With Randall Rader lying under the railcar beside him, Dexter felt his heart beating with apprehension. He was only a few feet above the grinding metal wheels, resting on the narrow suspension rods, holding on for dear life.
In less than fifteen minutes, Dexter DeMille and all ten members of Fannon's assault team were inside the Fort. The train was only going twenty miles an hour, but the frightening sensation of speed caused by lying so close to the tracks was overpowering. Dexter locked his eyes on the scenery beyond and prayed he wouldn't lose his grip and fall. He had been hoping that they would be stopped and arrested at the perimeter of the Fort, but the rail system had proved to be a surprisingly good way of subverting all roadblocks and security measures.
Once inside Fort Detrick, the train slowed and headed across open fields toward the warehouse where the cars would be disconnected, then left to be unloaded. As they neared the low black buildings, Fannon Kincaid was the first off the train, suddenly running alongside the car that Dexter was on.
"Off now! Head for that gully!" Fannon screamed above the rumble of the metal wheels. Randall, who was riding the same suspension rod as Dexter, pushed him in the back, knocking him off his resting place and onto the gravel shoulder. Dexter rolled down a hill, with four other members of the Choir alongside him, until he hit with a thud at the bottom of the gully.
"Stay low," Fannon commanded, as the high-hood switcher rumbled past. The engineer appeared not to have seen them.
Suddenly, the air brakes on the huge train screamed; metal shrieked against metal, as the ten cars slowed dramatically. The engineer inched the cars closer, until they were alongside a concrete loading dock.
Dexter was watching all of this from fifty yards away when suddenly Fannon Kincaid was at his shoulder.
"We're gonna hide in them woods, over there," the new Messiah said, pointing at a heavy stand of trees some distance off. "Everybody stay in this gully till we're outta sight a' them buildings," he ordered.
They moved in a group, crouching low, heading toward the wash near the tracks and finally up into the coolness of the wooded hillside.
"God's time is coming," Fannon said to them all, as they crouched in the leafy moon shadows created by the stand of trees.
"Faith and Race," the members of the assault team whispered in reply.
They had passed the first Fort Detrick security check with mind-baffling ease. At every turn, Fannon Kincaid had proved to be up to the task. Dexter DeMille wondered if he had made a huge mistake trying to trap him here.
Fannon led the way along a narrow path through the trees, moving single-file along the pine-needle-carpeted trail, heading back toward the main campus of the Fort. Finally, they crouched down and looked off across a meadow at a large windowless structure. Fannon put his field glasses up and surveyed the building.
"Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters," he announced, reading the flags flapping from poles in front of buildings bathed in the moonlight. Then he swung the glasses to the right. "What the fuck is that?" he asked, and then handed the glasses to Dexter. It took the scientist a minute to adjust the lenses. What came into focus surprised him. He had never seen it before, only heard about it… the ultramodern train that was painted pure white.
Chapter 43
As night fell they were crouched in the forest, east of the medical campus. Dexter had drawn a map that showed where Building 1666 was located. Fannon dispatched Randall Rader and the Texas Madman to find the lab and scout the area. Then he turned his gray eyes to look across the rich farmland at the lights coming on in the buildings a mile from where they were bivouacked in the stand of trees.
"Whatta ya think is going on over there at SATCOM HQ?" Fannon finally said. "Looks like they're about ta move that train."
Dexter looked over at the SATCOM Battalion HQ, which was almost a mile to the east. The hill they were on sat just halfway between the medical campus and the isolated SATCOM HQ, where he could see the strange four-car White Train, lit by lights from the building. Suddenly, they could hear the rumbling diesel engine as the train started moving slowly toward the east end of the Fort, where Dexter had heard the underground bio-weapons storage facility was located.
"I don't know what's happening," Dexter said, although he had a pretty good idea, and it had huge ramifications.
Fannon smiled at him. "Look at me, Mr. DeMille," the Reverend said softly.
"I am looking at you."
"No, all the way, into my eyes."
As Dexter swung his head to look directly at Fannon, the Reverend swung a big fist. He had timed it so Dexter turned directly into the punch, and it knocked him flat; he was stunned and almost unconscious, and his displaced jaw shot such pain into his eyes it made them water. While he was still trying to get his mind to function, Fannon's face loomed over him like a pale rutted moon.
"You ain't quite being honest with me, bub. Only a profligate sinner would attempt ta lie ta one a' the Lord's angels."
Still out of it and half unconscious, Dexter felt himself being dragged into a sitting position by the front of his shirt. He became vaguely aware that Reverend Kincaid was astride him, pulling him up.
"Again, let us talk about what is happening over there."
Dexter could taste the coppery blood in his mouth; then he saw huge drops of it falling onto his pants from a badly split lower lip. His blood appeared black in the moonlight as it fell on his trousers in Rorschach-like splatters.
"Why did you hit me?" he whined.
"In the next life, God will punish all liars, Mr. DeMille, but I get ta kick the shit out of 'em in this one."
"I think it's the White Train," Dexter finally whispered, his tongue feeling the new, unfamiliar edge of a chipped tooth.
"Of course, I know it's a white train, you dip-shit. I got eyes. What I want to know is, what is it doing?"
"It's called the White Train," Dexter repeated. He was feeling a complete loss of energy now, a hopelessness verging on despair. The blow had more or less convinced him that no plan to trap this man would ever work. "I never saw it before, but I heard about it. The government uses it to transport toxic material."
"What's it doing here?"
"There's a lot of chemical toxins and bio-weapons on the base, hidden in underground storage. It's all illegal stuff we should never have manufactured. There's an underground warehouse out by the SATCOM HQ."
"You think they're putting toxic waste in that underground warehouse?"
"No," Dexter said, thinking what a dumb human being Kincaid really was. "They're taking it out."
"Why?"
"All I can do is guess, so don't hit me."
"Then do it! Guess!"
"After that mess at Vanishing Lake, the Senate Defense Oversight Committee must be getting worried that something isn't right here, so Admiral Zoll is moving his stash of illegal weapons before an investigation committee finds them."
Fannon Kincaid leaned back on his haunches, and in that moment looked like a painting of a great Apache warrior, looking off from his perch with weathered intensity. He studied the White Train through his binoculars as it came to a stop out in the middle of an empty field. It was a ghostly, moonlit apparition; its diesel was idling, the noise carrying across the windswept plain like the distant metallic purr of a mechanical beast.