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2000 Western Pacific Mainline, 10252 Train out of Boise. 010616
Down the track the train rumbled. The clickity-clack of the western style rails were unmistakable to the trained ear (no pun intended.) This close to the tracks you couldn't tell, and if Deacon, Patterson or Solo lost their grip they'd be putty before the others could say "Oh shit!!!!" Crawling hanging upside down, under a speeding train was no way to make a living.
How it was that the team had ended up under the train this time of night was a detail that was unimportant. What was important was their mission. They had to recover sensitive data files from the Rogue Security Op who was on the train under the protection of U.S. Marshals, the FBI, and the FBI HRT (Hostage Rescue Team). The HRT was some of the best opposition Black Ops would run into; as the SWAT team of SWAT teams, they were tough. Tough but predictable, and that is what Deacon was counting on.
Nobody would expect a breach from under the train. Much less when the train came screeching to a halt. Much less come screeching to a halt in a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Gypsy and Melissa would be stopping the train, and the three under the train would be breaching the heavily guarded car.
Each of the three of them had brought a laser welder, metal bars and pipe to make a seat, and explosives to breach with on top of their normal load of weapons, electronics and armor. The seat would be used to lay in under the train and then do the rest of the work. They also brought silent drills, and such, to put in various surveillance equipment and devices. All wore Gortex and Monocrys suits with Kevlar lined hoods, and gloves. Their balaclavas were open at the faces, which were blacked out with oil paint. On their heads they wore harnesses to mount night vision optics.
Now they quickly climbed under the coupling between two more cars in silence. Cold, wet, tired, and hungry from their long horizontal climb they were almost at their goal. Just six cars to go.
Inside the First Class car Gypsy and Melissa sat eating their TV(/railroad) dinners. The warmth of the car and the alcohol must have hidden any thought they had of their teammates peril as the rain beat against the window in sheets. That or the food distracted them. Nope, it was probably the former. Gypsy wore a comfortable tweed blazer with dark Khaki pants. His Doc martins and English driving cap combined with the false glasses he wore to make him look like a young academic. While he was smarter than the entire faculties of all the Ivy League schools combined, he was not nearly as benign. Because of the high security on the train he was armed to the teeth, but also with entirely ceramic weapons. Around his waist he wore a cummerbund with over fifty ceramic throwing darts; on each forearm he had a ceramic tanto; on each ankle he had a XS-3 four shot ceramic .22 derringer; under his left arm he carried a Company issue spring gun filled with tranquilizer (laced with his mixture of hallucinogenic); and under his right arm he carried the XS-11 Company ceramic holdout. Spare magazines were in the small of his back, he had six. Duly armed, he had to be careful how he moved because just about any wrong move could give him away.
To keep any eyes off himself he needed a distraction. For that he brought Melissa; and he could hardly keep his eyes off her. She sat across from him in a conservative but none the less exciting dress. Her fine slightly milky complexion was enhanced by the dress' deep burgundy color. The cut of the dress was low but not too low and the shoulders were exposed. The dress' velvet cloth wrapped her waist and hips like a shadow. Expensive silver ear rings and a matching necklace she wore accented here ears, neck and bosom. The silver comb that she used to put her hair up in was a real Romanov, and even without it the styling of her hair was sensuous and attractive in a way that only red-heads were. Somehow exotic, she sat across from him and daintily ate her food and smiled. Playing the part of decoy was easy for an Intel Op. As an added bonus, the more people underestimated her the more they would be surprised when she put the plastic .22 Cougar replica in their ear and squeezed the trigger.
Gypsy didn't give a thought to his food or his brief case. His briefcase you ask? Yes, his briefcase, it sat beside him and it had all the usual goodies. His Cystron, his .44 Magnum, thirty extra rounds, his electronics tools, patch cables, and now an engineer's tool kit. Engineers? What kind of engineer I can see you asking. Why a railroad engineer; for they were on a train. It was his job to bring it too a stop at precisely two ante meridian.
"How is the lobster, my dear" he asked. -- "Oh, just marvelous," Melissa responded. If Patterson had seen this he would have yelled "HAM!!!" But since he was under the train and they were in here Gypsy decided to order another bottle of Burgundy wine. As the waiter came over with their next bottle four men entered the cabin. All wearing dark suits, sunglasses and with bulges under their arms that looked like HK MP5K PDWs to Gypsy. Gypsy sniffed the cork and then tested the legs on the wine. One of the four was waving an antenna around the cabin as Gypsy nodded to the pourer that the vintage was good. What an amateur. Doesn't even know how to use an Emerson VQ-23TX1, he thought. As they toasted each other and friends absent their crystal glasses made an even toned ring. They smiled slyly at each other. One of the agents couldn't keeps his eyes off Melissa, obviously the most human of the four Feds, and another just looked over with the disgust the lower classes showed for the upper.
After the four Feds left the car and they had finished their main courses, Gypsy asked, "Shall we have dessert now Sweetest?"
"Why yes. That would be splendid," she answered and he motioned to the Maiter de. Soon they were dining on chocolate cheesecake in raspberry sauce as their three companions contemplated mayhem.
2200
Under the car with their target they had set up their assault. Patterson was at the lead of the car, Deacon in the middle and Solo at the rear of the car. Seismic and sonic listeners had been set up on the floor of the car as well as the car in front of it and the car after it. Deacon was monitoring these on his micro-sized laptop, as well as watching five fiber-optic cameras they had drilled into the floor. A total of twelve men were guarding each car. Two men guarded each door (front and back) in a contained room that had another two outside it guarding the locks. In the main part of the car, walking the hallways and or guarding the charge were another four guards, two on each side of the car. These numbers didn't include the twenty or so that would be in their beds sleeping or resting because they were the other shifts. Then the main Detail with the Sec Op was six men strong and armed with SMG's and shotguns.
Chilled to the bone and soaking wet, the three of them slowly got into position. The sides of the cars were rigged with dummy frame charges that would go off and then a spring loaded arm would toss in two distraction devices. There were two such dummy set-ups on each side of the center car. Deacon would breach outside the door of the main Detail in the center of hallway of the center car. He had a cut-down entry shotgun on his chest and a .45M EECS Copperhead SMG under his arm as well as the suppressed .45M EECS Cudgel Auto pistol. Solo was at the back of the car and would breach outside the security station. Patterson would likewise breach outside the security station. With a KISS simple plan like this, nothing could go wrong, Deacon thought to himself with a laugh. Crawling out of these holes they would blow in the floor would itself be an exercise. They would be vulnerable doing so, but would use their sensors to give them the positions of the opposition and then attack when the odds favored them the most. Plus at two a.m. guards were at their most tired state.
So he sat now in the cold, prepared to go, and had to wait. He looked up ahead and signaled to Patterson, ALL OK?. -- ROGER. -- So he signaled back to Solo, ALL OK? -- AFFIRMATIVE. So he now just planned their escape route, backup plans, worst case scenarios, and random factors.
At the head of the car Patterson was freezing, and he swore to himself he'd break in Gypsy's face for getting the easy job, but then again there was no way he could do this job. He checked all his pistols again. The three .700 Nitros cut down and pistolized were securely strapped to his chest, twelve extra rounds were stuck into the front of his belt in an ammo belt and duct taped in position like huge street flares. The cut down HK G3 was at his side and hung under his arm. The G3 was normally an assault rifle, but Patterson had tinkered around a little and now it had a four-inch barrel and no stock. It was roughly the size of an MP5, if a little smaller. He called it an HK G3K PDW. The smart-sight was an added bonus. It's thirty round magazine was an added comfort, and when he shot it one handed at arms length, it felt just like a pistol. Four magazines hung under his other arm just in case things got really messy. It the fit really hit the shan, there were eight more magazines in his butt pouch. His final weapons were a pair of HK USP Tactical .45 Supers, decked out, suppressed, and modified with smart-sights these sat on his hips. On each thigh he wore six more magazines for each. Ten more magazines were in his butt pouch too. Last, last, a ten-inch Tanto of super quality was on his calf; just in case.
At the back of the car Solo was cramped beyond words, his immense bulk was constricted and he felt claustrophobic. All he could do was the flip the safety on and off to keep his mind from wandering. He held the Taurus PT92 in his huge hand and click-click. Click-click the safety went. He carried the usual four Berettas/Taurus look-alikes. No matter how fancy the guns were that Dynatronics pumped out, he liked the feel of these old super-nines. He knew he was going up against norms or even super-norms, but they were still norms. Not demons, monsters, wigglers, or beasts; so he didn't need tons of firepower. Just in case though he carried two Glock 22's. He liked the firepower of the huge 10mm cartridge. His final gun was a Beretta 92F machine pistol. He carried a total of twenty 9mm magazines for the 92's, and eight magazines for the 10mm. No knives. You don't need them when your forearms contain eighteen-inch retractable mono-blade razors.
Back topside Gypsy and Melissa had finished dinner and were strolling down to the luxury car. The bar was full of handsome men in tuxedos and fine ladies in black dresses. The two of them were sure to stand out. Arm in arm they mingled in the crowd. Melissa took hold of most of the conversations and Gypsy politely laughed at everyone's jokes although he didn't get half of them, or heard half of them. He was thinking about the types of Diesels the locomotive would have and how he'd go about stopping it. Pull the E-brake, shoot the engineer, overheat the engines, crimp the fuel lines, dump the fuel, plug the exhaust, or just blow up the fuel injectors. Decisions, decisions.
Then before he knew it his watch hit one a.m. The party was still going strong and they'd even been dancing a bit. Gypsy had to be careful not to bump into people, lest they notice his armaments. Now they both stood up and said their good byes to the others at the cocktail table with them. Gypsy bent down carefully and retrieved his briefcase. Then he and Melissa made their way forward to their cabin. The spacious interior was very adequately furnished and the whole motif of the train seemed very retro, back to the roaring twenties probably. But Gypsy didn't give a shit.
They sat in the cabin for a few minutes, not exchanging a word. Gypsy was deep in thought, off in his own world as usual. Melissa sat with her legs crossed and bounced the top leg up and down nervously as the silence began to get to her. Then Gypsy grabbed one more tool and put it in his briefcase. "Ready to go," he asked Melissa. -- "Yup, I'm ready when you are."
0145
Luckily their cabins were near the front of the train, Gypsy thought with a bit of a laugh. As they were walking up to the locomotive they saw two men in black suits up ahead. One stepped forward and said, "Excuse me, you can't go any further. There are no more cabins this way."
Melissa stepped forward and said in her sweetest voice, "I'm sorry. We must have taken a wrong turn." Though she was talking neither her nor Gypsy stopped walking, "we can't find our cabin." She added an innocent sounding laugh when she was about four steps away from the front agent, then Gypsy quick drew the XS-11 Holdout and put a 9mm slug in the face of each agent. The frangible round didn't exit, but did kill them dead. He and Melissa knew they had little time now; they knew that from their radio eavesdropping these guards would miss their radio check in fifteen minutes.
They dragged them into the bathroom and put them in the tiny stalls of each sexes respective bathroom. Gypsy then jammed the doors, and walked forward with Melissa. His pistol was put away now as they made their way up to the engineers area. They went through the fuel car and into the locomotive. Gypsy knocked both engineers unconscious with shots from the tranq pistol.
OK technology don't fail me now, Gypsy thought. Melissa stood by the door and watched down the hallway. Gypsy flew around sabotaging the locomotive, what should I do, what should I do? He thought about all his options and in the end he opted for all of the above. May the gods of technology and destruction look down on me. He placed some C4 on the fuel injectors, and some more on the engine block. Just a little, he didn't need to de-rail the train. What he giveth with one hand, he taketh with the other. Then he crimped the fuel lines, and began to dump fuel out of the fuel car. Then just after he completed screwing with all the controls, he yanked the E-Brake as his watch alarm went off. May your works be bountiful, may they sow discontent amongst your enemies, and may your foes be blasted into ittsy bittys bits. It was precisely two a.m.
As all the train's inertia threw its passengers forward, Gypsy and Melissa braced themselves. Meanwhile Deacon, Solo, and Patterson felt like they were standing up in the rests and hand holds they had built for themselves to lay in under the train. When it came to a halt they blew the dummy charges at the sides of the car. Deacon took one last look at his monitor and then left it dangling under the train as he cut the cars power. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Execute." He shouted into his implant mic. Then three more blasts rocked the train.
Deacon was laying on he back when he detonated his charge. The last thing he saw on the monitor was that the guards on his half of the train were on the opposite side of the hole as him and at the far end of the hall. The last thing you'll see is me. That made it seem like they were thirty feet over his head as he unloaded five shots from the .45M Cudgel. Both guards went down. Too bad for you. Then he scurried out of his seat and stood up in the hole. Prep. He fastened a breaching charge on the door to the room with the Detail and the Charge. He heard gunfire from both ends of the car. Time to hurry. He jumped up into the car and stood beside the door and he triggered the detonator. Blow. The door blew in and he went in low with the shotgun. He ran smack dab into a big guy. The muzzle of the shotgun was in the bad guy's stomach. Deacon squeezed the trigger. A yell and then the bad guy hit the ground. His night vision goggles showed total chaos. He fired twice more at bodies that stood in the room. Then he switched to the SMG. Firing a full burst he stitched up all the bodies in the room. Letting it hang at his side he switched to the Cudgel again and flipped on the white light to start the clean up.
Patterson climbed up into the hole in the floor right after the charges went off. The only things that preceded him were his two distraction devices. Then with lightning reflexes he was up on his feet with a .700 Nitro in each hand. Each of the four guards got one round in the chest. Kevlar, trauma pad, or not; they all went down hard. Lightened of one pound of flesh amounting to their heart and lungs, they hit the ground. He held both weapons in one hand and tipped them over. As the cartridges were falling he had torn the duct tape off his reloads. He quickly inserted four more rounds into the weapons and flipped them shut. He instantly drew his third .700 Nitro and pointed it down the hall. It was the hall opposite Deacon, and Patterson had to clear it. The two guards were struggling to their feet after the sudden stop. One bullet each separated them from a majority of the gray matter between their ears. They wouldn't be any more trouble. He dropped the third cut-off pistol back in its holster and opened it. He reloaded it and walked back to the gangway door. With one in each hand he drilled all of the seven men in the hallway. Some well-placed blow through shots were enough to drop the second men the bullets hit. He quickly drew the third and finished them off.
Standing around the corner he reloaded all three Nitros again in a flash. He heard more footsteps. This time they were slower. He swung around the corner low and fired four times, then drew the last gun to kill the fifth man. Eight more HRT agents were dead in the hall and it was getting grisly. He heard running now and the slapping shut noise that HK MP5s make; must be more of the HRT goons. He stood up and got the HK G3K PDW. He stood with his whole body shielded by the corner except for his head, the weapon, and his arm holding it, which was right along the wall. As agents in black suits in what had to pass as SWAT gear came around the corner he just held the trigger and dropped one after another on full auto fire. Then he behind-the-back threw a distraction device down the hall. It went off and then it was all quiet.
Solo stood over the four bodies of the guards at his end and was snapping off shots with his pistols, one in each hand, at the agents across the gang-way to the next train. They had made three rushes at him. With an odd fanaticism these men thought they could overpower him. Two of his pistols lay on the floor, empty. No time to reload. Just draw and keep shooting. Now he was shooting with one hand as he reloaded the gun in the other hand. The 10mm's were barking and agent after agent kept going down. Then two of his buddies would rush out to get him. Four or five others would throw down tons of fire to suppress Solo. He'd let them recover their downed comrade but he'd fire away at the guys laying suppressive fire. He just stood there taking the bullets he couldn't step out of the way of. More often than not he stepped into another bullet, but he had as much armor as an APC. The bullets just bounced off him.
Soon they stopped, aware there was no way they were getting on the train. Their morale broke like a cheap pencil. Right now they were probably calling for backup. It wouldn't get here in time.
Back in the Charge's cabin Deacon had flipped up his NVG's and was looking around with a white light. Its Xenon bulb threw out enough light for any situation. He was looking for the cabinets with the stolen documents. It shouldn't be hard to find cabinets. But they weren't here. He began searching the bodies of the Detail. As he rolled one over he saw something very bad: a bulge under the skin in the front of the neck. Only a trained medical doctor would see it. It was an implant communicator. Horror flooded his mind. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Throughout this entire engagement his pulse hadn't gotten over eighty. Now it was doing one-fifty. He reached for the man's wallet, and took out his ID. He concentrated on his CDC ID he used. Deacon had over five hundred ID's memorized from around the world and could call on them and their persona instantly to assume the mantle of authority among normal citizens. All that he had to do was conjure up a thought while holding his Black-Card. It would then read his brain waves and take on the given ID. This ID shouldn't do that. But it did; matching the orange with blue border of the CDC in Atlanta perfectly.
He checked each of the other five Detail members wallets and found five more ID's. All Black ID's. Tucking them into his load vests inner pockets, he then went over to the Charge. Oh, shit. This can't be happening. Deacon hadn't wanted to cry in nearly a decade. Now he wanted to break down. No... I didn't do this. The woman laying at his feet as he crouched in the darkness was none other than The Librarian, Intelligence departments head of the warehouses. And she had three nicely grouped holes in her skull, which had pulled away the disguise she was wearing.
The Librarian was in charge of the Warehouses. These were the Company's depositories for all the weird and paranormal objects, devices, evidence, and conspiracy material they had accumulated in the half-century of fighting the grays and other assorted nastiness. She was the subordinate of Maurice Crenshaw the 79 year old Director of Area 12, which was the Company's intelligence data depository. It held all the information the company had ever gathered, stored in the endless shafts of a salt mine. Deacon took her Black-ID card too. Nothing made sense right now.
At the head of the train, Melissa was standing guard when she heard the explosions. She turned to Gypsy, "Time to get off this train." He grabbed her hand and they jumped out of the locomotive into the dark night and the rain. Thunder crashed and lit up the night for a second. Flashes and bangs could be seen and heard from one of the cars way at the end of the train. That would be the team, Gypsy thought. He pulled two ponchos out of his briefcase and donned one as he handed the other to Melissa. They started to jog to the far car when the engine exploded behind them. Both were hurled to the ground as the shock wave hit them. Gypsy hit the side of a car before he went down. He could taste the paint and steel in his mouth, along with blood from his nose. No Fed agents could set a bomb that fast.
He looked for Melissa but couldn't see her. He was gripped with sheer pants wetting terror as a thought formed in his brain. This was a trap. He broke Deacon's radio silence then and there. "GET OUT OF THE TRAIN!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "The train is wired to blow. Get off now!! No questions Patterson!" He saw Solo run through the steel and aluminum wall and bounce down the raised slope the train was on. There was an explosion, a small explosion on the other side of the front of the car, and he assumed that would be Patterson. But no Deacon.
Deacon heard the Radio call but wasn't willing to accept the possibility. Intel had sponsored this mission and Melissa was technically in charge, but no one listened to her and she didn't try to lead. Deacon just did. Thoughts raced through his head. Was it Intel that set us up? Why would they want their own Librarian dead?
He turned around and used the last five rounds in the shotgun to put some big holes in the wall. Then he emptied a forty round magazine into the wall from his Copperhead. Thoroughly airiated, he kicked it as hard as he could and it dropped out onto the grassy slope. Rain and wind whipped into the train. Suddenly he was chilled again. He grabbed one downed agent and The Librarian. Moving as fast as he could carry a 300-pound burden, he jumped out of the train and ran fifteen yards out. He dropped both of them and went back in. Holding one agent under each arm he ran out and dropped them in the cold rainy mud besides their former comrades. He turned around to go back in, it had been seven seconds since Gypsy made the call. He saw the train car explode and felt it's heat, but something must have hit him because that was the last thing he remembered.
"Comeon Deacon! Wake up!!" Solo was saying. The world was all black and everything hurt. Where am I? Burning pain ran up and down his left arm. Ow. "Pain Away," he moaned and was greeted by the wonderful pinprick of a pneumahypo. When Solo shook his head and picked him up into a sitting position he knew he was alive. I hurt way too much to be dead.
"What happened?" Solo asked. -- "I was getting bodies out of the train."
Solo looked confused. "Why were you worried about squishies bodies?" he asked dumfounded.
"Because they weren't squishies. I wasted seven Protective Agents. Check out this." Deacon said as he handed the seven cards to Solo. Then he pointed to the bodies off a ways, "Check it out for yourself." Then he activated his radio, "Shadow, bring in the helo. Team, rally on me. Everyone report." He activated his beacon and saw that the little red light was on, signifying that there was better than a 99.99% chance it was working.
"Roger, me and Silver Dragon are inbound to you now." Shadow was riding overwatch on Black Helo Mk. II Attack Model this mission. He was still getting up to speed on all the changes in the last three years. He'd only been alive for about three weeks now. But he was feeling smarter all the time.
"Patterson here. A.O.K." -- "Solo here, 100%" he said just to amuse Deacon. -- "Gypsy here, banged up but OK. Melissa is almost conscious. Wood-door-frame-splinter-in-the-back," he slurred together as he got really worked up like normal.
Deacon groaned as the broken bones in his legs were set by Solo who threw them in a splint. Though genetic engineered Siberian wrestler cyborgs can muster up a lot of compassion, Deacon interrupted and adjusted Solo's work. Deacon then took back the ID's as Patterson trotted over.
Patterson squatted down and asked what was going on. Deacon explained, short and no nonsense. He'd have to explain many times in the future. Patterson just rubbed his head, somewhere in the fifty-first state... His bald head shone in the moonlight after he'd pulled down his balaclava into a big neck roll. "Whew!" Patterson exclaimed to no one in particular.
Further up the tracks Gypsy was stuffing Melissa's wound and getting her back on her feet. She moaned softly in pain. He threw her good arm over his shoulder and grabbed her wrist. He put his other arm around her waist and stood her up. His briefcase was slung over his shoulder and the big Magnum was stuck in his waist. She was coming too as they were half way to Deacon. Gypsy saw Patterson running up to him. His short stocky frame was incredibly athletic and he moved like a jaguar. Melissa gritted her teeth and let out a short cry. Gypsy held her for a second around the waist and shot her up with some pain-away.
As Gypsy started walking again, Patterson came to a stop beside him, turned around and began walking next to him. "So geek, ya need any help?"
Gypsy was furious with rage, but the three Nitros on his chest made him think otherwise. Nothing in the world could hurt Patterson now that he was 'doped' up on adrenaline and reflex enhancement. "Ah... what's it fuckin' look like to you, Grunt."
"That's what I thought, you always need help. Lame Geek, I don't mind helping though. Geek." Just for a second Gypsy thought he saw a smile, but that was impossible. Patterson never smiled--emotionless bastard. The big combat op moved around infront of Melissa and scooped her up off her feet. Her hurt arm was now facing away from him. He could see the blood on her shoulder staining her dress under the poncho. He walked off at a brisk pace towards Deacon. Now they made much better time towards the burning remnants of the train car.
Going down the sides of the track peoples faces were pressed to the windows. Trying to see what was going on and why they were stopped, they wouldn't see the three black clad figures moving beside the train. One, because they weren't looking that close; and two, because it was light in those cars and dark out here.
As they came up to the blown up train car the smell of burning flesh was overpowering. The burning bodies of the feds Patterson and Solo had gunned down were burning or blasted to smithereens. Either way, it wasn't pretty. The frame, bed and wheels were all the remained of the train car. The rest of it was scattered over a fifty-yard radius area. Little bits were burning here and there, but the heavy rain was putting them out for the most part. Steam and smoke were settling down on the ground and darkness crept in as the fires died down.
Deacon was on his feet and wired on painkillers as Gypsy, Patterson, and Melissa made their way into camp. Gypsy didn't look so great, covered in mud and grass stains with blood running down his face from the nose. Melissa didn't look that much better. Over behind Deacon, Solo was bagging the bodies of the Protective Agents and The Librarian. "I've got the Romanov, Moscow station will be happy," Gypsy said with a grin, "Patterson told me the whole story. Sounds like 97 all over again," Gypsy said.
"That was my first thought, but let's not jump to conclusions," Deacon said calmly, more for himself than for the others. Gypsy and Patterson had laid Melissa down on the ground and were working on her shoulder. Her dress was totally ruined and she looked like hell; soaked, bloody, bruised and beat up. "Broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, and minor scrapes Deac," Patterson said. "She should be alright. Even better once Doc gets here." Being an expert at hurting people, Patterson was consequently also very good at healing them.
"Good, Shadow should be here any minute," Deacon said, "We've got to get to White Hall and find out what's up; turn these bodies in for positive identification. Then..."
Gypsy interrupted, "Priority call from The Priest." He was handing Deacon up the Radiophone.
"What's he say?" Deacon asked through all the flames and bedlam.
Gypsy looked concerned and confused at the same time, "We have to go to Africa."
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