Sam Fisher- Train Derailing

  But her grip went slack. And so did his.

  Because the rumbling, shrieking, and groaning noises coming from outside, along with the shattering of more glass, meant only one thing: the train had derailed.

  He couldn’t be sure what happened next, judging it all based upon what he could hear and feel. His gaze was still locked on the Snow Maiden’s, the ferocity on her face turned to utter shock.

  He threw her pistol behind him while reaching for his Five-seveN. He seized it—

  But now she had his secondary, the P226, pressed to his forehead.

  This standoff lasted barely a second more before a massive wave of sand, perhaps dug up by the locomotive as it buried itself into the desert, came rushing through the shattered windshield and drove both of them backward and into the hall and stairwell.

  Even as the sand flowed in as though poured from a dump truck, the entire train heaved and creaked, iron scraping against iron, undercarriages wailing as wheels cut at wrong angles across the tracks. Another explosion rocked from somewhere outside, followed by a harsh cracking that sounded as though the hitches between container cars were being forced apart and snapped in two.

  The operator’s booth continued filling with sand, the walls buckling, and just as Fisher was slapping his hand on the wall, groping for purchase—

  The entire HEP car smashed onto its side and continued skidding across the
desert floor, more dirt and rocks and other debris coming in from the side door window, with the Snow Maiden now crawling backward toward the steel door at the bottom of the steps.

  Summoning up a scream, Fisher forced himself up through the oncoming sand and dove onto the Snow Maiden, freeing the SIG from her grip before she kneed him in the chest, then brought her boot around and side-kicked him in the neck.

  They both fell back as the side of the car, now their ceiling, began rumbling and smashing inward to a chorus of much louder scrapes and echoing booms. Fisher suspected that one or more of the oil container cars was ramming and tumbling over them, the entire train folding up like an accordion and rolling over itself, the tanks splaying across the earth like a box of cigars let slip from the hand of a drunken oligarch.

  Perhaps only the train’s collision could stop the triggerman from detonating the weapon—and any second’s delay was either fate glancing kindly on Fisher or cruel irony baiting him with the idea that he still had a chance.

  Barely finishing that thought, he and the Snow Maiden were thrown once more into the opposite wall as the HEP car fishtailed brutally to the right, booted by more cars piling up behind it, the reverberation like a legion of thunderheads vying for attention and drumming across the tracks.

  More sand spat into their faces, and Fisher was momentarily blinded, reaching out now for the Snow Maiden, wary that she might have another pistol or knife at the ready.

  A short bang came from nearby, shaking the car; it was followed by a collision that must’ve broken open one of the containers because now the air reeked of oil. A guttural hiss pierced the wind, as though pressure were being released from something, and that racket lasted a second more before the car rolled up, onto its roof, burying Fisher and the Snow Maiden under the sand.

  But then the car’s momentum kept it rolling and it smashed down onto its opposite side, the sand now drawing away from them, the explosions and near-human howls and shrieks of mangled metal still rising into the night.

  It was all happening around them now, the car beginning to grow steady, the vibrations coming up through the ground, and yet there was nothing else striking them. The impacts were more distant now, like mortar fire half stifled by a mountainside.

  Fisher coughed and clawed his way down toward the door, with the sand rising up to just below the first lock.

  They’d stopped.

- Blacklist Aftermath, Chapter 36