Super Chief (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 3)

by Joseph Flynn

There wasn’t a member of the crew, just then, who didn’t have both admiration for Maj and impure thoughts about her.

  A mile down the road, she veered north into rolling grassland. Mountains stood watch in the distance. Maj thought she remembered a fellow Columbia student, who’d hailed from Albuquerque, talking about going skiing near Ruidoso. It was the wrong season for that, but the place was still as scenic as you could ever want.

  She tried not to let the natural beauty distract her. She was looking for something far more prosaic, industrial and unlikely ever to appear on a tourism poster: abandoned railroad tracks. A line to nowhere, forgotten when the last person to use it had long since taken his final ride. Probably overgrown by native vegetation by now, as nature always overcame man’s constructs anyplace where it wasn’t kept at bay.

  The dirt bike held up well after hitting countless rocks and ruts, but it didn’t jolt across any rail lines either camouflaged by tall grass or simply overlooked. If human endeavor had intruded on that patch of countryside, she saw no sign of it. She pushed on until the muscles in her legs and backside begged for relief. Not wanting to admit to any hint of personal weakness, she rationalized a return to a paved highway by observing her gas tank was down to a quarter full.

  Once she was back on a state road, she stopped the bike and took a long pull of water from her canteen. She looked up at the bright blue sky as if she might see a sign from heaven. When that didn’t happen, she muttered, “Damn.”

  The Mescalero Apache Reservation wasn’t far away. She had been hoping to find abandoned railroad tracks with signs of recent use that would suggest the stolen Super Chief had been taken to the nearby sovereign Native American territory. She’d find the train, get the credit and maybe make a move to a more glamorous job somewhere else in the federal government. With a big raise, of course.

  But that didn’t look like it was in her immediate future.

  She pulled out her iPhone, was pleased to see it pulled a signal and opened an app to find the nearest gas station. A map appeared with directions, distance and time of travel. Maj laughed. Settling the West would have been a lot easier with information like that available.

  She headed off in the proper direction.

  Maybe, she thought, somebody had written an app to locate stolen trains.

  Then the recurring thought, the one about track construction and Irish laborers, came roaring to the front of her mind. Hell, maybe looking for old track was entirely beside the point. Maybe the thieves had laid down their own new rail.

  She felt pretty sure, though, Native Americans wouldn’t hire the Irish to do the job.

  Maj opened up the throttle. She wanted to bounce this idea off Tall Wolf. But not from the side of the road. She’d just busted past eighty miles per hour when a New Mexico State Police patrol unit burst from a speed-trap and took up chase.

  That was when Maj remembered she had an assault weapon strapped to her back.

  She slowed, stopped and raised both hands.

  Without looking back, she called out, “Federal officer.”

  Chapter 37

  High above southern New Mexico

  John Tall Wolf didn’t mind flying in jet planes. He enjoyed the amenities found in the executive aircraft used by government and private sector poobahs. For speed and comfort, they couldn’t be beat. Helicopters were another matter. He’d once been told, and had believed from the moment he’d heard it, that helicopters had all the glide characteristics of an anvil.

  If anything went wrong in a chopper, there wasn’t going to be a soft landing.

  Despite his misgivings, he was on his way from Albuquerque to Ruidoso, where he’d learned Maj Olson’s train was waiting, in an AW 109 Power helicopter on loan from the Special Operations Bureau of the state cops. Looking down from a height of several thousand feet, he thought he should’ve rented a car. Not that the pilot seemed the least bit perturbed. The sky was blue, the air was calm and the guy at the controls seemed to be humming.

  Now, if he just didn’t have a stroke.

  Then the pilot’s voice came through John’s headset. “Got a phone call from a police captain in San Francisco. She wants to be patched through to you, sir. You want to take it?”

  Makilah Walsh, John thought. “Yes, please.”

  “Just speak normally. Your mike will transmit your voice.”

  John was wearing a headset that let him communicate with the man to whom he’d entrusted his life. “Right.”

  A beep sounded and John heard Makilah. “Co-director Tall Wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have some news bearing on your investigation, sir.”

  “Just a minute, Captain.” John looked over at the pilot, got his attention. “Are you listening to this call?”

  The pilot turned red with embarrassment. Flipped a switch. “Not anymore.”

  “Knowing what I say here would only be a burden to you. You’d want to tell people what you heard, but if you did, it would get out and damage your career.”

  The pilot bobbed his head. “Just you and the other party now, sir.”

  He flipped another switch.

  “Go ahead, Captain,” John said, “we’ve got privacy on my end.”

  “Mine, too. I spoke with Sergeant Gallo, the supervisor of the raid on Merritt Kinney’s apartment. He told me last night that Mr. Kinney stole a personal journal from Edward Danner’s office. I advised the sergeant that it was in his best interest to continue to cooperate with the department and the federal authorities in this matter. He took my advice to heart. This morning, the sergeant told me he’s learned that the private investigation firm, SearchCo, has been hired by Mr. Danner to find and retrieve his journal. I trust you can pass this information on to anyone else who needs to know.”

  “I can and will,” John said. He thought Byron DeWitt could compel the firm to cooperate. That or just have his people follow the SearchCo investigators. Seize the journal as soon as the thing was found.

  “One more bit of good news, sir,” Makilah said.

  “What’s that?”

  “It shouldn’t take all that long to find Mr. Danner’s property. There’s a tracking chip embedded in the binding.”

  “Well, isn’t that … convenient?” Or was it, John thought.

  Makilah heard the hesitation in John’s voice.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Well, it’s just that if there’s a hidden tracking device maybe there’s something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “A bomb maybe, just a little one. Something that can shred a document beyond reconstruction. Maybe blow off someone’s hand in the process.”

  “Damn, I never heard of anything like that.”

  “Me neither, but if I can imagine it, maybe someone else did, too. A rich man would want to protect what’s his, keep the competition from seizing it. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “No, sir. No one beyond those private eye types anyway.”

  John laughed. “Maybe not even them. Just something to think about. Perhaps Sergeant Gallo can inquire discreetly about that possibility.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get him right on it.”

  “Good work, Captain.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  John heard Makilah end the call and he gave the pilot a thumb’s-up.

  “You’re done with your call, sir?”

  “I am.”

  “I had another call regarding you from one of our highway patrol units.”

  John asked, “One of your people wants to talk with me?”

  “Not personally, sir. The trooper stopped a woman who was carrying an assault rifle and speeding on a dirt bike. She claims to be a federal officer working for Amtrak. Our guy never heard of such a thing; neither have I, but she knew your name and asked for you.”

  John said, “She’s for real. Her name is Maj Olson. Let’s go see her.”

  Chapter 38

  New Mexico State Highway 48

  The r
oad where Maj had been stopped held no other traffic for a mile in either direction. The helicopter pilot made sure of that. He set his compact aircraft down on the blacktop. John hopped out, keeping his head down. After completing a safe flight, he wanted to avoid the irony of being decapitated. He hurried over to the state police car as the chopper lifted off.

  Once the downdraft and the roar of the flying machine had dissipated, he shook the state trooper’s hand and introduced himself. “John Tall Wolf, BIA.”

  “Ernie Rios, state police. This woman says she knows you.”

  John noticed an M-4 carbine lying across the back seat of the patrol unit.

  Maj, wearing a frown, sat facing backward on the saddle of her dirt bike.

  “She does,” John told Rios.

  “And Amtrak really has its own cops?”

  “They do. She’s from their intelligence division.”

  Rios started to look uncomfortable. “That make her a big shot?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. We both got our marching orders out of Washington. Very high up.”

  “Well, hell,” the trooper said. “Blasting down the road on her dirt bike, packing that assault weapon, she looked more like some bad-ass chick out of a low-budget movie.”

  John went with that. “So you’re saying Special Agent Olson could be a movie star?”

  Rios was quick on the uptake. He understood John had just handed him a way out. “Oh, yeah. I mean, she’s got the looks.”

  Maj snorted.

  “She definitely has the attitude,” the state cop said. “And she rides that bike like a pro.”

  “I see what you mean about the attitude,” John said. “She did identify herself, though, right?”

  “Absolutely. Put her hands up, surrendered her weapon, but wouldn’t get into the back of my patrol unit for anything. Said I’d have to shoot her first. Then she gave me your name.”

  “Okay, we have some ruffled feathers here, but nobody got hurt. You want to see my identification, trooper, just so you can tell your boss you got a look?”

  Rios smiled and shook his head. “You get transport from one of our aircraft, sir, I figure they checked you out plenty. You going to need a lift?”

  “No, thanks, but I’d like Special Agent Olson’s weapon back.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rios opened the patrol unit and handed the M-4 to John.

  John made sure the state cop was well down the road before he returned the carbine to Maj.

  She told John, “I’ve been out in the sun long enough. Let’s go somewhere we can get a cool drink and talk.”

  He got on the back of the dirt bike.

  It wasn’t made for two riders. He had to scrunch up close. A hand on each of Maj’s hips.

  Law enforcement working in close cooperation.

  Sitting in the back booth of a diner with gas pumps out front, Maj looked at John with a sneer and said, “Movie star? Hah! Big shot? Hah!”

  John smiled and replied, “But you didn’t mind bad-ass chick?”

  Maj gave in and grinned. “It’s not every female Ph.D. who can pull that off.”

  She still had her assault rifle with her, but it was tucked away as discreetly as possible.

  A waitress brought Maj a milkshake and burger; John got by with a glass of lemonade.

  When they were alone again, he asked, “Did you and Trooper Rios do anything but hiss, spit and threaten each other?”

  “Sure, we discussed unwelcome trends in modern dance.”

  “Well, he certainly looked like a fan of the arts.”

  “He was a macho jerk, but once he heard you were flying to the rescue in a state helicopter, he grudgingly agreed to answer some questions.”

  “That was collegial of him. Would you care to tell me what you learned?”

  “He told me he knew of no new rail track being laid into the nearby Mescalero Apache reservation.”

  “New rail?” John asked. That worked nicely with what he’d been thinking.

  Always good to work with a compatible mind.

  Maj finished a long slurp of her milkshake and smiled.

  “How’s that for an idea?” she said. “All along, I was thinking the Super Chief thieves were stuck on the existing rail system. Even using dark territory —” She stopped her narrative to explain the term to John. “Well, it seemed to me that somebody would have had to spot that train before too long. Once that happened, word would go up and down the system and we’d have heard about it.”

  “We haven’t publicized the theft,” John told her.

  “Don’t need to. If we were talking about some run-of-the-rails locomotive — old, grimy and undistinguished — nobody would give it a second glance. But a mint-condition Super Chief in full warpaint? That’s worth talking about. Hell, somebody would’ve snapped a still photo or shot a video of it and put it up on social media.”

  John thought about that and nodded. “You’re right. These days, anything worth noticing is worth sharing. I had a thought similar to your new rail idea.”

  He told her first about learning of Rick Engram, one of the Super Chief’s crew, paying to get his assignment. “The FBI is now looking into whether he has any Native American connections, family or otherwise. My sense of things is he does. That fits in with the idea I had that somebody with structural engineering skills is working with the thieves, also likely someone with native blood.”

  Maj raised her glass to John. “Great minds think alike.”

  John sighed. “Hearing you talk about laying new rail, though, just made me wonder something. Besides having a structural engineer on hand, you’d also need at least semi-skilled labor, I’d think.”

  Maj bobbed her head. “You’d need Irishmen or their equivalent.”

  “Okay, I need some help with that one.”

  “Many, if not the majority, of laborers building the eastern two-thirds of the first transcontinental railway line were immigrant Irish, a lot of them right off the boat. I remembered that from my dissertation, but the importance of it didn’t click until I thought of the idea of the thieves laying down their own rail.”

  “How much rail could they lay?” John asked.

  Maj leaned forward, as if to share a secret. “During the building of the transcon, a hand-picked crew of eight Irishmen, with prep work done beforehand, laid ten miles of track in twelve hours. Driving spikes by hand.”

  “Damn,” John said. “Makes me want to say people were tougher back then.”

  “They might have been, but who’s to say a group of motivated Native Americans, doing the prep work ahead of time and learning to swing hammers accurately and with force, couldn’t put down maybe six or seven miles of track?”

  John thought about that. “Their work wouldn’t appear on any existing maps.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, and it might get trickier still.”

  “How’s that?” John asked.

  “Once I thought of the Irish, other tidbits of my doctoral research came back.”

  “Pertinent stuff, of course.”

  “Wouldn’t bore you with it otherwise. Anyway, our Civil War was the world’s first train war. The first time troops, weapons and munitions were moved by rail. Both sides quickly understood the importance of this, but the North had much more track, more experience organizing train schedules and more guys who, well, understood the whole concept of railroading. They were the tech geeks of their day.”

  “Getting to the relevant part,” John said.

  “Okay, so each side also understood the importance of sabotaging the other side’s rail lines, right?”

  “Makes sense,” John said.

  “What your guys couldn’t destroy, though, they did their best to capture.”

  “Also logical.”

  “But the Union had this guy named Herman Haupt. He’d lay down track where he needed it and then he’d take it right back up before the rebels could destroy or capture it. That way he didn’t have to wait for new rails or ties to arrive fr
om the rear, and the Confederates weren’t left with anything to capture and use for themselves.”

  “Huh,” John said. “Wasn’t all that work hard on the crews?”

  “Not Haupt’s concern. He probably told his workers they could get sent to the front, if they didn’t like working for him, but I couldn’t document that. Anyway, using largely unskilled labor, Haupt could lay down or take up a mile of track a day.”

  “A man ahead of his time,” John said, and now he saw where Maj was going. “So you think it’s possible the Super Chief thieves might have built their own tracks and taken them right back up?”

  “That’d be a pretty good way to hide a train, don’t you think?” Maj asked.

  The waitress brought their check. John covered it and left a good tip.

  “Maybe back in the nineteenth century,” John said, answering the question.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Well, we have all sorts of spy satellites in orbit these days. The guys on the ground might think they’ve covered up their work well, but if the view from a hundred miles up looks like a railroad track had been impressed in the earth and then removed, I’d say we’d have a real clue, wouldn’t you?”

  Maj smiled. “That’s good. Wish I’d thought of it.”

  “You did your part.” John closed his eyes for just a moment. “You know where we have to ask the satellites to start looking, don’t you?”

  “Native American reservations, no question. I even wormed the fact out of Rios that the top people from the Mescalero reservation have jumped into their pickups and SUVs and are heading north.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I told him that I know you, remember? And I might have mentioned the vice president.”

  John winced.

  “What?” Maj asked. “I asked Rios if he knew of anything unusual going on at the reservation and he told me. After I dropped a name or two, that is. I figure if we do the same thing with cops in neighboring states, and if there’s a big, pardon the word, powwow about to take place somewhere, maybe we can triangulate on it.”

  “You’re right,” John said. “Your idea’s as viable as mine. One last question: How’d you recall all those details about train history?”