Clive Cussler: The Assassin

Bell bolted into the storm.

Forrer raced alongside him, slipping and sliding on the oily path. “Comstock and Lapham are dead. Matters is in jail.”

“Leaving Nellie to ‘inherit.’”

Nellie Matters was finishing connecting the copper cable she had strung from the naphtha tank to the heavy wire that grounded the saloon’s lightning rod. The thunderstorm raging outside was the biggest in days. The sooner she could let go of the highly conductive cable, the better.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

One of the bartenders had come down the stairs they’d been specifically ordered not to.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“What are you, an electrician?”

Her bag was open. The Savage and its telescope were in the bottom, still wrapped in their horse blanket. But tools were out. She said, “You’re not supposed to be down here.”

He finally recognized her as “Eddie,” the nephew of the new owner.

“Sorry, Eddie. Where’s your uncle? Haven’t seen him around.”

“Went to Atlantic City to get away from this heat.”

“What are you doing?”

“My uncle wants this wired here.”

“What for?”

“Why don’t you ask him when he gets back?”

“Something fishy’s going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had a job as an electrician’s helper. That’s a ground wire you’re messing with.”

He grabbed her arm. “Man, you’re skinny.”

Isaac Bell left Grady Forrer far behind as he ran full tilt up the refinery hill, through the front gates, and across Constable Street. He had noticed The Hook saloon. It looked like an old sea captain’s house with a widow’s walk on the roof. He shoved through the swinging doors.

The barroom was empty except for a floor manager, who shouted from behind the bar, “We’re closed!”

“Where are the cops watching the widow’s walk?”

“Home,” said the floor manager. “We don’t pay off cops to hang around— Hey, where you going?”

Bell paused at the foot of the stairs only long enough to turn the full force of his eyes on the man. “Stay there, you won’t get hurt.”

He bounded up three full stories, then into a sweltering attic, and up steep stairs onto the widow’s walk fully expecting to find the assassin aiming her rifle. But the room was empty. Nellie was not in it. Thunder pealed. He stalked to the windows and glared out at the refinery. He knew with every fiber in his being that he was close. But she was not here.

A derringer slug in the shoulder had knocked the fight and the curiosity out of the nosy bartender. Nellie pointed the gun in his face, fished steel handcuffs from the bottom of her tool bag, and tossed them to him. “Put one on your wrist.”

Stunned and disbelieving, he did as he was told.

“The other on the cable. Above, there, where it’s nailed to the wall.”

“Hey, wait. It’s lightning outside! It’ll electrocute me.”

“Better odds than this bullet,” she said. “Who knows if lightning will strike?”

“It hit yesterday. Twice last week.”

Nellie laughed. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you? Lightning can’t strike twice.”

“It’s the highest building on the street, higher than the tanks. It gets hit all the time. Why do you think they have four separate rods?”

“Bullet?”

He gave a terrified groan and clicked the manacle around the cable.

Isaac Bell racked his brain, trying to figure out what Nellie was up to now. Having the house right next to the refinery was a powerful opportunity. How would she use it if not to shoot from this brilliantly situated observatory?

Leaning a hand on the window frame as he gazed upon the storm, he felt a thick, rounded ridge on the sash. It looked and felt like it had been painted over and over for decades. But it was not made of wood like the rest of the room. Rope? No, cable. Metal cable. Still trying to winkle out Nellie’s deranged thoughts, he picked at it idly with his boot knife and saw a gleam of brass or copper. He traced it up to the ceiling, out the wall, under the gutter, and onto the roof. He flung open the window, thrust head and torso into the rain, and swung gracefully onto the sill. There he stood to his full height with his back to the four-story drop and traced the cable onto the flat roof, where it split into four separate strands. The strands went to the four corners. On each corner was a full-size bronze replica of a whaler’s harpoon.

“Nellie,” he whispered, “I underestimated you.”

Thunder pealed. Bell looked down and, as if he had conjured her with his voice, saw a slight figure hurry across Constable Street. It was her, carrying a tool bag long enough for her gun. Lightning flashed. Nellie stopped and looked up at the widow’s walk. Their eyes met.

Bell shouted with all the power in his lungs to the Van Dorns at the gate, “Get her!” A thunderclap drowned out his voice. Nellie blew him a kiss, and a bolt of lightning wider than a man plunged from the heart of the sky.

Ten million volts of electricity stormed down the ground wire, electrocuted the bartender manacled to it, and raged out the sewer and under Constable Street. Fumes from spilled oil were trapped in the refinery storm drains. These the lightning ignited. Fireballs shot from the drain grates. At the far end of the cable Nellie Matters had strung, the electricity jumped through the air and drilled a hole in the steel wall of a naphtha tank.

Isaac Bell heard the Standard Oil fire whistles chorus ghostly screams.

He staggered to his feet, vaguely aware that a thunderbolt had slammed him back through the windows. He had landed on the widow’s walk floor. He knew he hadn’t taken a direct hit; neither his skin nor his clothing was burned. But his heart was pounding, as if the immense surge of electricity passing so near had almost stopped it. His lungs felt half-paralyzed, hardly able to pump air, until he collected his spirit and demanded they get back on the job.

His vision cleared. He saw columns of flame fringed with black smoke.

In the refinery yard, fireballs danced jigs among the tanks.

Bell scanned the chaos below for signs of Nellie and quickly realized that what looked like chaos was orderly chaos. Thanks to the Van Dorn advance warning, the men running up and down Constable Street and dashing in and out of the refinery gates were moving with purpose. The company’s firemen hurried through the yards, ringing bells and dragging hose. Blazing oil overflowed from a burning tank. Workmen moved swiftly to pump oil from tanks near the fire to distant empty tanks and into barges on the waterfront. Others dug trenches to divert burning oil from vulnerable tanks.

Nellie was gone. But Bell was convinced that she would not run from the fires she had set. She would stay and finish what she had started. She would not find it easy. Prepared for the battle, the Constable Hook refinery she was trying to destroy was the best defended in the world. It was fighting for its life but not yet desperate.

If Bell knew Nellie, that would not discourage her. The question was how would one woman alone continue to attack? He stayed on his widow’s walk vantage point to find the answer.

A tank roof blew. Thick crude oil bubbled out. The side walls collapsed and a river of crude rushed down the hill. The black torrent split where the slope flattened. Some of it collected, forming a half-acre black lake. Shimmering in the heat, it roared spontaneously into flames. Globs of flaming tar flew in the air and landed on tank roofs. Firemen climbed the tanks with shovels and hoses. They extinguished the fires on all but one. It ignited with a roar and gushed smoke that the flames sucked in and flung at the sky.