Gavin pushed the Suburban down a cracked and potholed side street. They were moving fast, trying to close the gap with Greene and the Mexican cop.
"Two hundred feet," Jones said as he looked up from his iPad and scanned the street ahead. They were driving through a rundown industrial zone, mostly defunct now, empty of people and traffic. They shot through a cross street and were halfway down the next block when Jones snapped, "Here, stop right here."
Gavin stepped on the brakes and skidded the Suburban to a stop next to a half-demolished sign hanging between two rusted posts. The posts stood in front of a wide, low-slung building with a façade of plate glass windows, most of them busted. At one time it must have been a showroom of some kind.
Jones jabbed a finger at the ruined building. "There."
"Inside?" Gavin asked.
After a glance down at his iPad, Jones looked back up at the dilapidated hulk. "Behind it."
In the next block, a freight train rumbled past.
* * * *
As the train rolled and clanked its way past Scott and Benny, the engineer stared at them through an open side window. His arm was propped on the windowsill but he did-n't wave. He didn't smile or frown or change his expression in any way. He just stared at them. The way he might have stared as he passed a couple of cows.
"He was looking right at us," Scott said. "He knows we're going to hop the train."
"Of course he knows," Benny said. "But he doesn't care. He just wants to get wherever he's going on time. Or close enough so he doesn't get fired."
The train was a combination of boxcars and flats, rat-tling past them at less than twenty miles an hour. The sides of nearly all the boxcars were splattered with graffiti. Most of the flatcars were carrying steel shipping containers, whose sides were also tagged with spray paint. The rest of the flatcars were loaded with heavy machinery covered with tar-paulins.
To Scott, the flatcars looked almost impossible to climb onto while the train was moving. There was nothing to grab. The boxcars, at least, had steel steps and ladders mounted to them front and back. "Have you done this before?" he asked.
"Lots of times."
"Any tips?"
She turned to him and smiled. "Don't let go."
Scott edged closer to the tracks. He heard shouting be-hind them and turned around, his hand reaching for the pis-tol tucked into the small of his back. The teenagers who'd been passing the joint were running away from two men in suits standing on the loading dock. The fake State Department clowns who'd mugged Scott outside the DEA office and stolen his prisoner. Jones and...whatever the hell the other guy called himself. Probably Smith.
Alias Smith and Jones.
Scott's pistol was in his hand. He had a score to settle with these two.
Benny laid a hand on his arm. "My daughter."
That stopped him. He looked at her and nodded. "Let's go." They started running toward the train.
Behind them, Scott heard a shout. He glanced back and saw that the two suits had spotted them and were chasing them. The end of the train was coming up. Scott and Benny ran beside the tracks, trying to keep pace with a boxcar. There were only half a dozen cars left. Time was running out.
Scott was two strides behind Benny. He eyed the lad-der welded to the back of the boxcar and tried to figure out how to time the leap he would have to make to reach it. Speed was the problem. Fifteen miles an hour was slow for a train, but it was an all-out sprint for a human, and the weed-covered ground they were running on was uneven and full of hidden obstacles. They would only be able to keep up with the train for about sixty seconds, maybe less, and that was if they didn't trip. Scott was well aware that a fall now could send them sprawling under the train.
Benny grabbed the ladder with one hand. She ran two more steps then jumped and got her other hand on it. She hung there for an instant, her feet dragging the ground as Scott ran to keep up with her. Benny pulled herself up two more rungs until she was high enough to get her feet on the bottom step. Then she scrambled onto the narrow deck at the back of the boxcar. She waved Scott closer and shouted, "Come on."
Scott was running full out, trying to catch the ladder, when he heard a soft pop behind him and simultaneously a sharp ping just in front of his face as something glanced off the steel side of the boxcar. Then another pop and another ping. Bullets ricocheting off steel. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the two men twenty yards behind him and running hard. The tall one in the lead, firing his pistol one handed. A bullet knocked the straw hat off Scott's head. He reached for the Glock at his back.
"No," Benny shouted. "Keep running." Then she started shooting, blasting an entire magazine of 9mm rounds at their pursuers in about four seconds of sustained fire.
Scott glanced back again. The tall one was down but not hit. He had tripped or gone to ground to avoid getting hit. Scott saw him rolling into a prone firing position, not giving a shit about his suit, just focused on presenting the lowest possible target profile, his military training no doubt kicking in. The other one, the dick who had called himself Jones, was also down but not all the way. Probably not ex-military and too fastidious to get down in the dirt. He was on one knee and raising his pistol.
Both of them opened fire.
Scott dove for the ladder and managed to catch the bot-tom rung. The movement of the train swept his legs out from under him. As his toes dug into the dirt he was sure his fin-gers were going to slip off the ladder or be ripped out at the knuckles. More bullets pinged off the side of the boxcar. Scott reached up and wrapped his fingers around the second rung. Then the third. Climbing hand over hand until he was high enough to brace his knees against the side of the box-car. He climbed one more rung and was able to get a foot on the bottom step. Then both feet. He clambered over an iron railing and onto the deck at the back of the boxcar.
Benny jammed a fresh magazine into her pistol. "You all right?"
"Never better," Scott gasped and reached for his own pistol, which he was pleasantly surprised to find had not fallen out of his pants.
The train car behind them was a flatbed loaded with heavy equipment under tarpaulins. Scott leaned out to the side of the boxcar and looked back along the train for the two men, but the tracks had curved in the opposite direction, and they were out of his line of sight, which meant he and Benny were out of their line of fire.
They had made it. Barely.