Pursing his lips, Fisher hauled himself up along the back side of the HEP car, reaching the operator’s door and clinging to it against the high wind. He tried the lock. No, it wouldn’t be that easy.
Clutching the door’s handle with one hand, he leaned back and opted to shoot out the window. Three rounds chewed through, then he busted free the rest of the glass with his elbow and levered himself up and onto the sill, shoving in his pistol hand and ready to fire. Clear. He hauled himself inside, collapsing onto the car’s floor.
Fighting for breath, he rolled, pushed up onto his hands and knees, then stood, spinning back toward the controls.
They were gone. Stripped. Nothing here but bundles of wires jutting from empty consoles. Some of the cables had been neatly cut, others torn free.
A small hallway ahead dropped down three steps to another door, this one made of aluminum or steel and seemingly retrofitted to the car. No window. Iron bar handle. Two locks. Dead bolt, no doubt.
“Sam, watch out! I think I see—”
36
FISHER never heard the rest of Briggs’s warning. A pair of black boots had flown through the shattered window and connected with the side of his head. He flew back against the opposite door with such force that the window cracked behind him.
He reached for his weapon.
Never made it.
Two more blows struck him in the cheek and chin, a third to the neck.
He finally touched his holster. The weapon was gone.
He reached farther down to his secondary.
Gone.
Suddenly, his trifocals were torn from his head. He blinked hard, tried to focus. The barrel of a .40-caliber pistol was poised six inches from the tip of his nose.
His eyes still weren’t fully focused, but that was no matter; the voice came first.
And it was enough.
“I don’t believe it. No, not you!” she cried.
Fisher had briefly entertained the idea that yes, it might be possible that their “favorite” GRU agent was in Dammam, but conventional thinking had him and the rest of the team focusing on a handful of other Russian operators who’d gone rogue over the years, including Kestrel.
But no, it was her.
Major Viktoria Kolosov. Snegurochka. The Snow Maiden. Fisher’s pistols were tucked into her waistband. Yes, his MPX was still strapped around his back, but he’d never reach the machine gun in time.
He raised his voice above the incessant hum of the diesel engine and spoke to the wild-haired woman in Russian. “You missed a very nice helicopter ride!”
“I’m sure I did! What’re you doing here?”
“Same question.”
“No more talk. Say good-bye.”
“You won’t do it. You already had your chance back in Peru. I think you like me.”
She took a step back, clutching her pistol with both hands. “What’s so important that they sent you after us?” She gestured toward the door. “It can’t be just the gun in there.”
“The gun?” Fisher asked. “Is that what they told you? What’s your mission?”
She snorted, as though she’d never share that.
“Look, you don’t have to talk, but if this train gets to Abqaiq, nothing will matter.”
“What do you mean?”
Fisher suddenly widened his eyes and screamed at her: “What’s your goddamned mission!”
“I’m here to babysit the gun and make sure it reaches Riyadh. They’re paying me a lot to do it.”
“There’s another guy in there, right? Have you seen him?”
“No. The door’s been locked.”
“That guy’s an Iranian, the triggerman. That thing you’re calling a gun? It’s a nuke they built in Natanz. They want to blow up the oil processing station. Your Russian bosses sent you on a one-way mission.”
“I’m supposed to believe that? Listen to me, asshole, you ruined my life! I lost Nadia and I lost Kasperov. I couldn’t even go back to the GRU. Failures like me, we disappear. Do you understand? I had to take this job. And now you what? You want to save me?”
“I don’t care about you. I just need to get through that door. Now get out of my way—”
“Oh, yes, me and the gun pointed at your head will let you come on through. Now shut up and take off your fancy little rifle.”
Fisher reached up, slid a thumb under the MPX’s sling, then pulled it over his head, his gaze never leaving hers.
“Now throw it out the window.”
He smiled, thought about it.
“Do it!”
Now it was Fisher’s turn to snicker. He tossed the gun over her shoulder and out of the train.
He was about to make his move on her weapon when a pair of deafening explosions resounded from outside, twin bursts so powerful that the ground and car quaked and the cracked window behind him shattered.
Not a second later the windshield blew inward with a horrific crash and burst into thousands of pieces that sent both of them ducking.
Next came a squealing of the train’s wheels as they locked up, the force throwing the Snow Maiden forward, into the stripped console, with Fisher caroming off the panels beside her. He was already reaching out to seize her pistol when the windows had blown, and now he had it—
But she was reaching for his Five-seveN at her waist. He went for it.
But her grip went slack. And so did his.
Because the rumbling, shrieking, and groaning noises coming from outside, along with the shattering of more glass, meant only one thing: the train had derailed.
He couldn’t be sure what happened next, judging it all based upon what he could hear and feel. His gaze was still locked on the Snow Maiden’s, the ferocity on her face turned to utter shock.
He threw her pistol behind him while reaching for his Five-seveN. He seized it—
But now she had his secondary, the P226, pressed to his forehead.
This standoff lasted barely a second more before a massive wave of sand, perhaps dug up by the locomotive as it buried itself into the desert, came rushing through the shattered windshield and drove both of them backward and into the hall and stairwell.
Even as the sand flowed in as though poured from a dump truck, the entire train heaved and creaked, iron scraping against iron, undercarriages wailing as wheels cut at wrong angles across the tracks. Another explosion rocked from somewhere outside, followed by a harsh cracking that sounded as though the hitches between container cars were being forced apart and snapped in two.
The operator’s booth continued filling with sand, the walls buckling, and just as Fisher was slapping his hand on the wall, groping for purchase—
The entire HEP car smashed onto its side and continued skidding across the desert floor, more dirt and rocks and other debris coming in from the side door window, with the Snow Maiden now crawling backward toward the steel door at the bottom of the steps.
Summoning up a scream, Fisher forced himself up through the oncoming sand and dove onto the Snow Maiden, freeing the SIG from her grip before she kneed him in the chest, then brought her boot around and side-kicked him in the neck.
They both fell back as the side of the car, now their ceiling, began rumbling and smashing inward to a chorus of much louder scrapes and echoing booms. Fisher suspected that one or more of the oil container cars was ramming and tumbling over them, the entire train folding up like an accordion and rolling over itself, the tanks splaying across the earth like a box of cigars let slip from the hand of a drunken oligarch.
Perhaps only the train’s collision could stop the triggerman from detonating the weapon—and any second’s delay was either fate glancing kindly on Fisher or cruel irony baiting him with the idea that he still had a chance.
Barely finishing that thought, he and the Snow Maiden were thrown once more into the opposite wall as the HEP car fishtailed brutally to the right, booted by more cars piling up behind it, the reverberation like a legion of thunderheads vying for attention and drumming across the tracks.