The Striker by Clive Cussler (ebook reader web TXT) 📕

to end by electricity, its windows and portholes casting more light than the town and the moon combined. Bell recognized the clean and graceful lines of a Herreshoff, a magnificent boat built in Rhode Island. He was too far away to see the orchestra, but he could hear the musicians finish playing “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” and then jump smoothly into Joplin’s “Easy Winners.”

“I’ll bet that’s Gleason’s steam yacht. The Monongahela.”

“I wouldn’t mind being at that party,” said Wish.

“What’s that following it?” asked Bell.

A dark form, much longer than the steam yacht and four times as wide, crept after it. Only when it had completely rounded the bend could they see the lights of a towboat pushing a score of barges lashed together.

The orchestra bounced to the new hit “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?”

A loud steam whistle drowned out the music. The tow turned ponderously across the current and headed toward the barge dock.

Luke and his father had followed them out of the cave. “Barge tow,” said Zeke. “Empties coming back from Pittsburgh.”

Bell focused his keen eyes on the tow as it neared the barge dock. It was difficult to see for sure, but he sensed curious ripples of motion within the barges, like cattle boats landing for slaughter. “They’re not empty.”

“Who the heck barges coal up the river?”

“They’re not carrying coal . . . They’re full of men.”

Bell looked at Wish and the two detectives shook their heads in amazement. The strikers would have their hands full. While they were still getting organized, Black Jack Gleason’s yacht had escorted scab labor straight to their back door.

Luke said, “Oh, Pa, I’m powerful sorry.”

Zeke stood there, shoulders bowed, and felt blindly for his son’s hand.

The Monongahela stationed herself in the middle of the river. The steamboat pushed the barges against the dock, and soon Bell saw lanterns bobbing as the Gleason police began herding the men off the barges and up Dock Street.

“What—”

A white flash in the middle of the river lit the water from shore to shore and etched the surrounding hills as stark as snow. It cast a diamond brilliance on the tipple that towered over the shantytown, on a tow of laden coal barges moored to the tipple pier, and on the scabs shuffling ashore—a thousand workmen clutching bundles—their startled faces whipped to the sudden burst of light.

Isaac Bell fixed on its source and saw the Monongahela’s superstructure jump straight up in the air. Cabins, navigation bridge, and smokestack parted from the steam yacht’s sleek hull. For half a second, they appeared to float.

16

A THUNDEROUS DOUBLE SALVO ROARED LIKE BATTLESHIP guns.

Isaac Bell, high above the river, felt the heat of the explosion on his face.

Then silence and darkness settled on the water, the town, and the hills. The music had stopped. Jagged flames pierced the dark. The yacht’s hull was burning.

“What happened?” cried Luke.

“Her boiler blew,” said Zeke. “The Good Lord has intervened! He has struck that Satan dead.”

Isaac Bell exchanged dubious glances with Wish Clarke.

The younger detective spoke first. “That one-two punch sounded like someone lent the Good Lord a hand with a hundred pounds of dynamite. First the dynamite, then the boiler.”

“Isaac, old son,” said Aloysius Clarke. “I do believe you’re getting the hang of your line.”

“We better get down there and lend a hand.”

•   •   •

BELL DISCOVERED as he and Wish pushed their way onto the dock that the Polish and Italian scabs had not been imported from their home countries. Nor had the numerous black men come directly from the South. They had been rounded up from the coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, where an anthracite strike had shut down the hard-coal mines. Those he talked to were stunned by the explosion, bewildered, and afraid.

“They didn’t tell us nothing about the union.”

“They just said there was jobs.”

In the middle of the river, the steamboat that had brought the scab tow was circling the burning remains of the Monongahela, playing lights on the water, looking for survivors. Suddenly, her whistle shrieked an alarm.

“Now what?” asked Wish.

Bell pointed upstream where the tipple loomed darkly against the night sky. “Coal barges adrift.”

The entire tow that had been moored to the tipple pier—a fleet of twenty loaded barges lashed together—wheeled ponderously into the river and picked up speed as the powerful current dragged it downstream.

“How in heck did they break loose?”

“First thing I’ll ask, come morning,” said Isaac Bell.

Wish said, “Amazing how many things went wrong at once.”

Isaac Bell’s eyes shot from the drifting tow to the burning yacht to the bewildered scabs milling on the dock to the steamboat, whose captain had stopped his engine to let the current sweep him away from the wreck.

“Too many things. And I have a bad hunch it isn’t over.”

When the boat was a safe distance from any possible survivors still in the water, her big stern wheel churned, and she raced to capture the drifting coal barges. Deckhands scrambled with lines and the steamboat tied on. Stern wheel thrashing the water, she swung the lead barges into the current to master the tow.

“He’s got her,” said Wish. “Captain’s a man to ride the river with.”

Just as he spoke, the big steamboat exploded with a colossal double roar that toppled her chimneys and wheelhouse into the river. To Bell’s ear, the double roar echoed the one-two that destroyed the Monongahela.

But unlike the yacht, which was still drifting and on fire, the big steamboat sank straight to the bottom, leaving the wreckage of her upper decks exposed. The current slammed the coal barges against her, ripping their wooden hulls. Within minutes, twenty had sunk, blocking the channel to Pittsburgh.

“My provocateur,” said Isaac Bell, “is getting the hang of his line, too.”

17

A PIPE ORGAN DOMINATED THE FRONT ROOM OF BLOOM House, the