CHAPTER 41

LOWE WAS AHEAD of Falk and Dear Sam, and I could tell by his posture—arms out and hands curved in—that he was starting up his air bending. And if he could get a big enough gust of wind going—and experience said that he could—then he could derail the train.

Would have loved to have tackled him, but we had Dear Sam, Kellogg, and Kozlow to handle first. And they were definitely interested in keeping us away from Lowe.

Did my best to send an emotional message to whatever empaths, Jeff included, who might be able to pay attention. Focused a lot of longing on Mahin and Christopher. She’d been able to counter what Lowe had done during Operation Infiltration, and Christopher was the one who trained both her and me. Plus the fastest man alive was always useful.

However, I couldn’t spend a ton of time on this because, as my music changed to “Fight” by Motörhead, Kellogg lunged for me while Kozlow went for White. Apparently they’d decided to switch it up and keep us guessing.

Fighting on a moving train was both exactly as it looked in the movies and nothing like how it looked in the movies at the same time. The danger, wind, slipperiness, and all-around disorientation of this situation was pretty much as the movies showed it to be. But the inability to really practice the “sweet science” or any form of martial arts didn’t line up with what Hollywood had always told me.

Pop culture betrayal aside, the biggest positive was that no one else up here had spent time prepping by fighting on the tops of moving trains, and I could say this with some certainty since the bad guys were having as much trouble as White, Falk, and I were.

We hit at each other, then the force of the hits knocked us off balance and we spent some hilarious yet terrifying time trying to stay on the train or clawing to get back onto the top of the train, assisted by our allies. Those with guns had given up trying to shoot them—the risk was too high that we’d hit someone on our side.

“This is ridiculous,” I shouted to White as he and I each managed to grab Falk’s arms before he fell over the edge. “We need a new plan.” Rod Stewart’s “Street Fighting Man” came on. Resisted the desire to tell Algar that he wasn’t helping.

“I’m open to ideas,” Falk said, as we dragged him over and White landed an impressive upward kick into Kozlow’s stomach, which caused Kozlow to knock into Kellogg and White to slip toward the train’s side.

“I’d like us to figure out how to fight like Jackie Chan or Tom Cruise do on the tops of these things, and I’d love us to do it right now.” Managed to sweep Dear Sam’s feet out from under him right before he gave it a go anyway and tried to shoot us.

Happily he lost hold of his gun and that went off the side. Unhappily it was now my turn to, once again, start sliding off. And, so far, we had no cavalry showing up to save the day. Meaning it was all going to be up to us. Always the way.

We were now in some foliage that made what we’d been through already look tame. Something dropped onto the roof between us and Kellogg and Kozlow.

“Holy Mary Mother of God . . . is that a snake?” I screamed this at the top of my lungs because it damn well was a snake and I was terrified of snakes.

“Jesus!” This was from Kellogg. “It’s a copperhead!” He started screaming just like I was. How nice. A bonding moment.

“Calm down, it’s just a snake,” Kozlow said, earning my lifelong enmity.

Heard another scream from behind me. Turned to see Dear Sam freaking out because, lucky us, more snakes had landed on the other side of us, between us and him.

“Stay calm,” Falk said to me and White. “They’re probably falling out of the trees from the rains. They won’t attack unless they’re provoked.”

“They fell out of the freaking trees! They are venomous attack snakes bent on murdering us all and I am officially not having any of it! Do you hear me? I did not sign up for this!”

White squeezed my hand. “We’re faster than them, Missus Martini. I promise.”

“I’d like to keep on screaming, okay? I’ll run away much faster that way. Promise.” A horrible thought occurred. “You realize that if we fall off there are snakes lurking in the trees and on the ground, waiting to finish us off.”

“I’m more worried about the train and the people on it killing us,” Falk said. “We can deal with the snakes.”

“I can’t. At all.”

Dear Sam was backing up, doing his own form of freaking out. So he didn’t realize that he was backing up into Lowe. Decided not to warn him, just to show that, terrified or not, I could still focus on the mission.

Kozlow really wasn’t afraid of the snakes, and I could prove this by the fact that he kicked the one between him and us toward us. Showing that it was truly an evil murderer snake, it didn’t strike at him but slithered closer to us. Decided Kozlow had to die, and die ugly.

As my screams reached the register that only dogs could hear, Dear Sam knocked into Lowe. Lowe fell forward and Dear Sam fell backward. They disappeared. Either they were between this car and the engine or they were dead. Had to figure that our luck indicated they’d both survive somehow.

“Try to talk to it,” White suggested.

“I can’t. Seriously. I cannot do that.” During Operation Civil War I’d been able to sort of feel the snakipede’s minds on Planet Colorful. But I hadn’t been able to influence them in any way. There was no way I was going to be able to get the concentration going that I’d need to have.

Opened my mouth to scream again, only something else screamed for me. Looked up to see Bruno flying overhead, carrying Ginger in his claws. He dropped her and she landed near me.

Ginger snarled like I’d never heard her do before, and then she attacked the snake Kozlow had kicked toward us.

Was about to panic when Bruno cawed again, reminding me that a cat that had been trained from birth to fight and kill giant snakipedes that were venomous and could fly was not going to have a problem with a copperhead, no matter how dedicated the snake might be to survival.

Sure enough, Ginger moved in the way all cats can and do—murderously fast. She had the snake ripped to shreds in seconds. Then she spun and headed for the other snakes. And my music changed to “Bang, Bang,” by K’naan, with Adam Levine helping out on the high notes.

Forced myself to dig into my purse and get my Glock out at hyperspeed, which wasn’t hard since I was so revved up on Snake Terror Adrenaline. Got my gun out in time to see Kozlow aiming his gun for Ginger.

Aimed and did the rapid-fire technique Mom had taught me. Sadly, due to the movement of the train I missed him completely, but I hit the gun. The force of ten bullets hitting it knocked the gun from his hands and it skittered off and fell over the edge.

Aimed for him again. “No one shoots at my animals you bastard!”

Kozlow put his hands up and backed up. Thought he was going to jump or run, but apparently this was a signal and the chopper lowered and dropped a rope ladder. He grabbed onto it and Kellogg, now that Ginger had killed the snakes, managed to lurch into action and caught the ladder just before it was out of his reach. The chopper raised up.

I pointed my gun at them all anyway, but White gently pushed my hand down. “Save the ammunition. We have more to deal with here.”

“Where are the flyboys? I thought Tim said they’d be in the air.”

Falk nodded. “They were scrambled when we got onto the train. I heard Crawford give the order myself.”

“I’d like to know where the hell all these other people attacking us came from, too. It would be nice to get some help up here.”

White and Falk stared at me as Ginger came over to reassure me that she was on the snake case and Bruno landed next to us. “What other people?” Falk asked finally.

“On the roof. Fighting our people.”

They both stared behind us. “I see only our people and one other, Missus Martini. I think it’s Annette Dier, but I can’t be positive.”

“Are you kidding me? There are a ton of people on the top of this train.”

Falk shook his head. “Maybe your goggles are faulty.”

Or maybe they weren’t for wind, or night vision, or anything else. Maybe they were a very special gift from Algar that allowed me to see either ghosts or people who were cloaked. Gave it even odds for both. My music changed to “Invisible Touch” by Genesis, so perhaps the odds were better for cloaking.

But there was one way to find out. “Get forward and make sure Dear Sam and our air bender aren’t doing something terrible to the engineer or something. I’m going to see what the hell it is I’m really seeing.”

I was essentially in a crouch, so I took off just as I had for every race, Ginger running next to me, Bruno flying beside us. It wasn’t as bad running with the wind at my back, and I hurdled the spaces between cars and any little puddles of water, of which there thankfully were not many. Due to my time with the gang from Alpha Four, I still had a perfect four step, so nothing was slowing me down.

Due to the situation, I ran at human normal. This was not the time to overshoot anything, especially if there were copperheads lurking around every rock and leaf in this area.

Still made it to the nearest car with a bunch of people on it pretty quickly. Reader and Tim were on this car and now that I was near them, I could see that they weren’t fighting normally. They were back-to-back, which wasn’t unusual, but they were using techniques I knew they only did when they had to deal with A-Cs using hyperspeed.

But none of the people around them were moving fast. However, they were attacking my guys, and that confirmed them as my enemies.

“Ginger, Bruno, use those keen animal senses of smell and such and help me stop the bad people.” So saying I body-slammed the nearest person to me.

Who made the “oof!” sound, stumbled, and fell off the side of the train with a scream. Go me. At least hopefully.

Of the other eight people on this car, six of them turned to focus on me. They weren’t turned Secret Service or Field agents, and definitely not A-Cs—they weren’t good looking enough by far. However, there was something about them that I recognized. Two things, really. They were all, to a man, wearing goggles that looked a lot like mine. And they were all dressed just like the commandos I’d had the displeasure of serving with in Bizarro World.

“James, Tim, you’re surrounded by invisible commandos,” I called to them. “Humans, not A-Cs.”

Then I was too busy being attacked by six hulking guys to give them any more tips.