Renegade Page 19

  “It’s a trap! We’ve pulled right beside an armored troop train!”

  “Relax. I don’t see any of those turrets aimed our way. The troop train that guy mentioned is on the line, moving this way. This thing seems deserted. It’s probably a backup unit they’re keeping here against a real revolution. Yeah, I remember seeing trains like this back home. Between wars they just sit and rust. Nobody’s used anything like this since our Civil War. Hmmm—”

  He set the brakes and stared across at the empty cabin of the armored train. He said, “They’ve left it unguarded because the yards are guarded and it’s sort of lost among all these other freight cars. I wonder if there’s water in the boiler.”

  As he started to climb out, the professor gasped, “No! They’ll see you!”

  But the American knew he was invisible between the two locomotives as he swung across with his gun drawn. He saw at a glance that the tender was full of coal. He read the water gauge and muttered, “Hell, they must have run it in just a few hours ago! The boiler’s still lukewarm!”

  He opened the firebox door, saw the coals were still glowing, and quickly threw some coal in as the professor joined him, protesting, “This is insane! You can’t be thinking what I think you’re thinking!”

  “You want to give some orders? Start by getting our people over into these cars. We’ve an open switch behind us and the steam should build up fast. Move, damn it! Nobody can see us making the switch between these packed-in cars.”

  The old man bleated like a lost sheep, but then he leaped back aboard the passenger train to follow instructions as the American fed scoop after scoop to the new boiler.

  The transfer only took a few minutes. The awed peones were more crowded in the dark interiors of the armor-plated cars, but the cars had been fitted for comfort with benches, and they were settled in when he made a quick turn of inspection.

  He found Robles with the two girls in the forward car. He ignored the grinning Flo and Rosalita to ask the peon, “Do you know how to load and fire a Hotchkiss gun?”

  “Please, Captain Gringo, I do not know what a Hotchkiss gun is!”

  “All right, you’d better drive. I see there’s a signal cord running the length of this rig. One yank means stop and two means go. Three means reverse, and anything else means blow the whistle and run like hell. What are you waiting for, a good-bye kiss?”

  Robles nodded and moved back to do as he was told. Robles was shaping up nicely. Captain Gringo climbed up on the wooden platform under the overhead turret and glanced out the slit. He had a nice field of fire. He yanked open the breech of the Hotchkiss and threw a shell in place from the rack at his side. It looked like 35mm shrapnel. There wasn’t time to worry about it. If it shot, it shot.

  He called down, “Everybody hang on. Here we go!” and yanked the cord. Nothing happened for a moment. Then they were moving out of the slot for the main line. A yard man was waving a red flag at them, but what could he do? One of the other guerrillas, watching through a gun slit over the bench he knelt on, fired and blew the yard man’s face off. Captain Gringo grimaced, but issued no orders. Trigger-happy sons-of-bitches were just what the doctor ordered at the moment.

  They backed through a switch on to the main line, on the wrong track. He watched through the gun slit until he saw they’d crossed over to the southbound line, albeit headed backward to the north. He signaled a stop, then yanked three times. The drivers up ahead caught and whipcracked them the other way as Captain Gringo cranked the turret around. He was now at the wrong end of the train, but so what? Where was the right end?

  As he got his Hotchkiss trained in the direction they were now going he spotted a signal tower up ahead. He fired the Hotchkiss, blowing the boxlike office off its spindly leg and taking care of anyone thinking of getting cute with the remote-control switches. The little turret was full of the acrid fumes of hot brass as he fired once more, missed, and blew away the base of a telegraph pole with his third shot. So much for idle chitchat on the wire to the South. He patted the hot breech of the Hotchkiss and said, “That’s a good old hoss! You shoot nice and you shoot nasty, baby. You and me are going to get along fine!”

  Then he threw another shell in the chamber.

  Someone was tugging his pant leg. He called down, “It’s all right. Just leaving this yard tidy. Someone run forward and tell the professor to put Barbosa and Prado on the machine gun. If they can’t shoot it, nobody can. Tell ’em to follow my lead and smoke up anything I’m shooting at.”

  Whoever it was stopped jerking his pants. So he assumed they agreed with him. He stared through the gun slit down the long gray length of thick Krupp steel. He’d take time to show the others how those other turrets worked, once he figured out how to turn this goddamn train around. With the unarmored locomotive ahead they were vulnerable. This rig had been designed to back in stinging, like a scorpion. He’d have to work out more signals, too. It was going to be tough running a train from the rear unless someone forward could tell him what in hell was going on up front.

  He felt the train hesitate then resume speed under him as Robles obviously spotted something, then decided to bull on through.

  Captain Gringo spotted the smoke plume of an approaching train on the other track. So far, so good. Then as the locomotives passed each other he spotted the red, white, and green flags on the oncoming smoke box. It was the troop train they’d been shunted aside for. They were barreling in from the south wide open. If they’d heard the thuds of distant cannon fire … They had. The windows facing his way were open and a long row of rifles were sticking out of the troop train, spitting fire and lead!

  Captain Gringo fired into the car just behind the oncoming locomotive as, up ahead, the machine gun began its woodpecker song of death. The shrapnel shell exploded inside the other train just as the locomotive whipped past. Wood paneling, men, and parts of men slammed against the steel plating of their armored car as rifle bullets tinged off like hail on a tin roof. By the time he’d reloaded, the two trains had almost passed one another. He spied the long line of machine-gun pocks down the shot-up rear car and fired just in time, blowing the last third of the last car to bloody froth and kindling wood. And then they were through and tearing south with a clear track ahead.

  Captain Gringo cranked the turret around for a look behind them. He saw that the shot-up troop train had stopped, its whistle shooting a long, desperate scream of white steam to the sky.

  He watched it start to become a black dot on the horizon behind them. Then he frowned and muttered, “What the hell?”

  The dot refused to vanish in the distance as it should have. It was growing larger. The crazy sons-of-bitches were chasing them in reverse, which was very brave, no doubt, but very stupid. He trained the hot barrel of his little cannon down the ribbons of steel to their rear and muttered, “All right, you poor bastards. It’s your funeral!”

  The pursuing troop train’s commander wasn’t really stupid. It just took Captain Gringo a few minutes to figure out what he was up to. The madly backing shot-up troop train chased them for about five miles, then suddenly slid to a halt in open country. He nodded as a distant figure leaped down and ran for a faraway telegraph pole. Then he swung the barrel and began potting at the passing poles to his left, grinning, “Not tonight, Josephine!”

  He blew out the wire again on his third try. The sun was very low now, and the kicked-up dust clouds glowed redly against a darkening skyline. It would soon be too dark to pick off telegraph poles. If those other sons-of-bitches were smart enough to ghost him, hanging back just out of range, until they could hook up to undamaged wire, they’d wire ahead, and he didn’t think they’d be wiring home for money.

  He signaled his own engineer to stop and start backing up, teeth bared and Hotchkiss trained as the other train began once more to loom larger.

  Orange flames of gunfire began to wink at him from the other train as the federales caught on. Machine-gun slugs began to spang into the steel of his turret an
d, down below, a woman screamed. He held his fire until the federales frantically signaled their own engine and began to pull away, running back for the shot-up yards to the north. He saw he wasn’t going to get much closer, elevated his barrel, and lobbed a shell as far up the track as he could. It came down behind the enemy locomotive, and while it blew hell out of another car, the troop train was still retreating in good order, trying to throw his aim off with machine-gun fire his opposite number must have known was futile.

  Captain Gringo grunted, “He’s a pro. Thinking good on his feet and trying to save his people without simply hauling ass in panic.”

  He fired into the rear car of the troop train, watching it shatter in a big orange fireball with mixed emotions. He hoped he’d gotten the enemy officer in command. But the guy had been a soldier.

  He yanked the signal cord, and once more Robles braked and whipped them the other way with a spine-popping reversal. Captain Gringo watched as they started putting distance between themselves and that damned troop train. It was nearly dark and, damn, the son-of-a-bitch was backing after them again! He hadn’t blown away anybody smart enough to matter!

  He had to break contact. His unknown opponent knew the rules of irregular warfare and wasn’t going to let him!

  Perfume mingled with the brassy fumes in the turret as Flo rose in the gloom beside him, putting a hand around his waist to steady herself as the car rumbled down the tracks. He asked her what she wanted, and before Flo could answer, Rosalita had squeezed up his other side and said, “We can’t see what’s going on, down there.”

  Flo added, “It’s just a big tin box. There’s no place to pee and I have to!”

  He said, “The middle car is fixed up as a rough command post. There’s a latrine as well as fold-down bunks, a table, and stuff.”

  “So I can pee. Where are we going to sleep tonight? We’re packed in like sardines and there’s no privacy.”

  “Welcome to second class. Nobody’s going to get much sleep tonight. We’re in a running gunfight with one determined son-of-a-bitch and I want you both below. It’s not safe up here.”

  Rosalita rapped the steel plates near her head and laughed, “Pooh. This feels most bulletproof.”

  “Yeah, but the gun slit’s three inches wide, and the biggest machine-gun bullet made is less than an inch in diameter. We seem to have running stand-off, here. Neither one of us are letting the other get within point-blank range. But that other guy’s next move should be a sniper with a sharpshooter’s medal and a scoped rifle. So adios, girls. Go powder your noses or something.”

  Flo dropped down without argument, a born survivor. Rosalita insisted, “You are my toro and I want to help.”

  He said, “You can go forward to the other turrets and start passing ammunition, then. It looks like I’m going to need it. Get some of the men to help you.”

  When he’d finally gotten rid of her it was quite dark outside and black as a bitch in the turret. The thin atmosphere of the Mexican highlands wasn’t conducive to lingering twilight, and he couldn’t see more than a few hundred yards down the track. He could make out the rising smoke of the troop train against the sky as stars began to appear. He couldn’t estimate the range worth a damn. The silvery sheen of the tracks back there simply faded into blackness somewhere between them.

  A blossom of flame winked on and off back there, and a full second later he heard the report and the pang of a steel-jacketed bullet against the rear of his car. He didn’t fire back. He knew they couldn’t see his position worth a damn, either. Why give them his range with a futile cannon flash?

  The federales fired again, growing bolder or perhaps wondering how far out in front he was. He didn’t tell them. As long as they were following he didn’t have to worry about the trackside telegraph line. If the troop train stopped, he’d have to send someone out to cut it the hard way. The only advantage they had, aside from the armor and the Hotchkiss, was that nobody to the south knew they were coming. The forward locomotive was all too vulnerable, and not even these armored cars could roll through an open switch or over a blown-up culvert.

  The tentative running fight dragged on almost two hours as each unanswered troop-train rifle shot seemed to be coming from a little closer. The troop train, being lighter, was gaining on them. Captain Gringo depressed the elevation of his little cannon and waited, like a cat crouched outside a mouse hole. They were in range now. They probably didn’t know it. They could see his smoke plume and little else. They probably thought they were farther back. The most recent shots had been way too high and were passing over the turret like angry bees, not hitting a damned thing. They were shooting at where they imagined he was as they crawled right up the muzzle of his gun.

  He felt the wheels under him slow slightly and wondered what it meant. Then the train gathered speed and sped on as the night around him exploded in harsh yellow light!

  They were passing through a town. Right through the station. A row of those new electric lights had been strung along the station platform, and as they whipped through he saw open-mouthed people on the platform, staring wide-eyed in his wake. And then they were past the town and into the night once more.

  He yanked the signal cord and muttered, “Good boy” as he felt the brakes catch under his vibrating heels. As they slid to a stop his muzzle was trained directly into the illuminated corridor of the lit-up wayside stop. Now, if only those other bastards would just be a little bit stupid.

  They were. He grinned as the shattered rear of the troop train materialized in his gunsights. They were moving pronto in hot pursuit, the poor bastards.

  On the station platform, two American visitors were sitting on their baggage, discussing the terrible rail service that had kept them waiting for a northbound train for hours. As the armored train whipped past in a cloud of cinders and dust, one of them gasped, “What in the hell was that? It looked like some kind of military thing.”

  The other had just said, “I don’t think it means anything. They just like to wave guns around. There hasn’t been any real trouble down here since Diaz took over. They say he’s a bastard, but at least he knows how to run things quietly down here.”

  And then the troop train rolled into view, its rear car shattered and spitting bullets into the blackness beyond as disheveled men in federate uniforms crouched in the gaping maw. As the other people on the platform started running, the two Americans came unstuck and joined the general evacuation, not looking back. So neither saw the first shell rake the length of the already shot-up car to explode against the far bulkhead. But they both flew forward on their faces as the shock wave belly-flopped them to the dirt. As they lay face down, a second and a third explosion showered them with shattered glass and splintered wood. Then Captain Gringo put one into the space between the ties and rolling train, blowing a wheel rim off the track. The nearest car, derailed, took the ones following it with it as the troop train accordioned into a massive mound of wreckage filled with screams and blood.

  And then the last shard of wreckage stopped bouncing and for a moment the only sounds were the distant chugging of the armored train, off to the south, and the moans of dying men.

  One of the Americans rolled over and sat up, muttering, “Jesus H. Christ! What was that you said about them running things quietly down here?”

  The other raised his head gingerly, and as people moved toward the track to help the injured, said, “I don’t understand it. When my company sent me down here hey said Diaz ran a very stable government.”

  “Yeah? Well somebody ought to tell these crazy Mexicans. If I ever get out of here I’m not coming back. You can’t do business in the middle of a revolution, and if they’re lot having a revolution I don’t know what else to call it!”

  It was 3 a.m. by the time Mexico City had a handle on the situation again. In the map room a general who could have used a shave as well as some sleep stared at a new pin and groaned, “That stolen armored train hasn’t moved for forty-five minutes. Does anyon
e have even a guess where it might be right now?”

  Another officer said, “That’s the last contact, sir. They’ve been knocking out the wire, of course, but this close to the capital there are alternate lines. When they stopped for water, there, a Rurale rode hard to another line two kilometers away and—”

  “Spare me the details. Let’s say the rider took at least half an hour to report it in. That means they had a thirty-minute lead before we even put the fucking pin in the fucking map, and that was forty-five minutes ago!”

  He leaned forward with a stub pencil and drew a circle around the pin, adding, “They could be anywhere in here. A seventy-five-kilometer radius to search, black at the pit, and they have Hotchkiss guns and machine guns! Oh I love it! What’s the latest on that shot-out troop train?”

  “There are sixty per cent casualties, sir. They have two cars back on the track and are in pursuit. With the wires down we’ve lost contact with them, too.”

  “Who’s the incompetent son-of-a-bitch in command?”

  “A Major Martinez, sir. He’s an experienced officer.”

  “An idiot, you mean! He let those cockroaches make us look like fools by letting them steal an armored train right out from under him. I want him relieved of command as soon as he next makes contact. Tell him he’s to report directly to me for his pending court-martial! I want whoever left that armored train unguarded, too. Don’t bother to court-martial the motherfucker. Just shoot him against the most convenient wall!”

  A junior officer cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, General. I agree about the guilt of the man in charge of the armored train. But it was not the fault of Major Martinez. He was nowhere near when it happened.”