The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

By the time Bell got to the melee, Charlie Widney was heaving the last of the attackers over his shoulder and into the black waters of the harbor. Captain Fyrie and Arn Bjørnson had remained on the ship but seemed prepared to join in had the fight gone differently. Farther down the pier, additional men were spilling from the back of the grocer’s cart under the direction of Gly and Massard.

In the other direction were the two open-bed Leyland trucks. Bell pointed at one, and shouted to Brewster, “Move that to the gangway.” He looked back at the Icelandic captain. “Can your men load the ore onto the truck?”

“We’ve got it. Go!”

“And please grab my travel bag from my cabin.” Bell pulled the knife from its ankle sheath. “Follow me.”

He ran to the end of the gangway and dodged left toward where Gly and Massard’s men were gathering. The numbers seemed evenly matched, but these men were big, healthy-looking, and eager to get at it, while the Coloradans were a little bloodied from the first round. And yet they didn’t hesitate. Except for Brewster, who was turning the truck’s engine crank so they could steal it, the miners rushed after Isaac Bell like a pack of baying hounds.

The two groups crashed together like opposing football teams, only the idea was to maim and kill rather than merely tackle. Bell managed to stab one man in the arm before ducking out from under a swinging club. That man was struck in the shoulder by Walt Schmidt, brandishing the flensing knife like a halberd. The blood looked black in the murky dockside lighting.

Men scrambled and fought, throwing punches and heaving weapons when the confines were too tight to swing. Bell looked for Gly or Massard. For them, he’d risk pulling the .45 and ending this now, but neither man showed himself. Someone swung a length of chain at his head. He threw up an arm, and the links coiled around his bicep. He clutched at the end of the chain, and both he and his adversary pulled at the exact same instant. The tension as they pulled made the links as taut as an iron bar, and each man strained to best the other.

Knowing how to end the stalemate, Bell willed himself to relax and let the man yank him forward. He couldn’t get an angle with the knife, so he whipped past his opponent and then planted a foot and swung his body with everything he had. His extra momentum yanked the attacker backward, and Bell was able to swing him hard enough that when he released his grip on the chain, it rattled free of his arm and the man went plunging off the dock and into Aberdeen Harbor.

Around him, bloodied men fought desperate battles. On the filthy concrete, those who lost the melee lay moaning or dead. Bell still couldn’t find Gly or Massard. He tried to reach the grocer’s wagon to see if they were hiding behind it, but one of the men ran at him with a bat. Bell ducked back and the man held his ground, a smug look on his unshaven face. Another came to join him at his side, and just as quickly as the two groups of men had attacked each other, they separated to take a breather, as if this were a boxing match and the round had ended.

The Hvalur Batur’s whistle suddenly blew during the lull. Bell hadn’t set up a signal with Ragnar Fyrie, but it sounded like the crew had finished loading the byzanium ore and the ride out of this trap was ready. Like schooling fish or a flock of birds that change direction as one entity, the miners wheeled and started running back toward the ship. Their attackers, winded by the fight, were still game and were about to give chase.

Bell pulled his .45 from its holster and held it in such a way that the brawlers saw its silhouette. “First man to take a step gets one in the heart.”

30

Bell’s action had the desired result. The fighters stopped in their tracks, giving him a chance to race after his people. He heard Gly behind him and stopped to look back. The bald Scotsman had been behind the wagon. He was now on the seat, cajoling his men to pursue. Bell took aim, but he was already too far away for an accurate shot. He was also down to just six bullets. He turned to follow the miners, the heavy pistol swinging from one hand while the other held his blood-smeared knife.

The ten wooden crates were settled in the truck’s flat bed and the engine was purring. Arn was sitting behind the wheel and had his hand on the gearshift ready to wrestle it into drive.

“What are you doing?” Bell asked, panting.

“I’ve been to Aberdeen before. I know how to get out of the city.”

Not about to pass up local expertise, Bell stepped onto the running board while the others piled atop the treasured crates. “Let’s go.”

With a thousand pounds of ore, and two thousand more of men, the Leyland was grossly overloaded and had barely started creeping forward when Arn engaged the transmission. The heavy links of its chain drive slipped a few cogs as the machine tried to overcome so much inertia. Bell, Charlie Widney, and John Caldwell—the youngest of the miners at nineteen—all jumped from the vehicle and started pushing it to build up some speed before clambering aboard again. Well behind them, Foster Gly had managed to turn the team of horses and was starting to give chase, his men hanging from the sides of the wagon or clinging to its roof.

Bell watched them come. It took him just a few seconds to see that the old horses were actually faster than the Leyland, at least until the truck could build up more speed. The problem would come when they hit the streets of Aberdeen. It was late enough that traffic had thinned, but there were certainly going to be delays. Further impeding them was the necessity of slowing to a crawl in order to make a turn. And then acceleration, once they were clear, would be painfully slow.

The only thing keeping Gly from pressing his attack was Bell’s .45 pistol, yet he knew a missed shot would put any late-night pedestrians at unacceptable risk. If Gly had been able to bring weapons from France, Bell doubted he’d have qualms about firing indiscriminately into the crowd. He was grateful the thug had arrived without firearms.

There was a night watchman at a guardhouse where the dock ended and the city streets began. He might have heard the pistol shot had the fight not taken place too far down the quay from him to detect. He looked alert as the lumbering truck approached, while a hundred yards back the grocer’s wagon was coming like it was a sulky in a harness race. The guard carried only a flashlight and he waved it like a train conductor to get their attention and compel them to stop. He would certainly know the truck’s rightful owner and recognize that none of the men hanging from it were he. Behind him, a chain-link gate was pulled closed across the road but didn’t look like it had been padlocked.

“What do I do?” Arn asked.

“Ignore him and keep going,” Bell said. He and Arn drew their bodies tight against the truck’s cab as they raced past the astonished watchman and slammed into the swinging gate. The impact didn’t slow the truck but left the wire gates bent and quivering and emitting an odd metallic warble. The guard shouted after them as they motored on.

“With luck, he’ll face down the horses,” Bell said, “and buy us a little time.”

Just a couple of blocks from the dock was Aberdeen’s fifty-year-old train station, a crumbling affair soon to be replaced with a modern building. The truck’s motor was working doubly hard trying to move its ponderous load, and Bell realized there was a better way to do this.

Bell said, “Drive past the station and turn left along the outgoing tracks. We need something faster than this truck.”

Before they made the corner, Bell looked back. Just before the guard shack went out of view, he saw the watchman had placed himself in the middle of the exit, and the horses, so well conditioned, had stopped at the gate and no amount of urging by Gly would get them moving again. In moments, the guard would be manhandled aside, but Bell was getting the additional time he needed.

The truck went extra wide through the corner and almost plowed headfirst into an oncoming car. That vehicle had to cut sharply to the inside of the truck at the last second, the ashen-faced driver recovering his wits enough to curse them out. The maneuver didn’t cost them as much s

peed as it would have if Arn had stayed in his own lane, and they were accelerating again almost immediately. Beyond the passenger terminal, along College Street, were the freight yards. They were mostly hidden from the city by a corrugated metal fence, but there were gates leading into the secured depot. Farther ahead, the road had been torn up in preparation for the construction of the new Aberdeen rail station. The overburdened truck wouldn’t stand a chance through this area where the macadam and cobbles had been dislodged.

Bell had Arn stop next to one of the gates and made short work of the lock with his pick. Beyond, he could hear the huff and snort of locomotives and the clank of rail couplings. Like before, men needed to hop out of the Leyland to get it moving again once Bell swung the gates open. Because they were metal sheets, Bell couldn’t resecure the lock from the inside, so he found some proper-sized stones to use as ballast from a nearby railbed and wedged them on either side of the gates’ roller wheels so they couldn’t move.