The woman shrugged. "Then I guess I ride this damn thing all the way back and start saving up for the next run."
"Madam," said Harold Smith.
"Yeah?"
"You are a fool."
"Maybe. But I'm in the catbird seat, and so are you. Just hope you got the strength in your skinny old body to open that window exit."
Smith said nothing. He was thinking.
For a year now he had been tracking the rash of rail disasters plaguing the nation's railroad system, attempting to glean a pattern or purpose to the unusual surge of derailments and train wrecks.
His computers had found nothing significant, other than the statistical quirk of so many incidents over such a long time.
Smith was a student of statistics, going back to his pre-CURE days at the CIA, where he'd been a data analyst. He understood probabilities, coincidences, cluster effects and other statistical phenomena that the superstitious attributed to everything from bad astrological conjunctions to sunspots.
He understood it was possible that these disasters were simply a run of bad luck aggravated by the declining state of the nation's web of rails.
But Smith also understood the longer the phenomenon persisted, the less likely mere happenstance could be blamed. The longer the list of statistics grew, the less likely the reasons were purely statistical.
Smith had been close to sending Remo and Chiun into the field to look into the problem, when abruptly the string of disasters had stopped. It was a hopeful sign. It had lasted three months so far. If it continued, it meant the worst was over.
Now Smith found himself seated next to a woman who was expecting an accident.
"What makes you think there will be an accident on this particular line?" Smith asked carefully.
"'Cause one ain't happened yet."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, one ain't happened on this stretch yet. They been happening elsewhere but not here. So I figure to ride this line until I get lucky. Something bad's bound to happen."
Smith swallowed hard. "If you are referring to the rash of derailments, they appear to have stopped."
"They didn't stop in Texas."
"Texas?"
"There was a big train wreck in Texas last night. Ain't you heard?"
Smith blinked. He had not. He began every day scanning AP wire-service feeds off his computer links. There had been no derailment reported in the morning feeds.
"Are you certain of your facts?" he asked the woman.
"I got eyes. I can read. A freight train slammed into the yards at Texarkana. Made a damn mess, too. Saw it all on the TV."
"Pardon me," said Smith, wriggling in his seat.
Carefully he undid the catches and opened the briefcase, exposing his portable computer system with its satellite phone uplink to the big mainframes housed in the basement of Folcroft Sanitarium, the headquarters for CURE.
"What's that?"
"My laptop," Smith said brusquely.
"I think you need more lap than you got."
Initializing the system, Smith dialed up his mainframes and, that done, called up the AP wire.
It was the first item.
Freight Accident -Texarkana, Texas (AP)
A Southern Pacific freight train crashed into a sport jeep stalled at a crossing grade in Big Sandy, Texas, destroying it. Out of control, the train barreled on east to the Texarkana freight yards for some fifty miles, where it crashed. The engineer was decapitated in the crash. National Transportation Safety Board officials are investigating the cause of the accident.
Smith's prim, bloodless mouth thinned. Loss of life was minimal, he was pleased to see. Oddly there was no word of the driver of the demolished utility jeep. Presumably he had survived.
By all accounts it was a man-made tragedy. A driver had caused it by his reckless attempt to beat a freight train. It was a mistake so common that when Smith analyzed past train accidents he factored those out as statistically meaningless.
"They'll never replace papers," the woman said suddenly.
Smith looked up. "I did not catch that," he said thinly.
"I say, that thing will never replace the newspapers. I don't care how many trees gotta die. Newspapers don't need batteries. Mark my words. The information superhighway is gonna end up sprouting weeds from every crack."
"I see," said Smith, slipping back into thought.
The conductor was coming down the aisle calling out the next stop.
"Mystic. Mystic next! Exit to the rear. Mystic, Connecticut-five minutes."
The train had been humming along the track, doing 120 miles per hour. There was none of the familiar clickety-clack of the trucks on the rail sections. This was CWR track--continuous welded rail. The coach shook and shimmied monotonously.
Glancing out the window, Smith saw Long Island Sound shimmering under a summer sun. The water was lapping at the rail bed up ahead.
As the train rattled and swayed into a long turn, he could see the diesel engine pulling the long silver snake of the train behind it.
The train gave out a low, mournful sound. It was repeated, a more protracted note this time.
There was no warning. Smith was taking in the ocean view, his mind a blank, not thinking of anything in particular when the train shuddered. They were running through an area of salt marsh where cattails waved in a gentle sea breeze.
Then came a boom. A jolt. The car seemed to buck. Smith's eyes flew back to the car interior. He caught the startled looks on faces jerking up from reading material and Amtrak tray meals.
That shared moment of uncertainty seemed to last forever. In reality it was a split second broken by a string of dull detonations.
Boom-boom-boom-boom