Kismet glanced back at the dazed survivors of the crash, then looked again at the vehicle from which he had been thrown. Responding to an undefined impulse, he began walking toward the wounded Humvee.
“Kismet?”
He heard Buttrick’s croaked inquiry, but elected to ignore it. Instead, he quickened his pace, reaching the doorless vehicle in a few steps, and slid behind the steering wheel. He searched for only a moment to locate the starter switch, and turned it all the way to the right.
A triumphant grin crossed his mouth as the engine rattled to life. Still in gear, he had only to depress the accelerator and Delta 46 was back in the chase.
Buttrick was shouting for him to stop but Kismet, full of purpose, paid no heed. He brought the vehicle around in a wide turn, taking it nearly to the center divider before turning the front end toward the outside of the road, where a second unbroken string of concrete barricades stood as a guard rail. Almost as an afterthought he pulled the seatbelt taut across his lap and locked it in place before stomping the accelerator pedal to the floor.
Though he had already endured one such jump, the perspective from the driver’s seat was different somehow. He was a little closer to the action and further from the pivot point of the rear wheels, but the real dissimilarity lay in the act of initiating a nearly suicidal assault on the barrier. As a passenger, all he had to do was hang on. Although the approach seemed to take forever, it was over in an instant. The front end was violently knocked upward and the rest of the Humvee followed. The landing on the loose soil beyond the road was less forceful than the first and Kismet easily maintained control.
He quickly located the chase by the enormous cloud of dust. Both vehicles were traveling in a straight line toward the city’s main rail yard. The Humvee driven by the assassin became visible as it made an abrupt right-hand turn, peeling off from what would otherwise have been a collision course with a line of empty freight cars, and began traveling parallel to the rail spur. Realizing he had an opportunity to intercept, Kismet angled toward a point ahead of their quarry while Delta 44 swung into line directly behind, continuing the relentless advance.
Kismet gripped the wheel breathlessly. His bid to flank the assassin had only one fatal flaw: the artificial barrier posed by the rail cars ended well short of the intercept point. However, just beyond the last car, at the point where spur entered onto the main track, a second train was moving through the rail yard at a deliberate but unstoppable pace. Once that train passed the intersection, it would close the door of escape.
The assassin evidently saw this as well. With a desperate burst of speed, Delta 42 charged ahead. As it did, the run-flat rim on the left rear tire began to come apart, scattering large pieces of rubber across the gravel near the rail bed. The vehicle swerved uncertainly, but somehow the driver managed to maintain control as it approached the end of the idle train.
Kismet saw what was about to happen but was powerless to prevent it. The assassin swerved across the spur, the vehicle fishtailing uncertainly as it bounced over the iron rails, but straightened as it crossed the mainline a whisper ahead of the advancing locomotive. The driver of D-44, once more suffering from tunnel vision, never looked away from his goal.
Kismet made an instinctive grab for the radio handset, impotently shouting: “Break off!”
The message was never received.
The train was only traveling about twenty-five kilometers per hour but its mass was relentless. It hit the Humvee broadside, nearly bisecting the vehicle, and drove it forward along the tracks. The horrifying scene was lost from view as the locomotive pushed the wreckage beyond the parked train on the branching track, but there was no mistaking the eruption of black smoke as the diesel fuel tank, warmed by the desert sun and compressed by the crushing weight of the train, reached its flashpoint and exploded.
Kismet, still shouting a warning that would never be heeded, stomped on the brake pedal, bringing the Humvee to a halt a few meters from the rolling line of rail cars. The pursuit seemed to be over.
Fired by the same impulse that had motivated him to chase after the assassin in the first place, Kismet refused to admit defeat. Flooring the throttle once more, he veered out into the open area for several seconds before coming around in a wide turn that brought him parallel to the incoming train. He eased back on the accelerator, matching the pace of the rail cars, and tried to put the pieces of his plan into coherent order.
He knew that Delta 42 was nearly on its last gasp. Once the ruined tire fell completely apart, the assassin would be forced to continue on foot. All Kismet had to do was get to the other side of the moving train and that meant he was going to have to abandon his Humvee and transfer to the train. As long as D-46 was traveling at the same speed as the rail cars, he would at least have a chance of making the transition.
He looked around for something to hold the accelerator pedal down, but found nothing. Everything not bolted in place had been thrown clear during the earlier rollover. His eyes then settled on the radio unit. While it was secured in place, the clamping bolts were easily loosed, and a moment later he pulled it free of its mount. The weight of the back-up battery inside the oblong metal box made it ideal for what he had in mind. He removed his foot from the pedal and replaced it with the radio.
That minor success was overshadowed by the fact that he was now running out of road. His course alongside the moving train was soon going to bring him to the spur where the idle freight cars were parked. He would have to make his move quickly or not at all.
The train loomed above the passenger side door and the metal rungs of an access ladder were visible beyond the opening, but Kismet did not relish the idea of trying to squirm across the interior of his vehicle in the seconds that remained. He instead sprang for the open turret hatch in the center of the Humvee’s roof and thrust himself through the opening in a single decisive jump. The driverless vehicle maintained course and speed, but he knew there was no time for delay.
His objective now seemed much further away than before. Though he was relatively close to the rolling train, there remained a distance of almost two meters between the edge of the Humvee’s roof and the rungs of the ladder. To make matters worse, the train was slowing; the engineer had thrown the brakes in a futile effort to prevent the collision with Delta 44 and the juggernaut was still steadily decelerating. The ladder Kismet was so focused on reaching was gradually falling behind him.
Throwing caution to the wind he stepped back, then took a running leap toward the train. An instant later, he found himself hanging from the rungs on the side of a tanker car. He wasn’t sure of how he had completed the leap, but there was no time to waste figuring it out or congratulating himself on making it look easy. With a deep breath, he started ascending the ladder.
Delta 46 continued to roll alongside the train, gradually pulling ahead in its race to oblivion. A heartbeat later it plowed into the parked freight cars and annihilated itself. The Humvee came apart in a spray of metal, plastic and rubber, pelting the moving train with almost unrecognizable pieces of debris. Kismet ducked reflexively as a chunk of olive drab fiberglass struck near his extended hand.
His arms were still burning from the exertion of his crazed ride on the back of the ill-fated vehicle and he felt the fatigue rapidly building to the point of failure. After heaving himself onto the catwalk that framed the oval cylinder of the tank car, it was a struggle to get to his feet. From this vantage however, he could see all but a few shadowy corners of the labyrinthine rail yard. The assassin’s vehicle was limping along parallel to the moving train, taking refuge in its behemoth shadow, the driver perhaps assuming that the chase was over. Kismet saw clearly that path that would take his foe to freedom, but wondered if the way out was as obvious at ground level. Shaking the fatigue from his arms, he took off at a sprint.