Chapter 9
In less than a minute, Steed had duckwalked across the roofs of three boxcars as he headed toward the front of the train. A flatcar was connected directly behind the large BTH engine, making it virtually impossible to sneak up unobserved. The driver merely had to turn his head to one side or the other and he would spot any intruders from the corner of his eye.
The train was now moving at better than forty miles per hour and still accelerating. The lights of Silvertown loomed ahead, glistening stars amid the scrub growth that lined the tracks. The locomotive cab was shrouded in black, but Steed could make out a dim shape in the darkness; it was the silhouette of the man at the controls. He was wearing a bowler hat and had an umbrella draped over his forearm. Steed instinctively patted his own chest to make sure that he wasn't the one running the engine.
The rail line was passing another factory, and the points had temporarily shunted the train onto a siding. The driver's attention was focused on adjusting the speed through the loop, and Steed took advantage by sprinting silently across the surface of the flat wagon, crouching to hide just behind the cab.
Steed quickly peeked through the window. Even in the blackness, he could see that the man wore no mask. Could this really be the double agent he had been chasing for the past six months, The Ladja?
The train swung through the second set of points back onto the main line, lurching with the speed. Steed lost his balance and slipped on the steel floor of the flatcar, the side of his shoe brushing against a tie-down chain. The driver whirled at the clanking noise.
"Who's there?" The Ladja's familiar voice barked gruffly.
Seizing the initiative, Steed sprang into the cab and flung open the door of the closest access panel. It smacked The Ladja in the side of the head, knocking him away from the controls and through the open door on the opposite side. The villain hung suspended for a moment, precariously balanced above the tracks hurtling beneath him; then he managed to swing back onto the flatcar. A stray beam of light from one of the outer markers briefly illuminated Steed inside the cab. The Ladja's face turned ashen, a man who had seen a ghost.
"Steed!" he gasped. "But how?"
Steed retrieved his umbrella and bowler from the floor of the cab and donned them as he stepped debonairly onto the surface of the flatcar. "Like a cat, I have several lives left."
The Ladja abruptly lunged for the side of the car. He tore open the lid of a toolbox in the floor and hefted out an eight-kilo railway sledge.
"Why won't you die?" he shouted as he swung the hammer in a careening arc.
Steed barely managed to dodge the attack by diving across the slippery steel surface, landing at the very rear of the flatcar. His umbrella went skittering away as he scrambled back to his feet. The Ladja was rooting through the toolbox again; he produced a large spanner. He hurled it expertly across the dozen feet that separated the fighters.
An explosion of pain shot through Steed's right thigh as the wrench struck a glancing blow before skating off the edge of the car. He sank to one knee, desperately wishing he had managed to snag the weapon before it had flown over the side.
Suddenly, The Ladja loomed above him, the heavy sledge raised over his shoulders, ready to strike the deathblow. Steed sprawled backwards onto the floor of the car, hoping to roll away from the killing stroke. A passing marker illuminated the face of his foe for a brief instant. Surely, it must have been a trick of the light.
Steed was stunned to see his own features reflected back at him.
-oOo-
Emma was in a hurry as she crossed a boxcar, shimmied down its ladder onto a flat wagon, sprinted across its surface, then climbed to the top of the next boxcar. She wanted to be at Steed's side when he faced The Ladja. There would be no time for pussy-footing with Mistress Leov; Emma's attack plan was to find a long-handled implement somewhere in the brake van and use it to neutralize the whip and the shoes of her opponent. Deprived of her poisons, Leov would be easy to subdue, unless she had some special fighting skills that Emma hadn't seen yet.
She crossed the roof of the final boxcar and perched on its edge. Leov was somewhere in the car below, in the crew quarters of the brake van, the caboose. It was entirely possible that she hadn't seen the two intruders board the train, and Emma would have the element of surprise.
Emma silently approached the front end of the van and prepared to kick the door open. She would have to carefully guard her face and hands; they were the only exposed areas of flesh through which Mistress Leov's weapons could administer their drugs. Taking a deep breath, she braced herself against the railing and slammed her boot into the middle of the door. It nearly broke loose from its hinges as it crashed inward. Emma could see all the way to the door at the other end.
The brake van was empty.
Emma cautiously moved down the center aisle, checking the crew bunks on either side; but there really wasn't sufficient space for a buxom woman like Leov to hide anywhere.
The patter of footsteps sounded on the roof. Emma cursed as she whirled and ran back to the front of the van. She saw Leov drop down and pull the door shut, then heard a metallic scraping. Emma tugged on the door handle with all her might, but it wouldn't budge; the Mistress had somehow jammed the mechanism from the outside.
Emma furrowed her brow in suspicion and sprinted to the back of the brake van. The rear door was jammed as well. Like the door on the front, it opened inward, so as not to send anyone on the outside railing plunging off the train; unfortunately, that meant Emma couldn't use her weight to force it, or gain any leverage.
She was trapped. Emma urgently started searching for a tool to free herself, but all of the storage compartments in the caboose were padlocked. She picked up the heaviest object she could find, an electric lantern, and started hammering against the lock on the rear door.
Emma growled in frustration. Mistress Leov's strategy was now obvious. She was going to head to the front of the train and join her lover. Together, they would gang up and eliminate Steed, two against one, then come back for her.
-oOo-
Steed scooted back along the steel surface of the flatcar, but his injured thigh had reduced his mobility. He lay there defenseless, his fingers groping along the floor. He experienced a brief surge of hope as they closed around the handle of his umbrella. It couldn't possibly fend off the massive sledge; his only chance was to use the sword inside.
He raised himself to a knee as he pulled on the handle of the umbrella. Nothing happened. He tugged harder as The Ladja repositioned himself for the kill. The sheath was jammed. The sword would not come free.
The Ladja grinned as he wielded the rail hammer. "You can't use your blade!" he shouted triumphantly. "Now, Steed—die!"
Steed's vision tunneled as the outline of the sledge started to move forward against the lights of the factory. Over the Ladja's shoulders, a large metal storage tank was coming into view as the diesel engine passed beneath it. The picture painted on the white surface was other-worldly in its strangeness—a lion surrounded by bees. Steed could see words encircling it: LEO & BUZZER'S GOLDEN SYRUP.
A red indicator light on the funnel controls glowed just enough for Steed to make out a green button. With all his remaining strength, he hurled his umbrella like a javelin.
The Ladja laughed as he saw the umbrella fly over his head, thinking Steed's aim was off. There was the loud clunk of an electric valve servo as the tip of the umbrella hit the button, causing the light to change from red to green.
Steed rolled onto one side and covered his head as a solid wall of treacle burst forth from the spout. The Ladja screamed as the thick liquid rammed into the back of his head, knocking the sledge away as if it had been a matchstick. At this speed, the torrent was an irresistible force, dragging the two men across the surface of the car. Steed grasped one of the floor chains and held on for dear life, watching helplessly as The Ladja was swept over the side in a tide of golden syrup.
Dragging himself to his feet and maintaining a death grip on the chain, Steed staggered to the edge of the flat wagon, craning his head to determine what happened to his foe, but there was no sign of The Ladja anywhere. The spout continued to flow forth amber treacle, painting a stripe down the roofs of the boxcars as the train hurtled past the sugar refinery.
Steed knew he had to stop the train; it could crash through the buffers at any moment. He limped across the sticky surface of the flatcar towards the cab. Once inside, he shut off the throttle and engaged the brake. The diesel engine whined down to idle speed as the train slowed to a stop.
He exhaled sharply as he removed his soaked jacket; the shirt and tie were dry underneath. His right pant leg felt wet; luckily, it was golden syrup, not blood. He would probably escape with nothing worse than a bad bruise. Still, he favored his right leg as he moved quickly across the surface of the flatcar, heading for the rear of the train—and Emma.
Fortunately, he didn't have to cross the top of the train in his injured state; instead, he stepped onto the gravel ballast next to the rails and limped alongside. Steed looked at the distant tracks behind them, but judging from the train's speed and stopping time, The Ladja's body would be a good mile away. Normally, being thrown from a train at forty miles per hour could result in serious injury or death; but the viscous syrup might have cushioned the villain's fall.
Two cars ahead of the brake van, another flat wagon was nestled between two boxcars. Steed halted in the dim light as he spied an object in the center of the floor. He jumped onto the flatcar and approached it. It was a small leather case: the Zagadka decoder.
The sound of a single footfall came from the end of the car. Steed saw the silhouette of a leather-clad woman framed against the darkness.
"Mrs. Peel?" he called out hopefully.
"Right outfit," a sinister female voice answered. "Wrong woman."
Steed felt an icy chill pass over his body. If Leov was here, that meant that Mrs. Peel had failed in her battle. Perhaps she had been tossed from the train—or worse. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing.
Emma must be dead.
Steed tried to fight back the mind-numbing sorrow. Then he panicked as he realized it was threatening to induce his death-feigning coma. That was the trigger he had chosen—life without Emma. Leov wouldn't be fooled a second time around. She would recognize his faux heart failure and kill him while he was motionless and vulnerable.
He forced himself to concentrate. What was it Mrs. Peel had said about the whip? Something about it being envenomed with a paralyzing agent that the Mistress used to immobilize her opponents. Even if he could fight off the coma, she could still render him helpless with a single stroke. Then she would kill him with the poison spikes on her shoes. Steed's eyes darted around the empty flatcar, searching for a weapon. He could have used his umbrella as a shield; but it was a mile away, under a lake of golden syrup.
Suddenly, death felt very, very close.
Mistress Leov approached him slowly, her heels clicking like a metronome as she closed the distance between them. Steed knew that with his injured thigh, it would be impossible to dodge her attack. Already, she had thrown her arm back over her head, the whip uncoiling behind her like a viper, ready to strike. It would take a mere instant for her to snap it forward, and his clothing wouldn't be sufficient to prevent the lightning lash from breaking his skin.
Her arm seemed to be frozen on the backswing. The Mistress tugged forcefully; the whip had caught on something. Steed held his breath, waiting for a paralyzing slash that never came.
A second figure stepped forth from the shadows. The end of the whip was wrapped in loops around her leather-clad forearm. Careful not to touch the whip with her hand, she brought her arm around with a vicious yank. The whip handle flew from Mistress Leov's grasp and clattered harmlessly away to the surface of the flatcar. The second woman lowered her arm and let the coils slide off to the floor. Her eyes were ablaze.
"If you want to hurt him," Emma said evenly, "you'll have to go through me."
-oOo-