The Wrecker (Isaac Bell 2)

He jerked his hand back with a startled shout of pain.

The steel side of the gondola was hot-so hot it burned his skin.

Bell ran to the next gondola and touched it tentatively. It was hot, too. And now he smelled the smoke again, and he realized in a flash the diabolic trick the Wrecker had pulled. So-called down pressure was stabilizing the bridge as he had promised. But the vibrations from the water pounding the weakened piers were shaking the bridge. In turn, the bridge was shaking the train, which was shaking the coal. Deep inside fifty coal cars, thousands of pieces of coal were rubbing against each other and creating friction. Friction made heat, like a frontiersman rubbing two sticks to start a fire.

Even as Bell realized the perverted genius of Kincaid’s scheme, the coal ignited. A dozen small sparks became a hundred flames. Soon, a thousand fires would mushroom through the coal. The entire train was smouldering on the middle of the bridge. Any second, the wooden crossties under the train would catch fire.

He had to move the train off the bridge.

The staging yard was jammed with stranded trains and locomotives. But with no work to do, none of the engines had steam up. Bell spotted the big black Baldwin attached to Hennessy’s special. It always had steam up, to heat and light the Pullmans and the private cars and to be ready to move at the railroad president’s whim.

Bell ran to it. Every brakeman and yardman he saw he ordered to throw switches to direct the Old Man’s locomotive to the bridge. Hennessy himself, looking frail in shirtsleeves, was standing next to the Baldwin. He was breathing hard and leaning on a fireman’s scoop.

“Where’s your train crew?” Bell asked.

“I was keeping up steam before they were born. Sent every hand below to work on the coffer dams. Just had to catch my breath. Something’s wrong. What do I smell? Is that fire on the bridge?”

“The coal has ignited. Uncouple your engine. I’ll pull the train off.”

With Hennessy directing brake- and yardmen, who ran around throwing switches, Bell drove the Baldwin off the special, ran it forward, then backed it onto the bridge. Partway across, he coupled onto the lead coal gondola, while every man still in the yard worked to switch a path of rails to an isolated siding where the burning train could be safely moved.

Bell shoved the Johnson bar forward and notched the throttle ahead, feeding steam to the pistons. This was the hard part. He had spent enough time in the cab to know how to drive locomotives, but driving and pulling fifty heavy gondolas were two different propositions. The wheels spun, the train did not move. He remembered the sand valve, which spread sand under the wheels to improve adhesion, and found its lever. Smoke was billowing from the gondolas now, and he saw flames start to shoot up. He reached for the throttle to try again.

Suddenly, the Wrecker spoke through the side window.

“With what will you replace the weight?” he asked mockingly. “More coal?”

57

“BALLAST WOULD HOLD THE BRIDGE, BUT SOMEHOW SIGNALS GOT crossed. Hennessy ordered track ballast. He kept getting coal. I wonder how that happened.”

The Wrecker swung into the cab through the open back and whipped a knife from his boot.

Suspecting a backup weapon identical to the sword he had ruined, Bell swiftly drew his Browning and pulled the trigger. But the automatic had suffered one too many douses of mud and water. It jammed. He heard the Wrecker’s knife click. The telescoping blade flew out and struck him before he could move in the confined space.

It was no flesh wound, but a terrible thrust below Bell’s shoulder. Stunned, wondering if the sword had punctured his lung, Bell reached under his jacket. He felt warm blood on his hand. He couldn’t focus his eyes. The Wrecker was standing over him, and Bell was surprised to discover that he had collapsed to the footplate.

58

CHARLES KINCAID DREW HIS SWORD BACK TO RUN ISAAC BELL through his heart.

“I was not unaware of my weapon’s weakness,” he said. “It wasn’t made to stand up to a beat. So I always carry an extra.”

“So do I,” said Bell. He tugged from an inside pocket Kincaid’s own derringer, which he had picked up from the tracks earlier. It was slippery with his blood, sliding in his hand. The shock of the wound was making him see double, fading in and out of awareness. He gathered his spirit, focused like a headlight on Kincaid’s broad chest, and fired.

Kincaid stepped back with a look of disbelief. He dropped his sword. Rage twisted his handsome features as he fell backward off the locomotive to the tracks.

Bell tried to stand. He was having difficulty getting his legs under him. From far below, beneath the bridge, he heard cries of alarm. A steam whistle on a barge crane set up a desperate scream. He dragged himself to the back of the cab. From there, he saw what was terrifying the men working on the piers. Upstream, the Wrecker’s dam had broken at last. The flood crest was on the march.

An angry white wave, tall as a house and studded with cut logs and whole trees, filled the river from shore to shore. Shouting men struggled to move the electric dynamos above the flood. A barge overturned. The work lights went dark.

Bell grabbed onto the Johnson bar and fought to regain his feet. The bridge was shaking the locomotive. Flames were shooting skyward from the coal cars. If he moved the burning train, he would save the bridge from the fire. But even dead on the tracks, the Wrecker would have his way. If Bell moved the train, he would remove the stabilizing weight, and the bridge would collapse from the scouring floodwater. If he didn’t move the train, the bridge would burn. Already he smelled burning creosote as the crossties under the train began to smoulder.

The only solution was a compromise.

Bell reversed the Johnson bar, notched open the throttle, and backed the train to the edge of the bridge. Holding tight to handrails, he climbed down painfully. A yard foreman came running, casting fear-filled eyes on the burning train. “We’re opening switches, mister, so you can move her onto a siding out of the way.”

“No, I need tools. Get me a crowbar and a spike puller.”