Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [66]
It was difficult to get a clear shot as they twisted and turned in the shadows, but in any event I had other things on my mind. The train came out of the cutting and breasted the hill and below, at the end of a two mile gradient was the bridge over the river.
Something else was unpleasantly clear also--the three soldiers in camouflaged uniforms working their way along the line of boxcars, obviously the rest of the crew of the lead Landrover.
I fired several shots to keep their heads down, but without much effect, for the train was picking up speed now on the slope, swaying like a crazy thing.
There was really only one sensible thing to do under the circumstances so I eased myself down between the tender and the boxcar and got to work on the coupling hook and chain. The retaining pin came out with surprising ease, but we all stayed together for the present, which was only to be expected on the downhill run.
I scrambled back over the tender to the cab, got a hand to the brake lever and turned. Langley and Masmoudi were on their feet now and face to face, and none of your nasty karate either. They squared up to each other like gentlemen, swapping punch for punch, but I suppose that was only to be expected when Eton met Sandhurst.
I fired a shot into the air and as Langley turned his head, yelled, "Jump for it! Your only chance!" Then I pulled down the brake lever.
He had the sense to obey me without question, leaping high into the air, landing in the tender's coal bunker as the gap widened and the rest of the train drew away rapidly downhill, Masmoudi standing at the edge of the boxcar, his men working their way towards him. And then he did a strange thing. He put his heels together and saluted.
"My God!" I said. "More English than the bloody English themselves. Branded clean to the bone; That's Sandhurst for you."
Langley picked up an assault rifle from the floor of the cab and took careful aim. I knocked up the barrel as he fired and the bullet soared into space.
"You'd shoot anything rather than nothing, wouldn't you?"
"Peck's bad boy, that's me," he replied amiably.
The engine had ground to a halt and the rest of the train plus Masmoudi and his men was quarter of a mile away down the grade now and moving fast. I fiddled around with the controls which were simple enough and finally got the wheels to turn again, but in the opposite direction this time.
We started to climb back up the grade and I told Langley to stand on top of the tender and keep his eyes peeled for the other Landrover, just in case it decided to reappear.
We went over the hill and started the long run down to the tunnel through the cut. I hadn't bothered reholstering the Stechkin, but held it in my right hand against my thigh. I didn't trust him, not for one single moment. Certainly if the idea was to put me out of the way for good and all, the present situation was made to order.
I positioned myself carefully, one eye on the controls, the other on him and as we neared the mouth of the tunnel, I hooked open the fire-box gate with one foot so that the flickering flames illuminated both the cab and general area of the tender. I think he knew what I was up to for there was a slight, amused smile on his mouth.
We coasted out on the other side of the tunnel and I shoved on the brakes to slow her up a little. "Get ready to jump!" I told him.
"Are you going to leave her running, old stick?"
"I don't see why not. That way they won't have the slightest idea where we got off. With any luck she'll keep right on going until she ends up back in that prison yard."
I jumped then, quite suddenly and without telling him, no great feat as the train was doing no more than ten miles an hour. I hit the gravel at the side of the track, still running and Langley followed, perhaps twenty or thirty yards further on.