Clive Cussler - The Wrecker

“Senator Kincaid aboard?”

Osgood Hennessy stuck his head out the door. “You just missed him, Bell. What’s going on?”

“Which way did he go?”

“I don’t know. But he parked that Thomas Flyer up the line.”

“He’s the Wrecker.”

“The devil, you say.”

Bell turned to the Van Dorn detective. “If he comes back, arrest him. If he gives you any trouble, shoot first or he’ll kill you.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Send word to Archie Abbott. Railway cops to guard the bridge and the town in case Kincaid doubles back. Van Dorns, follow me. Dash! Grab a flag and a couple of lanterns.”

Dashwood picked up a signal flag, which was rolled tightly around its wooden staff, and two yardman’s lanterns and ran after Bell.

“Give me one!” Bell said, explaining, “If we look like we’re railroad men, it will buy us a few seconds to get closer.”

From the vantage of the raised siding, Bell scanned the ranks of still trains and the narrow walkways between the sidings. He had less than six hours of daylight to catch up with Kincaid. He looked toward the bridge. Then he looked toward the end of the line where new construction had ceased when they learned the bridge had been sabotaged. The road was brushed out, cleared of trees and shrubs, well past the point it crossed the mud road to East Oregon Lumber.

He could not see Kincaid’s Thomas Flyer from where he stood. Had Kincaid already reached his car and driven away? Then, on the edge of the deserted yards, he saw a man emerge from between two strings of empty freight cars. He was walking briskly toward a pair of locomotives that were parked side by side where the tracks ended.

“There he is!”

THE WRECKER WAS HURRYING TOWARD THE LOCOMOTIVES TO signal Philip Dow to blow the dam when he heard their boots pounding behind him.

He looked back. Two brakemen were running fast, signaling with white train-yard lanterns. A skinny youth and a tall, rangy man, wide of shoulder and narrow in the waist. But where was the locomotive they were guiding with their lights? The pair he was hurrying toward were sidetracked, with only enough steam up to keep them warm.

The tall one wore a broad-brimmed hat instead of a railroader’s cap. Isaac Bell Running after him was a boy who looked like he should still be in high school.

Kincaid had to make a instant decision. Why was Bell prowling the yards pretending to be a brakeman? Assume the best, that Bell still had not tumbled to his identity? Or walk toward them, wave hello, and pull his derringer and shoot them both and hope no one saw? The second he reached for his gun, he knew he had made a mistake wasting time to think about it.

Bell’s hand flickered in a blur of motion, and Charles Kincaid found himself staring down the barrel of a Browning pistol held in a rock-steady grip.

“Don’t point that pistol at me, Bell. What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Charles Kincaid,” Bell answered in a clear, steady voice, “you are wanted by the law for murder and sabotage.”

“Wanted by the law? Are you serious?”

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground.”

“We’ll see about this,” huffed Kincaid. His every mannerism bespoke the aggrieved United States senator put upon by a fool.

“Remove your derringer from your left pocket and drop it on the ground before I blow a hole in your arm.”

Kincaid shrugged, as if humoring a madman. “All right.” Moving very slowly, he reached for his derringer.

“Careful,” said Bell. “Hold the weapon between your thumb and forefinger.”

The only eyes Charles Kincaid had ever seen so cold were in a mirror.

He lifted the derringer from his pocket between his thumb and forefinger and crouched as if to place it gently on the ground. “You realize, of course, that a private detective cannot arrest a member of the United States Senate.”

“I’ll leave the formalities to a U.S. marshal … or the county coroner, if your hand moves any closer to the knife in your boot.”

“What the devil-”

“Drop your derringer!” Bell commanded. “Do not go for your knife!”

Very slowly, Kincaid opened his hand. The gun fell from his fingers.

“Turn around.”

Moving as if in a trance, Kincaid slowly turned away from the grim detective.

“Clasp your hands behind your back.”

Slowly, Kincaid placed his hands behind his back. Every sinew was poised. If Bell was going to make a mistake, he would make it now. Behind him, Kincaid heard the words he was praying to hear.

“Your handcuffs, Dash.”

He heard the steel clink. He let the first cuff snap around his wrist. Only as he felt the cold metal of the second cuff brush his skin did he whirl into motion, turning to get behind the youth and clamp his arm around his throat.

A fist smashed into the bridge of his nose. Kincaid flew backward.

Knocked on his back, stunned by the punch, he looked up. Young Dashwood was still standing to one side, watching with an excited grin on his face and a shiny revolver in his hand. But it was Isaac Bell who was looming over him, triumphantly. Bell, who had knocked him down with a single punch.

“Did you really think I would let a new man within ten feet of the murderer who killed Wish Clarke, Wally Kisley, and Mack Fulton?”

“Who?”

“Three of the finest detectives I’ve had the privilege to work with. On your feet!”

Kincaid got up slowly. “Only three? Don’t you count Archie Abbott?”

The blood drained from Bell’s face, and, in that instant of total shock, the Wrecker struck.

THE WRECKER MOVED WITH INHUMAN SPEED. INSTEAD OF attacking Isaac Bell, he rushed James Dashwood. He ducked under the boy’s pistol, got behind him, and slid his arm around his throat.

“Is it all right now if I reach for my boot?” the Wrecker asked mockingly.

He had already pulled his knife.

He pressed the razor-sharp blade to Dashwood’s throat and sliced a line in the skin. Blood trickled.

“Table’s turned, Bell. Drop your gun or I’ll cut his head off.”

Isaac Bell dropped his Browning on the ground.

“You too, sonny. Drop it!”

Only when Bell said, “Do what he says, Dash,” did the revolver clatter on the wet ballast.

“Unlock this handcuff.”

“Do what he says,” said Bell. Dashwood worked the key out of his pocket and fumbled it into the cuff on the wrist that was crushing his windpipe. The cuffs clattered on the ballast. There was silence, but for the huffing of a single switch engine somewhere, until Bell asked, “Where is Archie Abbott?”

“The derringer in your hat, Bell.”

Bell removed his two-shot pistol from his hat and dropped it beside his Browning.

“Where is Archie Abbott?”

“The knife in your boot.”

“I don’t have one.”

“The Rawlins coroner reports a prizefighter died with a throwing knife in his throat,” said the Wrecker. “I presume you purchased a replacement.”

He cut Dashwood again, and a second trickle of blood merged with the first.

Bell lifted out his throwing knife and placed it on the ground.

“Where is Archie Abbott?”

“Archie Abbott? Last I saw, he was mooning over Lillian Hennessy. That’s right, Bell. I tricked you. Took advantage of your terrible penchant for caring.”

Kincaid let go of Dashwood and slammed an elbow into the boy’s jaw, knocking him senseless. He gave his knife a peculiar flick of his wrist. A rapier-thin sword blade flew at Bell’s face.

BELL DODGED THE THRUST that had killed his friends.

Kincaid lunged like lightning and thrust again. Bell dove forward, hit the crushed stone, tucked his long legs and rolled. Kincaid’s sword whipped through space he had occupied a second earlier. Bell rolled again, reaching for the double-action revolver Eddie Edwards had given James Dashwood.