The lens magnified the target, making the train seem even closer than it really was. The sides of the cars were suddenly enormous, and they appeared to be passing directly in front of Jampa’s face. Although he had practiced looking through the eyepiece, the view was startling and unfamiliar. He swung the weapon a few degrees to the left, and found himself staring through a passenger window into the eyes of a young Chinese soldier.
It couldn’t have lasted more than an instant, but Jampa’s sense of time had become distorted by adrenaline, and the foreknowledge of imminent destruction. The seconds had become elastic, stretching into minutes, or perhaps even hours.
In that impossibly-frozen moment, he watched the soldier’s expression flicker from surprise, to recognition, to fear. Jampa had been a teacher of Science, before the Chinese had burned his school. He understood the workings of the human brain well enough to know that he could not possibly see and register so many details in a mere fraction of a second. It had to be his imagination, his own guilt over what he was about to do, but it seemed real. It felt real. It felt like murder.
The train window whipped past and the face of the soldier was snatched out of view, leaving Jampa to stare at the sides of the passenger cars as they careened by. His finger rested on the trigger of the rocket launcher, but he couldn’t seem to squeeze it.
His men held their fire as well. They were waiting for him to pull the trigger first — no doubt assuming that their leader had some valid tactical reason for delaying the attack.
The train cars continued to hurtle by, but the face of that soldier was seared into Jampa’s memory. He was so young. Not much more than a boy.
And then he remembered his little school in Amchok Bora. He remembered the faces of Chopa, Dukar, and his other students as the villagers had dragged the blackened bodies of the young boys from the smoldering ruin of the school. He remembered the olive green uniforms of the PLA soldiers as they had climbed into their trucks and driven away. The trucks had disappeared into the distance, and not one of the soldiers had looked back. Not one of them had spared a single backward glance for the dead and dying children, or the grief-stricken wails of the villagers.
And now, twenty meters from where Jampa stood, was a train loaded with two-hundred more uniformed thugs from the so-called People’s Liberation Army. Another load of impassive brutes, shipped down from China to aid in the ongoing oppression of the Tibetan people. More soulless burners of schools and killers of children, come to reinforce the invaders who were strangling the life out of Tibet.
A surge of heated air washed over Jampa’s face. His body recoiled slightly as the rocket leapt from its tube. He couldn’t remember pulling the trigger, or even deciding to pull the trigger, but he had obviously done it. He didn’t even know where it was aimed.
The 80mm rocket streaked forward on a thin ribbon of smoke, impacting the underside of a passenger car just above the wheel carriage.
The explosion was instantaneous, and much larger than Jampa had been expecting. The forward end of the railroad car rose above the track, shrouded in black smoke and a mushrooming ball of fire.
To Jampa’s right, two more quick ribbons of smoke announced that Nima and Sonam had followed his lead.
The passenger car, already twisting up and away from the first explosion, was blasted sideways in a deluge of sparks and the scream of rending metal. It teetered briefly on its far set of wheels, before leaving the rail completely and crashing onto its side.
The eighteen cars in its wake were still pushing forward at more than 100 kilometers per hour. Several thousand tons of linear force turned the remaining rail cars into an inertial jack-hammer, driving forward with unimaginable relentlessness.
Still burning, the damaged passenger car dug into the ground like the blade of a bulldozer, plowing up truckloads of rock and semi-frozen earth. The inexorable hand of inertia crushed the car into an accordion of fiberglass and steel.
Left with nowhere to go and still driven by the unabated force of the remaining train, the next car rolled sideways off the track, folded in the middle, and began plowing into the earth like the first car, collapsing into a mass of impacted scrap.
Relieved of most of their burden, the trio of locomotives shot ahead, trailing the mangled remains of two passenger cars.
Behind them, the derailment was turning into a chain reaction. As each car was twisted away from the rails and rammed into crushed aluminum foil against the unyielding permafrost, the cars behind drove forward and repeated the sequence. Car after car impacted and collapsed into formless wreckage.
Through it all rushed the fire. The Qinghai — Tibet railway operated at higher elevations than any other train on earth. In some places, the tracks rose more than 5,000 meters above sea level. To prevent altitude sickness for the highest portions of the journey, the train cars were pressurized like the cabins of jet airliners. Every car had its own oxygen concentrators, and its own pressurized oxygen tanks. Under the tremendous heat and force of the crash, the oxygen tanks exploded, sending enormous fireballs coursing down the length of the doomed railroad cars.
Jampa watched in silence, his ears stunned into near deafness by the unending series of impacts and explosions, his mind unable to comprehend the catastrophe unfolding before his eyes. The catastrophe he had caused.
He shook his head absently. He had wanted revenge. But not this…
Someone grabbed his elbow. He turned his head slowly. It was Nima. The old man was tugging at Jampa’s sleeve and shouting something. Nima’s words sounded like vague mumbles. Jampa couldn’t make out what the old shepherd was saying, either because his ears had still not recovered, or because his mind would simply not process human speech.
Sonam appeared at Nima’s side, gesturing and shouting as well, but his words were no more understandable.
The fog began to clear from Jampa’s brain, and the meaning of the words and gestures began to seep into his consciousness. It was time to run. The old truck was hidden on the other side of a rise a few hundred meters away. If they were going to have any hope at all of getting away, they had to go now.
The crew of the train would already be calling for help. Helicopters would come, and vehicles much faster than the aging truck. The only chance of escape was to get as much of a lead as possible. They needed to be half way to the Indian side of the border before the Chinese could put together an organized response.
Jampa nodded and allowed the expended rocket launcher to fall from his fingers. He took a quick look around to get his bearings, and began to trot in the direction of the hidden truck. After a few unsteady steps, he broke into a run, with Nima and Sonam running a few paces behind.
He was about half-way to the hiding spot when he heard a single muffled crack, like the backfire of a distant car. The sound was barely audible over the ringing in his ears. Maybe it was another explosion from the train, or even his addled mind playing tricks on him.
But when he and Nima topped the small hill that concealed the truck, Sonam was not with them. Jampa looked back over his shoulder and saw the hotheaded young fighter lying face down on the ground.
Jampa was turning to rush back toward his fallen man, when Nima seized his arm and shoved him toward the truck. Nima was shouting again, but Jampa still could not hear clearly enough to make out the words. Even so, he understood the meaning. “Go. Now. We can’t go back.”
Jampa stared at Sonam for several seconds, ignoring Nima’s unheard shouts of protest. Sonam was not moving.