The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

Gly leapt after the knife before Bell had time to recover. He crashed on the detective’s back hard enough and at such an angle that it actually helped Bell snip through the remaining chain. The dozen trailing cars were now released. Unburdened by an additional two hundred tons of weight, Alvin Coulter should be able to keep the train ahead of Massard’s.

There was no room for Bell to pull his weapon. And no time. He merely let himself fall over the bumper and let Gly’s momentum toss him over his shoulder and onto the ground. For such a large man, Gly had incredible reflexes. Just as he was about to tumble onto the ribbon of ballast stones between the tracks, he got a hand on the chain dangling from the receding railcar and was yanked clear. He fell so that only the heels of his shoes hit the ground, the rest of his weight being supported by the chain as he dangled beneath the slowing boxcar. He’d just barely kept himself from falling under its wheels and was now hidden from view under the car itself and safe from Bell’s now drawn automatic pistol.

Bell watched the gap between him and Gly grow as the locomotive put on a burst of speed. He hoped distance would give him an angle under the boxcar’s leading edge. However, he quickly realized that by the time he would be able to see Gly, Gly would be too small of a target.

He holstered his weapon and climbed atop the car carrying the miners and the crated ore. He had just gotten his footing when he felt the train dramatically slow, and he nearly toppled off the car. It appeared that Massard’s men had almost gotten into position to swing the crane boom over and drop the rail in front of the freight train when Bell had loosened the remainder of the cars and his locomotive began to outpace Massard’s.

Now the train was slowing of its own accord, and soon Massard would have them trapped. And God only knew what would happen when the string of cars that Bell had just cut free slammed into the rear of this boxcar carrying such a destructive amount of kinetic force.

And that’s when

Bell noticed broken Alvin Coulter lying in the gap between the two sets of tracks just before the train flashed past his inert body.

33

Bell let the wind carry away the oath he muttered. He was in motion even before the plan was fully formed. He dropped flat to the roof just above the sliding door. Massard was far enough ahead that he couldn’t get a good angle to fire back, so that wasn’t a concern.

“Can you hear me?” he shouted. “It’s Bell. Open the door.”

The door slid open smoothly. Looking up at him was big Charlie Widney. He said, “Tom Price is dead.”

“We might all be too. Really soon. Give me that long flensing knife.”

Just seconds later, the eight-foot-long pike-like weapon was thrust up into Bell’s hands. He said nothing further and ran for the coal tender. He leapt, landed in a forward roll, and came up with the long shaft of the knife still at port arms. He ran over, slid down the face of loose coal just behind the cab. Vern Hall and Johnny Caldwell were both sprawled on the floor, both bleeding from the skull, both as likely dead as not.

Bell ignored them. He saw the throttle had been closed and immediately cranked it to full open. The engine responded like a horse on the final turn of the Belmont Stakes. The rocker arms attached to the wheels became gleaming blurs as a burst of steam pressure sent them shuttling back and forth. The acceleration was immediate.

He looked ahead and saw Massard’s men had almost succeeded in cranking the crane over so that the end of its boom, and its dangerous payload, were almost directly in front of Bell’s train. The shunting engine was giving it everything it had, but it was no match for Bell’s more powerful locomotive. The front of their boiler smacked into the crane boom and swung it back so that it was pointing straight up the tracks once more. The section of rail swung like a pendulum. Bell kept low. Yves Massard must have realized his prize was again out of reach. He’d be desperate.

And still the freight train kept moving faster and faster. The clack of the wheels on the rails became as frantic as the staccato clatter of a typewriter. In a minute, Bell was level with the leading flatbed and pulling ahead with every yard of track they covered. He stayed to the far side of the locomotive cab and crouched. Out the window opposite, he saw the gears and pinions of the crane. The men tried to crank it over again, trying to wedge the dangling rail into the big drive wheels like a spiteful child might do with a length of pipe through a rival’s bicycle spokes.

Bell judged his timing and yanked his .45 free of its holster. He moved cautiously and took careful aim and fired off three shots. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone, wanting instead to cause enough confusion for the second part of his plan. As it was, he hit one man in the throat, and the spray of blood as he corkscrewed to the deck was all the distraction that was needed.

Bell thrust the flensing knife out the cab’s glassless window, leaning as far as he could, his arm quivering with the strain. The weapon was more than long enough and, more importantly, sharp enough. The blade was no match for the braided steel cable that wound around the crane’s main take-up drum, but it sliced cleanly through the hemp sling that let the rail dangle from the hook.

The rail hit the tracks in front of Massard’s train with a clang like an out-of-tune bell. It rolled and rattled for a few seconds before wedging under the flatcar’s front wheels. Friction built quickly, as did the crescendo of noise that was so high-pitched it was painful. The engineer back in the shunting engine must have understood what had happened, and no amount of threatening by the man Gly left with him could get him to maintain the pursuit. The train began a swift deceleration, the engineer fearing the wedged length of metal would get under the wheels and derail the first car and likely the entire little train.

Bell allowed himself a single nod to celebrate his feat and at that very moment the world echoed with the scream of a massive steam whistle. Bell hadn’t been paying the slightest attention to what was ahead of the dueling locomotives and so he never saw the train barreling down the same track as Massard and his men.

Wreathed in steam and smoke, the train was pulling a long string of coal hoppers headed north to keep the people of Aberdeen warm and their factories churning. It was so heavy, it required two locomotives, even though the run from Glasgow was relatively level. Its horn continued to wail. Its driver slammed closed his throttles and engaged full brake.

Bell had time to see Massard’s men leaping from the flatbed like rats abandoning a sinking schooner. What he didn’t see was Massard himself making it off. Just before Bell’s view was blocked, he spotted the Frenchman propped up against some rail ties on the flatbed, his jacket off and his shirt pulled open. Bell’s imagination added the bloodstained skin. Apparently, he had also hit Massard with his three-shot barrage.

And then came the impact. The two flatcars folded like hinges to the point where they coupled together and were suddenly thrust thirty feet in the air and then tossed aside. They were followed immediately by the small locomotive. It plowed into the ballast stones, rolling and shedding piping, so it was soon hidden amid jets of billowing steam. Steel wheels still screeching, the big coal train remained on the track.

Bell eased back on the throttle of the train and finally turned to check Caldwell and Hall. The teenager was dead. There was a dent in the back of his head the size of an orange. His blue eyes were wide and unblinking. Vern Hall was still alive but comatose. He had a contusion on his forehead that looked as though he’d been struck with an iron skillet, but other than that he was unmarked. Bell took down a lantern left by the engineer’s seat and raised the flame. He checked Hall’s eyes by lifting his lids. The pupils constricted normally, but he gave no conscious sign he was aware of Bell. Bell laid him out a bit more comfortably and draped him with an old coat that had been hanging on the bulkhead next to the bolt cutter.

Alvin Coulter had ended up dead and tossed from the train like dregs from an old cup of coffee. Bell gave the cab his critical consideration, trying to determine a logical sequence of events. There was little in the way of clues, as the cab was made of steel formed in hard edges and sharp corners. He did find blood on a steam line control knob that was the right size for the dent in Caldwell’s head. There was no way of knowing if he’d tripped, been pushed intentionally, or was pushing in an act of self-defense.

Bell asked himself if he’d been wrong dismissing any misgivings about Coulter because he’d volunteered to run the train. Had he tried to stop the engine as soon as Bell was otherwise occupied? Had Hall or Caldwell tried to stop him? Or did one of them kill the driver in order to slow the train and allow the French to claim the prize? Vern Hall was Joshua Hayes Brewster’s best friend and nominal second-in-command of the expedition. It didn’t follow that he’d be the turncoat, but Johnny Caldwell was young and impressionable. The French had had plenty of time to find one of the miners with a weakness and exploit it to turn him into a saboteur and ultimately a murderer.

Bell recalled finding a small silver picture frame in Caldwell’s room back in Central City. One without a photograph in it. He wondered if it had held a snapshot of a sweetheart. Love was a powerful motivator. Bell had seen men do incredibly brave things, as well as incredibly stupid, while in its thrall. He found Caldwell’s wallet in his back pocket and inside, among some American dollars and French francs, Bell found a photograph of a sloe-eyed woman. The photo was smaller than the frame Bell remembered, but when he flipped it over he could tell by the way the name had been cut off—all that remained was the final tia—that it had been cropped.

He shook his head at the wastefulness of it all but could understand why Caldwell would consider taking the French up on their offer to be their man on the inside, as it were.

He replaced the picture and stood, not sure what to think anymore. For the time being, none of the other stuff mattered, including the deaths of Tom Price, Johnny Caldwell, and Alvin Coulter. Getting the ore onto a ship bound for New York was the priority. The authorities would be rightly enraged about the theft of two trains and the ensuing deadly wreck. Bell needed to abandon the locomotive as soon as possible, but the quiet towns they passed through were so sleepy and rural that he knew he’d never find the right kind of truck to replace it. His best bet was the outskirts of Glasgow.

Seeing the steam pressure falling, Bell went to start shoveling coal into the hot mouth of the firebox. He had finished up when he heard a clatter above him. Bell looked up just as Yves Massard leapt from the coal tender and crashed into him. Both men fell to the steel decking.