Dead Man's Tunnel

by Sheldon Russell

  Dedicated to Felicia, Ayden, and Ava

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THANK YOU TO my editor, Daniela Rapp, to my agents, Michael and Susan Morgan Farris, and to the other professionals at Minotaur Books, dream makers all.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Also by Sheldon Russell

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  HE TOUCHED HIS eyelids to make certain they were open. Blackness spilled into his lungs and rose into the cavities of his body. He gasped and reached out for the boundaries, but only emptiness reached back. A draft swept over him from somewhere, and he shivered.

  Such cold had been with him always, and he struggled to remember where. His name came first: Joseph. It came clear and true and in his own voice. His breath hung in the morning like frozen puffs of smoke, and his sister, sucking on icy fingers, whined and wiped her nose on her sleeve. And he heard his father cutting wood down by the boat dock. Chips flew up from his ax and spun out onto the ice. The smell of pine filled the air.

  But that was then. He was not that boy now but Sergeant Joseph Erikson, U.S. Army, assigned to guard the Johnson Canyon rail tunnel in Arizona. Even though the war had ended with the dropping of the atomic bomb, Joseph was lost now in the universe.

  He held his hands in front of him and stared into the blackness. For an instant he saw them, it seemed so, but then they were gone. Looking up, he searched for the stars, those points of light that placed him in the cosmos, but they, too, were gone.

  He touched the wound behind his ear, and something hot settled into his stomach. He shivered again, not from the cold but from the memory that crept in from the darkness like a troll.

  The sound behind him on the trestle had been someone breathing, that much he remembered, and the blow had exploded in his skull with a flash.

  Had he pitched over the side of the trestle and into the abyss below? Often in the lonely hours of the guardhouse he’d thought about the falling, the certain death that awaited in the rocks, the terror, the monstrous seconds between life and death.

  He smelled creosote and oil, smells of the tracks and the trestle. But where were the stars, the desert night? Suddenly his mouth went dry. Out here only one place obliterated the sky and the sounds of life. Only the tunnel could plunge a man into blackness as suffocating as death.

  He’d double-checked the schedule of the westbound before making his rounds. There were three hours to spare, if she came on time. The old steamers were often late, but the diesels sometimes were even early; a man could just never be certain. But then how long had he been here? How long had he lain unconscious in the darkness?

  The tension in his neck crawled up into his scalp. The railroad had chiseled the Johnson Canyon Tunnel through solid basalt, only a few hundred feet in length, but with a curve at its center. They built a trestle as wobbly as an orange crate to its entrance. Trains raced from the mountains, the trestle quivering and creaking and clouds of dirt sifting into the canyon below as the trains shot into the tunnel at breakneck speeds. They plunged down a three-degree grade, their wheels screeching and smoking against the weight. The tracks shuddered beneath them, and rail spikes shot into the air like popcorn.

  The ones climbing, however, groaned up the steepest ascent in North America, at times moving no faster than a man could walk. They came with pushers at their backs, their engines hauling against the tons of rolling stock.

  Section men hated the tunnel for obvious reasons, and the track foreman cussed her and the sons of bitches who built her every chance he got.

  Sergeant Erikson knew the tunnel better than anyone alive. He’d walked it every day from end to end. At midpoint, all light blinked away, and the world went silent. The air fell still as death, and panic welled up in even the bravest of souls.

  Even so, a man caught between the wall of the tunnel and an oncoming train had no chance. Once, a section hand, who had fallen asleep in the tunnel, awoke to a westbound making the curve. He’d lost his rib cage on a ladder rung.

  Either way, Sergeant Joseph Erikson had no intentions of sticking around for a freighter plunging down the mountain like the end of the world. Dark or not, there were two ways out of a tunnel, and he figured to take one of them.

  As he turned, he spilled forward into the railbedding. Pain pooled in his groin. Groping in the darkness, he found the chains threaded beneath the tracks and wrapped about his ankles.

  “My God,” he said, and his voice echoed back.

  He’d been trussed between the rails like a butchering hog. He took a deep breath. The railroaders were forever pulling shit. Once, they nailed the guardhouse door shut, and another time they put a porcupine in the outhouse. But this had gone too far. This time he intended to settle with the foreman.

  “Hey,” he shouted, and his voice pinged away.

  A tingle buzzed against his ankles, like a fly in a windowpane. He knelt and put his ear against the track. It smelled of grease and metal, and a rumble traveled in from somewhere far away. Fear rushed through his veins, and his ears rang.

  “No,” he said.

  The wail of the engine drifted down from the mountain. Her rumble gathered up in the sky, and her brakes smoked against the plunging grade. And when her lights dropped over the precipice, shadows leapt up the canyon wall. The earth trembled, and the roar of engines filled the desert as the train shot into the darkness of the Johnson Canyon Tunnel.

  1

  THE QUARTER FELL out of Hook Runyon’s britches and rolled the length of the caboose, clattering against the wall. The bastards hadn’t bothered to park the caboose on level ground when they’d sided it at West’s Salvage Yard in Ash Fork, Arizona.

  He searched for his arm prosthesis, finding it under his bunk.

  “Goddang it, Mixer,” he said. “Leave my arm the hell alone.”

  Mixer, his dog, peeked up through his brows and clopped his tail against the floor. He’d been known to steal things, given the opportunity, and had recently taken a liking to Hook’s prosthesis. Just last week Hook had found it buried in the right-of-way alongside a porkchop bone. Had he not seen the hook peeking out of the sand, it would have been gone forever.

  A meager salary, a passion for rare books, and an occasional drink or two had not lent itself to buying a new prosthetic. He’d managed his own repairs on the thing over the years, t
hough it suffered from the lack of proper maintenance.

  Scrap West, the owner of the salvage yard, told him the prosthetic looked like a bent crankshaft, and why didn’t he just throw it in the shredder along with the rest of the junk? When Hook suggested that he might just throw him in with it, Scrap grinned and walked away.

  Hook strapped on the arm before lighting a cigarette. He put on coffee and sat down at the table to watch the sunrise over the mountain of squashed cars. Beams of sunlight skittered about in the broken windshields and off a thousand shattered mirrors. By midmorning, the yard would swelter under the sun. By noon, heat would quiver up from the piles of junk. And by day’s end, gasoline fumes would hang over the yard in a blue pall.

  Hook poured his coffee and sipped at the lip of his cup. He set it aside to cool. Opening his latest acquisition, a mint copy of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, he thumbed through the pages. He liked Steinbeck’s stuff, the dialogue was like listening to secrets through an open window. Someday Steinbeck’s writings would go for a fortune. But then what true collector sold his books? He’d rather sell his soul, or his children’s souls. In any event, finding such a book in such condition had been lucky, given his exile in the desert.

  Scrap West had complained to the railroad about thieves stealing copper off loaded cars. So Eddie Preston, the divisional supervisor, being an intemperate sort, and still hot over a little incident Hook had been involved in back in Amarillo, had taken the opportunity to even things up by putting him on the salvage detail.

  The night of the Amarillo incident, Hook had found the door seal broken on a sided car. Concerned that she’d be emptied out by morning, he’d asked the switchman to side her closer in to the yard office. In the process, the switchman stuck his thumb in the coupler and pulled back a stub. He commenced screaming and cussing, his stump spewing blood the whole time.

  Hook rushed in to help stop the bleeding. But when the sided car rumbled by, he realized he’d failed to set the brakes. The car rolled out onto the main line, gathering up speed as she went. She passed the yard office and then the depot, and by the time she hit the stockyard switch, she sped along at twenty miles an hour. Hook watched in disbelief as she teetered and then heaved over onto her side like a shot elephant.

  Half her contents, army surplus items, mostly cots, boots, and mess hall equipment, spilled across the tracks, shutting down the main line. About the time they’d loaded the switchman into an ambulance, a thunderstorm blew in from the southwest and soaked the spilled freight.

  St. John’s Orphanage offered to bring out their truck and load up the supplies if they could have them, so Hook had agreed, finding it prudent to not close the main line.

  In the end, no one ever located the switchman’s thumb, and Eddie Preston had been less than understanding about the whole situation. In short, that’s why Hook now stood guard over a mile-long line of scrap cars in Arizona.

  Having seniority over every other cinder dick on the force, Hook had threatened to file a complaint with the big boys. But Eddie suggested that an investigation might turn up more than Hook could explain and that if he was smart, which he doubted, he’d keep his mouth shut.

  The result had been three of the longest months in Hook’s life. In all that time he’d nabbed only a couple boys stealing spike kegs and a drunk sleeping under one of the cars.

  Pusher engines, old steamers for the most part, idled day and night on the siding across from his caboose. Used for boosting hotshots up the grade, they sometimes doubled as switch engines for moving cars in and out of the salvage yard. The chug and thump of their engines never ceased, and Hook had not had a good night’s sleep since his arrival.

  Hook sought out the engineers for news, brief encounters with civilization, inasmuch as engineers could be considered civil. Beyond that, he passed his days alone or in the company of Scrap West, which came mostly to the same thing.

  Even Mixer, who loved a good fight more than life itself, had succumbed to the isolation, resorting to extended naps, sometimes spiraling into deep unconsciousness. Several times Hook had checked his breathing to make certain he hadn’t died.

  Hook poured himself another cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. As soon as the sun was fully up, he’d make his rounds. He’d noticed footprints in the sand down by the switch and again where a load of copper had been sided.

  As he sat back down at the table, the engine on Scrap’s twenty-five-ton crane roared into life. The noise rode down the tracks and set up miniature tidal waves in Hook’s coffee.

  Scrap had purchased the crane from the army and took pride in what he considered to be the bargain of the century. He maintained that the crane had increased his output by 25 percent and could not have been purchased anywhere else at twice the price.

  Scrap never passed up a chance to make a dime, even keeping chickens in the back of the salvage yard. He claimed eggs big as basketballs and that he’d made enough from selling them to pay his monthly water bill.

  Mixer, who hated the crane even more than Hook did, rolled onto his back and groaned. Once started, the roar of the engine stopped only for lunch and then again at quitting time. Now and again, a car body would plummet from the crane and crash onto the growing heap of metal.

  When the crane suddenly stopped, Mixer glanced up at Hook. Within moments, a knock rattled the caboose door. Hook tucked his shirt in and opened it to find Scrap West standing with his arms folded over his chest. Scrap had been named Reginald by his mother, but hardly anybody in the world knew it. Hook knew it only because Scrap had gotten drunk one night and spilled the secret.

  “Eddie Preston’s on my phone,” Scrap said.

  “What does he want?” Hook asked.

  Scrap pinched up his face, which looked a good deal like one of his wrecked cars. His nose spread out on the end like a spade and was the exact color of a radish. A scar ran through his eyebrow where a leaf spring had hit him, and his thumbnails were permanently blue from having been squashed over the years. His eyes were hard as ball bearings. He had a missing front tooth, which he covered with his hand when he grinned. Scrap claimed he’d been born with a full set of teeth, except for that particular one, and it had refused to grow even after fifty years of trying.

  Scrap looked for the world like the bums Hook had run in his whole career, except beneath that beat-up mug was a brain that chugged away like a perpetual motion machine. It concocted one scheme after another in an attempt to screw the world out of yet one more dollar. Most of his schemes failed, but some didn’t. Either way, it didn’t matter because Scrap had already moved on to the next one.

  “I ain’t no goddang messenger for Division,” Scrap said. “For all I know there’s a call coming in on copper prices this very minute. She goes up a penny, and I lose a day’s wages. On top of that, my crane’s down there drinking diesel like a drunk sailor, and I’m up here talking to you.”

  “Hell, Scrap, you’re getting free security, aren’t you, not to mention all that track you pilfered off the right-of-way. I figure you owe the railroad a minute of your time.”

  Scrap worked the slug out of his pipe without looking up. He blew through the stem and then fished through his pockets for his tobacco.

  “I did the railroad a favor moving that rail,” he said, torching up his pipe. “I went in the hole on that one, I tell you. Anyway, it would have cost the railroad plenty to bring in equipment all the way from Flagstaff just to haul away that old track.”

  Blue smoke enveloped Scrap’s head. “And you can just tell Eddie Preston these bastards are still walking off with my copper and in broad daylight, too. Maybe he should send a yard dog out here that does something other than read books and take naps.”

  “Maybe you could hire some extra hands, Scrap. I never knew a man any tighter in my life.”

  Scrap poked his finger into the bowl of his pipe before firing it up again.

  “Just ’cause I wasn’t raised up rotten like some I know, and just ’cause I eked out a living on wha
t others threw away, doesn’t make me tight. Makes me economical.”

  “Makes you tight,” Hook said. “You probably got money stashed all over this junkyard.”

  “Maybe you ought try saving a dime yourself once in a while,” he said, “instead of squandering it on old books and raw whiskey.”

  “One day the government’s coming after their taxes, Scrap. What you going to do then?”

  “What’s the government got to find but my good word?”

  “Not paying taxes is illegal. And what about those switch brackets down by the south entrance? Where did those come from, I wonder?”

  “You just quit nosing around my stuff and spend a little more time guarding my cars.”

  Hook slipped on his shoes and lit a cigarette. “Come on, Mixer,” he said. “We better lock up, or the silver will be missing when we get back.”

  * * *

  Hook pushed the office door shut just as Scrap’s crane fired up again. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  “How’s it hanging, Eddie?” he said.

  “Runyon, I been sitting on this phone for half an hour. You think all I have to do is to wait on you?”

  “Sorry, Eddie, but my secretary couldn’t make it in today.”

  “Cut the wisecracks, Runyon. There’s been a death out at the Johnson Canyon Tunnel.”

  A chill ran through Hook. He hated that damn tunnel.

  “A death?”

  “You know, when someone stops breathing, forever.”

  “Yeah, I know what death is, Eddie. It’s working security in a junkyard.”

  “I want you to go check it out.”

  Hook lit a cigarette and watched the crane lift a wrecked Cadillac into the sky.

  “And leave Scrap’s copper unprotected? Jesus, Eddie, do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Believe me, Runyon, I’d send someone else if I could, but that line has to be kept open. If that tunnel shuts down, the whole system goes with it.”

  “What do they think happened?”

  “Accident, one of the military guards that’s been stationed out there.”

  “Accident?” Hook flipped his ashes into the wastebasket and looked out the window, which was gray with smoke and dust. “How do they know?”