Chapter 17: Race and Fight

Chapter 19: Race and Fight

March 17th, 1995, 11:30 PM PT; Mile 2057; Amtrak Station, Las Vegas, NV

It was amazing to George, an incredible wonderment, how Union Pacific could manage to, over the course of a nine hour run, add two and a half hours to the delay of the train. I mean, to George it didn’t even seem ... POSSIBLE. They waited for the lowest priority coal slugs going 25 to pass them, and then the train had to slog in behind it. There was no rational dispatching reason to do any of this.

It wasn’t just reasonable conflict between passenger trains and freight trains. It was Union Pacific intentionally delaying this train, by as much as they could, however they could. They were delaying it to delay it. And he was pissed off about it. Amtrak was supposed to have preference. It was absolutely ridiculous that Union Pacific treated them this way. He understood that the train was outside of its assigned slot, and so he would understand Union Pacific delaying the train for the occasional high-speed priority intermodal train. But this was far beyond that; it was out and out sabotage.

Admittedly, one of the reasons he was sitting around fuming at Union Pacific was a desire to remove his mind from the prospect of Lance being on the train. He suspected that Lance was a dangerous and evil man, possibly lacking in sanity, and Lance being there was a problem, and exactly what Jill’s uncle was doing during these long hours was beyond him, but he had a hard time believing it benefited him. Will had said he had tried to buy a room from both Will and the conductor.

The conductor, an employee he did not know at all, had come around to talk with George and Jill and they had explained why Lance should not be able to be in the sleeping car. While the circumstances were naturally dubious, Jill’s emotional upset and her halting and tear filled explanation of why she was avoiding Lance had won them over. Both Will and the conductor were rightly afraid of a conflict- as was George. But he knew that a conflict couldn’t be helped. He just needed to know what to do when it came, and he needed it to be close enough to Los Angeles that he could get enough time to escape him.

But he was prepared. He had several plans of what to do, and he was tensed, ready at any second to need to act on them. He was a physically strong man, and he suspected that he would have a distinct advantage when fighting on a moving train. This was his territory; this was the world he knew. Lance would be like a fish out of water fighting on a train. Even so, George did not know a number of unknown factors, such as whether Lance had a weapon. There were no screenings on trains, so he could potentially even be carrying a gun- although the likelihood that he flew to Salt Lake City made that a remote possibility.

Will had just came down and told him that Lance had managed to scope out both the bedrooms and roomettes while Will was making up the last bedroom, so Lance knew that they were either on the lower floor of the car or not on the train. And that was bad, because if he managed to get in the car again, and down the stairs, there was every chance that Lance would see them. And then you’d have a fight.

If the fight happened in the 25 miles or so before entering Los Angles, dealing with Lance would be extremely easy. If the fight happened much earlier, keeping him indisposed would be a major issue. Getting rid of Lance would probably be easy, even if the police were involved. It was the other things that made George more than a little nervous. He was breaking the law here; certainly the Mann act.

Currently it was night time on the Desert Wind; the lights of the Strip beckoned in the distance. The gambling capital of America was right outside the window. George was a gambler; of course he was a gambler. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be in this mess. He was taking a hell of a gamble here; he was risking his freedom and perhaps his life for a girl he met three days ago. He loved her, in all the ways he could possibly imagine, but he’d know enough stories of romance that didn’t last. He was betting everything that she was worth it.

He knew she was worth it, and that was the best kind of bet. The bet where you know that the odds are stacked in your favor because what you are betting on is worth the gamble. He was betting a dollar on a billion dollar pay off; it didn’t matter that the odds were 5000:1. Hell, even if they were a million to one, they were 1000:1 in his favor. He’d do anything for this girl, and he was putting his money, his freedom, and his life, where his mouth was. Well, maybe the money was his dad’s, but he was willing to lay all he had on this roulette wheel; he felt the Croupier was on his side, and he knew the wheel’s rhythm. After all, that rhythm was clackity-clack. His song.

March 18th, 12:30 A MT; Southwest Chief Mile 1812; 61 miles east of Kingman, AZ

John was having trouble calculating this; and this was his math. The Southwest Chief was running fully on schedule; actually it was arriving early at every station and being held against running hot. Based on his experience, when things were running this good, the train might actually make it into Los Angeles taking full advantage of the generous padding. Meaning it could arrive in over an hour early.

Meanwhile, what he had heard from the Amtrak conductor, who had been kind enough to find out for them, was that the Desert Wind was running 14 and a half hours late by this point. Furthermore, the Amtrak manager expected Union Pacific to not improve its time keeping; they had defiantly indicated that they were not responsible for a train this late interfering with their busy system.

The truth was that it would likely continue to massively lose time until the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe took over the train in Barstow, CA. He suspected that his railroad would use the late arrival as a test of their dispatcher’s capability and it would probably gain back a bit from that point. The Santa Fe took pride in their ability to dynamically manage their railroad quickly and efficiently. They considered all failures of that type to be indications of operational problems, and people got fired over those.

He was starting to consider the very real possibility that the Southwest Chief would arrive into Los Angels Union Passenger Terminal before the Desert Wind. That would, at the very least, be interesting- considering that the Desert Wind had left Chicago nearly 26 hours earlier. It briefly made him smile. His former employer, even now, still knew how to move a passenger train through their system.

He decided that if that was to be the case, he would be waiting for them at the sleeping car door. He needed to be there for his son, even if his son was engaged in massive foolishness. He also started thinking about reconsidering his demands on how George should handle his life. He had never let other people influence the directions he took in life and it seemed almost hypocritical to require the same of his son.

Having decided that, John went to his attendant, asked for a wake up call no later than an hour before estimated arrival into Los Angeles, and joined Gretel on the bed, quickly falling asleep with the gentle motion of the train.

It would have been much better, admittedly, if John knew the massive dangers plaguing George in the form of the presence of Lance on the train. But John didn’t know much about Lance, at all, and had no reason to suspect that he would be on the same train as George. In this case, as he was gently rocked to sleep next to his beautiful wife, ignorance was certainly bliss.

Slowly patrolling the general area as part of its normal rounds, Arizona State Police car # 564 and its two officers came to a stop at a rail crossing late in the dark desert night. They were tired and irritated by the delay caused by the approaching train; they, of course, assumed that the train was a slow moving freight train. The lights had started going, followed by the tolling gong of the crossing bell. Metal barricade arms had come down from all four corners, blocking the chance to simply go around it; a move the impatient officer driving the car had briefly considered before letting discretion be the better part of valor.

In the distance- far in the distance- they saw the approaching headlight of a train locomotive; It was far away. At that distance it almost seemed to be crawling towards them. They both silently sat and wondered if the gate crossing was not being a bit premature- the train was damned far away. Their ship was coming up and they wanted to get back to the station, turn in their patrol car, and get home.

But the closer the train got, they became increasingly surprised by how quickly the headlight was approaching out of the night, and one of the police officers, out of bored curiosity, switched on the radar system. It had been a quiet night, but already they could hear and almost feel the approach of the train. By this time the ditch lights had started to blink through the night. The radar system had a hard time focusing on the train.

The ground started to rumble more forcefully as the huge, massive Superliner train approached at incredible speed; the incredible speed of 102 mph, the radar screen now indicated. The thundering grew in intensity as the train hurtled toward them at triple-digit speed. The vibration of the train’s motion on the ground had already started to overcome the relatively soft suspension of the Chevrolet Caprice, and they could feel it through the seat of their pants.

As if the engineer had suddenly seen the lights of the car in the road, it started to sound its air horn. He had started the call way too late; the train was blasting towards them with absurd speed. So late, in fact, that only the first two notes of “Q” had been played before the lead engine shot through the grade crossing like a speeding bullet.

The sound as the caterwauling engine blew past could be likened to a sonic boom as the massive amount of air the engine displaced at over a 100 miles per hour assaulted the police car. It assaulted it with enough force, not only was the heavy patrol car rocking back and forth on its suspension, but in fact, it moved backward several inches. This was the first time either officer had ever encountered the Southwest Chief at a grade crossing; neither had known that there was a train in the southwest that moved with that kind of velocity.

The sudden sound and fury caused set the officer’s hearts beating almost as strongly as one of the 10,320 cubic inch, 16 cylinder diesel prime mover powering each of the the Southwest Chief’s four locomotives. They stared on as the 12 huge passenger cars flew past. The light of their headlights gave an eerie effect as it gleamed on the stainless steel, highlighting the red, white and blue stripes. The scene filled both officers, hardened cops of many years experience, with awe.

As quickly as it started, it was over, the train retreating into the distance, its lights fading. Yet even as the gates lifted and they started to drive over the tracks, they heard the rails still hissing with the heat and pressure of the fast moving train. The drove away from the scene feeling a bit smaller than when they had stopped; put in place as to their power and importance in the world they lived in.

The engineer of the Southwest Chief was surprised to see lights at the grade crossing ahead of him. He was sitting in the locomotive’s cab, his feet up on the windowsill. The throttle was stuck right into run-8, full throttle. The speedometer on the control panel was wavering between 100 and 103, the F40PH’s full speed. Behind him, the huge diesel prime mover was screaming its head off.

He knew he was speeding, but he had gotten the ok for it in coded language from the dispatcher. This was straight trackage here, and there wasn’t a freight within 15 miles of him. Running the Southwest Chief at top speed was not really frowned on by anyone, either at Santa Fe or Amtrak, and the FRA had been turning a blind eye to such shenanigans for years. This section of track was fully signaled, and the operating crew of Santa Fe’s mainline was known for how tightly they ran their railroad.

He got a rush out of being in control of the speeding train. This was a legendary train, running on a legendary route. It had once been the train of the stars, of politicians, even of royalty. He felt privileged to be at the controls of such a monster. The world went by in a blur, even from as high up as the cab of an F40 was. He saw the approaching grade crossing; he had tensed for it, since he saw the lights of the car.