“Hold this tourniquet in place while I get Ellen and our stuff. We’ve got to lose the special car and the support car. There are explosives mounted on the roof of each of those cars. They can be radio detonated at any time. Probably soon.”
“Radio—like this, this Italian fellow, Macaroni?” “Marconi, sir.”
“Indeed. Marconi it is.”
“Just like television, sir, but without pictures. His invention proved quite versatile and can, indeed, be used to remotely detonate certain types of explosives. Remember to hold on to the tourniquet while I get Ellen. You may need to find additional packing for the wound.”
“These dead men seem to be members of some sort of military unit. They might be carrying field kits with bandages.”
“Excellent idea, Mr. Roosevelt. I’ll have a look.” The nearest of the dead assassins, indeed, had an individual first-aid kit. Jack opened it, took out two field dressings and applied them over the packing. There was antiseptic, but in order to have it do any good, he’d have to reexpose the wound and hasten the blood loss. “I’ll see what else I can find that might help.”
And Jack was moving, climbing up into the coal car as rapidly as he could, crossing to the car’s rear. He jumped, nearly twisting an ankle, but reached the platform at the front of the support car. Dodging the obstacle course of dead men and their weapons, Jack reached the rear of the car, crossed to the special and shouted, hoping Ellen would hear him and not shoot. “Ellen! It’s me, Jack. I’m coming in.”
Jack put his hand on the door handle and twisted, opened the door and went inside. Ellen was crouched behind the overstuffed chair with a Colt revolver aimed at his chest.
“Grab whatever you think Mr. Roosevelt would want out of here, and I’ll get our stuff. Hurry, kid. This car and the one in front are going to blow up any minute.” Somehow, Ellen had gotten into her dress, but he would have bet a million dollars she’d skipped the corset.
The engineer was dying. She hated talk of time-travel and its anomalies, but maybe this man’s death was supposed to be, or maybe time was just healing itself. With his death, the only living man from 1900 in 1900 who knew of the reality of being able to travel in time was Teddy Roosevelt.
After getting her, their bags and a hastily packed suitcase and briefcase for Teddy Roosevelt ferried across the coal car, Jack had gone back to the coal car, stripping the dead assassins of their weapons, ammunition and anything else useful. There was, of course, no identification.
With a submachine gun slung tightly at his side, he’d climbed back across the coal car one last time, to slip the pin for the coupler connecting the train cars to the coal car.
There was a sudden lurching of the engine and coal car, and Ellen Naile realized that both of the two trailing cars—the support car and the special—were no longer attached, the locomotive’s full force and speed unfettered.
As Jack finally climbed down from the coal car, he looked at her in the lamplight and smiled, holding up both hands.
Despite the dying engineer, his head on her lap, Ellen almost laughed, restraining herself—but barely—only out of respect for the man’s life.
The reason she almost laughed out loud was the recollection of a story concerning Jack’s paternal grandfather. Michael Naile, tippling when he shouldn’t have been, had lost a finger slipping coupling pins into place on railroad cars, the finger inserted where the pin should have been. Ever after that, “Mick” Naile’s lost finger was kept in a jar of formaldehyde on the mantle in his home. When Mick’s wife, Margaret, would move the jar in order to dust, he’d swear that he knew the exact time that she did so, that somehow he was able to feel that severed digit. Jack’s showing his hands after removing a coupling pin was his way of saying “Look, Ma! All ten fingers!”
Jack crouched to the floor of the engine, where he had piled the booty taken from the dead assassins. Teddy Roosevelt was stoking the boiler and driving the train. “The people Lakewood hired for this must have brought their own individual weapons. We’ve got one Glock 17, one SIG 228 and one SIG 226 as sidearms. Probably work internationally, with all the handguns being 9mms. We’ll give Mr. Roosevelt the SIG 226 and one of the