The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

“I protest,” said the dispatcher. “This is a breach of all safety procedures.”

Bell hurried out to the train, shouting orders.

“Uncouple the Pullman. Accountants, lawyers, translators, and auditors: stay here. Keep digging until we know everything Kincaid planned. We don’t want any more surprises blowing up in our faces. Armed operatives, get on the train!”

Brakemen scrambled. When they had uncoupled the extra car, Bell saw James Dashwood standing forlornly in the Pullman’s vestibule.

“What are you waiting for, James? Get on the train.”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“What?”

“You said ‘armed operatives,’ Mr. Bell. Van Dorn apprentices are only allowed to carry handcuffs.”

Guffawing detectives exchanged incredulous looks.

Hadn’t anyone told the kid that that was the first rule you broke?

Bell raised his voice. “Boys, meet James Dashwood, former apprentice with the San Francisco office. He’s just been promoted for uncovering a key clue that exposed Senator Charles Kincaid as the Wrecker. Can anyone lend him a firearm?”

Fists plunged into coats, hats, waistbands, and boots. An arsenal of automatics, revolvers, derringers, and pocket pistols flashed in the rainy light. Eddie Edwards got to Dashwood first and thrust a nickel-plated six-gun into his hand.

“Here you go, Dash. It’s double-action. Just keep squeezing the trigger. Reload when it stops making noise.”

“Get on the train!”

Bell climbed up into the Pacific’s cab.

“We’re cleared through to Cascade Canyon,” he told the engineer.

“How they gonna know we’re coming with the telegraph dead?”

“Good question. Stop at the roundhouse.”

Bell ran inside the dark and smoky cavern, where twenty locomotives were undergoing noisy repairs on the giant turntable. The Southern Pacific rail cops standing guard led him to the black and greasy foreman.

“Heard all about you, Mr. Bell,” the foreman shouted over the din of steel and iron. “What can I do for you?”

“How long will it take you to pull the headlamps off two of these locomotives and attach them to mine?”

“One hour.”

Bell pulled out a stack of double-eagle gold coins. “Make it fifteen minutes and these are yours.”

“Keep your money, Mr. Bell. It’s on the house.”

Fourteen minutes later, the Van Dorn Express accelerated out of Sacramento with a triangle of headlights blazing like a comet.

“Now they’ll see us coming!” Bell told the engineer.

He tossed the fireman his scoop.

“Shovel on coal.”

THE PACIFIC STORM THAT Jim Higgins had shown James Dashwood slammed into the mountain range that rimmed the coasts of northern California and southern Oregon and drenched the Siskiyous with eight inches of rain. Then it leaped the Coast Range as if lightened of its watery burden. Instead, it rained harder. The storm lumbered inland, deluging the narrow valleys of the Klamath River. The detectives aboard the Van Dorn Express saw logjams damming rivers, steel bridges swept away, and farmers in tall rubber boots trying to rescue stranded livestock from flooded fields.

Moving from southwest to northeast, the storm battered the eastern Cascades. The effect on the