Knight's Late Train (8 page)

Nothing. The children are gone. But I wonder about Mary and the kids getting past John Sites without him seeing them. I go to the
wide exterior stairway exit and look up at the slanted, double doors that open to the side of the lodge. The inside latch is undone as if someone had left through the big doors. When I try to shove the large door panels open, I find they’ve been somehow blocked from the outside, probably with the handle of a yard tool or broom.

A squeak comes from behind, and I realize someone is coming down the stairs. I quickly snap off my light, find the edge of some storage shelving and flatten against it.

It sounds like one person, possibly two, moving cautiously. Perhaps it’s John, somehow finding the strength to stand and walk. It could be a couple of the jerkoffs in the snow-camo suits coming back to finish the job they started with me. It could be the US Marshals, finally arriving.

In the next instant, a light shines in my e
yes — a tactical light much like the one attached to the assault weapon I’m carrying. I see only the end of the barrel of a gun being aimed at me, the rest of the weapon and gunman hidden in the darkness behind the bright light. I resist the urge to put a bullet in the center of the small flashlight’s LEDs. If it’s one of the snow-camouflaged jerkoffs, I hope he’ll give me an indication before he pulls the trigger.

“E Z?” a feminine voice says. “Your kids are okay.”

It’s Rillie, and the relief from what she’s said washes over me like a relaxing, warm bath.

“Thank God, Rillie. Damn good to see you,” I tell her, lowering my weapon. “Where are they?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize what had bothered me about Rillie. John Sites calls me
Ethan
instead of
E Z
. That’s because he and my father are good friends, and that’s how Doc always refers to me — never
E Z
. Doc
never
calls me E Z, yet the woman before me never met me before today, nor has she heard me referenced by anyone but my father, John Sites and possibly Specks, who all only call me
Ethan
.

“
Put the gun down, E Z,” she says. “I mean it. I actually
have
used one of these before — many times. And I use them very effectively. I’ll use this one now if you twitch the wrong way.”

I believe her. She has the drop on me. Why hadn’t I realized before this that she
wasn’t who she claimed to be. But what an act — and why? I set the M-16 on the shelf beside me.

“You know,” Rillie says and flips on the basement light. “I was going to kill you from the start. But they told
me I had one option, and they’d pay me an extra $500,000 for it. So now that the taxi ride is over, and I’ve gotten to know you a little, I’ve reconsidered. But it’s up to you.”

Someone with a white-knit ski mask
stands behind her near the stairway back to the living quarters. In the darkness behind Rillie’s light, all I can see of the person is the white knit ski mask.

“Option?” I sa
y, making sure the guy behind her could hear. “It’d better include you and all your bastard cohorts committing suicide and going straight to Hell.”

“Now shut-up a minute and think about this. I’ll guarantee you a chance to save your father, ensure your children and Mary’s safety, and you’ll get two million dollars — all for stepping back and playing along.”

“Screw you!”

She smiles. “Actually, I was hoping that would be a part of it. We can team up. These people have plenty of work lined up and very deep pockets.” She raises an eyebrow. “You even know a few of the players.”

“Not anymore, I don’t. And I don’t want any part of it. You’re trading personal wealth for thousands of innocent lives.”

“I doubt many are
innocent
. Besides, they’ve done nothing
for
me. It’s not
me
killing them, it’s fate. Fate says they die and I get rich. That’s the way of this world; I learned that at a very early age.” She grins, her eyes wide like a child at Christmas. “Come on! I guarantee we’ll have a ball — many of them, in fact!”

“
Like I said before — you can ride the prick behind you straight to Hell!” I tell her, expecting to be ushered up the steps to meet the rest of my adversaries — and maybe have a chance to turn the tables on them and find the children.

She surprises me again.

“Too bad,” she says, and before her voice stops, I hear the reciprocating
tap
of her silenced weapon on full auto, and I feel a dozen high-velocity rounds pepper my torso.

Rude Awakening

7:00 PM

I regained consciousness on the
cold concrete basement floor with my chest aching like I’d been stomped by a brahma bull. The pain in my left shoulder was a different story — sharp and intense.

The type 2A ballistic vest I w
ore was pliable and thin enough to be fairly well concealed and had prevented major damage to everywhere I’d been struck except that exposed shoulder.

Damn it!
The same shoulder I’d been shot in a couple of months back in LA — and it’d just healed up rather nicely, too.

I knew I’d find about
a dozen quarter-size bruises underneath it when I took it off. I plucked off several 9mm lead slugs that were still embedded in the dense fabric of the vest, realizing how lucky I’d been that Rillie’s Mac 10 hadn’t been chambered with full metal jacket or armor-piercing rounds. But I had no time to further assess my injuries. I smelled smoke.

After staggering to the top of the stairs
I found no trace of John Sites. Smoke poured in from the great room and darkened the ceiling of the den. I went to the opposite side of the den and into the long, hall-like mudroom that stretched from the front of the lodge, near its attached four-car garage, all the way to the back door.

From
the hallway’s front door window, I could see one of the Blackhawk helicopters lift off, while the second chopper warmed up. As the copilot of the second whirlybird stepped through the open cargo bay door and closed it, I saw no passengers inside — only the pilot.

So far,
my team
wasn’t doing too well. I’d made a couple of base hits with the guards in the back of the house, but the opposing team probably had the kids and Mary on the first helicopter and most likely Doc accosted somewhere on the hazmat train. They might even have John Sites on that first chopper, as well. And the only ally I thought I had just tried to kill me. I decided it was time to make some points.

Holding a makeshift bandage to my wounded shoulder, I sprinted to the back door and then out toward the tree line where I’d left my gear.
As long as I held my hand firmly against the oven mitt I’d snatched from next to the den fireplace and jammed under my light jacket, it made a minimal, but adequate pressure bandage. I was losing blood, but not yet enough to slow me down.

After throwing open the pack flap, I yanked out a tube a little over two-and-a-half inches in diameter and two-feet long.
As the Blackhawk chopper in the front parking lot lifted off, I extended and armed the LAW rocket launcher, placed it above my right shoulder and adjusted the sites. When the helo came into clear view and passed over the trees about 200 yards out, I aligned the sites. The copilot turned in my direction and, although I couldn’t make out his expression from this distance, I’m sure he was flushed with fear.
Been there, done that
.

I imagined the radio communication between helicopters as I aimed.
Where’d he come from? He’s got a rocket! Evasive maneuver, now!

Hoping this weapon had not been tampered with as had my M-4’s ammo magazines, I
led the chopper only five yards and aimed high, anticipating they’d pull away from me in an attempt to avoid the small, powerful rocket. As I pushed the trigger button, they made that same evasive maneuver I would have, and I was surprised to see the Blackhawk fire off over a dozen countermeasure flares in addition.

Silly
mercs,
I thought,
flares are for heat-seekers!

The first time I
fired an M72 Light Anti-Armor Weapon rocket in Marine Corps Infantry training twenty years ago, I nearly shot it into the dirt in front of me. In anticipation of the huge
bang
and fiery tail that accompanies the 66mm finned projectile, I’d pushed the trigger and leaned forward expecting what I imagined would be considerable recoil. But there had been none since the tube was open in the back, allowing for nearly no back pressure. Luckily, that button takes a firm push. After being reprimanded by the really pissed range coach, my second push launched the rocket. The shot went true and had exploded with an incredible
boom
, dead center of the stationary target 100 meters away. I’d fired an M72 rocket launcher many times since.

This was a
much longer shot, as well as a moving target, but the rocket streaked to its designated bull’s eye and caught the helicopter in the tail boom behind its cargo bay as it turned away. The explosion tore the boom from the fuselage and, without the stabilizing tail rotor, the chopper began a slow spiral into the pines.

Th
e fiery explosion that ensued made me smile.

I turned back to the fire-engulfed lodge, and a flashback ruined my
brief mental revelry. I remembered a burning house, my wife Jolene and her parents trapped inside. I remembered I was helpless. I remembered they burned to death.

In the distance, I heard another helicopter
and my thoughts were jolted thinking the Jetranger had been taken. But the dithering roar was of two very large engines on this chopper. Then, about an eight of a mile away, a CH-47 Chinook raised above the tree line, tipped its two large rotors to the north and followed the first Blackhawk.

I recalled what John Sites had told me: “They’re mercenaries — not just Americans, but … Germans, South Africans, Columbians, French, Russian.”

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

While watching
the big helicopter speed away, Doc’s beautiful lodge exploded, the force of the conflagration throwing me into the trees.

Eggbeaters Away

7:30 PM

I tossed my backpack and ruck sack into the JetRanger helicopter and climbed behind the controls
.

“Specks, you okay?” I asked the old railroader in the back seat.

He was squinting at me. “Yeah, I think. But why’d you let that little bitch bash my head into the door?”

So that was what the
thump
had been when I thought Specks had gone into shock. “Sorry,” I told him and fired up our whirlybird. “I thought she was on our side.”

“That little shit’s been trouble ever since she showed up four months ago.”

“Four months?”

“Yeah. Just after Christmas.”

“Then she never worked with Doc?”

“Not to my knowledge.
She’s mostly been training in the yards. Your daddy and me haven’t done a job apart since he come up here two years ago.”

With that info, t
he foggy picture I’d had of what was happening cleared up considerably.

“Are you good for a trip to Slaughterhouse Yards?”

Specks looked out his door window. Above the trees, not far away, were two large streams of smoke.

“Doc’s
B & B?”

“Yeah, the bi
g fire,” I told him. “The other is one of the mercs’ two helicopters. I think the first one is heading for Slaughterhouse. And, by the way, that Betty Crocker reference was about
yellowcake
. It’s highly radioactive uranium in powder form.”

“Then Doc was right
,” Specks said. “There really are folks wanting to blow up a train in Denver and kill thousands.”

“And they’re pros. They seem to have their own little army.”

“You called ‘em mercs?”

“Yeah, mercenaries. They’re not domestic terrorists. They’re both American and foreign paramilitary, hired to do a job. Putting fear into the hearts of anyone isn’t their job. They don’t care about that. They’re just in it for the money. No doubt their financiers have a different, more sinister motive.”

“Mary and the kids?”

“I couldn’t find them. Rillie said they
were okay right before she shot me a dozen times. I think they still have them and they’re on the first chopper.” I gritted my teeth. “Otherwise, they’re dead.”

“
Did you say she shot you twelve times?” Specks leaned up in his seat to look at my left shoulder.

“Yeah, but I took eleven of them in my ballistic vest.
”

“You hold on there a minute, boy.”

He scooted out the passenger door and then climbed in front alongside me. After pulling back my jacket and briefly inspecting the wound under the oven mitt, he replaced it and applied pressure.

“It’s through-and-through,” he said. “But you’ll bleed out if you don’t get it bandaged up better. You sure you’ll make it
to Slaughterhouse?”

“Got to,” I said.

“Okay, then.”

On the
chopper’s floor, he spotted Rillie’s bra — the one I’d used to cover myself with when Specks first found our helicopter back at the burnt out snow-blower consist.

Carefully and securely tying the bra
around my wounded shoulder, he smiled at me. “There. That’s one multi-use item, ain’t it?”

We lifted off
, and I kept us close to the treetops.

“You’re pretty
good with a bra, Specks. Where’d you learn that?”

“I was young, dumb and full of come once, too.
Wrote a term paper my senior year in high school about fifteen useful things you can do with a bra. My flat-chested English teacher didn’t like it, and I got kicked out of school. Had to get a GED that summer.”

“Was it worth it?”

“You shoulda heard the other kids laugh when I read it out loud in class — yeah, it was worth it.”

I remembered, “
And you were a medic in the US Army with Doc, too.”

My focus changed to a black dot growing
larger in the distance coming in from the northeast. “That’s probably the US Marshals. The storm must have passed Denver.”

“They going to Doc’s?”

“John Sites called them in.”

“Where is old John?”

“Last I saw him, he was back at the lodge barely alive and bleeding on the floor. Just before I got out and the house was totally engulfed in flames, he’d disappeared.”

“Good
ol’ John,” Specks said, shaking his head. “Don’t you want to wait for the marshals?”

“No,” I told him. “We don’t have time. Besides, they’d have too many questions
and they’d take over and push me out. You want to stay?”

“Think you can handle this better than them?”

“They’re good at what they do. But, yes. I know I can handle this better than them. I don’t have any rules to follow. I’m betting there’ll be a squad of them going to Slaughterhouse along with a Homeland Security team soon, anyway.”

Specks pulled an H&K .45 pistol from the ruck sack and was inspecting it. “Like I said, then
….” He chambered a round with the barrel pointed to the ceiling of the chopper. Then he glanced in front of the cocked hammer. “
Let’s go!
”

“Better check to make sure it has a firing pin.”

“I did. It doesn’t.”

I raised my eyebrows as I looked back at the small, aging man with thick lenses and the semi-automatic sidearm
.

“Don’t worry, son,” Specks said, his eyes enlarged behind his glasses. “I was using one of these before Doc even knew about your mama and the mailman.”

I chuckled at him. “What do you plan on using it for without a firing pin, a hammer?”

“Could. But more likely to get the jump on someone, bluff them and take their gun away.”

“Bluffing’s a dangerous game.”

“I’m a dangerous man,” he said, then
asked, “Who we got back at the yards that’s on our side?”

“The roads won’t be cleared for
a while and air traffic is just starting back up, so I suppose only Chic,” I said. “I know he can handle a magic marker.”

“You’d be surprised about Chic.”

“Oh, he surprised me, all right.”

“Was he wearing that floral
sundress again? Totally not the season for it yet.”

I smiled. “As far as
Jones and the railroad cop go, I’d guess they’ll be more inclined to shoot me than they will the terrorists.”

“Yule’s there? He’s one of your father’s best friends.”

“That’s not what he said when I came through the door.”

Specks thought a minute. “That damn Rillie and Big Deal Jones have been up to their shit again. Probably lied to Officer Dye about Doc talking behind his back. That’s what they did last time
, and it took a week for me and Doc to straighten it out. That damn ol’ Yule is as gullible as he is hard-headed.”

“I know the hard-headed part,” I said recalling Rillie’s pipe wrench to his brain bucket. “I heard he killed a hobo last year.”

“What?” Specks shook his head. “Another one of Wilde and Jones’s fabrications. Yule saved a bo’s life by pulling him outa the way of a train a few months back. That’s all I know about.”

“Rillie and Doc didn’t have an affair, either, did they?”

“Boy, if you wasn’t too big to turn over my knee, I’d give you a paddlin’ right now. You know better than to believe that crap about your daddy. He’s a one woman dog. After your mama passed, it took two years for him to even look at another woman.”

I caught a glimpse of Specks from the corner of my eye. He was genuinely upset with me.

He continued, “Mary was your mama’s best friend — helped ol’ Doc with your two young’uns and did household chores ever since your mama died. When Doc finally raised his head high enough to see all the good things he had left in the world, she was standin’ right there in front of him, and he fell in love all over again. Don’t get me wrong, he misses your mama terribly. Probably won’t marry again. But he’d never be unfaithful to his Mary.” He shook his head. “Shame on you!”

“Thanks,” I told him.
“I needed that.”

With my left hand
between the seats on the JetRangers collective lever, I twisted the throttle all the way. Within seconds we were tearing over the pines, hugging the treetops at 150 mph.

We tried ou
r cell phones several times but still didn’t have reception. And the radio only gave me static. I was pretty sure neither issue was caused by the storm, and I wondered if the mercs hadn’t knocked out every comm tower in the state.

I took out John Site’s cell and tried it and had no reception, as well. His battery was low, and I hoped it would have enough power for me to hear all of his message.

I touched the
Voice Memo
button, then punched up John’s last memo. I put the phone on speaker and laid it on my thigh for both of us to hear.

“John left a message explaining everything he knows.”

Although the JetRanger III was quieter than most helicopters, Specks had to lean close to listen.

The message began: “
I’m leaving this message in the event I don’t make it. Whoever finds it, get it to Homeland Security right away.

“Nearly two years ago,
Gervase ‘Doc’ Knight got a hold of me about some undercover work he was doing for a man known as Judge Hammer. And after carefully vetting me, the Judge thought it wise that I be Doc’s outside contact.

“
A couple months before that, according to what the Judge told Doc, the CIA intercepted “Internet chatter” leading them to believe a terrorist plot known as “Thundertrain” was being devised. The plotters were wealthy European financiers and Middle Eastern fear-mongers who wanted to keep the US on edge and give “
nuclear
” an even worse name to Americans. Besides feeding their inherent hatred for America, they felt this would be just one more step to help keep the US dependent on foreign oil. This terrorist plan involved a hazardous material emergency by rail in a major US City. The CIA narrowed it down to Denver, Colorado, and they determined the railroad being exploited was the Colorado Western Express, but they had little else to go on.

“
So Hammer enlisted Doc Knight to investigate. While Doc was snooping and pooping, I checked into the CWE and found out they were in trouble and had been for over a year. Although backed by several very rich investors, it’s mostly a family business. All were growing tired of losing money due to the larger railroads stealing their biggest customers’ business. Ever since the mining along the CWE’s route played out, they’d been struggling.

“
I happen to know one of those investors and he filled me in and kept me updated. My informant told me that when they were about to sell out at a huge loss, the CWE trainmaster named Dill Jones, also being one of the share-holders, surprised the rest of the board, telling them the CWE had won a Federal contract dealing with a secret uranium ore mining operation from a super-rich strike. He’d told them they had to keep it quiet and that the government would send them a $250,000-a-month retainer for service until the mine was up and running. After that, the Feds would follow through with a twenty-year, exclusive deal at standard shipping rates. That contract kept the CWE alive over the past two years, waiting for their big payday. Of course Dill Jones was lying his ass off. It wasn’t the US Government he was dealing with. It was the consortium of rich foreigners — ‘Operation Thudertrain’.

“By the way, Dill Jones’s uncle died in a boating accident just before the railroad
supposedly got that big Federal contract. He was on the board and had just married a young Russian he met on the Internet. Dill Jones married the woman two months after his uncle’s death. Speculation has it that Immigration wasn’t going to let her stay in the country unless she was currently married. It all sounded crazy to me, and Dill tried to keep in quiet.

“
In the meantime, Doc heard rumor that an old man had made a discovery in an abandoned and what was thought to be played-out mine in western Colorado. When he looked into it, Doc came across a newspaper account about an old prospector who died only days following his public claim that he’d found the ‘mother lode’ after an earthquake.

“Doc figured it was the
Safe Place Mine reopening because of the unusually high rail traffic setting out and picking up freight cars on that mine’s spur track. They were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies, bringing in mining equipment of all types, rock crushers, large quantities of chemicals, filters, air handlers, conveyors, steel drums, protective clothing and radioactivity monitoring equipment. When he investigated, he uncovered the yellowcake production.

“
Turns out they’d found a super-rich vein of uranium ore. Over the next eighteen months, they mined it, grinded it into particles and extracted the uranium by treating it with leaching chemicals right there in the mine. They knew what they were doing — that process yields a coarse, radioactive powder — stuff known as yellowcake. This particular ore produced an unusually high-yield, as well — over 90 percent pure.