Knight's Late Train by Gordon A. Kessler

the Voice Memo button, then punched up John’s last memo. I put the phone on speaker and laid it on my thigh for both of us to hear.
    “John left a message explaining everything he knows.”
    Although the JetRanger III was quieter than most helicopters, Specks had to lean close to listen.
     
    The message began: “ I’m leaving this message in the event I don’t make it. Whoever finds it, get it to Homeland Security right away.
    “Nearly two years ago, Gervase ‘Doc’ Knight got a hold of me about some undercover work he was doing for a man known as Judge Hammer. And after carefully vetting me, the Judge thought it wise that I be Doc’s outside contact.
    “ A couple months before that, according to what the Judge told Doc, the CIA intercepted “Internet chatter” leading them to believe a terrorist plot known as “Thundertrain” was being devised. The plotters were wealthy European financiers and Middle Eastern fear-mongers who wanted to keep the US on edge and give “ nuclear ” an even worse name to Americans. Besides feeding their inherent hatred for America, they felt this would be just one more step to help keep the US dependent on foreign oil. This terrorist plan involved a hazardous material emergency by rail in a major US City. The CIA narrowed it down to Denver, Colorado, and they determined the railroad being exploited was the Colorado Western Express, but they had little else to go on.
    “ So Hammer enlisted Doc Knight to investigate. While Doc was snooping and pooping, I checked into the CWE and found out they were in trouble and had been for over a year. Although backed by several very rich investors, it’s mostly a family business. All were growing tired of losing money due to the larger railroads stealing their biggest customers’ business. Ever since the mining along the CWE’s route played out, they’d been struggling.
    “ I happen to know one of those investors and he filled me in and kept me updated. My informant told me that when they were about to sell out at a huge loss, the CWE trainmaster named Dill Jones, also being one of the share-holders, surprised the rest of the board, telling them the CWE had won a Federal contract dealing with a secret uranium ore mining operation from a super-rich strike. He’d told them they had to keep it quiet and that the government would send them a $250,000-a-month retainer for service until the mine was up and running. After that, the Feds would follow through with a twenty-year, exclusive deal at standard shipping rates. That contract kept the CWE alive over the past two years, waiting for their big payday. Of course Dill Jones was lying his ass off. It wasn’t the US Government he was dealing with. It was the consortium of rich foreigners — ‘Operation Thudertrain’.
    “By the way, Dill Jones’s uncle died in a boating accident just before the railroad supposedly got that big Federal contract. He was on the board and had just married a young Russian he met on the Internet. Dill Jones married the woman two months after his uncle’s death. Speculation has it that Immigration wasn’t going to let her stay in the country unless she was currently married. It all sounded crazy to me, and Dill tried to keep in quiet.
    “ In the meantime, Doc heard rumor that an old man had made a discovery in an abandoned and what was thought to be played-out mine in western Colorado. When he looked into it, Doc came across a newspaper account about an old prospector who died only days following his public claim that he’d found the ‘mother lode’ after an earthquake.
    “Doc figured it was the Safe Place Mine reopening because of the unusually high rail traffic setting out and picking up freight cars on that mine’s spur track. They were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of supplies, bringing in mining equipment of all types, rock crushers, large quantities of chemicals, filters, air handlers, conveyors, steel drums, protective clothing