Temple of the Gods - Andy McDermott [54]
Not that it mattered, as the compartment was too small to provide any cover. All the gunman had to do was fire through the door. He looked about in desperation. Nothing he could use for protection, no panels in the walls or floor—
A small hatch in the ceiling.
Eddie didn’t know where it led, or care. He scrambled on to the little desk and tugged at the hatch’s inset handle. If it was locked, he was dead. The handle rattled, but didn’t move.
Noises outside. The door juddered, clanking against the wedged gun. A kick, then another, harder. The panel around the catch buckled.
He gripped the handle with both hands, his entire weight on it. Metal creaked. A third strike from outside—
Something inside the hatch snapped – and it dropped open, wind screaming into the cubicle. Eddie grabbed the frame above and pulled himself up.
On to the bullet train’s roof.
The slipstream mashed him against the opening’s rear edge with hurricane force. In the darkness the shinkansen’s white-painted carriages were little more than dim blocks shrinking into the distance ahead and behind, the only illumination the glow of the train’s internal lights on the concrete trackside – and the dazzling blue flashes of electrical sparks where a pantograph arm touched the overhead high-tension cables.
The roof was smooth except for a pair of parallel ribs running its length, about two feet apart. Eddie lay flat between them, palms and toes pushing against the low aluminium ridges, and crawled forward. Moving towards the train’s rear would be far easier, but it would leave him completely exposed, whereas the pantograph’s raised base was just a few metres ahead. Getting over it would give him some protection against bullets.
However small.
The exposed top of his head stung and prickled as dust and grit snatched up by the train’s wake hit him at the takeoff speed of a 747. He kept moving. Even though the pantograph’s base was streamlined, it still disrupted the airflow, blasting a swirling tornado into Eddie’s face as he got closer. He had to turn his head and bury his chin into his shoulder just to draw a breath.
Movement behind – a man emerging from the lit rectangle of the hatch.
The sight of the agent galvanised him. He scrambled along the roof like a gecko, the airflow trying to tear him off with every movement. Another sharp stab as something hit him above one eye, then he reached the pantograph and pulled himself over its base, careful to avoid the arm itself—
A gunshot!
He flattened himself against the roof, not sure how the gunman had missed from such close range. Another shot – but still he didn’t feel the agonising slam and burn of a bullet impact. He grabbed the rooftop ribs again and pulled himself onwards, risking a look back. A flash from the power line revealed the agent halfway out of the hatch, anger clear even through the force of the wind on his face.
That same wind had saved Eddie. The gunman’s aim was thrown wildly off as the 180mph gale lashed his arm.
But now the agent was climbing out after him. No matter how strong the blast, he couldn’t miss from a distance of two feet. Eddie set off again, muscles already aching. He squinted ahead. Machinery was set into the smooth aluminium expanse of the roof, but at the very far end of the carriage. He had a long way to go before knowing if it would help or hinder him.
And his opponent was younger, faster, not sore from multiple injuries. He was already slipping past the pantograph, smoothly avoiding the electrified arm like liquid metal. All Eddie could do was keep going, knowing that the other man would be close enough for an unmissable shot in seconds—
A sudden bolt of pain – but in his face, not from behind. The shock almost made him lose his grip.
An insect, he realised. He had just hit a bug, the unfortunate creature splattering against his forehead.
If something so small could hurt so much . . . what about something larger?