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

he had lifted nothing heavier than a glass to build his strength. The wind was even stronger on the roof. Bell slithered flat on his belly to the front of the car, over the canvas-covered frame of the vestibules and onto the stateroom car, and crawled forward into a blizzard of smoke, steam, and hot cinders spewing from the engine. Reaching the front of the car at last, he found a six-foot space between its roof and the tender. Coal was heaped in the front of the tender. The back, the steel water tank, was flat, and lower than the roof of the stateroom.

The wind of their passage at one hundred miles per hour made it impossible to jump the space. Bell put his hands together and extended his arms, narrowing his body as if diving off a high board, and plunged. He cleared the back of the tender, and when his hands hit the steel tank, he tried to curl into a tight ball. He tumbled forward, skidded on the slick surface, and reached frantically for a handhold.

He found one wrapping the edge, dragged himself forward, dropped onto the coal pile, scrambled across it, and found himself peering into an empty locomotive cab lit by the roaring flames of the firebox that gleamed through a crack in the door. He climbed down a ladder on the front of the tender and jumped into the cab, a hot, dark labyrinth of levers, valves, gauges, and piping.

He was generally conversant with locomotives from avid reading as a child, schoolboy engine tours hosted by Kenny’s father, and leading a Yale Glee Club midnight excursion to Miss Porter’s School on an Atlantic 4-4-0 “borrowed” from the New Haven Railroad train yards. He left the Johnson bar reverser in the center notch and searched for the throttle.

The throttle would not budge. He looked closely. The train wreckers had screwed a clamp on to hold it in the wide-open position. He unscrewed the clamp and notched the throttle forward to stop the flow of steam into the cylinders. Tens of thousands of pounds of steel, iron, coal, and water just kept rolling. Gently, he applied the automatic air brakes on the cars behind him, reducing about eight pounds of pressure, which also set the locomotive’s brakes. Screeching steel and a violent bucking told him, Too much. He put on more air pressure, easing the brake shoes on the wheels, and tried a softer touch. At last the train began to slow until there came a point at about fifty miles an hour when Isaac Bell realized to his huge relief that he, more than momentum, was in command.

Just in time. He had reduced the train’s speed to a crawl when he saw a red lantern ahead. A brakeman was standing on the tracks, swinging the Stop signal. A passenger train had stopped for a dispatcher’s signal and was blocking the tracks. “Ran back as fast as I could,” shouted the brakeman. “Good thing you saw me. Bumping into us at ten miles an hour, somebody might get hurt.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Bell.

While he waited for the train ahead to get moving again, he checked his gauges for boiler pressure and water level and injected more water into the firebox and scooped coal into the fire. Then he followed the passenger train into Pittsburgh, tight on its tail to squeeze through the same switches. Crossing the Allegheny River, he saw a fire at the Point—the still-burning wreckage of the stern-wheeler Camilla. A bigger fire was shooting flames into the sky from the edge of the Golden Triangle. It looked as if the union hall fire had spread to surrounding buildings.

•   •   •

WALLY AND MACK were waiting at the specials’ platform. One look at Bell’s face and Wally said, “I see you already heard what happened.”

“Henry Clay wired the news himself. Couldn’t resist bragging. And I just saw the fires from the bridge. Did the boys burn to death?”

“Firemen I talked to think they had their heads bashed in first.”

“I should have sent you two. You’d have seen it coming.”

“Don’t start blaming yourself,” said Mack. “Terry and Mike were grown-ups.”

“Just so you know, Isaac, they found another body, apparently the guy who set the fire. Papers in his wallet said he was on the Strike Committee.”

“How come his wallet didn’t burn up?”

“Smoke poisoning killed him, apparently,” said Wally. “Or so the cops say.”

Mack said, “Whatever happened, the strikers will catch hell for it. The newspapers are putting on extra editions, howling for blood.”

“What about Jennings’s steamboat?”

“Similar situation,” Wally said. “Sheriff’s men shot a striker in a rowboat. It was nearby.”

Mack said, “With all this in mind, we sent Archie to keep an eye on Jim Higgins.”

Bell said, “But Jim Higgins is protected by armed strikers.”

“So they’ll protect Archie, too.”

Bell nodded. “Of course. You’re right. Thank you for looking after Archie.”

“Now what?” asked Wally.

“Any word from Research?”

“Dead end.”

Mack handed him a telegram from Grady Forrer.

THIBODEAU & MARZEN PRINCIPALS UNNAMED, UNKNOWN, UNKNOWABLE.

Bell had been counting heavily on the broker leading him to Henry Clay’s boss. He crumpled the telegram in his fist and flung it from him. Mack caught it on the fly, smoothed the paper, and handed it back. “Put it away for later. Sometimes dead ends turn around.”

“Now what?” Wally asked again.

“Where’s that black steamboat?”

“Terry and Mike saw it tied up behind a mill at McKeesport.”

“Which is probably what got them killed.”

A bell clanged. A gleaming locomotive pulled a New York-to-Chicago limited into the train shed. Bell looked around the train platforms, which were deserted at this late hour. He wondered where Mary was. But he asked, “Where’s Jim Higgins?”

“Forted up at Amalgamated,” said Mack. “He’s got trains blocked, trolleys blocked, and streets blocked. But the black boat is making them nervous.”

Wally said, “The cops are gnashing their teeth.”

“So’s the sheriff,” said Mack. “At least, according to my sources. Rarin’ to roust the strikers out of their tents.”

“That would be a bloodbath.”

Wally said, “The operators, and the Coal