Knight's Late Train (11 page)

Homeland Insecurity

9:03 PM MST

When I came to within sight of the yard office, I shut off the engine on my Honda ATV and coasted to a stop.

From 500 feet away, I assessed the situation while mostly hidden between two large box cars spotted on adjacent tracks.

In the parking lot where I’d landed with Rillie in the JetRanger earlier in the day, the big, double-rotor Chinook rested silently beside a tractor and other snow-moving equipment while guarded by eight very vigilant-looking sentries. With the wide, back ramp down, the maw of the early-Vietnam-War-era helicopter’s cargo bay was exposed. But it was too dark to discern anything inside the huge rotorcraft’s fuselage, including my family — if they might be being held there.

The banging of steel couplers, over
and over again, reminded me a number of my adversaries were still in the yards sorting freight cars to make up the hazmat train from Hell. I had no idea how I would stop them from building the train and running it to Denver to complete its purpose, or how I would save my loved ones at the same time. I only knew I must.

Just
as I thought it’d be nice to have a little help, another helicopter about the same size as the JetRanger I’d been flying came speeding in from the east. As it drew nearer, I realized it was a Eurocopter Light Enforcement Helicopter used by Homeland Security.  But it was way too small to be manned by more than a minimal force of maybe a three-man team in full battle gear.

I shook my head. T
hey were either ill prepared and going in as a stalling tactic on what could only be considered a suicide mission, or they were completely unaware of the enormity of the threat — perhaps in communication with the faux guardsmen, thinking they were allies in the fight.

As the
LEH slowed and began its descent 100 feet from the Chinook, a searchlight mounted under its fuselage lit up, the light playing behind the big twin rotor helo on the ground. All but one of the mercenaries behind the Chinook, dressed as National Guardsmen, waved to the security team in the Eurocopter as if greeting allies. The eighth man had ducked inside the Chinook’s dark cargo bay and was now carrying a long tube with a boxy IFF antenna, scope and firing mechanism attached. He stepped out and dropped off the side of the ramp and then knelt on the freshly cleaned pavement to steady himself.

Even before the
Homeland Security chopper touched down it was doomed, and there was nothing I could do about it. They would not hear shouts of warning. They would not see me from this angle no matter what I did to wave them off.

The missile that
shot from the Stinger, shoulder-fired weapon caused the LEH Eurocopter to explode in a bright fireball that mostly extinguished within a few seconds, leaving nothing but a blackened hulk on skids.

I took off in the opposite direction
. With the mercenaries in the parking lot, I’d have to circumnavigate the yard office in the other direction to get to the people inside. The Honda ATV I drove was extremely slow, but that was not its fault. It had obviously been rigged with a throttle governor to keep its speed below twenty. In the snow, uneven ground, and rails, that was probably a blessing.

Over five precious minutes passed before I made it to the other side of the yard office building. The lights were bright inside, and I could see a
good portion of the big room through the large picture window where Big Deal Dill Jones’ empty desk sat. Everyone in the room, including Specks, seemed to be gathered back from the window and near the door to the parking lot.

Knowing surprise was my best option, I decided the window would be my access point. I headed out over several tracks on
to a wide, elevated crossing directly in front of the large observation window.

With the little Honda ATV throttled to its limit, I hoped I’d have enough speed to vault from the
high crossing and into the big window. It was plenty low enough — if the little vehicle didn’t make it through, I knew
I would
when I rammed into the short wall below the glass and was ejected over the steering wheel and though the windshield.

At twenty miles an hour, I hit the end of the elevated crossing and got air. In the same second, a man stepped up on the other side of the window with a gun in one hand pointed at a small woman he had a hold of with the other.

I crashed through, praying without any form of guidance that my vehicle would hit the armed man more than the innocent-looking woman. It seemed the two either jumped or were slammed to the side by the collision. The ATV went sideways and tumbled over filing cabinets, office furniture and desks covered with computers. Finally coming to a rest against the front wall, I climbed out a little dizzy.

The man with the gun was down, his face and upper torso looking more like hamburger than human. I’d obviously caught him with
the front bumper and the busted window glass helped give him a new look his mother was sure to not approve of.

The small woman stepped toward me. She’d recovered the mercenary’s firearm, an H&K, I thought.
Maybe fortyish, with a painter-boy hairstyle, she wore a businesslike, dark blue pantsuit. I’m kind of attracted to older women — hell, I’m attracted to all women — and I found something oddly familiar with this one’s lovely face. 

“Good job, E Z,” she said. “You’re incredible. I don’t know how you did that without killing me too, but you did!”

I scanned the room.

“Don’t worry,” the woman said, “he was the only bad guy left. Rillie and the others rushed out after that chopper exploded outside. I think they’re getting pretty close to high-balling out of here.”

“Chic?” I asked. I had to go back over my sexually slanted thoughts over the past few seconds of this man when I thought he was a woman. I erased them from a virtual marker board in my mind before I caught myself getting some kind of man-love going. I didn’t need that. I had enough happening with all the women in my life.

“Yep,” she said. “It’s me! Since I had my
dangling participle
removed, I always dress for my future self on Thursdays. Midnight tonight will be Thursday, so I changed a little early. Just kind of a fun thing I do.”

“Where’s the big dud?”

“If you’re referring to yardmaster and royal pain in the ass Big Deal Dill Jones, he left earlier this evening when the snow let up. Said he was going to make his rounds — he walks the yards, checking things out when were not busy.”

Specks came up to me. “
I think that asshole over there shot Yule.” He pointed at the dead merc with the ground-meat face. “He slipped out when Rillie and three of her accomplices left. The guy ran to the doorway and fired three times, and came back smiling. If it’s any consolation, I think I smoothed things out between Yule, Doc and you. Not that it matters if he’s lying face down out there somewhere in the snow dead.”

“Comm still out?”
I asked.

“Yep,” Chic said. “Deader t
han Grandpa Dover’s ass — all except for our short-range walkie-talkies.”

“Cell phones?”

“Dead.”

I glanced out the big, empty window frame next to the yardmaster’s desk. A switch engine
was shoving a large number of the long, black LP gas tankers into an outside track some 200 yards away. On another track, a switcher was moving a white, chlorine gas tanker, a large box car, another chlorine, another box, an LP gas tanker, and finally a caboose that was next to the remote locomotive shoving it.

Chic said, “Looks like they’re shoving those cars into the outbound.
They’re probably pretty close to having their train built. I heard them say they wanted to be out of here by midnight. After the train’s built, they’ll still have to lace the air hoses and build up air in the train for their air brakes. Depending on how long they finally make it, in this cold weather, it’ll take them at least thirty minutes to get full train air.”

Specks interjected, “Course they’re
not going to be worrying about Federal regulations. He might pull out in half that time — just as soon as he’s got enough air for brakes in the first five or six cars.”

“The Shots left toward town on their ATV,” I said. “Any other friendlies out there that you know of?”

“If you shooed the Shots,” Chic said and smiled, “that should be all — oh, wait; the train crew on that inbound you and Specks hitched a ride on. They radioed in and said they wouldn’t be leaving their loco’s cab. The mercs took a couple tank cars off their train — that hadn’t
exploded
,” he said smiling at me again, “ and told the engineer and conductor to stay put or they’d be ‘dead meat’.”

“Okay,” I told him. “
As soon as you think the train to Hell is about to leave, you get ahold of that manifest train’s crew and have them highball their train out in front of the hazmat train like their asses are on fire — because it probably will be.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea. I’ll know more over the next thirty minutes or so.”

“
Be careful.”

“No rest for the wicked,” I said and started toward the broken window.
I turned toward Chic. “By the way, Chic, you look lovely, tonight.”

“T
hanks, E Z,” he said. “You are such a sweet man.” He held out the H&K .45 he’d taken from the dead merc’s body. “Better take this.”

“No, I’ll be fine. You folks might need it.”

“I’ll go with you,” Specks said.

He was
limping and holding one arm.

R
emembering his sprained ankle and injured shoulder, I said, “No way.” I waved my hand at the other three office workers. “You’re injured. Stay here and take care of these folks.”

“I’m no worse off than you, hot shot!”

“You can paddle my ass for it later, Mr. Reader.” I smiled at him. “But I said
no
.”

“
Ooh, E Z,” Chic said. “Since you talked that way, it reminds me. We might not see each other for a while, and I wanted to tell you I’ve decided to have my final operation on Halloween. All parts should be fully functional by Christmas for a real holiday ball! I know that’s eight months away, but you mind if I give you a call then?”

I bit my tongue — literally
, hard enough to make it bleed. I did not wish to offend this man — er, woman. He’d helped me considerably. I needed time to figure out how to politely tell him he was barking up the wrong tree. Sure, I’m close friends with a lot of guys — but not that close. And I love women — all of them. But that’s where I draw the line; they have to start off that way, as female. With Chic, when it came down to it, he’d always be one of the guys.

“Sure,” I told h
im, not normally one to cop out. But in this situation I hoped I’d find a polite way to tell him otherwise later, or he’d find someone else to call by then.

He waved with his fingers. “Bi-yee, and be care — full!”

“You sure?” Specks said.

“Yeah, he can call.”

“No. You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

“You just hold down the fort.”

“Okay,” he said. “See you in the funny papers.”

“Don’t be mad, just get even,” I told him.

He said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder!”

“
I hope the early bird catches your worm,” I said and stepped over the window frame, out into the snow.

He said,
“If you shake it more than twice, you’re playing with it.”

Trotting
away, I said, “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

He called
out, “They can’t arrest you for lookin’ — unless it’s through a tear in the window shade, and your pants are down around your ankles!”

Our litt
le catch-phrase banter had matured dramatically to an
adult only
level over the past thirty years.

Buggy Barred

9:35 PM MST

By a track switch, I found a buggy bar that car inspectors use to, among other things, change freight car and locomotive brake shoes. It’s a one-inch-thick, hexagonal, steel pry bar about three-feet long with one end pointed and the other spooned.

They were still switching cars in th
e yards, two switch engines moving rolling equipment at any one time.

I went between two tracks,
both loaded with freight cars. With the equipment so close together, I felt somewhat claustrophobic, even though I’m not normally. A second later four of the mercs stepped between the tracks about fifty yards away. They gave pursuit.

Dodging between a couple other tracks, I noticed a
string of cars on one side of me was moving to be switched. It became difficult to see in the darkness. The footing was far from sure, especially in the snow on uneven ground.

I took my buggy bar and struck a one-inch-wide band hel
ping to secure a load of lumber on a flatcar that rolled by. After two more strikes, the band broke and the sharp end flipped out about chest high, while sticking out about three feet from the side of the car.

That string of
freight equipment was moving toward where I was pretty sure the four mercs might pop out at any minute — about 150 feet away.

On the empty
flatcar standing still beside me, I found a heavy chain hooked to the freight car’s thick side sill. Two cars back on the moving track was a high-wide load with a big combine secured with chains.

I waited pati
ently for the big machinery, while watching for my adversaries in the other direction. Like clockwork, three of them trotted out between the tracks.

I flipped them off.

One of them fired his sidearm at me, but the bullet missed by yards, and a second man pulled the gunman’s hand back.

A
s the car with the broken banding drew close to them, I showed them the bird again. The steel banding used to secure loads on open top freight cars is strong stuff, but it’s very thin and nearly invisible from the side even in bright daylight, let alone at night. And once it’s broken or cut, the sharp edge can slice through a man’s flesh like a fillet knife.

They ran
my way and the guy who’d shot at me caught the banding across his upper arm and chest. It cut through his arm, probably to the bone and gouged into his upper torso before springing up and catching the second guy behind him in the face.

For good measure, I took the long chain I was holding and threw it hard against one of the securement chains on the combine as it went by. My chain wrapped around the securement chain
, and I ducked as it passed over me and tightened from the empty flat I stood next to.

The yet uninjured man and the one who got the band in the face were still coming at me.

When my chain finally stretched taut, the empty flat and the cars attached to it began to move with the chain. Finally, the combine came lose, and my extra chain yanked the big farm equipment off the flat car.

The huge-wheeled vehicle slammed into the
freight cars resting on the track beside it, and in front of the approaching mercs. With the movement of the train, the combine began to tumble between the cars. It crushed both of my pursuers, then finally smashed the injured man before coming to a stop in the opening at the end of the string of freight cars.

There was much more havoc to
wreak.

Now, I was on a hunt.

I went from track to track searching for more of the mercenaries while moving toward the switching locomotives. I’d hoped to find the RCL operators on the ground, but anyone I came across was fair play.

When I stepped around the end of some cars, I ran into two
very big mercenaries. They were ready. They had their assault rifles leveled.

“Knight, I’ll bet,” one of them said.
He sounded German. “We’re not going to make the mistake the others did. Drop the bar and don’t make a move — otherwise you’ll be dead before your shit hits your pants.”

I dropped the bar straight down
, and the spoon stuck in the snow. I noticed movement behind the men, and the surprise ruined my poker face. In the dark behind the two armed men, someone or something had just rolled out from under a tank car.

The talker said, “Don’t even try that with us, asshole. We can’t be tricked that easy. There’s no one behind us.”

I shrugged.

The squat silhouette approaching from
behind the men reached up to the sides of their heads, then slammed them together.

They fell, but one got up from his knees quickly.

I grabbed the buggy bar and threw it underhand from fifteen feet away. The pointed end of the steel tool caught the guy in the gut. He went down.

Yule
Dye grabbed the second man as the guy tried to recover his feet. Dye threw him into the big steel wheel of the freight car beside him. The steel clanked like it was struck with a sledge hammer.

I smiled at my new ally and nodded. “Yule, it’s a pleasure being on the same side.”

“E Z,” he returned, “the pleasure is all mine.”

H
e was holding his side. “I take back all that circus stuff.”

“No need to apologize,” he said. “Your father’s a
great friend. I sometimes forget that.” The guy he’d bashed into the freight car wheel began to get up a second time. Dye nonchalantly kicked his head into the steel plate again and continued, “I think I have a chemical imbalance or something.”

“His head’s about as hard as yours is,” I told him.

He smiled. “You know, I normally don’t hold a grudge, but your friend — that Rillie bitch — is going to get a real ass whoopin’ when I catch up with her.”

“Not if I find her first
,” I told him. “I plan on sending her away to never-never land. By the way, I’ve got plans for all these assholes — maybe make some big boom-boom. Would you mind finding a safe hiding place, maybe back at the yard office until I’m finished? Looks like you might need a little medical attention, anyway, and I’m going to put these pricks through holy hell.”

He sighed, noticeably in pain.
“You sure you don’t need help?”

After stepping
over to the dead man with the steel buggy bar in his belly, I placed my oversized right boot on his chest. “No, I got it.” I yanked the bar out.

“
Be careful.”

We parted.

As the mercenaries sorted through and switched in the hazardous material freight cars they wanted for Thundertrain, I began to wreak havoc. Over the next forty-five minutes, my delaying measures seemed to work, as I interfered and distracted a force dwindling gradually through attrition.

Loose b
anding, cables and chains became lethal booby traps on moving equipment; combines, tractors and other wheeled machinery became deadly surprises; rolling freight cars were killers, especially when I threw a switch under a long, moving box car. Imagine the surprise on the faces of the three men walking between the two tracks being straddled by the huge equipment. They looked up at the last second to see the behemoth coming at them sideways.

Holding
my long steel weapon close, I rolled under moving freight cars to avoid capture. Two of my adversaries who tried the same in order to follow me were too slow and clumsy. They were caught on the rail and quickly cut into pieces by the big, unforgiving, steel wheels. Another man was unable to make it out in time and got caught by the hanging brake rigging underneath a gondola car. He was dragged across a high crossing and then smashed between the wood crossing ties and the freight car’s low truck bolster, finally being rolled into an unrecognizable ball of flesh, clothing and blood. Another was mangled when he got snagged and pulled into the open, diverging rail point at a switch.

I
jumped between freight cars and ran atop box and tank cars. On an empty grain hopper, I threw back one of its roof hatches, climbed through the opening and out the bottom dump chute outlet to evade capture. Using a come-along chain-pull, I yanked the huge, side plug-door off a box car loaded with computers, TVs, stereo and video equipment, scattering much of the expensive electronic contents onto the ballast gravel and tripping up and knocking down several of my pursuers.

On a tank car loaded with molasses hooked up to steam lines,
I unscrewed the bottom outlet cap and opened the gate valve. It made one sticky mess for the mercenaries who tried to trudge through in order to catch me. I did the same to a slow-moving, machine-oil tanker. The slick oil made the road crossing it went over nearly impossible to traverse — too slippery for either foot or tire.

Finally, I stepped past the end of a freight car
, and I heard someone behind me.

“Big Deal doesn’t like you much.”

When I turned, I saw Dill Jones holding a gun. “Well, Little Dildo. I see you came up with another handgun. What is that, a Beretta?”

He’d followe
d me, and was on the other side of the track I’d just crossed. I gazed at him from over the freight car coupler next to us.

“Put the brake shoe bar down,” he said.

I threw my buggy bar to the side, this time sticking the pointed end into the snow-covered ground. “So what now, Jones?”

“Big Deal will tell you
what now
. You’ve really been screwing with Big Deal’s plans. If it wasn’t for you, Big Deal would’ve had smooth sailing.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

In my years dealing with some very bad and despicable folks, I’ve found that many of them seem to want to complain to you before they try to kill you. They’ll whine about how you and the rest of the world have been cruel to them, and then they’ll brag about what they’re doing to make it right.

“You
and your nosy father came in here and nearly screwed everything up. Big Deal’s about to get a great, big payday — twenty-five million dollars. That’s right, all Big Deal had to do was sit back and stay out of the way. Ol’ Big Deal didn’t have to lift a finger, unless something went wrong or someone caused a problem. Well, your dad got in the way and now you’re causing problems.”

I’d been warned that
freight cars being humped — being shoved and released from a switching locomotive — can be extremely quiet while moving down the rail, especially with snow all around to absorb most of the sound. I glanced up the track that separated Big Deal and I and noticed a box car slowly growing larger. It made no discernible sound from this distance, yet its several-hundred tons was heading our way on those silent wheels.

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 edge
d 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.