The Shroud of Heaven (15 page)
Delta 43 cleared the barricade easily, but as the rear tires hit the short wall, there was an audible snapping noise. One of the struts on the right rear wheel broke, causing it to cant outward at a forty-five degree angle. As the rear tires banged down on the pavement, the wheel on the right was no longer supplying power in a straight line. The back end turned an impossibly tight circle, pivoting on the undamaged left wheel and spun around beneath the still elevated front end. The Humvee corkscrewed in the middle of the highway and flipped onto its back with a sickening crunch.
At that instant, unaware of the second vehicle’s demise, Buttrick began his charge toward the barricade. Like the three others before, the last Humvee in the column hit the concrete divider and launched skyward. The jump was flawless, but the wreck of the D-43 lay like a turtle on its back directly in his landing zone. Because there was nothing else to do, Buttrick held the steering wheel steady as they crashed down toward its exposed underbelly.
Delta 43 was still turning counter-clockwise circles on the macadam as D-46 dropped from the sky. The two vehicles almost missed each other. Half a second earlier or later and the two Humvees would have been parallel. Instead, the left side of Buttrick’s vehicle caught the outstretched front end of D-43 as it swung around through another revolution. Delta 46 tilted sharply to the right and when the wheels on that side made contact with the pavement, the angle was enough to pull the Humvee over.
Kismet had planted his feet squarely on the floorboards and gripped either side of the driver’s backrest in anticipation of the jump, but nothing had prepared him for the violence of the landing. As Delta 46 began its roll, the doors flew open and Colonel Buttrick, overwhelmed by centrifugal force, was ripped from his seat as the Humvee rolled onto its right side. The roll continued, and the twisting Humvee moved forward and sideways at the same time, missing the stunned officer by a mere inches. An instant later, the open doors were crushed as it turned onto its left side. Kismet felt the almost irresistible tug of G-forces wrenching him toward the opening, and for a heartbeat, he saw nothing but dusty pavement. His grip failed and he slammed face first onto the roadway as the vehicle turned again, coming to a rest on its tires.
Kismet lay stunned for a long moment before daring to open his eyes. He instinctively struggled to his knees, and was mildly surprised that his body complied with only a minimum of complaint. Despite the initial violence of the wreck, he had managed to remain in the protective confines of the Humvee until most of its energy was expended. The force with which he had hit the roadway was no worse than tripping and falling onto a hard surface.
No better either
, he thought darkly as he pushed to his feet.
A few steps away, Buttrick and the sergeant were also coming around. A figure in combat camouflage snaked from the overturned D-43 and hurried over to assist their fallen comrades. Though shaken, the soldiers inside that Humvee appeared to be uninjured. Kismet absently wondered if they had been foresighted enough to buckle their seatbelts before engaging in the ludicrous pursuit. No one in Buttrick’s vehicle had taken that precaution, and to a man they had been yanked from their seats.
Delta 46 sat idle a few meters away.
Kismet stared at the crumpled, but relatively intact Humvee as though trying to divine its purpose. The engine had evidently stalled, but for all the outward damage—the missing doors and crushed fender panels—the vehicle appeared operational.
Still trying to determine the significance of the Humvee’s presence, Kismet saw movement in the corner of his eye and looked out across the field. Beyond the second concrete barricade, the stolen resupply vehicle was struggling to maintain its lead. Its left rear tire—perforated by a few lucky shots from Bravo 25’s machine gun—was coming apart. Huge chunks of black rubber were thrown out in its wake, directly in the path of the remaining chase vehicle. Though the Humvee was equipped with a run-flat rim, essentially a hard rubber tire inside the inflated outer tire, which allowed it to remain operational in exactly such a circumstance, the reduced wheel diameter cut its top speed nearly in half, especially on the loose sandy surface. Delta 44 was going to win the chase.
Kismet glanced back at the dazed survivors of the crash, then looked again at the vehicle from which he had been thrown. Responding to an undefined impulse, he began walking toward the wounded Humvee.
“Kismet?”
He heard Buttrick’s croaked inquiry, but elected to ignore it. Instead, he quickened his pace, reaching the doorless vehicle in a few steps, and slid behind the steering wheel. He searched for only a moment to locate the starter switch, and turned it all the way to the right.
A triumphant grin crossed his mouth as the engine rattled to life. Still in gear, he had only to depress the accelerator and Delta 46 was back in the chase.
Buttrick was shouting for him to stop but Kismet, full of purpose, paid no heed. He brought the vehicle around in a wide turn, taking it nearly to the center divider before turning the front end toward the outside of the road, where a second unbroken string of concrete barricades stood as a guard rail. Almost as an afterthought he pulled the seatbelt taut across his lap and locked it in place before stomping the accelerator pedal to the floor.
Though he had already endured one such jump, the perspective from the driver’s seat was different somehow. He was a little closer to the action and further from the pivot point of the rear wheels, but the real dissimilarity lay in the act of initiating a nearly suicidal assault on the barrier. As a passenger, all he had to do was hang on. Although the approach seemed to take forever, it was over in an instant. The front end was violently knocked upward and the rest of the Humvee followed. The landing on the loose soil beyond the road was less forceful than the first and Kismet easily maintained control.
He quickly located the chase by the enormous cloud of dust. Both vehicles were traveling in a straight line toward the city’s main rail yard. The Humvee driven by the assassin became visible as it made an abrupt right-hand turn, peeling off from what would otherwise have been a collision course with a line of empty freight cars, and began traveling parallel to the rail spur. Realizing he had an opportunity to intercept, Kismet angled toward a point ahead of their quarry while Delta 44 swung into line directly behind, continuing the relentless advance.
Kismet gripped the wheel breathlessly. His bid to flank the assassin had only one fatal flaw: the artificial barrier posed by the rail cars ended well short of the intercept point. However, just beyond the last car, at the point where spur entered onto the main track, a second train was moving through the rail yard at a deliberate but unstoppable pace. Once that train passed the intersection, it would close the door of escape.
The assassin evidently saw this as well. With a desperate burst of speed, Delta 42 charged ahead. As it did, the run-flat rim on the left rear tire began to come apart, scattering large pieces of rubber across the gravel near the rail bed. The vehicle swerved uncertainly, but somehow the driver managed to maintain control as it approached the end of the idle train.
Kismet saw what was about to happen but was powerless to prevent it. The assassin swerved across the spur, the vehicle fishtailing uncertainly as it bounced over the iron rails, but straightened as it crossed the mainline a whisper ahead of the advancing locomotive. The driver of D-44, once more suffering from tunnel vision, never looked away from his goal.
Kismet made an instinctive grab for the radio handset, impotently shouting: “Break off!”
The message was never received.
The train was only traveling about twenty-five kilometers per hour but its mass was relentless. It hit the Humvee broadside, nearly bisecting the vehicle, and drove it forward along the tracks. The horrifying scene was lost from view as the locomotive pushed the wreckage beyond the parked train on the branching track, but there was no mistaking the eruption of black smoke as the diesel fuel tank, warmed by the desert sun and compressed by the crushing weight of the train, reached its flashpoint and exploded.
Kismet, still shouting a warning that would never be heeded, stomped on the brake pedal, bringing the Humvee to a halt a few meters from the rolling line of rail cars. The pursuit seemed to be over.
Fired by the same impulse that had motivated him to chase after the assassin in the first place, Kismet refused to admit defeat. Flooring the throttle once more, he veered out into the open area for several seconds before coming around in a wide turn that brought him parallel to the incoming train. He eased back on the accelerator, matching the pace of the rail cars, and tried to put the pieces of his plan into coherent order.
He knew that Delta 42 was nearly on its last gasp. Once the ruined tire fell completely apart, the assassin would be forced to continue on foot. All Kismet had to do was get to the other side of the moving train and that meant he was going to have to abandon his Humvee and transfer to the train. As long as D-46 was traveling at the same speed as the rail cars, he would at least have a chance of making the transition.
He looked around for something to hold the accelerator pedal down, but found nothing. Everything not bolted in place had been thrown clear during the earlier rollover. His eyes then settled on the radio unit. While it was secured in place, the clamping bolts were easily loosed, and a moment later he pulled it free of its mount. The weight of the back-up battery inside the oblong metal box made it ideal for what he had in mind. He removed his foot from the pedal and replaced it with the radio.
That minor success was overshadowed by the fact that he was now running out of road. His course alongside the moving train was soon going to bring him to the spur where the idle freight cars were parked. He would have to make his move quickly or not at all.
The train loomed above the passenger side door and the metal rungs of an access ladder were visible beyond the opening, but Kismet did not relish the idea of trying to squirm across the interior of his vehicle in the seconds that remained. He instead sprang for the open turret hatch in the center of the Humvee’s roof and thrust himself through the opening in a single decisive jump. The driverless vehicle maintained course and speed, but he knew there was no time for delay.
His objective now seemed much further away than before. Though he was relatively close to the rolling train, there remained a distance of almost two meters between the edge of the Humvee’s roof and the rungs of the ladder. To make matters worse, the train was slowing; the engineer had thrown the brakes in a futile effort to prevent the collision with Delta 44 and the juggernaut was still steadily decelerating. The ladder Kismet was so focused on reaching was gradually falling behind him.
Throwing caution to the wind he stepped back, then took a running leap toward the train. An instant later, he found himself hanging from the rungs on the side of a tanker car. He wasn’t sure of how he had completed the leap, but there was no time to waste figuring it out or congratulating himself on making it look easy. With a deep breath, he started ascending the ladder.
Delta 46 continued to roll alongside the train, gradually pulling ahead in its race to oblivion. A heartbeat later it plowed into the parked freight cars and annihilated itself. The Humvee came apart in a spray of metal, plastic and rubber, pelting the moving train with almost unrecognizable pieces of debris. Kismet ducked reflexively as a chunk of olive drab fiberglass struck near his extended hand.
His arms were still burning from the exertion of his crazed ride on the back of the ill-fated vehicle and he felt the fatigue rapidly building to the point of failure. After heaving himself onto the catwalk that framed the oval cylinder of the tank car, it was a struggle to get to his feet. From this vantage however, he could see all but a few shadowy corners of the labyrinthine rail yard. The assassin’s vehicle was limping along parallel to the moving train, taking refuge in its behemoth shadow, the driver perhaps assuming that the chase was over. Kismet saw clearly that path that would take his foe to freedom, but wondered if the way out was as obvious at ground level. Shaking the fatigue from his arms, he took off at a sprint.
Running along the top of the moving train was disconcerting. Though he poured all his remaining energy into the effort, he felt like he was losing ground with every step. His progress along the top of the tanker remained unimpeded, but the simple truth of the matter was that the train was still taking him in the wrong direction at a pace nearly equal to his own.
At the end of the tank car, he made a relatively simple leap over the intervening distance, onto the next cylindrical body. Though mindful of the moving surface beneath him, he nevertheless went sprawling as soon as his feet touched down. Fortunately, the opposing forces of motion were in line and he did not slip from the narrow metal walkway, but another moment of advantage had gone to the fleeing killer. Kismet scrambled up and took off again.
By the time he reached the far end of that second rail car, the train had slowed almost to a full stop. His next leap was far less dramatic, and as he ran along the top of yet another tank car, the movement beneath him ceased altogether. Fatigue from his aerobic effort was settling into his legs and chest, but he pressed on, prompted to still greater exertion by the fact that he was finally getting somewhere. However Delta 42 was slowing, hampered by the ruined tire and the driver’s uncertainty about how to negotiate the maze of train cars parked on spur lines at every turn. He closed the distance on the Humvee in what seemed like only a few seconds, then continued ahead along two more rail cars before turning to face the killer.
He moved out to the edge of the catwalk, calculating the effort required to cross the distance and fixing in his mind the exact moment at which he would have to jump. There would be only one opportunity for him to make the crossing—no false starts, no second-guessing. Yet his earlier successes now filled him with confidence, overriding that instinctive fear of falling. As the Humvee crept closer, he drew in a deep breath, then let it out.