The gamble worked. His assailant, frustrated by his inability to pound Kismet senseless, changed tactics and instead pushed away in an effort to extricate himself from the grappling match. Kismet got his arms free, but just as quickly wrapped his legs around the man’s middle, trapping him in close combat, the same way he’d been instructed all those years ago when learning ground-fighting techniques in the army. Kismet got his right arm around the man’s neck, then caught his right forearm with his left hand and began ratcheting his grip tighter.
The man continued to struggle ineffectually for a moment, but then seemed to realize what Kismet was doing. He stopped thrashing and instead tried to slide his beefy hands in between his vulnerable throat and Kismet’s headlock.
The battle seemed to have come to a standstill, with neither man moving an inch. Kismet felt his foe’s squirming fingers working into the notch of his elbow and realized that the man was about to succeed. In desperation, he began twisting his own body back and forth, trying to shake the man, the way a predator shakes its prey in its jaws to break its neck.
The man roared in fury, a roar that was all the louder for the fact that the squealing of the train’s brakes had subsided to a low rasping. The agonized howl took the last bit of fight out of the man, and a moment later, his struggles ceased as asphyxia bore him down into dark unconsciousness. Kismet held tight a moment longer, fearing that that the sudden capitulation was a ruse, and then heaved the still figure away.
At that instant, the train lurched to a full stop.
Lights flashed and bobbed in the darkness alongside the train, heralding the imminent arrival of Leeds’ men. Over the deep rumble of the idling locomotive, Kismet hear the distinctive report of gunfire and knew that, despite his victory in the close-quarters struggle, things were about to get a lot worse.
On hands and knees, he groped for his knife, found it, and was about to stand up when he became aware of another white-robed figure looming over him. The man that had reached the cab first, the one he’d cold-cocked with the kukri, had evidently recovered from the blow…and recovered his pistol as well. The gaping barrel of the Magnum was pointing straight at Kismet’s face, and as the latter stared back, helpless in defeat, the shrouded man thumbed back the action and tightened his finger on the trigger.
A shot, then several more…too many too count…thundered in Kismet’s ears.
But the revolver hadn’t discharged.
The man with the big gun flinched as bullets ripped into him and then fell against the guard rail.
In disbelief, Kismet turned toward the source of the shots. Brilliant white light, the beams of a half-dozen or more high intensity LED flashlights, left him nearly blind, but he could just make out the shapes of the advancing group. The men were poised for action, carbines held at the high, ready and trained on him, but they weren’t wearing the makeshift disguises of the bunch that had attacked them at the cemetery. This group wore a different uniform; helmets and body armor, tactical vests with spare magazines and other equipment, all in the distinctive gray and off-white digital camouflage pattern of the United States army’s advanced combat uniform.
THIRTEEN
For the next two hours, Kismet barely moved.
Most of the soldiers had swarmed over the locomotive, ensuring that there were no other hostile elements lurking nearby, but two of their number had remained with him, keeping their M4 carbines raised and ready the whole time. He stayed quiet, and except for a few terse commands, so did they.
Once the security sweep was complete, an army medic in full battle-rattle arrived on the scene to begin assessing casualties. Ignoring Kismet, he went first to the man that had been carrying the revolver. He used a pair of trauma shears to cut away the man’s disguise, revealing the bland face of a younger than middle-aged man with unkempt hair and a short beard. Kismet surreptitiously watched as the medic checked for a pulse, listened for breath sounds, and then repeated the process twice more before glancing up to the stone-faced riflemen and shaking his head.
The man that Kismet had choked out was luckier. Once again, the mask was stripped away, this time to reveal a much younger man, and the medic successfully found a pulse after a few seconds. He moved to the man’s side, giving his security element a better line of fire in case the man came to, and went to work checking for other injuries.
“Broken jaw,” he mumbled, as if dictating to an unseen secretary. He probed some more, repositioning the kid and mopping up blood to see if minor wounds concealed more severe injuries. “Superficial laceration to the upper chest…a lot of bruising…” He looked up again, addressing one of the other soldiers. “He’ll live, but we should evac him to a local facility.”
The soldier nodded and, still keeping his carbine raised with one hand, keyed a radio clipped to his vest and relayed the message.
The medic regarded Kismet with evident apprehension. “I need to check you over.”
Kismet nodded, but said nothing. As far as the medic and the soldiers were concerned, he was a potentially hostile combatant; any attempt to put them at ease would probably just make them even more suspicious.
The medic ticked off the list of Kismet’s injuries, mostly bruises and abrasions. He daubed Betadine onto a few of the deeper cuts and used butterfly sutures to close the wound on Kismet’s shoulder. When he was finished, the medic addressed Kismet with a little less reservation. “You should probably get checked out in the ER as well, but Major Russell wants to talk to you first. You okay with that?”
Kismet nodded again. “I’ll live. And the sooner I get to tell my side of this, the better.”
The medic cocked his head sideways in a knowing gesture, and then went to work preparing the unconscious man for transport. Once the patient was borne away on a field litter, the long silence resumed, and Kismet waited some more.
The night air was just starting to get uncomfortably chilly when another soldier climbed up onto the walkway. This man had removed his battle armor but still wore a holstered semi-automatic pistol on his hip. There was a gold oak leaf badge on his patrol cap and the name tape on the front pocket of his uniform blouse read “Russell.”
Despite being sore, tired and frustrated by the long period of inactivity, Kismet did his best to present a cooperative demeanor. “Major Russell.”
The officer cut him off with a brusque wave. “It’s Kismet, right?” He spoke with a clipped but precise style, accentuating his faint southern drawl. “Do you have any idea what you have done here? I have got a ten mile section of railroad that’s now a crime scene, and now all train traffic on the eastern seaboard is at a dead stop.”
Kismet bit back an equally rancorous reply and focused on what the major had, perhaps unintentionally, revealed. “I hope the fact that you know my name means that you’ve talked to my friends already. Are they okay?”
Russell’s mouth twitched a little, as if fighting away a smile. “They’re fine and in a lot better shape than you.”
“So I assume they’ve already told you that we aren’t the bad guys. The only reason we were even on this train is because we were being chased by the guys in white sheets. We were just lucky that this train happened to be transporting military equipment.”