With a running start, he probably could have easily leapt to the next roof, but there seemed no pressing reason to tempt fate. Instead, he lowered himself slowly down to the ledge and again stepped cautiously over the coupling.
As he did, something flashed through the air above his head.
He did not see it so much as sense it, and as soon as he looked and saw nothing, his rational mind tried to dismiss the experience. It could have been anything…probably was nothing…but the animal part of his brain — that evolutionary holdover instinct that raised gooseflesh on the back of his neck and set his heart to racing — was unconvinced. Although still moving with painstaking care, he felt a new urgency as he began climbing up the container door.
As soon as his head rose above the roofline, he saw the figures — two of them, white robes whipping furiously about their bodies — striding forward down the length of the car, bent forward in defiance of the headwind. Evidently, Leeds’ goons had seen them hop the train, and at least a few of them had managed to follow suit.
“Damn!” The wind snatched the muttered curse from Kismet’s lips. He inched up onto the roof, staying flat, and drew his Glock from its holster, as the two creeping figures reached the far end of the car. Higgins and Annie were up there somewhere, waiting for him and completely unaware of the trouble headed their way.
He was about to rise to his feet, intent on giving chase, when a strong hand grabbed one of his ankles and yanked him from the roof and into the crushing darkness between the cars.
Annie widened her stance as the train rocked into a curve and nearly caused her to lose her already tentative footing. She gripped the side of the military truck secured to the flatcar which she and her father had boarded only a few minutes earlier and waited for the sensation to pass.
She gazed once more into the darkness, down the serpentine line of cars behind them, and wondered aloud. “What’s taking him so long?”
They had both seen Kismet make it aboard the train…or to be more precise, they had seen him charge up the sloped rail bed before vanishing from sight. They had continued watching, but he had not reappeared, which probably meant that he was aboard, but could also mean that he had slipped and fallen onto the rails, and been subsequently sliced apart by the steel wheels.
No, she told herself. He made it. We made it, and it wasn’t that hard…so he made it too.
But if he had made it onto the train, where was he?
“We should go look for him,” she decided, shouting to be heard over the din.
Her father gave a perturbed look, but then nodded his assent. With one hand still resting against the exterior of the truck, Annie began moving toward the rear of the train, intent on finding Nick Kismet. She had only gone a few steps however when a strange white shape appeared atop the shipping container on the car behind them. It took a moment for her to register what she was seeing, a moment in which the cloaked figure abruptly launched into the air, white robes fluttering like moth wings, and came down squarely on the flatcar, just a few steps away.
Higgins saw the unexpected arrival and immediately brought the barrel of his rifle around, but before he could attempt to aim the unwieldy weapon, the intruder raised a handgun of his own and let lead fly.
The report of the pistol was muted by the rush of air, sounding about as loud as a door slamming. Annie hit the flat deck and hastily rolled under the tall wheels of the military transport. She expected to hear her father’s rifle thundering as he returned fire, but to her surprise, he hit the deck and rolled beside her, shaking his head in frustration. He gripped her shoulder and then pointed to the forward end of the car. “Go!”
She didn’t argue. Scrambling away on hands and knees, she quickly reached the end of the car. The rush of air moving past caught away most of the sounds from behind her, but there were at least two distinct voices shouting to each other; the gunman wasn’t alone. She gazed ahead, to the next car in the train — another flat car — and mentally rehearsed what she was going to do next.
Like a sprinter off the block, she sprang to her feet and launched herself forward, over the gap between the cars. There was no hesitation in her stride; perhaps on some level she was trying to compensate for her earlier episode of claustrophobia, but she was confident of her ability to make the jump, even working against the train’s forward acceleration. She touched down lightly and caught herself with outstretched palms against the front end of another military truck. She skirted around the vehicle and made for the next car in the line, intent on putting even more space between herself and the gunmen.
A rush of movement and a faint tremor beneath her feet alerted to the presence of another person on the car, and she shrank instinctively against the truck as if trying to melt into its exterior.
“It’s me,” Higgins rasped. “Can’t get a shot. Keep moving.”
He didn’t need to explain it to her. The Kimber was a devastating weapon, but its long barrel made it unwieldy in close quarters, and to make matters worse, it only had a five round magazine. The only option that made any sense was to fall back and find a more defensible position, where the rifle’s lethal accuracy and potency could be used to best advantage. On a linear battlefield like the train, that meant just one thing: get as many cars as possible between themselves and their attackers.
And Nick?
The thought was there before she could stop it from forming, but she pushed it away. Either Kismet was still alive and still in the fight or he wasn’t, but there was nothing she could do to help him right now. She pushed away from the truck and started moving again.
She leapt to the next car and this time kept going, nearly at a full run. She danced over the tie-down straps, but as she reached the forward end of the car, she saw that the next car was different. It had a rectangular silhouette, but there was a platform at its rear surrounded by what looked like a low fence. Adjusting her stride just a little, she made the jump, catching herself on the barrier, and then clambered over it onto the platform. In the darkness, she could just make out a door, but in the moment that she grasped the latch handle, she heard something hit the rail behind her.
She whirled to find her father, clinging to the fence and struggling to regain his footing. Gripping his shoulders, she managed to steady him and then helped him over. When he was safely beside her, he turned and aimed the rifle into the darkness, looking for a target. With a nod, she fell back to the door and tried the handle. The door swung open, spilling light from the interior.
“Got it,” she cried. “Come on.”
Not waiting for a reply, she charged into the car, Higgins right behind her…
The car was full of men — armed men — and as she skidded to an abrupt halt, half a dozen gun barrels swung up to greet her.
Kismet’s next thought was of pain.
He had flung his arms out instinctively, desperate to grab ahold of something to keep from falling into the gap between the cars or perhaps simply to regain some sense of which way was up. Then, he hit the heavy steel coupling and for a moment, experienced a supernova of pain. The metal knuckle caught him in the abdomen, punching the wind out his sails.
At some primal level, his initial instinctive response saved him, for even as the impact knocked his breath away, his arms curled around the coupling with the intensity of a vise. There was no conscious involvement; agony superseded all voluntary actions. Yet, even as the torment began to recede, a new eruption struck. A blow, then another, not as intense as his crash onto the coupling, but more focused…someone was hitting…no, kicking him.