Clive Cussler: The Assassin

His Locomobile was parked between the slanting legs of the derrick and the engine house. Still hot, the motor fired on the second spin. He leaped behind the steering wheel and thundered off in the direction the shot had come from, weaving a wild path through the densely packed oil derricks and skidding around drill machinery, pump houses, engines, and machine shops. When he burst out of the last row of derricks, he saw a big man on horseback galloping across the open plain that stretched beyond the oil field.

Bell raced after him.

The fleeing rider was well mounted on a strong, big-boned animal of fully seventeen hands. Bell shoved his accelerator to the floorboards and wrenched his steering wheel side to side as he plowed his big auto over rough ground, slewing around hummocks and dodging gullies.

Ahead of the horseman, the grassland ended abruptly at a thick wood. If he got inside the trees, he was free. Bell drove faster. The deep cut of the creek bed separated the grassland from the trees. Bell exulted; he had him trapped.

He yanked open his exhaust bypass for maximum power. Unimpeded by back pressure, the Locomobile’s four cylinders roared with all their might.

The horseman galloped straight at the creek and dug his spurs in. The horse gathered its legs and jumped. Its forelegs struck the far bank. Its left rear hoof slipped down the earthen wall of the creek. The right hoof dug into the grass, and the animal scrambled free and galloped for the trees.

Isaac Bell was forced to slam on the Locomobile’s anemic brakes and slide the auto into a sideways drift to stop before it tumbled into the creek. He yanked his Winchester from its scabbard buckled to the passenger seat. The horseman was already inside the woods, partially screened by the thinly scattered outer fringe of trees. Bell saw one chance and opened fire.

He worked the Winchester’s ejection lever in a blur of motion. Had a cartridge jammed, the pivoting lever would have snapped in his hands. The heavy rifle boomed repeatedly. The horseman’s hat flew in the air. He swayed and started to fall off. A flailing hand gripped his saddle horn and he stayed on his mount. Before Bell could fire again, horse and rider found the shelter deep inside the woods.

Bell heard a loud report behind him. Another gunman? It seemed to come from the oil derricks. It was followed immediately by a metallic clanging noise like a blacksmith’s hammer. Then he heard a sharp retort like a blasting cap or a quarter stick of dynamite.

A blinding light flashed from the refinery.

A hollow Boom! shook the air. The explosion blew the top off a crude oil tank that stood in the outermost ring of tanks. Shattered planking tufted into the sky. Black smoke pillared. The first explosion, Bell surmised, had ignited the natural gas that rose from the crude oil and collected in the top of the tanks. The gas explosion had set the oil itself to burning.

That it threatened to destroy Spike Hopewell’s entire refinery was evidenced by the sight of gangs of oil workers arriving on the run with shovels and picks to dig a trench between the burning tank and its neighbors. They converged from the derricks and the refinery, the rag town, and the saloons. A gang rolled out a cannon on a two-wheeled gun carriage.

A field gun would be a baffling sight had not Bell studied the oil business from top to bottom to prepare for the Corporations Commission investigation. Regular procedure for fighting an oil tank fire was to shoot holes in the tank below the liquid line to drain the oil that fed the fire. Artillery allowed the firefighters to stay outside the lethal range of explosions.

One of the gun carriage wheels slipped into a shallow gully and sunk axle-deep in the wet, spongy ground. Bell raced to help, driving the Locomobile across the prairie ground as fast as the clumped grass would allow. He could see at the base of the roiling smoke column a diamond-bright core of flame growing wider, taller, and brighter.

Bell heaved his steering wheel hard left and drove as close as he dared alongside the cannon while keeping his own wheels on firm ground. He threw the towrope he kept coiled around the spare tires. The gun crew tied onto the carriage trail. Bell accelerated the powerful auto and dragged the cannon out of the gully. Plowing ahead slowly enough to let the men guiding it run alongside, he pulled it into a position that gave them a clear shot at the burning tank.

The intense heat was making the crude oil boil and foam into a maelstrom of red flame, white steam, and black smoke. Already the heat was too intense for the ditching gang. The men backed away. Suddenly the boiling, foaming oil tank exploded. Tentacles of liquid flame shot into the sky and cascaded to the ground, falling on neighboring tanks.

The firefighters dropped their shovels and ran. They barely escaped. Two more explosions in quick time sent lids flying. Two more tanks gushed geysers of flame that fountained skyward and collapsed on tanks as yet unscathed. An explosion breached the wall of a tank. Oil spilled, tumbling over the ground, across ditches, and splashing against a burning shack, leveling the flimsy wooden structure, and igniting.

The fires spread, gaining speed.

The flames leaped the outer ditch around the refinery. Several buildings erupted into flame, and soon the fire was slithering past the refinery toward the biggest holding tank in Kansas, which Spike Hopewell had built to store his glut of gasoline.

The cannon crew exchanged frightened looks.

“Shoot!” said Isaac Bell. “On the jump!”

More frightened looks. Most scattered, leaving Bell with three brave men: an independent wildcatter sporting a boss’s knee-high riding boots and watch chain, a gray-bearded Civil War vet in a forage cap, and a young farmer in a battered slouch hat.

“Can’t shoot gasoline,” said the wildcatter.

“Too volatile,” said the vet. “It’ll blow that tank like a nitro shot. Kill everyone within a mile.”

“But if the cannon doesn’t set it off,” said Bell, “the fire will.”

He thought fast and pointed at the 0-6-0 switch engine idling on the refinery siding. “Who can run that locomotive?”

“Me,” said the bearded old soldier.

“Steam it to this end of the siding close as you can to the tank.”

Bell pointed at a giant spool of drilling cable. The other two understood his plan immediately. Terrified expressions on their smoke-grimed faces said they didn’t like it.

“It’s our only chance,” said Bell.

The spool was six feet high. They extracted the loose end of the cable from the coil, put their shoulders to the spool, and commenced rolling it to uncoil the cable. Men watching saw what they were up to and came to help.

A rigger ran up with a monkey wrench and a sack of cable clamps, nuts, and bolts. “You boys must be loco,” he shouted over the roar of fire. “Guess I’ll join the crowd.” He bent the loose end of the cable into a loop, clamped it together, and dragged it toward the locomotive, while Isaac Bell and the others dragged their end to the gasoline tank.

Tanks were burning behind them and to either side. Columns of smoke rose from the incinerated crude, swirling like tornadoes. They climbed swiftly, joined high overhead, and turned the sky black.

Pursued by the fire, Bell and his helpers pulled the cable to the foot of the gasoline tank. It was as high as a three-story house. A ladder led up its iron side. Bell slung the loop over his shoulder and climbed. The men below pushed the stiff cable up, trying to relieve him of some of the weight. He was breathing hard when he reached the top and swung onto the wooden roof. The farmer followed close behind carrying a crowbar and an ax.

“Can you run get me that monkey wrench?”