Karen coughed, choking. The car was now full of smoke as well as gasoline fumes. Train was coming back over the seat, his shoes crunching on shards of glass as he fumbled for the knife., He banged away at one comer of the - glass with the butt of the knife and then cut a line through the plastic skin covering the window aperture. Karen crouched low in the backseat to get away from the smoke and the gasoline fumes, fighting the urge to scramble past him and out that hole.
Suddenly, the air above her head cleared and she looked up. Train was slashing at the rubbery coating now, making the hole bigger. Then he leaned back down into the backseat.
“Give me the Glock,” he said. She passed it up to him, and he stuck his head and fight hand out of the hole. Immediately, he ducked back down.
“Forgot. Can’t see.
Everything’s still purple. You look.”
She squeezed up against him in the space between the front and back seats, poked her head out of the hole in the rubbery substance, -and looked around. There was only the pale stripe of the gravel road cutting through the dark woods. The other car was gone. But the stink of gasoline was even stronger outside. She ducked back down into the car.
“Looks clear,” she said. “But there’s definitely gas pooling somewhere.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll boost you through the window.
You cut the stuff off the door, ‘cause there’s no way I can fit through that window.”
She nodded, handed him the Glock, and squeezed her head and shoulders through the hole. He hunched down on the right-side door, wrapped his arms around her legs at the knees, and straightened up. She felt like a Polaris missile coming out of that hole, and she promptly lost her balance as she scrambled to find a handhold, finally grabbing the edge of the luggage rack on top of the car. She tore her skirt sliding over the bottom edge of the car but landed on the gravel more or less upright. Train popped his head and one arm out of the hole right after her and gave her the knife.
In order to free the front door, she had to climb back up on the side of the car to cut away the rubbery dull white film covering the whole left side of the ear. The film was thin but very strong, and it would not peel off the side of the car, so she had to cut through to the seam of the left-front door before being able to yank it open. The rubber clung to the door like a shroud.
Train climbed out, and together they scrambled wordlessly around the front of the car. But just as they started up the hill, they heard the sound of the car phone ringing.
They looked at each other. The phone rang again.
“Who the hell-” Train said.
“Mcnair. I’ll bet it’s Mcnair. We called him, remember?”
“But-“
“There must be a signal now,” she said. The phone rang again. Karen handed him the knife and ran back around to the side of, the car. But there was no way to reach the phone inside without climbing back up on the side of the car.
Train was about to help her when something at the back of the Suburban caught his peripheral vision. A whiff of smoke? A tiny white object, back by the bumper. Purplewhite. Fverything tinged with purple. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them, desperately trying to see as he moved carefully toward the back, of the car. Karen was stretching, trying to lean into the car.
“Karen, wait a minute,” he called as the phone rang again. And then he froze when he recognized what was on the rear bumper. A lighted cigarette was dangling from a string tied to the bumper, about eighteen inches over the shimmering puddle in the ditch. The ash had burned almost back to the string.
“Karen! Karen! Get, out! Get away, now!” he shouted, and then began to backpedal sideways across the hill, trying to get to her.
Karen had been halfway into the hole in the driver’s window when she heard him yelling. She turned, saw the look on his face, dropped back off the car, and bolted up the bank, where Train grabbed her. Together, they scrambled up the hill. An instant later, the car exploded behind them in a bright red-and-yellow fireball. They both hit the ground as the hot compression wave seared the night air over their heads, and then bits of hot metal and flaming plastic were’ clattering around them on the wet hillside. Down on the road, the remains of the Suburban burned furiously, hot enough to keep them backing UP the hill, hands held by the sides of their faces to ward off the intense heat. The road and the surrounding trees were thrown into stark visual relief in the yellow-orange glare. They stopped, about fifty yards up the hill and sat down in the underbrush.
Karen examined her torn skirt, ragged stockings, and uniform jacket. “Remind me never to go parking with you in the woods again,” she muttered.
Train grinned weakly in the firelight. “Well,” he said, “I try to give all the girls a hot time. The good news is that fire ought to bring somebody..”
“The good guys this time, I hope,” she said, trying to cover her thighs with the tom skirt. “I’ve got to go buy some fatigues if you and I are going to keep seeing each other like this.”
He grinned again and put -his arm around her. But then he grew serious.
“We were lucky. Very damned lucky.
Again.” He described the cigarette hanging off the bumper.
“It’s the oldest time-delay fuse in the business, and it leaves no trace. Once the cigarette burns back to the string, it drops.
In our case, into that ditchful of gasoline.”
“Then he meant to kill us this time.”
“No doubt in my military mind,”
Train said, shifting his bulk in the grass. She noticed for the first time that there was a cut on his forehead. Down below, the burning hulk was settling now as the frame deformed and bits of the interior fell out onto the road. The hood popped open as they watched, revealing several glowing engine components. The night breeze was raining soot all over the hillside where they crouched under a small tree. Finally, the fire began to diminish.
“How did he know where to find us?” Karen said.
Train rubbed his eyes and thought about that. It had to be the phone lines at his house. Mcnair had described where the hospice was, and he’d also intimated that Sherman would be there, that they would all be there. “He got it from Mcnair’s phone call. My phones must be tapped.”
Karen nodded in the flickering light, knowing the feeling.
Then she realized what had been tickling the edge of her memory. “That stuff-on the windows. I know what that is. It’s that plastic compound they were using to cover that helicopter-at the Quantico air base.”
Train looked at her and swore softly. A jet of intense n-orang I e flame hissed out of the engine compartment en the fire found the air conditioner’s Freonflask. Karen shivered in the wet darkness.
“So young Jack Sherman did his old man another little favor,” she said.
“He said he’ would. I wish I’d shot him when I had the chance.”
Train squeezed her hand. “Mcnair will have to move now. After this.”
Twenty minutes later, they heard a siren approaching, and then a second one. Train got up, helped Karen get to her feet, and put his arm around her. They began to walk sideways down the hill, keeping their distance from the burning hulk. The distant flickering of blue and red lights over the trees was a welcome contrast to the glowing metal carcass on the road.
Three hours later, they were in Mcnair’s car, headed back Washington.