Night Probe! - Clive Cussler

He found himself next to railroad tracks of a narrow gauge that ran from the cavern into a tunnel carved at one end.

Awkwardly he one-handedly slipped off his belt and made a crude sling, then rose to his feet and struck out along the track into the tunnel.

He walked between the rails, careful not to trip on the raised ties. The tracks ran level for fifty yards and then started to slant up a slight incline. After a while he stopped and played the beam into the darkness ahead.

What seemed like two monstrous red eyes reflected back at him.

Cautiously he moved forward, stubbed his toe against something solid, looked down and saw another set of rails. They were spiked at a much wider gauge, even wider than the ones British trains ran on, Shaw judged. He came out of the tunnel into another cavern.

But this was not an ordinary cavern. This was an immense crypt filled with dead.

The red eyes were two lanterns mounted on the rear of a railroad car. On the observation platform were two bodies, mummies really, still fully clothed, their blackened skulls staring into the eternal dark.

The hair on the back of Shaw's head raised and he forgot about the stabbing ache in his wrist. Pitt had been right. The underground quarry had yielded the secret of the Manhattan Limited.

He glanced around, half expecting to see a shrouded figure holding a scythe, beckoning with a bony finger, beckoning for Shaw. He passed alongside the coach, noting that it was surprisingly free of rust. At the boarding steps, where the next car was coupled, another grotesque bundle lay, its head propped against the six-wheeled truck. Out of morbid curiosity, Shaw stopped and studied it.

Under the flashlight the skin showed a dark brownish-gray color and had the consistency of leather. As the months and years passed, the body had desiccated and hardened and become naturally mummified by the dry air of the quarry. The round visored cap still resting on the head indicated that this map had been the conductor.

There were others, scores of them, scattered around the train, frozen in the final posture of death. Most had died sitting up; a few were lying outstretched. Their clothing was in a remarkable state of preservation and Shaw had no trouble telling the men from the women.

Several of the dead were stiffened in warped positions below the open door to the baggage car. In front of them a jumbled stack of wooden crates sat partly loaded into an ore car. One of the mummies had pried open a crate and was holding a rectangular-shaped block against his chest. Shaw rubbed away the grime on the object and was stunned to see the smear turn the color of gold.

My God, he thought. By today's prices there must be over three hundred million dollars' worth of the stuff lying about.

Tempting as it was to linger and contemplate the riches, Shaw forced himself to push on. Sweat was soaking his clothes, yet he felt as if he were in a refrigerator.

The engineer had chosen to die in the cab of his locomotive. The great iron monster was blanketed under a century of dust, but Shaw could still decipher the fancy gold numerals "88" and the red stripe that ran down the side.

Thirty feet in front of the cowcatcher there was a massive fall of rock that had buried the main entrance of the quarry. More dead were strewn about here; having dug frantically with their final breath, their gnarled hands still clutched around picks and shovels. They had actually moved several tons of stone, but it had been only an exercise in futility. A hundred men couldn't have dug through that mountain of rubble in a month.

How did it all happen? Shaw trembled unconsciously. There was an undeniable horror about the place. Helplessly trapped in a cold and dark underground prison, what tortures of the mind had they all endured before death ended their sufferings.

He continued around the locomotive and coal tender, then mounted the steps of the first Pullman car and walked down the aisle. The first sight he saw there was a woman lying in a berth, her arms embracing two small children. Shaw turned away and kept moving.

He rummaged through any and all hand cases that remotely looked like they might contain the North American Treaty. The search went with frustrating slowness. He began to rush as the cold fingers of panic touched his mind. The flashlight was dimming, the batteries would not last but a few minutes longer.

The seventh and last Pullman car, the one with the grisly occupants on the observation platform, bore the emblem of the American eagle on the door. Shaw cursed himself under his breath for not starting here. He laid his hand on the knob, turned it and passed inside. For an instant he was taken back by the opulence of the private coach. They certainly don't make them like they used to, he mused.

A figure wearing a derby hat with a yellowed newspaper covering his features was sprawled in a red velvet revolving chair. Two of his companions sat folded over a mahogany dining table, their heads in their arms. One was dressed in what Shaw identified as an English-cut coat and trousers. The other wore a tropical worsted suit. It was the second who grabbed Shaw's interest. A withered hand clutched the grip of a small travel case.

Almost as if he was afraid of waking its owner, Shaw painstakingly removed the case from under the rigid fingers.

Suddenly he froze. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught an imperceptible movement. But it had to be an illusion. The wavering shadows on the walls were causing his inborn fears to run wild. If it was left to his imagination, the feeble light could make anything come alive.

Then his heart stopped. A cardiologist would say that's impossible. But his heart stopped as he stared paralyzed at a reflection in the window.

Behind him, the cadaver with the derby in the revolving chair was straightening to a stiff-backed position. Then the hideous thing lowered the newspaper from its face and smiled at Shaw.

"You won't find what you're looking for in there," Dirk Pitt said, nodding at the travel bag.

Shaw would never deny that he'd been rattled out of his wits. He sagged into a chair, waiting for his heart to pump again. He could see now that Pitt wore an old coat over a black wet suit. When he finally collected his senses, he said, "You have a disconcerting way of announcing your presence."

Pitt added to the dim illumination by turning on his dive light and then nonchalantly turned his attention back to the old newspaper. "I always knew I was born eighty years too late. Here's a used Stutz Bearcat Speedster with low mileage for only six hundred and seventy-five dollars."

Shaw had used up all his emotional reactions in the past twelve hours and was hardly in the mood for idle levity. "How did you manage to get in here?" he demanded more than asked.

Pitt continued to study the classified automobile ads as he answered. "Swam in through the escape shaft. Ran out of air and almost drowned, Would have too if I hadn't lucked onto a pocket of stale air under an old submerged rock crusher. One more breath enabled me to break into a side tunnel."

Shaw motioned around the coach. "What happened here?"

Pitt pointed toward the two men at the table. "The man with the travel case is, or rather was, Richard Essex, undersecretary of state. The other man was Clement Massey. Beside Massey is a farewell letter to his wife. It tells the whole tragic story."

Shaw picked up the letter and squinted at the faded ink. "So this fellow Massey here was a train robber."

"Yes, he was after a gold shipment."

"I saw it. Enough there to buy the Bank of England."

"Massey's plan was incredibly complex for its time. He and his men flagged the train at an abandoned junction called Mondragon Hook. There they forced the engineer to switch the Manhattan Limited onto an old rail spur and into the quarry before any of the passengers realized what was happening."