The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

the chief investigator striding purposefully straight at him.

“I surmise,” Isaac Bell said sternly, “that you lost Platov.”

“Not only Platov. His entire shop car disappeared.”

It had been the last car on Stevens’s special. Now it was gone.

“It didn’t steam off on its own.”

“No, sir. The boys told me when they woke up this morning, it was uncoupled and gone.”

Bell surveyed the siding on which the Stevens special sat. The rails pitched slightly downhill. Uncoupled, Platov’s car would have rolled away. “Can’t have gotten far.”

But a switch was open at the back end of the yard, connecting the support train siding to a feeder line that disappeared among a cluster of factories and warehouses along the river.

“Go get a handcar, James.”

Dashwood returned, pumping a lightweight track inspector’s handcar. Bell jumped on, and they started down the factory siding. Bell lent this strength to the slim Dashwood’s effort, and they were soon rolling at nearly twenty miles per hour. Rounding a bend, they saw smoke ahead, the source hidden by clapboard-sided warehouses. Around the next twist in the rail, they saw oily smoke rising into the clear blue sky.

“Faster!”

They raced between a leatherworks and an odoriferous slaughterhouse, and saw that the smoke was billowing from Platov’s shop car, which had stopped against the bumper that blocked the end of the rails. Flames were spouting from its windows, doors, and roof hatch. In the seconds it took Bell and Dashwood to reach it, the entire car was completely engulfed.

“Poor Mr. Platov,” Dashwood cried. “All his tools . . . God, I hope he’s not inside.”

“Poor Mr. Platov,” Bell repeated grimly. A shop car filled with tanks of oil and gasoline burned hot and fast.

“Lucky the car wasn’t coupled to Mr. Stevens’s special,” said Dashwood.

“Very lucky,” Bell agreed.

“What is that smell?”

“Some poor devil roasting, I’m afraid.”

“Mr. Platov?”

“Who else?” asked Bell.

Horse-drawn fire engines came bouncing over the tracks. The firemen unrolled hoses to the river and engaged their steam pump. Powerful streams of water bored into the flames but to little effect. The fire quickly consumed the wooden sides and roof and floor of the rail car until there was nothing left but a mound of ash heaped between the steel trucks and iron wheels. When it was out, the fireman found the shriveled remains of a human body, its boots and clothes burned to a crisp.

Bell poked among the wet ashes.

Something gleaming caught his eye. He picked up a one-inch square of glass framed with brass. It was still warm. He turned it over his fingers. The brass had grooves on two edges. He showed it to Dashwood. “Faber-Castell engineering slide rule . . . or what’s left of it.”

“Here comes Steve Stevens.”

The fast-flying cotton farmer waddled up, planted his hands on his hips, and glowered at the ashes.

“If this don’t beat all! Ah got a socialist red unionist creepin’ up on me. Every sentimental fool in the country is rootin’ for Josephine just ’cause she’s a gal. And now my high-paid mechanician goes and barbecues hisself. Who the heck is goin’ to keep my poor machine runnin’?”

Bell suggested, “Why don’t you ask the mechanicians Dmitri helped?”

“That’s the dumbest idea Ah ever heard. Even if that damn-fool Russian couldn’t synchronize my motors, nobody else knows how to fix my flying machine like him. Poor old machine might as well have burned up with him. He knew it inside and out. Without him, Ah’ll be lucky to make it across the New Mexico Territory.”

“It’s not a dumb idea,” said Josephine. Bell had noticed her glide up silently behind them on a bicycle she had borrowed somewhere. Stevens had not.

The startled fat man whirled around. “Where the heck did you come from? How long have you been listenin’?”

“Since you said they’re rooting for me because I’m a girl.”

“Well, darn it, it’s true, and you know it’s true.”

Josephine stared into the smoldering ruins of Platov’s shop car. “But Isaac is right. With Dmitri . . . gone . . . you need help.”

“Ah’ll get on fine. Don’t count me out ’cause I lost one mechanician.”

Josephine shook her head. “Mr. Stevens, I have ears. I hear those motors chewing your machine to bits every time you take to the air. Do you want me to have a look at them?”

“Well, Ah’m not sure—”

Bell interrupted. “I’ll ask Andy Moser if he would look them over with Josephine.”

“In case you think I’m going to sabotage your machine when you’re not looking,” Josephine grinned at Stevens.

“Ah didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it. Let me and Andy lend you a hand.” Her grin got wider, and she teased, “Isaac will tell Andy to watch me like a hawk, so I don’t ‘accidentally’ bust anything.”

“All right, all right. Can’t hurt to have a look.”

Josephine pedaled back toward the rail yard.

“Hop on,” Bell told Stevens, and pumped the handcar after her. Stevens was silent until after they passed the slaughterhouse and the factories. Then he said, “’Preciate yer tryin’ to help, Bell.”

“Appreciate Josephine.”

“She took me by surprise.”

“I think it’s dawning on both of you that you’re all in this together.”

“Now you sound like that fool Red.”

“Mudd is in with you, too,” said Bell.

“Damned unionist.”

But the best intentions could not overcome the stress of running rough for three thousand miles. Josephine and Andy tried their wizardry on Stevens’s two motors all afternoon before they admitted defeat.

Josephine took Bell aside and spoke urgently: “I doubt Stevens will listen to me, but maybe if he hears it from Andy he might listen.”

“Listen to what?”

“That machine will never make it to San Francisco. If he tries to force it, it’ll kill him.”

Bell beckoned Andy. Andy said, “Best I could do was synchronize’em for a few minutes before they started running haywire again. But even if we could keep ’em synchronized, the motors are shot. He won’t make it over the mountains.”

“Tell him.”

“Would you come with me, Mr. Bell? In case he gets mad.”

Bell stood by as Andy explained the situation to Steve Stevens.

Stevens planted his hands on his hips