“I know,” she said, taking his silence for disbelief. “I’m a silly academic pointing out the worst-case scenario. The sky is falling — once again. The thing is, when these scenarios actually happen, there’s always someone running around, wondering why no one told them it could be this bad. I’m telling you, right here and now, it’s going to be horrific.”
Kurt’s face was dark. A new thought occurred to him. “I have to ask why you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.
“The informant sent the papers to you,” Kurt clarified. “Why not send them straight to the authorities?”
Hayley shrugged. “I can only guess it’s because of my background. The claims and calculations would seem like gibberish to someone else. Had the package been sent directly to the ASIO, I can only assume it would have ended up in the wastebin.”
“Okay,” Kurt said, “but why not some other scientist?”
“It’s a very obscure field,” she explained. “We’re a tiny group.”
“Tiny but not infinitesimal,” Kurt said.
“No,” she agreed, “not infinitesimal.”
“So I have to ask you one more time: if there were other options, why do you think they picked you?”
She paused for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. The sadness had returned to her voice. There was a tinge of weariness to it, and a stronger hint of guilt. “I don’t know.”
She looked away, averting her eyes and staring out into the night. And, in that instant, Kurt knew that she was lying.
He considered pressing her for the truth but held back as he felt a subtle change in the train’s motion, like the engineer had taken his hand off the throttle.
Hayley looked up. “Something wrong?”
“Not sure,” Kurt said. He stood just as the brakes went on at full pressure.
The car lurched. Kurt braced himself and caught Hayley’s arm, keeping her from falling as the dinner plates and wineglasses flew off the table. The screech of the steel wheels sliding on the rails overrode all other noise as the quarter-mile-long train began skidding to a halt.
Still holding Hayley, Kurt glanced out the window. The train itself was in a turn, on a slight uphill grade. Looking forward, Kurt saw two other passenger cars and the twin diesel engines. Sparks were flying from the wheels as they dug into the track. But something else caught his eye: tiny points of crimson burning in the night, flares along the track bed and, a little farther on, the outline of a tractor trailer stalled across the rail line at a crossing. Two men stood in front of it, waving their arms frantically.
The breaking continued until the Ghan lurched awkwardly to a stop a few hundred feet from the crossing.
At this point, Hayley could see the truck as well. “Lucky we were able to stop,” she said.
Kurt glanced around. “Somehow, I don’t think luck’s got anything to do with it.”
Before Hayley could reply, he spotted just what he expected to see: men in ski masks, coming out of the night and headed straight for the motionless train.
NINETEEN
The masked men came aboard the train at several different points, climbing onto the couplers between cars and forcing the doors.
“What’s happening?” Hayley asked in a panicked voice.
“I’ll give you one guess.”
Hayley’s mind quickly grasped the truth. “They’re after us.”
“Either that or this is a Butch Cassidy reenactment no one told me about.”
Hayley grabbed her cell phone and dialed out in an attempt to call for help. “I have a signal, but I can’t seem to get through.”
“Waste of time,” Kurt said. “They’re probably jamming the tower.”
He glanced outside. Two car lengths down, another man stood out away from the train, scanning back and forth.
“They’ve got a guy outside,” Kurt said. “Probably watching for anyone who might make a break for open ground.”
A voice came over the public-address system. It had a bit of an accent, one that Kurt couldn’t place immediately. It certainly wasn’t the conductor.
“Please remain calm,” it said. “We have hijacked the train, but we’re not interested in harming anyone. We’re looking for two people. A man with silver-gray hair, about six feet tall, and a woman about six inches shorter than him, with blond hair. Her name is Anderson. Cooperate with us, and no one will get hurt. Interfere or argue, and you will be beaten or killed.”
As the announcement ended, Kurt cracked the cabin door a fraction and glanced down the narrow corridor.
He saw two men down the hall, pushing their way into one of the compartments. They were wide-bodied brutes, with thick arms and legs and faces hidden by ski masks. They moved without a hint of elegance or remorse. Kurt pegged them as street thugs hired for money.
A third man trailed behind them. He was thinner and taller. Even with the man’s ski mask, Kurt could tell he had a narrow face and sunken eyes. Though not as imposing physically, there was a more menacing air about him. Kurt guessed he was the headman.
A wave of shouting erupted. The sound of a scuffle and someone being thrown around reverberated throughout the railcar. A moment later, a man about Kurt’s height was dragged out of the room. Beside him was a young woman. They looked like newlyweds.
The leader examined them. “No,” he said without emotion, “not them.” Then he hauled off and punched the defenseless man. “That’s for resisting.”
The man sagged, held up only by the two bandits. Their leader wasn’t done. He wound up and kicked the man in the chest, sending him tumbling back into his compartment.
Every instinct in Kurt’s body told him to intervene, but the headman was clearly armed, and his two henchmen might have been. Besides, he had one job right now: keep Hayley Anderson safe.
He went to the window again, preparing to smash it. Charging out into the dark and battling one opponent seemed like a better play than a close-quarters fight against three.
He grabbed a chair and raised it over his head. Before he could use it, the door flew open.
“Drop it!” a voice shouted.
Kurt let the chair go, and it clattered to the ground.
He turned around slowly as the intruders measured him up and gave Hayley the once-over.
“I assume you guys are here for the dishes,” Kurt said, pointing to the pile of flatware, cups, and glasses on the floor.
The two men looked down, their eyes instinctively drawn in the direction Kurt had pointed. It was an amateur response, but they were amateurs, local muscle hired to do someone else’s dirty work. In the fraction of a second before they corrected their mistake, Kurt moved. He pivoted on his left foot and fired his right leg toward the closest man’s gut.
The heel of his boot hit like a pile driver and knocked the man backward. He crumpled like a folding chair, sucking wind and grabbing his stomach as he hit the ground. The second thug lunged at Kurt, his huge pawlike hands going for Kurt’s neck.
Kurt blocked the effort, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting it. Using the attacker’s considerable momentum against him, Kurt spun him off balance and body-slammed him to the ground. The man hit the floor with a thud, and Kurt dropped down and hammered him with a forearm smash to the face.
He would have slugged the guy again, but he knew the boss would be coming. He spun to his feet and turned.
It was too late.
The gaunt leader of the crew was already there with a black pistol in hand, holding it sideways, gangster style. He studied Hayley, nodded approvingly, and then turned back to Kurt.
“I don’t need you,” he said.
Kurt dove to the right as the man fired mercilessly. The first shell missed, the second grazed Kurt’s arm. The third bullet shattered the window behind him. Before the would-be killer could trigger a fourth shot, a different sound rang out. It was a sickly thud, like the sound of a broken-bat single being hit in a baseball game.