The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

“What are we doing, Bell?” Joshua Hayes Brewster demanded from the back of the truck, where he sat atop the crates like a Near Eastern potentate.

“Our truck doesn’t have the power to outrace those two nags hauling the meat wagon.”

“So? Gly won’t get too close. You’ve got a gun, and it doesn’t look like he could smuggle any into England.”

“I have less than a full magazine. After that, my pistol’s just a fancy paperweight.”

Brewster didn’t respond, and Bell concentrated on his surroundings. There were a half dozen rail spurs that led out of the yard and progressively merged until becoming a single track running parallel to the passenger line as it followed the River Dee out of Aberdeen. A string of freight cars sat idle on the far track and appeared to be abandoned. On another spur, a small shunting locomotive was backing in a row of slat-sided wagons used to move livestock.

Closer was a more modern train, with metal freight carriages. The locomotive, a 0-6-2 from the Stoke Works, was attached, steam streaming around its six tall drive wheels, while brakemen and the engineer performed visual checks. At the rear of the train was the guard’s van—what in the States was referred to as the caboose. There were gravel crossings over the rails for vehicles, overhead platforms with stairs for workers. Halfway down the depot was a tower with an observation platform for the yardmaster to coordinate freight handling and switches when the yard was busy.

Bell didn’t see any security, as he might at an American depot, and wondered if England didn’t have the need, as no one tried to illegally ride the rails. He was glad for it. They didn’t have time for a confrontation with a bunch of thick-necked railway bulls.

He pointed to where he wanted Arn to park the truck. It was a spot just behind the locomotive’s coal/water tender and next to a boxcar with an open door and room enough for the byzanium ore.

“Who are you and what’s all this?” a brakeman, in smudged overalls, asked when the truck’s engine shuddered to silence. He had a working-class accent that was almost too thick to understand.

Bell ignored the question and asked one of his own. “What train is this?”

“The ten-ten to Glasgow. What’s it to you?”

Bell leapt from the truck’s running board and approached the train’s engineer, the confused brakeman following in his wake and muttering to himself, “This is the ten-ten to Glasgow. Right?”

“Aye,” the engine driver said, eyeing Bell suspiciously.

“Mr. McDougal asked that we load these ten crates and accompany them to Glasgow Station.” It was pure bluff.

And it didn’t work. “I don’t know any Mr. McDougal. And I don’t care if the King himself asked ye to put them boxes onto me train. It isn’t gonna happen. Now, who are ya and what’s yer business here?”

“So much for the easy way,” Bell muttered. He moved so that the brakeman and engineer were in front of him and pulled the .45 from behind his back. Both men’s mouths turned into matching round holes and the color drained from their faces. Their hands went up instinctually. “My men are going to load our cargo, and then you’re taking us to Glasgow.”

“Easy there, mate,” the engineer said when he could find his voice. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Nor do I want to give you any,” Bell said mildly. “Yet here we are. Is the train ready to leave?”

“It is. But, we’ve another fifteen minutes until we depart.”

“No one ever complains when a train’s early, only when it’s late. Get aboard and let’s get going.”

“You don’t understand. The track may not be clear. Our railroads run on very tight schedules.”

“We can slow down once we’re out of Aberdeen, but we are leaving now.”

“I won’t do it,” the engineer said defiantly, feeling that since it was he who knew how to drive the train, he had some leverage with his would-be abductor.

Bell shouted over to where the Coloradans were loading the crated rocks into the goods wagon. “Can any of you men help me run a locomotive?”

Alvin Coulter poked his head out of the boxcar. “In my sleep, Mr. Bell.”

Seeing his leverage disappear, the engineer started blubbering. “Please, don’t shoot us, mister.”

Bell rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to shoot anyone.”

The blast from the gun was like standing inside a thunderclap.

An instant before Bell’s ears registered the noise, obscene pits appeared on the brakeman’s face and neck as a dozen pellets from a shotgun at full choke raked his body as well as that of the engine tender behind him.

Bell lost a fraction of a second to shock and horror and then leapt sideways while the gore-spattered engineer just stood there paralyzed with fear. Bell rolled when he hit the stony ground so that he was facing back toward where the blast originated, his .45 brought to bear. Around him, as though trained by professionals, the Coloradans went into action like soldiers. The last of the crates were heaved into the railcar while Alvin Coulter, John Caldwell, and Vern Hall raced for the locomotive cab by first climbing over the tender’s coupling and using its bulk as cover.