the Spy (2010) by Cussler Clive (early readers .txt) 📕

Bell said, I hate to leave John Scully in a lurch, but can you keep me off the Frye Boys case while I look into this?

A lurch is where Detective Scully likes to be, Van Dorn growled.

The man is too independent for my taste.

And yet, a clairvoyant investigator, Bell defended his colleague. Scully, an operative not famous for reporting in regularly, was trailing a trio of violent bank robbers across the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. They had made a name for themselves by leaving notes written in the blood of their victims: Fear the Frye Boys. They had robbed their first bank a year ago in New Jersey, fled west, robbing many more, then laid low for the winter. Now they were rampaging east from Illinois in a string of bloody assaults on small-town banks. As innovative as they were vicious, they employed stolen automobiles to cross state lines, leaving local sheriffs in the dust.

You will remain in charge of the Frye case, Isaac, Van Dorn said sternly. Until Congress gets around to funding some sort of national investigation bureau, the Justice Department will continue to pay us handsomely to capture criminals who cross state lines, and I don't intend to let a maverick like Scully disappoint them.

As you wish, sir, Bell replied formally. But you did promise Miss Langner the full support of the agency.

All right! I'll shift a couple of men Scully's way-briefly. But you're still in charge, and it should not take you long to confirm the veracity of Langner's suicide note.

Can your friend the Navy Secretary get me a yard pass? I want to powwow with the Marines.

What for? the boss smiled. A rematch?

Bell grinned back but sobered quickly.

If Mr. Langner did not kill himself, someone went to a lot of trouble to murder him and besmirch his reputation. The Marines guard the gates of the navy yard. They must have seen that someone leave the night before.

Chapter 3

MORE LIMESTONE! YELLED CHAD GORDON. GREEDILY watching his newest torrent of molten iron gush like liquid fire from the taphole into its ladle, the Naval Ordnance Bureau metallurgist muttered a triumphant, Hull 44, here we come!

All canvas and no hull was a charge regularly leveled at Chad Gordon for running risks with three-thousand-degree molten metal that no sane man would.

But no one denied that the brilliant star deserved his own blast furnace in a remote corner of the steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he experimented eighteen hours a day to create low-carbon pig iron to process into torpedo-resistant armor plate. The company had to assign him two separate crews of workmen, as even poverty-stricken immigrants accustomed to working like dogs could not keep up with Chad Gordon's pace.

On this snowy March night, his second shift consisted of an American foreman, Bob Hall, and a gang that Hall regarded as the usual bunch of foreigners-four Hungarians and a gloomy German who had replaced a missing Hungarian. As near as Bob Hall could make out from their jabbering, their missing pal had fallen down a well or been run over by a locomotive, take your pick.

The German's name was Hans. He claimed to have worked at the Krupp Werke in the Ruhr Valley. That was fine with foreman Hall. Hans was strong and seemed to know his business and understood more English than all four Hungarians combined. Besides, Mr. Gordon wouldn't give a damn if the German had come straight from Hell as long as he worked hard.

Seven hours into the shift, a hang of partly solidified metal formed near the top of the furnace. It threatened to block the uptake that vented volatile hot waste gases. Foreman Hall suggested clearing it before it got any bigger. Chad Gordon ordered him brusquely aside. I said, More limestone.'

The German had been waiting for such an opportunity. Quickly, he climbed the ladders to the top of the furnace where barrows were standing by with fresh stock. Each contained a twelve-hundred-pound load of iron ore, or coke, or the dolomitic limestone with an unusually high content of magnesia that the hard-driving Chad Gordon was counting on to strengthen the metal.

The German grabbed a barrow of dolomitic limestone and rolled the two-wheel cart to the mouth of the furnace.

Wait for the boil! the foreman bellowed from down at the base where melted impurities were tumbling from the slag notch. The molten iron and slag in the bottom of the furnace were roaring at a full three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. But the ore and coke on top had barely reached seven hundred.

Hans didn't seem to hear him as he dumped the limestone into the furnace and hurriedly descended the ladders. You lunatic, yelled the foreman. It's not hot enough. You blocked the uptake.

Hans shouldered past the foreman.

Don't worry about the hang, Chad Gordon shouted without bothering to look up. It'll drop.

The foreman knew better. The hang was trapping explosive gases inside the furnace. Hans's dump had only made it worse. A lot worse. He shouted to the Hungarians, Get up there and clear the uptake!

The Hungarians hesitated. Even if they couldn't fully understand English, they knew the danger of flammable gases accumulating above the batch. Hall's clenched fist and angry gestures at the ladder sent them scrambling to the top of the furnace with bars and picks. But just as they started to break up the hang it dropped on its own accord in one solid piece. Just like Mr. Gordon had predicted. Except the barrow of limestone heaped on the cool surface had also blocked the uptake. When the hang dropped, the sudden burst of outside air into the furnace combined with the heat below to ignite the trapped waste gases.

They exploded with a roar that lifted the roof off the building and threw it onto a Bessemer converter fifty yards away. The blast blew boots and clothing off the Hungarians and incinerated their bodies.