PART 2: THE NOD The sheriff laughed while MY WIFE’S MILKSHAKE dripped down my face, and

The rain began to fall in heavy, freezing sheets as we approached the perimeter of the abandoned rail yard. Spur Line 9 was an eerie rust-belt graveyard of decayed freight cars, overgrown tracks, and industrial silos that had sat dormant since the timber boom of the late nineties.

Tonight, however, the yard was ablaze with floodlights.

Four heavily armed guards in black tactical gear were patrolling the central loading dock. In the center of the yard sat an unmarked, armor-plated diesel locomotive attached to three blacked-out cargo cars. The engine was idling, releasing massive clouds of white steam into the freezing night air.

I parked the Subaru behind an old coal bunker three hundred yards out.

"There's the control tower," I pointed toward a three-story steel-framed structure overlooking the main switch tracks. "The manual override is on the top floor. If Northstar is moving that train, they have to bypass the automated county rail grid using that local switch."

"If I throw the manual junction lever," Rachel said, studying the layout through a pair of compact binoculars I'd handed her, "it will lock the main track switches into a dead-end spur. The engine won't be able to leave the yard without derailing."

"Exactly," I said, hand-chambering a fresh round into my sidearm. "I'll clear the entry hall of the tower. You get up those stairs, lock the door behind you, and throw the switch. Once it's locked, we drop the emergency brake line from the tower's relay."

"What about the guards?"

"I'll draw their attention to the west side of the yard using a distraction. Once they move off their positions, you run for the tower."

Rachel grabbed my jacket, pulling me close. Her eyes were fiercely intense. "Don't die out there, Ethan Vance. That's an order."

"Yes, ma'am," I murmured, pressing a swift, hard kiss to her lips before slipping out into the darkness of the rain-slicked yard.

I moved beneath the rusted undercarriages of the stationary boxcars, staying completely out of the glare of the halogen floodlights. Reaching the power generator that fed the yard's lighting grid, I pulled my tactical knife, sliced the main fuel line, and threw a lit emergency flare into the pooling diesel.

A massive WOOSH echoed through the yard as the generator burst into a wall of flame, instantly killing half the floodlights and plunging the western sector into chaotic shadows.

"Fire at the main generator!" a voice shouted over the yard's intercom system. "Team Two, check the perimeter!"

As the guards rushed toward the blaze, I signaled to Rachel across the dark yard.

She moved like a shadow, low and fast, sprinting across the gravel tracks toward the base of the control tower. I kept my sidearm trained on the lone guard remaining near the tower door. As he turned toward the sound of her boots on the gravel, I fired twice through my suppressed barrel. The guard dropped without a sound into the mud.

Rachel reached the door, stepped over the fallen operative, and slipped inside, vanishing up the stairwell.

I moved to cover the base of the tower, taking a defensive position behind a stack of wooden ties. But as I scanned the dark yard, a sudden realization hit me like a cold wave.

The cargo cars weren't being loaded. They were being unloaded.

A massive crane was silently lifting heavy, military-spec bio-hazard containers from the train onto the beds of two idling semi-trucks marked with the logo of Black Ridge Development.

This wasn't a weapons transfer. This was a illegal disposal site for high-grade chemical compounds—the very same compounds produced by Northstar’s classified defense labs.