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“I wasn’t close enough to hear what they said,” Mildred reminded him. “I could barely make out what was going on once they flicked the spotlights off. All I know is that Jak ran to the gates and a group of men followed him. I heard two shots and then the men reappeared, marching Jak to the train.”
“J.B.?” Ryan called for the Armorer’s opinion.
“Who knows why anyone would want Jak,” J.B. answered.
“If he’s still alive,” Ryan stated, “we’ll find him. And if he’s dead, then we are going to chill every last sec man on that train.”
T HE SEC MEN HAD MARCHED Jak beyond the locomotive engine and the first ten, wheeled units that it pulled before one of them opened a door and shoved him into a car. Jak had kept his head low, hands weaved behind his neck, left arm burning with pain, and tried to keep track of everything he saw.
The engine had been painted a matte black so as not to pick up reflections. It shrugged off the moonlight, a shadow looming large against the indigo sky. Holes had been molded into its casing through which burning coals glowed reddish-orange. It was almost forty feet, tip to tail, and the majority of that space was dedicated to burning the fuel that powered it. An open plate at the end showed where the engineer worked the controls. Above the engine, near the strange figurehead that jutted from the front, a wide chimney belched puffs of steam while the vehicle stood at rest. Once it got moving again, that smokestack would blast a dense fog into the air around the train, just as Jak had seen on its approach, creating a misty cloud through which it seemed to battle to its destination.
Behind the engine stood a chrome container unit and Jak guessed that this held the fuel that powered the beast. It was a long unit, almost as long as the engine itself, and Jak could see putrid yellow symbols indicating radioactive material within as well as the coal.
Cars followed. The first was a flatbed, open to the elements with a large cannon affixed to its surface. If necessary, Jak guessed, this would be the first line of defense should any unwelcomes approach the steel behemoth.
After that, a series of boxes on wheels, glass windowpanes catching the moonlight. Jak guessed that these held equipment since one of these cars was where the spotlight trolley had appeared from.
The next two cars looked similar to each other, like large wooden crates with narrow horizontal slits where the planks met, and a set of steps at each end leading up to an open doorway. Inside the first doorway, Jak saw a sec man watching the group that passed with the prisoner. The man held a large-bore shotgun in his hands and trained it on Jak as he passed.
Jak stumbled up the steps as he was pushed roughly into the second car, though he felt grim satisfaction when he heard his assailant’s wail as he cut himself on his deadly jacket.
Inside, the interior was intensely dark, and Jak blinked his eyes several times in an effort to adjust. Out in the open had been dark enough, but the inside was pitch black.
Then a man behind him lit an oil lamp and followed Jak up the steps. “Come on,” he growled, “git in there.”
Jak looked around the narrow car. Floor-to-ceiling grillwork stood immediately in front of him with a bolted gate in its center. The grille acted as a cage, closing off four-fifths of the car. Through the grille, Jak could see eyes staring at him—scared, timid eyes, wet with tears.
As his guard jostled him forward, the oil lamp picked up more of the room and Jak saw that the eyes belonged to about eight or nine children, dressed in dirty rags and cowering as far from the mesh gate as they could. The room stank of their own feces and urine, and Jak could see cockroaches and other small creatures moving around the stained floor of the cage. As he watched, one of the filthy children reached out, trapping a roach in his fingers before devouring its squirming body.
“Welcome to your new home, sonny.” The guard with the oil lamp laughed behind him, his breath rancid as it spewed over Jak’s shoulder.
Another sec man had joined them, and he unbolted the gate, brandishing a remade Beretta blaster at the children in the cage. “These here are your new friends,” he told Jak, pulling back his hand to push the albino inside. He looked at Jak’s coat with its decoration of sharp edges and obviously thought better of it, choosing to wave the blaster in Jak’s face instead. “You get inside.” he told Jak.
Jak looked at the blaster’s muzzle, then up at the sec man’s eyes, and a snarl crossed his lips. The sec man backhanded him across the face, and Jak stumbled backward into the caged room, twirling around before slumping down hard on his rear. The guard pointed the Beretta at him, arm outstretched, aiming it at Jak’s forehead.
The albino teen sat still, watching the man’s eyes, waiting for that flash of determination that meant he was going to pull the trigger. Nothing. Just a bluff. A wicked smile crept across Jak’s face and the man growled, lowering the blaster.
And then Jak saw the twitch in the eyes, the defining moment, and the man pulled the trigger after all, burying a slug deep in his chest.
Chapter Seven
The horse’s hooves thundered against the ground beneath her as Mildred and her steed tried to keep pace with Ryan’s horse. J.B. and his own horse had deliberately dropped back behind the group, and the Armorer had his mini-Uzi hidden in his lap, covering his companions in case things got bloody.
They could see the train ahead now, a little below them where the ground sunk. The companions charged downhill, following the tracks as they endeavored to catch up.
Mildred could hear the noise of the train over the frantic hoofbeats of her mount, rattling the metal tracks with a regular clacking sound. As she closed with it, the racket became louder. Close by, the train stretched onward as far as Mildred could see; it was only when they were on the higher ground that she had had any inkling as to the length of the metallic beast.
Ryan leaned in low to his steed’s neck, letting the wind from the train’s slipstream pass over him. There were three horse lengths between him and the rear of the moving train, and he urged his horse on with a kick of his heels in its flanks.
A man crouched atop the train, holding a longblaster pointing into the air. Rearguard, obviously, but a pretty stupe one in Ryan’s opinion. The man was paying no attention to the track behind the train, and the noise of the train’s passing masked the galloping approach of the horses across the sandy plain; enough at least that the man didn’t bother to check. Ryan knew the type—he was lazy because he was bored by the routine.
The one-eyed man was in reach of the train now, though the horse kept shrugging away as Ryan guided it toward the moving vehicle. He patted the horse’s neck, trying to calm the animal, as he pulled the reins to the left, guiding the horse closer to the back of the train. There were no doors here, no way in from the rearmost car, but he could see bars of metal stretch up the side—a ladder.
Ryan reached out for the nearest of the horizontal bars as the wind whipped all around him, slapping him in the face and pushing his reaching arm backward. The one-eyed man urged his mount on with another jab of his heels. He needed to get up that ladder and kill the sentry before the sec man knew what was happening, otherwise the whole crew might be alerted. Ryan reached again for one of the metal rungs and felt his little finger whisper against it. He stretched his arm a little farther, teeth gritted as he strained his muscles for the extra reach, and suddenly snatched the rung in a firm grip.
Taking all of his weight on his left arm, he kicked the horse away beneath him. Suddenly he was dangling by one arm, watching his mount run off into the wilderness, the ground hurtling three inches beneath the toes of his combat boots. The instant stretched for an eternity, and he swore that he heard Mildred gasp behind him, despite the relentless noise of the tracks and the howling wind shrieking in his ears. Then he had swung his other arm around and he was climbing the ladder, pulling himself up as his feet swung over empty space.
The muscles in Ryan’s shoulders and across his chest burned as he pulled himself up the ladder, looking down to ensure that his feet found the lowest rungs. As soon as his feet were planted, Ryan relaxed a little, his pulse pounding in his ears.
He powered up the ladder, hurled himself over the rim of the car and onto the roof. The sec man with the longblaster rifle turned as he heard or felt Ryan’s boots slap down on the roof. He made to cry out, but Ryan’s fist pounded into the man’s windpipe before he could even stand.
The man fell backward, dropping his blaster over the side of the hurtling train. He scrabbled, arms flailing, spluttering where his throat had been bruised, but he regained his balance and pulled himself to a crouch at the edge of the narrow rooftop. His eyes fell on Ryan, assessing the stranger, and he tried to speak. The words came out as a croak, their meaning lost, and the man began to gag, looking at the roof like a drunk who had lost his bearings.
When the man looked up again, he saw his one-eyed assailant was on top of him, casting a low punch into his belly. The breath whooshed out of the man, and he felt something burn where the blow had connected.
Ryan stepped back, yanking the blade of his panga from the sec man’s gut. A dark flower blossomed on the man’s shirt where the blade had pieced his flesh, and Ryan watched it expand in the dull moonlight. The sec man reached for his stomach, looking at Ryan with fear in his eyes, then he keeled over, collapsing to the roof.
The wind streaming in his dark hair, Ryan walked across the car roof, placed his boot against the man’s thorax and shoved the heel into the man’s body, tipping the guard over the side of the train. He watched as the man bounced along the tracks two, three times, before finally coming to rest as the train sped away. J.B. and Mildred were trailing along the left edge, urging their mounts to keep pace with the train. Ryan’s boarding, start to finish, had taken three seconds.
Ryan crouched and looked down the length of the roof and along the consecutive rooftops that traveled up the line ahead of him. There were a few sec men on the nearby rooftops, but none close enough to cause the companions any problems. Ryan scrambled across the roof and, lying flat on his belly, dipped his head over the edge and checked each side in turn. They were the same, a simple ladder arrangement built into the metal sides about two-thirds of the way along the car. In the dark it was hard to be certain, but the car appeared to be made of molded steel, cold to the touch.
Halfway along the roof was a lumpy square, and Ryan crawled swiftly along to examine it: some kind of drop-down hatch. He put his ear to the entryway and listened for any echoes coming from within. Ryan failed to discern anything, but the train was loud on the tracks, the wind loud in his ears, and the whole thing was shaking worse than a gaudy slut with an armful of jolt on payday; he couldn’t be certain.
He quickly worked his way back to the ladder on his left, the right-hand side of the car, and looked over the side. Mildred’s horse was keeping pace, and she was looking up at Ryan, waiting for his signal. He held his open hand out to the side, fingers splayed where Mildred could see them against the inconstant moon, then bunched it into a fist and pumped the fist down as though pulling an overhead cord: come on.
Clutching her horse’s neck, Mildred shrugged the bag from her back and held it up against the side of the car. She traveled as light as she could, but there was important medical equipment in it that she’d gathered here and there during her travels.
Ryan leaned down and grabbed for one of the backpack’s straps, yanking it onto the roof. He rested it there as quietly as he could, trusting its weight to keep it secure for the few seconds it would take to get Mildred aboard. Then he reached back over, his chest flush against the rooftop, and stretched his left arm as far down the ladder as he could, securing himself to the roof with his free hand.
It took two tries, but Mildred’s reaching hand finally locked on to one of the low rungs of steel and she pulled her body, still atop the horse, closer to the train. Her mount shook its head back and forth, trying to keep away from the rapidly moving train as Mildred took her right foot out of the stirrup and shifted her balance in the saddle. Her right arm darted out and she clutched at Ryan’s forearm. His hand gripped her own forearm, their wrists touching, and he held her steady as she leaped across the gap between horse and train, the ground hurtling beneath her.
Mildred swung awkwardly for a moment, scrabbling to find the rungs of the ladder with her feet, but Ryan’s grip held firm and she realized that she had ample time to find proper purchase and make her way up to the roof. Ryan held her arm the whole time, as solid as an oak, his grip never faltering, and Mildred finally swung onto the ladder and held it firmly.
When she let Ryan’s forearm go, he continued to clutch her until he was sure that she wouldn’t drop, then his grip loosened and she pulled her right arm to the rungs of the ladder and yanked herself up. Ryan smiled at her from where he lay atop the roof and she breathed a word of thanks as she pulled herself over the edge to join him.
“Easy pie,” he assured her as she pulled her backpack back over her shoulders and tightened the straps.
J.B. was next, passing up Ryan’s SSG-70 Steyr blaster before he clambered up the ladder. Before long the three of them sat together on the roof establishing their next move in a series of rapid hand gestures.
Ryan indicated the roof hatch, and they moved toward it in walking crouches. The three of them surrounded the hatchway, each assuming his or her role for the next part of the operation. Mildred unholstered her ZKR 551 Czech-built .38 caliber target revolver, pointing it so that it would be aimed directly into the space below once the hatch was removed. J.B. set his Uzi on the surface of the roof, close to hand, and placed both hands ready to unfasten twin catches on the hatch.
Ryan had resheathed his panga and now held his SIG-Sauer. The blaster had a built-in baffle silencer that worked sporadically, and it would prove necessary if they were to execute their plan quietly. Mildred and J.B. were there for backup, but if Ryan could take out any guards with a passable degree of silence they would be better placed to continue their operations unnoticed.
Ryan held his left hand above the hatch, silently counting down from three on his outstretched fingers. On one, J.B. flipped the latches, and on zero he had the hatch pulled back toward him, opening the doorway in the roof.
Feet first, Ryan dropped through the opening, quietly landing in a crouch and steadying his blaster hand with his left, swiftly rotating on his heel to take in the confined space of the car. The room was dark, the only light coming from the night sky through the open hatch directly above him. He could sense objects all around him. A few glints of metal caught his eye, but he couldn’t see anyone else in the car. He held his breath and listened, blaster still in the ready position. Nothing. He was alone.
He called to the others, his voice a low growl, confirming the all clear and instructing them to join him. Mildred dropped down first, her target revolver still in hand, and J.B. followed, Uzi at the ready.
“Dark as a blacksmith’s rag in here,” J.B. muttered as he pulled the roof hatch back in place. He fiddled in one of his jacket pockets for a moment and produced a glow stick with an audible snap. The glow stick emanated a dull, green iridescence, filling the car with long shadows.
Ryan scurried to the front end of the car and stood next to the metal door that had appeared with the increase in light. He put a hand on the doorknob, slowly increased the pressure on it and felt the door give, opening a bare inch. He pulled the door closed again and examined it for a locking device of some kind, but couldn’t find any bolts or turnkeys. “Door’s unlocked,” he told the others bleakly.
“One of us needs to watch that at all times,” J.B. decided. “Can’t be entertaining uninvited company.”
Mildred sat cross-legged on the metal plate floor four feet in front of the door and held her ZKR 551 loosely in her hand, her eyes focused on the door handle. “Got it,” she said. “You boys look around, see if there are any toys to play with.”
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