Maden Mike - Tom Clancy Firing Point

With eighty feet of twelve-thousand-pound capacity rope secured across his chest like a bandolier, he scrambled up the embankment. He dropped to his stomach near the fence, peering beneath the train’s big steel wheels, checking for guards or workers who might be in the area. The last several cars of the long train were being unloaded with forklifts and work gangs, too far away to be of any concern—at least for now.

So far, so good.

Now for the fun part.

Razor wire.

Jack pulled off the rope coil and set it on the ground, took off his sport coat, and picked up the rope coil again. Slipping his index finger through the hanging loop in the back of his coat, he grabbed the fence and started his climb. The big diesel train engine shielded him from any eyes that might be watching for him on the other side.

When he reached the razor wire on top, he threw his sport coat over it and climbed over, then worked his way down the other side, dropping to the ground for the last few feet.

He dropped to his stomach again and did another scan. Everybody seemed to be going about their business around the yard. Nobody was in close proximity to Jack. If something as catastrophic as TRIBULATION was going on inside the frozen warehouse, these people outside were obviously unaware of it.

Jack scuttled toward the front of the engine, opposite of his target, the building just on the other side of the train that stood next to the warehouse itself.

The HVAC building.

—

Jack put together a stupidly simple plan. Emphasis on stupid , he whispered to himself, kneeling down by one of the train’s big steel wheels.

He didn’t have any other options. Shutting TRIBULATION down immediately was the objective, and he knew the FBI was still twenty minutes out. He couldn’t risk waiting for them. Hell might be breaking loose even now.

Without the other Campus gunfighters to assist, without blueprints and schematics of the facility, and outnumbered by at least ten armed security men, all operators by the look of them, he could only come up with one wild-ass, long-shot, Hail Mary solution.

Gavin’s brief to him on the phone about TRIBULATION included one interesting fact. The computer they built relied on super-low temperatures. “Almost absolute zero,” Gavin had said.

The only thing Jack could think of was the HVAC unit he’d spotted from his drive-by. He thought about taking out the power lines that ran along the track, but a computer with that kind of sensitivity would have some kind of power backup like a generator. There was no way to kill the power to any of the facility for any length of time.

That left one option.

—

Jack crawled beneath the engine in the space between the giant diesel tanks, the rope still looped around his shoulder. Luckily, the rail car immediately behind the engine had already been freighted. All of the loading activity was still taking place far in the back, far away from him. Everyone associated with the train was focused there. It was go time.

Now or never.

Jack scanned the area one last time, then dashed out from beneath the train and sped over to the cinder-block HVAC building. He dropped down low behind it, once again finding cover from eyes and cameras that might be searching the area.

Or so he hoped.

He turned the corner and tried the steel doorknob into the building. That would be the easy way in.

But it was locked. He swore and returned to the back wall again. He then slipped a quick peek at the wall opposite the door.

Bingo.

A service ladder was bolted on the outside of the building, leading to the roof.

Jack dashed over to it and scrambled up like a monkey on crack. He reached the top and dropped to his belly again. The big refrigeration unit’s massive compressor roared inside its aluminum housing. Hot exhaust blew through the long metal louvers.

And the electric motor that ran the whole thing hummed furiously next to Jack.

Thank you, baby Jesus .

Jack pulled the rope off his shoulder and unwound it enough to be able to grab the steel winch hook. He secured it through the massive eyebolt welded to the top of the motor casing used to pick up the heavy device for installation and removal.

Jack scanned the yard again. He was still undetected. He pulled the remainder of coiled rope back over his shoulder and let it out as he climbed down the ladder, retracing his steps to the train. He quickly knotted the other end around a steel I-beam of the engine’s undercarriage and then stopped himself.

The rope was rated for twelve thousand pounds of weight. The electric HVAC motor weighed a thousand pounds at most.

But the motor was bolted to the rooftop of the building. Was the rope strong enough to bust those bolts?

Maybe not.

Shit!

He made a quick calculation.

It should work.

Jack untied the rope and instead of securing it, looped the end of it around the same undercarriage steel I-beam, then pulled the end of the rope and brought the rest of the rope through it. He double-checked to make sure he was clear, then dashed back up the ladder.

He ran the end of the rope through the eyebolt a second time.

He scrambled back down the ladder to tie the end off again beneath the engine.

And slammed into a security guard.

The guard’s hand flew to his sidearm as he shouted, “What the fu—”

But Jack was faster, and a throat punch cut the man off mid-sentence.

Gasping for air and grabbing his broken larynx, the man crumpled to his knees. Jack smashed his own big knee into the man’s lower jaw, flopping him back into the dirt, knocked out cold.

Jack snatched the man’s pistol out of its Kydex holster and shoved it into his own waistband, then scurried back under the train and finished tying off the rope. It might have been a really dumb idea but at least now he had twenty-four thousand pounds of pull to work with instead of just twelve.

Jack scrambled back to the fallen guard. He grabbed the stocky man by the shoulders and dragged him back underneath the train, then pushed him down the embankment. Jack couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. Any other day he might have stopped to try and help him but right now one man’s life wasn’t worth the millions at risk. Especially a Sammler puke.

If that’s what he was.

Only one thing left to do.

—

The train engineer slept like a log in his seat, his watch alarm not due to go off for another twenty minutes. But the shock of cold steel pressing into his ear woke him early.

He turned in his seat. His groggy eyes widened at the sight of Jack’s Glock pointed at his gray-bearded face.

“What’s this?”

Jack pointed around the engineer’s side of the cabin. “This is a train. And you’re an engineer. Let’s get this thing moving.”

The man sat up. “Moving? Where? I can’t—”

Jack pressed the pistol against his forehead.

“Now. Move this rig.”

“Where?”

“About a hundred feet should do it.”

“Look, mister—”

Jack pointed at the control panel with his pistol. “That’s the brake release, that’s the throttle, and that’s the dead man’s handle. Either you can run this thing or I can blow your brains out and run it for you. Decide which it’s going to be before I finish squeezing this trigger.”

“Okay! Okay!”

—

The four-thousand-horsepower General Electric EMD 710 series V-16 diesel motor roared into life as the throttle engaged to the first position.

Couplers banged as the wheels began moving. Loaders way back down the line started cursing and shouting, wondering what the hell was going on.

The train inched forward, pulling forty-five cars and flatbeds along with it, creating chaos with the guys still inside or on the forklifts.