was the middle of the track, squeezing himself down as a tornado engulfed him.
Lia jumped from her seat when she heard the explosion. But as she got up, a man came into the car firing a submachine gun. She threw herself down between the seat and the table, rolling on the floor as the car exploded around her.
The gunfire continued, the man and then another passing through the car. There were screams and then another explosion.
Lia wondered why she was still alive, why the gunman hadn’t shot her.
She was in the interrogation room in Korea, rolling and fighting them off, attacked.
But she couldn’t. For the first time in her life she couldn’t win, no matter how hard she fought.
The wind stopped. Dean remained prone against the ballast segment at the base of the tracks, the scent of burnt metal thick in his nose, his lungs choked with dust and smoke. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and at his temple. The train had seemed to scrape along the top of his back, but he didn’t think he’d been injured.
When his heart stopped pounding he pushed to get up. He slammed his head so hard that he fell down immediately, stunned; it was only then that he realized the train had stopped over him.
Finally he began to push forward, but he got only a few feet before his way was blocked; the rear power car was too low to the tracks for him to get under. There was no way around it. He tried to turn, but there was no room, and so he had to back up, working out slowly.
95
Karr pushed at the plastic lump, then felt his balance give way. He groped wildly in the air; before he could grab onto anything he smacked hard against a metal bar and began to fall in the other direction. But the cord he’d twisted around his arm pulled taut and held him.
Only for a moment. He slipped down two feet as the light it was attached to pulled away from the structure, socket and all. Tommy grabbed a cross member but lost his grip, swinging against one of the other girders and smacking his head. Blood ran down the side of his face. Dizzy but still managing to hold on, he realized the wire was now taut again. He gave it a gingerly tug, then a much stronger one, and pulled upward. He got his head even with the bomb sacks, but as he reached for them he slipped or the wire slipped and he spun into a thin ladder used by workmen when replacing the lights and doing other work. He grabbed at it, so disoriented that even with the solid foot-and handholds he thought he was falling.
The explosive packs were a few feet away to his left. When the world stopped spinning a little, Karr reached toward them, lost his balance, and slipped off the ladder. He became a disembodied head and unconnected arms, grabbing at wires and the air, pulling and punching and screaming.
One of the explosive vests flew downward, bounced off a post, and then sailed below, where it exploded. Tommy Karr saw the explosion in slow motion, gray and black particles steaming up toward him. He thought he was flying, then realized he was on the beam with the bombs. He took another package and this one he was able to heave, sending it far into space toward the gold dome. It disappeared there, and then there was another explosion from the ground, far away and yet close enough to shake him so violently he thought he was flying through the tangled steel.
The next vest sailed down but failed to explode for what seemed like hours. He grappled with a fourth and flung it, and somehow this one looked as if it exploded nearly in his hands.
Had it? The pain that had pulsated through his body left him. He felt a tickle in his neck, the light touch of a girl’s fingers stroking him — Deidre, he thought. For a moment he thought of nothing and saw nothing and felt nothing.
The moment stretched into an hour and then collapsed back on itself. When he managed to clear his head he saw he was upside down, his legs jammed against the ladder, the last explosive pack on the girder above him, just out of reach. He grabbed it on his second try and flung it as far as he could.
It burst open into a cloud of dust.
His head weighed five hundred pounds. His heart thumped like the heavy whoop of a helicopter blade.
A helicopter was five or ten yards away, hovering there.
Somebody yelled at him in French.
He vaguely understood that they were telling him not to move.
96
Mussa permitted himself a moment to gather his breath after the train had been successfully stopped by Ahmed, who had slipped into the rear power car before the bombs went off. Running through the cars with their submachine guns, Muhammad and Kelvin had killed the passengers. Mussa himself had shot the French border policeman who’d had the bad luck to be on the back half of the train.
The man had turned to Mussa at the last moment, as the blood burst in a cloud from the side of his head. The look bothered Mussa — it was the expression of a man not ready to die.
Undoubtedly he’d seen that expression often, certainly in his early days. But he could not remember it bothering him as much as now.
A test from Allah of his resolution.
The floor shuddered and a hiss rose from beneath him. Ahmed was unhooking the power car from the rest of the train. He would drive it down the track about thirty yards, providing a barrier to anyone who happened to pursue. The engine would also have a very minor role in helping to deflect the explosive blast upward, in case the yield of the weapon was less than calculated. The track communication system, which used the tracks to convey signal and other information, would be jammed from the car with an electrical interference device.
God was great.
“We are done,” said Kelvin, entering coach eighteen with Muhammad.
“The carts will be set up here. Come.”
Lia’s mind retreated as the punches landed against her. She stepped back, cowering.
Had she always been a weakling? Had she simply fooled herself into believing she was strong?
So many times she’d been faced with danger — in the Army as well as working with Deep Black — and she’d never felt fear like this, never been paralyzed.
All her life she’d lived by the belief that cowards died. She felt herself melting toward the darkness, a trapped mouse waiting to be exterminated.
Muhammad and Kelvin slammed the carts over the transom as they pulled them from the storage area where he had hidden them.
“Careful!” Mussa yelled. “Careful! One at a time. Both of you. Use caution!”
Assuming the calculations on his stopwatch were correct, they were roughly eight and a third miles from the French side of the tunnel, perfect — or as close to perfect as possible. All he had to do was set up the device.
The emergency lighting system bathed the coach a fitful reddish yellow. Mussa had night-vision glasses but opted not to use them; they were clumsy and there was more than enough light to see what he had to do. He directed the others to bring the first cart forward. One of the women they had shot lay in a pool of blood at the
