Temple of the Gods - Andy McDermott [55]
Even as the idea blazed through his mind, he was already shifting position, bringing one hand to his jacket pocket. It found hard, cold metal – his lighter.
He drew it out, looking back. The agent was mere feet behind him. The man brought up his gun, took aim—
Eddie tossed the lighter over his shoulder.
Instantly caught by the slipstream, it shot backwards and hit the gunman’s face with the force of a punch. He screamed as blood streamed from his nose – then Eddie’s boots cracked against his head as the Englishman deliberately raised his hands and let the wind whip him back along the smooth metal surface. The agent lost his hold and tumbled along the roof—
Into the overhead cable.
Tens of thousands of volts surged through him, his hair instantly bursting into flames. A fiery halo surrounded his head as the cable sliced vertically down through his skull like a cheesewire. Friction dragged him backwards – into the arm, which collapsed under his weight.
Registering a dangerous loss of power from one of its pantographs, the train’s computers immediately applied the emergency brakes.
Eddie had just regained his grip on the rooftop, but even had he been equipped with suckers on his hands and feet he wouldn’t have been able to hold on against the abrupt deceleration. Momentum hurled him forward. The low ridges weren’t enough to channel him – he bumped over them, sliding towards the edge and a lethal plunge to the tracks below—
One hand caught a protruding section of the air-conditioning machinery set into the end of the roof. He jerked to a halt, crying out as his shoulder joint crackled.
Brakes squealing, the shinkansen dropped below a hundred miles per hour, sixty, thirty. A final shrill, and it lurched to a standstill on a concrete flyover above the surrounding countryside. Eddie painfully dragged himself back on to the roof and started a staggering run towards the head of the train, looking for another access hatch. He had to get back inside before Scarber and her remaining goon found the statues . . .
Scarber didn’t need the update from her man Jun to know that something had gone seriously wrong; the sudden braking that threw her to the floor of the first-class car had been clue enough. Any stoppage of a bullet train was considered an emergency by the authorities, and with at least two corpses aboard and clear evidence of a gunfight there would be a massive police presence very shortly. It was time to bug out.
But there was something she had to do first. ‘Never mind that,’ she told Jun as he started explaining where the Englishman had gone. ‘We’ve got to find the statues. You saw the bag Chase had when he boarded – it must be somewhere forward of here. Find it, then evac the train.’
Jun nodded. ‘Where do we meet?’
Scarber looked through a window. There was nothing visible in the darkness outside; the train had stopped somewhere between the towns along Japan’s south coast. ‘Hell if I know. Just get the statues, then once you’re off the train call me – we’ll rendezvous when I’ve got a GPS fix.’
‘Okay. What about you?’
‘Never mind about me, just get the bag. Go on!’
Jun turned and jogged from the carriage. Scarber raised her recovered and reloaded gun and fired three shots at the nearest window, splintering the toughened glass.
The other carriages were scenes of confusion and rising concern. The shinkansen were renowned for their efficiency and safety; an emergency stop far from a station was almost unheard of. The train’s staff were making their way through each coach in turn, trying to reassure the passengers that the delay was only temporary, the problem would soon be solved, and they would be moving again as quickly as possible.
Jun pushed through the worried commuters, eyes sweeping from side to side as he searched the luggage racks. Chase had boarded the train carrying a nondescript black holdall, and a couple of passengers had already protested when he examined what turned out to be false positives. But he was running out of time to worry about raising suspicion; the operation had already gone to hell,