Cali and Mercer leapt onto the next car, feeling the vibrations of the destruction behind them through their feet. Neither dared look back.
The second car came loose and rode up and over the first, tumbling it like a log as the locomotive’s belly tank ruptured and the four thousand gallons of diesel fuel she carried spread out in a small lake.
They continued even faster, running beyond what either thought they were capable of, the sound of the awful destruction behind them never seeming to recede as they ran from it.
Even with the train slowing, they jumped to the second car from the end an instant before the one they left slammed into the pileup. That car had a structural flaw of some kind because when it hit, the front of it accordioned, metal shearing and tearing as though it was paper.
The gaps between the trains were only about four feet but as Cali and Mercer neared the rear of the car Mercer shouted jump with five feet to go.
Cali did as he ordered, and as they launched themselves from the car, it hit the one before it. The coupling to the last car broke free as the second boxcar was pulled off the tracks and onto its side, falling as if in slow motion, spreading ballast stones in an arc as it tore into the ground.
They landed hard on the last car, both of them knocked off their feet by the impact. Mercer looked back. With the preceding car pulled bodily from the tracks, the last of the rolling stock had a clear path to the tangle of destroyed train cars. It had slowed enough so he threw an arm over Cali and together they held on as it hit. Most of the energy of the collision was absorbed by the squashed cars in front, so it felt like nothing more than a mild bump.
Cali and Mercer shared a surprised look, then burst out laughing.
“I think this is our stop,” Mercer quipped and Cali laughed even harder.
But their laughter was cut short when both smelled burning fuel at the same time. They scrambled to their feet and ran to the rear of the car. Cali descended the ladder first, with Mercer right behind, hooking his feet outside the rungs so he could slide down the ladder like a submariner. They ran for a couple hundred yards before turning back.
The railcars were piled three high in places. Two of them were flipped over on their roofs, and as Mercer and Cali watched, the spreading pool of diesel consumed the wreckage in a wall of flame that grew to a hundred feet.
Mercer put his arm around Cali’s slender waist and she snuggled into him as they watched the inferno mutely, confident that Poli was dead.
Southern Russia
Poli Feines had been behind the wheel of the Russian jeep for twenty straight hours, yet the predatory gleam in his single eye hadn’t faded. His drive from the mine to the Black Sea had been over tortuous back roads and old smuggling routes, and it was only when he reached the M-27 motorway near the port city of Novorossiysk that he encountered asphalt.
While this part of the Black Sea was famous for its resort beaches, his destination was a small working-class fishing village on the other side of the Bay of Zemess called Kabardinka.
Blind rage had erased any memory of the first part of his journey. First Africa, then New Jersey, and Niagara Falls, and now this. Though he hadn’t seen him, Feines was positive that Philip Mercer was behind the attack at the mine, just as the helicopter pilot had described him as the man on the barge in upstate New York. Even after twenty hours of thinking about his losses, acid jetted from his stomach and scalded the back of his throat. He’d served with Gavrail Skoda for more than a decade in the Bulgarian Army and had partnered with him numerous times when he’d gone freelance. Feines had five brothers, one of them an identical twin, but he’d loved none more than Gavrail and now Skoda was dead, killed by Philip Mercer on a barge on the Niagara River.
Feines admitted that they hadn’t had enough time to plan that mission properly, but he and Skoda had pulled off far more elaborate capers with less time than they’d had. And the men with him were combat-hardened veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. That they were willing to martyr themselves for the cause only made success more certain.
And now Mercer shows up again. Poli’s hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles went white and the bones threatened to erupt from the skin. He welcomed the pain, for it reminded him what he would do with Mercer when their paths crossed again. Feines was a professional. He never let his contracts affect his personal life. But this was different. When he’d discharged his obligation to his client, he would hunt Mercer down, kill everyone close to him, then torture Mercer so slowly that he’d beg for death.
The lights of Poli’s vehicle showed the sign for his turnoff. He exited the deserted highway and drove slowly through the fishing town. The smell of the sea, which tinged the air, was overwhelmed by the stench of rotted fish and diesel fuel. North of the town a road ran parallel to the sea. He could see the bright lights of Novorossiysk across the bay. There were several supertankers lined up to load oil transported on the new pipeline from Kazakhstan. And out on the still waters of the Black Sea, more ships could be seen headed into or out of the port. The laden tankers would need to transit the full length of the Black Sea and pass through the Bosporus Strait at Istanbul, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, where on average there is an accident every three days. Before reaching the Mediterranean, they also faced the navigational nightmare of crossing the Aegean Sea.
The headlights revealed a small fish processing plant built on pilings over the water. The parking lot was deserted but for two cars, a luxurious Audi A8 W12 and a limousine. The lights were on in the office trailer at the edge of the parking lot. Alongside the plant was a long wooden jetty where an eighty-foot commercial fishing boat was moored. Poli could see the glow of navigation equipment through the broad bridge windscreen.
He parked the UAZ jeep next to the black Audi. He reached over his shoulder to touch one of the barrels. It was warm but not yet hot. The heat was a by-product of the exchange of subatomic particles from one barrel to the next. By themselves there wasn’t enough ore in any one of the containers to start such a chain reaction, but two in close proximity created a critical mass. In the mine the barrels had been stored well away from one another, but in the confines of the truck it was almost as if they were calling to one another in a deadly siren song. Left unchecked, the plutonium would eventually explode in a shower of deadly dust that would contaminate several city blocks or more, depending on the wind.
Two men emerged from the office trailer and he sensed movement on the fishing boat.
The older of the two walked up to Feines and hugged him while the other held back at a distance. Poli didn’t return the embrace. The man released him. He was of average height, with thick salt-and-pepper hair. His mustache was tell tended, and below his arched brows were arresting blue eyes that even in the dim light of the parking lot possessed a devilish charm. “First of all,” he said in Russian, “are you okay?”
“I’m fine. But I think all the Arabs sent to help me were killed.”
“What happened, Poli?”
“You didn’t give me enough time,” Feines snapped.
“I couldn’t stall the Americans any longer,” Grigori Popov said. “Ira Lasko was about to go over my head. If that happened there would have been an investigation and it would have been my ass on the line. As it is I’ll have a lot of explaining to do. I can only hope to convince my superiors and the Americans that the timing was a coincidence or perhaps there is a leak within Lasko’s office. Tell me what happened.”