thought had a broken back threw out an arm and tripped him. Cabrillo went sprawling and didn’t have time to recover before the guy was on him, throwing punches with abandon. There was no power behind the shots, but all Juan could do was defend himself while the train hurtled for the corner.
He felt the sudden dip in the line and knew he had seconds. He tucked his legs to his chest, managing to plant his feet on the terrorist’s chest, and in a judo move threw him over his head. The guy crashed down onto the roof on his back. Juan spun and, using his right hand to power his left elbow, drove it into the man’s throat. The crushing of cartilage, sinew, and tissue was nauseating.
The instant Juan’s fingers grasped the metal wheel, he started spinning it with everything he had. They were doing fifty on a corner meant to be taken at thirty. The brakes screamed and threw off showers of sparks as they entered the turn. Too late, Juan knew. Way too late.
The centrifugal force made the boxcar light on its outside wheels, and despite its massive weight they started losing contact with the rails. Juan cranked the brake wheel until it was locked tight. Behind him, the Pig’s engine roared with the flood of nitrous oxide Linc had dumped into the cylinders, and rubber smeared off the deflated tires when they spun against the steel tracks. The freight car’s outside wheels bumped and lifted, bumped and lifted, gaining centimeters with each judder. He wished there was some way he could communicate to the men and women inside the car. Their weight could make all the difference.
Inspiration born of desperation made Juan snatch up one of the terrorist’s AK-47s and step to the outside edge of the car. The valley stretched below him seemingly forever. He aimed along the length of the train and loosened a full magazine. The bullets hit the steel flank at such an angle that they all ricocheted off into space, but the din inside was enough to frighten the prisoners over to the opposite side of the car above the bouncing wheels.
Their weight cemented the train back to the tracks.
The boxcar shot out of the turn and onto another gentle stretch of line. Juan shook his head to clear it and was about to sit down to give his body a rest when Mark’s panicked voice exploded in his ears. “Take off the brake! Hurry!”
Cabrillo started turning the wheel to take pressure off the pads and chanced a look behind them. The road was no longer visible, the truck loaded with flying terrorists out of the picture at least for now, but farther up the line, barreling down the tracks, was another truck that had been modified to run on the rails. Unburdened by thirteen tons of train car and people, it came toward them at breakneck speed. Over its cab, Juan could see more men eager for the fight, and even at this distance he could tell they were armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
The Pig’s windshield was so badly cracked, it wouldn’t hold up to autofire, so he had no illusions what an RPG would do.
Linc had the transmission back in reverse, forgoing the low-range gears for the higher ones in hopes that the truck’s power and the rolling stock’s momentum would be enough to buy them some time. So long as they continued to sway through the gentle bends, the terrorists couldn’t take a shot.
“When’s our next tight turn?” Juan asked. He knew Mark had a scrolling map going on his laptop slaved to the Pig’s GPS tracker.
“Two miles.”
“Missiles?”
“Only one.”
“Keep it. I’ve got an idea.”
Juan raced aft, leaping from the train car onto the Pig’s roof. Linda had replaced Greg Chaffee on the M60. Chaffee was sitting down in the cargo area with Alana and Fodl. He looked spent. “The instructors at the Farm would be proud, especially . . .” Juan mentioned the name of a legendary staffer at the CIA’s training center, a name known only to those who’d gone through it.
Chaffee’s eyes widened. “You’re . . . ?”
“Retired.”
Juan popped the hinge pins from one of the cabinets built into the inside wall of the Pig. The door was three feet square and weighed about sixty pounds. He passed it up through the hatch with Linda’s help and then crawled onto the Pig’s cab. His timing didn’t necessarily have to be that good, but his luck had to hold. The train-truck was a quarter mile distant, gaining fast. Someone on it spotted Cabrillo out in the open and fired with his AK. Juan hauled up the metal door, using it like a screen, and bullets pinged off it like lead rain, their kinetic energy like sledgehammer blows.
The Pig went into another shallow curve, just enough for their pursuers to lose sight of them. Juan slid the sheet steel down along the retreating truck’s nearly vertical windshield and let go.
The metal plate hit the outside track with a ringing crash and slid for several long seconds before its lip caught a tie and it spun to a stop. It came to rest across one of the rails.
Thirty seconds later, the truck showed itself from around the corner. It had to be doing sixty miles an hour. This time the Pig was too tempting a target for the men with the RPGs, and several made ready to let fly.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE DRIVER OF THE HYBRID TRAIN-TRUCK HAD JUST SECONDS to react, and in saving his life he saved Cabrillo and the others. He spotted the piece of sheet steel sitting on the track and recognized immediately that hitting it would cause a derailment. Stomping the brakes, he yanked a lever on the floor next to his seat. Hydraulics raised the train wheels that sat just inside the truck’s regular tires, and as the wheels tucked under the chassis the outside tires made contact with the railroad ties.
Between the brutal deceleration and the staccato impact of running over the raised ties, the gunmen leaning over the cab readying their RPGs had no chance to accurately fire. Rocket contrails arrowed away from the truck in every direction—skyward, where they corkscrewed like giant fireworks, or into the valley below, where they detonated harmlessly in the desert.
The truck bounced over the metal plate, and once they were clear the quick-thinking driver had to slow even further in order to mate the steel train wheels with the track once again.
Cabrillo’s idea had gained them only a half mile or so, not the outcome he had hoped. The next tight corner was
