Chapter 63 - The Chicago Chokehold
The Calumet industrial bypass was a graveyard of rusted boxcars, rotting wooden ties, and gray winter slush. Rain began to fall in heavy, frigid sheets as Engine 101 roared past the perimeter of Gary, Indiana, her Nathan horn blasting three long, defiant warnings into the desolate evening gloom.
Ahead, towering over a labyrinth of four hundred diverging tracks, stood the five-story concrete monolith of Tower 18—the historic central switching hub that governed every wheel turning in or out of Chicago. From its highest glass observation deck, searchlights swept through the mist, pinning our locomotive in a harsh, blinding glare.
"Nina!" Arthur yelled over the static-choked radio. "I have Derek Taylor on the open yard frequency! He patched himself into Tower 18’s transmitter!"
I snatched the heavy brass microphone from the wall mount. "Derek. You have ten seconds to release the Chicago switches before federal marshals drag you out of that tower by your heels."
A hideous, broken laugh crackled over the speaker, distorted by Derek's wired jaw and blind, narcissistic malice.
"Still barking orders, Nina?" Derek hissed, his words slurring through his shattered teeth. "You think you won because Grandfather left the pier? Look at your telemetry! You don't own this junction! Grandfather transferred Tower 18 to my personal shell company twenty minutes ago! I control the interlocking! I control the switches! In five miles, your precious Engine 101 is going to meet a five-thousand-ton unit train of crude oil on Track Nine!"
Jonah ripped the microphone from my hand, his voice dropping into a register so dark and lethal that even the radio static seemed to quiet. "Derek. If you drop that switch, you won't live to see the trial."
"Try me, peasant!" Derek shrieked. "You took my company! You took my name! You made me a laughingstock on national television! Let’s see how your millions look when you're burned alive in sixty thousand gallons of North Dakota crude!"
The radio clicked dead.
On Arthur’s screen, a terrifying blip appeared. Three miles ahead, an automated oil train—running without a crew under Vance Global’s remote freight protocol—had just been tripped onto our collision path. It was accelerating to forty miles an hour, barreling down the identical stretch of welded rail we were running on.
"Switch 42 is frozen!" Arthur shouted, his face paper-white. "Derek locked the hydraulic solenoids from the tower master console! Mack can't brake in time! Even in emergency reverse, the stopping distance is two miles! We hit them in ninety seconds!"
"Mack!" Jonah roared into the intercom. "Lock the vestibule doors and brace the rear trucks! Nina, get behind the reinforced steel safe in the salon!"
"No!" I shouted, grabbing Jonah's arm, my knuckles white against his sleeve. "I'm not hiding while you die on this platform! Look at the diagram, Jonah! Switch 42 isn't entirely hydraulic! It's an old dual-action pneumatic! My father built the fail-safe manual release in 1994! There is a manual trip lever directly on the ground box fifty yards before the signal bridge!"
"That means someone has to be on the track," Jonah said, looking directly into my eyes. In that instant, there was no hesitation, no fear—only the blinding, terrifying resolve of a man who would tear down heaven to keep me breathing. "Mack! Slow her down to thirty as we hit the signal gantry! Dump sand on the rails!"
"Jonah, no!" I screamed as he grabbed a four-foot steel breaker bar from the emergency rack.
"Trust me, Nina," Jonah whispered. He pulled my head down, crushing his lips against mine in a kiss that tasted of iron, rain, and fierce, unquenchable devotion. "I don't lose to rats."
Before I could drag him back, Jonah kicked open the low side hatch of Car 49. Cold wind and freezing spray exploded into the salon.
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The black tank cars of the oncoming oil train burst through the fog ahead, their twin headlights burning like the eyes of a demonic leviathan. Jonah swung his legs over the threshold, his boots finding the slick iron running board of the locomotive as we hurtled toward the crossing.
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