The Hunt For Atlantis

SIX

Don’t worry,” said Castille to Nina as the truck lurched down the dirt road, “we’ll be okay.”

“How?” she demanded, holding up her handcuffed wrists. “We’ve been arrested, Kari’s been kidnapped, and Chase is dead!”

She was taken aback when both Castille and Hafez made amused noises. “Eddie has survived worse,” Hafez told her.

“What could be worse than being shot at and then falling off a cliff?”

“Well, there was this time when we were in Guyana -” Castille began, before one of the soldiers shouted at him in Farsi, jabbing the gun into his stomach as a final punctuation. “Ai. It seems these idiots would prefer us not to talk.”

“These idiots,” snapped another soldier, “speak English too.”

“But I bet they don’t speak French,” Castille smoothly continued in one of his native languages.

“I bet they don’t!” Nina replied in kind. That earned her an angry shout from one of the soldiers, and Castille another jab in the gut.

The rest of the uncomfortable journey took place in silence. Nina kept her eyes fixed on Castille, rather than on the bodies lying on the floor.

Eventually the truck came to a stop with a squeal of brakes. Nina blinked in the harsh daylight as the troops pulled her out.

They were at the train yard she’d seen earlier, four long parallel tracks running alongside the main lines and feeding back into them at each end. There was a short train on the nearest siding, three passenger cars headed by an idling diesel locomotive. A much longer freight train waited on another track. She could hear the bleating of sheep or goats coming from the wagons.

Captain Mahjad stood before his prisoners, hands on his hips. “What are you going to do to us?” Nina asked.

“Take you to trial for the murder of my men,” he said. “You’ll be found guilty, and put to death.”

“What!” she shrieked. “But we didn’t even do anything!”

“Don’t argue,” said Castille. “He’s crooked, you won’t be able to talk him-” A soldier savagely swung his rifle and smashed it into Castille’s back, dropping him to the ground.

“You’re lucky I don’t just shoot you right now and say you were trying to escape,” snarled Mahjad. For a moment he seemed to be considering it, but then he issued more orders. The soldiers pulled Nina and Hafez to the train’s front car, another pair hauling Castille up by his arms and dragging him after them.

The car’s interior was of an old-fashioned design, a narrow corridor running down one side with a row of eight-seater compartments on the other. Castille and Hafez were shoved into the rearmost compartment, four soldiers going in with them. Nina’s guard started to push her in after them, but Mahjad said something to him. The guard suppressed a nasty smile, then brought her to the compartment at the far end of the corridor. It looked as though it had once been the first-class section, but those days were long gone, the seats threadbare and grubby.

“Sit down,” said Mahjad, following her in. Nina thought about refusing, but before she could open her mouth he forced her down onto the seat by the window, then sat facing her. The soldier took up station outside the door, visible through its narrow window.

She thought Mahjad was going to speak, but instead he simply sat there, his unreadable gaze slowly passing over her body. She touched her hair self-consciously; the movement instantly caught his attention, eyes locking onto her face.

Nina grew horribly aware that not only was she alone in the compartment with Mahjad, but also that the soldier outside would undoubtedly turn a blind eye to anything that happened.

Or worse still… take part.

She shuddered. Mahjad picked up on the tiny motion, one corner of his mouth creeping upwards malevolently as the train jolted, then started to move.

Long forced runs were nothing new to Chase. But doing one in this much pain was something else entirely.

Every fifty yards he looked back at his pursuers. By the time they reached the tunnel, he had built up a lead of about four hundred yards. But they were catching up: younger, fresher, unhurt.

He was still out of the effective range of their G3 rifles, and from what he knew about the training of the average Iranian soldier, he would be at low risk of being hit even once he entered it. But eventually they would get close enough to bring him down. Unless he reached the train yard first.

What he would do when he got there was still a mystery.

Wing it, he decided.

Waiting on the sidings were a freight train and a shorter passenger train. Parked next to the latter was a military truck.

Adrenaline pumped into his system, revitalizing him. It was the same truck he’d seen heading for the farmhouse! It must have brought the soldiers-and presumably their prisoners-back to the yard… which meant they were going to board the train.

Chase quickly looked back. The three Iranians were two hundred yards behind and still gaining. That wouldn’t give him much time when he reached the yard to-

Shit!

The passenger train was moving! The gravelly rasp of the diesel’s engine reached him, dirty exhaust fumes spewing into the mountain air.

He was too late! Considering the state of the road above, he had no chance of keeping pace with the train even if he stole the truck.

But somehow he had to find a way to rescue Nina, to say nothing of his friends.

The train was still moving slowly to negotiate the points that would put it onto the main line. One by one the cars snaked through the turn. Chase pushed himself harder, ignoring the pain. Maybe there was still a chance that he could catch up…

There wasn’t. He had barely reached the points at one end of the yard by the time the train pulled out of the other, the locomotive’s noise rising to a throaty roar as it accelerated.

Now his options were the truck … or the other train.

A lone soldier stood by the back of the truck, watching the train depart. He heard footsteps crunching over ballast behind him and looked around-taking a flying kick right in his chest. Chase followed up the move by punching the fallen man in the face.

Grabbing the soldier’s gun, Chase glanced back down the track at his pursuers, then ran towards the front of the freight train.

He heard the first bullet hit one of the wooden trucks just before the crack of the gunshot reached him. Animals bleated in fear. He dropped and rolled underneath the nearest truck, emerging on the other side. He had a few moments of cover, but it wouldn’t take long for the soldiers to reach the back of the train and run around it.

The locomotive was just ahead, a dirty slab of metal with a cab at each end. But there was something he had to do first…

He ducked into the gap between the loco and the first truck. The coupler was a standard “knuckle” type; he pulled the lever to unlock it with a heavy clunk. Now, when the engine set off, it would automatically disconnect and leave the rest of the train behind.

He looked back down the length of the train. Two of the soldiers had followed him down the left side, which meant there was only one on the right. He jumped up onto the coupler and leapt across to the other side of the truck, whipping around its corner with his gun ready. The third soldier was racing towards him.

In a single smooth movement, Chase dropped to one knee, took aim and fired. Three shots cracked from his rifle, but he scored a hit with the very first one. The soldier tumbled to the ground.

Chase ran to the front of the locomotive. A head popped through the open door, the driver leaning out to see what was going on. He figured it out very quickly.

“Afternoon,” Chase panted, pointing his gun up at the driver. “I need to borrow your train.”

The shocked man raised his hands, looked around desperately, then turned and with an ululating shriek threw himself out of the other side of the cab.

“At least I asked,” Chase muttered as he climbed the steps. The cramped cab was empty, the rattling chug of the engine at idle echoing from behind a narrow access door in the back wall. Through the windscreen he saw the fleeing driver running towards a signal cabin near the end of the sidings.

The largest lever on the control panel had to be the throttle. Which meant that the next largest was the brake.

He hoped.

Chase pushed the throttle lever forward experimentally. The loco lurched as the engine noise rose-but the brakes held it in place.

He released what he thought was the brake lever. There was a piercing metallic squeal, and the loco jolted. He immediately rammed the throttle forward. The big diesel engines behind him shrilled, needles on the control panel’s gauges shooting into their red zones, but he ignored them and looked out of the open door.

The engine had indeed disconnected from the rest of the train, so at least he wouldn’t be dragging several hundred animals along with him. The running soldiers had almost reached the front of the first wagon-

He brought the G3 around and switched it to full auto, unleashing a blaze of fire down the side of the locomotive. One of the men dropped instantly, a cloud of blood spraying from his chest. The other hurled himself onto the track in front of the stationary wagons. Chase’s line of fire was blocked by the boxy engine’s body.

He grunted in annoyance, then returned his attention to the controls and the track ahead. The first set of points was approaching fast.

Chase knew from playing with his dad’s model railway as a kid that points were supposed to be taken at low speed. In fact, he’d been banned from the train set after his curiosity about what would happen if they weren’t caused a Great Western express to take a flying diversion to the floor.

But he didn’t have much choice-he had to catch up with Nina’s train.

Chase braced himself. The whole locomotive rocked as it crashed through the points too fast, metal screaming against metal. The violent move was repeated as the six wheels of the rear truck ground over the switch as well. Then the loco straightened, but the next points were already coming up fast.

Another howl of metal from beneath the engine set Chase’s teeth on edge, but he kept pushing the throttle forward even as the sharp turn threatened to pitch him out of the driver’s seat.

One more set of points and he would be on the main line, following the other train. If he forced every ounce of power out of the locomotive, it shouldn’t take too long to catch up-and if he judged it right, he could match speeds and automatically couple his own engine to the back of the train, then climb out of the cab and jump aboard.

Light flashed off metal ahead: something moving.

The last set of points had changed!

Chase snapped his head around to see two frightened faces staring out of the signal cabin’s window as he powered past. The driver must have told the signalman to try to stop him-and now his locomotive would end up on the track parallel to the other train.

Which meant that if another train came the other way, he would plow headlong into it!

But if they thought that would stop him, they were wrong.

With a last crash of overstressed metal, Chase’s locomotive thundered through the points. He slammed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The needles jumped again, but the only one he cared about was the speedometer. Thirty kilometers per hour… forty…

The tracks ahead curved back and forth as they wove through the mountains. He couldn’t see the other train yet. But it couldn’t be too far ahead.

Catching up with it wasn’t his biggest problem.

Getting onto it was.

Castille and Hafez exchanged looks. Both men had long experience with soldiers, and they had been watching carefully for the telltale signs of boredom and inattentiveness that almost inevitably struck during guard duty.

The soldiers watching them were showing the signs. They outnumbered their handcuffed prisoners two to one, and were armed, so they had an innate feeling of power and superiority that could easily slip into complacency. When the two men were first shoved into the compartment, the soldiers’ weapons had been raised and fixed on them.

Now, they were lowered. It would only take a moment for them to be lifted again-but a moment was all Castille and Hafez needed.

They just had to wait for the right one.

The more Nina tried to ignore Mahjad, the more she became aware of his gaze. All she could do was turn away from him and lean closer to the window, watching the mountainous landscape roll past beyond the dirty glass.

Mahjad shifted position. Nina glanced at him-and froze in horror when she saw that he was toying with Chase’s Wildey.

“My life would be easier if you and your friends had been shot while trying to escape,” he said. “Less paperwork, fewer questions from my superiors. Maybe I should just kill you all before we arrive and save myself some work.” The gun slowly came around, its thick muzzle pointing at her. She cringed in her seat. “But… you could persuade me to change my mind. Save your friends.”

“How?” Nina asked. But she already knew the answer.

“You know how,” he answered, leaning back in his seat as a gloating smirk spread across his face.

“You’re sick.”

The smirk intensified. “I’m not an unreasonable man,” he said, looking at his watch. “I’ll give you a few minutes to consider it. If you choose not to accept my offer…” his face twisted into a malevolent grin, “I’ll kill your friends. And give you to my men. I’m afraid they’re not… what’s the word? As gentlemanly as me.”

Paralyzed by the sick fear churning her stomach, Nina turned away from him again, utterly lost and alone.

The locomotive was now doing over seventy kilometers per hour, still accelerating. Chase stared intently at the view ahead, searching for the first glimpse of the other train as he powered around a long curve.

There!

About half a mile ahead, but he was gaining.

Two minutes to catch up. Maybe less.

The gap between the tracks was around ten feet. But the distance between the sides of the two trains would be smaller, as little as five feet. An easy jump.

At least, easy when the two vehicles weren’t doing close to fifty miles an hour.

Chase adjusted the throttle, hanging his rifle from it by its strap to hold down the dead-man’s switch. If he eased it off just before he drew alongside, then the loco should match speeds and make his jump easier. He moved to the open door and leaned out to judge the force of the wind-

And was hit from behind, his shoulder smashing agonizingly into the metal frame as the last Iranian soldier burst from the corridor connecting the front and rear cabs. Shit! How had he gotten on the train?

The track bed blurred past below as the soldier tried to shove Chase out of the door. One arm numbed by the impact, the only thing he could reach for support was the handrail on the outside of the engine, which made him swing even farther out of the cab.

From where he saw the headlights of another locomotive, charging straight at them!