The Striker ib-6

by Clive Cussler

The shock of the explosion scattered burning furnace coal. The Vulcan King’s forward decks took fire from the shattered wheelhouse to the waterline. Militiamen in khaki stampeded from the flames. A man in the dark uniform of the Coal and Iron Police threw himself into the river. Strikebreakers dropped their pick handles and splashed in after him, calling for help.

  “Stop!” said Isaac Bell. “Back your engines.”

  48

  “What are you doing, Isaac?” Wish, Wally, and Mack were at his side.

  “Coming alongside to get those people off. Back your engines, Captain Jennings. Wheel hard over.”

  “Not ’til I saddlebag the murderers.”

  “Back them!”

  “You can’t let ’em win.”

  “Henry Clay doesn’t want to win. He wants mayhem. I won’t give it to him.”

  Mack Fulton cocked his Smith & Wesson, told the pilot, “Boss man says back your engines.”

  A single lever in the engine room engaged the reversing gears on both engines at once. Coupled to the same shaft as the stern wheel, when the engines stopped, the wheel stopped.

  Escape pipes roared behind the wheelhouse.

  Bell threw an arm around the grieving pilot’s shoulders. “Right now, they’re nothing more than scared fools. Like us— Hard over with your wheel, Captain. Bring us alongside. Let’s get those people off.”

  Bell turned to his squad.

  “Shoot anyone who tries to bring a weapon. Rifle, pistol, blackjack, or brass knuckles, shoot ’em. And watch for Clay. There’s more militia than anyone else, so he’ll probably be wearing a uniform.”

  He led them down to the main deck. Captain Jennings circled to a position upstream from the Vulcan King, where he could use his paddles, rudders, and the hard-running Monongahela to maneuver beside the burning steamer.

  Bell stationed Wally, Mack, and Archie where the boats would touch. Wish Clarke passed out shotguns and insisted on staying in the thick of it, claiming he would protect his hospital stitches with his sawed-off. Bell climbed one level to the boiler deck, where he could watch from above.

  The fire was spreading, fed by dry wood and fresh paint, marching back from the Vulcan King’s bow, driving men toward the stern. In their chaotic, writhing mass, Bell saw that most wore khaki uniforms — short, four-button mud-colored sack coats, foraged caps on their heads, and cartridge boxes belted in back at the waist. Their weapons were a typically motley state militia collection of Spanish-American War black powder, single-shot .45–70 trapdoor rifles, improved Krag-Jørgensen magazine rifles, and even some 1895 Lee Navys — all with bayonets fixed. The Coal and Iron Police, easily identified by dark uniforms and shiny badges, had pistols and clubs. Known for brutality, they looked terrified, and many of the hard-eyed Pinkerton detectives had lost their bowlers in their panic.

  The gap of water separating the boats narrowed.

  The ex-prisoners drafted as strikebreakers clawed frantically to the rail.

  Isaac Bell cupped his hands to shout, “Drop your weapons!”

  Rifles and pick handles clattered to the deck.

  Wish Clarke tipped his shotgun skyward and triggered a thunderous round.

  “Drop ’em!”

  Pistols and blackjacks carpeted the deck.

  A Pinkerton scooped up a fallen Colt automatic and slipped it in his coat. Mack Fulton shot him without hesitating. As he fell, men turned out pockets to show they were empty.

  The two hulls neared. Men poised to jump.

  “Reach for the sky!” the Van Dorns bellowed. “Hands in the air.”

  The flames bent toward them suddenly, driven by a shift in wind.

  The hulls came together with a crash that nearly threw Bell from his perch on the boiler deck. Hundreds jumped, kicking and fighting to safety. Bell leaped onto a railing to see better. The Coal and Iron cops, the prisoners, and even the Pinkertons, had dissolved into a mob with a single mind — to get off the burning boat — and it was nearly impossible to distinguish individual features. Only the trained militia still held their hands in the air, trusting that if they followed orders, they would not be shot.

  Henry Clay, Bell knew, was expert at melting into his surroundings, which was why Bell was positive Clay had disguised himself as a militiaman. But even they were so densely packed, as they crossed over, that every soldier in khaki looked the same. Desperate, Bell tried to concentrate on the bigger soldiers, those built more like Clay.

  Here came one now, hands up to show they are empty, jumping onto White Lady, face inclined downward as he watched his footing. He was aboard in a flash, crowding into those ahead of him, stumbling forward when another behind him shoved his pack.

  His pack. Instead of a cartridge box, he was wearing a khaki Merriam Pack big enough to hold a bomb.

  “Stop that man!”

  49

  Wally Kisley lunged after Henry Clay.

  Three men leaping madly from the flames trampled him.

  Bell saw his checkerboard suit disappear in the scrum. He jumped from the rail to the deck and swung down to the main deck, landing on fallen men, kicking to his feet and running after Clay, who was racing toward the stern, straight-arming men out of his way. Suddenly, he cut across the open freight deck.

  Bell veered after him.

  Clay yanked a gun and fired three shots without breaking stride. Two fanned Bell’s face, the third drilled the brim of his hat, whirling it from his head. Bell stopped running and took careful aim with his Colt Army and triggered it just as Clay turned to fire again. He cried out as Bell’s shot, intended for his head, creased his hand instead when he raised his gun. The gun went flying. But the wound did not slow him as he leaped up the boiler deck stairs, slinging the Merriam Pack off his shoulders and clutching it by the straps.

  Bell knew he was heading for the furnaces, intending to bomb a boiler.

  He spotted him from the top of the stairs and again took careful aim.

  The Colt roared. The shot staggered Clay. His arm dropped straight to his side, and the pack slipped from his hand. But he kept moving, ever swift and indestructible. He scooped up the fallen bag with his other hand and darted toward the nearest furnace. Bell took aim again. Firemen, panicked by gunshots and ricocheting lead, scattered for cover, blocking Bell’s shot. Henry Clay ran past the open furnace and tossed the pack underhand with a softball pitcher’s smooth delivery.

  Bell saw a cloud of sparks as it landed in the shimmering bed of cherry red coals. In the half second he took to reach the firebox door, the canvas was burning brightly. He had to pull it out before the fire burned though the canvas and ignited the fuse.

  Bell grabbed a fireman’s rake, reached into the blaze, caught the strap, and yanked. The strap burned through, and it broke. He thrust the rake again, caught the wooden frame, which was drenched in flame, and pulled it out. The pack fell, smoldering, at his feet. “Pull the fuse,” he shouted to the nearest coal miner and tore after Henry Clay, who was racing sternward on the freight deck.

  Clay ran out of space where the boiler deck overlooked the White Lady’s fifty-foot stern wheel. Bell caught up. The wheel was throwing spray as paddle blade after paddle blade climbed out of the water behind the boat, circled through the air, and plunged down to push again. Henry Clay turned with a smile on his face and a derringer in his unwounded hand and fired. The bullet seared the heel of Bell’s hand. His thumb and fingers convulsed. His gun fell to the deck and bounced into the narrow slot between the back of the boat and the stern wheel.

  Clay’s smile broadened in triumph. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”

  He squeezed the trigger. Isaac Bell was already swinging, hoping that the only thing that would slow down the rogue detective would be talking too much. Before the slug had emerged from the barrel, Isaac Bell’s left fist smashed Clay’s jaw.

  The shot missed.

  Bell feinted with his wounded right hand, punched Clay with another powerful left. It staggered Clay, and he reeled backwards to the e
dge of the stern.

  “Give it up,” said Bell. “It’s over.”

  Clay looked at him incredulously. “It’s never over.”

  He flew at Bell, cocking his left hand in a powerful fist. He tried to raise the right Bell had wounded and could not. An angry light filled his amber eyes, and he glared at his arm as if it were a traitor.

  “I’m taking you in,” said Bell. “We’ll recommend mercy if you reveal who paid for this. Who’s the boss?”

  “It’s never over,” Henry Clay repeated. He swung his good arm. Bell took the punch, rolled with it, and counterpunched, rocking Clay back on his heels.

  “You can’t fight me with one arm. Give it up.”

  “It’s never over,” Clay said again. But even as he spoke, he turned away.

  Bell suddenly realized that Clay was so desperate to escape that he would risk certain death by trying to dive into the narrow strait of water between the White Lady’s stern and her churning wheel. Without Henry Clay, he had no case against the man backing him, no way to discover the identity of the true murderer, the real provocateur.

  Bell lunged for him, and as fast as Henry Clay was, Isaac Bell was faster. He seized Clay’s militia tunic in his right hand and started to drag him from the edge. But this time, the young detective was the fighter betrayed by a wound. The bullet that had disarmed him had robbed his hand of too much strength. Thumb and fingers feathered apart. Clay tore loose and dived into the seething water.

  Isaac Bell watched the wheel wash spewed by the slashing paddle blades. But Henry Clay’s body never broke the surface of that endless rolling wave behind the boat.

  50

  I wish I’d been there to watch him drown,” Joseph Van Dorn said heavily. “I taught that man every trick I knew. It never occurred to me until it was too late that I created a monster.” He shook his head, rubbed his red whiskers, and looked probingly at Isaac Bell. “It makes a man wonder, will he create another?”

  “Relax, Joe,” said Mack Fulton. “Isaac’s just a detective.”

  “And a pretty good one,” said Wally Kisley, “once he masters the art of bringing criminals in alive.”

  “Or at least a corpse.”

  The Van Dorns were waiting for a train in a saloon close to Union Station. Prince Henry of Prussia was sailing home on the Deutschland, and the Boss was taking them all to New York for what threatened to be a wild scramble.

  “How wide was the space between the wheel and the boat?” asked Archie.

  “Three feet,” Bell answered. “But to survive without me seeing him, he would have had to dive under the blades and then stay underwater and swim a long ways off before he surfaced.” Bell had relived Clay’s dive over and over in his mind, bitterly aware that if he had captured him alive, he would be much closer to identifying the real provocateur behind Henry Clay.

  “We’ll get him one of these days,” Van Dorn said magnanimously. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. At least the strike is over. The miners aren’t all that happy, but they’re heading back to work, and their families will be living in houses instead of tents.”

  “Company houses,” said Bell.

  “Yes, of course. Did your young lady show up yet?”

  “Not yet.” Bell had no idea where Mary was.

  Wish Clarke walked in with his carpetbag.

  “Wish looks like he lost his best friend.”

  “Or dropped a bottle,” said Mack.

  Wish did not sit. “Son, do you have a moment?” he asked and walked to a table in a far corner. Bell followed.

  “Sit down, Isaac.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “While they were dismantling the wreck of the Vulcan King, they found—”

  “Clay’s body? It drifted—”

  “I’m so sorry, Isaac. They found your girl.”

  “What?”

  “Scalded to death when the boiler burst. Looks like she was engaged in sabotage.”

  “But that can’t be,” Bell gasped.

  “Maybe not, son. But you showed me her letter. She might have done what she thought she had to do.”

  “Where is— Where do they have her?”

  “Remember Mary as she was, Isaac.”

  “I have to see her.”

  “No, Isaac. She doesn’t exist anymore. Not the girl you know. Let her be the girl you remember.”

  Bell turned toward the door. Wish blocked him. Bell said, “It’s all right. I just have to tell her brother.”

  “Jim knows.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “He refuses to believe it. He swears she wrote him that she was going to New York to confront the man staking Henry Clay.”

  “Who?”

  “She didn’t put it in the letter.”

  Bell said, “I will find him if it takes every minute of my life.”

  Wish Clarke laid a comforting hand on Isaac Bell’s shoulder. “Keep in mind, son, when you never give up, time’s on your side.”

  EPILOGUE

  A Smoke-filled Room

  1912

  The Congdon Building’s elevator runner reached for the intercom. “May I have your name, sir? I gotta call ahead.”

  “Don’t,” said Chief Investigator Isaac Bell. He opened his coat to show his gold Van Dorn Agency badge and the butt of a Browning automatic polished by use.

  * * *

  It was hot and smoky in James Congdon’s office, and ashtrays were deep with cigar butts. Congdon, bright-eyed and flushed with victory, recognized Bell when the detective walked in without knocking. He welcomed him warmly.

  “Chief Inspector Isaac Bell. I haven’t seen you since you relieved me of a carload of money playing poker on the Overland Limited back in ’07.”

  “If I had known then what I know now, I’d have taken more than your money.”

  “I recall it as a friendly game — if expensive.”

  “You’re under arrest, Judge James Congdon, for murder in the coalfields.”

  Congdon laughed at the tall detective.

  “I have no time to be arrested. My train is taking me to the convention in Chicago with enough delegates to nominate me to run for vice president of the United States.”

  “Then I’ve caught up with you just in time to save the life of your running mate.”

  Congdon laughed again, and mocked him, “Never give up? Never? I know you’ve been sniffing around for years, but you’ll never link me to any murders in that strike. Fact is, thanks to me intervening with the coal operators and persuading President Roosevelt to mediate, the strike ended peacefully. Everyone got something they wanted — the miners received a small raise, the producers were not forced to recognize the union — and there’ve been no coal strikes since.”

  “Even if that lie were truth,” Bell answered quietly, “even if you got away with every killing in the coalfields, you will die for the murder of Mary Higgins.”

  “Mary Higgins died while sabotaging a company steamboat,” Congdon said. “But I can’t allow accusations to confuse gullible voters.” He raised his voice and shouted through the closed door to an adjoining office. “Mr. Potter! I need you.”

  A well-built middle-aged man with a beard that was showing flecks of gray limped into the office carrying a leveled Colt Bisley.

  Isaac Bell looked him over. “‘Mr. Potter,’ you will disappoint the many who hoped that Henry Clay drowned in the Ohio River.”

  Congdon said, “Mr. Clay became Mr. Potter so that I could help him live in great comfort, free of the electric chair.”

  “In exchange,” said Bell, “for killing your enemies and rivals.”

  Congdon said, “I’m disappointed that you don’t seem one bit surprised. I had hoped to see your jaw drop.”

  “Joseph Van Dorn suspected years ago that Clay had to be your assassin. Who else, he asked, could be as cold-blooded? And he described you to a T, Congdon: a man wise enough to see Henry Clay’s talents and greedy enough to employ them.”
<
br />   Clay’s expression turned cold at Bell’s mention of Van Dorn. “That bulge in your coat where you used to pack your Colt Army, and subsequently a Bisley, is now, I’m informed, a Browning No. 2. Put it on Mr. Congdon’s desk.”

  Bell surrendered his favorite pistol of many years, a Belgian-made semiautomatic modified to fire an American .380 caliber cartridge.

  “I presume you replaced the sleeve gun I took away from you in New York. Drop it, too.”

  Bell shook the derringer out of his sleeve and handed it over.

  “And the pocket pistol.”

  “You have a long memory,” said Bell.

  “It’s kept me alive. Put it on the desk.”

  Bell placed the tiny one-shot on the desk.

  “And the knife in your boot.”

  “Want me to throw it at anything?”

  “If you still can, hit the edge of that bookshelf.”

  Bell threw overhand. The knive struck like a flash of lightning.

  James Congdon howled in dismay. The blade had pierced the portrait of his latest wife, depicted as a shapely goddess in silk gauze, and stood quivering in the lady’s nose. Bell used the distraction to glide behind the shimmering white Rodin marble.

  “Sorry, I missed.”

  Clay leveled his gun.

  “What if you miss me and shoot your boss’s favorite statue?”

  Clay started toward him, saying, “I’ll get so close, I can’t miss.”

  “Be careful!” Congdon shouted.

  As Clay turned to assure him, Bell whipped his two-shot derringer from his hat.

  “Drop it!”

  Henry Clay stopped in his tracks. His startled expression seemed to shout Where the hell did that come from?

  Bell said, “Live and learn. Toss your gun over there, on the carpet.”

  Clay shrugged with a faint knowing smile and did as Bell ordered. Then he looked at Judge Congdon. The old man caressed the bronze statuette on his desk. “You’re wrong, Chief Inspector. The statue you’re hiding behind is not my favorite. This is my favorite.”