Chapter 29 - Labor Under Fire
The diesel tractor roared to life with a thick puff of black exhaust that choked the narrow tunnel.
Vance slammed the mechanical gear lever forward, and the steel wheels shrieked against the rusted rails, sparking violently as the heavy utility vehicle surged down the forgotten spur. Clara sat huddled in the center of the iron flatbed, shielding her newborn son with her entire body, singing a soft, trembling lullaby over the engine’s deafening clatter.
Behind them, round a sweeping curve, twin blinding high-beams pierced the darkness.
A massive, armored maintenance train—outfitted with heavy steel cowcatchers and searchlights—was barreling toward them at sixty miles an hour, closing the distance with terrifying momentum.
"They're gaining on us!" Vance yelled over the engine roar, keeping his foot jammed hard against the tractor's throttle. "The track narrows ahead! If they ram us from behind, we'll be crushed like a tin can!"
Mara climbed over the tractor's cab, balancing precariously on the vibrating steel frame as the freezing subterranean wind whipped through her hair. She peered through the scope of her rifle, locking onto the lead searchlight of the armored pursuer.
*Crack!*
The left searchlight shattered.
From the open platform of the armored train, two Board operatives opened fire with high-caliber machine guns. Tracers lit the tunnel like lethal fireworks, chewing through the concrete walls and ripping iron chunks out of the tractor’s flatbed.
"Clara, stay down!" Mara screamed.
A bullet grazed Mara’s shoulder, tearing through the Kevlar and leaving a burning trail of fire along her skin. She didn't flinch. She reached into her combat vest, pulling out the last two thermite grenades she had taken from the pier.
"Vance! When I say brake, you drop the anchor for two seconds, then floor it!" Mara yelled.
"You're out of your mind, Bennett!" Vance roared back.
"Do it now!"
Vance yanked the manual brake lever. The tractor’s steel wheels locked, screaming against the rails in a shower of sparks, slowing their speed dramatically. The massive armored train surged forward, closing the gap to less than fifteen feet, its cowcatcher gaping like the jaws of a steel beast.
Mara pulled both pins with her teeth and hurled the thermite canisters directly beneath the armored train's front wheels.
"Floor it!"
Vance released the brake and slammed the throttle. The tractor surged ahead just as the thermite ignited.
A blinding, four-thousand-degree white-hot chemical reaction erupted beneath the armored train's front axle. The extreme heat instantly welded the steel wheels to the frozen rails, shearing the train's front chassis completely off its mountings.
The armored train derailed with an ear-splitting, apocalyptic scream of twisting metal, flipping sideways and slamming into the tunnel’s support pillars. Tons of masonry, steel beams, and rubble collapsed in a massive cave-in, sealing the tunnel behind them in an impenetrable wall of dust and stone.
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The shockwave propelled the utility tractor forward, shooting it out of the old rail spur and straight onto the industrial tarmac of a decommissioned cargo hangar at the edge of O'Hare International Airport.
Silence descended, save for the gentle hum of the tractor's dying engine and the falling snow.
