Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 49

They walked back to their compartment without seeing anyone else, though they did hear people talking in their rooms as they passed by.

Pine went in first, followed by Blum and Chung. He closed the door behind him.

“Sit,” he said.

Pine and Blum sat on the lower bunk.

“Take your gun out and put it on the floor,” ordered Chung as he kept his weapon pointed at Pine’s head.

Pine did as he said.

“Kick it over to me,” he said.

She did so. He bent down and picked it up, placing it on a small metal desk behind him. Next to it was Blum’s pistol, Pine saw.

“Your other pistol too, please,” said Chung. “I know that you carry a spare.”

Pine took off her ankle holster and slid it across the floor.

Chung pushed it behind him.

“How did you know we were on the train?” asked Pine.

“This is the only train that goes to Arizona. And you two are the only passengers who paid cash for your tickets. And, apparently, you did not provide names to the ticketing person. So, she simply named you Jane and Judy Doe. Quite the red flag.”

Pine grimaced at this. “You had the train stop somehow. Did you put a car on the track or something?”

“Completely irrelevant.”

“Okay, then what do you want?”

Chung reached into his pocket and held up something. “This man.”

He tossed the piece of paper over to Pine, who caught it.

She used her Maglite to look at the object.

It was a photograph.

Of David Roth.

Pine and Blum looked up at Chung.

“I don’t know where he is.”

Again, the Korean moved so fast, Pine had no time to even try to block his blow. She went heels over ass against the wall.

When Blum stood and tried to lash out at Chung, he merely grabbed her wrist and twisted it until Blum cried out in pain and collapsed to the floor, holding her hand and gasping for breath.

Pine slowly sat up, rubbing blood off her mouth.

“I did not come all this way for you to tell me that you do not know things that you do know,” Chung said.

“I’m looking for Roth, it’s true,” said Pine, spitting blood out of her mouth. “But I haven’t found him. Yet.”

“But you have an idea where he is?” said Chung.

“I think I do.”

“Where?”

Pine looked down at Blum. “If I agree to tell you, will you let her go?”

Chung shook his head. “She is not a little girl.”

Blum struggled up and plopped down next to Pine.

“Well, good, because I’m not going anywhere.” Blum brushed off her clothes, set her hands in her lap, and said pleasantly, “Now tell the nice man where you think Mr. Roth is, Agent Pine.”

Pine said nothing.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll have to do the honors.” She looked at Chung. “We believe that Mr. Roth is in Flagstaff. That’s where we’re headed. You already know that because you checked on our tickets.”

“Why this Flagstaff?”

“There’s an FBI office there. It’s the largest one near the Grand Canyon. We think he’s going to turn himself in there.”

“Why turn himself in?” said Chung tightly.

“We think he’s afraid,” said Blum. “He doesn’t want to die. He thinks the FBI can protect him.”

“Can they?” Pine finally said, looking at Chung.

“You ask me? It’s your employer, not mine.”

“Irrelevant to my question,” said Pine, mimicking the Korean’s earlier statements. “I want to know what you think about that.”

Chung mulled this over. “I do not think anyone can protect him. Least of all your people.”

“Well, then we agree on something. Why do you want him?”

“I think it obvious.”

“Not to me, it’s not. Unless you want your nuke back.”

Chung appraised her. “The world is complicated, Agent Pine. Far more complicated than you seem to give it credit to be.”

“I think planting a nuke on American soil and killing a bunch of my fellow citizens is pretty simple, actually. Simply insane! You have every reason to work with me.”

“Why is that?”

“If that nuke goes off, North Korea will cease to exist. We’ll bomb it back into the Stone Age.”

“I completely agree with you.”

Pine was about to say something else, but then simply gaped at him.

Blum found her voice. “You... you agree with that?”

“Of course I do,” said Chung. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Pine said, “Why don’t you explain that to me? Because it doesn’t make any sense.”

“That is not my job to explain things. And if you can’t help me, then...” He shrugged.

“Then what, you kill us? What would be the reason?”

“If I let you live, you will make my task much more difficult.”

“I guess I see your point,” said Pine.

“Your honesty does you justice,” conceded Chung.

“You seem far too nice for this sort of work,” interjected Blum.

“Your observations deceive you, madam,” said Chung. “I am not nice. At all. As, unfortunately, you are about to find out.”

At that moment, the train started up again.

It caught them all off-guard, and Chung stumbled backward a bit.

Pine slumped forward, her head between her knees, as though she were about to be sick.

Her fingers closed around the length of pipe. It was the tool the steward had used to lower the top bunk into place. Earlier, she had seen him slide it into a holder under the bunk after he’d finished making up their beds for the night.

She sat up and delivered a blow with the pipe first to Chung’s hand, knocking the pistol from it, and then striking his jaw.

He staggered backward against the wall.

Holding his face and his back, he straightened just at the moment that Pine hit him with a roundhouse kick, the force of which lifted him off his feet, and he flew against the window of the train car.

He bounced off the glass and catapulted forward at the same moment that Pine lunged for her gun that had fallen off the desk after Chung’s collision with it.

Pine slid along the floor, snatched her gun, hit the wall, turned, and fired.

The shot missed Chung, but smacked into the window and shattered it.

Chung exploded forward and kicked the gun free from Pine’s hand. He followed the kick with a hand strike to her side, which seized up her left side and drove all the air out of her lungs.

Shit, here we go again.

Chung straightened and was about to deliver a crushing kick to Pine’s head when he reeled backward, grabbing his own head.

Blum had hit him with the pipe.

Blood flowing from a gash on his head, he turned and was about to deliver a blow to Blum that would have killed the woman when Pine hit him from behind with a knee to the base of his spine, propelling him forward into the already cracked glass.

As the train picked up speed, Pine planted her legs firmly around Chung’s, pinning them together. At the same time her arms encircled his torso and kept his arms bound to his sides. She levered forward, forcing Chung’s face against the glass.

Pine got her delt under Chung’s right shoulder blade and pushed upward. She gave a heave, and slowly the shorter Korean was lifted off the floor, the toes of his nicked shoes now the only thing touching there. This was remarkably difficult, since Pine could not spread her legs and plant her feet to give herself the leverage to more efficiently lift Chung. She knew that if she allowed his legs an inch of freedom, he would disable her and then kick both of them to death.

She could have had Blum grab one of the guns, but she wasn’t going to make the woman cold-bloodedly shoot the Korean in the head. And she might miss and hit Pine; or since Pine was plastered to the guy, the bullet could pass through Chung and kill her.

But she couldn’t just stand here holding the Korean. That was not sustainable. The plan came together in her head in seconds.

“Carol,” panted Pine. “The window. The... seal.”

Blum looked confused for a moment, but then lurched over, gripped the red lever at the bottom of the window, and pulled it free.

Chung, seeing what they were trying to do, struggled to free himself. He rammed his head backward, catching Pine hard on the chin. Pain rocketed up her face and she winced. But she managed to hold him firmly against the broken glass as Blum pulled the rubber seal free from around the perimeter of the window.

Once that was done, Blum gripped the edge of the glass and tugged hard. It broke free from the wall of the train, slipped sideways, and then fell out of the opening. Air whipped inside the compartment, blowing the curtains straight out.

This was the moment of truth, Pine knew. With the window gone, so was most of her leverage holding him against it. Chung jerked and pulled and bucked, but without his feet being on the floor he couldn’t gain the necessary traction, and without that he lacked the ability to strike out.

The interior train lights started to flicker on and then off.

Pine continued to slowly lift the far shorter man, inch by inch, at the same time keeping his limbs pinched to his sides. Her torso, arms, and legs were like a tube, a tube that she was slowly, inexorably forcing Chung through by moving her arms and legs millimeters at a time. The horrific image of a constrictor working its victim down its gullet popped into her head, and it was not far off the mark. Except Pine wanted to cast off Chung, not swallow him.

As she leaned forward, his waist was now resting on the edge of the window.

That meant Chung was halfway out of the train window.

But so was Pine.

The train was only going about twenty-five miles an hour now. But it was accelerating.

The wind whipped into them. They were both facing downward. Aside from her views of Chung’s back, Pine could see the landscape sweeping past. The terrain was pancake flat. Lawrence, Kansas, was far behind them now and receding faster and faster.

Pine was reaching the edge of her safety zone. Another few inches and she would not be able to stay in the train compartment. Chung’s weight and the angle she was holding him at were straining every muscle she had to its breaking point. Then they would both go flying out the window. And though the train wasn’t going that fast yet, the collision with the ground could very well send them bouncing under the train wheels. And that would mean certain death for them both.

Panting for breath, she suddenly felt Blum behind her, gripping her belt and then leaning backward, serving as the extra ballast that she needed.

Pine readied herself. Even as she could feel Chung working his right arm free, her limbs too spent to contain it much longer, she counted to five in her head.

Hold it, Atlee. Hold the lift. Just another few seconds. Another few seconds and you got the gold.

She grunted and then screamed as the Southwest Chief leapt forward with a burst of power from its twin engines. The sudden jolt of acceleration nearly carried all three of them outside, but Blum had quickly leaned back so far that her weight provided enough of a counterbalance to offset the increase in speed.

Three...

Pine had to time this exactly right. She could not afford to allow Chung to cling to her arms or legs. She was so tired that if the Korean managed to remain in the compartment, they were both dead. She wanted Blum and herself to keep their vertebrae right where they were.

She was leaning out so far now that she could barely breathe with the wind hitting her in the face.

Two...

She tensed every fiber, every ligament, in preparation for the release. She could feel the throb of Chung’s heart against her chest. She could hear his gasps. She could smell his fear.

As she could her own.

One...

She pushed against Chung’s back at the same moment that she let go of the death grip around the man’s arms.

She felt his freed limbs flailing in the air. The Korean managed to somehow turn to the side, his hands groping for the now-empty window frame.

They were nearly face-to-face as the lights on the train came on and this time stayed on.

She could see his features, as the wind sliding off the racing train pounded them both. She supposed they mirrored her own:

Terror.

He suddenly reached out and gripped her windswept hair, right as Pine let go of his legs.

His fingers pulled out some of her hair by the roots, even as his feet danced frantically against nothing.

She leapt back as he tried to kick her in the face.

And then the wind caught him, and he was fully out the window, unable to regain any sort of equilibrium.

For a moment, he seemed suspended in the air, and then, like a passenger sucked out of a depressurized plane, Chung was jerked violently to the right and in a flash disappeared from view.

Then Pine was falling backward and into Blum’s outstretched arms.

The two women lay there on the floor for several minutes, shaking and gasping.

Finally, they slowly rose as the lights in the train went off once more before again coming back on.

A few seconds later the door slid open and a steward looked in. When he spied the missing window and the curtains being blown around the compartment by the force of the wind, he cried out, “Oh my God!”

Pine dropped into a sitting position in the lower bunk and said, “We need another room.” She drew a deep breath. “This one’s broken.”