'Fraser?'

'Yes, sir?'

'We need to improve our image.'

'Sir?' Benton Fraser stared, puzzled, at the woman in front of him.

'Our image, Fraser.' Superintendent Thatcher stared back. Her face, as usual, was an inscrutable mask. 'The image of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.'

Resplendent in his dress uniform of red tunic and blue trousers, Benton drew himself up to his full height. 'I wasn't aware there was anything wrong with our image, sir.' He sounded piqued, insulted. Paramount to him was the image he reflected, not for the greater good of himself, but for that of the Mounties.

Thatcher (for obvious reasons she rarely, divulged her Christian name) looked down for a moment. Didn't he know, she thought? Wasn't he aware that his presence, in the shape of six-foot two of gorgeous hunkdom, unnerved her? No, she corrected herself, of course he didn't. She had, in the two months since she had taken over as Canadian Consul in Chicago, gone to great lengths to conceal her feelings for Constable Benton Fraser. Such had been her inner turmoil that she had, at first, tried to fire him. At the time, he had been convinced that - personal feelings aside - she had ample grounds for doing so.

Both Thatcher and Benton now preferred to draw a veil over the firing episode, attributing it to an inauspicious first encounter. Thatcher had been appointed while Benton was in Canada on a holiday - a holiday that, Benton-like, had involved a hijacking, a plane-crash, temporary blindness, paralysis, dehydration and a near-fatal plunge down a waterfall. The nature of that holiday was not unrelated to his boss's decision to put him on probation when he returned after three weeks' recuperation. And the probation was, in turn, not unrelated to Benton becoming involved in a bank robbery which had resulted, as these things do, with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police being sued for post traumatic stress by the thwarted robbers. Benton had been under the impression that his role in thwarting the robbers would see an end to his probation. He was spot on there:

Superintendent Thatcher fired him.

Ray Vecchio, detective with the Chicago Police Department and Benton's best friend, told him Thatcher's actions were illegal. 'She cannot,' he had declared with authority, 'just get rid of you like that.'

'She just did. Ray.'

'How long have you been . .. what is it... doorman at the Consulate?'

'Sentry, Ray. And I am not a sentry. I am the Deputy Chief Liaison Officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Chicago.'

'Well there you go then. She's not even your real boss. You're a civil servant, Benny. She can't just get rid of you like that.'

Relieved, Benton had gone back to the Consulate and related this piece of information to Thatcher. She had stared at him from under her long, unnerving dark lashes. 'Fine,' she had said, after a long silence. 'Then you'll just have to make things easy for me by requesting a transfer.' As she had uttered the words, she had crossed her fingers under the desk and hoped against hope that the authorities in Ottawa would refuse the transfer. They did.

Since then, neither of them had referred to the episode. Now they enjoyed a healthy working relationship; Thatcher lusted quietly beneath her brittle facade while Benton, to his professional discomfiture, became increasingly hot under the restrictive collar of his dress uniform whenever he found himself in Thatcher's presence for more than a few minutes.

Refocussing her attention on the matter in hand, quelling a moment of quiet lust, Thatcher looked up at her deputy. 'Where were we?' she demanded.

Benton forced his thoughts away from his collar and back to the matter in hand. 'We were discussing our image, sir.'

'Ah. Yes. I am not,' continued Thatcher, 'referring to your image in particular, Fraser. I'm concerned about the Mounties in general; about the way the public perceives us. Especially the American public.'

'Oh.' Thatcher, thought Benton, was full of surprises. Why, having bulldozed her way through the ranks, terrorizing Ottawa and now Chicago with her utter ruthlessness, was she now concerned about image? Wasn't she aware of how most people perceived her? The Iron Lady; Attila the Nun? Didn't she know that she had single-handedly rekindled the centuries-old antipathy between Americans and Canadians? It was, thought Benton, a shame that such a good-looking woman - with, he was increasingly beginning to suspect, a soft heart - should present such a hard, threatening image. There was, he knew, a Real Human Being under the brittle exterior. Three times now, when she had thought he wasn't looking, he had caught her smiling at him. It was almost enough to make him forgive her for trying to fire him. Thank goodness, he thought, the powers that be in Ottawa had thwarted her. Thank goodness they had declared that being sued by the bank robbers for post traumatic stress syndrome did not constitute ample grounds for his dismissal.

Aware that he was staring dumbly at his senior officer, Benton shook himself out of his reverie. 'Uh ... and what do you propose we do about our image ... sir?'

Thatcher hoped Benton couldn't see the corners of her mouth twitching. She had to admit that the 'sir' business - quite unconscious on Benton's part - gave her a certain frisson. Anyway, she preferred it to the correct alternative: there was something horribly hard and sexless about the word 'ma'am'. 'I propose, Fraser, that we make a television programme about the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; an informative and edifying documentary for the benefit of the American people.'

'Ah.'

'Is that all you can say, Fraser?'

'No, sir. Well, that is to say ...'

'Dismissed.'

'Understood.' Benton inclined his head in a semblance of a bow and then turned to leave the room. He wasn't remotely perturbed by what others might have seen as an abrupt dismissal. It was just Thatcher's way. She seemed, for some odd reason to go all peculiar after a few minutes in his presence.

Thatcher breathed a sigh of relief as Benton closed the door behind him. She blamed America for the change that had come over her in recent months. On too many occasions, she had almost let her guard down, had been in danger of revealing her true inner feelings. Shaking her head, she rummaged in her top drawer for her glasses (she never wore them in front of Benton). Perhaps, she reflected, I'm under stress. Then she dismissed the thought as rapidly as she had dismissed Benton. Stress, in Canada, was something that you learned about in geology classes; something that happened to the layers of the earth's crust as they pressed against each other. She was not, she reminded herself, a crust.

But as she tried to concentrate on the paperwork in front of her, she couldn't banish the thought that she had become, to some extent, an American. Was this programme idea really about boosting the image of the Mounties abroad? Or was it something altogether different: was it Thatcher trying to secure her fifteen minutes of fame by appearing on the small screen? Whatever the real reason, it was too late to rethink or abandon the idea. In the hyper-efficient and diligent manner she had acquired since coming to America, Thatcher had already set the wheels in motion for the making of the documentary.

Chapter One

Beaming with pride, Benton leaned against the train and watched the spectacle being enacted in front of him. This, he thought, was magnificent: this was what being a Mountie was all about. Comradeship, honour, skill and dedication. Admittedly, there was no longer much call for riding horses in the famous circular formation, battle lances at the ready, but it still made for an impressive sight. Not for the first time since their arrival in Southern Manitoba, Benton silently congratulated Thatcher on her impeccable organization.

With full and wholehearted approval from Ottawa and with backing of nationwide TV stations in both Canada and the States, Thatcher was about to make history - silencing those who had prayed fervently and often that Thatcher herself would become history 'before too long. The programme was going to be broadcast from coast to coast: the image of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would be boosted far and wide. No longer would cynics call the Mounties antique supermen in silly hats. No: instead they would marvel at the extraordinary levels of equestrian skill and marvel at the sight of the Mounties - forty of them in total - who had congregated to take part in the documentary.

Less marvellous, thought Benton (but being Benton he kept these thoughts to himself) was the production team making the documentary. To him, they appeared affected and superficial, more 'actory' than actors - and desperately pleased with themselves. The director with the beret and the clipboard, for instance, seemed to be more of a thespian than a technician; his whole bearing screamed 'auteur'.

Unseen by Benton, that same director - who rejoiced in the suspicious name of Robert Bolt - was replaying rough cuts of the morning's shooting to Thatcher. The footage, of thirty-two Mounties enacting their famed musical ride against the stunning backdrop of the plains of Southern Manitoba, was accompanied by narration for the benefit of those - i.e. everyone in the world - who were unfamiliar with the subject matter. The musical ride,' announced the gravelly voice, 'was performed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a showcase of their prodigious skill in horsemanship.'

'Amazing,' said Bolt.

Thatcher shot him a suspicious look. He was, she correctly surmised, complimenting his own direction abilities rather than the hugely impressive dressage skills of the Mounties. Furthermore, he hadn't once complimented Thatcher on her own skills: on the not inconsiderable feat of seeing that everything ran like clockwork during the breaks in filming and, more importantly, of marshalling her men and her horses on and off the specially-chartered train that was taking them from one location to another. The fact that Benton was largely responsible for all the organization was, to Thatcher, a detail so minor as to be irrelevant.

Yet what really bothered her about Bolt was that he had developed a nasty habit of ignoring her. Like now, for instance. He had returned to the monitor and was nodding again in appreciation of his own filming prowess. The thirty-two riders,' continued the narrator, 'the thirty-two horses, the scarlet tunic, the battle lance and the precision drills which culminate in the 'dome' formation ...'

'Chicago,' drooled Bolt, 'is going to love this ...'

' .. . have inspired wonder since their inception in 1873. Theirs is a history rich in tradition, and the musical ride has secured its place as an enduring symbol of a nation.'

Thatcher thought that was just a tad over the top, but Bolt had no such reservations. 'This,' he said as he turned to her, 'is to the bone beautiful. Now we need close-ups. Faces. Boom, boom, boom. Faces, we need faces.'

Rather pointedly, Thatcher patted her newly-washed hair and presented Bolt with a close-up of maternal grandparents (librarians, both) in small towns in the inhospitable Northwest Territories while his Mountie father pursued Mountie affairs in even more inhospitable locations. She didn't know that those grandparents had died (of disappointment) shortly after Benton himself had followed in his father's footsteps at the age of eighteen. Nor did she know that his father had been murdered two years previously and that Benton and Ray Vecchio had brought his murderer to justice, thereby cementing a strong, if volatile friendship.

But the most peculiar piece of information about Benton to which she was not privy was that when he appeared to be talking to himself he was, in fact, conversing with his father.

Benton had long since ceased to be surprised when his father appeared by his side. He had also given up trying to work out whether that appearance was in his mind, in his father's mind, in both, in the ether, or for real. All he knew was that when his late parent popped up, he was visible only to Benton and that he would dispense a great deal of useless advice to his only child.

Robert Fraser saw things differently. His guilt at being a largely absent parent had manifested itself only when he was dead as well as absent - a problem whichever way you looked at it. The dead part didn't bother Robert too much. There were, he conceded, many advantages to being deceased, the her own delectable face. 'You don't think,' she suggested disingenuously, 'we need, say, an "on the spot" interview?'

'You kidding?' Bolt was horrified. 'You mean one of those Seventies "let's-talk-about-what-we-already-know" interviews? I don't think so.' He wagged a disapproving, directorial finger at Thatcher. 'What America wants is inspiration, not chit-chat. America,' he finished, 'wants heroes.' Then he turned away from Thatcher to continue with his own heroic endeavour.

Feeling rather foolish and not a little angry, Thatcher cast around for someone else to speak to. The only person in the near vicinity who wasn't rushing around being arty was Benton and he, she noted with disapproval, was lounging against the side of a train carriage, talking to himself. Typical, she thought with a sudden stab of wounded pride; he rarely says more than a word to me, but he can chat animatedly to himself. She stalked off in the opposite direction, forgetting that the main reason for the lack of happy, chatty intercourse between her and Benton was because she invariably opened their conversations with the word 'dismissed'.

There was much that Thatcher didn't know about Benton. She didn't know that he had lost his mother when he was six. She wasn't aware that his quixotic personality had much to do with being raised by his principle one being that you couldn't be killed.

Now that he had more time on his hands, Robert was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that he hadn't been a particularly diligent parent. His role, as he now saw it, was to watch over his son and protect him from the evils of the modern world. This he did by dispensing useful advice.

On this particular occasion, however, Robert's appearance was purely for social reasons.

'Nothing quite like it, is there. Son?' he said as, smiling delightedly, he took in the activity in front of him.

'Oh, hi. Dad.' Benton turned and smiled at his father. He was, he noted, dressed for the occasion in his pristine scarlet and blue uniform. 'I didn't know you were coming.'

'Wouldn't have missed it for the world. Stirs the blood.'

'You don't have blood,' sighed Benton. 'You're dead.' It wasn't, he felt, a criticism - his father didn't take too kindly to critics - just a factual observation.

But lack of blood, to Robert, was but a minor detail. He shrugged and tapped his chest. 'I've got the memory of blood. Something's beating in there. Hey!' he suddenly exclaimed as one of the Mounties detached himself from the group in front of them. 'Would you look at that? My old stable mate!'

Benton looked. The man, slightly wizened, completely grey, was indeed familiar. He wore the slightly puzzled yet contented smile of someone who was pleasantly surprised that he was still alive.

'Yes,' said Benton. 'Sergeant Frobisher and I had a long talk yesterday. He was telling me about the time you spent together in Moosejaw. I must say,' he added, 'he looks good, doesn't he?'

That was the wrong thing to say. His father shot him a suspicious and not altogether friendly glance and, on the defensive, claimed that it was 'just the uniform'.

Benton shrugged. 'Well, why don't you go say hello?'

Suddenly shy, Robert seemed to shrink into himself. 'Nah. I wouldn't want to impose.'

'But you're dead. It's not really an imposition.'

'Well,' replied his father, obviously tempted but a little wary, 'I don't know if I'd be able to.'

'What do you mean?' Benton turned and frowned at his parent. 'Oh, I see. You mean he might not see you because ...'

'... because I'm dead.'

'Well,' said Benton-with another shrug. 'You could give it a try.'

But then Frobisher himself saw Benton and, with a smile of recognition, dismounted and walked over to him. 'Ah, Benton! Good to see you.' Then, grinning, he waved the cane he was carrying. 'Have they given you one of these yet?'

'Er...not yet sir, no.'

'Well, you're young.' With a rueful smile, he patted his right thigh. 'In a few years time that steel blade you took in the leg will catch up with you, just like it did me.'

Given that he had never fallen victim to a steel blade, Benton thought that was highly unlikely but, polite as ever, refrained from saying so.

His good manners were called upon again a moment later as Frobisher fell prey to a loud and lengthy attack of gas. Benton pretended not to notice. Beside him, however, his father wrinkled his nose in disgust. 'Try spending a week,' he said, wincing at the memory, 'on a stakeout in Dead Horse Gulch with that.'

'Do you mind?' said Benton, offended for the other man.

'What?' said Frobisher.

'Nothing, sir.'

'Oh.' Then, seeing that his fellow riders were dismounting and leading their horses into the train, Frobisher gestured with his cane. 'Seems like they're loading up. Shall we?' Without waiting for Benton, he marched off back to his horse.

'You coming?' Benton whispered to his father as Frobisher forged ahead.

'No son. Never was a fan of train travel myself. Anyway,' he added with the smug smile that only the deceased can muster, 'I have my own methods of transport.' Head held high and whistling a jaunty jingle, he disappeared.

'You know,' said Frobisher, as Benton caught up with him at the train steps, 'the boys introduced me to a real eye-opener the other night. Moose hock rolled in wild boar tongue,' he recalled with relish, 'covered with gorgonzola cheese.'

Sounds perfectly revolting, thought Benton. 'I'd like to try that sometime,' he lied.

Frobisher wagged a cautionary finger. 'Don't be too hasty. It seems,' he added, as another volley of gas erupted from his nether regions, 'to follow you around for a while.'

Thank goodness, thought Benton as he hauled himself into the train after the unfragrant Frobisher, that the filming was nearly finished. Barring any mishaps, they would be back in Chicago by tomorrow.

But mishaps, in Benton's world, had a terrible habit of happening. Today was going to prove to be no exception.

Still miffed about Bolt's cavalier treatment of her, Thatcher was determined to re-establish her role as the ultimate authoritarian. As soon as the Mounties were settled and the train in motion, she began to stride up and down the carriage, casting menacing looks at anyone unwise enough to meet her eye. Clad entirely in black, stilettoes pounding the floor and shoulder pads swaying from side to side, she resembled a monochrome Cruella de Vil.

'We will speak,' she said as she paced, 'only when we are spoken to. We will keep our responses short and to the point. We will maintain our postures. Above all,' she finished as each and every Mountie quaked with fear, 'we will act naturally '

An unnatural silence descended as Thatcher reached Benton at the far end of the carriage. 'Why, she whispered, 'are they staring like that?'

Benton looked at the glazed expressions. 'I expect, he said, 'that they're terrified, sir '

Ridiculous, thought Thatcher. How were the film crew supposed to film this bunch of corpses? How, more to the point, would it look on film if her happy band of men stared at her like rabbits caught in the headlights of the sort of deadly vehicle that took no hostages? 'The whole point of this exercise, she sighed, 'is to bring a new dynamism to our image. Look at them!' she snapped as she pointed with a long red talon, 'They're stiffs! Make them do something Fraser. Anything. They can break into song for all I care. They just can't sit there '

'Into song?'

'Yes ' Suddenly pleased with the idea, Thatcher nodded. 'Yes. Make them sing.'

'Understood.' Benton too was pleased. He was fond of singing. Even Ray had said he had a good voice, a compliment devalued by the fact Ray was tone deaf, but a compliment nonetheless.

By way of one of those neatly contrived coincidences that need no explanation, the Mountie closest to Benton had a guitar at his feet. Benton gestured to it. 'May I?'

The Mountie, too terrified to open his mouth in Thatcher's presence, merely nodded.

Thank you kindly.' Benton picked up the instrument. Then, smiling happily to himself, he strummed a few chords and, in a move that brought smiles to the faces of every other Mountie in the carriage, he began to play 'Ride Forever'. Soon the carriage was filled with the lusty and surprisingly tuneful sound of forty Mounties belting out their much-loved anthem.

Thatcher was delighted; so much so that the tiniest hint of a smile flickered briefly on her lips. Yet the smile remained a hint, a hopeful and tentative suggestion. Realizing it was trying to flower on the wrong face, it gave up and fled.

After a moment, Thatcher realized that Bolt was standing behind her and turned to him with a suggestion of her own: that-he film her as she listened to the singing. She had already decided on the correct half-wistful, half-admiring expression she would wear. It would, she knew, convey the impression of a professional dedicated to her work yet who was not so aloof that she was incapable of enjoying herself with her troops. 'Mucking in'; that was it.

Bolt, however, had other ideas. Most of them revolved around the career in which he moonlighted when he wasn't directing films. This career was robbery. Hitherto, Bolt had been less successful in that line of work than he had been in directing (and he wasn't exactly renowned for the latter). Now all that was about to change. He and his accomplices had a plan that simply couldn't fail. He knew this because the plan had been largely devised by his much more intelligent and criminally successful brother. The train and its forty-odd Mountie passengers (some of whom appeared very odd indeed) was now heading home to Chicago. The crew of that train would very soon be tied up; the Mounties would be gassed and unconscious, and Bolt and his fellow partners in crime would be in control of the train and its occupants and in a position to issue their demands to the outside world.

Those demands were not modest. Ten million dollars to be deposited in an unnamed account by the City of Chicago or else the runaway train and its hostages would hurtle into Chicago Central Police Station, brakes disarmed, and the explosives on board would be programmed to detonate at exactly the same time as the train entered the station at a hundred miles an hour. It was all perfectly simple: the best piece of direction Bolt had ever planned. His only regrets were that it wouldn't be filmed and, of course, that the plan wasn't actually his. Yet the cessation in filming had its compensations. The wretched woman, for instance, who was at this moment batting her eyelids at the camera, was wasting her time. There was no film in the camera; there was no cable connecting the boom to the sound recordist; there was, in short, no point in the hard-nosed harridan pouting into the lens.

Soon she, like the other Mounties, would be sound asleep.

As he pointed the empty camera at Benton, Bolt looked up to the roof of the carriage. The air conditioning ducts, if Georgie Racine had done his work properly, would soon be belching forth invisible but potent gas that would silence the Mounties for a good few hours. And a good thing too, thought Bolt. This hearty 'Ride Forever' business was beginning to get to him.

In front of him, Benton's relaxed expression gave way to a frown as he continued strumming his guitar. Something, his intuition told him, was not quite right. The camera crew all looked as if they were waiting for something to happen. And weren't those footsteps he could hear on the roof? And why, he thought with a sudden stab of fear, wasn't the camera wired-up for sound? It was the last realization that galvanized him into action. Instead of launching lustily into the second verse of the anthem, he handed the guitar back to its owner, stood up and walked towards Thatcher.

Thatcher herself was having a few problems - the least of which was Benton. Bolt was ignoring her. 'I think you'll find,' she said with icy hauteur, 'that with myself in the frame ...'

'Not now, lady,' snapped Bolt. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'

Nobody, thought Thatcher, nobody speaks to me like that. She was in the process of composing a terrifying tirade of abuse when Benton appeared in front of her.

'Not now, Fraser,' she snapped. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'

But with a force that surprised her (and, if she were truthful, rendered her all a-quiver), Benton grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her towards the carriage door. To her even greater surprise, the crew's P.A. - a sulky little piece if ever Thatcher had seen one - tried to block their way. Only after a cautionary look from Bolt did she let them pass.

'Thank you kindly,' said Benton as he opened the door and ushered Thatcher into the caboose. Neither of them noticed that the P.A. locked the door behind them.

Indignant now that the moment of quivering had passed, Thatcher rounded on her deputy. 'Fraser,' she hissed, 'I was in the middle of a very important. ..'

To her surprise, Benton held up an authoritative hand to silence her. 'And I apologize for interrupting, sir, but I believe something is amiss.'

'Oh. Well, I suppose there is always room for improvement. But on the whole I think we've got some promising voices here.'

'No, it's not with the singers, sir. It's with the film crew.'

'The film crew?'

'If indeed that is what they are.' As he spoke, Benton turned and looked through the glass door into the carriage. Bolt and his crew, suddenly frenetically busy, were now at the far end.

Thatcher, too, looked back. 'What do you suppose they're doing, Fraser?'

'Not filming, sir.' Stepping forward, Benton tried to open the door. 'And the fact that they've locked this door would indicate to me that they are intent on keeping the men together so that they can ...'

'Can what?'

'I think,' said Benton as he watched the crew leave the carriage, 'they're going to do something to them.'

'What, Fraser?' Thatcher was becoming frantic. Nobody - except, of course, her good self - was allowed to interfere with her men.

'Listen,' commanded Benton. Thatcher pressed her ear to the door. 'To what? I can't hear anything.'

'Exactly, sir. They've stopped singing.'

'So? Maybe they've finished the song.'

'I don't think so, sir. You see, it has several verses and ...'

'I'm well aware of how many verses our anthem has, Fraser!' Anger, thought Thatcher, is the best defence against ignorance.

'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But in that case, why would they all suddenly fall asleep in the middle of the second verse?'

Again Thatcher peered into the cabin. Sure enough, every single Mountie was slumped against the back of his seat, mouth lolling open and eyes firmly closed. 'They've gassed them!' she spluttered.

'It would appear so, sir.'

But as they watched, an elderly Mountie at the rear of the cabin stood up, looked around in an embarrassed fashion, and made his way to the bathroom at his end of the cabin. This Mountie was Sergeant Buck Frobisher and his embarrassment was huge. Having produced so much gas of his own, he was strangely immune to the effects of the vapours belching out of the air-conditioning ducts. Worse, he was under the impression that the vapours were in fact belching from somewhere else and that it was he who had gassed his fellow Mounties. 'Ah, men,' he mumbled as he slunk down the aisle. 'I didn't realize ... uh, sorry ... I didn't know ...' Crippled with embarrassment, he flung open the bathroom door and slammed it behind him, vowing never again to go anywhere near moose hock rolled in wild boar tongue covered with gorgonzola cheese.

'Well,' said Thatcher from behind the other door, 'what do you suppose we do?'

'I'd like a moment to think about that, sir.'

The moment, however, proved to be a short one. Before Thatcher had a chance to reply, Benton lunged sideways and threw himself out of the open window.

For another moment - one that resonated longer and with considerable shock - Thatcher remained rooted to the spot. Then, recovering her wits, she peered outwards and downwards. The train was speeding across a viaduct: below it was a gorge. Benton was nowhere in sight. 'Well,' sighed Thatcher. 'That's very helpful.' Then she withdrew from the window and pondered her options. That took yet another, much shorter moment: a moment that ended with a sigh of despair when she looked once more through to the carriage and saw Bolt and his cronies, handkerchiefs pressed to their mouths, running towards her. Most of her men were unconscious, one of them was in the bathroom, and the only one in whom she had any faith - although of course she would never admit this to him - had decided to jump ship, as it were. Her position was not good. Not good at all.

It was, in fact, better than she feared. While there were those (and they were legion) who reckoned Benton Fraser was certifiably insane, none of them would have imagined him mad enough to hurl himself out of a fast-moving train without good reason. And they would have been right. Benton's reason was, to Benton, perfectly sensible. A carriage-full of somnolent Mounties separated Thatcher and himself from the only other conscious member of their team. It was therefore essential to reach Frobisher and inform him of the position they were now in. And that was why Benton was pulling himself along the cables underneath the train towards the bathroom and its embarrassed occupant. Time, thought Benton as he hauled himself past one deadly wheel after another, was of the essence. Not so much because of what Bolt and his cronies might do next, but because of Frobisher's imminent activities.

Benton sighed with relief when he reached the underside of the bathroom, identifiable by what he liked to think of as a waste disposal chute rather than the wrong end of the toilet bowl. 'Sergeant Frobisher?' he yelled up the chute. 'Before you continue, may I have a word with you?'

Above him, Frobisher's surprise was total. He was, in fact, beginning to think that he was hallucinating. Gassing a trainload of Mounties was - given the unhappy combination of moose, boar and gorgonzola - just believable: having company in a room this size was not. Still, best to be sure. He looked around and, failing to find the source of the voice, decided to play for time. 'Friend or foe?' he enquired.

'A friend, I assure you.'

Frobisher frowned. 'Where are you?'

'I'm right here, sir,' replied the disembodied voice.

Frobisher peered into the basin. 'In the sink?'

'No sir. To ... er, to the rear.'

This, thought Frobisher, was ridiculous. Deeply suspicious of his own sanity, he peered down the toilet bowl. Then he experienced a sensation rare to people engaged in that activity: enormous relief. 'Great Scott,' he bellowed as he saw the familiar face. 'Benton!'

'I'm glad to see you're alright, sir.'

'Well, that's a matter of opinion,' replied Frobisher, thinking of the moose and the somewhat urgent reason for his being in this particular place at this particular time. 'What are you doing in my toilet?'

'I've come to debrief you, sir.'

How peculiar, thought Frobisher. 'Something wrong with the door?'

'We have a problem, sir,' shouted Benton up the chute. 'It is my belief that the men have all been gassed.'

So it was true, thought Frobisher. He sensed an unbecoming blush approaching. 'Oh my God,' he said, more to himself than to Benton.

'Yes, and furthermore, it is my belief that this train is no longer under our control.'

So, thought Frobisher with mounting horror, I've gassed the driver as well. 'It's worse than I thought,' he yelled back.

'Yes, sir, and I thought it prudent to inform you.'

'Inform me?' Frobisher nearly laughed. 'I've been living with it for a week.'

Benton hadn't a clue what the man was talking about. 'Sir ...? I'm sorry, but I can't see how this relates to the terrorists.'

'Neither can I,' said Frobisher, who hadn't a clue what Benton was talking about.

Benton tried again. "It is my belief that this train has been taken over by terrorists and that they have gassed the men into a stupor.'

Frobisher was delighted. 'Ah! Well, I must say, that's a relief!'

'A relief?' Benton was beginning to fear for Frobisher's sanity.

Frobisher, however, was revelling in the confirmation of that sanity. Suddenly businesslike, he leaned closer into the toilet bowl. 'How many terrorists?' he barked.

'Undetermined, sir.'

'Strategy?'

'Unformed. I thought,' continued Benton, 'I should first assess your status and then report back to our superior officer. In the meantime I suggest you just continue ... uh ... continue with your current, um . . . project.' With that, he reached up through the chute to shake hands with Frobisher.

Although more than a little nonplussed by the sight, Frobisher, like Benton, was a stickler for good manners. Leaning down into the bowl, he reciprocated the gesture. 'Very well,' he said, shaking the proffered hand. 'Good luck, son.'

A firm, manly handshake and then Benton was gone: back the way he had come, seemingly oblivious to the dangers of dangling about underneath a train that was travelling at more than a hundred miles an hour.

Back in the bathroom, Frobisher was not so successful in his own purpose. His hand was now stuck. Try as he might, he couldn't wrench it free of the caress of the white porcelain. 'Uh ... Benton? Benton,' he repeated, his voice rising in panic. 'My arm is stuck!'

No reply.

'In the hole!' bellowed Frobisher. Then, refusing to entertain the thought that Benton had departed, he yelled even louder. 'Give me some help, Constable. That's an order!'

'God,' came the unexpected reply. 'You sound like an old man.'

So stunned was Frobisher that he didn't reply at first. Such a remark was so staggeringly un-Benton- like; such insubordination was unthinkable from Robert Fraser's son. 'I sound like a what?' he thundered.

'An old man.'

Again Frobisher didn't reply immediately. It was beginning to dawn on him that the voice was not Benton's. Furthermore, its source was not beneath him, but behind him. Fearing the worst, suspecting that one of the terrorists had broken into the bath room to monitor his unorthodox ablutions, he wrenched once more and, purple-faced with the effort, managed to pull his hand free. 'Old man!' he shouted as he whirled round. 'I'll tell you something ...'

But there the outrage ended and the words stuck in his mouth. Standing beside the basin, not two feet away from him, was Sergeant Robert Fraser, his very old - and very deceased - comrade in arms. He was smiling broadly and looking at Buck with a fondness he had never displayed in life. 'How are you. Buck?' he said, the smile now tinged with amusement as he registered the total shock on Frobisher's face.

The answer - yet to be articulated - was that Frobisher wasn't feeling too good. First there was the gas problem. Then there was the fact that he had nearly lost a hand. Added to that was the little matter of their being stuck on a fast-moving train at the mercy of an unknown number of terrorists with, as yet, no strategic plan of action designed to thwart them. And now there was a dead man standing in front of him. He must, after all, be hallucinating.

'Well,' said his old friend. 'Aren't you going to say anything?'

'... Bob?' At last Frobisher found his voice.

'Yes. It's me.'

'I am not an old man.'

Bob Fraser chuckled. 'Yes you are. You're sixty-seven. Same age as me.'

'But you're dead.'

Bob Fraser waved a dismissive hand. 'I know that. I was just trying to make you feel better about being old.'

'Eh?'

'Well,' said Bob. 'I died two years ago - when I was sixty-five. If I were still alive I'd be sixty-seven but I'm dead so technically I'm still sixty-five.'

'Why's that?'

'You don't age when you're dead.'

'No,' said Frobisher. 'I must say,' he added grudgingly, 'you're looking well on it.'

'Thank you.'

Then Frobisher blinked several times, scratched his head, closed his eyes for a full ten seconds and then opened them again. It was no use. Bob was still there. He took a deep breath and scrutinized the smiling apparition. 'I do not,' he said without much conviction, 'believe this.'

'Oh? What is there about this situation that you can't believe? That I'm dead?'

This time it was Frobisher who made the impatient, dismissive gesture. 'No, absolutely not. I believe you're dead. But there's one thing that bothers me. You seem to be who you seem to be. But by the same token,' he countered, wagging an accusatory finger, 'you do not seem to be who you do not seem to be. And that's a different story.' Looking immensely pleased with himself, he folded his arms across his chest. 'There you are.'

Poor Buck, thought Bob. Senile dementia was setting in. 'Alright,' he said. 'You want proof?'

'What?'

'Do you want proof?'

'Of what?'

'That I am who I say I am.'

'Absolutely. Proof. That's the thing. There we are.'

'Well, ask me a question then.'

'What?'

'No,' sighed Bob. 'Something more personal than that.'

'Oh ... oh yes. I see what you mean.' For a moment Frobisher stared, unseeing, at the opposite wall. His attention was focused on another decade, another place, another life. 'Very well,' he said at length. 'On April 23rd, 1957, sixty miles north of Destruction Bay, two men stood on a rope bridge which spanned a canyon.' Eyebrows raised, he looked at the other man. Bob merely nodded. 'On the other side of the bridge,' he continued, 'a woman was held in the clutches of a deviant. The two men had two cartridges between them, and one rifle. It was an impossible shot, but each one knew that whoever made that shot would be the man to secure the love of the woman. The first man,' he said in a now-wistful voice, 'tried and failed. The second man tried and ... and he won the whole shooting match.' The hurt, he realized with a pang, was still there. Even after four decades. He cast a nasty little glance at Bob.

But Bob didn't notice. He, too, had been transported into the past. 'We were happy,' he sighed. 'Caroline and I.'

'Yeah, I know that. I know that. I know that.' Frobisher didn't care to dwell on the subject. 'But the question is,' he added, 'these two men, through their long years of friendship, often talked about that impossible shot. And when they did, what did they call it?'

'The shot, you mean?'

'Yes. The shot.'

'Well... the shot. They ... they called it...'

Hah! thought Frobisher. An imposter after all.

'Time is up,' he announced with glee.

'Oh come on!'

'Bob Fraser would have given me the answer in one second.'

'Well, I'm dead,' wailed Bob. 'It affects your memory.'

Secure in his victory, Frobisher pointed at the door. 'Out,' he barked. 'Out. Now.'

'Alright! It was called ...' Bob knew it was there, knew it lurked somewhere in his memory. If only ... 'Yes!' he shouted suddenly. 'It was called "The Great Yukon Double Douglas Fir Spruce Telescoping Bank Shot".'

'My God! My God!' Frobisher's mouth fell open, revealing rather more denture than was currently modish. 'It's you! Bob Fraser!' Overcome with delight, he leaped forward to hug his old friend. The leap was an unfortunate move, resulting as it did in his forehead making heavy and sudden contact with the mirror on the opposite wall. Stars appeared in front of his eyes and then, as he turned, so did Bob. 'Oh,' he said, realizing. 'Does that always happen?'

Bob brushed the question aside, making a mental note to warn people, in future, about the nonmaterial nature of his appearances. Benton, for instance, had fallen into a ditch the first time he had tried to hug him. I am, thought Bob with pride, like a precious object; you can look but you can't touch. That's not important,' he said to Buck as he brought his mind back to the present predicament

The important thing is you're in quite a pickle, my friend. He looked Frobisher in the eye. 'You've got a train to stop.'

Frobisher nodded. -Right you are. Er ... how do you stop a train?'

Bob shook his head and quietly congratulated himself for defeating the ageing process. Those extra two years were really telling on Buck 'You stop a train,' he said as he opened the door, 'by putting on the brakes. 'Come on.'

Chapter Two

Detective Ray Vecchio, poker player extraordinaire (his own description) was having a ball. Not only was he winning at poker, but he was having three days' holiday. Added to that (and as compensation should he begin to lose at poker) was the fact that Benton owed him a favour. A big favour. Benton had asked Ray to look after his pet wolf while he was on the three-day film shoot. Ray had replied that he would be delighted to help - but that he would have to take three days' holiday in order to do so. He had managed to justify this lie to himself on the grounds that excellence at poker demanded a facility for lying.

Diefenbaker, the wolf, had no objection to Ray's methods of animal-sitting. He was more than happy to sit by the poker players for three days on the trot, munching the endless plates of cheesy crispy things that Ray handed down to him. As far as he was concerned, it beat the hell out of chasing around Chicago on some hair-brained scheme of Benton's ... or Ray's. Chicago was windy and cold and inhospitable to wolves and, more to the point, Dief was rather fed up with the trouble Benton and Ray seemed to attract. Each, in his lupine opinion, was as bad as the other in that respect.

Ray didn't see things that way. It was beginning to occur to him that, because things had been quiet during Benton's absence, it must be Benton, not he, who had a penchant for attracting trouble - or at least for annoying other people. By 'other people' Ray, of course, meant Ray. The one phone call Ray had received from Benton since his departure seemed to confirm that theory. Benton had phoned from the train, claiming that Ray had instructed him to do so.

'I did not!' Ray had been adamant.

'Yes, you did. Ray,' had been Benton's equally certain response. 'In fact, your exact words were: "let me know how it goes".'

Ray had been obliged to call a temporary halt to the poker game in order to explain, in his most patient manner (Ray confused patience with condescension) what he had meant by the remark. 'You see,' he had sighed, reflecting on his good fortune to have been born an American and not a Canadian, 'this is another thing that's wrong with you, Benny. When somebody tells you to "let them know how it goes", they don't mean that you should call them and let them know how it goes as it's still going. What they mean is you should "let them know how it goes after it's all said and done and gone". You understand?'

'Not entirely, no,' had been Benton's response as he had reflected on his good fortune not to be American and therefore irate all the time. Then he had asked after Diefenbaker's health. Ray had responded, with total confidence, that the wolf had never been better. This, in fact, hadn't been strictly true. Diefenbaker was feeling slightly sick after so many cheesy crispy things - but then Ray hadn't known that. Being a wolf and therefore insatiably greedy. Dief, queasy or not, was reluctant to pass up on the offer of food. The memory of nearly starving to death during his infancy in the Northwest Territories remained with him. He actually felt it had warped him; turned him into a human being with a lapdog's longing for comfort, trapped in the body of a wolf. And even that body had its faults. Diefenbaker was deaf. Selectively and therefore selfishly deaf, but deaf nonetheless.

And how, a day after that first telephone call, Ray's telephone was ringing again. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Benton because the only other people who knew his cellphone number, apart from his colleagues, were sitting round the table with him. And not even Ray's colleagues were crazy enough to phone him when he was on holiday. No, he sighed to himself, it had to be Benton. Only Benton would phone when Ray's hands were full of the cards with which he intended to scoop the massive pot on the table in front of them.

Not taking his eyes off the action at the table, Ray switched his cards to his left hand and grabbed the phone with his right. 'Look,' he growled into the mouthpiece, 'I'm holding the bullet in Low Chicago in a twelve hundred-dollar pot that keeps growing. This better be good.'

It was. Benton's voice, strangled and barely recognizable, articulated words that Ray, in the middle of the most potentially lucrative game of his life, really did not want to hear. 'This is Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.' Benny, thought Ray as he upped the stakes on the table, sounds as if he's got a gun to his head. 'I am reading,' continued Benton, 'from a prepared text.'

Oh my God, thought Ray. He has got a gun to his head. With an anguished wail, he turned to address the other players. 'Am I some sort of God?' he shouted. 'Am I some sort of bad luck God?' The other players, who hadn't a clue what he was talking about but knew him for the excitable Italian-American he was, looked at each other and shrugged.

Do I listen to Benton, thought Ray in panic, or do I win twelve hundred dollars? There was no competition. 'Hold on!' he pleaded down the phone. Then he leaped up, grabbed his tape recorder from the mantelpiece, switched it on and banged it on to the poker table. Picking up the phone again, he yelled 'Okay! Shoot!' down the line and then slammed the phone on top of the recorder.

Benton's tones, muffled now and more surprised than anguished, wafted over to the poker players. His actual words, however, were drowned out by the frenzied resumption of the betting. 'We are on a charter train, coded 56023. It is travelling on the Palliser Line and is now held hostage. Any attempt to board the train will result in the death of those on board. Any sighting of aircraft will result in death. Any ... uh, any attempt to ...' totally non-plussed by the lack of response from Ray, Benton began to falter. Beside him, an equally puzzled Bolt leaned forward and grabbed the receiver. Playing for time, he said to himself. That was what the policeman must be doing at the other end. 'Our demands,' he barked down the phone, 'are as follows .._ Ten million dollars ...' Pausing theatrically to let the enormity of the sum sink in, he was more than a little surprised by the reaction from the other end. The voice that he assumed was Detective Vecchio's responded with the words 'See you ten; raise you ten.'

Deciding that he had misheard, Bolt carried on. 'Ten million dollars, to be delivered by Detective First Grade Raymond Vecchio of the Chicago Police Department, unaccompanied, to station siding thirty three ...'

'I'll see you that three hundred. Raise you a hundred.' The words, although barely audible to Bolt, deepened his astonishment. He was beginning to wonder if this Vecchio person was entirely sane. This was not, in his experience, the way to respond to a dire threat. 'Station siding thirty-three,' he repeated, 'on the Palliser Line, by four p.m. central standard time.' Then, just to emphasize to Vecchio that he meant business, he added a dire warning. 'Be ever vigilant, America, for the enemy is already among us.'

But Ray couldn't even hear the enemy. All he was aware of was the sound of his own voice as he let out a whoop of delight and gathered his winnings to his breast. Benton's dilemma was temporarily forgotten; the fate of forty hostages thundering through Illinois on a runaway train was consigned, for the moment, to his tape recorder. Ray was on a high; nothing and nobody was going to spoil his triumph. Not even Diefenbaker, who had heard every word (giving lie to his supposed deafness) and who was now whining at his feet, was going to spoil his triumph.

Back in the train. Bolt looked at Georgie Racine. Racine looked at Freya Chichester-Clark (not her real name). Production Assistant turned would-be assassin. She was standing behind Benton and Thatcher, waving a gun around. 'So,' she bellowed, 'what's with this Vecchio guy? Is he some kinda deaf mute or something?'

'No,' said Benton. As ever in times of stress, he appeared completely unruffled, totally at ease with himself and his surroundings. This was intensely annoying to Freya. Apart from the fact that the Mountie was supposed to be terrified, he was also required to find her irresistibly attractive. And here he was, showing no sign of either terror or lust. Worse, he was now casting a look of mild rebuke in her direction. He was offended, it appeared, for her criticism of the Chicago cop.

'So why,' snarled Freya, 'didn't he say anything?'

'I imagine he was just assimilating the information imparted down the phone whilst preparing to do as instructed.' Privately, Benton imagined no such thing. He had heard the clink of the poker chips, had realized that Ray had taped rather than listened to the phone call. And now he feared that Ray would be so elated by his win that he would forget to listen to the tape.

Still expressionless, Benton looked over to Thatcher. She, however, was enveloped in a simmering rage that had nothing to do with hostages, hijacking, ransom money and imminent death. She was furious that Bolt, not five minutes earlier, had instructed her to change into her Mountie dress uniform. 'I love a woman in uniform,' he had gloated. 'And in particular uniforms that are so darned arresting. Now get changed!'

Thatcher would sooner have died than change in front of a man who - in common with the careers of most of her ex-employees - was nasty, brutish and short. And then she had become aware of the gun pressed against her forehead and came to the conclusion that changing her attire was, after all, preferable to dying.

Her rage, however, had intensified over the past few minutes. It had nothing to do with Ray's cavalier attitude to their predicament, but with the fact that Freya was so clearly infatuated with Benton. Wasn't she aware that whatever passion lurked in Benton's breast was secretly, tortuously directed at herself? And besides, didn't the woman have any dignity? In Thatcher's book, it was a pretty poor sort of criminal who undressed her hostages with her eyes.

That last thought lifted her mood somewhat. She turned, haughty as ever, to Freya. 'I have every confidence,' she drawled, 'that Detective Vecchio will obey your ... your orders.' The last word was accompanied by a supercilious curl of her lips; a suggestion that she would, were she less polite, have inserted the word 'little' before 'orders'.

Freya was momentarily taken aback - and showed it. Then she remembered her impressive, double-barrelled name and the double-barrelled shotgun in her left hand and felt happier. 'Well, lady,' she sneered. 'You'd better damn well hope and pray that he does obey. This train ain't going to stop for nothing or nobody until we get that money.'

But Freya had reckoned without Bob Fraser and Buck Frobisher. She could have been forgiven for the former: he was, after all, invisible to her and her colleagues. But all of them had forgotten about Frobisher, and were blissfully unaware that, accompanied by his deceased colleague, he was making his way to the engine of the train.

The driver had been unceremoniously ousted from his seat and knocked unconscious at the same time as the Mounties had been gassed. His place at the controls had been taken by one Frankie Moliere, ex-vision mixer to the film crew, now returned to his true vocation as a terrorist.

Moliere looked round as he heard the door open. Assuming that it was one of his colleagues, he was more than a little surprised to see an elderly Mountie standing in the doorway. 'Hey ...!' he began, rising in anger to his feet.

But age had not withered the speed of Frobisher's reactions. Two things occurred to him simultaneously: one was that this man was smaller than he, the other was that the window in the engine room was wide open. Without pausing for breath, he sprang forward, lifted the outraged terrorist off his feet and threw him out of the window. 'Ah hah!' he crowed, as Moliere flew from the speeding train.

Bob Fraser, standing behind him, was less than enthusiastic. 'Hum,' was all he said.

Annoyed, Frobisher turned round to his deceased friend. 'What are you "humming" about? I just got rid of one of the enemy.'

Bob Fraser shrugged. 'Uh ... nothing. It's nothing.'

Frobisher exhaled deeply, not, this time, from his nether regions. 'Well, when you humm, it always means something. So what's wrong?' -

Bob gestured towards the controls in front of them. 'Well, do you know how to operate a train?'

'Er ... I was counting on you.'

'I haven't the foggiest.'

'Oh.' Too late, Frobisher regretted the hasty violence with which he had despatched Moliere into the outside world. Then he saw the real driver huddled in the corner. 'Look! He'll know.'

'He's unconscious.'

'Oh. Well ....' Frowning, Frobisher looked around. 'Well ... it can't be that hard. Must be someplace where they put the coal.'

'Buck,' sighed his friend, 'haven't you noticed that there's no smoke coming from this train?'

'Isn't there?' Buck brightened at the words. 'Well that's good, then. That means they must have run out of coal.'

'Er ... no. There never was any coal.'

'What da you mean?'

'I mean,' said an increasingly exasperated Bob Fraser, 'that this isn't a steam train. It's not powered by coal. It runs on electricity.'

'Electricity? Good God.' Frobisher looked exceedingly disapproving. 'What next.' Then, again, he looked around. 'Well, there must be a plug somewhere ...'

'No, Buck. No plugs. But there has to be a brake somewhere.'

'Ah! The brake! I knew there had to be something.' Happy again, Frobisher cast around for something resembling a mechanism that might stop the train. Yet, like his friend, he was totally unfamiliar with any sort of engine, least of all that of a train, and his face was creased with doubt as he rummaged around amongst the bewildering array of dials and switches that populated the little cabin.

Eventually - and to his delight - it was he, not Bob, who found it. 'Ah hah!' he said, not for the first time.

'What have you got there?' Bob looked suspiciously at his crouching friend.

'I've found it. I've found the "brake"!'

Like a child beaten by a rival in a treasure hunt, Bob shot a darkly mutinous look at the victor. Why wasn't he, possessed as he was with all the unearthly powers of the dead, the one to find the brake? Where were all those powers of extra-sensory perception that the living insisted belonged to the dead? Not in the engine-room of this particular train, that was for sure.

Frowning, Bob crouched down beside his friend. 'What,' he asked loftily, 'makes you think it's the brake?'

'It's written right on it.' Frobisher pointed to the red lever. 'See ... it says "brake".'

But Bob was unimpressed. 'It could be a ruse.'

Well aware that his friend was just plain jealous at not finding it first, Frobisher was equally scathing. 'And exactly to what end would that be a ruse?'

'Something criminal.'

'Are you insinuating,' sighed Frobisher, 'that an entire design crew deliberately mislabeled key elements of a train?'

'It's possible.'

Death, thought Frobisher, does strange things to people. Bob had never been the brightest of men, but now his brain seemed positively pickled. 'I'm talking,' he said as he shook his head, 'to a lunatic.'

But as far as Bob was concerned, Frobisher was the lunatic. 'Now, you see,' he continued, 'this is what's wrong with you. Buck. You discount everything but the probable. It's why,' he added with gleeful malice, 'you didn't make that shot way back then.' Frobisher bit back an equally cutting reply. Don't get riled, he told himself. If you're not allowed to speak ill of the dead, then you shouldn't speak ill to them either. 'Don't think,' he said after a moment, 'you can twist the knife. Bob. That was springtime. I had my allergies. My eyes were cloudy. Anyway,' he added, not wishing to pursue the subject, 'this is the brake, and I'm going to bring this train to a halt.'

Bob held out a restraining hand. 'Wait. Wait!'

'What?'

Bob pointed to two suspiciously new-looking wires beneath the lever. 'What are these?'

'Wires,' said Frobisher with an uninterested shrug. Then, following his friend's gaze, he saw that the wires stretched back towards the body of the train - and that the brake lever itself was loose. Alarm bells ringing in his mind, he gave the lever a tentativejmll. Nothing happened. 'Oh my God,' he said as he turned, horrified, to face Bob. 'They've bypassed the brakes.'

His mouth set in a grim, thin line, Bob grunted and pulled himself upright. 'We'd better get hold of Benton. This train,' he finished in doom-laden tones, 'is a runaway.'

'This train,' repeated Frobisher as the enormity of the situation sank in, 'is a runaway.'

Chapter Three

Ray was not one to disappoint his friends. Apart from the fact that he was anyway in danger of losing three of them (the losers at poker had not been gracious), he was well aware that a friend in need was a friend indeed. And he needed Benton: the Mountie owed him a favour and would hardly be in a position to repay it if he were dead.

Furthermore, as Ray told a worried Diefenbaker, he was a policeman - a senior policeman at that - and was not going to pass up the opportunity of becoming even more senior by thwarting one of the most spectacular attempts at extortion he had yet encountered.

So, as soon as his friends had taken their some-what grumpy leave, Ray played back the tape of Benton's phone call. And as soon as he had done that, he headed, Diefenbaker in tow, for the police station. His colleagues, he knew, were about to get the shock of their lives. They would sooner have bet on the imminence of a blue moon than on Ray appearing at work when he was officially on holiday.

Commander Welsh, Chief of the Precinct, experienced something more akin to disappointment than shock when Ray burst through the door. Why, he said to himself as he watched him approach, did he have this sneaking suspicion that Vecchio was not here to say a cheery 'hello'; to pass the time of day with his colleagues? Even when the detective was officially 'at work', his presence in the building invariably made Welsh feel uneasy. The word Vecchio, he knew, meant old in Italian; so why was it Welsh who felt old whenever the other man approached? At least this time there was some sort of small compensation: he wasn't accompanied by the Mountie. Ray on his own usually meant trouble - but with the Mountie in tow that trouble had a capital T and was preceded by Big.

But when Ray charged into his office, looking not just serious but worried, Welsh's heart sank. And when Ray played the tape to him, that organ all but dropped to his boots. One Mountie on his patch had been bad enough. Now, suddenly, he seemed to be responsible for a trainload of them. The fact that they were hostages and in grave danger didn't worry him unduly. What upset him was that the train was heading full-tilt towards Chicago; his city. And what caused him grave concern was that whatever ignorant terrorist had hatched the plan in the first place seemed to be intent on shooting himself in the foot. Why else would he have stipulated that Detective Raymond Vecchio deliver the ransom money?

Ray stood expectantly at the other side of the desk, awaiting Welsh's response. Desperately concerned, he was also strangely elated. This would be the biggest operation he had ever worked on - and he was going to be in charge.

Welsh, when at last he spoke, had a different view of the situation. 'Vecchio?'

'Sir?'

'Get the FBI.'

Two hours later. Ray was still fuming. What did the FBI have that he hadn't got? Sure, they had fancy names and poncey headquarters in Quantico, Virginia - but as far as Ray was concerned they were too consumed by their own importance to focus on the things that really mattered. And one of the things that really mattered was, of course. Ray.

Ray looked on in disgust at the agents who had turned one of the interview rooms at the station into what they called a 'Situation Room'. They had installed a complicated computer on the desk and were all rushing around-being important and wearing headphones; but what had they actually achieved? Nothing. Precisely nothing.

The one who styled himself as Agent Ford suddenly broke off from a frenzied conversation with his portable phone and barked an order. 'Agent Deeter!'

'Sir?'

'Into the Commander's room. We now have a strategy. And you,' he added to Ray, 'better come too.'

Ray was sorely tempted to protest at the disparaging tone that had accompanied the word 'you' - and at the eyebrows that beetled along in an insulting fashion across Ford's brow. Yet somehow Ford's expression didn't invite an outraged response. Feeling less than proud of himself. Ray followed Agent Deeter down the corridor to Welsh's office.

If Welsh was irritated at the way Ford had taken command of the situation, he didn't show it. In truth, he was annoyed by Ford's manner, but reckoned it was less of a cross to bear than Vecchio's incompetence. And anyway, there was another, more professional reason for tolerating Ford's behaviour: if the train blew up along with its Mountie cargo and half of Chicago, then the FBI, not the Chicago PD, would take the blame. That, as far as Welsh was concerned, was incentive enough for allowing Ford to pace around his office - as he was doing now - playing God.

'Alright gentlemen!' announced Ford as he paced. 'Here is our situation: representatives from State National Security Council are meeting regarding the larger implications of the situation. As I speak, two Rapid Response Teams are flying in from Fort Bragg and Quantico ...'

But that was too much for Ray. Before he could check himself, his mouth opened in a mocking manner, allowing a snide little remark to slip out. 'What?' he sneered. 'No B-52 Squadron?'

Ford rounded on him, impelled by the full fury of the FBI. 'You have a problem with this. Detective?'

Ray held the other man's gaze. 'Well, you know, Ford. We all have our own style. Me?' he added, pointing to his chest. 'If I got a sore head, I don't take a chainsaw to it - I swallow a couple of aspirin.'

'Vecchio!' snapped Welsh with a nod towards Ford. 'This is their field protocol.'

'Lieutenant,' said Ray. 'There are people on that train. Sure,' he added with a token towards humanity, 'they're Canadians, but they're still people. And we don't know what their situation is.'

'Precisely, Detective. We can't talk to them, so we don't know. Therefore,' continued Ford with a withering look, 'we assume the situation has gone sour until we receive confirmation one way or the other. And let's be clear-about one thing, Detective Vecchio. You're a conduit - you deliver the money, nothing more. Do we understand each other?'

The corner of Welsh's mouth twitched as Ray made an equally withering reply. 'No. I don't think that's possible.'

Thankfully, Agent Deeter broke the hostile silence. Gesturing to the piece of paper he had been reading, he looked up, frowning, at Welsh. 'I don't understand. This here says the Mounties were being filmed doing a musical ride. What is a musical ride? Some kind of theme park thing?'

'Ah!' said Welsh. 'No, no, no.' A dreamy and, to Ray, totally unexpected look came into his eyes as he began his explanation. 'It's much more than that. It's thirty-two riders moving as one... perfect harmony between man and beast. A kaleidoscope of manes and tails and battle lances criss-crossing in a collage of synchronous movement.' Staring through unseeing eyes at the far wall, Welsh looked for a moment as if he were about to cry. 'It takes your breath away.'

It had taken Ray's breath away as well. What had happened to the list of unprintable expletives Welsh usually uttered when the word 'Mountie' was mentioned? Where the litany of abuse whenever Benton Fraser's name was mentioned? This was indeed peculiar.

Suddenly Welsh saw the incredulity on the faces of all three men. Something dangerously resembling a blush fought for recognition on his face as he struggled to regain his composure. 'Hey,' he said, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. 'I was just a kid when I saw it. It haunted me.' Then his face darkened as he remembered his usual attitude towards Mounties, and the fact that they had returned to haunt him - this time in a less than romantic guise.

Seeking to reassert his authority after the extraordinary response - or lack of one - from the police in Chicago, Bolt was ushering Benton and Thatcher along the train and into the carriage occupied by the horses. Initially unsettled by the nauseating gases emanating from higher up the train, they had been further upset when the Mountie looking after them had slithered unconscious to the floor. Now, with the arrival of Bolt, the horses became distinctly ill-at-ease. None of them, on the musical ride, had been impressed by the director or his crew. They had, in fact, tacitly agreed amongst themselves that there was something 'not quite right' about the nasty, brutish and short man giving orders. The beret was bad enough, but it was the sullen little moustache lurking underneath it that realty worried them. If ever a moustache had a few grudges of its own to settle, then this was the one.

Bolt, however, wasn't-interested in the horses or their opinion of his facial furniture. Hustling Benton and Thatcher into the carriage at gunpoint and backed up by another member of his gang, he pointed to the comatose Mountie in the corner. 'Howard. Pick him up, will you?'

'Pick him up?' Howard Albee looked doubtfully at the prone figure. Mounties, he had earlier noticed, were generally taller and broader than criminals. And this one was one of the biggest. 'Prop him up, then,' corrected Bolt. 'Against the door.'

With a sigh of relief, Albee did as he was bid.

'Now then,' said Bolt, turning back to his hostages. 'In an effort to show you that my intentions are serious, I was thinking of a gesture you might appreciate.'

As Benton and Thatcher looked on, he opened the sliding door of the carriage and, just as Frobisher and Benton's father had done with the hapless Frankie Moliere, threw the Mountie out of the train.

'Oh my God!' Horrified, Thatcher watched as the train hurtled past a small farmhouse. If the Mountie hadn't already been unconscious, his landing would have rendered him so: he shot like a bullet through the open front window of the house and, unseen by the occupants of the train, landed on a dining-room table. The farmer and his wife, who had long run out of conversation, looked up as their lunch went flying. Then they experienced the same, fleeting thought. Here was something to talk about. A topic. Then, as they stared at the prone Mountie in front of them, they abandoned that thought. Starting a conversation was just too much effort. And who was to say it would be an interesting conversation anyway? They continued to munch in silence.

Back on the train and grinning from ear to ear, Bolt turned back to Benton and Thatcher. 'You see? "We mean business. But,' he added, 'we do have a sense of humour. You,' he said to Benton, 'put your arms round her.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Put your arms round her. Like you were hugging her.'

'But...'

'Just do it!' Albee jabbed his gun into the small of Benton's back.

'Alright... um...' Hugely embarrassed, Benton placed his arms round Thatcher's waist. 'I'm sorry, sir ... I don't appear to have any choice in ...'

'And you,' bellowed Bolt to Thatcher, 'do like-wise.'

Without a word, Thatcher obeyed. Her poker face betrayed no emotion whatsoever as she placed her hands around the taut, finely-tuned muscles of Benton's broad back. Not even by a flicker of her eyelids did she show hef-feelings as her brown eyes met Benton's blue ones. Even when Albee clicked the two pairs of handcuffs behind their backs, locking them into an embrace, she remained impassive.

'Now this really amuses me,' chuckled Bolt. 'Superior officer. Junior officer. Boss,' he said as he prodded Thatcher's side. 'Worker,' he leered at Benton. 'The empowered. The unempowered. And look, they're even hugging each other. It's a beautiful thing, don't you think?'

'What,' said Benton, fighting to keep his compo- sure, 'do you hope to gain from this?'

'Oh, you couldn't possibly imagine,' laughed Bolt. 'Well... maybe you could. Start by thinking: choo, choo, choo - train. Now think,' he said as he slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand, 'kaboom! Explosives. Then put the two together. Train. Boom. Explosives.' Then, laughing at his own extraordinary wit, he headed towards the door. As he reached it, he turned and, remembering he was a terrorist and not a comedian, looked to Albee. 'If they move,' he said, 'shoot them.'

Silence - broken only by the occasional nervous whinny of a horse - descended in the carriage. Benton didn't know where to look. To say that he was uncomfortably close to his superior officer was an understatement: he was positively wrapped round her. Being nearly a head taller than Thatcher, he found that staring at her forehead was his least embarrassing option. Thatcher herself found the situation even more difficult. She found - as Bolt had discovered - that she fitted snugly into Benton's arms and that even if she tilted her head to one side, she was still staring at his shoulders. Her most comfortable position was staring straight ahead - at the adam's apple two inches from her face. The silence became unbearable after thirty seconds. The men,' said Thatcher in as businesslike a voice as she could muster. They're not dead, are they, Fraser?' As she said the words, she looked up at him - and immediately regretted the reflex action. Eye contact was all very well, but at a distance. There was something extremely disconcerting about it in such close proximity.

'No, ma'am,' replied Benton in a whisper. The title 'ma'am' came easily to him this time. There was absolutely nothing sir-like about the body pressed against him. 'Er ... as we passed through the ride car I detected the after-odour of the quixotimon root. It is found exclusively,' he explained, 'in the upper reaches of the Amazon basin. In its gaseous form it's known as quixotimanophyl - a paralytic. It's harmless, but the men won't regain consciousness for approximately twenty-six minutes.'

'Say no more,' replied Thatcher. Then, trying desperately to focus on the situation in general and not her own particular dilemma, she prodded Benton in the back.

Surprised, he looked down at her. 'Um ...'

Thatcher silenced him with her gimlet eyes and, with an almost imperceptible tilt of her head, indicated Albee, sitting on a box of feed beside them.

The gesture was enough: Thatcher wanted to distract their guard. Benton nodded. 'Excuse me?' said Thatcher, turning as far as she could to the man in the green baseball cap.

'Yeah?' Albee tried, and failed, to sound uninterested. In a previous and even more precarious life he had been an actor and, while that career was no more, the craving for attention was as strong as ever.

Thatcher threw him a dazzling smile. 'What's your name?'

'Albee,' said Albee.

'Albee? The same as the playwright?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Oh. Are you related, then?'

'Yes, ma'am,' lied Albee. 'We're a theatrical family, see? He writes and I act. Perhaps,' he added as he peeled off his cap with a flourish, 'you recognize me?'

'Um... yes... Yes! I think I do. You were in...?'

'High Octane Action at Hell Hole Gulch.' Albee puffed out his chest with pride. 'That was my most recent film.'

'Yes. Yes, I remember. That was one of Robert's favourites.'

'Robert?'

'De Niro.'

'Robert de Niro!' Albee shot up from the feed box and stared in admiration at Thatcher. 'He's my hero. I based my whole character on him. And,' he asked in awe as he stepped closer, 'you know him?' Such a small world, he thought as he beamed at the handcuffed woman. Who would have thought the spheres of acting and terrorism would collide so fortuitously?

'Dated him,' replied Thatcher.

'You ... dated... Robert de Niro?'

'Yep. He gave me a tattoo.' Thatcher gestured as best she could. 'On my hip.'

This Albee had to see. He knew his hero was something of an artist in his spare time - and here was the chance to see an original work by the great man! Too excited even to ask permission for a viewing, he bent down beside Thatcher.

She reacted like lightning. With a small grunt of triumph, she swung her leg and walloped Albee in the temple. Stunned by the blow, her victim fell forward towards Benton, who, in turn, kneed him in exactly the same place. Albee let out a feeble moan and tumbled unconscious to the floor.

'Very nice work, ma'am,' grinned Benton.

'Er .. .thank you Fraser.' Embarrassed by the thought that Benton might misread the fact that her heart was hammering in her chest, Thatcher looked away. The silence that-followed was even more loaded with tension than the previous one. The fact that there was no longer anyone watching over them made the situation far more embarrassing. Both had been in similar clinches before: neither knew how to handle the unnatural circumstances of this one. This time it was Benton who spoke first. As he did so, Thatcher looked up at him and was more than a little disconcerted by the way he seemed to be examining her face and hair. His gaze swept over her, not flinching and not missing an inch.

'May I?' he enquired as they locked eyes.

'May you what?' snapped Thatcher.

Instead of replying, Benton leaned forward. Thatcher gasped as she felt his breath against her cheek; her eyes widened as his mouth opened, revealing his perfect white teeth and pink tongue. Rigid with what she tried to persuade herself was horror, she waited for his mouth to descend on hers.

It didn't. It bypassed her face and stopped just beyond her left ear. 'Er... Fraser? What are you doing?' And then a sharp tug and a movement in her hair told her exactly what he was doing - removing one of her hairpins. When he emerged from behind the ear he was holding it between his teeth.

Startled, confused (but not, she told herself, disappointed), Thatcher stared at him as he chewed at the small object. It was only when he leaned towards her again that she realized he hadn't been chewing: he had manoeuvred the pin so that he was now holding one prong between his teeth. And now he was inviting her to clench at the other prong in order to straighten the pin. Nodding her understanding, ignoring her disappointment, Thatcher parted her lips, revealing her own very white and very expensive teeth. And then disappointment gave way to something altogether more confusing as her mouth met Benton's. Their lips played together as she tried to grasp the proffered prong. In theory, she thought, this should be easy. In practice, however, their tongues kept getting in the way as Benton guided the small object between her teeth. But at last she had it and, tugging away from Benton, she felt it straighten and lengthen...

And then, as she released her end, Benton dropped the pin. It fell on to the open neck of her tunic, hovered tentatively on the lapel - and then fell into her cleavage.

Their eyes met again. Disappointment met with daring: both knew what had to be done, and both pretended they didn't want to do it. Giving Benton tacit approval, Thatcher nodded and, to illustrate that this was business and not pleasure, took a deep, resigned breath. The action proved unwise: the hairpin, spotting-more cleavage, burrowed downwards.

Benton pretended not to notice. Heaving his own sigh, he angled his head into her blouse and began to fish around with his teeth. Not entirely sure what to do under such unusual circumstances, and conscious that Benton's stance forced her head even more tightly against his chest, she adopted a glazed, totally blank expression.

A few seconds later Benton's tongue flicked against her naked flesh and his head stopped moving. A moment after that he emerged, eyes shining, the pin once again between his teeth. Then he lunged forward over her shoulder and dropped the pin into his hands. With his nimble fingers working at the handcuff, he began to pick at the locking mechanism. In order to see what he was doing, however, he was obliged to rest his head on Thatcher's shoulder. Desperate to break the renewed, strained silence, he said the first thing that came into his head. 'Escada?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'That fragrance you're wearing.'

'No.'

'Carrier?'

'No.'

'Oh.' Then, suddenly, the lock snapped open and Benton was free. 'Chanel?' he asked as his hands slipped free of their bonds.

'Plee ... ease,' said Thatcher, to whom Chanel was beneath contempt.

'I give up,' smiled Benton as he leaned away from her. 'What is the perfume you're wearing?'

Benton's hands were free - but Thatcher's were still manacled in a vice-like grip around his back. The situation made her feel both powerful and vulnerable - her favourite feeling. As ever, it was the powerful part that took over. 'I'm not wearing anything, Fraser,' she snapped as she stared into his eyes. 'I hate perfume.'

In Chicago, Ray was preparing for his role as a conduit. As he didn't know precisely what a conduit was, his preparation was minimal. Nor did it require much thought: he would find life easier, Welsh had told him, if he left the thinking to Agent Ford and simply did as he was told. 'If you obey orders,' Welsh had finished, 'then you won't be held responsible when things go wrong, will you?'

Ford's orders were simple. Ray was to take a bag containing ten million dollars, by helicopter, to station siding thirty-three on the Palliser Line. There the station manager would show him how to attach the bag to the mail pole - and then he would leave.

'Supposing,' said Ray with one last, admittedly feeble attempt at mutiny, 'it's all a hoax?'

'It's not a hoax,' barked Ford. 'We've just had confirmation of the hijacking from a Mountie they threw off the train.'

'They threw a Mountie off the train? Is he alright?'

'Seems so,' shrugged Ford. 'A pecan pie broke his fall.'

'A what?'

'A pecan pie. What are you - Canadian or something?'

'No. I'm American. Italian-American, if you must know, but what's that got to do with ...'

'... Just go, will ya'!' screamed Ford. 'And, oh, Detective ... one last thing.'

'Yes?'

'The dog stays here.'

Ray looked down at the expectant Diefenbaker. 'Sorry, Dief,' he said, 'but orders is orders.' Then, grinning, he looked back at the FBI agent. 'Actually ... sir, he's not a dog. He's a wolf.'

Ford turned a deathly shade of pale and looked at the creature at Ray's feet. Diefenbaker, taking Ray's cue, began to growl. The sound started at the back of his throat; no more than a low rumbling. Then it increased in volume, reaching terrifying proportions as Dief opened his mouth, displaying a set of lethal, pointed fangs.

Ford opened his own mouth. 'Er ... Detective?'

'Yes?'

'Perhaps ... perhaps you should take him after all. Extra manpower. Or,' he added with a strained sickly grin, 'wolfpower.'

Diefenbaker, sporting a happier grin, stepped forward to lick Ford's hand in gratitude.

Strangely, Ford had already left the room.

Ray reached the tiny station siding half an hour later. Nothing more than a wooden shack by the railway line in the middle of a prairie, it looked completely deserted - and incongruous beside the gleaming helicopter that had deposited Ray.

There was no reply to Ray's tentative knock, so, feeling intensely vulnerable, he opened the door and walked into the shack. Any thoughts of being ambushed and annihilated quickly disappeared when he noticed the only occupant of the room. The man sitting dozing in a chair was ancient, wizened and looked. Ray thought, not unlike a prune. A friendly prune, he corrected, as he took in the man's benign expression.

'How you doing?' began Ray with an equally benign smile. 'I'm with the police.'

'You are?' The old man looked impressed - then puzzled. 'Where are they?'

'I'm it.' Ray pointed to his chest. 'I'm the police.'

'You are?' The old man nodded to himself. 'And how do you like it, son? Does it pay well?'

'Yeah,' said Ray, swinging the bag containing more dollars than he would ever earn in his lifetime. 'It's fine. Say - do you have something called a "mail pole"?'

'A what?'

'A "mail pole".'

'Sure.' The ancient nodded to the structure between the shack and the railway line. 'That's it over there. You wanna post some mail?'

'Uh ... something like that, yeah. What do I do... just hang the bag on that clip thing?'

'Yep. But ... uh, you'd better take my socks down first.'

Ray turned round in amazement.

'S'alright,' smiled his companion. 'They'll be dry now.'

Remembering Welsh's entreaties to obey orders at all costs. Ray climbed the steps to the mail pole, removed the socks and attached the bag. As he did so, he heard a rumble in the distance. A moment of sadness engulfed him as he looked down the track. The train, he thought: the hijacked train with my best friend on board.

Some of the occupants of the train, however, were anything but sad. In the caboose. Bolt, Freya Chichester-Clark and the most literary-minded of the gang, Bert Brecht, whooped with delight when they saw the bag of swag dangling on the mail pole. And it was Brecht, as the train hurtled towards it, who extended the snatch pole and lifted the bag on to the train. He missed the half-forlorn, half-angry expression of the man standing at the foot of the steps in front of the station.

As the train sped on towards Chicago, Freya - a whizz at arithmetic - began to count the money while the others went back to their earlier task; that of dismantling their camera equipment and assembling the components of a bomb from various parts of it. 'Clever, eh?' as Bolt had said when he had hatched the plan. The rest of the gang were far too self-obsessed to agree with him. They were, to a man - and Freya - of the opinion that no idea was good unless it was theirs.

As they finished constructing the bomb. Bolt had another idea - one that the others were grudgingly obliged to agree with. That old geyser who went to the bathroom,' he said. 'He's still around somewhere. Go find him, Bert, and give him the old heave-ho, okay?'

Bert nodded his assent, relishing the idea of yet another Mountie flying out of the train.

Frobisher was unaware of his impending fate. Back in the bathroom - for reasons not unrelated to moose and gorgonzola - he was delighted to see Benton and Thatcher lurking outside when he had finished his ablutions. 'Ah,' he said, doffing his hat at the latter. 'Allow me to debrief you. I have just assessed the situation in the engine room of this vehicle ...'

'.. . and?'

'And ... ma'am ... the enemy has bypassed the brake valves. In a nutshell? This train is a runaway.'

'Not only is it a runaway, sir,' said Benton, 'I think it's loaded with explosives.' Benton had finally worked out what had disturbed him about the camera equipment: a detonator, no matter how much you tried to disguise it as a microphone, was still a detonator. Not to be outdone in the revelation department, Frobisher gestured behind him. The station back there? They took something off a mail pole.'

Thatcher nodded. 'Ransom.'

'Which leaves,' said Benton, 'only one conclusion. The ransom was a cover. Their darker purpose is to drive this bomb into the heart of Chicago ...'

As he spoke, all three of them heard footsteps approaching: not from behind or in front of them - they had locked the doors on either side - but from above. Someone was on the roof of the train.

Thatcher whirled round to Frobisher. 'Do you have a gun?'

'No. I left it at the border.'

'Likewise,' said Benton.

'Damn.'

'It's the law, ma'am,' said Benton. 'We're not allowed to use guns in the United States.'

'I'm well aware of that Fraser,' snapped Thatcher. Still smarting over the cleavage-nuzzling episode, she was relishing re-asserting her authority. 'If we survive this,' she added, 'remind me to make some changes to my official travel policy.'

'Yes, ma'am. In the meantime, I think I'd better get out on the roof and assess the situation.'

Concern creased Thatcher's features. Just because she was smarting over what had happened in the horse carriage didn't mean that she was totally opposed to it happening again. 'I'm not sure if that's altogether wise, Fraser.'

But Benton had already decided that, wise or not, it was a necessary course of action to take. 'Stand clear!' he commanded as he unlocked the door of the utility carriage and, just in case one of the hijackers was standing on the other side, kicked it open. On the other side, Bert Brecht went flying.

'Ha!' said Benton in satisfaction as he leaped over the prone figure of the stunned terrorist. Without so much as a pause for breath, he ran down the length of the carriage, wrenched open the other door and, flinching slightly at the sudden chill of the wind, braced himself to climb the ladder on the outside platform. Any hesitation or second thoughts were banished as he looked over his shoulder to see Brecht, his face a mask of anger, running towards him. He was carrying an axe.

At the other end of the carriage, Frobisher and Thatcher looked on. 'Well,' said the former, stepping forward, 'he's going to need some help.'

'No!' In a theatrical gesture, possibly and unconsciously gleaned from "her hijackers, Thatcher stopped him with an authoritative hand. 'I'm the senior officer. It's my responsibility.' Without giving Frobisher a chance to protest (which, in the light of his rheumatism and the unhappy combination of moose and gorgonzola, he had no intention of doing), she ran down the corridor. By the time she had scaled the ladder, Benton and Brecht were locked in hand to hand combat on the roof of the train. Thatcher stood, gripping the top rung of the ladder, assessing the situation. Brecht's feet were only inches from her hands - and were coming closer. Smiling with grim satisfaction, she reached forward, ready to deliver a stinging and crippling blow to his ankles.

Then Benton saw her. 'Uh ... ma'am. I really would prefer that you not...'

But it was too late. Thatcher delivered an impressive karate chop to the back of Brecht's legs. Stunned by the blow, he lost his footing and toppled backwards. For a moment he seemed to hang suspended in mid-air. Then, with a wail of terror, he fell off the roof of the train and into the lethal depths of the canyon below.

It was only then that Thatcher realized her mistake. Brecht's hands, as she delivered the blow, had been holding Benton's lapels in a vice-like grip - and they were still clinging tightly as he tumbled into the abyss. Thatcher caught a glimpse of Benton's mouth, wide open with shock, as he disappeared with the hijacker.

The train thundered on, oblivious to the fact that it had lost two more of its occupants.

Chapter Four

'It was all my fault!'

Buck Frobisher looked uneasily across the little room. Being locked in the tiny toilet of a runaway tram with a wailing woman was an experience he had no wish to repeat. He had never, anyway, been very good at consoling people. His usual method of dealing with stress - even bereavement - was to tell people to pull themselves together and do something positive. When he had lost Caroline to Bob Fraser he had, for example, grabbed a shotgun and trundled off to shoot a few elk. That had cheered him up no end.

But elk-shooting, in this particular case, really didn't seem a viable option. Aware that Thatcher was waiting for him to say something, he cleared his throat and told her that, no, it wasn't her fault.

The remark was greeted with a derisive snort - but not from Thatcher. Turning to his left, Frobisher saw that Bob Fraser was standing right beside him. 'Well,' he said when he had finished snorting, 'in a way it was her fault, you know.'

'Stay out of this,' snapped Frobisher.

'How can I stay out of it?' wailed Thatcher. 'I am the senior officer on board this train. Fraser was my immediate staff. He was,' she added as she sniffed into a tissue, 'my responsibility.'

'She has a point, Buck,' said Bob, who seemed remarkably sanguine about losing his only son to an abyss.

'He drove me crazy,' sniffed Thatcher. 'That's no secret. But... but lately I had started to think ... I mean ... I had started to feel....'

'Oh great Scott,' sighed Bob as realization dawned. 'You don't think she ...?'

'Great Scott,' said Frobisher to the distressed woman. 'You don't suppose that you're ...'

Thatcher looked, pain and puzzlement in her eyes, at the elderly man. "I'm confused, sergeant. My feelings are very confused.'

Frobisher went bright red. Feelings were his least favourite thing. If you had to have them, he reckoned, at least you should have the decency to keep them to yourself. This woman seemed to have fallen victim to that horrible American trend of sharing them. 'I see,' he said by way of consolation.

'I see?' squeaked Bob. 'What kind of counsel is that? Console her, for God's sake!'

Aware that if he responded to his dead friend, Thatcher would think he was talking to her,' Frobisher refrained from delivering the unpleasant rebuke that lay on the tip of his tongue. Instead, and even more embarrassed now, he cleared his throat again and addressed the disconsolate Mountie, 'Uh, Inspector ... there are times between women and men ... that is to say, there are times between men and women when things grow . .. arise ...' Steeling himself to utter the dreaded word, he looked Thatcher in the eye. 'Feelings.' He delivered the word with a sort of spitting motion and a curl of the lip - as if divesting himself of something even more unpleasant than the unfortunate moose and gorgonzola.

'Well,' he added, glad that the counselling session was over. 'Enough said.'

'Enough said?'

Frobisher stoically ignored the presence at his side, while making a mental note to tackle Bob at a later stage on the subject of feelings. When alive, Bob's attitude to them had been much the same as his own. Death, it was becoming ever more apparent, did strange things to people.

Yet to Frobisher's surprise, his words of wisdom seemed to have had a calming effect on Thatcher. 'You're right. Sergeant,' she said in a suddenly business-like voice. 'We've got a train to stop. We have to push on.' Then she stood up, adjusted her uniform, ran a hand through her hair and reached for the door handle. 'You deal with the men. I'll take the engine.' With one purposeful stride, she exited the bathroom.

Bob Fraser looked on in admiration as she closed the door behind her. 'She really takes death in her stride, doesn't she?'

Frobisher nodded. 'But you don't think Benton's really dead, do you?'

'No. My guess is he's executing a plan to bring this crisis to an end.'

He was. Never one to panic in a crisis, Benton had, in one split second as he fell from the train, weighed up his options. One was to follow Brecht to the bottom of the canyon and to die. The other, as Brecht's hands released their hold, was to lunge for the minute ledge between the railway tracks and oblivion. This he did - and with gratifying success. He lay there, panting with exertion and relief as the train rattled past him. Then, rising to his feet and brushing himself down, he considered his next set of options. In that he was aided by the rickety handcar standing on the spur of track that led off the main line. He wasted not a second. Jumping on, he wrenched at the see-saw hand mechanism. After a few protesting squeaks and squeals, the rusty iron wheels of the car began to move. Then, establishing a regular pumping rhythm, he directed the little vehicle on to the main track and in pursuit of the train. It wasn't, he thought, the fastest mode of transport on earth, but it would have to suffice. And as he pumped up and down, he was pleased to discover that the little car gathered its own momentum, going ever faster - and ever nearer the train.

By the time Thatcher had made her resolution to pull herself together and reserve her grief for a later, private and intense moment, Benton was swinging a lasso above his head, aiming its loop at the buffers on the back of the train. And by the time she had made her way - clinging to the outside of the train - to the next carriage, Benton had thrown the lasso, attached it to the train, and was pulling himself and his car towards the train. And so when Thatcher decided her best route to the engine was along the roof, she had no idea that Benton was back on board. Her surprise, then, was total when Benton appeared, seemingly from nowhere, at the foot of the ladder she was about to climb.

'Fraser!'

'Ma'am.' Fraser doffed his hat (an old hand at surviving near-death experiences) and looked at her in concern. 'Thank God you're alright.'

In a passable imitation of a dead fish, Thatcher gawped at her deputy. Then she blinked several times and, frightened that her knees were about to give way, clutched at-the ladder for support. Aware, finally, that she resembled a deceased cod, she cleared her throat. 'I thought,' she whispered, 'that you were ...'

'... Dead? No ma'am.'

'But how did you ...?'

Benton brushed the question aside with an impatient wave of his hand. That's not important. What is important is that...'

'Not important?' Relief and surprise had, as was often the way with Thatcher, given way to anger. 'Not important? I grieved for you.'

'You did?' Benton was childishly delighted.

'Briefly,' snapped Thatcher.

'Understood.' Yet in the moment that was far briefer than Thatcher's grief, a strange sensation tingled down Benton's spine. 'Red suits you,' he said, unnerved by the tingle. Thatcher tried and failed to summon a disapproving look. She, too, was tingling. Briefly.

'Now,' said Benton, after the moment had passed. 'I've had some time to think about it, and it's my conclusion that, given the nature of our situation, and the threat that we pose, the only logical course of action for the authorities will be to destroy this train.'

Thatcher was horrified. 'And everyone on board?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'That's madness.'

'Well . .. put yourself in their situation,' said Benton with a shrug. 'Wouldn't you do the same?'

Again, Thatcher was appalled - but for different reasons. 'You think I could be that cold-hearted?'

Benton had the grace to look slightly sheepish, yet stuck to his guns. 'Well, forgive me ma'am, but I would have thought you more than up to the challenge.'

Thatcher looked as if her world had fallen apart. 'Is that,' she whispered, 'what you think of me?'

'I don't mean to upset you ...'

'I'm not upset, Fraser!' The whisper had fled, chased away by an angry bark.

Looking uncomfortable, Benton tried to explain. 'It's just that... well, what I'm trying to explain is ...'

But Thatcher didn't want explanations. 'Don't bother,' she snapped as she reached again for the ladder. 'Let's go.'

Shrugging, Benton stood patiently as she clambered on to the roof of the train. Then, careful not to follow her too closely in case he made contact with the area sporting Robert De Niro's tattoo, he reached for the rungs and began to climb.

By the time he reached the roof, Thatcher was stalking towards the front of the train. Everything about her body language suggested that she was, after all, deeply upset. And if Benton needed any confirmation of that fact, he was given it when she stopped, mid-stomp, and turned as he hurried towards her. 'Actually, Fraser, I am upset. What makes you think,' she asked as he skidded to a halt in front of her, 'that we're so different? You graduated first in your class and so did I. You received medals for field work, as did I.' Almost as close as she had been when they had been handcuffed together, she tapped his chest. 'You wear red serge: I wear red serge. The only difference between us is that you are a woman and I'm not.'

'Er ... I think you have that back to front, ma'am.'

Thatcher looked straight into his eyes. 'You know what I mean.'

'Yes,' said Benton. 'I do.'

'I'm not made of stone.'

'I'm very much aware of that.'

'Are you?' Somehow they had moved closer: so close that Thatcher was sure Benton could hear her heart racing.

'Yes,' said Benton.

'You are?'

'Yes.' Benton leaned even closer. 'I know you have a heart. And I think it beats in just the same way as mine.'

If it keeps missing a beat, thought Thatcher, then, yes, it's just the same. 'What,' she breathed. 'is it doing right now?'

'It's racing.'

'Out of control?'

Benton nodded. 'It's a runaway.' As he spoke, he knew there was no way of controlling the situation. And from the look in Thatcher's eyes; the way she inclined her head slightly to one side and parted her lips, he knew that she knew there was nothing they could do. Except, of course, kiss.

The next thing Thatcher was aware of was sinking into Benton's arms, of being kissed and returning those kisses with equal passion. Like him, she was oblivious to everything except The Moment. And, as Moments went, it was fairly lengthy.

It was broken, not by the tunnel into which the train shrieked; not by the fact that the tunnel roof shaved off the top of Benton's hat; and not through any desire to stop what they were doing - but by Frobisher's head popping urgently from a hatch in the roof of the carriage not five feet from where they were standing. 'Uh,' said the elderly man as he took in the situation. 'Hum. I'm not one to throw water on a decent fire, but something is amiss. The enemy,' he added by way of explanation, 'is gathering in the caboose.'

His words had a dramatic effect. Benton and Thatcher pulled away from each other as if they had been electrocuted; both smoothed down their uniforms; both tried to pretend they weren't actually there and then, when that failed, they both answered Frobisher at the same time. 'We were just,' they said in unison, 'just... um ...'

'Strategy session,' interrupted Frobisher. 'I understand.' Then, hoping he had niftily avoided the need to discuss Feelings, he popped back down into the train.

Above him, Thatcher and Benton looked at each other. Then, without a word, Thatcher assumed a haughty, Thatcherite expression and stalked off towards the hatch in the roof. Benton stood still for a moment, a strange, slightly wistful expression on his face. Then, straightening his shoulders, shrugging away the past few minutes, he followed her below.

Ray had forgotten his earlier moment of sadness Benton, he knew, would be doing his utmost to save the day, the train and its precious cargo. Benny, he thought, might be intensely irritating at times - but he was resourceful all the time. There was no need to dwell on the danger in the train. Besides, there were much better things on which to dwell. Foremost amongst them was the fact that he no longer had the supercilious Ford breathing over his shoulder; had no more dreaded orders to obey. Ford's instructions had ended with the delivery of the money.

I'll show him, thought Ray as, after the train had disappeared into the distance, he trudged back into the station shack. A plan was already forming in his mind. To execute it, he would need the assistance of the ancient station manager.

Ray smiled broadly - an unnerving sight - as he closed the door behind him. 'Got your socks,' he said, handing them over. 'Well done, well done. And bone dry, I see. Nothing like a mail pole.' The old man nodded in satisfaction and deposited the footwear on his desk. At least Ray assumed it was a desk: it was difficult to see what might lurk under the unholy mess in front of him.

'Say,' continued Ray, 'what's your name?'

'Crew,' said the old man.

'Crew. Ha ha. That's kinda neat.'

'Is it?'

'Yeah . .. you know. Train ... Crew. It's good. I like it.'

Not entirely sure what his visitor's point was, Thomas Crew smiled uneasily. 'Er ... what's yours, son?'

'My what?'

'Your name.'

'Oh. Vecchio. Ray Vecchio.'

'Hmm,' Crew looked distinctly unimpressed. 'Sounds foreign to me.'

Ray correctly deduced that this line of conversation was not worth pursuing. Crew was probably one of those Mid-Westerners who regarded anyone from the next state as foreign and, as such, not to be trusted. Better stick to trains, he thought. He looked, not entirely hopefully, at the appalling heap of junk on the desk. 'I was thinking,' he began. 'Have you got any way to track trains? Some kind of grid or a computer or something?'

To Ray's surprise. Crew nodded and sprang to his feet. 'Sure, they gave me a computer, but it's a useless piece of junk. Technology - pah!' he spat as he lifted an old coat off the desk to reveal a new and highly expensive computer. 'There's nothing on this but fish. Look,' he finished as he pointed to the screen. 'Little fish swimming around.'

Ray suppressed a giggle. 'Er ... they call that a screen saver.'

Then he bounded forward, tapped on the keyboard and, to Crew's amazement, turned the fish into a railway grid.

'Hey!' said a deeply impressed Crew. 'You some kind of expert?'

'Uh ... well, kind of, I suppose. They teach us this kind of thing in police school.'

Crew's admiration gave way to derision. 'Huh. No wonder you guys never solve crimes any more. Too busy playing with toys.'

'Well,' said Ray. 'They do have their uses. See here ... this is a pattern of the Palliser Line and that,' he added as he pointed to a line snaking across the screen, 'is our runaway train.'

'Say! Whaddya' know!' Delighted with the new toy. Crew pulled up a chair and looked on as Ray monitored the progress of the train. After a few minutes, he peered more closely at the screen. 'Seems like they've slowed down.'

'Mmm.' Ray stroked his chin. 'Wonder why.' The next minute, and to his utter horror, the train vanished completely off the screen. 'Hey!' he yelled. 'Where the hell have they gone?'

Beside him. Crew was looking smug. 'Told you it was a useless piece of junk.'

Fuming, Ray jabbed furiously at the keyboard in front of him - but to no avail. The runaway train resolutely refused to return to the screen.

'That lump,' said Crew, peering at the screen. 'Would it indicate a hill?'

'Could do,' shrugged Ray, whose interest in hills was, at this juncture, non-existent.

'Well,' continued the other man, 'if so, it's Horseback Ridge.'

Ray turned round. 'Am I missing something here? What has a hill called Horseback Ridge got to do with our train?'

'Quite a lot,' replied Crew, ignoring the sarcasm. 'There's an old shunt line by the hill. Train's gone off the screen ... reckon that's where it's gone.' Nodding to himself. Crew opened the drawer beneath him and pulled out an ancient scroll map. 'Here,' he said as he -unfolded it. 'I'll show you. This line,' he pointed, 'is the Palliser Line. That there is Horseback Ridge ... and this - this is where your runaway's gone.'

Ray looked at where the gnarled old finger was pointing. 'So where does the shunt line lead to?'

'A nuclear plant. But,' said Crew, stalling Ray mid-wail, 'your train won't make it there - 'cos at this time of day there's another train coming this way, carrying spent fuel rods.'

'Why the hell,' said Ray with a frown, 'would they want to divert... oh my God! Fuel rods?'

'Yep. It's a train full of radioactive uranium.'

'So if that train meets up with our train, and if our train's wired ...' Horrified at the vision that sprang in his head. Ray jumped to his feet. 'You got a car?'

Crew broke into a broad, enthusiastic grin that seemed to knock decades off him. 'Have I got a car?' he chuckled. 'Oh boy do I have a car!'

Relieved, although slightly puzzled. Ray ran towards the door. 'Then let's go!'

A minute later, the reason for Crew's boyish enthusiasm was revealed. Leading Ray to a lean-to beside the station, he tugged at a length of tarpaulin, exposing one of the newest and nippiest vehicles on the market. Related - via satellite by the look of it - to the jeep family, it had chunky exposed wheels, a serious-looking roll bar, no roof and a gleaming, half-exposed chrome engine.

This,' said an astonished Ray, 'is yours?'

'Yep.' Beaming with pride. Crew surveyed his baby. Then he leaned into the space behind the seats and emerged with two crash helmets. 'Here,' he said as he handed one to Ray. 'Better put this on. It's going to be a bumpy ride.' 'You don't happen to have a third helmet, do you?' asked Ray.

'No. There's no room for a third person. Anyway,' added Crew, looking around. 'Who else is there to take with us?'

'I.. er, I wasn't thinking about a person. It's just that I tied my ... my dog up outside and figured he might like the ride. Thought he might be getting ... you know, lonely.'

'Sure.' Belying his age. Crew hurdled nimbly over the driver's door of the vehicle. 'But he's not a lap dog, is he? Don't want him falling out.'

'Um, no. Not a lap dog. Definitely not.' Ray walked back to the shack where Diefenbaker, for want of anything better to do, had fallen asleep. He was in for a very rude and violent awakening.

Five minutes later Diefenbaker was beginning to wish Crew had not extended the kind invitation to join them in the jeep. Despite the lack of anything remotely resembling a road - or even a flat surface - Crew screamed along at more miles an hour than Diefenbaker knew existed. Even Ray, a great fan of driving at speed, looked-slightly sick. And heaven only knew, thought Dief as he cowered at Ray's feet, how Ray could possibly read a map under these conditions.

'What's this?' shouted Ray above the din of the engine.

'What's what?'

'This.' Ray jabbed a finger at a line on the map.

Crew, whose eyesight was failing, had to take his eyes off the lack of road. This didn't seem to bother him unduly: the vehicle was capable of tackling any terrain - and no animate object would be stupid enough to stray into its erratic path. That,' he shouted as he looked at where Ray was pointing on the railway, 'is a safety measure. An emergency run-off shunt.'

'Do you think we can get our train onto it?'

'Sure. If we put on a bit of speed.'

Oh God, thought Diefenbaker, eavesdropping. That's all I need.

'And do you think,' yelled Ray as Crew stepped even harder on the throttle, 'you can get me on the train?'

Crew had to mull over that one for a moment. 'Well, it'll pass under a bridge in about ten minutes. Depends if you fancy jumping off the bridge on to the roof.'

Ray didn't fancy that very much at all. There was, however, no alternative. The best thing to do, as Crew went on to explain, was for Ray to get to the train while Crew drove on to the shunt and switched the rails.

Ray agreed. Getting to the train was imperative. He needed to alert Benton to the fact that the hijackers were not the only threat: to tell him that Ford and his cronies were intending to blow the train up as a damage limitation exercise.

In Chicago, however. Ford's plans were beginning to fall apart. Like Crew, he had a state of the art computer that monitored the train - and subsequently lost it. But unlike Crew, he didn't have a twenty-year old, coffee-stained map to fall back on. 'We've lost them!' he screamed into the computer. The train's disappeared!'

'Oh.'

'What do you mean "oh"?' Ford swung round to Deeter. 'Is that all you can say?'

'No, sir. I agree that losing them is bad news - but we also have some good news.'

'And what's that? They've been whisked away by aliens?'

'No, sir.' Deeter held up a fax that had come through moments before. 'We've matched the voice on the tape.'

'Oh. Who is he?'

'Bolt,' read Deeter. 'Randall K. Sometimes calls himself Robert. Born Oregon, 1953. Ex-military. And,' he added with a earl of his lip, 'he's a demolitions expert.'

'Shit!'

'Dishonourably discharged,' continued Deeter, 'in 1987 following an explosion at an officer's mess in Baden-Baden. Went underground stateside and resurfaced in a white supremacist group called the Fathers of the Confederation, based in Idaho.' Deeter grimaced and looked up at Ford. 'He's been linked to a number of recent bombings and train derailments.'

'So how did he find time to become a film director?'

Deeter looked down at the fax again. 'I'm afraid we don't have any information on that, sir. Perhaps he isn't really a film director. Maybe that was just a cover.'

'For what?'

'For being a terrorist.'

'Oh. Yes, I see. Well, Deeter, as soon as we ... hey!' Swinging back to the screen again. Ford noticed a succession of dots bleeping in the corner. 'We've got the train back!'

'Well done, sir.'

'Thank you.' Ford bent towards the machine. 'Right. As soon as we can establish a failsafe position, we get the Rapid Response Team in and hit the train with everything we've got.'

'We're going to blow up the train?'

Ford shot his deputy a withering, old-fashioned look. 'You'd rather blow up Chicago?'

Chapter Five

Tactfully ignoring Thatcher and Benton's rumpled appearance and sheepish expressions, Frobisher helped them through the hatch in the train's roof and led them through the vehicle, past the still-comatose Mounties and to the partition at the caboose. 'The enemy,' he said as they all huddled into the alcove, 'has gathered in the caboose.'

Cutting an authoritative figure despite the shaved crown of his hat, Benton held up a commanding hand. 'Alright. Follow me.'

'No.' Thatcher's voice was like a whip-crack.

'Ma'am?'

'This is my detail, Fraser. I'll go first. You follow me.'

Without leaving time for further objections, Thatcher stepped forward, pushed her way through the door and on to the outside platform.

Both taken aback by her sudden reversion to imperiousness, Benton and Frobisher looked at each other, a tacit sigh of 'women' on their lips. Someone else, however, had a typically vociferous response. 'Boy,' sighed Bob Fraser, materializing in front of them, 'times change! On balance I think for the better - but in my day a woman wouldn't have been allowed ...'

'Do you mind?' said Benton and Frobisher in unison. Then, realization dawning, they looked, open-mouthed, at each other. 'Great Scott!' Again they spoke simultaneously. 'You mean that you can actually see ...'

'Fellows,' interrupted Benton's father. 'This is not a good time to ponder one of death's mysteries.' Then he shot a half-puzzled, half-accusing look at his son. 'What happened to your hat?'

'Nothing.' Benton would sooner have had half of his head lopped off than tell his father about what had happened between him and Thatcher.

Bob Fraser nodded. 'Understood.'

'Ready?' said Benton to Frobisher. Then, at the older man's nod, he pushed the door open and followed Thatcher on to the platform. He stopped, mid-stride, when he took in the sight before him. Thatcher was standing on the corresponding platform of the caboose. Bolt was standing beside her. So, holding a gun to Thatcher's head, was a grinning Freya Chichester-Clark.

Bolt beamed at the Mounties. 'Well, howdy gentlemen.' Then, indicating the terrified Thatcher, he shrugged in apology. 'Look, first of all, I want you to know that I have no quarrel with you personally. As a matter of fact, I really love the horsey thing you do. Actually, it kinda turns me on. But,' he added with another shrug, 'the American Government is an outlaw government, because it is a government that has chosen to betray the sacred trust of its founding fathers. That betrayal cannot be tolerated and that so-called government must be punished, you see. So,' he said, holding up a tiny transmitter in his left hand, 'I have decided to take this opportunity to demonstrate a little trick I've been working on with this radio frequency transmitter.' Grinning from ear to ear, he flipped a switch on the mechanism, activating a little digital counter. This train is bound for glory,' he announced. 'It is now a trigger mechanism for an imminent nuclear meltdown.'

The two Mounties (three to those with ghost-friendly antennae) gaped in horror at the smiling terrorist. That horror increased when Bolt leaned down towards the buffers of the caboose and pulled a lever, detaching the caboose from the rest of the train.

Benton was the first to react. Thatcher's pleading eyes, her quiet desperation impelled him to breach the increasing space between their platform and the caboose - but Frobisher held him back. 'No, son,' he commanded with surprising authority.

'Priorities.'

Benton didn't take his eyes off Thatcher. 'But, 'Priorities.' Frobisher was adamant.

Still Benton stared at Thatcher. He thought he detected a new, sadly reproachful look in her eyes, yet he couldn't be sure. The caboose, gently rolling backwards, was already too far away for them to see its occupants clearly, while the main part of the train sped onwards towards destruction.

'Buck,' whispered Bob Fraser to his friend.

'Would you have a word with him?'

'About what?'

Lip curling with disapproval. Bob gestured to the distant caboose. 'Her.'

Oh God, thought Frobisher. Feelings. 'Why me?' he wailed. 'He's your son.'

'Well, yeah,' shrugged Bob, 'I know. But I'm dead and my advice has been growing stale recently. Come on,' he urged as he prodded the other man in the ribs and nodded towards Benton. 'Go ahead.'

Glad that Benton was still looking wistfully at the retreating caboose, Frobisher moved behind him and addressed his left collar-bone. ,'Er Benton ...' Pausing to clear his throat, he decided to start again. 'Benton. Your mother ... your mother married a good man.'

'Yes,' said Benton, without much conviction and still without turning round. 'She did.'

'I suppose, in a way, your father and I were rivals. But in the end we forged ahead. We overcame,' he said, nodding to himself, 'no matter what. What I'm ... well, what I mean ... I mean that between men and women there are ... things. There are times between men and women ... things which arise.' Then Frobisher took a deep breath and steeled himself to utter the dreaded word. 'Feelings.'

'She's my superior officer, sir. That's all.'

Frobisher nearly fainted with relief. 'Well,' he said with a smile. 'Enough said.'

Bob, who had made a tactful retreat while Frobisher dispensed his advice, noticed that the difficult, intimate conversation appeared to be over.

'All done?' he whispered as he sidled up to Frobisher.

Frobisher turned round and smiled. 'Yep.'

Beside them, Benton also turned. The pained, wistful look had gone. In its place was a resolute, unsmiling determination. 'Right,' he said. 'Let's get back to business.'

At that very moment the train passed under a bridge. Unseen by the three men on the platform, Ray Vecchio was -standing on the bridge. Diefenbaker, looking acutely embarrassed and not a little silly, was in his arms. I am a wolf, he kept repeating to himself. Not a lap dog.

Ray screwed his eyes tightly shut and, heart thumping in his breast, braced himself for the jump. 'One ... two .. . three ... Go!' Behind him and standing beside the jeep. Crew shouted the command as the train whistled underneath. Leaving no room for misunderstanding, he gave Ray further encouragement - in the form of a violent shove that sent him flying downwards.

Ray landed on the very platform on which the three Mounties were standing.

'Good timing,' said Frobisher as Ray and Dief landed in a winded, undignified heap. 'We could use an extra man.'

Ray looked up in utter astonishment. 'Hey! Look ... we've just jumped into a speeding train. D'you think someone could say hello?'

'Hello Ray,' obliged Benton. Then, patting a delighted Diefenbaker on the head, he grimaced at his friend. 'We're in a bit of a pickle.'

'You're telling me,' said Ray, scrambling to his feet. 'And it's a dill.'

'C'mon then,' urged Benton. 'We've got to get to the engine room. See if we can stop this train.'

Frobisher, Ray, Benton and Dief ran hell-for-leather through the train, past the still-somnolent Mounties, the agitated horses and into the engine room. Bob Fraser didn't accompany them. Death had given him a dispensation from strenuous exercise. Wafting, now, was his thing.

'This train,' panted Ray as they entered the engine room, 'is on a collision course with a load of radioactive uranium.'

'Really?'

'Yes. They diverted it off the main track, Benny. We're now heading towards a train coming in the other direction, loaded with fuel rods. We're talking,' he added in apocalyptic tones, 'major melt-down.'

Before Benton or Frobisher could reply, a disembodied voice echoed through the engine room. Ray was the only one taken completely by surprise - the others suspected Bob Fraser. Yet when they looked round for the ghost, none was to be seen. And then the voice spoke again. It was coming, they realized, from the carriage-to-carriage intercom on the engine control panel - and it belonged to Bolt.

'We're heading south,' it crackled through the speaker.

'What do you mean, honey?' came the reply from a surprised Freya Chichester-Clark. 'I thought we were heading north.' For reasons of her own, it was imperative that she went north. Unbeknownst to Bolt, her fiance was meeting her at a secret rendezvous from whence she would escape from Bolt with all the ransom money. She couldn't wait. Pretending to be in love with Bolt had been the most arduous part of this exercise. Still, it had kept him sweet.

'Change of plans,' was Bolt's terse reply.

'What do you mean,' piped up a third party, '"change of plans"?' The voice, thought Benton, was that of the terrorist who appeared to be called Georgie Racine.

'Well,' came the reply. 'Several changes of plan, actually. We are heading south, to an All Terrain Vehicle and then a helicopter. And second? Well, turns out I'm kind of greedy, so you guys won't be coming along.'

The listeners in the engine room looked at each other in silent trepidation. What on earth was going on?

Five seconds later they knew exactly what was going on. The sound of gunfire echoed clearly and sharply through the intercom, followed by a sort of slumping sound as bodies fell to the ground.

Neither Frobisher nor Bob Fraser dared look at Benton. They knew, as Ray did not, that Thatcher was with the hijackers in the caboose. She, presumably, had managed to activate the intercom. But had that been the last, heroic act of her life?

And then Bolt's voice, eerily smarmy now, wafted once again through the ether. 'Just you and me now. Inspector Thatcher.'

Ray didn't hear Benton's heartfelt sigh of relief. 'Gee!' he said, looking not entirely unhappy. 'They got the dragon lady?'

Benton ignored the remark. 'Let's get to work,' he said, turning to Frobisher.

'Alright.' Deeply grateful that Feelings appeared to be safely off the agenda, Frobisher became suddenly businesslike. 'Right. Priorities. One: defuse the train. Two: stop the bomb.'

Respectful as ever, Benton chose not to criticize Instead, he offered an alternative. 'Or we could defuse the bomb and stop the train.'

'Exactly.' Frobisher chose not to criticize Benton for echoing his own advice. Poor boy, he thought He's obviously distressed about the dragon lady.

'What,' frowned Benton, 'if we can't do either?'

It was Ray, staring balefully at the control panel to which the terrorists had wired the bombs, who replied. 'I've found us a safety net. There's an emergency run-off shunt a couple of miles down the line.'

'How,' asked Frobisher, 'do we pull the switch to get us on to it?'

'We don't have to,' said Ray with a broad grin I've got a man on to it right now.'

'Oh?' Benton was impressed. 'Where?'

'Out there,' said Ray. 'He's got the fastest jeep in the world. He'll be at the switch before we get there.'

'Well, I sincerely hope he will be,' said Frobisher as he stepped out of the door and on to the platform at the front of the train. 'We have a train at twelve noon.'

Ray and Benton looked at each other in alarm Range?' asked the latter.

It was his father, joining Frobisher on the platform, who replied. His presence, he knew, was paramount: Buck's eyesight had never been that good, 'Six point three kilometres!' he yelled.

'Six point three kilometres!' shouted Frobisher for Ray's benefit.

Ray was horrified. 'It's gotta be sitting right in front of us!'

'Six point one kilometres!' warned the dead man.

'Six point one kilometres!' echoed the one who feared death was imminent.

'Five point seven kilometres!'

'Five point seven kilometres!'

'Where,' asked an anxious Benton, 'is your man on the shunt?'

'Don't worry,' said Ray, worrying. 'He'll be there.'

Frobisher, however, knew otherwise. He had just noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the fastest jeep in the world standing on its nose beneath an incline on the left of the train. 'No, son,' he sighed. 'I don't think he will be.' Then he turned to the younger men and, still standing on the threshold of the outside platform, drew himself up to his full height. 'Give me that gun,' he said to Benton.

'Sir?'

'You heard me. The rifle.'

Benton looked down at the rifle propped against the engine console. It had, presumably, been left by the hijackers. Perhaps, he thought, as a mocking invitation to the hostages to shoot themselves before they were melted down. Shrugging, he handed it to Frobisher. The older man, now the very picture of heroic martyrdom, stepped out on to the platform. 'Do or die,' he thought. In front of him, the train carrying the nuclear waste was speeding directly towards them. In between the two vehicles, the emergency shunt-line had come into view. Beside it was a huge, old-fashioned switch. Frobisher lifted the rifle into the crook of his shoulder. It was going to be difficult, he mused, but not impossible. The switch was a flat metal panel - one that would turn if hit by a high-velocity bullet.

'The Great Yukon Double Douglas Fir Spruce Telescoping Bank Shot?' suggested an impressed voice at his ear.

Frobisher shrugged. 'Any bloody shot I can make.' With that, he bent into firing position, only to find that the sights on the rifle defeated him. In his time, a rifle was a rifle was a rifle - no high-tech gadgetry to complicate the issue. 'Which end of this thing,' he wailed to his friend, 'do I look through?'

'Haven't a clue. Here . ..' Bob Fraser reached up, detached the sights from the weapon and threw them off the speeding train. 'How about that?'

'Much better. Modern technology,' snorted Frobisher. 'Forget it.'

Back in the engine room, Ray and Benton looked at the engine console under the supercilious gaze of Diefenbaker. 'What,' said Ray, 'are these numbers?'\

'Well these indicate the hours, minutes and seconds, which means that this,' added Benton as he pointed to a different set of flickering figures, 'must indicate the ...'

'... speed of the train.'

'Precisely. So the bombs will go off at the allocated time - unless the train stops. In that event, they will go off as soon as it's stationary.'

'But we don't want to stop it!'

'Yes we do. Ray. The shunt line stops after quarter of a mile.'

'Oh. But didn't you say that they'd bypassed the brakes?'

'I've just mended them.'

'Oh. How did you do that?'

'It's not important. Ray. What is important is that we must kid these instruments into thinking that the train's still moving.'

'Got you,' nodded Ray. 'Er ... how do we do that?'

'We have to find something that's moving and connect it to the monitor.'

'Ah.' Ray looked around without much hope. Then his eyes lit up as he spotted something above them. 'How about that?'

Benton followed his gaze. 'Perfect,' he said as he saw the fan whirling round on the ceiling. 'Perfect. Heartily glad that they now had something to occupy their minds, both men set about dismantling the fan from its mechanism. For Ray, the activity stopped him entertaining his severe - and increasing - doubts about Frobisher's ability to shoot them on to the shunt. And as far as Benton was concerned, it stopped him thinking about something equally important - about why the intercom had gone dead.

The latter question had a simple answer. Bolt, holding Thatcher at gunpoint and with the bag of money in his other hand, had dismounted from the caboose and was running towards his next mode of transport - the all-terrain vehicle that would lead him to the helicopter hidden in a clearing in the nearby woods.

Ray's doubts over the former issue were, however, well founded.

On the platform, Frobisher shook his head and lowered the gun. 'It's-aa impossible angle.'

'Rubbish! No angle's impossible.'

Frobisher glared at his deceased friend. 'Look, when you made that shot you were Bob Fraser - a young Bob Fraser. Look at me now,' he said with sudden sadness. 'My eyes are fading, my knees won't hold and I've been passing wind for a week.'

Even Bob had to concede that the prognosis for a successful shot was not good. Then his eyes lit up with sudden excitement. 'Do you want me to tell you how I made that shot?'

'No.' The last thing Frobisher wanted was his friend crowing in his ear. Then, remembering they were on a bomb-laden train about to crash into another carrying lethal nuclear waste, he changed his mind. "Course,' he said grudgingly, 'if you feel you must, then go ahead.'

Bob needed no further invitation. Grinning like a schoolboy, he leaned towards his friend and whispered into this ear. The last thing he wanted was eavesdroppers. He had carried the secret of that shot to his grave - and beyond. He had sworn never to divulge it to anyone else - and especially to Frobisher - yet, under the particularly challenging circumstances in which they now found themselves, he was prepared to make a gracious exception.

Whatever it was he told Frobisher, it had an immediate effect. His friend nodded several times, raised the gun once more, closed his eyes - and pulled the trigger. A moment later, a sharp 'zinging' sound echoed above the noise of the two trains as a bullet slammed into the metal switch.

'Good man,' said Bob Fraser as, in front of them, the railway tracks, protesting rustily, shifted to open the shunt line. And not a moment too soon. A few seconds later, their train thundered past the switch and on to the shunt line, its end carriage narrowly avoiding collision with the nuclear train. That tram, its route now barred to it, screeched to a shuddering halt and lurched drunkenly on the axis of the shunt line.

In the engine room. Ray screamed encouragement to Benton. 'It's worked! He's done it! Hit the brakes!'

With the revolving fan now safely wired to the trigger mechanism of the bombs, Benton did as he was bid. For a moment nothing happened. Then to their intense relief, their train began to slow down and stopped, finally, three yards from the end of the line.

Chapter Six

'If it were me, son, I'd saddle a horse.' Still with one hand on the brake lever, Benton looked up at his father. Did he mean what he thought he meant? Was his father actually encouraging him to ride out in search of Thatcher? As if reading his son's mind (which, given that he was dead, he probably was). Bob smiled in greater encouragement. 'Go for it, son.'

Grinning, delighting in one of their rare moments of understanding, Benton rose to his feet, squared his shoulders and strode out of the engine room.

Ray looked at him in surprise. 'Where are you going?'

To saddle a horse.'

Baffled, Ray watched Benton's retreating figure. Typical, he thought. 'Not even a 'Phew, that was close.' Oh no: seconds after narrowly escaping death Benton was off again on another errand.

'Where on earth,' said Frobisher as he came in from the platform, 'is he going?'

'To saddle a horse.'

'Ah,' said the older man, breaking into a smile. More heroics. After the successful attempt at the Great Yukon Double Douglas Fir Spruce Telescoping Bank Shot, he felt ready for anything.

'What about the men?' asked Ray.

'Yes ' said Bob Fraser. 'What about the men?'

Frobisher looked at his watch. 'Well, if Benton's right, they should be coming to right now...'

And as he spoke, the rousing opening bars of the second verse of the Mountie's anthem drifted towards them and the train echoed with the strains of 'Ride Forever'.

Nodding to himself, Frobisher bolted out of the engine room, leaving Ray and Diefenbaker, both suddenly forlorn. 'What's with them. Dief? Are all Mounties mad?'

But Diefenbaker didn't answer. He had witnessed the exchange between Benton and his father; knew what was about to happen. How undignified, he thought, for Benton to go chasing around the countryside after a woman - and in particular a woman like Thatcher.

But Dief's disappointment was double-edged. He had long considered himself an honorary human being, able to do everything a man could do. But no matter how honourable or honorary, there was one activity he was simply incapable of mastering.

Ray was thinking much along the same lines. 'Don't worry. Dief,' he sighed, delivering a reassuring pat on Diefenbaker's rump. 'I can't ride either. But the Mounties could. Invigorated by their sleep, they responded with alacrity to Benton's orders. Still singing lustily, they hurried down the carriage and into the horse cars to saddle up.

A few minutes later, the ramps of the horse cars crashed simultaneously to the ground. Had Bolt or his deceased accomplices been watching, the ensuing spectacle would have brought tears to their eyes and tingles to their spines. Thirty-four horses and thirty-four men, led by Benton and Frobisher, leaped from the train. Immaculate in red serge, battle lances at the ready and in perfect formation, they thundered across the prairie, kicking up dust in their wake as they sped off in search of their Leaderene.

The Leaderene herself was bouncing around in the passenger seat of Bolt's ATV, contemplating her fate. Why, she wondered, had he taken her with him? Would she remain a hostage forever - or would Bolt kill her as soon as he had reached freedom? If only she could do something .. .

But the nature of the ATV prevented her from doing anything at all except cling on for dear life. A cross between a motorbike and the sort of jeep favoured by Crew, it was hideously uncomfortable - and frighteningly fast. It was all Thatcher could do to hold on to the bar in front of her. Grinning triumphantly. Bolt had both hands on the handle-bars - but his gun, tantalizingly out of reach to Thatcher, was nestling snugly in his shoulder holster. There was absolutely nothing Thatcher could do except pray fervently to a God whom she had abandoned - in a move she now regretted - in favour of a being she had believed to be altogether more powerful. Herself.

As for Bolt, he was having the time of his life. The Mounties would be dead soon, Chicago would be panicking, his accomplices were no more - and he now had ten million dollars to call his own. What to do with them, he wondered as he charged across the rough terrain? Where to live? Whence to fly in the helicopter that he would soon reach? And what to do with his passenger? Earlier, she had irritated him by her all too obvious desire to be the centre of attention: well, now she was the centre of attention - and she didn't appear to be relishing it. Not one little bit, he saw as he cast a sidelong glance over to her. She had turned pale, her mouth was set in a thin, desperate line - but she still looked immensely sexy in her red serge.

Grinning to himself. Bolt gunned the engine and threw the little vehicle up a steep incline. By his reckoning, it was about time for the Mounties' train to collide with the one carrying nuclear waste: an explosion he just had to hear.

As he reached the top of the incline, he eased the throttle and guided the ATV to a halt. Just as he was turning to tell Thatcher to brace herself for the biggest bang of her life, he saw something strange out of the corner of his eye. It looked, he thought in one mad moment, like a forest of spindly trees on the move; Burnham Wood, to his theatrical sensibilities, on its way to Dunsinane. But as he peered into the distance, he realized, with mounting horror, exactly what the apparition was. The trees were not trees at all; they were lances. And beneath them, approaching over the horizon, were thirty-four Mounties on horseback. The Musical Ride, by some horrible twist of fate, had managed to thwart him. And now they were coming after him.

Frobisher, experiencing a second flush of youth and with it an improvement in the eyesight department, was the first to spot the ATV. He turned to Benton. There!' he yelled; a bellow that was swiftly followed by a word he had relished since he had first become a Mountie forty-three years previously. 'Charge!'

The Ride needed no urging. Lances lowered, the Mounties kicked their horses into a gallop and charged down the hill.

An elated Thatchei-saw her chance - and then missed it. Just as she was about to dismount from the vehicle, Bolt revved the engine and screamed back the way he had come. 'Shit!' he screamed. Then he turned to his reluctant passenger. 'Why,' he snarled, 'do they always look so happy?'

Two minutes later they had reason to be happy. An all-terrain vehicle was no match for thirty-four super-fit horses ridden by an equal number of fit men. With every second that passed, they gained ground on their quarry; and with every yard covered, they came closer to the range of their lances. At an order from Benton, they began to throw them. In a frenzied panic. Bolt tried to zig-zag around; to avoid the spikes that rained down all around him. Yet they weren't aiming for Bolt himself, but for the petrol tank on the rear of the vehicle.

Two lances punctured the tank at the same time. Thatcher let out a whoop of delight: Bolt one of despair. Then, as the vehicle started to splutter and slow down, he turned it to face the marauding army. Despite the truly awesome sight of the horses thundering towards him, he remained calm enough to reach for his holster and extract his gun. He trained it on the Mountie nearest to him - Benton.

Having missed one moment, Thatcher wasn't about to repeat the experience. In one deft movement, she snapped her elbow back, catching Bolt a heavy blow on the jaw and throwing him to the ground. Then she stood up on the vehicle and held her arms up in the air.

Benton needed no further encouragement. With hardly a break in his stride, he rode on towards the crippled ATV and, in a scene reminiscent of Gone With The Wind (or at least a middling-to-good Western) he scooped Thatcher off her feet and, still without even slowing down, positioned her on the saddle behind him. As she folded her arms round his waist and held on for dear life, Thatcher experienced a fleeting moment of regret. If the film crew hadn't turned out to be terrorists, Benton's gallant rescue would have been captured forever on celluloid. There was, a healthier part of her brain told her as they galloped along, a flaw in that line of reasoning, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it was.

The Ride, with flawless synchronicity that would have brought tears to Commander Welsh's eyes reconfigured itself with electrifying speed and, in one fluid movement, encircled the hapless Bolt Lying on the ground, groping for his gun, he made a pathetic figure. His beret had fallen off, his wispy hair was straggling around his shoulders, his posturing artisan's striped Breton shirt was streaked with mud. And he was surrounded on all sides by huge whinnying horses. Yet even as he stared defeat in the face, his director's eye couldn't help admiring the fitting, 'theatrical nature of the denouement of the day's events. Then he remembered that he had murdered his accomplices, tried to destroy two trains and their occupants, and he began to cry.

The Ride returned to the train, still in formation and led, on one side, by Benton and Thatcher, and on the other by Frobisher. Bolt was in the middle, doubling-up behind a particularly macho Mountie His hands were bound and, just in case he still entertained notions of escape, the Mountie behind him held him at lance-point.

Frobisher's delight at the success of their mission was further enhanced when Bob Fraser appeared at his side. -Say!' he exclaimed as Bob's mount fell into trotting pace with his own. 'Isn't that my old horse Bucket? The one that was shot out from under me in Dry Gulch Canyon?'

'Yes.' Bob patted the aged animal. 'Thought you'd like to see him again.'

'Yeah.' Frobisher nodded and leaned across to stroke Bucket's mane. 'Very thoughtful'

'By the way,' said Bob. 'Did I congratulate you on that shot?'

'Not yet, no.'

'Well, it ranks right up there with the Great Yukon Double Douglas Fir Telescoping Bank

How typical of Bob, thought Frobisher. No overt congratulations - just a backhanded compliment. 'You realize, of course,' he said with more than a tinge of superiority, 'that I knew you were always the one Caroline loved?'

'Oh.' Bob Fraser looked incensed. 'So now you're saying you missed intentionally?'

'Well,' shrugged Frobisher, 'we were friends.'

'No we weren't.'

'Yes we were.'

'Oh no.' Bob edged his horse ahead. 'No, no, no. We were not.'

Frobisher nudged his own horse forward. 'Don't you tell me that after thirty-seven years on the force .. .'

'You told people I was your friend.' Bob shook his head. 'But no. No, I was never your friend ...'

And the two men continued as they had done for years, bickering into the sunset.

On the other side of the Ride, Thatcher leaned towards Benton. 'You understand, Fraser, that what happened between us can never repeat itself.'

Then, regretting the statement, she inserted a let-out clause. 'Unless, of course, the exact same circumstances were to repeat themselves.'

'By exact same circumstances, sir, you mean we would have to be aboard a train loaded with unconscious Mounties that had been taken over by terrorists and was heading for a nuclear catastrophe?'

'Exactly, Fraser.'

'Understood.' Nodding and displaying no emotion whatsoever, Benton steered his mount up the last slope towards the train. He broke out into a smile as he noticed Ray was standing on the roof of the train, Diefenbaker sitting at his feet.

He wouldn't have been smiling if he knew that Diefenbaker was crying and that Ray was trying to console him. 'I know, big fellow,' said Ray as he stroked the distraught wolf. 'But there are times ... between men and women, when things ... come up, you know ... Feelings.'

Diefenbaker whined in response.

'Oh well,' sighed Ray. 'Enough said.'