Текст книги "Zero Hour"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Graham Brown
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

EIGHTEEN

Australian outback, just south of Alice Springs

The Ghanraced through the desert like a great metal snake: twenty shimmering passenger cars pulled by a pair of matching diesels in a brick-red paint scheme.

Named in reverence to Afghan explorers who helped map Australia’s desolate interior and adorned with a camel logo, the Afghan Expresstraveled a route that stretched vertically across the continent, from Darwin in the north down to Adelaide on the island’s southern coast, pulling into Alice Springs every few days near the halfway point of its journey in each direction.

A four-hour whistle-stop allowed passengers to explore the small town, but, as dusk approached, the train began to fill up once again. Kurt and Hayley boarded shortly before departure.

“Where exactly are we going?” Hayley asked.

Kurt said nothing. He just kept moving forward until he reached the Platinum Car, in which the train’s most luxurious accoutrements resided. A steward opened the door to their compartment, revealing a compact lounge, complete with a private bathroom and shower, a small table, and a pair of large plush chairs that folded out into beds at night. The space was tight, like a ship’s stateroom, but the modern design and décor made it seem more spacious.

“Pick a side, any side,” Kurt said, “and then relax and await the gourmet dining to follow.”

Hayley pointed, and Kurt placed her small carry-on beside the chair.

“Are you trying to impress me?” she asked.

“Possibly,” Kurt admitted. “But mostly I figured you could use a little taking care of after all you’ve been through. It’s not every day someone steps out of their regular life and takes on something like this.”

A soft smile appeared on Hayley’s face. She seemed surprised and reassured all at the same time. “It feels like forever since someone gave a bit of thought to what I might need. Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Kurt said, putting his own pack away as the train eased off the stops and began to move.

An hour later, night was falling. The view through the picture windows of the cabin was that of an indigo sky blending slowly with the matte black of the MacDonnell mountain range. With this for a backdrop, dinner arrived, brought in by a private steward on a rolling cart.

Kurt paid the steward, included a generous tip, and then acted as a combination sommelier and maître d’, laying a cloth napkin across Hayley’s lap and presenting the wine.

“A 2008 Penngrove Cabernet Sauvignon.”

“I love a good cabernet,” Hayley said, her eyes sparkling like a child awaiting a present.

“I haven’t had this one,” Kurt said. “I’m told it’s very smooth, with a hint of licorice and vanilla.”

He uncorked the bottle and took her glass, pouring it from about ten inches above. “A good fall helps the wine to aerate,” he said. “It speeds up the breathing process. But we should still give it a few minutes.”

“Why not?” Hayley replied. “The poor crushed grapes have been in there for years. Be a shame not to give them a few minutes to soak up the fresh air.”

Kurt poured a glass of his own and set the bottle down.

Next, he lifted the insulating covers from the plates set up before them. An avocado-green-colored soup with dashes of red was first. “Pea-and-ham soup, with a hint of garlic.”

“Looks delicious.”

Pulling the cover off the second scrumptious-looking dish, Kurt continued, “Braised short ribs with silver-beet gratin. And the pièce de résistance…” He removed the final lid. “Bread-and-butter pudding, soaked in sweetened custard and brandy.”

“I might just start with that,” Hayley said. “How on earth did you conjure up such fantastic foods on a train out here in the never-never?”

“Platinum service,” Kurt said. “And, besides, the chef is a personal friend of mine. At least he has been for the last few hours.”

She took a deep breath. “If this is traveling, perhaps I could get used to it.”

Kurt sat down as Hayley sampled the soup.

“Must say I’ve never met someone so brave and intelligent who’s afraid to travel,” Kurt said.

“I know it’s strange,” she said. “I know all the statistics, how the most dangerous part of any trip is the drive to the airport. I understand aerodynamics, and I spend half my life dreaming about far-off places, but something grips me when I leave home.”

“You seem okay now,” Kurt pointed out.

She smiled. “Maybe it’s the company.”

“Consider me your personal guide and protector wherever we go.”

“Truth is, I’d love to see the world,” she said. “And the universe. I used to dream about being an astronaut. Seems a little silly, when getting out of Sydney makes me feel like I’m going to be ill.”

“The universe is a big step,” Kurt said. “Let’s start by getting to Perth.”

The Ghanwould take them south to Port Augusta, where they’d board another of Australia’s great trains for the journey west.

For the next twenty minutes, they ate and chatted lightly, enjoying the atmosphere and the gentle motion of the train. Only after they’d had their second helpings of bread pudding did Kurt ask the question that was most on his mind.

“So tell me about zero-point energy,” he said.

She finished the last sip of her cabernet and slid her glass toward him. Kurt filled it halfway and then topped off his own glass.

“Zero-point energy is a relatively simple concept,” she said. “It’s the energy remaining in a system when all that can be drawn from it has been taken out.”

She pointed to the bottle of wine. “Imagine this bottle is a system or an energy field, and you or I decide to drink from it with a straw.”

“Which we would never do,” Kurt pointed out.

“Not unless we were outrageously desperate,” she replied with a conspiratorial smile. “But assuming we’d lost all sense of decorum and decided to give it a try, we’d be able to siphon off the energy from it right down to the bottom of the straw. But any wine below the reaches of the straw would remain behind untapped. That wine that can’t be reached is the zero-point energy.”

“Unless we found a longer straw,” Kurt said.

“Exactly,” she said, “except that physics tells us that, at some point, there’s no such thing as a longer straw.”

“Can you give me a real example?”

“The classic case is helium,” she said. “As it’s cooled, the molecular activity within the sample begins to slow, and the helium turns from a gas to a liquid. At absolute zero, it should freeze into a solid, and all molecular activity inside it should stop. But no matter how far one lowers the temperature, right down to absolute zero, helium will neverturn into a solid under normal atmospheric pressure.”

“Meaning?”

“Some energy remains in the system. Some energy that can’t be removed.”

“And that’s zero-point energy?”

“Exactly,” she said once again.

“So if it can’t be removed,” Kurt said, “what hope is there in accessing it?”

“Well,” she hedged, “all things are impossible until they’re proven otherwise. Theoretically, there are fields of energy all around us sitting at their zero point. The same theory that postulates the existence of such fields suggests it may be possible to dislodgethis hidden energy the way someone dislodges electrons in a power grid and reaps the benefits of electricity. Only, no one has been able to do it yet.”

It sounded a little like the mythical ether of the old days to Kurt, a substance that was once believed to fill the emptiness between planets and galaxies when scientists of the day couldn’t believe there was such a thing as a vacuum.

“Has anyone tried?” Kurt asked. “Before you and Thero, I mean.”

“A few brave souls,” she said. “I assume you’ve heard of Nikola Tesla?”

Kurt nodded.

“Tesla was one of the first,” she said. “In the 1890s he began developing what he called his Dynamic Theory of Gravity. He tinkered away on it for years until 1937, when he claimed it was finally complete and promised boldly that it would displace Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, at least in explaining how gravity works.”

“Don’t we know how gravity works?”

“We know whatgravity does,” she corrected, “but we don’t know howit causes what it causes. Tesla believed it was connected to a kind of energy field that existed everywhere, but in some places this field had greater concentrations than others. He also believed that that field could be tapped and the result would be an unlimited energy source, one that would bring peace and prosperity instead of thermonuclear explosions and genocide.”

“So you’re telling me that zero-point energy and gravity are connected?”

She nodded. “If Tesla’s right – and Einstein and the others are wrong – then, yes, the two are connected in very complex ways.”

Kurt considered this. “Complex enough to cause what Thero is threatening?”

She seemed to need a second to think about it. “Tesla spent four decades working on his theory,” she said, “more than half his life. He made his great announcement, insisting to the world that he’d finally completed the Dynamic Theory of Gravity, that all the details were worked out, and then he never published it. After all that work, he locked it away and never spoke of it again. Despite years of ridicule and the crushing poverty he’d fallen into thanks to the treachery of Westinghouse and Edison, Tesla took the Dynamic Theory of Gravity to his grave.”

Kurt had never heard this story. “Has any record of it ever surfaced?”

Hayley shook her head. “When Tesla died, your government seized all his belongings and papers – despite having no legal reason to do so. They were held for a year or so and then finally released to his family. His work on zero-point energy and the Dynamic Theory of Gravity were not among them.”

Kurt considered what she’d told him. He knew Tesla’s reputation as a genius and as a mad scientist of sorts. He also knew Tesla was primarily considered a pacifist. It was fully conceivable that Tesla had destroyed all records of his theory. It was also possible that somewhere in the vast archives of the federal government there lay a file with Tesla’s name on it with the missing papers inside. He made a mental note to relay this information to Dirk the next time he checked in.

“The fact is,” Hayley continued, “we’re dealing with a primal force of nature. Many would tell you it’s something best left alone.”

“But Thero isn’t leaving it alone,” Kurt pointed out. “So what happens if he makes a breakthrough?”

“If he’s successful, a vast output of energy and a side effect of short-lived, extremely powerful gravitational fluctuations.”

“Can you try that in English,” Kurt said.

“The Earth isn’t going to be vaporized or anything,” she said. “We’re not going to start floating out of our chairs like astronauts in zero g.”

“What will we see?”

“The first and most dramaticmanifestations will be noticed in the seas,” she said.

“The tides,” Kurt said.

“Exactly,” she replied. “The oceans of the Earth are drawn by the gravitational pull of the moon. The land is pulled on as well, but, unlike the liquid of the ocean it’s locked in place except at the fault lines.”

“How much power are we talking about here?”

“If the papers sent to us are valid,” she began, “potentially more energy than all of humankind has produced and expended since the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

Kurt paused before responding. For the second time in as many days, he found it hard to believe what he was being told.

“How is such a thing possible?”

“The same way it’s possible to run a nuclear submarine on a small chunk of uranium for years. Or to obliterate a large city with only twenty pounds of plutonium. There are vast amounts of energy hidden in places the normal human eye can’t see.”

“But splitting a continent in half?” Kurt asked. “I’ve seen big earthquakes in California. They knock down highways and buildings, but, contrary to popular belief, half the state doesn’t float off into the Pacific.”

“No,” she agreed. “No one is suggesting you’re going to see a divided continent with the ocean in the middle. But Thero is no fool. His first earthquake was a test, probably triggered from the station in the Tasman Mine. We have every reason to believe that that was just a small prototype. He’ll hit us harder next time, much harder, and he’ll hit us where Mother Nature has already done half the work.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Australia has the beginnings of a rift valley,” she explained. “Like the Great Rift Valley in Africa. Ours runs from Adelaide northeast toward the Great Barrier Reef. It began to form a hundred and fifty million years ago and then stopped for reasons unknown. The crust is thin and fractured in this section, and the pressure built up by a hundred million years without movement is waiting to be released.

“If Thero can direct his weapon toward this point and create a gravitational distortion that wedges the plate apart even fractions of an inch, the pressure that’s been built up over the millennia might be released all at once. We’re talking about a series of earthquakes, hundreds even, all in quick succession along the rift. What normally takes ten thousand years might happen in a day, or a week, or even hours. The devastation from that kind of tremor will not be measurable on the Richter scale, or any other scale ever devised. Every city, every town, every village in Australia will be reduced to rubble. Not a single building will remain standing.”

Kurt considered her point quietly. It was a grim scenario.

“I know,” she said, taking his silence for disbelief. “I’m a silly academic pointing out the worst-case scenario. The sky is falling – once again.The thing is, when these scenarios actuallyhappen, there’s always someone running around, wondering why no one told them it could be this bad. I’m telling you, right here and now, it’s going to be horrific.”

Kurt’s face was dark. A new thought occurred to him. “I have to ask why you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

“The informant sent the papers to you,” Kurt clarified. “Why not send them straight to the authorities?”

Hayley shrugged. “I can only guess it’s because of my background. The claims and calculations would seem like gibberish to someone else. Had the package been sent directly to the ASIO, I can only assume it would have ended up in the wastebin.”

“Okay,” Kurt said, “but why not some other scientist?”

“It’s a very obscure field,” she explained. “We’re a tiny group.”

“Tiny but not infinitesimal,” Kurt said.

“No,” she agreed, “not infinitesimal.”

“So I have to ask you one more time: if there were other options, why do you think they picked you?”

She paused for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. The sadness had returned to her voice. There was a tinge of weariness to it, and a stronger hint of guilt. “I don’t know.”

She looked away, averting her eyes and staring out into the night. And, in that instant, Kurt knew that she was lying.

He considered pressing her for the truth but held back as he felt a subtle change in the train’s motion, like the engineer had taken his hand off the throttle.

Hayley looked up. “Something wrong?”

“Not sure,” Kurt said. He stood just as the brakes went on at full pressure.

The car lurched. Kurt braced himself and caught Hayley’s arm, keeping her from falling as the dinner plates and wineglasses flew off the table. The screech of the steel wheels sliding on the rails overrode all other noise as the quarter-mile-long train began skidding to a halt.

Still holding Hayley, Kurt glanced out the window. The train itself was in a turn, on a slight uphill grade. Looking forward, Kurt saw two other passenger cars and the twin diesel engines. Sparks were flying from the wheels as they dug into the track. But something else caught his eye: tiny points of crimson burning in the night, flares along the track bed and, a little farther on, the outline of a tractor trailer stalled across the rail line at a crossing. Two men stood in front of it, waving their arms frantically.

The breaking continued until the Ghanlurched awkwardly to a stop a few hundred feet from the crossing.

At this point, Hayley could see the truck as well. “Lucky we were able to stop,” she said.

Kurt glanced around. “Somehow, I don’t think luck’s got anything to do with it.”

Before Hayley could reply, he spotted just what he expected to see: men in ski masks, coming out of the night and headed straight for the motionless train.

NINETEEN

The masked men came aboard the train at several different points, climbing onto the couplers between cars and forcing the doors.

“What’s happening?” Hayley asked in a panicked voice.

“I’ll give you one guess.”

Hayley’s mind quickly grasped the truth. “They’re after us.”

“Either that or this is a Butch Cassidy reenactment no one told me about.”

Hayley grabbed her cell phone and dialed out in an attempt to call for help. “I have a signal, but I can’t seem to get through.”

“Waste of time,” Kurt said. “They’re probably jamming the tower.”

He glanced outside. Two car lengths down, another man stood out away from the train, scanning back and forth.

“They’ve got a guy outside,” Kurt said. “Probably watching for anyone who might make a break for open ground.”

A voice came over the public-address system. It had a bit of an accent, one that Kurt couldn’t place immediately. It certainly wasn’t the conductor.

“Please remain calm,”it said. “We have hijacked the train, but we’re not interested in harming anyone. We’re looking for two people. A man with silver-gray hair, about six feet tall, and a woman about six inches shorter than him, with blond hair. Her name is Anderson. Cooperate with us, and no one will get hurt. Interfere or argue, and you will be beaten or killed.”

As the announcement ended, Kurt cracked the cabin door a fraction and glanced down the narrow corridor.

He saw two men down the hall, pushing their way into one of the compartments. They were wide-bodied brutes, with thick arms and legs and faces hidden by ski masks. They moved without a hint of elegance or remorse. Kurt pegged them as street thugs hired for money.

A third man trailed behind them. He was thinner and taller. Even with the man’s ski mask, Kurt could tell he had a narrow face and sunken eyes. Though not as imposing physically, there was a more menacing air about him. Kurt guessed he was the headman.

A wave of shouting erupted. The sound of a scuffle and someone being thrown around reverberated throughout the railcar. A moment later, a man about Kurt’s height was dragged out of the room. Beside him was a young woman. They looked like newlyweds.

The leader examined them. “No,” he said without emotion, “not them.” Then he hauled off and punched the defenseless man. “That’s for resisting.”

The man sagged, held up only by the two bandits. Their leader wasn’t done. He wound up and kicked the man in the chest, sending him tumbling back into his compartment.

Every instinct in Kurt’s body told him to intervene, but the headman was clearly armed, and his two henchmen might have been. Besides, he had one job right now: keep Hayley Anderson safe.

He went to the window again, preparing to smash it. Charging out into the dark and battling one opponent seemed like a better play than a close-quarters fight against three.

He grabbed a chair and raised it over his head. Before he could use it, the door flew open.

“Drop it!” a voice shouted.

Kurt let the chair go, and it clattered to the ground.

He turned around slowly as the intruders measured him up and gave Hayley the once-over.

“I assume you guys are here for the dishes,” Kurt said, pointing to the pile of flatware, cups, and glasses on the floor.

The two men looked down, their eyes instinctively drawn in the direction Kurt had pointed. It was an amateur response, but they wereamateurs, local muscle hired to do someone else’s dirty work. In the fraction of a second before they corrected their mistake, Kurt moved. He pivoted on his left foot and fired his right leg toward the closest man’s gut.

The heel of his boot hit like a pile driver and knocked the man backward. He crumpled like a folding chair, sucking wind and grabbing his stomach as he hit the ground. The second thug lunged at Kurt, his huge pawlike hands going for Kurt’s neck.

Kurt blocked the effort, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting it. Using the attacker’s considerable momentum against him, Kurt spun him off balance and body-slammed him to the ground. The man hit the floor with a thud, and Kurt dropped down and hammered him with a forearm smash to the face.

He would have slugged the guy again, but he knew the boss would be coming. He spun to his feet and turned.

It was too late.

The gaunt leader of the crew was already there with a black pistol in hand, holding it sideways, gangster style. He studied Hayley, nodded approvingly, and then turned back to Kurt.

“I don’t need you,” he said.

Kurt dove to the right as the man fired mercilessly. The first shell missed, the second grazed Kurt’s arm. The third bullet shattered the window behind him. Before the would-be killer could trigger a fourth shot, a different sound rang out. It was a sickly thud, like the sound of a broken-bat single being hit in a baseball game.

The gunman’s head snapped forward, and the pistol flew from his hand. He fell into the cabin, hitting the table and splaying on the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Behind him, Joe Zavala stood in the doorway with a piece of cabinetry in his hands.

Kurt snatched up the black pistol. “Way to make an entrance.”

Joe grinned. “What I do, I like to do in style.”

The leader was out cold, the other two assailants were moving but not interested in any more combat. They hadn’t expected to take a beating, and now that they were outnumbered and outgunned, they seemed more interested in surrender.

Kurt pulled the mask off the leader. “Anyone recognize this face?”

Joe shook his head, Hayley did likewise. “Never seen him before,” she said.

“I figure they’re not our friends from the flooded mine,” Kurt replied.

“What makes you say that?”

“The fact that we’re still conscious,” he said.

A radio began to squawk in the downed leader’s pocket. “What’s the delay? We heard shooting. Do you need assistance?”

This time, Kurt thought he recognized the accent. “Russians?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Joe said.

“What are they doing mixed up in this?”

“No idea,” Joe said. “But I saw another group of them heading to the back, where the caboose would be if this train had one.”

“And at least two more outside,” Kurt said.

Kurt aimed the pistol at the man with the busted face. “How many friends did you bring to this party?”

The man answered slowly. “Eight or nine in the truck. I didn’t count ’em.”

Kurt pointed to the Russian. “How many like him, the guys who did the hiring?”

“There were four of them.”

Kurt looked up. “That means at least three more with guns.”

“And plenty of muscle to do the heavy lifting,” Joe added.

“We have to get out of here,” Hayley said.

Joe nodded. “The lady isa rocket scientist. We should probably listen to her.”

Kurt couldn’t have agreed more, but how and to where? Going on foot into the outback wasn’t going to get them very far.

The radio squawked again. “Victor, respond. What’s happening?”

Kurt grabbed the radio and pressed the talk switch. “Victor’s not available right now, mostly because he’s taking an unintended nap. But please stand by, your call is important to us.”

“What are you doing?” Hayley asked, her eyes all but bugging out of her head. “Now they know we’re here.”

“They already know we’re here,” Kurt said. “Thanks to Joe, we took the first round. Time to go on the offensive, at least enough to throw a little doubt into their minds.”

The radio crackled. “Screw with us, and you’re going to regret it,”the voice growled.

“We’ll see about that,” Kurt replied. “Just so you know, I have your friend Victor’s gun, and, unlike him, I don’t miss what I shoot at.”

Kurt figured that would give them something to worry about. He stepped outside and checked the corridor. Seeing it was clear, he motioned for Joe and Hayley to follow.

He figured the group that went to the back of the train was now headed forward at double speed. He had a plan to slow them down. Making a few threats was the first step, finding the breaker panel at the front of the car was the second. He flipped it open just as the radio came to life again.

“Leave the woman, and you get to live.”

Kurt put his hand to the car’s master switch and spoke into the radio once more. “You want her,” he said, “then come and get her.”

With that, he flipped the switch, cutting power and plunging the fifty-foot car into darkness. A wave of muffled shouts came from the passengers.

Kurt ignored them and continued to the forward door, not hesitating for even a second. He pulled the door open and stepped through. Joe and Hayley followed. And all three stood in the gap between the cars out on the coupler.

“I hope you have a plan,” Joe said.

“Don’t I always?”

“I’m not sure you want me to answer that right now.”

Kurt studied the metal plating that covered the knuckle-shaped coupler below them. Next, he looked up, glancing through the dusty window into the railcar ahead of them.

It was an observation car. Warmly lit, half full. The passengers inside were hunkered down in various places, hands on their heads, too scared to move. At the far end, he saw two more of the hijackers.

“Check the sides.”

Joe and Hayley peaked around the edges of the car, looking backward.

“Our friend is still out there,” Hayley said. “He’s got a partner now. They seem to be ambling this way.”

“There’s a guy on this side too,” Joe said, “also coming forward. Probably moving in lockstep with the men inside.”

“Which means my plan is mostly working.”

Joe’s eyebrows went up. “ Mostlyworking? We’re almost surrounded.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said.

Joe looked confused. “I’m not sure I want to know what total success looks like.”

“Complete encirclement,” Kurt explained. He glanced forward into the lighted Pullman car once again. “Finally,” he whispered, “a couple of heavies, coming this way.”

The approaching thugs moved slowly, checking each row of seats to make sure Kurt and Hayley weren’t among the passengers in the car.

“Congratulations,” Joe whispered. “You’ve now graduated from the General Custer School of Tactical Brilliance.”

Kurt smiled, reached over, and gently opened a trapdoor in the floor plating. The gravel and railroad ties of the railbed could be seen through the opening. “If Custer knew what I did, he’d have tunneled under Sitting Bull and popped up behind him. Crawl forward, quick and quiet.”

“And then what?”

“And then we hijack the train. Or rehijackit, I should say.”

“Hijack the hijackers?” Joe said. “Now you’re talking my language.”

Joe went down first, Hayley followed. Kurt squeezed his way through behind them, gently lowering the metal plate once he’d climbed down. He’d only crawled a foot or two when the door opened above him.

He held still as heavy footfalls scuffed and clunked on the decking.

The thugs were hesitating, either waiting for directions or a signal to make a coordinated attack.

“We’re in position,” a voice said.

Kurt’s hand went to the radio to cover it, but no sound came forth. The hijackers had switched channels to keep him from hearing their plans.

“Move in,”a tinny voice replied. “And make it fast. We’re running out of time.”

Through a narrow gap in the plating Kurt saw the door to the darkened railcar open and watched as the men entered. As soon as they did, Kurt began to move, scrambling forward on his forearms and knees, moving like a lizard on its belly. There were twenty-four inches of clearance between the axles of the cars and the track bed. It wasn’t much headroom, but enough to make the escape work.

Enveloped by the smell of oil, dust, and creosote, as the sharp edges of the gravel stones dug into his knees and elbows, Kurt moved with all possible haste.

He worried mostly that the men on the ground would spot him, but he needn’t have been concerned. The light spilling from the other railcars was bright enough to affect their night vision. From their vantage point, looking into the dark space beneath the train was like gazing into a black hole.

Kurt made it past the two bogies on which the Pullman-type car’s wheels rested, continued forward under the next car, and caught up to Joe and Hayley. She was struggling.

“Not exactly enjoying this part of the trip,” she said.

“At least you fit under here,” Kurt said. “This is a little tight for me. And considering the size of Joe’s head, I’m not sure how he’s avoided knocking himself out yet.”

Joe chuckled. They kept going and quickly reached the aft of the two diesel engines.

“Afraid we’ve run into a roadblock,” Joe said.

Kurt looked past them. There was much less clearance under the engine than under the passenger cars.

“These modern engines have the electric motors down on the wheels,” Joe explained, pointing. “The gearing too. Not to mention the fuel tank in the middle, and probably a cowcatcher up front.”

“You sure we can’t squeeze by?”

“Not a chance.”

Kurt frowned. If they couldn’t go under, they would have to go over or around. “If you were a hijacker in a locomotive, what would you be watching?”

“The engineer,” Joe said.

Kurt’s eyebrows went up. “My thoughts exactly.”

“What are you going to do?” Hayley asked.

Kurt glanced out behind them. The guards on foot still had their attention on the passenger car, but not for long. Due to the way the train had stopped on the curve, there was more space on one side than the other.

“We’re going to break in and surprise whosever in the lead engine. Hopefully, without having to do any shooting.”

Kurt eyed the foot patrol once more. As they turned toward the tail end of the train, he climbed out from under the passenger car and sprinted forward in the dark. He reached the lead engine and went up the ladder onto the catwalk, or sill, that ran the length of the engine like a running board on an old car.

Joe came up behind him, and Hayley followed quickly as well.

They eased their way toward the cab of the diesel. The throbbing of twin sixteen-cylinder diesels masked their approach.