“Apparently,” Bell said, “this isn’t our boatman’s padre.”
Bell looked around for the paddlers and realized they weren’t there. He left his wife and returned to the beach. The boat was gone. He spotted it out on the open water, heading back the way they had come. He cursed. This was wasting time they didn’t have.
“What’s wrong?” Marion asked when she saw the look on his face as he marched back into the village.
“The men took off in the canoe. We’re stuck here until they come back, I assume with the man’s father.”
In most situations, Bell had the patience of a saint. Or a sniper. This wasn’t one of those times. The afternoon wore on. They were fed some cake, made on a cast-iron griddle, and a stew made from vegetables native to the area. At sundown, they were shown to a hut where rough blankets had been laid on the grass floor.
Sleep eluded them both. The bedding was infested with bedbugs, and, for Bell, the thought of Teddy Roosevelt dying while he was stuck in this primitive place was as galling as the bloodthirsty parasites.
He was up before dawn and strode down to the beach. The sun was a tangerine smear on the horizon, and the waves came in black but turned to cream when they broke. There was no sign of the large dugout. Bell rattled off a string of curses aloud that would have made the saltiest sailor blush.
Marion had come up behind him without him noticing. “I’m going to have to go to confession just for hearing you curse.”
He grinned, abashed. “Sorry about that.”
“No boat, I see.”
“We never should have gotten in it with them.”
They spent an idle day in the village. Bell offered to help out with chores, but no one would hear of their guests doing any physical work. He ended up spending most of his time pacing the beach like an Army sentry and watching the horizon for the returning mariners.
They finally rowed into view at three in the afternoon. Bell was so anxious that he waded out up to his chest to pull them to shore. The sixth man in the canoe was of mixed Spanish and native blood and wore a black shirt despite the heat. The white collar at his throat proclaimed his profession. It wasn’t the navigator’s father who spoke Spanish. It was his priest.
“Hola,” the man greeted Bell and made short introductory remarks.
Bell gave his standard reply afterward. “No hablo español.” He pointed to Marion, who waited on the beach. “She hablo.”
“I also speak English,” the priest said. “I am Father Marcos.”
“Isaac Bell.” They got the boat beached, and Bell shook the padre’s hand. “This is my wife, Marion. Marion, this is Father Marcos.”
“Hello.”
“How did you two end up here? Naa wasn’t sure. He just said you were stranded on the beach. Was it a shipwreck?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But it wasn’t an oceangoing ship. It was an airship, like a Zeppelin. Father, I don’t mean to be rude, but we need to get to Colón as fast as possible. I don’t know if you are aware, but our former President Teddy Roosevelt is visiting the canal tomorrow.”
“Oh, yes. The whole town is talking of nothing else.”
“Wait. What? Do you mean you just came from Colón?”
“Yes, that is where my church is.”
Bell groaned in frustration. “I told them that’s where we wanted to go yet they brought us to their village instead.”
“Dear me. I’m so sorry. I visit here once a month to minister to these people.”
“Doesn’t matter now.” Bell brushed aside his anger. “There’s going to be an assassination attempt on the President’s life while he’s visiting. We need to get back to Colón so I can warn him. I’m kind of a policeman.”
“Dear me,” Father Marcos repeated. “Colón is an eight-hour journey from here, and I’m afraid they won’t want to make it tonight.”
“I can pay them, once we’re back to civilization,” Bell said, not wanting to sound like he was pleading even though he was. “Anything they want.”
“It’s not that, Mr. Bell. The men need a night’s rest. Bringing you here and fetching me from Colón nearly killed them.”
“Dawn, then. We have to leave at dawn.” Leaving at sunup would put them in Colón around one. While he didn’t know what time TR was scheduled to transit the Gatun Locks and cruise the lake, Goethals mentioned a luncheon in the President’s honor.
“Yes. I will speak with Naa and make him understand the importance of this trip.”
They met on the beach an hour before first light. The five paddlers, plus Bell, Marion, and Father Marcos. Marcos offered to remain behind to lighten the boat, and Marion insisted on doing the same. Bell didn’t like leaving her behind but understood every extra pound in the canoe slowed them down.
“You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.
“I’ll borrow or steal a steam launch as soon as I can. With luck, I’ll have you back in Colón in time for dinner. Father Marcos, could you please ask Naa if we can make for the canal’s entrance rather than the Colón docks? With TR’s visit, I suspect Colón will be a madhouse.”
“That’s a good idea. Downtown was packed with visitors yesterday.” He exchanged a short conversation with the Kuna Indian. Naa caught Bell’s eye and nodded to show he understood.
Bell fished something from his pocket. It was the chamois sack that Court Talbot used to pay his men. In it was about a hundred dollars’ worth of coins. He opened it so they could all see the gold in the light of the torches several of them carried. He gave it to Naa.
“Gracias,” he said.
“No. Me gracias to you.”
Bell kissed his wife good-bye and helped launch the dugout into the dark waters of the Caribbean Sea. The men rolled into the canoe, each took up a paddle, Bell included, and they began to stroke. It took Bell a few minutes to get into the natives’ rhythm because their strokes were a little shorter and choppier than he was used to. Soon enough, though, they were gliding across the water at a pace he wasn’t sure they could maintain but prayed they could.
Into the fourth hour, Bell felt like he was going to die. His shoulders and arms ached with an unholy fire, and his spine felt like it had been fused into one solid, unbending bone. His eyes stung with sweat and the need to squint against the relentless glare of the sun. He couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs, leaving him light-headed. Water from the gourds they carried was warm and barely made a dent in his thirst, and the smoke-dried fish they ate left his mouth coated with a pungent paste. The only bright spot on the grueling journey for Bell came an hour earlier, when they’d paddled past the Fowler-Gage biplane, which had drifted into the ensnaring tendrils of a mangrove swamp. He vowed to tow it to safety when he returned to rescue Marion.
His companions were showing no difficulty at all with the voyage. They dug their paddles into the water at a rate and tempo that seemed mechanical. They were silent, unflagging, seemingly built for the very task they were performing and no other. Bell could only marvel at their strength and stamina.
They started seeing other boats a little over five hours into their ordeal. They were fishing vessels out of Colón, and, in the far distance, smoke hovering along the horizon indicated the presence of big steamships heading to or from the busy harbor.
Twenty minutes later, they rowed past the city itself. They had cut a full half hour from their regular time. Bell finally let himself relax and set down his paddle even as the other men kept up their machine-like strokes. He had to rest his body. He didn’t know what was coming his way and he needed to be alert and loose. He rolled his shoulders and massaged his hands to return feeling to them. The new calluses oozed clear fluid.
They turned into Limon Bay, and up ahead was the beginning of the canal, a long, slender artificial channel that led to the three gigantic chambers of the Gatun Loc
ks system. Naa and his men didn’t slow. They stroked at the exact pace they had started with.
Closer still, Bell saw the open mouth of the right-hand chamber, the one used for vessels transiting up to the lake. The left chamber for ships exiting the canal was closed. A long, low seawall jutting out into the channel divided them. That meant a ship had gone up and was presumably still on the lake. He would have heard an explosion of the size needed to take out the dam from a dozen miles away. He wasn’t too late.
Bell pointed to where he wanted the dugout maneuvered down the right side of the seawall, and Naa steered them in.
They drew closer still, and the huge chamber began to loom over them. A thousand feet past the open gates were the closed doors leading to the middle lock. At this distance, and from the channel’s surface, they looked like the entrance doors to the lair of some mythical Titan. The seawall was on their right, while on their left was the still-natural-looking shoreline, with newly grown grass and even a strip of beach.
It was low tide, so the lock’s walls towered thirty feet above their heads, the concrete as thick as any fort’s in the world, maybe thicker. He’d seen these chambers several times now and still couldn’t believe their scale.
Bell didn’t want to enter the chamber itself. It was literally a dead end with the far doors closed. There was a small platform just outside the gates and rising from it were iron rungs embedded in the cement wall. He pointed, and Naa and his men aimed the canoe for it. They dug their blades in the water to slow to a stop at the last second, and the wooden craft kissed the platform without a sound.
“Gracias,” Bell said and slid over the gunwale and onto solid ground.
He climbed the ladder as quickly as he could, the hot iron aggravating his already damaged hands. When he popped up on top of the high lock’s wall, he startled a worker in white overalls who’d been working in the engine compartment of one of the little locomotives they called mules that were used to tow ships through the locks.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be here,” the man said indignantly.
“I don’t have time to explain, but Roosevelt’s life is in danger. Have they come through?” The man hesitated. Bell grabbed him by the collar. “Answer me, dammit.”
The worker’s eyes went wide. “Yes. A few minutes ago. They should be exiting the third chamber any minute.”
Bell ran. Each lock was a thousand feet long, a little over three football fields. And each was roughly thirty feet higher than the one before it. In all, a ninety-foot climb. Bell had given himself only thirty minutes’ rest after pushing his body for five hard hours and yet he ran. He’d come too far to fail now. For the mules to function, their tracks had to climb a steeply graded hill between each chamber before the path flattened out again. Bell staggered when he hit the first of these concrete rises, but he threw himself at the task and powered his way up and soon found himself running along the length of the middle lock, with a second daunting slope up ahead.
His heart raced, his chest ached, and his mouth was full of saliva. He ran on anyway, hoping the boat carrying the President was still in the third lock, stuck in place, while water filled it to the same level as the lake beyond.
Bell hit the second rise, where the path along the middle chamber transitioned to the upper one. His feet felt floppy, his steps unsure, but he kept at it, churning his legs to climb up to the final lock.
When he reached the top and could look down the length of the chamber, his heart sank.
Because the lake was still filling, a regular ship couldn’t yet transit the locks. There wasn’t enough water in the upper chamber to float a vessel with a standard keel. In order to fulfill TR’s wish, Goethals had had a pontoon boat constructed, with a few dozen metal barrels welded together and a wooden deck laid over them. Two men operated outboard motors at the stern, while the rest of the ungainly craft was shaded by a bright white canopy under which the former President would lunch with local dignitaries while a brass band, standing on a dais between the helmsman and guests, belted out some jaunty rags.
The odd, rectangular boat was now at the far end of the chamber, and the gates were about to open. Usually, the deck of a ship transiting the canal would be at or above the height of the lock’s walls, yet, with the lake so low, the special boat sat twenty feet below where Bell stood.
To Bell’s right, a short distance away, was the concrete spillway of the Gatun Dam, and somewhere close to its face was a massive charge of explosives. The boat needed only to exit the chamber to put itself in danger.
Bell ran harder than ever. He would not fail.
The distant gates continued to yawn open, driven by surprisingly small motors due to their impeccable balance. Bell pulled his .45 and considered firing it to get people’s attention but realized it would have opposite the effect he wanted. They would want to flee into the perceived safety of the open lake. He looked to his right again and saw a figure crouched on the lake’s shore pulling up something from below the surface. Though the man was screened by a thicket of tall grasses, Bell thought he saw a detonator with a T-handled plunger next to him.
Macalister.
The range was so extreme, and Bell was breathing so hard, he’d never hold steady enough to fire, yet he had to take the shot. He stopped and hunched slightly in a two-handed grip that had become more instinct than intention. He estimated the range at a hundred yards and knew the bullet would be seven inches below his aim at that distance.
A round was already chambered, and so he cycled through all eight bullets as fast as he could pull the trigger, denying Macalister any time to duck behind the cover of the copse of trees farther up the bank. As with a golfer who always aims for the cup on a par 3 yet inevitably misses, there are still tales told at every country club of someone sinking a ball in one shot. Isaac Bell hit his shot. He saw a spray of blood blow from the spy’s body and he collapsed onto the ground.
Bell paused, his chest heaving. Was it a kill shot? Was this nightmare over?
Seconds trickled by. Macalister slowly lifted himself from the muddy lakeshore, appearing to be favoring his left arm. He tried to haul up more of what had to be electric fuses attached to the mines but lacked the strength. Bell saw him turn his attention to the detonator.
He started running again. The gate at the end of the lock was fully retracted into slots in the chamber walls, and the two mules on either side pulled the pontoon boat forward. The band was so loud, and the distance too great, for anyone to have heard the shots. The gawky raft’s nose peeked out of the chamber when it paused for the mooring lines to be recovered.
Bell pushed harder. White water formed under the vessel’s flat transom as the two men operating the outboards gave them gas. All Bell heard was the throb of the band—a tuba, a trombone, a showy trumpet, and a snare drum. The boat was under way, moving slow, slower than Bell at the moment, but it would accelerate, and TR would surely want to investigate the spillway. He’d be right over the bomb when Macalister touched it off.
Bell ran past the electric locomotive without giving its operator a glance. The pontoon boat was out of the chamber now and beginning a starboard turn toward the dam. Bell was twenty feet from the end of the chamber wall. The boat was twenty feet below him and pulling away. The calculation was simple physics, though, when he committed himself, Bell didn’t run the numbers.
He reached the end and threw himself off the lock, hurtling through the air and plummeting toward the boat. It was a very long fall, long enough for him to regret it, before he hit the tent canopy and smashed down onto the trombonist, hard enough to break the musician’s collarbone, and then crashed to the deck, where Bell’s right leg broke below the knee in a sickening snap he heard over all the other sounds.
Pandemonium erupted as people fell or were pushed over in the wake of Bell’s landing in the middle of their party. A few of the ladies screamed in fear, while the men shouted. B
ell found himself being trampled by a stampede that had nowhere to go. Someone kicked his broken leg, and he bellowed in agony. That pain jolted him. He managed to throw himself into a vacant chair and pull his .45. He changed out the empty magazine and fired three quick shots that stopped the crowd in their tracks.
“Back up the boat,” he shouted. “We are all in danger. There’s mines set in the lake. We have to turn back.”
“Do as that man says,” a high but commanding voice said. “On the jump.”
The two motormen responded immediately, and the boat came to a stop and started going backward again. It tucked itself behind the mouth of the lock chamber wall just as Tats Macalister realized he wasn’t going to kill two birds with one stone. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t going to die when the dam blew but he’d at least be a witness to its destruction.
The explosion was huge, a guttural expulsion of force that sent water flying to the heavens and waves to rival tsunamis across the lake. The blast seemed to suck the very air from people’s lungs and topple them to the ground. It did all those things and more.
But it failed to accomplish what was intended. The spillway was impervious to the explosion because Macalister had only fused together two of the enormous explosive devices when Bell had opened fire and had then lacked the strength to add all the other wires to the detonator. With only two of the bombs exploding when he’d pushed down the plunger, the underwater pressure wave that beat against the dam was no more than a puff of wind to the solid structure.
It took several minutes for some semblance of order to return to the people on the pontoon boat. Most were shell-shocked—by the blast, and by their own deaths’ close call. One passenger, however, took it all in stride. He was polishing his eyeglasses when he made his way over to where Bell sat, panting with pain and exhaustion.
“Isaac, dear boy, what the devil are you doing here? And what was that business with the explosion? Reminded me of my Rough Rider days.”
Bell smiled up at his father’s best friend. “Hi, Uncle Ted.” Roosevelt hated being called Teddy. “It’s a long story, but if you find me a drink, I will tell it. But first we need to capture a German spy.”
The Saboteurs Page 34