by S L Shelton
We headed toward the engine first, passing through other sleeper cars and the dining car.
“Maybe we should get something to eat after we explore,” I suggested as we entered the dining car. It smelled wonderful.
“Please,” she said in an amazing release of sincerity. “I’m starving.”
Now I know what sincerity really looks like on your face, I thought.
Then we headed back, seeing how close we could get to the bad guys’ car.
“Careful,” she whispered as I reached for the handle.
I looked up through the double windows and saw the passage blocked by two men arguing. “You’re right,” I said, defeated. “Let’s go get some food.”
**
8:47 p.m. — The night train to Prague
After getting a bite to eat, we headed back at our sleeping berth. The train had been underway for several minutes, so I was expecting tickets to be called for soon. Moments later, there was a knock at the door; the steward was there to punch our tickets and collect our passports.
“Why do I have to give up my passport?” Kathrin complained.
“Only the seated passengers keep their passports. Those with sleeping berths aren’t disturbed during the trip, so the passports need to be kept in the safe,” the steward explained. “I assure you, they will be returned prior to our arrival in Prague.
I had been aware of this because I had taken night trains in Europe before. I was surprised by Kathrin’s response.
Once he was gone, we prepared for bed. I laid down on my bunk fully clothed, but Kathrin stripped to her underwear and then pulled a long t-shirt over her head before climbing up to hers.
About the time I started to drift, my phone chimed, indicating that I had a message. I pulled it up and read the text from Storc. It read: “City Night Line, Night Train Frankfurt Hbf to Prague HL N. One livestock car and one passenger car. Scheduled to arrive Praha Hlavni Nadrazi at 8:09 a.m.”
I texted back. “Thanks pal. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I’ll keep you posted.”
It would have been cruel to let him know that a girl with a bag of wiener schnitzel and a soda got the information hours before he did.
“Good news?” Kathrin asked from above.
“Yeah. It looks like the cars are going to Prague,” I replied as I tucked my phone back into my bag.
“We should get right on that,” she said, giggling. She paused for a long moment and then said, “I can’t wait to meet the woman who inspires such heroism.”
“Or insanity.”
She leaned over the edge of her bunk and smiled. “This is the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said softly. “Thank you for letting me be a part of it.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask why you are doing this,” I said playfully, but I truly wanted to know.
“Are you joking? Cute American boy on an international adventure? Who wouldn’t?” she said, winking at me, and then she rolled back into the center of her bunk.
I thought about it for a second. “Seriously, though. You didn’t come because you were hoping to hook up with me, did you?” Joking, a bit.
There was a burst of laughter from above me. Something I said must have been very funny.
“Although you are very cute and charming when you aren’t buzzing like a computer, I’m not even remotely attracted to you,” she laughed again.
“Not at all?” I asked playfully.
“Nope,” she said, giggling again.
“Come on,” I said with mock incredulity. “Not even a little?”
“Not even a little... I like girls,” she stated firmly, but I could hear the smile on her face.
“Really?!”
“Really.”
There was a long pause. “I don’t guess I have to worry about you slipping into my bunk overnight.”
She burst out laughing.
“You think you know someone...” I added.
More laughter.
We needed the laughter and the sleep. We were underway for only a short time when a heavy rain began, booming its arrival with thunder and lightning. That, along with the clack, clack, clack helped push me into sleep, despite the new constriction creeping up my spine.
As I slept, I dreamed of Barb—and once of Barb and Kathrin, but that ended in laughter too.
ten
One Day Until Event
5:15 a.m. on Saturday, May 15th, 2010—On the night train to Prague, Decin, Czech Republic
I was awakened by a sudden jolt—a bump that shook me in my bunk. I opened my eyes slowly and stretched, checking the time on my phone before looking out the window to see that it was still dark and that the train had stopped moving. I pulled my hoodie over my head and stepped into my boots. Without lacing them, I opened the door on our compartment and poked my head out. I saw a steward at the far end of the car and walked down to ask what was happening, wiping the sleep from my eyes as I approached.
He was speaking on the cabin phone in a tone that indicated he was scolding someone on the other end. He was speaking in German, however, preventing me from understanding the whole conversation, so I waited until he finished and hung up the phone.
“What’s going on?” I asked sleepily.
He responded in very good English without a second thought. “I’m very sorry for the disturbance, sir,” he said sincerely. “We will be arriving in Prague behind schedule. There was an emergency stop.”
I looked out the window and saw we were just outside a town, sitting in a large train yard next to a small rail depot. Our train was just beginning to move again.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Decin, sir,” he said. “Just over the Czech border.”
“What was the emergency?” I asked without looking away from the window.
“It was veterinary in nature. It appears that we were forced to stop here to detach a stable car,” he said with disgust in his voice.
I was wide awake then, thanks to the adrenaline being dumped into my bloodstream.
“Someone must have a great deal of influence,” he continued. “This train doesn’t normally stop.”
His last words were directed to my back as I was already running down the hall to our sleeping compartment. I burst through the door, sending Kathrin sitting up in bed, awakened by the ruckus.
“Grab your things,” I said urgently as I grabbed my bag from my bunk.
“Why? What’s going on?” she asked as she grabbed her bag and swung down from the above.
I looked out the window toward the depot. In the light of the train yard security lamps, I could see that Barb’s container car was being pushed slowly onto a branch line by a small yard engine.
“We are about to lose our container car,” I replied, rapidly stuffing my belongings into my bag.
Kathrin looked out the window before packing more urgently. She pulled her pants on, quickly tucking in her sleep shirt while slipping her feet into her boots. Abruptly, the train stopped again, sending us askew.
I gripped the upper bunk to keep my balance as she grabbed her pack and the small, wheeled carry-on bag. We dashed out of our compartment just as the train started moving forward again.
“Down here,” I whispered as we moved toward the rear door of the car.
I pulled the inner door open and was startled to see the steward standing inside the door to the left. Without missing a step, I broke to the right.
“Wait. You can’t exit here. This is not a stop!” he yelled.
Kathrin pulled back on the handle and slid the door open as I turned to him. “They are stealing our horses!” I yelled as I felt the cold air from outside.
When I turned around Kathrin was gone, so I followed her through the door into the darkness.
The train was still going relatively slowly when we exited, but without a platform, it’s a decent drop from a moving vehicle. When I reached the ground, my boot came off, and I hit the ground hard with my knee, leaving me momenta
rily stunned. It took me a moment to assess that no real damage had been done, but when I turned to look for Kathrin, she was several feet behind me, on the ground and holding her ankle, a look of agony on her face.
I ran to her.
“I should have taken a second to lace my boots,” she joked through her grimace.
I pulled her boot off before carefully feeling her ankle and the top of her foot. She grimaced again.
“Move it.”
She circled it all directions, grunting in pain when it reached a certain point, but she managed to move through it.
It wasn’t broken. That was the good news—but it was certainly sprained.
I pulled my hoodie and t-shirt off and began to uncoil one section of compression bandage from my chest before wrapping her foot with it, careful to add support around the arch.
I put my shirt and hoodie back on and then helped her pull her boot back on. After she laced it tightly, grunting through the exercise, she tried to stand on it. Tested it with some weight and then a little more, and then she walked a few steps before nodding that she was okay.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
I shook my head as I reached into my bag and pulled out a handful of bills, handing them to her.
“Go up to the station and buy a ticket back home,” I said, pointing at the depot building.
She blinked at me, staring dumbfounded. “No,” she said, finally and firmly. “It is a sprain. I’ve had them worse than this before and hiked through the Alps. I will not leave.”
“Kathrin,” I said firmly. “You’re a faithful and dedicated friend. We will be great friends for many years to come, but your part in this adventure is over.”
An angry look appeared on her face. She moved toward me and shoved me.
“Stop,” I said.
She threw a punch. I blocked it, pushing it to the side before she threw another, faster than the first…and then three more.
She was throwing punches and kicks at a furious pace, and I was starting to fall behind when she leapt from the ground, spinning, her bad foot flying within an inch of my nose. She landed gracefully, standing, poised for another strike, and then held that pose for a moment.
“I’d say I’m in pretty decent shape for continuing. I dare you to say otherwise,” she said willfully.
I stared at her—blinking. Who the fuck are you? I asked myself of the girl in front of me.
Trust her, my inner ghost voice whispered.
“You’ve convinced me,” I said ironically, flashing a smile.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a grin as reached up to tap me gently on my face with her open palm. “I wouldn’t have done any permanent damage.”
We shook off the adrenaline pressure created by her quite impressive display and then started trotting toward the hostages’ container, which was rolling slowly away from us down a branch track.
“Come on,” I said, having to swallow the last of the tension as Kathrin started to hobble along after me.
As it left the yard, it began to pick up speed and pull away from us. I started to trot, but I quickly realized that Kathrin would not be able to follow with her sore ankle. I began looking around hopefully for an alternative form of transportation.
We walked as quickly as we could, watching as the container car drifted further and further from sight, turning onto another branch that led across a bridge over the river. It was disheartening, thinking back at the last three days, with us getting closer and closer to the hostages only to have it drift further away with each step.
“Shit,” I muttered breathlessly as Kathrin began to slow. “We have to find a way to follow them.”
Kathrin’s attention shifted to the road and the loud clatter of an approaching two-wheeled vehicle before changing direction toward it. I broke off my futile chase of the yard engine and joined her as a young man in blue coveralls was just pulling into a gravel lot on a noisy two stroke scooter. We jogged over to him. He was just setting it up on its stand when he saw us approaching.
Kathrin asked if he spoke German as she approached him but he shook his head apologetically.
“Koupit,” she said—the word ‘buy’ in Czech—and then pointed at his scooter. He looked at his scooter and then at us before shaking his head.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out four hundred-euro bills. “Koupit,” I said more insistently, knowing the old scooter was worth less than half that.
His eyes flashed wide, and a broken-toothed smile appeared.
Within moments, our bags were strapped to the rickety luggage rack on the back, and we were riding out of the lot onto a connecting street. We merged onto a highway and crossed the river bridge riding on the sidewalk while scanning ahead and to our left, trying to catch sight of the two train cars. When we had crossed the water, I began moving through streets, taking us closer to the direction they had gone and hoping we weren’t too late.
We reached a dead end at a chain link fence, looking at the tracks beyond. I hopped off and leaned against the wire, pressing my face against it to look down the track.
“There you are,” I said with a satisfied sneer after spotting our train several hundred yards to the east. It had already passed this point.
“It’s already gone by,” I said as I reached into my bag and grabbed my phone.
“How far?” she asked.
“Less than a minute,” I replied, handing her my phone after pulling up the map. “Here, navigate. They are headed that way,” I said, pointing.
I turned the scooter in a tight circle, and then we took off back down the street, reversing our course.
“Do you see the tag for the phone?” I asked.
“Tag?” she replied.
“Yes…the GPS marker on the map,” I said.
“No. It’s not on here,” she replied and then held it up for me to see.
“Shit!” I exclaimed. “We can’t lose the railcar, then. If we do, we’ll never find it again without that GPS signal.”
By the time I made our next left, she had the map zoomed in to street level detail and was guiding me through the winding passages of the small town, tapping me either on my left or right shoulder and then pointing to guide me.
“We need to catch up with them before the next yard, or we won’t know which way they went,” she said into my ear, her breath and the vibration of her voice giving me a momentary calm despite her urgent message.
The road ahead merged with one that ran parallel to the next train yard. Both of us scanned it for the two cars being pulled by the small yard engine as I strained to hear it, or anything, over the engine of the noisy scooter. When we were reaching the end of the yard, the road veered off to the right, but a small dirt drive continued to run along the last three sets of tracks.
I craned my neck up, trying to see down the line, and spotted the back of our target moving down the center set of tracks.
I stopped the scooter after traveling, jarringly, a short distance down the rough and rutty dirt road. “They’re on the center track,” I said as I tried to back the scooter up. “We can’t follow them on this road.”
Kathrin pulled up the satellite view on the phone’s map. Looking at a daytime aerial photo of the train yard, she searched the line on the map out to the next town where it could branch out.
“Ceska Lipa. Thirty-one kilometers,” she said, mapping out the route that seemed to be fastest to Ceska Lipa. “Turn there and take a right at the stop sign.”
I complied, turning us around before gunning the engine and then heading for Route 262 in a puff of oily smoke. Route 262 followed nearly the same path as the rails, veering away only occasionally.
“We have to hurry,” Kathrin said, her lips pressed close to my ear.
The pleasant warmth and vibration of her voice did nothing to ease my anxiety that time. I leaned forward and pulled the throttle back more, looking down to check the fuel gauge after a particularly loud backfire. The tank was nearly ful
l.
It was only about eighteen miles to Ceska Lipa, and it was unlikely the scooter would go as fast as the small utility engine towing the two train cars, so we had to make up time where we could—at the beginning and the end of the trip when the acceleration and deceleration of the train gave us an advantage.
“I don’t think we’re going fast enough to catch them,” Kathrin said, drawing more worry into my mind.
“We should have stolen a car,” I yelled.
“I didn’t know that was an option,” she replied with amusement in her voice. “Good to know for next time.”
I gunned the engine, throttle open all the way. If I had thirty minutes to spare, I could clean the spark plug and the fuel filter to get a bit more speed, but we were stuck with the scooter as it was.
“Look!” Kathrin exclaimed as we approached the town of Benešov nad Ploučnicí. “There they are!”
I turned and saw them slowing to take the turn on the tracks, going into town.
“They’re slowing to go through town,” I replied. “We can make up some time if we don’t slow down.”
I felt Kathrin nod her head, her chin bumping my shoulder as she pointed out the best route to take through town. It was still early morning and the streets were not crowded yet, so I blasted through intersections at full speed, praying we wouldn’t attract the attention of some industrious traffic cop.
By the time we reached the other side of town, we were only about four hundred yards ahead of the train. Within moments, it passed us again in the dark. I could see the safety lights on the back of the railcar as they got smaller and smaller, pulling further away. They finally disappeared around a turn in the track as it followed a narrow river.
“Shit!” I yelled.
“Don’t give up,” Kathrin said softly into my ear. “We’ll find them.”
“No signal yet on the phone?” I yelled over my shoulder.
“No,” she replied after a moment. “Still nothing. Maybe they found it.”