Kilo Option, page 10
Yernin’s eyes narrowed. There was no reason to think Lane had traced him this far this fast, yet the longer he was aboard, the more unsettled he became.
He had thought of everything, though not killing the whore had been a mistake. He could see that now. Because of her they’d traced his movements as Stein to the navy base and then to the airport. But everything else had gone according to plan.
Then he had another thought. It suddenly came to him that the name Stewart Mann was the problem. The whore knew him by that name. And he’d made the train reservations under that name. It was an amateur’s error. One that had apparently nagged at his subconscious from the moment he’d seen the police cars converging on the airport.
If someone was coming, and now he thought that was a possibility, he would need another diversion. One that would be so big and splashy it would draw the authorities for miles around away from the manhunt.
One that would buy him some time.
He taped four bricks of Semtex to his midriff, then pocketed the micrologic computer and a remote firing fuse. He taped the floppy disk to his left calf, reloaded his Heckler & Koch with a fresh magazine, then stuffed it in his belt at the small of his back. Working by penlight in the dark compartment, he removed the covering plate from the light switch beside the door, ran a pair of wires from the hot side and the ground to an acid fuse, which went into the last six one-pound bricks of explosive. These he placed under the pull-down bed. Then he replaced the switch cover.
When he was finished he made certain that the wires would be hidden from anyone coming into the compartment. When the light switch was thrown, the plastique would blow, taking out the entire car.
Before he stepped out into the noise and confusion of the corridor he once again examined his reasons for abandoning the safety of his compartment, and reviewed his contingency plans for getting to Mexico City if he had to get off the train before Miami. If he was pushed to it, a great many people aboard this train would die or be injured tonight. But there was no help for it. Jumping off the train now would not only be risky, it would be unnecessary. Yet he did not want to be cornered in his compartment. He needed freedom of movement.
Out in the corridor he had to shoulder his way through a group of noisy revelers, then past a couple who were passionately embracing in the corner before he got outside to the connecting platform between cars. Four men, all of them smoking, were arguing about the point spread. They automatically stepped aside without looking up for Yernin to pass.
The next car forward was just as noisy and crowded as his.
The third car forward was the dining car, crammed wall to wall and end to end with bodies. The noise, heat, and smoke were intense, but nobody paid him the slightest attention as he pushed his way through. He was just another football fan.
The final two cars were coach class and just as crowded as the others. Loud music played from a portable stereo in one of them and couples were trying to dance in the narrow aisle. Somebody handed him a beer.
The last two connecting platforms were empty, as was the final one between the forward-most coach-class car and the rear of the second of the two diesels pulling the train. The door to the back catwalk of the engine was locked, however.
First checking to make sure that no one was coming, he screwed the silencer on the end of the gun barrel and shot out the door lock, careful to do as little visible damage as possible. Next he shot out the single overhead light, plunging the connecting platform into darkness.
He slipped outside, the noise and wind terrific. He untaped the Semtex from his middle, retaped the four bricks into one mass, and inserted the remotely fired fuse into the plastic.
Jumping across to the rear catwalk of the big diesel, he lay on his stomach just above the rear wheels and jammed the bomb between the engine’s lower frame and the upper support structure of the wheel assembly. When he triggered it, the force of the blast would take the entire wheel assembly off, derailing the engine and pulling the passenger cars off the track one at a time.
He got up, jumped back to the coach car, and went inside, where he leaned back against the rear bulkhead in the darkness. He would wait here until it was time to leave. Somehow he didn’t think he would still be aboard when the train reached Miami. If it reached Miami.
EN ROUTE TO FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA
Bishop shoved his headset back. “A cabby in Richmond thinks he might have picked Isaacs up at the HoJo and taken him to the Amtrak station.” He had to shout over the noise of the helicopter rotors. “He says he remembers him because he told the cabby he was rooting for the Bills, but he was wearing a Packers jacket.”
“Once he gets to Miami he’ll be tough to stop,” Hughes pointed out. “There are lots of ways to Mexico City from there.”
They were over the outskirts of Fayetteville. The train wasn’t due for another twenty minutes. Which gave them plenty of time to get their people in place and settled down so that Isaacs might not notice anything out of the ordinary.
“Right,” Bishop agreed. “Which means we get aboard the train, isolate him, and take him out at the next stop, which is Dillon, South Carolina, fifty miles away. Gives us a little less than an hour to corner him. My people will be standing by, along with the South Carolina Highway Patrol and Rowse’s people. We shouldn’t have too much trouble.”
“Do that and somebody else is going to get hurt,” Lane said.
“No place for him to go.”
“At the very least he’ll blow the train, and then get away in the confusion.”
“He’s a spy, not a mad man,” Bishop argued.
Lane turned his ice blue eyes to his FBI friend. “What’s the body count so far?”
Bishop shrugged. “I see your point, but we’re not going to let him get to Miami. Maybe we can get the other passengers off, a few at a time.”
“They’re on the way to the Super Bowl, I don’t think they’ll cooperate.”
“Maybe we can disconnect the cars one at a time, so if he tries something it won’t involve the entire train,” Rowse said.
Lane nodded. “We might get away with something like that once, but no more.”
“Well then, what do you suggest, Mr. Lane?” Coniff piped up.
The helicopter’s rotors changed pitch as they started down for a landing in the parking lot down the street from the depot.
“You and I will be the only two to board the train,” Lane told Bishop.
“And me,” Lieutenant Rowse interjected. “I’ve got a stake in this.”
“Then what, William?” Hughes asked, giving his friend a worried look.
“I’ll show him the error of his ways.”
14
ABOARD THE SILVER METEOR
Yernin watched from the darkness of the connecting platform as they came into a fairly good-sized town. He figured it was Fayetteville, and when they eased into the station his guess was confirmed by the sign over the trackside platform.
A dozen people waited to board, most of them dressed in Packers green and yellow. He studied their faces, and the way they waited for the train to come to a complete stop. It was late, but they were keyed up for the trip to Florida. They looked as if they’d been partying all night, just like the other fans already aboard. They would fit in well.
The doors to the middle three cars opened, and boarding steps were put out. Yernin watched as the football fans clambered aboard, laughing and shouting and good-naturedly jostling each other.
All except three of them in line for the car farthest back.
Yernin pressed his cheek against the window so that he could see down the length of the train. Three men, none of them dressed as football fans, climbed aboard. Moments later the train jerked and headed out of the station, pulling away from the bright lights.
He continued to watch out the window, and as they cleared the end of the depot, he saw at least three police cars parked along the street between the buildings, and then the train angled away into the switchyard.
He stepped back into the darkness, his left hand going to the calculator in his pocket. He had only to push the square-root key, which was the lowest button to the left, and the explosives over the diesel engine’s wheels would blow.
Not everybody he’d seen aboard the train was dressed in football colors, but most of them were.
Nor were all of them drunk, and boisterous, though most of them were.
The three men he watched boarding the train wore dark jackets, which was about all he could tell from the distance and angle. But they’d not behaved like everybody else. As if they were not a part of the crowd.
It might be nothing, but Lane or somebody had traced him to Norfolk and to the airport. It was possible that they’d traced him here under his Stewart Mann work name. From what he knew about Lane, the man was certainly capable of doing such a thing.
He was ready for just such an eventuality. But he wanted to be sure before he took such a drastic action. Killing without good reason was not i only foolish, it was dangerous.
He opened the door, left the safety of the connecting platform, and pushed his way to the end of the coach car to the next connecting platform. He closed the door behind him and shot out the overhead light.
The train was already out into the countryside, the view out the windows pitch-black. Yernin opened the door and stepped into the next coach car just as the bathroom door opened and a man came out. Yernin had to move aside.
The man gave him a bleary-eyed grin. “Next,” he said, and he headed down the aisle. A woman so drunk she could barely walk staggered up the aisle past the man who happily patted her on the rump, but she didn’t notice or didn’t care. Her attention was focused on Yernin standing at the bathroom door.
“You goin’ in, or just waitin’ for company?” she asked, with a goofy, unfocused look.
Yernin realized she was trying to flirt with him. She was wearing a wedding ring. He wondered where her husband was.
The door at the far end of the car opened and he got a brief glimpse of a man in a dark jacket before the crowd moved in. But the man was familiar. One of the three who’d boarded the train? If so it meant they’d divided their search. He was running out of time and maneuvering room.
“What’s it gonna be, sweety?” the woman asked.
Yernin smiled at her. “After you,” he said. He took her by the arm, shoved her into the bathroom, and stepped in behind her. As he was closing the door he got another look at the man in the dark jacket, and he recognized him. It was Bill Lane. He was sure of it.
“Hey, not so rough—” the woman protested.
Yernin locked the door, then pulled the woman to him. She tried to pull away at first, but then pressed her body against his, moving her hips and pelvis suggestively.
“What about your husband?” Yernin whispered, slipping the stiletto out of its sheath beneath his left arm. He couldn’t have her chasing him through the train.
“He’s already passed out.” She turned her face up to his.
Still holding her with his left hand, he moved aside and plunged the stiletto into her chest beneath her left breast, angling the blade upward so that it penetrated her heart.
Blood gushed out onto his hand and wrist, but then her heart stopped and she slumped to the floor.
Yernin washed her blood off his hands and the stiletto, then propped the woman on her knees in front of the toilet, her head lying on the toilet seat as if she were throwing up. Next he wiped the blood off the floor with a handful of paper towels, then checked out the window to see where they were. But the night was black, except for a green signal light they passed. He estimated they were moving about fifty miles per hour and accelerating slowly. If he jumped from the train now he would hurt himself. He would have to time his departure for when the train slowed for a sharp curve or a bridge. Amtrak rails were so bad, deceleration was required by law.
Lane was a NSA analyst, not a field officer. But Maslennikov had warned him that the man had a habit of showing up at the wrong time and wrong place. He had been targeted by several field-hardened KGB hitmen and he had killed them. Because of Lane, General Normav’s carefully crafted operation during the joint U.S.–Ukraine war games in the South Pacific last year had unraveled at the seams. Kiev was still embarrassed by the setback.
“Do not underestimate this man,” Maslennikov said.
Whether or not he killed Lane now, he still needed a diversion. If one of the other two men who’d boarded the train tried to search Yernin’s compartment, he might trigger the explosives. And if Lane were still aboard when the Semtex over the locomotive’s wheels went off, he would probably be killed or injured. Especially if he was close to the forward end of the train.
Yernin figured that would be the best-case scenario. It would take the authorities a long time to dig through the wreckage before they could know what was going on.
He needed to isolate Lane in the connecting platform between the forward coach car and the diesel engines, and kill him.
The train was packed, and Lane took his time moving forward through the cars. He did not think Isaacs would recognize him if they came face to face, but he wasn’t sure, so he took care to pretend he was just another football fan in no particular hurry. He wasn’t eager to engage in a shootout in the middle of a crowd, he just wanted to establish that the man was aboard.
If they could isolate him to one car, more of Bishop’s people could be brought aboard at Dillon, and by the time they reached Miami this afternoon they would be in better control of the situation.
Isaacs was ruthless, but Lane didn’t think he was desperate enough to commit suicide. When he realized that the odds were severely against him, he would give it up.
The man was probably a Ukrainian. And Lane understood them as well as anyone could understand a people. Ukrainians were not fanatics. They did not believe that the way to salvation was through sacrificing one’s own life.
Isaacs might be on his guard, but by now he would have to believe that he was home free. That he would get off the train in Miami, lose himself in the crowd, and make his way to Mexico City with whatever he’d gleaned from the navy computer center.
But a man like Isaacs would have contingency plans. He had the backing of the Ukrainian KGB, and it was pretty good these days. In some ways even better than the old Soviet Union’s KGB because it wasn’t so administratively top-heavy.
Lane extracted himself from a group of Packer fans who’d tried to draw him into an involved discussion about Bart Starr and pushed his way to the front of the coach car, opened the door, and stepped onto the connecting platform, his shoes crunching on broken glass.
The ceiling light had been smashed or shot out, leaving the small space in darkness, the floor littered with glass.
Lane stepped aside so that his back was against the bulkhead, not the door, and transferred his 9mm Beretta automatic from his shoulder holster to his jacket pocket. If need be he would kill the man. Providing he had a clear shot, and there were no alternatives.
He checked the window into the car he’d just left, and then the window into the next car forward. Football fans. A few of them curled up in their seats, trying to get some sleep under impossible conditions, but more of them partying. A beer keg was set up between the last row of seats and the restroom. A half-dozen men were gathered around it, drinking beer out of big plastic mugs with the Buffalo Bills insignia.
Isaacs had been here, and he was still somewhere close. Lane could almost feel the man’s presence in the air, he could almost smell the stench of death. He’d shot out the light so that whatever he’d done here would not be observed … from where? Outside?
Lane checked the exit doors on both sides of the car; they were locked. There were lights in the distance, but the countryside was mostly in darkness. There was nothing to see.
Isaacs may have stood here as the train pulled into the station at Fayetteville. What would he have seen? Something to warn him off? It was possible that he’d gotten off the train while it was still in the switching yard, but somehow Lane didn’t think so.
Lane had another thought. Isaacs had booby-trapped his way out of the navy computer center in an effort to slow down his pursuers. He’d also booby-trapped the car he left at the airport. It was his style. There was no reason to think he would do anything different now. The surest way to stop a train was by stopping its engines. The big diesels pulling it.
He left the connecting platform, pushed his way through the crowded car, and peered out the window into the forward connecting platform. It was dark like the last one.
Making sure no one was paying any attention to him, Lane took out his gun, opened the door, and stepped gingerly onto the connecting platform, his shoes again crunching on broken glass. Isaacs had been here as well.
The exit doors on both sides of the car were secure, but the lock on the forward door had been shot out. Lane cocked his gun, then opened the door and, keeping low, darted across to the locomotive’s rear catwalk. The noise from the wind and the big diesels was terrific, and he had to brace himself against the swaying motion. But he was alone.
If Isaacs had set explosives to take out the diesels, he would have done it here. Somewhere very close.
The train began to slow down, its brakes squealing. Pocketing his gun and holding onto the safety railing, he leaned out as far as he could, but there was little or nothing to be seen forward. The train was decelerating for some reason, possibly for a road crossing in some small town, or perhaps for a sharp curve or a bridge.
Something was about to happen. Lane could feel it in his gut.
It suddenly struck him that Bishop and Rowse had not been sufficiently warned about booby traps. They could be walking into a trap. Isaacs could have set more than one.
Lane jumped back across to the coach car and onto the dark connecting platform. He was about to yank open the inner door when a hand shot out of the darkness and the muzzle of a silenced pistol was jammed into the base of his skull.
