Elena Rostova planted her combat boots against the steel risers of the driver’s platform.
The floor jolted at fifty-eight cycles a second. Beneath the diamond-plate decking, forty thousand pounds of Detroit Diesel iron hummed through the frame.
“Hold that stanchion,” Mac Cole growled.
He didn’t look at her. His weathered face stayed locked toward the windshield, eyes tracking the salt-fog curling over the suspension cables. His right hand gripped the ten o’clock rim of the steering wheel with iron pressure.
His left arm was the problem.
The prosthetic arm was forged from surgical-grade titanium and vulcanized black rubber. At the wrist, locked into a heavy four-pin bayonet socket, sat the Globe Five-Hole Brass Transfer Punch. The star-notching punch head rested squarely atop the polished steel paddle of the Bendix air-brake valve.
A single brass needle on the dashboard gauge quivered at ninety-four pounds per square inch.
“If that needle drops below ninety,” Elena said, her voice crisp with clinical calm, “what happens?”
