The Wrecker by Clive Cussler (book club reads .TXT) 📕

Switching tactics with astonishing agility, he snatched up a signal lantern, swung it high. Bell stepped nimbly aside. The Wrecker brought it low, smashing its glass against a rail. Kerosene spilled, and the lantern ignited in a ball of liquid fire, which the Wrecker hurled on the still form of James Dashwood.

54

A WAVE OF FIRE BROKE OVER DASHWOOD. FLAME SPLASHED his trousers, his coat, and his hat. Smoke spewed the stench of burning hair.

The Wrecker laughed triumphantly.

“You choose, Bell. Save the boy or try to catch me.”

He ran toward the locomotives parked at the edge of the siding.

Isaac Bell had no choice. He tore off his coat and waded into the smoke.

The fire burned most fiercely on Dashwood’s chest, but the first priority was to save his eyes. Bell wrapped his coat around the boy’s head to smother the flames, then threw his body over the fire on the boy’s chest and legs. Dashwood woke up screaming. What Bell thought were cries of pain and fear muffled by his coat turned out to be frantic apologizing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bell, I’m sorry I let him get the drop on me.”

“Can you stand up?”

Face black with soot, half his hair singed to a greasy mat, blood streaming down his throat, Dashwood jumped to his feet. “I’m O.K., sir, I’m sorry—”

“Find Archie Abbott. Tell him to round up the Van Dorns and follow me up the mountain.”

Bell scooped his knife, his derringer, and his Browning from the ballast. Kincaid’s derringer lay nearby, and he pocketed it, too.

“Kincaid owns East Oregon Lumber. If there’s a back way out, the killer knows it. Tell Archie on the jump!”

A sudden shriek of a locomotive whistle snapped Bell’s head around.

Kincaid had climbed into the cab of the nearest engine. He was holding the whistle cord and attempting to tie down the braided loop.

Bell raised his Browning, aimed carefully, and fired. The distance was great, even for such an accurate weapon. A bullet whanged off steel. The Wrecker coolly finished tying the cord and started to jump through the open door of the cab. Bell fired again through the open window, intending to pin him down until he got there. Kincaid jumped anyway and hit the ground running.

The whistle stopped abruptly. Kincaid looked back, his face a mask of dismay.

In the sudden silence, Bell realized his shot had missed Kincaid but by chance had severed the whistle cord. Kincaid started to turn back to the locomotives. Bell fired again. The whistle was important, a signal of some sort. So important that Kincaid was running back to the locomotives in the face of pistol fire. Bell triggered another shot.

Kincaid’s hat flew in the air, ripped from his head by Bell’s lead slug. He turned away and ran behind a tender. The square bulk of the coal-and-water carrier blocked Bell’s field of fire. He ran toward the tender as fast as he could. Rounding it, he saw the Wrecker, far ahead of him, jump from the end of the ballast roadbed. When Bell reached the end of the roadbed, he glimpsed the Wrecker running down the middle of the brushed-out line. He made an elusive target, weaving and jinking, flickering through the shadows of the trees that crowded the path, disappearing as the bed curved with the slope of the mountain.

Bell jumped from the ballast to the cleared forest floor and charged after him.

Rounding the turn in the brushed-out roadbed, he saw in the distance, down a long straightaway, a flash of yellow—Kincaid’s Model 35 Thomas Flyer—and then a flicker of Kincaid running up to it.

Kincaid reached under the red leather driver’s seat, pulled out a long-barreled revolver, and coolly fired three shots in rapid succession. Bell dove for cover, the slugs whistling around him. Scrambling behind a tree, he snapped off another shot. Kincaid was in front of the car, trying to start his motor, bracing himself with his left hand on one of the headlights and turning the starter crank with his right.

Bell fired again. It came close. Kincaid ducked but kept cranking. That was six shots. He had one shot left before he had to replace the magazine.

The motor caught. Bell heard a ragged chugging as, one by one, the four gigantic cylinders boomed to life. Kincaid leaped behind the steering wheel. Bell was close enough now to see the fenders fluttering from the cold motor running rough. But the car was built high in the back and the canvas top was up, its small rear window covered over with three spare tires that hung from the top. All he could see of Kincaid was his hand when he reached out to grip the side-mounted gearshifter. Too hard a shot to waste his last bullet on.

The rattling, chugging noise dropped in pitch. The motor was engaging the drive chain. Bell put on a burst of speed, heedless of the rough ground. The Thomas started moving. Blue smoke trailed it. The rattling chug sound sharpened to a hollow, authoritative snap as it accelerated up the cleared right-of-way. Fast as a man. Now fast as a horse.

Bell ran after the yellow car. He had one shot left in the Browning’s magazine, no clear view of Kincaid, who was hidden by the canvas top and the tires on back, and no time to reload. Bell was running like the wind, but the Thomas Flyer was pulling away.

Ahead of the Thomas, the clearing suddenly widened where the Southern Pacific right-of-way crossed the East Oregon Lumber Company’s muddy trail. The Thomas swerved off the brushed-out bed onto the lumber trail and slowed as its wheels spun in soft mud and deep wagon ruts. Its engine was howling with effort, its tires flinging earth and water, its exhaust pipe spewing smoke.

Bell drew within feet of the Thomas and jumped.

He grabbed for the rearmost spare tire with his free hand and clamped his powerful fingers inside its rubber rim.