As he landed on the floor he realized the terrorist had retreated. Dean jumped up and ran to the end, breath shallow, blood spurting from his head. He spun himself around the bend to the floor, ready to fire but not shooting this time. He had to conserve his bullets.
He waited a breath, two breaths, then began moving forward again.
Maybe the other man was out of bullets.
Why was he still in the train? And what were the boxes there for?
Another bomb.
Maybe the man was running to set it off.
As Dean reached the end of the coach he threw himself around the passage, diving headfirst into the other car. Dean began to run, racing through the coach. But as he sprang into car seventeen the air around him exploded with ricochets and shrapnel. He fired down the aisle of the car, the MP-5 shaking and then stuttering as he dove straight down to the floor, rolling and crawling and pushing behind the seats.
He was out of bullets.
Dean waited. When the terrorist didn’t come, he slid toward the aisle, gun-first. A fresh fusillade drove him back.
Sure that the man would be coming for him, he pushed against the bottom of the seat cushion, coiling his body, ready to spring out.
He’d use the gun as a battering ram, hope that he’d be lucky, or lucky enough not to be killed.
When the man didn’t appear, Dean told himself to wait — then changed his mind and slid the gun forward.
More rounds spat through the car, ricocheting and slapping around him. The seats were thick and the gunman had no angle, but the fact that Dean hadn’t been shot yet was due largely to the gunman’s inexperience — if the terrorist had been trained better, he would have held his fire and closed the angle down patiently, relentlessly, seat by seat.
Dean glanced across the aisle at the acrylic shelving. He could see a reflection — the terrorist, lying at the end of the car, gun poised.
Why was he on the floor out in the middle of the aisle?
Dean slid his gun forward into the aisle. Another few rounds, poorly aimed.
There was only one reason he’d be on the floor — he’d been wounded so severely he couldn’t move.
But he had Dean pinned.
There were several bodies blocking anything but a shot from the aisle.
Dean climbed up into the seat, hunkering and gathering his breath. With a sudden heave he threw himself over the top of the chair, flying into the next row. The gunman didn’t catch on until Dean hit the cushion on the other side.
More gunfire — and then nothing, a click, the gun empty, a curse.
Had he heard that? Or did he want to hear that?
Dean jumped to his feet.
107
The gangway of the power car was claustrophobic and smelled like a burnt transformer. Ahmed sat in the engineer’s plush velvet seat and pushed the levers. The transformers behind them began to hum.
It was theoretically possible to escape at least the blast — they had less than ten miles to go and just over ten minutes to do it. They’d have to clear the tunnel by a good margin to escape the blast, but it was possible.
Did he want to live?
Allah was offering him a choice. If he escaped he might have other triumphs.
Or he might be captured. More likely the latter.
The train stuttered forward.
God wasn’t offering him the choice; the devil was. Mussa reached toward the red brake switch on the left. As his fingers reached it, he threw his body against Ahmed’s head and arms, grabbing for the gun with his other hand.
108
Rubens jerked around as the voice came through the loudspeaker.
Lia, talking to the British authorities via the emergency phone system in the maintenance section of the Chunnel.
“They’ve split the train in half and separated the engine from the back half. There were at least two of them. Everyone in the back half of the train is dead. Cut the power. Stop them from getting away.”
“Can we talk to her?” Rubens asked.
“We should be able to cut right in,” said Telach. “Lia?”
A British operator asked who was interfering — then the line clicked and he was gone, his voice erased by the Art Room’s computers.
“Lia?” repeated Telach.
“Marie, are you on the line?” answered Lia, her voice fainter than it had been before.
Rubens punched his mike button. “Lia, this is Rubens. The terrorists have assembled a nuclear bomb on the train. I want you to talk to one of our experts on how to defuse it.”
“Are you serious?”
“I assure you I am very serious.”
109
Dean took three steps and then dove as the man brought up a pistol from his side. The gun went off close to Dean’s head. He grabbed for it, managing to push it to the side as it fired again. Something burned the right side of his thigh, the pain so intense Dean yelped.
He waited for the next shot. Paralyzed by pain.
It didn’t come. Dean hadn’t been hit by the bullet but rather fragments of the man’s skull, shattered as the 9mm shell entered his head.
Blood dripped down his pants as he stood. He bent back down and grabbed the pistol, then began making his way to the car where he’d seen the carts clustered together.
110
Lia listened as the weapons expert explained how he thought the bomb would work — a set of conventional explosives would force the nuclear material together, creating a critical mass and triggering the atomic chain reaction. It was essentially the way early nuclear bombs worked, or at least one type of them, ever since “Fat Man” had been detonated over Nagasaki.
“Depending on the design, the warhead may not be in the exact center of the assembly. From the formula I saw, they had to compensate for the lack of proximity to the plutonium by layering the explosions, probably because they couldn’t be sure of handling the material in a way—”
“Just tell me how to disarm it,” Lia told him.
