Reel fired to the left, shattering the glass on the door leading to the train car in front of them. She gripped the flash-bang, engaged it, and threw it through the opening. She whirled and shot out the glass in the window to the rear. The bullet was followed by the second flash-bang, which Robie tossed through the new opening. Robie crouched down and covered his face and his ears as both flash-bangs detonated within seconds of each other.
Screams came from the other train cars.
Reel, who had ducked down a split second before the flash-bangs went off, raced back down the aisle and joined Robie.
He engaged the emergency braking system. They were thrown for ward as the train’s brakes caught. They righted themselves, faced the open door, and looked at each other. They were both breathing hard.
“How fast are we going?” Reel asked.
“Still too fast.”
He glanced out the door. “Water’s coming up.”
The train was slowing, yet it took a long time for something that big to reduce its speed. But they were out of time.
Shots were starting to rip through the train car as their opponents recovered.
“Gotta go.” Robie gripped her hand as the train slowed even more.
“Robie, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Don’t think, just do.”
They jumped together.
It seemed to Robie that they stayed in the air a long time. When they landed, they hit soft mud, not water. The one thing they couldn’t have accounted for was a summer drought that had extended into fall and had lowered the lake’s water level by about four feet. When they hit the wet dirt, Robie and Reel rolled and tumbled along about twenty feet past their first impact.
The train was already out of sight around a bend. But at some point the brakes would bring the million-pound-plus behemoth to a stop.
Robie slowly sat up. He was covered in mud and slime. His clothes were ripped and he felt like an entire NFL team had jumped on him.
He looked over at Reel, who was starting to slowly get up. She looked as bad as he did and probably felt worse. Her pants and shirt were torn too.
Robie managed to stand and stagger over to the knapsack, which had separated from him on impact.
Reel groaned. “Next time I’m staying and just shooting it out.”
Robie nodded. There was a pain in his right arm. It felt funny. He worried that he had broken it, but it didn’t feel broken, just...funny.
As Reel walked over to him he rolled up his shirtsleeve, exposing his burn.
What he saw surprised Robie. But it also solved the question of how the people had been able to follow them.
Robie looked at Reel and smiled grimly.
“What?” she said.
“They just made a big mistake.”
CHAPTER
60
SAM KENT WAS AT HOME when the call came in.
“Believed to be dead,” said the voice.
Robie and Reel had jumped off a train going nearly forty miles per hour. It was thought unlikely that they could have survived.
The fail-safe tracker had gone silent.
It was over.
Kent didn’t believe that for a second. But he had confirmation that his greatest fear had been realized.
Robie and Reel had teamed up. And despite the report, his gut was telling him that they were alive.
Kent was sitting in his study in his exquisite home set among many exquisite homes in a sect ion of Fairfax County that was home to the unassailable “one-tenthers,” the people in the top one-tenth of the one percent. Average income per year: ten million dollars. Most of them made far more than that. They did it in myriad ways:
Inheritance.
Gaining the ear, for a fee, of those in power.
And many, like Kent, actually worked hard for a living and provided things of value to the world. Though his wife’s money had certainly come in handy.
Now Kent sat in his castle and contemplated the phone call he was about to make. It was to someone of whom he was understandably afraid.
His secure phone was in his desk drawer. He pulled it out, hit the required numbers, and waited.
Four rings and a pickup. Kent winced when he realized it was the person and not a recording. He had been hoping for a bit of a reprieve.
He reported the latest news in terse, information-packed sentences, just as he had been trained to do.
And then he waited.
He could hear the other person breathing lightly on the other end of a communication line that not even the NSA could crack.