There was a loud clanking noise, and I figured the empty coal train was pulling out. Great, just in time for Rowan to be able to drive on the tracks.
Increasing my speed, I finally got to the flat area at the bottom of the gulley where I could make better time. The sound of the clanking cars was thunderous, but I could still hear a high whining sound of tires spinning in the snow in an attempt to find purchase.
Moving into a hampered jog, I held the twelve-gauge with the butt under my arm in an attempt to keep it steady. There was a spot of darkness up ahead, but I was pretty sure that was either my truck or the buttress at the end of the line. I slowed when I got to the Bullet and looked around in all directions but still didn’t see the Jeep. I moved around the ties and stood on the railroad tracks, peering into the distance where the train had disappeared.
I could still hear the noise but could see nothing.
It couldn’t be more than a hundred yards ahead.
With a deep breath that imitated a steam locomotive, I pressed off and ran along the uncovered area where the coal cars had sat, finally seeing the Jeep turned sideways in a ditch where Dave Rowan must’ve pushed his luck just a little too far. The four-by-four was buried at the bottom of the trench, and the only thing it was doing at this point was throwing snow into the wheel wells.
I raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, firing a round into the air a little in front of me so as to avoid any double-ought precipitation.
Rowan let off the gas, and his hands shot up to the roof of the CJ-7.
I lowered the barrel on him and yelled as I walked closer, “Shut it off!”
He did as I said and then raised his hands again.
“Where is the woman?”
He didn’t say anything, and I lowered the barrel of the twelve-gauge on him. “Where is Jone?”
He smiled a sickening smile and shouted back, “Jone who?”
I yanked the door open and grabbed him by the coat front, shoving the muzzle of the shotgun under his chin and forcing his head back. “Tell me where she is or I scatter the top of your head all over the insides of the Jeep.”
His eyes widened, but his voice still had confidence. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I slipped the barrel away and blew out the passenger-side window.
He jumped, and I was betting he soiled himself just a bit. “Agha . . . !”
I jacked the slide mechanism, bouncing the empty shell off his chest, and shoved the muzzle back under his chin. “I’ve had a long day, and I wouldn’t press my luck if I were you.”
He was sobbing now. “Look, it wasn’t my idea—”
“Actually, it was your idea; abducting and selling women out of Arrosa, Wyoming. I guess you figured you could get away with it because you were out here in the middle of nowhere, but the game’s over. I don’t know where Linda Schaffer is, but I’ll find out. You sold Roberta Payne to the card dealer over in Deadwood, but now she’s dead, he’s dead, and the guy who tried to kill me is dead—and you’re going to be dead if you don’t tell me where Jone Urrecha is right now.”
He glanced past me up the hill toward the tracks. “In the train.”
I stared at him.
“She’s in the last coal car.”
I staggered back and looked up at the tracks, the train long gone. “Damn it!”
I pulled out the cuffs I’d borrowed, hooked Rowan to the roll bar on the Jeep, and snatched the keys as I dug back up the hill.
“What about me!”
“I’ll try and remember that you’re here.” I snatched the radio from my belt and keyed the mic. “Lucian, are you there?”
Static.
“Lucian, the woman, she’s in the last coal car of the train that pulled out from the spur. We’ve got to stop that train!”
Static.
“Lucian!”
Static.
I reached my truck and threw the radio into the back, climbed in, fired up the Bullet, and yanked the mic from my truck radio, which was more powerful than the handheld. “Lucian, can you read me?”
Static.
“Damn.” I pulled the selector into gear and began the arduous task of backtracking along the roadway beside the tracks, almost sliding into the Jeep but then correcting and continuing down the slippery way. It was harder this time but probably because I was in even more of a hurry.
I finally saw the BNSF high-rail truck at the end of the spur with its emergency lights on and floored the Bullet, almost slipping down the bank in the process. I steered into the drift, blew by the high-rail, and locked up my brakes—all in all, an accidental show of remarkable driving acumen.
I threw myself from my vehicle and slapped my hand on the window of the rail truck; Fry dropped his coffee as I yelled into the glass between us, “Stop that train!”
Brushing the cup from his lap, he mouthed the word What?
I slammed the glass again. “There’s a woman in the last car of that coal train you’re loading!”
His eyes bugged like headlights as he looked past me down the road at the empty tracks. “Lord almighty.”
“Get on your radio!”
He shook his head as he rolled down the window. “There’s no radio reception; something must’ve happened to the transponders that relay out of Gillette.”
I became aware of another vehicle sliding to a stop behind me and turned in time to see Lucian dropping his window. “What the hell is going on?”
“The woman, she’s in the last coal car of that train. Rowan threw her in there in hopes of getting rid of her.”
“Like the hobos?”
“Yep, like the ho— homeless.” I started around. “We’ve got to catch that train and stop them from loading.”
Lucian picked up the mic from the floor. “These damn things aren’t working.”
“I know.”
The BNSF driver, Fry, yelled at me, “That booth is on the north side—there’s nobody you can get on our side of that train.”
I kicked a tire, in full realization that my options were running out. “Are there any other roads?”
He made a face as he looked off into the fog, the delineation of the horizon lost in all the whiteness. “One, but you have to go out past the highway, then down the frontage road, and then drive in on the gravel, and it probably hasn’t been plowed.”
I pulled the cell phone from my pocket. “Who can I call?”
“Nobody; it’s a skeleton crew working tonight. We’re supposed to load this train and then call it quits.”
“Nobody has a phone?” The ludicrousness of this statement coming from my mouth was not lost on me. “Somebody?”
“No. There won’t be anybody in the administrative offices, and without radios you won’t be able to get hold of anybody in the chute section—it’s all computer generated, and besides, as you might have noticed, there’s no service out here.” He shook his head. “There just isn’t any way.”
I stared at the tracks leading west, my mind racing like a runaway locomotive. I bit the inside of my lip and stared down at the steel wheels of the high-rail gear equipment on his massive truck. “Oh, yes there is.”
—
As fast as the driver was working, it was still agonizingly slow. His voice was strained as he shouted down from the cab of the oversize truck. “This is a really bad idea.”
“Give me a better one?” We watched as he lined the one-ton truck up with the rails, rapidly backing up and pulling forward. “And hurry.”
Fry shouted down. “I don’t get this thing right, we get derailed in the first twenty feet and then it’s going to take a hell of a lot longer, I can tell you that much.”
With a mechanical whine, the steel wheels lowered onto the iron rails just enough to carry the weight of the vehicle but still allowing the traction to the tires that would provide us with power. The driver jumped from the other side and came to the front, touching a lever and lowering the front high-rail wheels onto the track with a loud, jarring noise.