distance between him and the Pontiac.
The Mustang coughed again. Kevin looked at the hood. No steam or smoke. It coughed again. In seconds the Mustang was sputtering, as if trying to catch its breath, the power falling off. Kevin glanced at the instrument cluster to see if the engine had overheated in the hot summer air. He gasped when he saw the gauges.
The trip odometer read 295 miles. The sputtering made sense now. The fuel tank was empty.
In his desperation to escape, he had forgotten that he’d driven home without filling up. Now he’d be lucky to make it to the freeway before the car lurched to a stop. He needed to get something between him and the Pontiac.
A ear-ringing blast startled Kevin. The train, which was 100 yards behind the Mustang, blew its air horn twice more as it approached the crossing. Kevin suddenly realized what he had to do and thought for a moment that he was crazy for deciding to do it so quickly.
The gates on the right were lowering. The barriers were long, long enough to stretch across the two lanes on either side of the road, but they left a hole about fifteen feet wide. If a car was angled correctly, it could make it through.
The Mustang continued to sputter. Luckily, the light ahead was green, letting the traffic on Westpark through. There were no cars between Kevin and the intersection. He didn’t want to tip his hand until the last possible second, so he drove as though he were going past Newcastle. Behind him, he could see the Pontiac closing the gap. The train was only a fifty yards behind him. He couldn’t be sure, but the distance looked long enough for what he planned. It didn’t really matter. He had no other options.
Just before he reached the intersection, Kevin hit the brakes and wrenched the wheel to the right. The Mustang went into a four-wheel drift with its nose pointed at the crossing. For a moment, he could see the surprised expressions on Kaplan and Barnett’s faces as the Pontiac steered to avoid hitting him. Kevin floored it, praying that there was enough gas left to get him across the tracks.
The sputtering got more violent, but the car responded, squirting through the gap in the barriers. The looming train filled the windshield, and the blast of the air horn was deafening.
Heading at an angle across the tracks instead of perpendicular to them, the Mustang careered toward the right hand curb and glanced off. Kevin was thrown against the seatbelt with the impact. Now hobbled, the Mustang limped forward, still scraping the curb. Kevin coaxed it a hundred more feet before the engine died. It took Kevin a second to realize he hadn’t been broadsided by the locomotive.
He didn’t spend time celebrating. He turned the key, hoping there were a few drops of fuel left. It was no use.
Kevin scrambled out of the car and quickly surveyed his surroundings, pausing for only a second to appraise the damage to his faithful car. It was pitiful. The broken mirrors, the crazed windshield, the bullet holes, the wheel skewed from the impact with the curb. He didn’t want to know what the passenger side looked like. He quickly put it into perspective though. Better it than me, he thought and then searched the street for a hiding place.
Kevin wasn’t heartened by what he saw. On both sides of the street, a high chain-link fence with barbed wire stretched as far as he could see before the end of the road curved out of sight a quarter mile ahead. On the left, the fence protected a electrical transformer station. On the right, construction equipment lay dormant. A sign on the fence said “Stratford Pointe — An apartment community for the future.”
He looked down the track in the direction the train was coming from. A caboose was visible in the distance. It would be there in less than a minute. They’d catch him before he could run to the next street.
Kevin looked at the low-slung train cars piled high with lumber. Through the gaps he could see his pursuers searching for him. Then he saw something which caught his attention. It looked like his best chance. He began running away from the crossing, and angled across the street, using the traffic waiting at the signal to stay out of sight of the other side. When he was sure Barnett and Kaplan could no longer see him, he headed back toward the tracks.
In front of the crossing, at the back of the line of waiting traffic, a pearl black pickup with tinted windows was stopped. Its back window and bumper were festooned with stickers with the familiar maroon and white colors of Texas A&M. Many of them said “Texas A&M Aggies” or “Gig ‘em Aggies.” Kevin had seen bumper stickers that said, “My daughter and my money go to Texas A&M,” but he’d never seen the one on the truck’s bumper that said, “I did your daughter and spent your money at Texas A&M.”
He ran up to passenger’s door, hoping that it might be less threatening in this era of carjackings, and knocked on the window. The electric window lowered to reveal a man around his age in a tank top and jeans. A gun rack was mounted on the back window, but it held only an umbrella.
“You got a problem, bud?” the man said.
“My damn car broke down,” Kevin said between gulps of air, “and I was wondering if you could give a fellow Ag some help.” He wiggled his class ring toward the man.
The man looked at the ring and a smile broke across his face. “I’ll always help another Ag in trouble. And today’s your lucky day. My dad owns a garage. Maybe I can take a look at it and see if we can’t get it fixed. Name’s Bob Tinan.” Bob leaned over to extend his hand through the window, and Kevin took it.
“Kevin Hamilton.” Through the windshield, he could see the approaching caboose thirty seconds away. “Thanks, Bob, but I know what’s wrong with it. It’s the head gasket.” Kevin jerked his thumb toward the Mustang. “It was bound to happen sometime. The only way it’s going to move now is behind a tow truck.”
Bob looked at the heavily damaged car 100 yards behind them and turned back to Kevin. “Hell, you’re probably right. No sense messin’ it up more than it already is. Come on in. There’s a gas station a couple blocks from here.
As Kevin climbed in and closed the door, the caboose passed, and he could see the Pontiac shoot under the opening gates.
“He’s in a hell of a hurry,” Bob said. Kevin bent over, pretending to tie his shoes.
“What year did you graduate, Bob?”
Bob told him and drove toward the intersection. Kevin looked back towards his car. Barnett and Kaplan were already out of the Pontiac and slowly approached the immobile vehicle, their guns discreetly held at their sides. As the pickup turned right onto Westpark and out of sight, they still didn’t realize that Kevin was gone.
CHAPTER 9
From the Transco Tower, the 800-foot-tall suburban skyscraper on the West Loop, the railroad crossing at Westpark and Newcastle was easily visible, as was most of the rest of Houston. It was one of the reasons that Clayton Tarnwell had chosen it for his vast office headquarters. On clear days, the Houston ship channel, over ten miles to the east, could be seen through the silvery towers of downtown Houston. From this vantage point, Tarnwell could survey the vast metropolis as if he owned the entire expanse. He loved to watch the expressions of visitors as they walked into the enormous office, toward the floor-to-ceiling picture window. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
Clayton Tarnwell was paying no attention to it whatsoever.
“What!” he screamed into the phone. “Are you telling me that two highly-trained, very expensive operatives couldn’t handle the simple task of bringing in a college student?”
“I think you may want to hear the entire report,” David Lobec said from his car phone. “And I recommend not discussing it any further over an open line. We can be there in less than five minutes.”
He thought about using some choice words, but trusted Lobec’s professional advice. Someone might be eavesdropping. “You damn well better be!” He slammed the phone into the cradle, then stabbed the intercom button.
“Coffee. Now. And when Lobec gets here, send him in.”
A female voice replied, “Yes, sir.”
Tarnwell picked up the loan contracts he had been studying, then slapped them down on the desk without seeing any of the words. Damn! He was so close. After years of building his small, but extremely profitable empire, he was now on the verge of leapfrogging into the ranks of the Forbes 400. Ward’s Adamas process — no, Tarnwell’s Adamas process, he corrected himself — was the key. Once he had the process patented, he would own the most
