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Despite its seemingly dilapidated state, Juan was proud to be captain of that ship. The Oregon was doing exactly what she was designed to do.
Hide in plain sight.
4
Marion MacDougal “MacD” Lawless was only five feet away from Franklin Lincoln, but he was completely invisible. His ghillie suit, typically worn by snipers as camouflage, was custom-designed to blend into the Vietnamese jungle foliage. The color, density, and arrangement of artificial plant life on his outfit perfectly mimicked the bushes and ground cover where they lay only a dozen feet from the railroad tracks. Linc wore one just like it and could hardly make out his own arms stretched in front of him.
A snake slithered across the barrel of Linc’s assault rifle, oblivious to the person only inches away. Linc had no idea if it was venomous, but he wasn’t about to rile it and find out.
“I hate the jungle,” the former Navy SEAL muttered in his basso voice. The snake slinked past his hiding spot and into the trees.
“At least we’re not lying on top of a fire ant nest,” MacD replied in his syrupy New Orleans drawl. “Ah did that once in Louisiana during a camping trip and Ah went to my junior prom looking like Ah had the measles.”
Linc seriously doubted that bothered his date too much. If MacD hadn’t become an Army Ranger before joining the Corporation, his good-looking features could have earned him a great living in Hollywood.
“The most dangerous animals we had in Detroit were rottweilers and pit bulls,” Linc said. He still had a scar on his right thigh where a guard dog had sunk its teeth into him while he was taking a shortcut home as a kid.
MacD shifted slightly, just enough to rustle the suit and make himself visible for a fraction of a second. “Just between you and me, Ah would have taken Eddie’s spot in a heartbeat if Ah thought Ah wouldn’t be as out of place as the Pope at Mardi Gras.”
“Stupid genetics,” Linc said. “Always messing things up for us.”
Not only did neither of them speak Mandarin, Linc was an African-American who spent so much time in the Oregon’s weight room that he could have been a competitive bodybuilder, and MacD was a tall blond who couldn’t pass for a Taiwanese triad member no matter how much makeup and latex prosthetics were applied to his face.
As the Corporation’s director of shore operations, Eddie Seng would normally be with Linc and MacD right now. But the two “gundogs,” as the Oregon’s former Special Forces operators were known, were on their own today.
Linc felt a slight tremor in the ground. But unlike the suddenness of an earthquake, this shaking grew slowly and steadily stronger.
“That’s got to be them,” MacD said.
“Right on schedule.”
Soon, the quaking was accompanied by the squeal of steel wheels grinding on the rails. In the distance Linc could see the engine swing around one bend in the track before disappearing again behind an outcropping. At the same time, the Oregon came into view, paralleling the train’s course. Whitecaps curled from its bow as it raced to keep up.
“Did Eric take care of the cameras on the train?”
Linc checked his satellite phone and smiled. “Stoney just sent me confirmation that he was able to intercept the wireless feeds. They’re now on a loop.”
When Eric got on the train with Juan, his job was to record the cameras’ view of each of the unoccupied cars and rebroadcast that using a specially built transmitter embedded in his tablet. Now, no matter what was happening in the cars he’d already passed through, the triad would think they were still empty.
When the engine reappeared, the ground’s vibration was matched by the throb of the diesel motor’s five thousand horsepower. Linc and MacD remained absolutely still as it went by. Linc had a good view of the engineer, who was focused on the track ahead. He gave no indication that he’d noticed anything unusual. Within a few more seconds, the dense jungle would be blocking his view rearward because of the curved section of track.
“Get ready,” Linc said as the seventh passenger car passed. “It’s slowed just as expected because of the winding track. We’ll have less than twenty seconds once you fire.”
“No sweat.” MacD adjusted his position and brought his crossbow to bear. Linc was the best sniper in the Corporation, but that was with a rifle. MacD was an expert with the crossbow from his days hunting deer in the Louisiana swamps.
The final car passed them, and MacD fired. Amid the clacking of the train’s wheels, the bolt whizzed away in utter silence, trailing a fishing line designed to haul in thousand-pound marlins. The bolt cracked through the window of the car’s rear door, activating the spring-loaded grappling claws that secured it to the frame.
“Nice shootin’, pardner,” Linc said as he leapt up from his hiding spot.
They threw off the camouflage that covered a device that looked like a toboggan, with Teflon guide sleeves on each side of a shallow carbon-fiber tub. A thousand feet of fishing line continued to unravel as the train pulled it out of its reel. The other end was tied to the front of the sled.
They lifted the lightweight but sturdy sled onto the tracks and placed the guides on the rails. With only a hundred feet of line left, they dived into the rigid tub. Just as they got their feet anchored against the back of the tub, the line went taut, yanking them backward as it matched the train’s speed.
After the initial shock wore off, Linc activated the motorized reel. The Teflon guides thunked every time they hit a joint in the rail. The sled was working as expected.
“It’d be nice if the marlins did this once in a while when I went fishing,” MacD said, watching the motor pull them toward the train.
“Reeling themselves in?” Linc replied with a smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”
