The Bootlegger (Isaac Bell 7)

Bell said, “Admiral Falconer showed me experiments in a test caisson where armor experts simulated torpedo attacks to measure the impact of explosions underwater. Torpedoes were coming into their own just as the science boys began to understand what made them so deadly.”

Blast energy from mines and torpedoes was terrifically amplified and concentrated underwater. By the middle of the war, depth charges were sinking submarines, which gave Bell an idea how to deal with the tunnel and everything in it.

“Round up four cases of dynamite.”

Bell wired Grady Forrer for more information from the geological survey that Osgood Hennessy had commissioned for his tunnel.

HOW DEEP TUNNEL?

WHAT IS BOTTOM MATERIAL?

Bell had decreed that gangland Detroit was too dangerous for even a fortified Van Dorn field office to employ apprentices, so he was forced to press tough Protective Services operatives into apprentice tasks. “Run to the library. Look in the 1891 issues of Harper’s Weekly for an article about the Saint Clair River Tunnel.”

“Library?”

“You can count on Harper’s for a rundown on the big engineering feats. 1891. The librarian will help you find it.”

“When?”

“Now! On the jump!”

The broad-shouldered house dick lumbered off, scratching his head.

Grady wired back:

BOTTOM CONSISTS OF SAND, CLAY, BOULDERS, AND ROCK.

TUNNEL CROWN THREE FEET UNDER BOTTOM.

“Good!”

But when the Protective Services op returned with the Harper’s article about the St. Clair Tunnel, Bell ran into a snag he hadn’t considered. The cast-iron walls of the St. Clair Tunnel were two inches thick, which would make it immensely strong. Hennessy’s abandoned tunnel had been built of similar cast-iron segments.

Stymied, and hoping to see the problem from another, more productive angle, Bell put it to Dashwood in the starkest terms. “We can’t count on explosives breaching the main tunnel. They will easily destroy the connector. But if the connector collapses too far from the main tunnel, the debris will seal it before the water reaches the main tunnel. To guarantee breaching the main tunnel and destroying the Comintern’s stockpile, we have to explode the dynamite very near the joint where the tunnels connect.”

Dashwood asked, “Why don’t we just raid the tunnel? That will shut it.

”

“It won’t stay shut long,” said Bell. “The cops and courts are for sale on both sides of the river. They’ll put pictures in the papers of a prosecutor swinging an ax at a case of whisky. But hush money will keep that booze safe where it is. Zolner and his partners will lay low ’til the politicians are done demanding another ‘drive’ against liquor, then back to business—unless we flood the tunnel and destroy the Comintern’s stockpile. I told Mr. Van Dorn, and I’ll tell you: I will not settle for bloodying his nose this time. I’m going to drive Marat Zolner out of Detroit.”

“Where do you think he’ll go?”

Bell answered, “Where do I think? Listen.”

He sat at the private-wire Morse key and tapped out a message to New York.

FORWARD FINAL PAYMENT LYNCH & HARDING MARINE.

DELIVER MARION EXPRESS CRUISER MIAMI.

“We have to stop him from setting up business the way he’s doing here in Detroit and back in New York.”

“What if he goes to The Bahamas?” Dashwood asked.

“He won’t. He has no reason to go to Nassau. Nassau is like Canada, a relatively safe base for legal liquor. Florida is lawless, an import-and-distribution center like Detroit and New York where he can fight to expand and take over.”

Bell gave Dashwood a cold smile and added, “If for some reason he does go to Nassau, Nassau is three hours from Miami by fast boat. And Marion is going to be one fast boat.”