“No thinking. Have you got it?”
“Yes.”
“If you haven’t got time to pass it to Danny or me, just tuck the butt under your right arm, hold it tight, and fire like you’re aiming a hose. It’ll jump high on you, but don’t let it frighten—”
“Quiet!” It was Danny. There was a noise like a faucet turned full on. The horse was urinating on the track.
“For Chrissake,” Murphy cussed. “Rude bastard! Nearly crapped myself.”
“Trang,” Danny said, “you move up ahead about twenty-five yards. Shirley back the other—” They heard the distant whistle of a train, and it reminded Mellin just how far they were from the border, given that the PLA engineer on the train could still sound his whistle without announcing it to the enemy soldiers on the border thirteen miles away. “If we succeed, each goes his own way, but get away from the line fast! Remember to head south.”
“What if it isn’t a supply train?” Murphy asked as he took the Makarov pistol, and Trang and Shirley, now on foot, walked in opposite directions down the track. No one had answered him, each intent on his or her task.
Danny Mellin handed Murphy a two-foot-tall T-socket wrench, the top of the T being the handles, the bottom of it a socket that fitted over the screw bolt that held down the tie and bracket up against the rail. When a screw bolt was taken out, the tight steel wedge between the tie bracket and the rail could be knocked out with a sledgehammer.
“We won’t use the hammer till we’ve taken all six screw bolts out,” Mellin explained. “That way we make all the noise as the train gets closer — use its noise to cover our noise.”
“Bit bloody dicey, isn’t it, Dan?”
“You got any better suggestions?”
“Yeah, blow the fucker up. Y’know, like the movies. A pack of TNT and the little plunger box.” They heard the whistle coming closer.
“Keep working on those screw bolts. Three to go. Hurry!”
As Danny hit the first wedge and knocked it out, it sounded as if it’d be heard for miles.
“Christ!” Murphy said.
There was the sudden chatter of a submachine gun. Danny hit another wedge.
“Christ!”
“Shut up, damn it!” Danny said, and hit the wedge again before it came out.
The whistle sounded shriller now and they could see a shape coming at them. There was a woman’s voice. Shirley.
“What the—” Murphy began.
“The— A guard back there was coming up the track! I shot him.”
“Good girl!” Murphy said.
Danny was hitting the fifth wedge, not even looking up. “Mike, throw those bolts to hell and gone.” As Murphy did so, Danny hit another wedge and it shot out. They heard firing from Trang’s direction farther on but knew — or prayed — it wouldn’t be heard over the mounting rumble of the train about a half mile off now. They heard Trang — they assumed it was Trang — firing again.
Danny hit the last wedge and it wouldn’t budge. He was exhausted. They could hear the train coming up the straightaway before the bend that was the culvert. Mike grabbed the sledgehammer and hit the sixth wedge and it was out.
“Run!” Danny gasped. “Run!”
Somebody, perhaps the engineer or fireman, might have seen something wrong up ahead, but the yellow slit-eyed headlight showed only the shape of Trang’s horse as it took off down the culvert between the tracks. As Shirley, Danny, and Murphy clawed their way frantically up one side of the embankment they could hear the pained metallic squeal of brakes being applied and see rushes of bright, golden sparks. But by now the locomotive’s wheels had reached the loose rail and immediately plowed off the track into the stones, the headlight slamming into one side of the culvert even as the locomotive’s wheels were frantically reversing in a futile effort to stop the train. The locomotive was now at a more acute angle to the track, the long string of boxcars and wagons telescoping into one another and climbing higher and higher on one another so that the great pile of wrecked cars formed a logjam, as it were, from one side of the culvert to the other. Already several cars were alight from the spilled fire of the locomotive.
The flitting shadows of guards could be seen, some approaching the enormous rubble of overturned cars, and once they realized the train’s cargo was about to cook off, turning and running down the culvert as fast as possible.
There was an enormous orange-red, fireworks-like display as Kalyusha and 90mm rockets went off, followed by a sustained roar made up of tens of thousands of Black Rhino going off, the culvert, because of its tunnel-like shape, a natural conduit for the force of the multiple explosions. Trang disintegrated in a hail of Black Rhino splinters, his blood vaporized to a fine mist, and amid all the noise, screams, and chaos of PLA bodies and supplies toppling out, the only thing Danny Mellin could hear and didn’t want to was the distraught neighing of the horse cut down by shrapnel and lying helplessly somewhere on the track. If he could have, he would’ve gone down to finish it off, but by now the area in the culvert was swarming with dazed troops, their officers yelling, adding to the confusion of the wreckage.
A parachute flare shot out of the burning culvert, and now the full extent of the derailing could be seen to have surpassed Mellin’s wildest expectations. It would take the PLA days, at least, to get a rail crane up from Ningming, and even with the number of troops Wei had at his disposal, it would take days to clear the culvert, let alone get another train through.
As Danny Mellin, Shirley, and Murphy headed south through the sodden fields, they were exhausted, their adrenaline used up in stopping the train, and weakened by the effort They stopped for a while to rest, and Shirley searched her baggy, sodden PLA uniform for any rations, but found only a mush of wet tobacco and rice paper.
“Don’t worry,” Danny advised them. “Dehydration’s the problem, and we sure aren’t going to die from thirst”
“You can eat the eucalyptus leaves,” Murphy said.
“You sure?” It was Shirley, feeling a lot calmer now in her mind but very shaky, and suffering from a stunner of a headache from lack of food.
“Eucalyptus leaves?” Murphy said. “Sure I’m sure. Koala bears live on ‘em.”
“Koala bears look pretty dopey,” she said good-naturedly, then suddenly fell quiet. “I hope he didn’t feel much.”
“No,” Murphy said. “I mean, he wouldn’t have felt a whole car of ammo going off like that.”
“C’mon,” Danny said, “let’s try to make as much mileage as we can tonight. There’ll be Chinese swarming around here tomorrow once they figure out the line was sabotaged.”
“How far south, Danny? As the crow flies.”
“Ten, eleven miles.”
“Christ!” Murphy said. “Didn’t figure we were that close.”
“Much longer if we kept to the rail tracks.”
“We’re practically home, mate.”
“That’s just the border,” Danny informed him. “Then we’ll have to work through to our lines, wherever they are.”
“Oh ye of little faith!” Murphy joked. Despite his fatigue, he was still high on the rush of stopping the train.
“Pipe down,” Danny cautioned.
“Right,” Murphy said, carrying the PLA rifle, giving the Makarov to Shirley. Now they could see a saffron glow, blurred by the rain, hanging suspended like an enormous upturned bowl of flames over the culvert.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
