Don Pendleton - Tiger War

For a moment there was silence, broken only by the hiss of steam. Then they heard voices and boots running along the track. Bolan holstered the Makarov and un-slung the AK-74 from his back. He had time to cock before the first Tiger soldiers appeared. He fired, two men fell, and the rest backed away.

"Reverse!" Bolan shouted.

Heath took the reverse lever and pulled, but it would not move. Just then the engineer came out of his dazed paralysis. He gave the lever an expert tug and it fell into position. They could go backward.

"Paj?" he asked.

"Paj! Paj!" Bolan shouted, firing through the side door to keep the troops at bay.

A pair of feet crunched on top of the coal tender. A muzzle flashed and something hot flew past Bolan's ear. A Simonov carbine barked as Heath fired, and a dead Tiger soldier fell headlong into the cab.

The engineer opened the throttle, steam left the engine stack loudly, and the forest began gliding past in reverse. From inside the trees muzzles flashed as Montagnard riders opened up on Tiger troops. A bullet clanged against the cab.

Bolan reached for his radio. "Mr. Ly, stop firing!" he shouted. "Cease fire!" All it would take was one bullet through the tank and they would be immobilized.

The train picked up speed, Bolan firing all the time. Now Heath too was firing, crouched by the opposite side door, shooting at Tiger soldiers in the grass who had tried to outflank them from the other side. On Bolan's side, men were running to rejoin the train. Bolan mowed them down.

The train rolled back from the danger zone. "Okay, Mr. Ly, you can resume shooting," Bolan told him by radio. "Try capturing some men so we can interrogate."

"We will try, Colonel," the headman replied. "Many Tiger soldiers are still in the passenger car." Suddenly his voice turned frantic. "Look out, Colonel! They are coming from the top of the car!"

Bolan scrambled up the coal tender. A line of men was emerging from a trapdoor. Some were walking along the roof, others were sliding down into one of the flatcars that separated the passenger car from the locomotive.

Bolan changed magazines and began firing. Men fell off the roof to the side of the track, some under the wheels of cars. Two managed to get back into the carriage. The trapdoor shut.

"Nark to Phoenix. Nark to Phoenix," the radio blared. "What's going on?"

"We have captured a train," Bolan answered. "There are flatcars for horses and more cars for men. We are going out by train."

"You're kidding!"

"I'm on it right now," said Bolan. He explained about the troops. "We've got to keep moving so they can't come out of the passenger car and swamp us." Then he told him what he wanted done. "Signal when you're in position. Out."

For the next hour the train went up and down the line, Bolan lying on top of the coal tender. The spot was a good observation post. He could thwart any new attempts by Tiger to attack him from the roof or, when they stopped to reverse direction, from the ground. It also enabled him to see when the train was approaching the end of the forest so he could reverse before they came out in the open. In the grassland they would be vulnerable to spotting by aircraft from far away. Finally he could look out for elephants on the tracks. From the engineer he had learned they were responsible for several derailments.

The radio came to life. It was Nark. "We're at the track. I'm positioning the men. Got interesting information about the Tiger troops. They're escorting wages to the hardsite. Ly got that from captured prisoners. Are you rolling south or north?"

"North," Bolan replied.

"When the train comes in sight, I'll go on the track and wave."

"I'll be watching for you."

A few minutes later, through the smoke and steam, Bolan caught sight of Nark far down the line, waving his arms. Bolan leaned down and told the engineer to reduce speed. Now came the tricky part. The train had to stop so that Nark's assault party was directly in front of the passenger car; otherwise men would be shooting at an angle and might hit the locomotive.

"You're stopping too early," Nark said on the radio.

Bolan slid down the coal into the cab. "Release brakes."

The engineer swung the brake lever to the open position, and the train picked up speed by a fraction. To come to a stop at an exact point would not be easy. Although they were rolling quite slowly, the number of cars gave them a lot of momentum.

"Good, good," Nark was saying. "Slow down again."

"Apply brakes," Bolan said.

"A little more, a little more," Nark went on. "Here we go. Three, two, one... zero!"

"Stop! "ordered Bolan.

The locomotive slid to a lurching stop. A moment of hissing silence followed, then the forest exploded with gunfire. Bolan pulled the engineer down, and all three crouched in the cab. Even with the best of plans, there were such things as stray bullets.

For over a minute the Montagnards poured fire into the passenger car from one side of the track, while on the other, a specially positioned machine gun sprayed the windows and doors every time someone tried to get out that way.

Over the gunfire Bolan could hear slamming magazines and clearing bolts. It was like being on a firing range.

Finally there was silence. Bolan imagined the Montagnards approaching the passenger car. A solitary burst fired, glass tinkled, and... silence. There was the sound of running feet along the track, then Nark climbed into the cab.

"They've surrendered," he announced.

"Good," said Bolan, lifting himself to his feet. "Let's load."

It was sunset when they finally steamed out of the forest. It had taken over two hours to load. First, ramps had to be built to get the horses onto the flatcars, then platforms had to be installed to turn the ore wagons into two-story cars, which doubled their capacity. In each car the floor was taken up by men and equipment. Over their heads was a bamboo platform on which stood more men. Even with these additions, however, they were short of space, and men had to sit on the locomotive, the passenger car roof, between the legs of horses, on couplings, and some hung from outside ladders.

"Colonel Phoenix's war train," Nark joked.

"Some war train," said Bolan. "We look more like an army in retreat."

They stood on top of the coal tender of the moving train surveying the long line of overcrowded cars. The car directly behind them was a flatcar with horses and men, then came two ore wagons full of men bristling with guns, then the passenger car with its rooftop passengers, then more ore wagons interspersed with flat-cars. Over fifty cars.

They chugged at ten miles an hour through the savanna toward the next forest, trailing a pall of smoke, the machinist whistling nonstop to scare off elephants. Herds were crossing the line on their way to the evening watering, kicking up dust colored pink by the setting sun. The sun hung in the western sky over a ridge, a flaming disk.

"Isn't it beautiful!" said Nark, looking in the direction of the setting sun.

Bolan nodded, feasting his eyes on the sight. When men roll to war, everything that represents life takes on added meaning, he reflected. For him, a sense of added meaning was always present, for he was forever rolling to war. For him, the meaning was justice by fire.

"How soon do you figure we'll be in Py Fung?" asked Nark.

"If everything goes well, two hours," replied Bolan. "Then another three by trail. We should be in position, ready to attack, before midnight."

"What about the train?"

"We'll park it in a siding. The engine driver says there's enough canopy to hide it. We'll put a bullet through the tank so he can't report us. He'll have to walk to town."