James Axler (24 page)

When he explained the situation to the dozen men who had joined him during the tower repairs, one of them had piped up with an interesting point. The man’s name was Boran, a sour-tempered individual with a hook in place of his left hand, but still a dead aim with his right. “Anyone seen anything o’ Sean Givin?” he asked. “He was rearguard and I was meant to relieve him this morning, but when I got there, there weren’t no sign of him.”

“Givin,” Adam muttered out loud, trying to place the name. He knew every man’s shift, the patterns etched into his brain after so many journeys. “Why didn’t you bring this to me earlier?” he asked.

Boran shrugged. “I di’n’t think it meant anything.

Mebbe he just slipped and fell off, what do I know?”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, “could have been. We’ve lost men before, I’ll accept that. You weren’t to know better.”

“So what do we do now?” another sec man asked, tossing a scimitar idly in one hand like some perverse circus act.

“Get the word out,” Adam told them, “we got us some intruders aboard. Mebbe one, mebbe more. You see anyone you don’t recognize and you challenge ’em, bring ’em to me if you think it’s necessary. We’re a big crew, I know, and there’s mebbe people on side you don’t know. Use your brains, stay alert. Don’t chill one o’ our own.”

“This is mayhem,” one of the sec men called, “anarchy. We go around challenging everybody? What about the project, man. What about that?”

Adam looked at the tower, where work repairing one of the struts had just finished. “I’ll make sure the project stays on target. You just let me worry about that.”

As the train pulled away, the men went about distributing the alert. Adam paced the length of the train as it trudged slowly past him to his left. When the forty-seventh car had reached him, the red Bsloppily painted on its side, he leaped aboard, a dark kerchief pulled over his mouth and nose. It was time to consult the bruja.

RAY HAD KNOWN the second he entered the prison car, before he had even seen the two men who stood there.

It was the change in atmosphere; the heavy taint of fear wasn’t there any longer.

There was a man standing at the door to the cage. He was tall and powerfully built, with the sure stance of an arena fighter. His unruly dark hair was long and curly, and he wore a holster at his hip. The man held a blaster.

“I’m ready for your little dance, sweetheart.” Ray had laughed as he entered the car, tormenting the little Asian girl with his words as a prelude to what he planned to do with her slim little body. But when he opened the door, the tall man had turned his head to look over his right shoulder, the fiery blue of his eye cutting through Ray as he stood there, door handle still gripped in his hand. There was a black line across the man’s forehead where a leather patch was strung to cover his left eye.

Ray heard a noise off to his right, and he looked across to see the second stranger. Ray couldn’t claim to know every person on the train, as he’d only been with the operation for two months. This was only his second go-round the loop. But he was sure he had never seen these two before. The second man stood, covering the room while the man with the eye patch spoke to the prisoners. This one was shorter, his eyes watching behind steel-rimmed spectacles, a battered fedora on his head and a heavy jacket wrapped around his wiry frame. The coat was bulky in places, stained and scuffed with spatters of ash and oil. The shorter man was holding a compact Uzi machine blaster, the long handle cutting the barrel to create a T shape. Ray watched the man raise the Uzi in his direction; the expression on the shorter man’s face was the familiar look of a seasoned chiller.

It was automatic, an ingrained survival instinct. Ray pulled the door back toward him, leaping backward and slamming it as a spray of bullets thudded into it. His footing slipped as he rushed through the next car, another cage unit full of stinking, filthy brats, a narrow walkway along the left side. Recovering his footing as he heard the door open again behind him, Ray dashed ahead, reaching for the wooden door at the front of the car, the sounds of children’s screams filling the rocking room. He dived through the door and into the next car as a burst of gunfire spurted from the Uzi.

“DAMN!” J.B. GRUNTED as he followed the curly haired sec man into the next car. The man had stumbled as he ran down the narrow corridor beside the cage, but by the time J.B. was clear of the door, the man had recovered and managed to reach the far door, placing the cage of children between himself and the Armorer.

J.B. rushed forward, sweeping the Uzi in a tight arc as he blasted shots at the receding figure of the sec man. To his right, the caged children began screaming.

“We got a live one, Ryan,” J.B. shouted, hearing his heavy footsteps as Ryan bounced into the car behind him.

Together, Ryan and J.B. dashed through the car and reached for the exit door into the next unit.

J.B. went through the door first, keeping his head low as a volley of shots from the sec man’s blaster split the air above him, thudding into the wall to his left.

Ryan dived through the door behind him and they found themselves in another storage unit, half-empty but stocked with food. The dark-haired sec man was scrambling through the tight corridor between the wooden shelves, blasting off shots behind him without taking aim. In this enclosed space and with the rate of fire his blaster achieved, the sec man had concluded that aiming didn’t much matter.

Ryan and J.B. weaved between the half-empty shelves, using them as cover. A bullet plowed into the shelf just by Ryan’s face, splintering the wood as he turned from the scattering debris. J.B. pumped off two short bursts from the Uzi, the shots splitting food packages on the shelves, tossing frost-blackened vegetables and clouds of powdered egg into the air. At the far end of the car, the sec man had reached the next door.

He turned, firing a stream of bullets behind him before jumping across the gap between moving cars and into the next unit. Ryan’s back slapped into the wall, making as small a target as he could as the bullets streaked past.

He looked across the car, seeing J.B. doing the exact same thing. The bullets raced into the far wall, bursting several more food parcels as they went.

“We do not need this,” J.B. growled.

“Agreed,” Ryan said, rushing through the car toward the door in the front. “Let’s shut the runner up and get back to Jak.”

They ran between the shelves, and Ryan took the lead as they prepared to enter the next car. A continuous tolling bell echoed through the train.

With J.B. standing across from him, Ryan’s hand reached out to turn the handle of the door when the air was split with the noise of a shotgun. A volley of buckshot thudded into the metal door, chunks of lead burst through and shook it in its frame.

Ryan dived backward, spinning as he dropped to the floor. J.B. leaped back as well, slamming himself into the wall behind him. A second round slammed into the door, and it teetered in its frame again, hunks of the metal plating disintegrating and clattering to the floor.

Ryan brought up the SIG-Sauer to cover the door as it caved inward under the force of a mighty kick. He reeled off a succession of shots at the open doorway.

There was a cry as one of his bullets met a target, and urgent voices called for calm.

“How many of them?” Ryan asked as he scrambled back to his feet.

J.B. was skirting along the side wall, skipping backward on light feet as he moved away from the open door. “Not sure, but it’s more than just the runner.”

“Fireblast!” Ryan spit.

“WHAT IS IT, OLD WITCH?” Adam asked, as the bruja drew back from noisy pain that was calling behind her.

He stood in front of her in the incense-thick car, a dark kerchief over the lower half of his face, his breath steady.

The bruja’ s head rose heavily, her dim eyes ineffectually piercing the gloomy car to see the commanding officer standing there, three paces from her table. He was so close that she might reach out and grab him, she realized, and a thin smile crossed her lips.

“Speak,” Adam urged her forcefully. He was a man of little patience, and it was clear that being around the old witch made him nervous. “Is it the project?”

The bruja inhaled deeply, taking in the incense-filled atmosphere of her car prison, feeling its dulling effect blur her senses, making the pain something different and far away. “The project, yes,” she said, her voice a screech, a whisper.

“But there’s more,” Adam said in realization, taking a step closer. He wore a large blaster in the holster at his hip, and he deluded himself that it equated to power.

But, like many things in the world of man, this was but a fleeting power, easily dismissed. The bruja’s wandering gaze stroked at the weapon before moving up his body, watching his mouth form the words. “Speak, old witch. I won’t ask you over and over.”

Suddenly a continuous ringing split the air, and Adam looked at the ceiling where the noise came from before biting off a muffled curse beneath the kerchief.

The bruja considered the space between them, insignificant now, close enough that she could grab him, rend his throat with sharp teeth and nails. And he, distracted, was more concerned with the tolling bell than the dangerous prisoner in front of him.

“Later,” he blurted, turning from the crone and striding back toward the doorway at the front of the car.

“Another,” she replied, her voice a whisper. But Adam had left and was jogging along the train’s length.

The bruja closed her ancient, rheumy eyes and concentrated on the pain that was emanating from the other, the woman who, like her, could feel the stab of the broadcast.

RYAN AND J.B. WEAVED through the food storage car as a rain of bullets split the air. Behind them, three sec men had rushed through the door from the far car, including the curly haired man with the homemade longblaster.

J.B. ducked down behind a wooden shelving unit and peppered the car with a burst from his Uzi. The sec men took cover as the bullets rent the air.

Through the smoking hole of the open doorway, J.B. saw more figures approaching, bursts of light as they fired rounds into the car.

Ryan had the near door open and turned back to put up some covering fire. He blasted several shots in quick order and felt a grim satisfaction when he saw one of the sec men’s shoulders explode in a cloud of blood and bone.

“Come on,” Ryan ordered, waiting for J.B. to cross the threshold into the next car.

J.B. leaped through the open door and sped down the narrow corridor by the side of the cage full of children with Ryan at his heels. “The doors are the weak spots,” the Armorer observed. “We could pick them off, one by one.”

Ryan started to respond, but his reply was cut short as a burst of buckshot exploded through the air. To their left, Ryan and J.B. watched helplessly as two of the caged children were struck with the deadly burst, dropping to the floor with blood streaming over their small bodies.

“Not here,” Ryan stated. This was no place for a showdown. They needed to get clear of the sequence of cages that ran through the train, get to somewhere where they didn’t have to worry about the children getting hurt or chilled.

JAK WATCHED as the door burst open and Ryan and J.B. came hurtling through.

“We’ve got a wagload of trouble following us,” Ryan told him urgently. “Keep the kids down or they’re liable to get shot.”

“Need help?” Jak asked.

Ryan nodded. “Whatever you can do.”

 “Door come off if pushed,” Jak told him. “Been offing screws.”

“Good work,” Ryan said as he and J.B. rushed down the narrow corridor by the cage. “Choose your moment wisely. We probably won’t get a second chance now.”

With that, he and J.B. disappeared into the next car.

Moments later, eight sec men filed through the car, and Jak instructed the children to stay low as the armed men passed. One of the rearmost sec men was the curly haired one who had taunted Maddie, and Jak slipped his knife from his sleeve as the man followed his colleagues along the narrow corridor and into the next car.

A moment later a ninth sec man, a straggler with blood on his shirt by his left shoulder, staggered into the car accompanied by a tenth man holding a Smith & Wesson revolver low to his body. Jak stood near the back of the cage, watching these men enter, and he hunkered low into himself, the knife hidden in his hand.

As the man with the wounded shoulder stepped in front of the cage, Jak ran at the door. He jumped off the floor, slamming high into the hinged side with shoulder and hip simultaneously. The hinges popped from their sockets, the loosened screws flying in all directions as Jak crashed into the door. The mesh gate fell forward, spinning on the bolt. The cage door toppled into the wounded sec man, the top of the door hitting his forehead with a loud crack. The sec man’s legs gave way as the door and Jak’s weight barreled into him.

As the wounded sec man stumbled backward, falling to the floor, Jak was already using his momentum to push him into the second man, the one brandishing the revolver. The albino youth’s boots raced across the falling gate as he propelled himself at the other man, and he plunged the knife in his right hand into the man’s body just beneath his sternum.

Smith & Wesson Man was pushed upward with the blow, his feet leaving the floor as the full force of Jak’s attack slammed into him. The man toppled over on the pivot of the knife, and Jak spun aside, yanking the blade free as he went. The man crashed to the ground, knocking the breath out of him as he hit the wood floor, his weapon trapped beneath him. He lurched, trying to free his blaster as Jak leaped at him again, the blooded knife in his outstretched hand.

The blade’s sharp point penetrated the man’s back, cutting through his shirt and his skin and deeply into his body, puncturing his lung from behind. Jak’s weight rested on the man’s body, holding him down as he pulled his blade free and yanked the man’s head backward by the hair. He drew the bloody blade across the man’s exposed throat, slicing deep into the flesh and ending the unfortunate sec man’s life in a horrifying second of fury.