Written in Time (54 page)

The first man clambered up onto the coal car as the second man’s boots appeared on the railing. As the second man sprang from the platform to the coal car, the first man looked around, upward, toward the roof of the train car full of dead men.
 

The first man’s eyes locked with Jack’s eyes.
 

Jack triggered a round from the ‘97, firing into the left ribcage of the second man in the coal car, the one nearest to him. Dead before he fell, the second man sprawled forward into the muzzle of the first man’s submachine gun. A spray of blood belched from a jagged lacing of wounds in the second man’s back as the first man’s submachine gun fired burst after burst.
 

The first man was trying to shoot his dead compatriot’s body away from the muzzle of his gun.
 

Jack already had the Winchester’s slide tromboned, the paper-hulled empty flying past his line of sight as he fired for the first man’s head, the only target. The lower right side of the first man’s face disintegrated, and Jack’s stomach churned.
 

Automatic weapons fire stitched across the floor inches from Jack’s feet, and he jumped back.
 

The third man, still on the train-car roof, was firing down at him blindly, the submachine gun bullets cutting a random, zigzagging pattern. Jack swung the ‘97 down from his shoulder as he cycled the pump, holding the trigger back.
 

A peculiarity of the ‘97 Winchester was that, with the trigger held back, as one worked the pump, the weapon would fire. Jack emptied the twelve-gauge into the car’s ceiling, averting his eyes, feeling the sting as some of the pellets of buckshot that did not penetrate through the car’s ceiling ricocheted against him.
 

The submachine gun fire stopped for only a second, but long enough for Jack to snatch the two nearly useless .38s from his pockets and fire them out into the ceiling, toward the rear of the car.
 

Hoping to bait the assassin on the train-car roof into thinking that his adversary within the train car was moving toward its rear, Jack Naile leaped through the doorway at the car’s front, onto the platform, jumped from the platform onto the coal car, then clambered up into the damp, rocky mass that filled it. The nearest of the two dead men was the one Jack wanted, the one whose submachine gun was—presumably—fully loaded.
 

Jack glanced toward the roof of the following car. He caught a glimpse of the head of a man at the roofline’s horizon.
 

The sling from the H-K MP-5 submachine gun was cinched tightly to the dead man’s torso; there was no time to loosen it, to get the weapon free.
 

A knife was lashed to the dead man’s web gear, inverted, the Kydex sheath bound with black electrical tape. Jack snapped the blade free of the sheath and raked its primary edge across the fabric sling of the submachine gun.
 

Good thing the guy was already dead, Jack thought; the knife would have inflicted a painful wound.
 

Jack tore the weapon free of the body and hit the Heckler & Koch’s bolt handle with his left hand as he found the fire-control lever.
 

The bolt had been closed on a chambered round that flew past him; H-Ks were among the comparatively few submachine guns to fire from a closed bolt. But a fresh round chambered. Jack had fired an MP-5 submachine gun once before in his life; the weapon, like this one, had been fitted with a suppressor. But many of the characters in his novels used MP-5s, and Jack’s knowledge of the weapon was detailed.
 

No time for the shoulder stock, Jack let himself sprawl onto his back in the coal bin, holding the weapon with both hands as he tripped the trigger. The man on the roof was standing, submachine gun to his shoulder. Jack, on the other hand, was using a technique often described as “spray and pray,” pumping the automatic weapon’s trigger as fast as he could, firing three-shot bursts, turreting the weapon’s muzzle in some hope of contact with his target.
 

Bullets pelted into the coal around Jack, coal dust spraying his face and hands.
 

Jack’s expropriated submachine gun was very suddenly empty. A spare magazine was jungle-clipped beside the spent one. Mechanically, he started to make the change, knowing he wouldn’t have the time before his adversary fired again and killed him.
 

But Jack’s adversary, although he stood perfectly erect, weapon tucked to his shoulder, didn’t fire.
 

Jack blinked.
 

The third assassin’s body shuddered, collapsing into a heap, then falling away into the slipstream, swallowed by the darkness.
 

Jack breathed.
 

He seated the fresh spare magazine and got to his knees in the coal. He looked forward, toward the locomotive. A fourth member of the team, just as Jack had predicted, was clambering up from the locomotive cab, into the coal car.
 

Jack started to fire, but hesitated lest he strike the engineer, a mountain of a man swinging a wrench in an arc toward the fourth killer’s head. Jack went flat in the coal, a single burst of gunfire, bullets whistling past his head.
 

No more gunfire.
 

Jack’s submachine gun was on-line with where the fourth man had been. But the man wasn’t there anymore.
 

The locomotive engineer was fumbling dangerously with the fourth man’s submachine gun.
 

“Hey, man! Don’t!” Jack shouted as loudly as he could.
 

Then the submachine gun began to spit lead and Jack dove for what cover there was in the coal pile.
 

CHAPTER
NINETEEN
 

The train was beginning to slow, which might be interpreted by the assassins’ pickup unit as a signal to come in closer. Jack jumped from the coal car into the cab. The fourth assassin lay sprawled half inside the locomotive and half hanging down over the coupling. The fireman was dead, executed in an identical fashion to the military personnel and male secretary in the support car.
 

The engineer was bleeding profusely from his left thigh and seemed close to death, already unconscious. A closer inspection of the wound revealed that his left thigh was partially severed.
 

“Shit,” Jack hissed through his chattering teeth. He was very cold, and the adrenaline rush was leaving him.
 

Scanning the cab’s interior, he identified the lever-like throttle and began easing it forward. The train picked up speed again.
 

Turning his attention to the engineer, Jack resumed his quick triage. In the light of his flashlight, the color of the blood looked awfully dark, meaning it was very likely arterial. Considering the enormity of the wound, regardless of the blood’s color, the engineer might be dead in seconds.
 

Jack tore the bandanna from the engineer’s neck, and patched it against the most obvious bloody hole. The bandanna was instantly saturated. Jack stripped off his own vest, bundled it firmly and pressed it over the bandanna. The bleeding seemed to slow. He added the engineer’s cap to the compress. Jack released the lock on the clip that held the two submachine gun magazines in place, letting it clatter to the cab floor. Using the empty magazine and the remnants of the sling from the submachine gun, Jack started a tourniquet. The fourth assassin had a knife taped to his web gear, a Randall Model 1 by the looks of it. Jack cut the sling free of the submachine gun, tightened the tourniquet again. The engineer groaned in pain.
 

If he let go of the tourniquet, Jack knew, the engineer would surely die. If he stayed with the engineer, they would all die when the pickup team arrived.
 

There was a toolbox on the floor of the cab. Jack started to reach for it, hoping to use it as a wedge against the empty submachine gun magazine that controlled the tourniquet.
 

Jack thought he heard his name called.
 

He looked up. Teddy Roosevelt, suitcoat gone, white shirtsleeves smudged with coal dust, climbed down from the coal car.
 

“Barbarians! To kill men like that! Barbarians!”
 

“Yes, sir, except that’s an insult to barbarians.”
 

“I’m glad you were able to give them their just desserts, Jack. What can I do, sir, to assist you and this injured man?”
 

“Hold this tourniquet in place while I get Ellen and our stuff. We’ve got to lose the special car and the support car. There are explosives mounted on the roof of each of those cars. They can be radio detonated at any time. Probably soon.”
 

“Radio—like this, this Italian fellow, Macaroni?” “Marconi, sir.”
 

“Indeed. Marconi it is.”
 

“Just like television, sir, but without pictures. His invention proved quite versatile and can, indeed, be used to remotely detonate certain types of explosives. Remember to hold on to the tourniquet while I get Ellen. You may need to find additional packing for the wound.”
 

“These dead men seem to be members of some sort of military unit. They might be carrying field kits with bandages.”
 

“Excellent idea, Mr. Roosevelt. I’ll have a look.” The nearest of the dead assassins, indeed, had an individual first-aid kit. Jack opened it, took out two field dressings and applied them over the packing. There was antiseptic, but in order to have it do any good, he’d have to reexpose the wound and hasten the blood loss. “I’ll see what else I can find that might help.”
 

And Jack was moving, climbing up into the coal car as rapidly as he could, crossing to the car’s rear. He jumped, nearly twisting an ankle, but reached the platform at the front of the support car. Dodging the obstacle course of dead men and their weapons, Jack reached the rear of the car, crossed to the special and shouted, hoping Ellen would hear him and not shoot. “Ellen! It’s me, Jack. I’m coming in.”
 

Jack put his hand on the door handle and twisted, opened the door and went inside. Ellen was crouched behind the overstuffed chair with a Colt revolver aimed at his chest.
 

“Grab whatever you think Mr. Roosevelt would want out of here, and I’ll get our stuff. Hurry, kid. This car and the one in front are going to blow up any minute.” Somehow, Ellen had gotten into her dress, but he would have bet a million dollars she’d skipped the corset.
 

The engineer was dying. She hated talk of time-travel and its anomalies, but maybe this man’s death was supposed to be, or maybe time was just healing itself. With his death, the only living man from 1900 in 1900 who knew of the reality of being able to travel in time was Teddy Roosevelt.
 

After getting her, their bags and a hastily packed suitcase and briefcase for Teddy Roosevelt ferried across the coal car, Jack had gone back to the coal car, stripping the dead assassins of their weapons, ammunition and anything else useful. There was, of course, no identification.
 

With a submachine gun slung tightly at his side, he’d climbed back across the coal car one last time, to slip the pin for the coupler connecting the train cars to the coal car.
 

There was a sudden lurching of the engine and coal car, and Ellen Naile realized that both of the two trailing cars—the support car and the special—were no longer attached, the locomotive’s full force and speed unfettered.
 

As Jack finally climbed down from the coal car, he looked at her in the lamplight and smiled, holding up both hands.
 

Despite the dying engineer, his head on her lap, Ellen almost laughed, restraining herself—but barely—only out of respect for the man’s life.
 

The reason she almost laughed out loud was the recollection of a story concerning Jack’s paternal grandfather. Michael Naile, tippling when he shouldn’t have been, had lost a finger slipping coupling pins into place on railroad cars, the finger inserted where the pin should have been. Ever after that, “Mick” Naile’s lost finger was kept in a jar of formaldehyde on the mantle in his home. When Mick’s wife, Margaret, would move the jar in order to dust, he’d swear that he knew the exact time that she did so, that somehow he was able to feel that severed digit. Jack’s showing his hands after removing a coupling pin was his way of saying “Look, Ma! All ten fingers!”
 

Jack crouched to the floor of the engine, where he had piled the booty taken from the dead assassins. Teddy Roosevelt was stoking the boiler and driving the train. “The people Lakewood hired for this must have brought their own individual weapons. We’ve got one Glock 17, one SIG 228 and one SIG 226 as sidearms. Probably work internationally, with all the handguns being 9mms. We’ll give Mr. Roosevelt the SIG 226 and one of the H-Ks; I’ll hold on to the SIG 228 and we’ll keep the Glock for emergencies.” He stuffed the smaller of the two SIG pistols—the 228—into his waistband, dropping four spare magazines for the pistol into his front pants pockets.
 

“Time to give Mr. Roosevelt a crash course in use of the SIG and a suppressor-fitted submachine gun.” Jack stood up and glanced behind them. “Can’t see the two cars we uncoupled.” As he spoke, the air around Ellen seemed to pulse, and there was a roar so loud she could barely hear Jack exclaiming “Holy shit!”
 

Ellen rested the locomotive engineer’s head on the carpetbag as she sprang to her feet so rapidly that her heel snagged in the hem of her dress. Jack caught her, and she was in his arms when she looked back along the tracks. “It’s not nuclear, is it, Jack?” Ellen heard the desperation in her own voice as the mushroom-shaped fireball lit the night almost as brightly as a premature sunrise would have.
 

“No, kid. No. Just conventional. Probably semtex or an even more powerful kind of plastic explosive. But they sure used enough of it. Probably trashed the whole track under the train cars. We’ll need to find the first place we can where we can wire news of the wreck before the next train trashes itself with no track under it and wreckage in front of it.”