Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

The first tanker truck, filled with highly flammable fuel oil, derailed and impaled itself on mangled metal, its contents gushing out…

“Your time is up,” said Mahjad. He leaned towards Nina, his malevolent smile deepening as he reached for her leg. Repulsed, she tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go. “So, what is your-”

Another train rushed past on the other line. Mahjad glanced at it, then looked back at Nina. He opened his mouth to speak-

An explosion shook the carriage.

In his SAS career Chase had been on the ground uncomfortably close to the targets of NATO precision air strikes-but the earthshaking blast of a thousand-pound laser-guided bomb was a mere firework compared to the colossal explosion as the first tanker blew up. The train to which he was now desperately clinging was whisking him away from it at over fifty miles per hour, but the detonation was still deafening, and the heat as the expanding fireball chased after him was enough to singe the hairs on the backs of his hands.

There was another noise, a horrific groaning as the other tankers piled into each other just a few feet from his side. They were derailing, the concertina effect of the collision wrenching them from the track.

Another explosion! The second tanker in the train went up like the first, followed a moment later by the third.

Shit!

The entire tanker train was going to blow in a chain reaction-and the explosions were rippling down the line faster than his train was moving!

If Chase didn’t find cover inside in the next ten seconds, he would be completely vaporized.

Arms straining, tendons tight as steel cables, he pulled himself up with a yell that was completely drowned out by the ear-splitting booms of more tankers exploding. Forget singed hairs, he could feel his skin stinging as he rolled over the top of the railing and thumped onto the wooden platform. He jumped up and tugged at the handle of the door.

Locked!

The chain of explosions raced towards him, a burning wind sweeping ahead of the expanding fireballs. Chase flattened himself against the door, nowhere to go-

Suddenly he fell, landing on his stomach inside the carriage and staring straight up at the soldier who had just opened the door.

Chase rolled away from him. Caught by surprise, the soldier gawped stupidly-then looked up to see a wall of liquid fire rushing towards the back of the train.

He didn’t even have time to scream as the blaze from the last tanker burst through the door, a rectangular jet of flame fanning out and swirling around the interior. Completely engulfed in fire, the soldier let out a terrible shriek of pure agony before stumbling towards Chase, arms flailing.

Chase rolled again as the inferno roiled over him, just in time to dodge the burning fuel showering from the soldier. He jumped to his feet, ignoring the Iranian as he collapsed, writhing pitifully. Now that he was on the train, he had a job to do.

Mahjad was stunned by the first explosion, then positively terrified as the following string of detonations got louder and closer. Nina was forgotten as he jumped up and threw the compartment door open, bellowing orders down the corridor.

She had no idea what was going on, but it sounded almost as if the train was being bombed!

Could it be Chase somehow coming after her? She couldn’t imagine how , but whatever was going on had Mahjad scared.

Maybe this would give her a chance to escape.

Castille and Hafez exchanged another look as one of their startled guards opened the door, Mahjad’s screaming commands reaching them from the other end of the car. This time the look was a signal, a confirmation that both were on the same wavelength.

Get ready!

Chase opened a heavy sliding door and found himself in the corridor of an old-style compartment car, a real Hogwarts Express job. To his relief, the compartments that he passed were empty. If they’d been full of soldiers, he would have been in real trouble-

Boots thudded on the floor as men ran into the other end of the car, the connecting door thrown open with a bang. Real trouble after all.

He whipped inside the nearest compartment, sliding the door almost shut. The running footsteps clattered past: five men. He peered through the window. A soldier stood barely two feet away, back to him.

“Psst!”

The soldier looked around with a quizzical expression, which changed to one of shock in the fraction of a second before a fist smashed into his face. Chase hauled him into the compartment, giving him another punch for good measure before taking his gun. In one swift movement he flicked the G3 to full auto and darted back out into the corridor, unleashing a blaze of fire at the other soldiers. They fell.

He ejected the spent magazine, ducked back into the compartment to take the unconscious soldier’s spare mags, then slapped one into place and moved back out, gun raised. Castille, Hafez and-most important-Nina were somewhere on this train, and he was going to find them.

One of their guards had already left the compartment, sent by Mahjad to find out what was happening farther down the train, and now Castille and Hafez’s captors looked around in surprise at the distant but unmistakable sound of automatic weapons fire.

Castille’s eyes locked onto his friend’s. “Now!”

He jumped from his seat and twisted, his cuffed hands sweeping the gun out of the grip of the soldier on his right as he drove the heel of one boot into the face of the man sitting opposite. Teeth snapped under the impact. Simultaneously, Hafez lunged forward and kicked the man on Castille’s other side, sending his gun spinning into the air.

Castille straightened and twisted his upper body again, bringing up his elbow and slamming it into the throat of the man to his right. He felt something give with a horrible wet crunch.

As he turned, Hafez brought his heel down onto the remaining soldier’s kneecap with an audible crack of splitting bone. The soldier howled in pain. Hafez jumped forward and grabbed his gun, clubbing him over the back of his skull. He collapsed face first onto the floor and lay there, unmoving.

The other two soldiers were in no better state. “Nice work,” Hafez said, nodding at the unconscious figures.

“You too.”

“Of course I could have taken the other one as well if he’d been here.”

“Of course you could, old man.” Castille jokingly rolled his eyes. “Now, I just hope that one of these fools has the keys to these handcuffs…”

Chase ran into the second car, passing the closed door of the toilet and rounding the corner into the next corridor-only to find four more soldiers charging down it, rifles raised!

He threw himself back around the corner, managing to get off a couple of shots. A scream told him he had found a target. The wooden paneling on the corridor wall blew apart, splinters flying everywhere as a storm of bullets ripped into it.

“Jesus!” He shielded his eyes from the broken wood. The awkward length of the G3 meant he would have a hard time firing blind around the corner, while his adversaries could take cover in the compartments and use their superior firepower to hold him back until their reinforcements arrived.