“How can it possibly get any better?”
A woman let loose a bone-chilling scream.
Everyone turned. The screaming woman was up front, standing over a body in the middle of the aisle.
Preston.
“Someone must have killed him in the tunnel!”
“But who?”
37
Two crooked lines of cocaine wound across the instrument panel, just above the pressure gauges in the red zone. They were vacuumed up by the empty fuselage of a ballpoint pen.
The engineer stood straight again and wiggled his nose, then pinched it closed to get membrane action. “We’re not going fast enough… must go faster.” He pushed a lever forward.
A crowd had gathered around the body in the dining car.
“I don’t think he’s acting.”
“Of course he is.”
“It’s been five minutes.”
“I’ve seen human statues in New York go for hours.”
“He’s really good.”
Ivan and Zigzag wasted no time. The element of surprise was gone, but the train was still moving. They checked the schedule. Ten minutes until the Okeechobee depot. Ten minutes to find Tibbs or he could jump off with the briefcase. They worked quickly through the sleeping compartment, knocking on doors. “Tickets!…”
Serge tiptoed into the car behind them and peeked around the corner.
Eugene Tibbs heard a knock and opened his door. There was no nonsense. Zigzag tackled him and Ivan stuck a gun in his mouth. “The briefcase! Now!” Tibbs pointed up at the overhead rack. Zigzag pulled it down.
A voice from behind: “I’ll take that, if you don’t mind.”
They turned around. Serge stood in the doorway with an even bigger gun. They handed him the briefcase.
“Thanks.” Serge slammed the compartment door shut and took off.
Zigzag and Ivan ran out the door, and Serge took a shot at them from down the hall. They dove back in Tibbs’s compartment.
Passengers in the dining car heard gunfire, took notes.
Ivan and Zigzag poked their heads back into the hallway. Clear. The Russian pointed to the back of the car. “You go that way!”
They checked everywhere, but no Serge. Zigzag tried to find his sleeping compartment. He knocked on doors and came to one that was locked with no answer. He gave it his shoulder. The door popped open. He tore through luggage. Nope. Belonged to a couple from Kalamazoo. Three more doors down, no answer, also locked. He gave it the shoulder again. The door popped easily. It swung open and hit a switch on a small control box on the floor. Zigzag heard a little train whistle as a toy locomotive began to chug around a small circle of track on the floor.
Zigzag smiled as the train stopped at the loading dock in front of his feet, the logging car automatically tipping out its load: several plastic logs and an unpinned grenade whose handle had been wedged in the car. The handle sprang off as the grenade wobbled a few inches and bumped into Zigzag’s toes.
“Uh-oh.”
The explosion rocked
Ivan spotted Serge sneaking out the front door of the first sleeping compartment. He ran after him. As Ivan passed through the connector between the cars, he noticed the emergency door was unlatched. He stuck his head out the side of the train and looked up a ladder.
Back in the dining car: “How long has it been?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Do you think we should poke him or something?”
They heard pounding and banging overhead and looked up through the clear skydome. Two men wrestled on the roof with a metal briefcase, rolling this way and that, legs swinging precariously over the edge of the train as it headed across the Indian River on an old steel-girder trestle. One man socked the other in the face; the other punched back. They rolled over again. Another punch. The briefcase went skidding away from both of them, sliding across the glass roof.
Ivan and Serge rolled over a couple more times until they came to the edge of the car. Ivan was on top, his hands around Serge’s throat, Serge’s head hanging back over the side of the roof and turning blue. Ivan reached his right hand back and slugged Serge in the face. Then he unsnapped his shoulder holster, pulled out a pistol and pressed it to Serge’s forehead. Serge grabbed it by the barrel and pushed it up; a shot flew into the sky. It became a battle of arm strength, the barrel of the gun slowly moving back down toward Serge’s face.
The train rumbled across the trestles, the vibrating briefcase sliding left and right across the roof. A hand reached down and grabbed it by the handle. The passengers pointed up through the glass at two new feet walking toward the pair of struggling combatants.
Ivan was winning the war of muscles, and the barrel of the gun reached Serge’s face again. Ivan pressed it between his eyes. “You lose.” He began squeezing the trigger.
Wham.
The briefcase slammed into the side of Ivan’s head. He flew off Serge and rolled in disorientation and pain. The gun fell over the side of the train and clanged off bridge beams on the way down.
