Michael lowered his feet to the floor and let go of the chandelier. Blue gunsmoke drifted around him. One glance at the wrecked seats told him what the shotgun would’ve done to his knees. Crippled, he’d have writhed on the floor until Sandler arrived.
He heard the whoosh of the door opening at the far end of the car. He looked back. Sandler, wearing a khaki hunter’s outfit, lifted his rifle, took aim, and fired.
Michael was already diving to the floor. The bullet sang over his left shoulder and thunked off a shuttered window.
Before Sandler could fix his aim again. Michael leaped up in a blur of motion and crashed headlong through the door at his end of the car. A soldier was there, as Michael had expected. The man had a pistol in his hand, and reached down to grasp the back of Michael’s coat and pull him to his feet.
Michael didn’t wait for the man to haul him up; he sprang up under his own power, slamming the top of his head against the soldier’s chin. The man staggered back, his eyes wide and blurred with pain. Michael grasped the man’s wrist, keeping the gun turned aside, and struck with the flat of his hand upward against the sharp Germanic nose. The soldier’s nose shattered, the nostrils spraying blood, and Michael grabbed hold of the Luger and slung the man away from him like a sack of straw. He whirled around, looking through the door’s small glass inset. Sandler was more than halfway down the aisle. Michael lifted the Luger to fire through the glass and saw Sandler stop in his tracks. The rifle barrel was coming up. Both guns went off at the same instant.
Splinters of wood exploded around Michael, just as fragments of glass flew at Harry Sandler. What felt like a burning brand kissed Michael’s right thigh, and the shock knocked him to his knees. The door’s glass inset was gone, and there was a hole in the wood the size of a man’s fist where Sandler’s bullet had passed through. Michael fired again through the door, and was answered a few seconds later by another rifle slug that threw a shower of splinters and hit the wall over Michael’s head. This was a dangerous place to stay. Michael got up in a crouch, one hand pressed to the spreading crimson stain at his right thigh, and backed through the next door into the car ahead.
The clattering roar of the train wheels made him turn. The car he stood in had no floor; it was just a metal-shuttered shell, and Michael stood on the edge looking down at the speeding blur of the railroad tracks. Above his head an iron pipe attached to the ceiling went the length of the car, sixty feet or so. There was no way to the other side except hand over hand on the pipe. He looked toward the bullet-pocked door he’d just come through. Sandler was waiting, biding his time. Maybe one of the Luger slugs had hit him, or maybe the glass had blown into his face. It occurred to Michael that his best chance to get off this madman’s leviathan was to continue to the locomotive and gain control of the throttle. If Sandler was gravely wounded, the soldiers would probably pick up the hunt. In any case he couldn’t wait here very much longer; the rifle bullet had nicked a groove in his thigh, and he was losing a lot of blood. In another few minutes his strength would be a memory. He pushed the Luger down into his waistband and jumped over the rushing rails, locking his hands around the iron pipe. His body swung back and forth, warm blood creeping down his right leg. He started along the pipe, reaching out as far as he could with one hand before he let the other one loose.
Michael had made it past the midpoint when he heard, over the thunder of the wheels, the staccato bark of a high-powered rifle. The bullet hit the ceiling about six inches to the left of the pipe. Michael twisted his head, saw Sandler in the doorway behind him, chambering another round. Sandler was grinning, his face streaked with crimson rivulets from glass slashes. He lifted the rifle and took aim at Michael’s head.
Michael held oh with one hand and wrenched the Luger from his waistband. He saw Sandler’s finger on the trigger, and he knew he’d never get a shot off in time.
“Drop it!” Sandler bellowed over the noise. “Drop it, you son of a bitch, or I’ll blow your damned head off!”
Michael paused. He was calculating in inches and fractions of seconds. No, he decided; Sandler’s next bullet would hit its mark before the Luger could fire.
“I said drop the gun! Now!” Sandler’s grin had become a twisted rictus, and blood dripped from his chin.
Michael’s fingers opened. The Luger fell onto the rails, and was gone.
“I got you, didn’t I?” Sandler shouted, looking at the dark stain on Michael’s thigh. “I knew I got you! You thought you were smart, didn’t you?” He wiped his forearm across his face and stared at the crimson that smeared it. “You made me bleed, you son of a bitch!” he said, and Michael saw him blink dazedly. Glass shards glittered in the hunter’s face. “You’re a real card, Baron! I thought for sure the knife would get you! And the shotgun… that usually finishes the hunt! No one’s ever made it this far before!”
Michael grasped the pipe with both hands. He was thinking furiously, cold sweat on his face. “You haven’t got me yet,” he said.
“The hell I don’t! One squeeze of this trigger and I’ve got a new trophy!”
“You haven’t caught me,” Michael went on. “You call yourself a hunter?” He laughed harshly. “There’s another car to go, isn’t there? I can make it through whatever you’ve got in there… wounded leg and all!” He saw new interest-the thrill of the challenge-flare in Sandler’s eyes. “You can shoot me right now, but I’ll fall to the rails. You won’t take me alive… and isn’t that what it’s all about?”
It was the hunter’s turn to laugh. He lowered his rifle and licked blood from his lips. “You’ve got guts, Baron! I never would’ve expected such guts from a tulip sniffer! Well, we’ve both drawn blood, eh? So we’ll call the first round even. But you won’t make it through the next car, Baron; that I promise you.”
“I say I will.”
Sandler grinned fiercely. “We’ll see. Go on. I’ll give you sixty seconds.”
Michael took what he could get. He continued along the pipe. Sandler shouted, “Next time, you’re meat!” Michael reached a small platform in front of the next door and swung himself down onto it. The soldier who guarded the entrance to the final car stepped back, out of Michael’s reach, and motioned him on with a gesture of his gun. Michael glanced back, saw Sandler sliding the rifle strap around his shoulder in preparation for crossing the pipe. The final car awaited, and Michael entered it.
The door closed behind him. Its glass inset was painted black. Not a trace of light entered the car; it was as dark as the blackest night. Michael looked for shapes before him-furniture, light fixtures, anything to tell him what lay ahead-but could make out nothing. He held his hands out in front of his face and stepped forward. Another step. Then a third. Still no obstructions. The wound at his thigh was a dull throb, the blood oozing down his leg. He took a fourth step, and something bit his fingers.
He pulled his hands back, his fingers stinging. Razors or broken glass, he thought. He reached out again, to his left, felt empty space. Two steps forward and a third to the left grazed his hand against more razors. Michael’s blood had gone cold. It was a maze, he realized. The maze’s walls were covered with broken razors.
He quickly took his coat off and wrapped it around his hands. Then he started forward again, deeper into the absolute dark. His senses quested; he sniffed the air, smelled engine oil, the bitter scent of burning coal in the locomotive, his own coppery blood. His heart was pounding, his eyes straining to make out shapes in the blackness. His hands touched another wall of razors, directly in front of him. He found a razor-studded wall to his left as well; the maze was leading him to the right, and he had no choice but to follow the passageway. It turned sharply to the left again, suddenly ceasing in a dead end. Michael knew he’d missed a corridor somewhere, and he’d have to backtrack. As he searched for the way out, the razors shredding the coat around his hands, he heard the door open and close at the entrance to the car: Sandler had arrived.