Dark Zone

102

Dean stared at the far wall of the tunnel, trying to decide if what he saw there were real shadows of the gunmen moving inside the train or flickers of his imagination.

They had to be gunmen — he could hear the muffled sound of the submachine guns again.

They were moving toward the back of the train, in his direction. Each coach had doors at the side, but they appeared to be all locked closed. The only way in or out of the train was the passage at the end of the decoupled car.

If they came out he could surprise them, jump down on them from the top of the train.

But how many were there? One? Two? More?

Dean moved along the walkway next to the tracks, stooping and then crawling toward what had been the rear of the train. He couldn’t quite see in the windows, but as he came parallel to the middle car he saw two shadows prominently one car away. He slid down, flattening himself against the car at a space where there were no windows. He waited, taking the long, slow breaths he’d learned to take more than thirty years before, the calm, quiet breaths of a Marine sniper hunting his prey.

He heard the clack-clack of automatic weapons fire behind him, then beyond him. As the shadows moved through the car he had just passed, he started walking again, going as quickly as he could while remaining low, aware that there might be someone else in the train.

A voice echoed in the tunnel, distorted by an eerie echo.

Dean dropped to his stomach. The voice continued to speak — it was in French, he thought, and even if it had been in English it would have been difficult to understand because of the distortion of the tunnel.

The tone seemed unhurried. It was a matter-of-fact conversation, not a harsh bark of orders or worried alerts.

It was coming from the front of the train — from the tracks.

Dean crawled ahead to the last coach, the one that had been attached to the rear power car. He could hear footsteps and then saw a faint flashlight.

The engine had been pulled down the tracks thirty yards or so. The person with the flashlight was moving toward it, with another person, just one other person.

So at least two still in the train and two there, going to the engine. Maybe more in the power car itself.

The two figures climbed up onto the power car and disappeared. Dean slid around to the back of the coach. The doorway at the end was open, dim yellow light washing out. He waited, eyes sifting for shadows, ears perked to hear anything that would tell him someone else was aboard.

Nothing.

He moved back around to the side and peered in the window. Boxes sat in the aisle roughly in the middle of the car. Otherwise, it was empty.

Except for the dead.

He slid around the coach and pulled himself up onto the decking of the vestibule at the end of the car. People liked to talk about athletes who grew old and lost a step, saying they’d gotten wiser in the process and could use their intelligence to make up for the loss. But it didn’t feel that way to Dean. Fifty-some years dogged every movement, leaning hard against him, pulling him away from the train. He’d been a kid in Vietnam, and he’d trade anything to have that kid take over his body right now.

Or maybe just one of the kid’s weapons.

Dean craned his head upward just enough so he could see into the car through the door. He saw nothing — but his view was blocked by the boxes as well as his angle. There was no way to look in without going in — pushing his body across the space and exposing himself to whatever and whoever was there.

And so he did.