Part 10 (1/2)

Their arrival went unseen by anyone, the guards at Xintan One having long grown complacent with the internal leg of the journey. After all, there had never been an escape in the prison's history. As such, no one was actually a.s.signed to watch the train during the bridge crossing.

Once the two flying figures had reached the engine car, gliding low over it, West and Stretch retracted their wings and dropped to the roof of the engine, landing perfectly on their feet.

They had to move fast. The train had covered almost twothirds of its short journey and the gates of the main facility rose large before them.

West drew his two Desert Eagle pistols and leaped down onto the nose of the engine car and proceeded to blow out its two drivers' windows.

The windows shattered and he swung in through one, landing inside the driver's compartment.

Both drivers-Chinese Army men-shouted and reached for their guns. They never got to them.

Stretch swung inside the driver's compartment to find the drivers dead and West taking the controls of the train.

”Predator,” West called above the wind now screaming in through the shattered winds.h.i.+eld.

Stretch loaded his ant.i.tank rocket launcher, then shouldered it, aiming it out the broken front windows.

”Ready!” he called.

Then, right on cue, the iron gates of Xintan One cracked open, ready to receive the transfer train.

At which point, West jammed forward on the throttle.

AS THE GATES rumbled open, the two platoons of Chinese Army troops waiting on the receiving platform of Xintan One turned, expecting to see the armored train engaging its brakes, disgorging steam, and generally slowing.

What they saw was the exact opposite.

The armored trainburst in through the great gateway at full speed, accelerating through the tight confines of the archway and blasting past the siding.

Then a finger of smoke shoomed out from the shattered forward winds.h.i.+eld of the engine car-the smoke trail of a Predator ant.i.tank missile, a missile that cut a beeline for...

...the other gate of Xintan One.

The outer gate.

The Predator missile slammed into the iron gate and exploded. Smoke and dust billowed out in every direction, engulfing the receiving platform, obscuring everything.

The huge iron outer doors buckled and groaned, their center sections twisted and loosened, which was all West needed, for a moment later his train thundered into them at phenomenal speed and crashed right through them, flinging them open, hurling them from their ma.s.sive hinges, before the train itself rushed out into gray daylight, racing away from the mountaintop prison, running for all it was worth.

At first, the Chinese were just stunned, but their response when it came was fierce.

Within four minutes, two compact helicopters-fastattack Russianbuilt Kamov Ka50s, otherwise known as Werewolves-rose from within Xintan One and took off after the runaway train.

Another minute later, a much larger helicopter rose from within Xintan Two. It was also Russianmade, but of far highter quality. It was an Mi24 Hind guns.h.i.+p, one of the most feared choppers in the world. Bristling with cannons, gun pods, chemweapons dispensers, and rockets, it had a unique doubledomed c.o.c.kpit. It also possessed a troop hold, which today bore ten fully armed Chinese shock troops.

Once clear of the prison's walls, the Hind lowered its nose and thundered off in pursuit of West's fleeing train.

The final aspect of the Chinese response was electronic.

The Xintan complex possessed two outer guardhouses situated on the mountain railway a few miles north of the prison, guardhouses that the train would have to pa.s.s by.

Frantic phone calls were made to the guards posted at both guardhouses, but strangely no reply came back from either one.

At both outposts the scene was the same: all the guards lay on the floor, out cold, their hands bound with flexcuffs.

West's people had already been there.

THE ARMORED train whipped through the mountains at breakneck speed, a rain of snow rus.h.i.+ng in through its shattered forward windows.

It roared past the first guardhouse, cras.h.i.+ng through its boom gate as if it were a toothpick.

Stretch drove, eyeing the landscape around them-snowcovered mountainside to the left, a sheer thousandfoot drop to the right.

The train rounded a lefthand spur and suddenly the second guardhouse came into view, plus a long soaring iron bridge beyond it.

”Huntsman! I've got a visual on the outer bridge!” Stretch called.

West had been leaning up and out through the shattered winds.h.i.+eld, setting up some kind of mortartype device and peering behind them, back at the prison complex. He ducked back inside.

”We got choppers on our tail. Two attack birds and one big b.a.s.t.a.r.d Hind-”

”Threechoppers?” Stretch turned. ”I thought Astro said they only kept one chase copter at Xintan, the Hind?”

”Looks like his intelligence was two choppers short,” West said wryly. ”I hope that's not the only thing he got wrong. Too late to worry about it now. The rotor net is mounted and in your hands. Just get us to that bridge before somebody on that Hind figures out who we are and decides it's worth blowing the bridge to stop us. Keep me posted. I've got work to do.”

West then grabbed a microphone from the dash, keyed the train's internal intercom, and began speaking in Mandarin: ”Attention all guards aboard this train! Attention! We are now in command of this vehicle. All we want are the prisoners-”

In the five regular carriages of the train, every one of the Chinese guards looked up at the voice coming in over the PA.

Among them, one other face snapped up and gasped, the only one to recognize the voice.

Wizard. He was b.l.o.o.d.y, bruised, and beaten. But his eyes lit up at the sound of his friend's voice. ”Jack...” he rasped.

”-We mean you no harm. We understand that many of you are just doing your job, that you are men with families, children. But if you get in our way, know this: harm will come to you. We will be coming through the train now, so we give you a choice: lay down your weapons, and you will be not be killed. Raise your weapons against us and you will die.”

The intercom clicked off.

Up in the driver's compartment, West threw open the interconnecting door between the engine car and the first carriage.

Then, holding an MP7 submachine gun in one hand and a Desert Eagle in the other, he entered the prison train.

The three guards in the first carriage had heeded his warning.

They stood backed up against the walls, their Type56 rifles at their feet, their hands raised. West moved warily past them, his guns up, when suddenly one of the guards whipped out a pistol and- Blam!

The guard was blown back against the wall of the carriage, nailed by West's powerful Desert Eagle.

”I told you not to raise your weapons,” he said to the others in a low voice. He jerked his chin at a nearby cell: ”Into the cage, now.”

The four guards in the second carriage were smarter. They'd set a trap. First, they'd cut the lights, darkening the carriage and second, they'd concealed one of their men in the ceilingabove the interconnecting doorway while the others feigned surrender to West.