misdirected him enough to get through the next two days. That was all they needed. They were now within twenty-four hours of victory.
Yet he felt his heart racing.
“A few more minutes,” he whispered to himself.
Then it will all be done. Leave him confused.
He caught a strange light in the mirror coming through the window. He looked at it suspiciously for a moment or two, then his phone vibrated. He looked at his phone. It was from Bruner.
THEY KNOW
GET AWAY NOW
Flaherty went to the window. The lights he’d seen had been from an unmarked vehicle, a black sedan, which pulled to the side of the parking lot. The driver’s side door opened and a man climbed out. He wore dark tactical clothing and a flak jacket. The man’s eyes were fixed on the front entrance of the restaurant and not on the restroom window.
After the agent moved out of his sight line, Flaherty pushed the window open. Up the road, he counted several police cars coming toward the restaurant, their sirens off. He climbed through the window and got on his stomach. He crawled behind a line of low holly bushes to his car, out of view of the first sedan. He climbed into his car, turned the ignition, and moved slowly out of the parking lot, just another customer leaving for the night.
At the main road, the agents had already taken up position. They were quarantining the restaurant.
Flaherty floored it, gunning past the FBI agent who tried to stop him. The man lurched at the last possible moment; had he not, Flaherty would’ve run him down. The agent sprinted back to the black sedan.
Flaherty pushed the S550 as fast as it would go. The country road opened up into a series of low hills. Graduated curves became sharper. The up and down of the hills turned steeper. But Flaherty kept the Mercedes floored. In the rearview mirror, he saw the first of the police lights, several hundred yards behind him.
The vehicle swept over a particularly high hill. Flaherty felt weightlessness in his spine for a brief moment. He looked at the speedometer. He was going a hundred and five miles an hour. As the car settled back into the downhill grade, Flaherty registered a large, dangerous curve a hundred feet away. Just beyond the curve was a large oak tree. Flaherty feathered the brakes as he tried to slow down, but nothing happened. He slammed harder, but nothing happened, and he scrambled to find the emergency brake as the massive tree loomed ahead, becoming larger and larger as the car tore down the steep hill. When, finally, Flaherty found the emergency brake, he yanked back, but nothing happened.
Flaherty jacked the wheel as the car reached the curve. He felt the brutal torque and heard the horrendous screech of tires. Speed won out over physics, and the Mercedes swerved toward the side of the road, its tires unable to maintain grip on the asphalt. The car slid into a rolling tumble, out of control, the tires screeching.
In the moment just before the Mercedes went headfirst into the tree, Flaherty felt no fear, only betrayal. Bruner’s face flashed in his mind, and he finally understood. The car slammed with a horrendous torque into the tree, the sound of crushing metal echoing through the dark Virginia night.
73
FRANCE
Kyrie saw the man with the orange ski parka standing near the front of the car. From the second-to-last row, he watched him for more than a minute. Then, with a suddenness that jolted him upright, the man turned and started running, disappearing into the next car.
He looked at Fortuna. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Dewey clung to the roof of the train, halfway down the last car, looking for the final killer, when he heard the chilling low, harsh Iranian accent over his earbud.
Where is he?
He remembered Paria, the monster he’d managed to outwit several years before. The accent was the same, the hatred and anger even more visceral.
Iran.
His hands were numb. His face and hair were caked in snow and ice, which clung to the freezing sweat.
Dewey turned and—slowly, as if calculating the strength of the wind—stood up and started running toward the front of the speeding train. He had to lean dangerously forward so as to not be blown from the roof. The snow was blinding. But he ran, his eyes focused on nothing but his next step. He leapt over the accordion canopy connecting the cars and kept moving, trying to put the thought of Katie out of his mind, until another sound arose inside his frozen ear. A pained “No!” from Tacoma, and then three barely audible shots—three suppressed bullets, and a final horrible grunt—then screams, which echoed out from the car just below.
* * *
Beauxchamps heard Katie’s words as he came to the rear of the second-to-last car. A few seconds later, Tacoma flew by him, an angry look on his face.
Beauxchamps followed him, running up the aisle, struggling to keep his pants up. Passengers started yelling at him, asking what was going on, but he kept moving.
Tacoma was quickly out of his sight, moving toward the front of the train with speed Beauxchamps couldn’t keep up with. He kept running through the second car, pushing people out of his way. In
the next car, he heard Tacoma’s sudden groan through his earbud. He looked up and saw—through the still open door at the front of the car—the cafeteria car, and a female figure, stepping into the small frame of the opening.
Frantically, Beauxchamps looked around, scanning the rows of seats as people started yelling and screaming.
Then he saw him. It was the dead Arab, his Afro still protruding above the seats. He was five or six rows back.
Beauxchamps ran for the dead Arab, lunging past a middle-aged man. He found the man’s pistol at his feet. Beauxchamps charged toward the front of the car, flipping the safety off as his arms swung through the air. His eyes again found the opening in the door. He saw the female figure and watched in agony as her right arm went slowly, deliberately into the air, her hand holding a gun. He was too late.
Then he heard Tacoma.
No!
Beauxchamps stopped running. He raised the weapon, his hand shaking ever so slightly. He didn’t have time to aim.
He pumped the trigger—three rapid pulls—three dull metallic thuds—thwack thwack thwack—firing at the woman who was about to shoot Tacoma, firing through the small opening in the door, across a hundred feet of dimly lit, passenger-filled pandemonium. The bullets tore into the killer’s back and she dropped to the ground.
As he walked toward the cafeteria car, clutching the gun, Beauxchamps felt elated. He was breathing heavily. The passengers in the front rows of the car cowered in their seats. Several children were crying.
He stepped into the cafeteria car just as he heard the sound of unmuted gunfire behind him. In the same instant, he felt the white hot heat of a bullet, striking him in the middle of the back. He could see Tacoma’s orange jacket in the far corner of the dining car, his last sight before he crumpled to the floor and died.
* * *
Kyrie clutched his handgun as he walked rapidly through the car, Fortuna just behind him. He pointed at the dead Arab slumped against the glass but kept moving. Kyrie stepped over the man he’d just shot in the back, a man in a conductor’s uniform, and entered the cafeteria car.