We’d have been in Olympia three days ago if it weren’t for all the whistle stops, she thought. It’s like he’s practicing running for president—and I guess with there being an election next year (again, dammit!) and his being the president, he might decide to run for re-election. Now there’s a… scary? cheerful? ironic? well, it’s a thought, anyway.
After Grant’s Pass, the rail line swung wide of I-5 and the modern roads, winding up through the Cow Creek country, threading between pine-covered, fog-shrounded mountains, turning back and forth in great swooping bends. We started late, too, out of Ashland. For a daring escape, this has sure turned into a parade.
She was just checking whether there was any tea left—they had run out of coffee two days ago and she was still headachy from caffeine withdrawal—when the train’s brakes shrieked. Everyone and everything fell or slid forward. Chris Manckiewicz, in the corner and working as ever in one of his notebooks, grunted sharply in frustration.
Heather staggered to her feet and headed forward. Oh crap, having to start on an up slope, and towing all this coal, it’s going to take forever to get going again.
Strange sound—familiar and yet not familiar—and then she realized.
She shouted, “Helicopters!” and dropped to her knees to peer over the edge of the window.
Here, where the rails made a wide 180-degree turn, there was a broad spot on the road to their right, and the creek was to their left, far down the hill; a Marine helicopter was skimming just above the road, dropping men in battle armor as it went, and they were rolling and diving into the brush between the road and the train, moving forward in a rapid buddy rush, each man advancing a few paces ahead of the man covering him, dropping, and covering the man behind him who ran forward in turn, a swift leapfrog to close the distance.
Shots cracked from the Ranger car; Heather rolled onto the floor as windows shattered from the Marines returning fire. Their stuff has been sealed on shipboard all this time and they’ve still got modern smokeless powder and automatic. At least twenty of them to our nine Rangers and three Feds.
Manckiewicz rolled, punched the door, and darted into the Ranger car. Heather considered following—get the guns together, better organized defense—no, I can probably do more good here, between the Rangers in the lead car and the president’s car, at least slow them up if they try to come through here, keep them from having this car to work from.
She rolled and came up beside a shattered window. They want him alive, otherwise they’ d’ve bombed the train or shredded it with the helicopter’s guns. So—
She drew her 9mm and fired at a hand reaching over the sill of the window beside her; it was a relief that the gun worked at least once; she’d cleaned it just that morning, but the ammunition had been smelling strange for weeks, and she was using Crisco because they had no unspoiled gun oil.
Scrambling sounds outside the car. A burst of automatic fire from the Rangers’ car; apparently maniacal maintenance had kept a few of their modern weapons working.
One of the Marines outside poked a stick over the sill; careful not to waste a round, Heather didn’t go for that, but positioned herself carefully to see where the next try would come, watching both sides because it occurred to her that one of them might try crawling under the cars.
Another flurry of automatic-weapons fire, mixed with some deeper bangs from black-powder guns, from the car ahead. Then some bangs from far back on the train; Rogers and Machado, if she remembered right, had been taking a turn as snipers in the caboose, and either they had a shot at the attackers, or more likely the attackers were trying to flank them on that side.
The stick came in again, still on the road side of the train, but a moment later on the creek side, a stealthy hand reached up and tried the window; Heather aimed and squeezed the trigger, but it didn’t fire. She ejected the bad round as she crept closer; then there were two hands.
Heather took the least risky alternative and smashed across both hands with the pistol butt. The man shouted. Looking into his eyes, she jammed the gun toward his face, wondering what she could do with a prisoner in the circumstances but not wanting to kill him. As he leaned back away from her gun, the Marine’s injured hands lost their grip. He fell backward down the gravel-covered embankment, rolling toward the creek far below. She ducked back down; a shot hit the ceiling above her head.
Yes, they’re definitely trying to take Graham alive, and they probably don’t want to kill any of the rest of us if they don’t have to. I don’t really want to kill any of them either.
Another Marine was halfway through the window behind her, leveling his weapon, as she rolled sideways; he fired, not aiming, and she came up, aimed, fired, and heard him shriek in pain; at a guess, she’d broken a bone in his arm, and he was unable to stop himself from sliding back out of the window.
Another sound penetrated her consciousness, a raspy buzzing with a sort of whining overtone; some other aircraft? They must’ve sent everything they have. A last couple of gunshots sounded in the Ranger car ahead; now it sounded like a bar brawl in there.
The door from the Ranger car slid open.
A Marine moved in. Heather tried firing her 9mm and came up with another dead round; the Marine kicked it out of her hand and presented her with a view straight into the muzzle of his own weapon. She raised her hands—
The thundering boom outside took both her and the Marine by surprise as the railroad car shook. For a moment they stared wide-eyed at each other, aware he could have been startled into killing her; then he stepped back, to give himself more distance, and looked out the window. “Fuck,” he said. She could tell he still had her in his peripheral vision, so she didn’t move, but she said, very softly, “What?”
“Don’t know. Did you all have air cover?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Because our chopper just blew up. I don’t know what hit it, but it sounds like a lawn mower engine up in the sky.”
Heather listened and heard the same rattling buzz she’d heard before; she turned cautiously to look and saw a biplane.
“The fuck?” he said, looking at it around her.
“Cropduster with an antitank rocket?” she said. “Nobody told me we had anything that would fly except the Gooney.” If we win it won’t matter and if they win I don’t want them to go looking for Quattro Larsen. “Even that wasn’t working this morning.”
“Fuck,” the Marine said. “So we’ve got your train and you’ve got us; it’s a standoff unless—”
Heather heard another, more familiar, sound, the stuttering, coughing roar that had to be the Checker Cab of the Sky. She held her breath, then made herself relax.
“That’s another plane,” he said. “Must be one of yours, can’t be one of ours.”
“If I keep my hands where you can see them, can I put them down?”
“Yeah.” He pointed his rifle away from her but kept it on his hip where he could swing it back; she put her hands down on the back of the seat in front of her. “Escalera, USMC, I’m a corporal.”
“O’Grainne, OFTA, I run it.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t.”
“I bet.” There was another, smaller explosion outside. “God, that chopper is burning like mad, someone really hit it with something.”
“Did you have friends on there?”
“Shit, we’ve been at sea forever, a carrier’s like a small town, after a while you know everyone.”