Free Blood on the Tracks by Barbara Nickless

flushed. “I am , Nik. I’m fine.”
    His eyes narrowed at the lie, but he nodded and went back to his window.
    “Hoppers and cubbies.” Cohen’s expression had softened. “You know that I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”
    “Right. Sorry. A hopper is a car used for carrying bulk items like corn or wheat—products that have to be protected from the weather. The front and rear walls angle in from the top to the bottom, leaving room at each end of the car for a metal platform that sits directly over the wheels. Like this.” I drew a quick sketch. “One platform is taken up with the brake system. But the other platform is open. Perfect for hobos.”
    “And the cubby?”
    “It’s a hole cut into the end-wall of the car, here”—I pointed—“above the platform. Not roomy, but a great place to hide.”
    “Okay. I got the hoppers. Go on.”
    “A few flatcars. No worries there—they’re filled with loads that make riding them too risky. But we’ve got twenty-three gondolas spread out along the train.” I made another sketch. “A gondola is essentially a roofless boxcar sliced in half horizontally so it’s only about six feet higher than the wheels. On our train, thirteen of the gondolas are empty, which means he could easily be inside. The only way for us to know is to climb up inside each car and take a look.”
    “What about a flyover? Could we see him that way?”
    “Depends. If he’s in one of the gondolas, sure. But if he’s on a platform or in a cubby, he’ll be impossible to see from the air. And we run the risk of alerting him if we do a flyover in a police chopper.”
    Cohen nodded. “Sounds like the work will have to be done from the ground.”
    “How many men do you have?”
    “Larimer County is putting their SWAT team in with twenty-one men plus a commander. We’ve got ten deputies, the sheriff, and two K9 teams. State’s giving us another twenty-five men. So sixty plus us.” Cohen rubbed his eyes as if only now realizing how tired he was. “You got suggestions on how we should use everybody once the train stops? Your witness placed him near the rear of the train?”
    “Right.”
    “Your witness is a drug addict, right?”
    “Doesn’t matter. Rhodes has enough experience catching out to know that the back half of a train makes for a better ride. I’d recommend focusing your manpower on the cluster of closed hoppers and empty gondolas in the last third of the train.”
    I showed him the consist I’d sketched. “Here,” I pointed. “And here. Plus the rear DPUs. If you stop so that the forward third of the train is across the bridge north of the fertilizer plant, you’ll be able to place men on the roof of the building to look into the open hoppers and the gondolas and to watch for him if he makes a run for it. Put some men on perimeter near the front of the train and at the bridge. Just in case. And tell the guys on perimeter that if Rhodes gets wind of what we’re doing, he might jump as soon as the train slows.”
    “We need to tell the sheriff exactly where he should place his men along the track.”
    “Mark off the track in hundred-yard segments. So you’ll have men in these places.” I drew tiny markers on the paper.
    While Cohen passed the distance indicators onto the sheriff’s dispatcher, I asked the copilot to patch me in with the Fort Worth operations center so I could talk to Engine 158346. The engineer was Dan Albers, a brute of a man with the temper of a cornered badger. When on duty, he kept a Bowie knife strapped to his calf and a sawed-off shotgun next to his chair. He once single-handedly took down a trio of purported members of an FTRA gang who tried to hop his train. The Freight Train Riders of America are violent thugs with a take-no-prisoners mentality. Albers coldcocked two of them before they knew he was there, and he had the third cowering in a boxcar at gunpoint by the time police arrived.
    Something to be said for taking care