Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"I can't pinpoint it exactly without an old map."

Giordino quickly glanced through several topographical maps of the valley. "Nothing here, but these surveys only go back to nineteen sixty-five."

"How did you discover this Mondragon Hook?" asked Pitt.

"Elementary reasoning," Heidi shrugged. "I asked myself where I would hide a locomotive and seven Pullman cars where no one could find them for a lifetime. The only answer was underground. So I began working backward and checked old Albany dispatch records before nineteen fourteen. I hit pay dirt and found eight different freight trains that hauled ore cars loaded with limestone."

"Limestone?"

"Yes, the shipments originated from ajunction called Mondragon Hook and were destined for a cement plant in New Jersey."

"When?"

"In the eighteen nineties."

Giordino looked skeptical. "This Mondragon Hook could have been hundreds of miles from here."

"It had to be below Albany," said Heidi.

"How can you be sure?"

"New York & Quebec Northern records don't list ore cars carrying limestone on any freight trains that passed through Albany. But I did run across a mention of them in a dispatch log from the Germantown rail yard where there was a switch of locomotives."

"Germantown," said Pitt. "That's fifteen miles downriver."

"My next step was to search through old geological maps," Heidi continued. She paused and slipped one from her briefcase and flattened it on the table. "The only underground limestone quarry between Albany and Germantown lay here." She made a mark with a pencil. "About nine miles north of the DeauvilleHudson bridge and three-quarters of a mile west."

Pitt put the binocular glasses to his eyes and began scanning the aerial photos. "Here, due east of the quarry site, is a dairy farm. The house and barnyard have erased all remains of the junction."

"Yes, I see it," Heidi said excitedly. "And there's a paved road that runs toward the New York State Thruway."

"Small wonder you lost the trail," Giordino said. "The county laid asphalt over it."

"If you look closely," said Pitt, "you can pick out a section of old rail ballast as it curves from the road for a hundred yards and ends at the foot of a steep hill, or mountain as the natives would label it."

Heidi peered through the binoculars. "Surprising how clear everything becomes when you know what to search for."

"Did you happen to turn up any information on the quarry" Giordino asked her.

"That part was easy," Heidi nodded. "The property and the track right-of-way were owned by the Forbes Excavation Company, which operated the quarry from eighteen eighty-two until nineteen ten, when they encountered flooding. All operations were halted, and the land was sold to neighboring farmers."

"I hate to be a wet blanket," said Giordino. "But suppose the quarry was an open pit?"

Heidi gave him a considering look. "I see what you mean. Unless the Forbes Company mined the limestone from inside the mountain, there'd be no place to hide a train." She scanned the photo again.

"Too much growth to tell for sure, but the terrain appears unbroken."

"I think we should scout it out," Pitt said.

"All right," Giordino agreed. "I'll drive you."

"No, I'll go alone. In the meantime, call Moon and get some more bodies up here-a platoon of marines, in case Shaw brings in reinforcements. And tell him to send us a mining engineer, a good one. Round up any old-timers around the countryside who might remember any strange goings-on at the quarry. Heidi, if you feel up to it, kick the local publishers out of bed and dig through old papers for any relevant news items that were pushed to the back pages by the DeauvilleHudson bridge collapse. I'll know better where we stand when I inspect the quarry."

"Not much time left," Giordino said gloomily. "The President makes his speech in nineteen hours."

"I don't have to be reminded." Pitt reached for his coat. "All that's left for us now is to get inside that mountain."

The sun had set and was replaced by a quarter moon. The evening air was crisp and sharp. From his vantage point high above the old quarry entrance Shaw could see the lights of villages and farms miles away. It was a fair and picturesque land, he thought idly.