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

Morgan, his rivals on the southern and northern routes. At the point where Bell was so close to the rail-junction city that he could see the snowcapped peaks of the Wasatch Mountains to Ogden’s east, his train ground to a halt.

The tracks were blocked six miles ahead, the conductor told him.

An explosion had derailed the westbound Sacramento Limited.

BELL JUMPED TO THE ground and ran alongside the train to the front end. The engineer and fireman had dismounted from their locomotive and were standing on the ballast, rolling cigarettes. Bell showed them his Van Dorn identification, and ordered, “Get me as close to the wreck as you can.”

“Sorry, Mr. Detective, I take my orders from the dispatcher.”

Bell’s derringer appeared in his hand suddenly. Two dark muzzles yawned at the engineer. “This is a matter of life and death, starting with yours,” said Bell. He pointed at the cowcatcher on the front of the locomotive, and said, “Move this train to the wreck and don’t stop until you hit debris!”

“You wouldn’t shoot a man in cold blood,” said the fireman.

“The hell he wouldn‘t,” said the engineer, shifting his gaze nervously from the derringer to the expression on Isaac Bell’s face. “Get up there and shovel coal.”

The locomotive, a big 4-6-2, steamed six miles before a brakeman with a red flag stopped them where the tracks disappeared in a large hole in the ballast. Just beyond the hole, six Pullmans, a baggage car, and a tender lay on their sides. Bell dismounted from the locomotive and strode through the wreckage. “How many hurt?” he asked the railroad official who was pointed out to him as the wreck master.

“Thirty-five. Four seriously.”

“Dead?”

“None. They were lucky. The bastard blew the rail a minute early. The engineer had time to reduce his speed.”

“Strange,” said Bell. “His attacks have always been so precisely timed.”

“Well, this’ll be his last. We got him.”

“What? Where is he?”

“Sheriff caught him in Ogden. Lucky for him. Passengers tried to lynch him. He got away, but then one of them spotted him later, hiding in a stable.”

Bell found a locomotive on the other side of the wreck to run him into Union Depot.

The jailhouse was situated in Ogden’s mansard-roofed City Hall a block from the railroad station. Two top Van Dorn agents were there ahead of him, the older Weber-and-Fields duo of Mack Fulton and Wally Kisley. Neither was cracking jokes. In fact, both men looked glum.

“Where is he?” Bell demanded.

“It’s not him,” said Fulton wearily. He seemed exhausted, Bell thought, and for the first time he wondered if Mack should be considering retirement. Always lean, his face was shrunken as a cadaver’s.

“Not who blew the train?”

“Oh, he blew the train all right,” said Kisley, whose trademark three-piece checkerboard suit was caked with dust. Wally looked as tired as Mack but not ill. “Only he’s not the Wrecker. Go ahead, you take a crack at him.”

“You’ll have a better chance of getting him to talk. He sure as hell won’t admit a word to us.”

“Why would he talk to me?”

“Old friend of yours,” Fulton explained cryptically. He and Kisley were both twenty years older than Bell, celebrated veterans and friends, who were free to say whatever popped in their heads even though Bell was boss of the Wrecker investigation.

“I’d knock it out of him,” said the sheriff. “But your boys said to wait for you, and the railroad company tells me Van Dorn calls the tune. Damned foolishness, in my opinion. But no one’s asking my opinion.”

Bell strode into the room where they had the prisoner manacled to a table affixed solidly to the stone floor. An “old friend,” to be sure, the prisoner was Jake Dunn, a safecracker. On the end of the table was a neat, banded stack of crisp five-dollar bills, five hundred dollars’ worth, according to the sheriff, clearly payment for services rendered. Bell’s first grim thought was that now the Wrecker was hiring accomplices to do his murderous work for him. Which means he could strike anywhere and be long gone before the strike happened.

“Jake, what in blazes have you gotten mixed up in this time?”

“Hello, Mr. Bell. Haven’t seen you since you sent me to San Quentin.”

Bell sat quietly and looked him over. San Quentin had not been kind to the safecracker. He looked twenty years older, a hollow shell of the hard case he had been. His hands were shaking so hard it was difficult to imagine him setting a charge without detonating it accidentally. Relieved at first to see a familiar face, Dunn shriveled now under Bell’s gaze.

“Blowing Wells Fargo safes is robbery, Jake. Wrecking passenger trains is murder. The man who paid you that money has killed innocent people by the dozen.”

“I didn’t know we were wrecking the train.”

“You didn’t know that blowing the rails out from under a speeding train would cause a wreck?” Bell said in disbelief, his face dark with disgust. “What did you think would happen?”

The prisoner hung his head.

“Jake! What did you think would happen?”

“You gotta believe me, Mr. Bell. He told me to blow the rail so the train would stop so they could hit the express car. I didn’t know he was gonna put her on the ground.”

“What do you mean? You’re the one who lit the fuse.”

“He switched fuses on me. I thought I was lighting a fast fuse that would detonate the charge in time for the train to stop. Instead, it burned slow. I couldn’t believe my eyes, Mr. Bell. It was burning so slow the train was going to run right over the charge. I tried to stop it.”

Bell stared at him coldly.

“That’s how they caught me, Mr. Bell. I ran after it, trying to stomp it out. Too late. They saw me, and after she hit the ground they lit out after me like I was the guy who shot McKinley.”

“Jake, you’ve got the hangman’s rope around your neck and one way to get it loose. Take me to the man