The Hit

Chapter





59





GUN OUT, Robie reentered the train car. He looked down the aisle. Reel was still in her seat, but she looked stiff, unnatural.

Robie looked around. He saw no obvious breach points.

He looked back at Reel, squatted low, and moved forward, prepared to fire in an instant. He cleared each row of seats until he got to Reel and looked up at her.

Only it wasn’t her.

It was a man.

With his throat cut.

Robie glanced down. Her bag was gone.

Where was Reel?

A voice called out softly, “Robie, over here.”

He glanced up. Reel was at the rear of the train car.

“We have company,” she said.

“Yeah, that one I’d figured out,” replied Robie. “Where did he come from?” he asked, gesturing to the dead man.

“Rear door. Advance guard, I guess.”

“They should have sent more guards,” noted Robie.

“He was tough to kill. Very well trained.”

“I’m sure.” Robie looked around. “The train’s not moving. Station’s not that big. All passengers should have gotten on by now.”

“You think they’ve commandeered the train?”

“Wouldn’t bet against it. They’ll do a car-by-car search.”

“The dead guy was trying to call in that he’d spotted me. But he never made it.” She looked around. “Got a plan?”

Before Robie could answer the train started to move.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Reel.

“Too many questions in the station, maybe. They want to be rolling through the country when they hit us.”

“Toss us out on the fly?”

“After they make sure we’re dead.”

“So, again, got a plan?”

Robie looked behind him. The attendant who had greeted them hadn’t come back. He might be dead too.

Robie raced up the aisle to a small storage closet located at one end of the car and grabbed a large metal bowl from inside it. He rushed into the small bathroom compartment, turned on the water, and filled up the bowl. Then he emptied half the bowl of water in front of each of the connecting doors into their train cars. He rubbed the slickened metal floor with his foot and came away satisfied.

Then Robie looked at the dead man.

Reel joined him and said, “He had no creds. No ID, nothing.”

“Missing personnel, missing equipment.”

“Is that what DiCarlo told you?” asked Reel.

“Yes.”

“The apocalypse scenario has been a long time in preparation, Robie.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

He climbed up on a seat and squatted down.

Reel did the same.

“You left, me right,” said Robie, and Reel replied, “Copy that.”

A few seconds later armed men came racing in from both directions. It was a designed pincers move, to trap Reel and Robie between two flanks and catch them in a crossfire they could not withstand.

Only they had not counted on a slippery floor.

Three of the men went down hard and slid along the floor, while a fourth staggered around trying to regain his balance.

Reel and Robie popped out from the hidden spots and opened fire, Robie right, Reel left. Nine seconds later four men lay dead, their blood turning the floor and walls crimson. The other men retreated to the cars bracketing this one.

Robie looked at Reel. “How fast do you think we’re going?”

She looked out the window. “Fifty, maybe a little more. These old bangers don’t get much above sixty.”

Robie looked at the terrain outside. All trees. “Still too fast,” he said, and Reel nodded.

Robie glanced to his left and then back at her. “Where’s your bag?”

“I stashed it here.” She pulled it out from between two of the seats.

“Got any flash-bangs in there?”

“Two of them.”

He looked at one of the connecting doors between the cars through which the men had retreated. It was metal but with a glass window. Then he ran over to a control panel built into one wall in the car’s vestibule. He ripped it open and took a few seconds to see what was available.

While he was doing that Reel snagged both flash-bangs from her bag.

“You ever jumped off a moving train before?” he asked, looking up from his work.

“No. You?”

He shook his head. “I figure at sixty, we have no chance. At thirty our odds improve some.”

“Depends on what we jump into,” said Reel, who was already clicking keys on her phone. She brought up their current location.

“Body of water coming up on the left in about two miles.”

“Could be harder than dirt depending on how we hit.”

“We stay here we die.”

Robie hit a button and the left-side door slid open. Cool air rushed in.

“They won’t be waiting long,” said Reel, looking at each doorway.

“No. We need to take care of that.”

She handed him a pair of earplugs, which he pushed deeply into his ears. She did the same with her ears. Then she passed him one of the flash-bangs.

“Give me a countdown,” she said.

Reel went to the middle of the car, drew her pistol, and waited.

“Five-four-three-two-one” called out Robie.

Reel fired to the left, shattering the glass on the door leading to the train car in front of them. She gripped the flash-bang, engaged it, and threw it through the opening. She whirled and shot out the glass in the window to the rear. The bullet was followed by the second flash-bang, which Robie tossed through the new opening. Robie crouched down and covered his face and his ears as both flash-bangs detonated within seconds of each other.

Screams came from the other train cars.

Reel, who had ducked down a split second before the flash-bangs went off, raced back down the aisle and joined Robie.

He engaged the emergency braking system. They were thrown for ward as the train’s brakes caught. They righted themselves, faced the open door, and looked at each other. They were both breathing hard.

“How fast are we going?” Reel asked.

“Still too fast.”

He glanced out the door. “Water’s coming up.”

The train was slowing, yet it took a long time for something that big to reduce its speed. But they were out of time.

Shots were starting to rip through the train car as their opponents recovered.

“Gotta go.” Robie gripped her hand as the train slowed even more.

“Robie, I don’t think I can do this.”

“Don’t think, just do.”

They jumped together.

It seemed to Robie that they stayed in the air a long time. When they landed, they hit soft mud, not water. The one thing they couldn’t have accounted for was a summer drought that had extended into fall and had lowered the lake’s water level by about four feet. When they hit the wet dirt, Robie and Reel rolled and tumbled along about twenty feet past their first impact.

The train was already out of sight around a bend. But at some point the brakes would bring the million-pound-plus behemoth to a stop.

Robie slowly sat up. He was covered in mud and slime. His clothes were ripped and he felt like an entire NFL team had jumped on him.

He looked over at Reel, who was starting to slowly get up. She looked as bad as he did and probably felt worse. Her pants and shirt were torn too.

Robie managed to stand and stagger over to the knapsack, which had separated from him on impact.

Reel groaned. “Next time I’m staying and just shooting it out.”

Robie nodded. There was a pain in his right arm. It felt funny. He worried that he had broken it, but it didn’t feel broken, just...funny.

As Reel walked over to him he rolled up his shirtsleeve, exposing his burn.

What he saw surprised Robie. But it also solved the question of how the people had been able to follow them.

Robie looked at Reel and smiled grimly.

“What?” she said.

“They just made a big mistake.”