Chapter 68 - Shadows on the Cog Track
The snowcat crawled out of the maintenance shed into a world of pure white fury.
Wind gusts exceeding eighty miles per hour slammed against the armored hull, threatening to tip the multi-ton machine as it clawed its way up the mountain along the wooden trestles of the cog railway. Below us, the valley was lost in a swirling abyss of snow and shadow; above, the black face of Mount Washington rose like a frozen fang into the storm.
"They're on the tracks!" Lily yelled, pointing through the thick, heated glass of the rear port.
Through the whiteout, three pairs of high-powered halogen beams were climbing fast. Tactical snowmobiles, fitted with heavy-duty studded tracks, were racing up the railway service road behind us.
A sharp, metallic *ping* echoed through the snowcat’s cabin, followed by the dull thud of armor-piercing rounds biting into the reinforced rear plating.
"They won't risk shooting the engine bay," Arthur yelled over the roar of the diesel. "They need the drive intact! Claire, in the overhead rack—take the flare launcher!"
I scrambled into the rear, pulling down a heavy, orange steel launcher loaded with industrial magnesium rounds meant for avalanche control.
"Open the top hatch!" Arthur shouted. "Target the trestle behind us! Jacobs Ladder!"
We were crossing Jacobs Ladder—a wooden trestle bridge spanning a sheer drop of three hundred feet over a jagged ravine of jagged granite and ice. The snowmobiles were closing the gap, less than seventy yards behind, their riders leveling compact submachine guns.
I hit the release on the roof hatch. The sub-zero wind hit me like a physical hammer, tearing the breath from my throat. I pulled myself up, locked my elbows against the steel rim, and aimed the heavy launcher directly at the wooden pilings beneath the following snowmobiles.
I pulled the heavy trigger.
The launcher kicked with a deafening *thump*. A blinding orb of two-thousand-degree white fire rocketed downward, striking the ancient, creosote-soaked timber of the trestle.
The explosion was immediate. Decades-old dry rot and chemical preservatives caught fire in a massive geyser of flame, instantly vaporizing the ice and snapping the primary support cables.
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With a sickening, structural groan, a sixty-foot section of the trestle collapsed into the black chasm below, taking two of the snowmobiles with it in a tumbling cascade of shattered wood, fire, and twisted metal.
The third snowmobile screeched to a halt at the edge of the abyss, its headlights illuminating the roaring firestorm that cut us off from the valley forever.
