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CHAPTER
1
PASSENGER TRAIN TRAVEL WAS NOTknown to be particularly dangerous, especially in Europe where the machines soared like the wind on rigorously sculpted rails that translated to silky smooth rides. There were many departures a day between Geneva and Milan operated by several railway companies; one could travel early in the morning or later at night. The trains ran at a maximum speed of two hundred kilometers per hour, while their passengers napped, worked, binged shows on streaming platforms, or ate and drank in considerable comfort. This particular ride was a bullet-nosed silver Astoro tilt train operated by Trenitalia. None of the hundred-plus passengers was contemplating dying today.
Except for one.
As far as Travis Devine was concerned this ride was fraught with peril of the kind that would not send you to a hospital, but rather a half dozen feet into the cold earth. The source of the danger had nothing to do with the train. It had been ferreted out by his well-honed situational awareness, which had led him to conclude that his life was in imminent jeopardy.
The trip from Geneva to Milan contained beautiful scenery: the soaring, snow-capped Swiss Alps, the lush, verdant valleys, immaculate, aromatic vineyards, two pristine lakes, and the quaint, picturesque villages of Europe ladled in between the two venerable cities. Devine cared nothing about this as he sat in his first-class seat upholstered in brown leather staring at seemingly nothing, while actually taking in everything inside the train car. And there was a lot to observe.
Devine checked his watch. On some trains this trip could take five hours and a quarter, but he was on an express ride that would do it in just under four. He had ninety minutes of that trip left, and maybe that same number of ticks to live. Devine would have preferred a packed train car, but his tight escape from Geneva had not allowed for any latitude on the travel time, and this early in the morning there were only three other passengers in the first-class car. The attendants had already been through checking tickets. Despite this being first class, food was not served at the seat, but there was a dining car between the first-and second-class sections. The attendants were now off somewhere else as the train had settled into the second half of its journey south.
Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. It was how the former U.S. Army Ranger Devine referred to the three other passengers. Two men, one woman. Not passengers, at least not to him.
Adversaries. Bogies. The enemy.
The men were sitting together in seats facing each other, forward of Devine’s position, near the front of the car. The woman was on the other side of the aisle, two up from him. She looked like a student. Textbooks stacked high, a bulky rucksack in a storage rack behind her; she was drawing something in a sketchbook. But Devine had been fooled by people posing as students before.
The men wore thick overcoats against the climate just outside the slender train windows. Overcoats that could hide a lot.
Devine had gotten up and gone to the bathroom twice now, but only once to relieve himself; the other was solely for recon. He had also gotten some food in the dining car and brought it back to his seat. Each time after returning, Devine had glanced at his gear bag, which was behind him on a luggage rack.
And the third time he saw what he thought he would.
On his phone he brought up his train’s journey, saw its exact route, its progression, and most critically its timing. Of particular note was the Simplon Tunnel, which they would enter after passing through the Swiss town of Brig. When they exited the tunnel they would be in Italy. The article he was now reading said that the tunnel was twelve miles long and would take the train eight minutes to pass through. The tunnel had opened in 1906 and had given its name to perhaps the most famous train in the world, the Simplon-Orient-Express.
Devine wasn’t interested in the history; he was focused on the tunnel.
He texted a high-priority message to an interested party and then checked his watch.
He had caught Alpha and Bravo staring at him, at different times, but he had made no reaction. These were known, in Devine’s world, astargetglances. Charlie, who was wearing a Madrid Real ballcap, had never looked at him, but she had surreptitiously eyed the two men while getting something from her bag. Her movements were mildly tensed, even robotic, he’d observed. She was trying overly hard to appear normal, which was causing her anxiety. Stress activated the sympathetic nervous system, the flight-fight-or-freeze part of the body that present-day humankind could thank its cavemen ancestors for. Fear did things to a body physiologically. The mind could screw with you in ways you could hardly imagine. In trying to save you, its stressor signals could actually kill you with a heart attack or render you incapable of saving yourself. Or, in his case, blow a plan to kill someone right out of the water, and give the potential victim a chance to survive.
Devine analyzed the situation exactly as he had been trained to do, every contingency, every weak point. The men had never removed their overcoats even though the climate inside was quite comfortable. In fact, Devine had taken his parka off because he had felt warm.
Keeping their hands in their pockets, in particular, was an informed tell of malevolent intent, because hands were a necessary accompaniment to a primary weapon, usually a gun. And they had target-glanced Devine not once but twice. Finally, they had never left their seats as far as he could tell. There were no food or drink containers at their tables. That completed the Rule of Three for Devine. A trio of behavior patterns that were out of the ordinary meant you needed to come up with a plan if you wanted to walk away under your own power.
Well, I’ve got at least four warning signs here, because of what I saw on my gear bag, so I need to get my shit together.
Devine checked his watch once more and then eyed his bag. After he’d gone to the dining car he’d come back to find that the zipper was three teeth above where he had left it; and, in just the right light, he had seen the whorls of a thumbprint on the pull tab, a thumbprint that was assuredly not his. There was nothing in his bag other than clothes and a toiletry kit; otherwise, he never would have left it unguarded. He was also kicking himself for not bringing a gun with him on this trip, but that would have been problematic for a number of reasons.
At the border station of Domodossola a contingent of the Swiss Guard boarded to do a customs check. Devine was asked if he had anything to declare and how much cash he had on his person, and he had to show his passport. He watched carefully without seeming to as they asked the same of the other three passengers. He couldn’t see the passports of the two men, but the woman’s appeared to be a post-Brexit UK blue and gold, which mimicked the original colors that had been in place on British passports since 1921.
Later, he eyed the window as the train began slowing. They pulled into the town of Brig. No one got on in first class, and no one got off, except for the Swiss Guard contingent. For a moment Devine thought about exiting the train, too, or telling them of his concerns with the other passengers. However, he had his plan now and he was sticking to it. And he wasn’t trusting anyone right now, not even the Swiss Guard. The opponents he was battling had the resources to buy pretty much anyone and anything.
And these foes of his had great incentive to wish Devine harm. Working on behalf of the United States, Devine had helped foil a ballsy attempt by some powerful if unscrupulous interests to promote global unrest for pure profit, with the added kicker of overthrowing several governments hostile to the players behind this scheme. It seemed as long as people lusted for wealth and power, this crap would just keep happening. And one day they might just succeed in taking over the world, thought Devine.
The train glided away from the station. The two attendants came through, and then, seeing no new passengers, or anything that needed their attention, other than Devine handing one of them the trash from his meal, they left through the opposite end of the train car to do whatever attendants did when their official work was done.
The train speed was posted on a digital screen attached to the bulkhead at the front of the car. Devine watched it rise to 180 kilometers an hour before it started to drop. He did the mile-to-kilometer calculation in his head to arrive at the length of time the train would be in the Simplon Tunnel.
Twelve miles is nineteen kilometers. Doing that in eight minutes would mean a constant speed of... right.
He looked at the screen again. One hundred and sixty kilometers...one fifty-three...one forty-two point...
He put on his parka and rose just as the train entered the tunnel; now the only real illumination came from the interior car lights. Devine strode up the aisle to the toilet in the connecting vestibule. As he passed the woman he glanced down at what she was drawing in charcoal.
Okay, that makes sense. And it’s nice to have at least partial confirmation.
