Marcus Cole kept his eyes locked on the white center stripe cutting through the river fog.
He didn’t turn his head. He didn’t blink away the salt sting in his eyes.
His right hand maintained a firm, steady grip on the ribbed rim of the steering wheel. His left prosthetic arm, forged from aircraft alloy and fitted with the brass transfer punch, rested flat against the Bendix air-brake valve handle.
Under Sheet 4A, Rule 9, the driver’s focus was the legal anchor of the coach. As long as Mac stared straight ahead into the mist, the roadbed existed. If he looked away, the wheels lost their grip on the fog.
“Speedometer is thirty-five,” Mac said, his gravelly voice vibrating in time with the Detroit Diesel. “Air pressure is ninety-five PSI. The water temperature is one-eighty. Everything in the doghouse is running sweet.”
“Good job, Mac,” Julian Vance said, standing at the edge of the driver’s platform. “We have twenty minutes of clear air before the ghosts in Row 12 wake up.”
“Twenty minutes is a lifetime on a night shift, Kid,” Mac said. “Enough time to catch your breath.”
Behind them, the front cabin was quiet. The warm amber ballast lamps cast soft golden pools across the brown vinyl bench seats. In the wheelchair bay, Clara’s ventilator gave a rhythmic, gentle hiss, her chest rising and falling beneath the hospital blanket.
