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  Placing the barrel against the terrorist conductor’s forehead, Sam says, “This is for your buddy, Allah.”

  He shoots.

  9

  Sam Savage doesn’t waste a split second. He bounds back onto his feet, goes to the instrument panel. He spots a big red button-like switch located on top of the panel.

  “EB,” he says. “Emergency fucking brake.”

  All he needs to do is press it. Making a fist, he punches it . . . and waits. The damn train doesn’t slow down. The switch doesn’t work. He punches it again and again out of frustration. It’s the same damned thing. Nothing happens.

  “Shit!” he barks out loud. “Morgan sabotaged the entire safety system!”

  “You need to kill the power at its source,” comes another voice. “The supercapacitor.”

  It’s Safraz. He’s standing in the open doorway along with Maureen.

  “Where’s that?” Sam asks.

  “Up top,” the little bearded man says. “You need to climb on top of the locomotive and disable it.”

  “How do I know the conductor didn’t mess with that too? He’s covered all his bases by the looks of it.”

  “Because, in order for the train to have electricity that supercapacitor, along with the hybrid capacitor, all must be operational.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Sam says. “It’s the bastard’s Achilles’ heel.”

  “You must act now, Sam,” Safraz insists. “We don’t have much time.”

  “It’s going one hundred fifty miles an hour, Safraz,” Sam says. “I’ll be blown off.”

  He shakes his head. “It is our only chance for survival. I would gladly do it myself, but as you can see, I am far too small.”

  Sam runs his hand over his scruffy face as if it helps him to think. The little guy is right. He wouldn’t last ten seconds up there.

  “How much time until we get to the bridge at the gorge, Maureen?”

  She stares at her watch face.

  “Three minutes,” she says. “We’re not gonna make it.”

  “Yes, we are,” Sam says. Then to Safraz, “Point me to the ladder.”

  “It’s right outside the door,” Safraz says.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “It’s a box. Maybe one foot high by two feet wide. It will have wires and tubes coming out of the bottom descending into the powerhouse. You need to remove the cover from the box, then simply cut all the wires. That should interrupt the power feed enough to disable the main powerhouse. In turn, the locomotive will stop since the spark plugs will no longer carry their spark.”

  “Simple,” Sam says. “Great.”

  He pulls his military grade pocket knife from his belt, opens it, heads for the door.

  “Wish me luck, wife,” he says to Maureen.

  “You don’t need luck, husband,” she says. “While you’re doing that, Safraz and I will keep working on the emergency brakes in the first three cars. With any luck, you won’t even need to cut the power in the powerhouse.”

  “I won’t count on it, baby.”

  He kisses her on the mouth before heading out the door and beginning his climb up the narrow metal ladder.

  Coming to the top of the locomotive, Sam is immediately slapped by the harsh wind. He feels himself falling backward until he finds a piece of metal protruding from the locomotive’s roof. He pulls himself onto the top and immediately begins searching for the box Safraz described. Knowing it will be located directly above the powerhouse, he shifts himself in that direction.

  The vibration of the heavy machine speeds under him, the vicious wind whips against his face, the locomotive shifts violently from side to side as if it is purposely trying to toss him off like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. He knows the only way to stay attached to the locomotive is to press himself down on the machine’s flat roof.

  A quick glance at his watch.

  “Two minutes,” he says, his voice only audible inside his head.

  He spots a box. The box. It’s black, and its dimensions match those described by Safraz. It’s not mounted on the surface but on brackets so that a space of maybe four inches separates the box’s bottom from the locomotive rooftop. He spots a spaghetti of wires leading from the box down through the machine’s roof and into the powerhouse. No way he can get to those wires with his four-inch blade. He needs to remove the box cover, just like Safraz said he would.

  Crawling close to the box, he manages to perch himself on his knees. From there he gets a better view of the river and the Hudson Valley. He also spots something else. Coming up on him is a mountainside. A tunnel accesses the mountain. What he’s not sure of, is how much room there is between the tunnel ceiling and the locomotive rooftop. His heart shoots into his throat, his pulse soars. He could crawl back down the ladder, but there’s no time. He’s coming up on the tunnel too fucking fast.

  He throws himself down onto his chest and face as the train enters the tunnel.

  Sam’s world goes black. He’s pressing his body as flat as possible against the locomotive rooftop, face down, the wind whipping at his head and shoulders. The negative air pressure inside the tunnel builds inside his ears until his eardrums feel ready to explode. He feels the solid concrete tunnel ceiling brushing against the top of his skull, scraping away his skin and hair. Or is he just imagining it?

  He can’t be sure about anything, other than his need to remain completely flat or risk having his head and spine crushed. Then, just like that, the train emerges from the tunnel, and sunlight shines down upon the runaway locomotive. Sam pulls himself back up, happy to be alive. But the happiness is short-lived. Not more than a mile away, in the immediate distance as the track makes a long half-moon arc around a deep gorge, is his worst nightmare. This train’s worst nightmare.

  It’s the Catskill Gorge Bridge.

  10

  He must work fast. He has less than a minute to open the box top, sever the wires, then pray the train stops. His knife still in hand, he raises himself onto his knees over the box. Four Philips head screws secure the cover. He uses the blade tip to begin loosening the first screw. He turns the screw counter-clockwise. It turns, until he’s able to loosen it completely with the fingers on his free hand.

  He then starts on the second screw. Same story. The screw comes loose, and he’s able to remove it completely using his fingertips. He gazes at the deep gorge and the massive black metal trestle bridge that spans it. The bridge is coming closer and closer. In a matter of seconds, the train will plunge into the rocky gorge, and every soul on board will be smashed to pieces.

  He starts on the third screw.

  “Please, God,” he barks, “give me strength.”

  The screw begins to loosen. But he’s applying too much pressure and the screw strips. It won’t loosen anymore. He tries using his fingertips, but the screw is too tight.

  “Fuck me!” Sam screams.

  No choice but to start on the fourth screw. He tries not to panic. Tries not to apply too much unnecessary pressure and like the third screw, risk stripping the head. The screw begins to loosen and loosens more until he can use his fingers to remove it.

  Glancing up, the bridge can’t be two thousand feet away.

  “Just do this,” Sam orders himself. “Don’t think. Just do.”

  He lifts the cover just enough to get his fingers inside. He then uses all the strength he has left to yank the cover off, breaking the third screw. He tosses it and stares down at the half-dozen color-coded wires attached to a complicated menagerie of electronic devices, tubes, and conductors. He doesn’t think about which wire to cut first. His plan is to keep cutting until the power is killed and the train stops.

  He sets the business side of the blade under a red wire. He cuts. Sparks fly. He feels a jolt of electricity shoot into his hand and arm. He goes light-headed. But what’s worse, he loses the knife.

  Fifteen hundred feet until the locomotive reaches the bridge, the dazed Sam catches his breath, finds the knife
where it has landed on the locomotive roof. He lunges for it, grabs it. Picking himself back up, he once more settles himself on his knees. He places the blade under the second wire. He cuts. Sparks shoot out. His hand and arm sting from the shock. But this time he holds onto the knife.

  Sweat pours down off his forehead and into his eyes. Not even the harsh wind can stop it. His heart beats rapidly, pulse pounds like tympani inside his brain.

  “You son of a bitch!” Sam shouts. “You’re not gonna beat me!”

  He cuts the third and fourth wires, sparks flying, electricity shooting through his system. His body is on fire. The train is almost over the gorge now. The locomotive is on the bridge. No time left. And that’s the train hits the concrete wall again. The deceleration is so rapid and sudden, Sam must grab hold of the box and hold on with all the strength left in him to keep from being flung not only off the locomotive, but off the bridge and into the gorge.

  “Maureen and Safraz,” he says aloud to himself. “They got the emergency brakes to work.”

  But Sam knows at any second the brakes could give out just like they did once before. He has to continue with his mission whether the brakes have been applied or not.

  Sam inhales and exhales. He lets loose with a lung piercing scream as he cuts the final wire. He sees the spark, feels the electricity injecting into his veins. The knife falls from his hand as the world before him goes in and out of focus until finally, all is black and silent.

  When Sam comes to, he stares up into the face of a beautiful women. Maureen.

  “Am I heaven?” he says. “Are you one of my ninety-nine virgins?”

  “No, Sam,” Maureen smiles. “Thank your lucky stars you’re not in heaven.”

  Safraz appears beside Maureen. The little bearded man smiles.

  “You are a Muslim then?” he asks.

  “No,” Sam says, “just an optimist.”

  He sits up, looks around. He sees nothing but sky. By the looks of it, Sam, Safraz, and Maureen stopped the train while it was on the bridge headed for destruction. Getting back up onto his feet, he is able to see just how close to destruction they came. Not ten feet in front of the now stopped locomotive is the missing section of track Morgan the conductor boasted about in his video. Less than a foot away from the missing section of track is nothing but open air, the rocky gorge one-hundred long vertical feet below.

  “You see what I see, Maureen?” he says.

  “That’s how close we came, Sam,” she says, placing her hand on his shoulder. “You saved the day.”

  “Not me,” Sam says. “You saved the day with those emergency brakes. And our friend, Safraz, saved the day too. If not for him, I never would have known how to disable the powerhouse. How can we ever thank you, little man?”

  Safraz smiles. “My thanks will come after I have died an entered into Allah’s glory.”

  Sam gives him a wink.

  “Your ninety-nine virgins,” he says.

  “Hey,” Safraz says, “death could be a lot worse.”

  “The passengers?” Sam asks, refocusing on Maureen.

  “They’re to stay inside their cars. Another locomotive has been sent out to pull the train back to Albany. No New York City for these folks today. But hey, at least they’re alive.”

  “And that little boy who got dropped off a few miles back?”

  “Already picked up by police, no worse for wear.”

  Sam finds himself smiling.

  “Well, looks like my work is finished here,” he says.

  Maureen glances at her wristwatch.

  “You’re still on the clock, pal,” she says. Then, “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of stale Amtrak coffee. It’s the least I can do for my newly wed husband.”

  “I was wrong,” Sam says, heading for the locomotive ladder. “I have died and gone to heaven after all.”

  THE END

  If you were thrilled by this Sam Savage Air Marshal adventure, check out Dead Heading, the first novella in the Sam Savage series. Also, head on over to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM to claim your FREE copy of MOONLIGHT FALLS, the first novel in the Thriller and Shamus Award winning Private Detective series.

  About the Author

  Winner of the 2015 PWA Shamus Award and the 2015 ITW Thriller Award for Best Original Paperback Novel for MOONLIGHT WEEPS, Vincent Zandri is the NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and AMAZON KINDLE No.1 bestselling author of more than 30 novels including THE REMAINS, EVERYTHING BURNS, ORCHARD GROVE and the soon to be released, THE DETONATOR. Zandri's list of domestic publishers include Delacorte, Dell, Down & Out Books, Thomas & Mercer, and Polis Books. An MFA in Writing graduate of Vermont College, Zandri's work is translated in the Dutch, Russian, French, Italian, Japanese, and Polish. Recently, Zandri was the subject of a major feature by the New York Times. He has also made appearances on Bloomberg TV and FOX news. In December 2014, Suspense Magazine named Zandri's, THE SHROUD KEY, as one of the "Best Books of 2014." Recently, Suspense Magazine selected WHEN SHADOWS COME as one of the "Best Books of 2016". A freelance photo-journalist and the author of the popular "lit blog," The Vincent Zandri Vox, Zandri has written for Living Ready Magazine, RT, New York Newsday, Hudson Valley Magazine, Writers Digest, The Times Union (Albany), Game & Fish Magazine, and many more. He lives in Albany, New York and Florence, Italy. For more go to WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

  Vincent Zandri © copyright 2018

  All rights reserved as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Bear Media/Bear Noir 2018

  http://www.vincentzandri.com

  Cover design by Dark Unicorn Designs

  Editing by Bridgette O’Hare of Plot2Published Editing

  Formatting by Dark Unicorn Designs

  Author Photo by Jessica Painter

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to a real person, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published in the United States of America

  The author is represented by Sam Hiyate of The Rights Factory