THE THOUSAND DOLLAR HEIST, page 15
“Yeah. Keep me posted, okay?”
“Will do.”
“And Colt? You don’t have to get back on that train. You’ve done your job. I’ll get my family, then tell the troops about it all, okay? Get HRT to handle it from there.”
“I know those people,” I said. “And you know if this thing degenerates into a hostage crisis, the wrong people are gonna die.”
“And we only want the right people to die, yeah?”
“Fucking A,” I said, as I got behind the wheel of the cruiser, gunned the engine and pulled out of the killing fields, gaining traction on the tarmac and leaving the carnage behind me, buried in the dust.
Chapter Seventeen
There it was.
The California Zephyr, coming right toward us.
The route I’d taken to go after the train had taken me back through Denver. I could have skirted the city – I was in a stolen police car after all, having killed its prior occupants – but a straight haul through was by far the most direct and quickest route, and I’d already lost one hell of a lot of time. I’d also wanted a chance to find Kane.
To most people, it would probably have seemed an impossible task. I mean, what were the chances of finding him in a city of six hundred thousand people, spread out over a hundred and fifty square miles?
Pretty good, as it turned out – because as I’d followed the route back into the city, I found him trotting along the road toward me. He’d obviously been following the trail of the cop car, trying to catch up to us. That was my boy. Loyal as hell, and pretty damn clever, too.
I’d swung the passenger door open for him, ruffled the fur under his chin when he jumped in. I hadn’t known which one of us was happier to see the other; but we’d been reunited, and we had work to do.
That work was coming toward us now, in the shape of a quarter-mile long, thousand-ton passenger train.
One that we were going to have to get on, while it was moving.
We’d come through the tiny hamlet of Tolland just a few minutes ago, had parked the cruiser by the side of the road, at a point where the railroad tracks ran across a small bridge overhead. We’d run up the embankment, and were now hidden in some trees that bordered the tracks.
The journey from Denver had been hard, especially once we’d hit the mountains. We’d followed Interstate 70 for a long way, then turned north, up toward Black Hawk, before heading west again, across the higher ground. I was glad the police cruiser was powerful, because there were some seriously steep gradients on the route; but luckily, the vehicle had been built for pursuit, and had plenty of horses under the hood.
I’d chosen this location, about five miles west of the small town of Rollinsville, for several reasons. The first was that this was about as far as we could come, without having to take a huge horse-shoe shaped detour around Mount Epworth. The train could just keep going on the purpose-built mountain rail tracks, but roads were a different matter. If I’d been forced to make the detour, it would have added too much time. It would also have put us too close to the station, and I wanted this to happen far from prying eyes.
An additional factor was that even though much of the train’s route in this area was fairly straight, enabling the Zephyr to get up to higher speeds, at this particular point, the tracks curved – first to the right, around Mammoth Gulch, and then back to the left. Such an S-bend would force the train to slow considerably, especially given the steep terrain. I figured it wouldn’t make much more than ten miles per hour at this point, giving us a chance.
Now, getting onboard a moving train at any speed was never going to be easy, but at least this would turn the impossible into the potentially doable.
Manny had been right, getting on at Fraser-Winter park would have been easier; but as I’d pointed out, the only advantage I had was that the bad guys thought I was dead, and I didn’t want to give that up.
It was all coming to a head now.
We were getting toward ten o’clock, and Manuel and his cousins were about to hit the Rodeway Inn. They’d been scoping the motel for the past twenty minutes, getting set to make their play.
Personnel at the motel were down to just two by the time they’d got there, and it was the pair of Russian ex-Spetznaz commandos. They’d been left to babysit the hostages, and presumably to murder them if things went wrong on the train. The rest of the team had already moved down to Glenwood Springs Municipal Airport, where they were getting ready for the next phase of the operation.
From what he could tell, Mickey thought they would be there for another hour or so, before flying out to intercept the train. Most likely guess for the exact location the operation would take place, based on comms chatter and electronic intercepts, was somewhere in the mountains between Kremmling and McCoy. No roads for the cops to get in on, but perfect for the choppers. Mickey and Ethan had even predicted the exact point they thought the train would be brought to a stop and the choppers would fly in – a piece of open ground, where the mountain territory flattened out for a mile or so. The helicopters could land no problem, while being protected by the terrain on all sides.
So, it looked like the bad guys would fly from the airport at about eleven, land in the mountains and set up shop, and wait there for the Zephyr, which would pass through – and be brought to a stop by the gang onboard the train – at about midday.
Our plan, however, was to make sure that their plan didn’t work.
After rescuing his wife and children and getting them to safety, Manny and his cousins were going to go for the rest of the team at the airport, make sure those choppers never got airborne.
In the meantime, it would be my job – and Kane’s – to get back on the train, and get into a position to subdue the bad guys there.
Simple, right?
Well, we were about to find out.
The big train was right there in front of us now, and as the huge locomotive engines at the front pushed steadily along the curving railroad track, the noise went through me like the shock from an artillery blast, literally shaking my bones.
The good thing, though, was that it was moving slowly – ten miles per hour maximum, maybe even less.
Which meant we had a chance.
Kane and I both watched as the train passed us by, one eighty-five-foot-long car after another. Watching it this way, clanking along the tracks in front of us, from one side to another, you got an idea of just how big the Zephyr really was.
It was the final baggage car we were waiting for, right at the back. The plan was to grab hold of the rear ladder steps and pull ourselves up; I would then hoist Kane up onto the roof, and he would help to pull me up after him. I obviously hadn’t discussed it with Kane, but he’d know what to do; he always did.
Once on the roof, we’d work our way down to a passenger car and then target one of the upper-level roomettes. I’d memorized the layouts and the occupancy levels back in the hotel room in Chicago, and I knew that after Denver there were a couple of empty rooms upstairs. We’d go in through the window, and then take things from there.
Although going for one of the earlier cars would have given us more of a chance if we got it wrong the first time, the chances of being seen were just too high. The rear car had no windows except for small portholes in the two doors on either side, so we should be able to get on unobserved. Of course, the plan only gave us the one chance, and no margin for error.
The final passenger car began trundling past, and I knew it was time to make our move.
“Come on buddy,” I said as I came out from the cover of the trees, and Kane followed me, right on my heel.
We raced forward until we were right next to the train, just as the baggage car started to go past our position, and we waited, crouched and ready, legs coiled like springs.
Then the back of the train was there and I jumped, one hand grabbing hold of the ladder, one arm extended behind me to grab Kane by the scruff of his neck, to make sure he made it too.
The train pulled away, and even at ten miles an hour it felt like my arm was being pulled out of its socket. But my grip held tight, and my feet were secure on the ladder; and Kane was right next to me, balanced on the rear step, my other hand still holding onto him.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. Okay, the first part was over. Now we just had to get inside the damn thing without the bad guys seeing us.
I was about to haul Kane up to the top – there was a rail up there he could get ahold of with this teeth, or his front paws – when he started to growl, a deep sound that came from the back of his throat. He was trying to look underneath the train.
“What is it, boy?” I asked, but he didn’t even look my way, his attention focused on the underside of the car.
Gripping the ladder as tight as I could, I levered myself down, trying to get my head underneath the lip of the car, toward the wheelset. Kane didn’t act that way for no reason, and I needed to check out what had caught his attention.
Heart racing as my head descended frighteningly toward the tracks, I finally managed to get my eyeline underneath the carriage.
And then my racing heart stopped almost entirely.
In the middle of the wheelset, attached by what was presumably a magnetized fitting to the underside of the baggage car, was a shaped explosive charge.
This was no simple IED; this was military-grade C4 plastic explosive, positioned so that the blast effect would be channeled upward, right into the baggage car. Everything inside would be entirely destroyed, along with any people unfortunate enough to be in there.
I came back up, cold sweat on my forehead.
Damn, if they had an explosive charge there, might they have put them underneath the other cars too?
I pulled out my phone, called Manuel, not knowing if he would answer, or if he’d be too busy killing Russians.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“I’m on the train,” I said, “and you?”
“We’ve got them,” he said, and I could hear the relief, the sheer happiness, in his voice. “We’re at the motel, we took care of the Russians no problem. Didn’t even need guns.”
I bet they didn’t, I thought grimly, wondering just how badly the Spetznaz boys had got it.
“Gonna make a move on the airfield now,” Manuel said.
“Okay,” I said, “but listen. The bad guys, they’ve got a shit load of plastic explosive underneath the train. I don’t know why. I think it’s to create a hostage situation in case they’re compromised. Threaten to kill everyone onboard the train unless they get away.”
“Ah, fuck.”
“Exactly. So listen, get into position at the airfield, but hold, don’t go in until I say, okay? If they see you coming, they might know they’ve been compromised and turn this thing into a damn terrorist siege.”
“Got it. So what are you gonna do?”
I sighed. “I’m going to climb under this train,” I said, wondering if I actually was crazy, “and see if I can disarm those bombs.”
Chapter Eighteen
I’d put Kane up on the roof, before taking my life in my hands and climbing down underneath the train.
The frame assembly that sat underneath each car and supported the axled wheelsets at each end was called the truck. I’d managed to crawl past the first one, terrified by the wheels churning away on either side of me, and was now in an open area, in the middle of the car, right next to the C4.
It had been hard work to get there, but the structure was designed to be accessed in case of emergencies, so there was actually a narrow crawlway of sorts, that enabled engineers to get down there and make repairs when the vehicle was on the move. It was damn uncomfortable, but better than having to hold on to the piping with my hands and feet while hanging upside down.
I examined the device, and immediately saw that there was good news and bad news.
The good news was that the device was fairly easy to disarm. There weren’t any tamper switches or anything which might have set the explosive off prematurely; there was just a remote detonator. All I had to do was remove the detonator, and the shaped charge that could destroy the entire structure above it was rendered almost entirely useless.
The bad news was that if the bad guys had placed a charge under this car, they might have done the same at other points on the train; and that meant I was going to have to drag myself down the tiny crawlway for the entire quarter-mile length of this son of a bitch, and do it as fast as I damn well could. I needed to be finished and clear by the time this thing reached Winter Park. The last thing I needed was for the people at the station to see a dog on top of the train, and a crazy security guard crawling underneath it.
And so I started the process as soon as I’d made the first device safe; I threw the detonator away, and began pulling myself along to the next car.
And who said this job wasn’t glamorous?
I could run a quarter-mile in around a minute, walk the damn thing in under four; crawling under a train for that distance, defusing bombs as I went? Turned out I needed just over fifteen.
And after I’d finished, I needed new hands and knees too, not to mentioned some serious repair work to my neck and back. High-speed crawling through narrow spaces, whilst being bounced along by a moving vehicle, suspended not much more than a couple of feet from the ground, is not good for the human body, trust me on that. It was the sheer adrenaline that got me through it, nothing more. There was no training for that sort of shit.
I was damn well glad I’d done it though, because out of the fifteen cars that made up the Zephyr, five of them had C4 charges placed underneath them. If the detonators were still in place and someone hit the remote, the whole freaking train would have been blown apart, and I doubt whether any of the three hundred passengers and crew would have survived.
If the bad guys wanted to make threats, their major bargaining chip was now gone. And if that bastard Arenas hit the trigger, nothing would happen.
I wondered when the charges had been placed, thought that it was probably after Denver; the larger number of bad guys could have shared the work, under the direction of Henderson and Arenas. And engineers would have checked the train over when it was waiting at the platform for forty minutes at the Denver stop; the chances of them finding the charges, if they’d been placed earlier, would have been too great.
I wondered if there were any more explosives hidden elsewhere on the train, but didn’t think it likely; one of the reasons for placing them under the train would be so that they wouldn’t easily be found by the legitimate members of the security team. And those would have done the job – and more – so why risk placing more charges where they could be found?
I was at the front of the train now, underneath the standard baggage car. There was no way in hell I was going to crawl all the way back again, and so I decided I would just get onto the roof at this end instead. Time-wise, I didn’t have much choice in any case. We were due into Winter Park in the next five minutes, and Kane and I had to be inside before anyone saw us.
I pulled myself up from under the train, surprised by how much my hands were trembling; the effort underneath the train had really taken it out of me, and now I was suffering.
But I could cry about it later, I told myself; right now, there wasn’t time.
I found the ladder on the front of the car that matched the one on the rear, and pulled myself up onto the narrow platform between the baggage car and the second locomotive. I looked upward, wondering how I was going to get up there without assistance. Maybe, I thought, I could brace myself between the two cars and edge myself up that way?
But then Kane’s head appeared over the edge, and I smiled. “Good boy,” I said, taking off my belt and throwing one end up to him. He caught it in his mouth and started to back up along the roof, and I held tight to my end and walked my feet up the side of the car, until I reached the top and pulled myself over the edge and onto the roof.
“Thanks,” I said, as I looked across the top of the locomotives, examining the scene ahead of us. The landscape was beautiful – soaring mountains and sweeping valleys – but I ignored it, focused instead on the buildings that were emerging in the near distance.
We’d almost run out of time.
I wracked my brains, trying to remember where the nearest empty room was; figured it was five cars down, that I’d have no time to get there if I wanted to remain unseen by the good folk of Winter Park; and decided to go for the first room in line, instead.
Speed was going to be important here – speed, and the element of surprise.
I pulled out a gun – I was carrying three now, including the ones I’d taken from those cops – and reached over the side of the train, my fingers finding the edge of the window. I pulled hard, and it opened; and a moment later I swung off the roof of the train, legs leading as I crashed down onto the window-side table, gun up and aimed ahead of me.
Empty.
I’d caught a lucky break; maybe the occupants were headed downstairs, to get out for a stretch at the station?
Whatever the reason, I needed to capitalize on it; and so I leaned back out of the window, reached up for Kane, and pulled him inside after me.
The train was already slowing for the station, and I let out a sigh of relief.
Just in time.
But there was no time to rest; we were onboard the train now, yes. But we still had to find the bad guys, and take the bastards down.
Chapter Nineteen
We were outside the door to Bedroom E again, while the train was stopped at the station. I couldn’t know for sure who would be in there – maybe nobody – but at least I knew that Henderson and Sayers would be working down on the platform.
I’d got word to Manny, told him the C4 was disarmed, to take down those bastards at the airfield before they got airborne, and I knew that he and his cousins would be taking the fight to the enemy as I stood in the narrow upper passageway of car C.
