Corsair

The explosion came farther along the bridge’s length, on the valley floor near one of the trestle supports. Smoke and flame climbed the wooden members, mushrooming outward and upward like a deadly bloom. Cabrillo threw himself flat as the train barreled through the pulsing surge of fire and emerged on the other side with no more damage than some singed paint.

Behind them the blast had weakened the bridge’s lattice framework, but Linda’s and then Adams’s sniping had prevented the terrorists from properly rigging the structure. The supports stood firm for a solid ten seconds after the train had rushed past, allowing them to get nearly to the end of the long span before the structure started to collapse. The great timbers fell in on themselves, the valley choking with dust thick enough to obscure the waiting Mi-8 helicopter and the tiny figures of running terrorists.

The bridge fell like dominoes, the steel rails sagging as though they had no more strength than piano wire. Linc had to have seen what was happening behind the Pig in the wing mirrors, because the engine beat changed when he flooded the cylinders with nitrous oxide.

Wood and iron tumbled in a rolling avalanche that chased after the fleeing boxcar. Cabrillo watched awestruck as the bridge vanished in their wake. He should have felt fear, but his fate wasn’t in his hands, so he saw the spectacle with almost clinical detachment. And even as the Pig gained more speed, so, too, did the structure’s incredible failure. A hundred feet behind their rear bumper, the rails quivered and then vanished into the boiling maelstrom of dust.

He didn’t dare look ahead to see how much farther they had to travel. It was better, he thought fleetingly, not to know.

Just as the rails started to dip under them, the hollow sound of air rushing below the carriage changed once again and thick wooden ties appeared under the line. They had made it just as the last of the bridge crumpled into the valley, rending itself apart so that nothing showed above the billowing debris.

Cabrillo pumped his fist, shouting at the top of his lungs, and nearly lost his footing in his excitement. “That was a hell of a piece of driving,” he called to Linc. “Is everyone okay?”

“We’re all good,” Lincoln replied.

There was something his voice, something Cabrillo didn’t like. “What is it, big man?”

“I tore the guts out of the transmission the last time I hit the nitro. I’m looking down the tracks in the mirror and see we’re laying one hell of an oil slick.”

It was only after it was reported that Juan noticed he couldn’t hear the motor’s aggressive growl. Without gears, there was no reason to leave the engine running.

“Mark says the rest of the line is pretty gentle, but . . .” He let his voice trail off.

“And let me guess,” Juan added, “our brakes are shot, too.”

“I’ve got my foot pressed to the floorboards, for whatever good it’ll do us.”

Juan looked in the direction they were heading. The ocean was a slag-gray shimmer in the distance. The train tracks’ terminus was hidden in a fold of land, though he estimated they had only a few more miles to go. He also agreed with Mark Murphy’s assertion that the rest of the way was a gentle glide down to the sea. He could only hope that whatever reception Max had planned would work because when he clamped on the boxcar’s brakes he could tell they, like the Pig’s, were worn down to nothing.

“Max, do you read me?” he said into his mic.

“Loud and clear.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in position and ready to pick you up.”

“Any word on the choppers of the Libyan strike team?”

“No. I suspect they’ll come in from the south, so we’ll never see them. And more important, they’ll never see us.”

“As soon as you have us with the magnet, I want Eric to make best possible speed into international waters.”

“Relax, Juan. Everything’s ready. Doc Huxley and her people have set up the forward hold with cots, blankets, and plenty of IV drips. The cooking staff ’s been whipping up enough food to feed the people you’ve found, and I’ve got every weapons system on the ship locked and loaded in case someone wants to take them back.”

“Okay. Okay, I get it. We’ll be there in about three minutes.”

The last section of the rail line came out of the mountains through a valley that ran right to the sea. The Corporation people, along with Alana, Greg Chaffee, and their new Libyan charge, Fodl, were strapped into the Pig, while the rest of the refugees in the boxcar had been given a shouted warning to brace themselves.

The old coaling station was a run-down ruin, little more than the metal framework of a couple of buildings with bits of wood still somehow clinging to their sides. The cranes that once filled freighters with coal were long gone, and the desert had hidden where the anthracite had once been mounded in the lee of a cliff.

The Oregon loomed over the newly installed floating dock. Her main cargo derrick was swung over into position, and the large electromagnet dangled less than twenty feet over the pier.