Okay, so the time finally comes. Little Lou is almost hoppin’ outta his skin he’s so wired up. Jade was sittin’ as far back in the alcove as she could, legs tucked up under her, still starin’ off into space and seeing nuthin. I started to wonder what Lou had done to her, then tried to stop thinkin’ about it. Didn’t work.
Moustache is as calm as a guy can be, talkin’ in his own language to his two men. The other three strangers are bendin’ over their suitcases, and I see they’re takin’ out all kinds of stuff. I’m not sure what most of it was, but they had little round gray things about the size of baseballs, weird-lookin’ kinds of guns—I guess they were guns, they looked kind of like pistols—and finally they pulled out some rubbery gas masks and handed two of ’em to Moustache’s men.
Lou and Rollo both are lookin’ down the track toward the station, and I see they both have pistols in their hands. Rollo’s hands are so big his pistol looks like a toy. Little Lou is sweatin’, I can see the beads comin’ down his face, he’s so [deleted] scared. I keep myself from laughin’ at him out loud. He’s worried that the oinks he bought off won’t stay bought. Be just like them to take his money and then double-cross him by doin’ their job right anyway.
But then I figured that maybe Big Lou was the one who paid off the oinks. Screwin’ Little Lou is one thing; if they mess around with Big Lou they’d regret it for as long as they lived. And so would their families.
Moustache sends off all five of the strangers up the track. I wonder how close to the bomb they can get without bein’ blown up themselves. I wonder if the bomb will bring down the roof of the whole [deleted] tunnel and bury all of us right where we are. I wonder about Moustache sayin’ they ain’t tryin’ to whack the Chairman. What’re they gonna do, then?
I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Moustache is starin’ hard at his wristwatch, that big pistol in his other hand. I hear a dull whump kind of noise. He looks up, runs out to the middle of the tracks. I go to Jade, who’s gotten to her feet. Lou and Rollo are still starin’ down the track toward the station, Moustache is lookin’ the other way, toward where the train is comin’ from. Nobody’s watchin’ us.
«Come on,» I whisper to Jade. «Now’s our chance.»
But she won’t move from where she’s standing.
«Come on!» I say.
«I can’t,» she tells me.
«It’s now or never!»
«Vic, I can’t,» she says. I see tears in her eyes. «I promised him.»
«[Deleted] Lou!» I say. «I love you and you’re comin’ with me.»
But she pulls back. «I love you too, Vic. But if I go with you Lou will hunt us down and kill you.»
«He’s gonna kill me anyway!» I’m tryin’ to keep whispering. It’s makin’ my throat raw.
«No, he told me he’d let you alone if I stayed with him. He swore it.»
«And you believe that mother-[deleted] lying [deleted]?»
Just then we hear gunfire and guys yelling. Sounds like a little war goin’ on up the track: automatic rifles goin’ pop-pop-pop. Heavier sounds. Somebody screamin’ like his guts’ve been shot out.
Moustache yells to Lou and Rollo, «Quickly! Follow me!» Then he waves at me and Jade with that big pistol. «You too! Come!»
So with Moustache in front of us and Lou and Rollo behind, we go runnin’ up the track. There’s a train stopped up there, a train like I never seen before. Like it’s from Mars or someplace: all shinin’ and smooth with curves more like an airplane than any train I ever saw. Not that I ever saw any, except in pictures or videos, y’know.
I see a hole in the ground that’s still smokin’. The track is tore up. That was where the bomb was. It was just a little bomb, after all. Just enough to tear up the track and make the train stop.
We run past that and past the shining engine. Even in the shadows of the tunnel it seemed to shine, like it was brand new. Not a scratch or a mark on it. No graffiti, even. Where I come from, we don’t see much that’s new. It was beautiful, all right.
Anyway, there are three cars behind the engine. They all look spiffy too, but a couple windows on the first car were busted out, shattered. The car in the middle had a blue flag painted on its side, a flag I never seen before.
Moustache climbs up onto the first car and we’re right behind him. We push through the doors. There’s a bunch of dead bodies inside. Flopped on the floor, twisted across the seats. Not regular seats, like rows. These seats were more like big easy chairs that could swivel around, one next to each window. You could see there’d been plenty of bullets flyin’ around; the bodies was tore up pretty bad, lots of blood. I heard Jade suck in her breath like she was gonna scream, but then she got control of herself. I almost wanted to scream myself; some of those bodies looked pretty damned bad.
One of the tall guys came through the door up at the other end of the car. He had his gas mask pushed up on top of his head. His rifle was slung over his shoulder, makin’ his suit jacket bunch up so I could see a pistol stuck in the belt of his pants. He looked kind of sick, or maybe that was the way he looked when he was mad.
Moustache went up and talked with him for a minute, lookin’ kind of pale himself. Lou told Rollo to pick up all the loose hardware lyin’ around the car. What? Hardware. Guns. Must’ve been six or eight of ’em on the floor or still in the grip of the dead guys. Oh yeah, two of the dead ones were women, by the way. Far as I remember, neither one of ’em had a gun in her hand.
We got through the connecting doors and into the middle car. Not everybody in there is dead. Only a couple guys in blue suits that Moustache’s men are already draggin’ down into the third car, at the end of the train.
There was one guy alive in there, a little guy no bigger than me with eyes like Jade’s. Otherwise he looked like a regular American. I mean his skin wasn’t dark even though it wasn’t exactly light like mine. And the suit he was wearin’ was a regular suit, light gray. Right away I figured he was the Chairman of the World Council.
C. C. Lee.
He was sittin’ there, his face frozen with no expression on it, almost like Jade’s when Little Lou had been pawin’ her. I looked at him real close and saw his eyes weren’t exactly like Jade’s; they were real oriental eyes, I guess. Hard to tell how old he was; his hair was all dark, not a speck of gray in it, but he didn’t look young, y’know what I mean? Straight hair, combed straight back from his forehead. Kinda high forehead, come to think of it. Maybe he was startin’ to go bald.
Anyway, Moustache sat down in the chair next to his and swiveled it around so they were facin’ each other. Jade and I stood in the aisle between the rows of chairs. The others moved out to the other two cars.
«This is not what I wanted,» Moustache said. He talked in English, with that accent of his.
«It is what you should have expected,» said the Chairman. His English was perfect, just like a newscaster on TV.
«I regret the killing.»
«Of course you do.»
«But it was necessary.»
The Chairman looked at Moustache, really looked at him, right into his eyes like he was tryin’ to bore through his skull.
«Necessary? To kill sixteen men and women? How many of your own have been killed?»
«Four,» said Moustache. «Including my brother.»
The Chairman blinked. «I am sorry for that,» he said, almost in a whisper.
«He knew the risks. Our cause is desperate.»