by Jack Tunney
Well, that was probably going to end right about now, though Dasinger hoped Rusty wouldn’t face anything much. Trouble was, after all, what Dasinger Private Investigations dealt in, and with, every day they had paying customers. “Troubleshooting is what we do,” Dasinger reminded himself silently. “And the trouble with troubleshooting is . . . sometimes trouble shoots back.”
The loaders and the guards—Garman’s and the railroad men—were still staring at Brandy. “Openly leering” would probably be a better description for most of them.
“We’re here, boss,” Brandy announced unnecessarily, giving him her usual easy smile. “The railroad gents and the g-men here still okay with my supervising the loading?”
Dasinger turned and gave Agent Dunhill a raised eyebrow, and the FBI man rather hastily assured Brandy that “Everything is just fine, Ma’am, you just carry on. I’m Special Agent Mason Dunhill, if you need anything. Oh, and this is Agent Powers.”
Brandy gave them both nods, like one out-of-uniform general to another, announced crisply, “Dasinger Private Investigations Operative Brandy Bennett. A pleasure, gentlemen.”
Then she turned on her heel, pointed at Rusty and then at the truck, and as he obediently started back towards it, headed for Garman’s armored boxcar. A long, liquid whistle of appreciation greeted her from among the crowd of men waiting there, but she ignored it utterly.
“And where in the Sam Hill did you find her?” Dunhill growled, watching the lilt of her rear view undulating away from him.
“Trade secret,” Dasinger replied dryly. “My best agent, gentlemen.”
“I’ll bet. I’ll just bet.”
Brandy reached the boxcar and started snapping orders as calmly and firmly as any respected senior officer—and the startled knot of grinning, leering men all straightened in startled unison, then started to obey.
Dasinger gave in to his smirk.
After all, this was highly likely to be the only part of this job he was going to be able to stand and enjoy.
***
The locks on the boxcar doors clicked shut. After the railroad guards had inspected them and the usual railroad door-seals, Dasinger, Garman, and Brandy all took their turns at doing the same thing. Followed by the two FBI agents (according to a reluctant Agent Dunhill, the third g-man, Connell, was already in Duncansville, securing the siding where the boxcar would end up for unloading). The boxcar was secure, all right.
Dasinger peered up at its vents. Double-walled and welded like a battleship, this wasn’t the usual crate on rails, through which the wind could blow almost unimpeded. He just hoped there was enough air in there for Hank Northrop.
So far as he could tell, there hadn’t been any hanky-panky, so far. Brandy had insisted on being inside the boxcar during the entire loading process.
First, the very large crate she and Rusty had brought along had been loaded into the head end of the boxcar and secured just so. That is, the right way up and secured by straps to the mounts on the inside of the boxcar’s inner walls, in offsetting directions, so it couldn’t budge. Brandy had to make sure it was positioned so that there would be room for the Old Hand to let himself out of the crate from inside, once the train was rolling. Next aboard, and secured right next to the crate Hank was hiding in, was the smaller crate that held Baby. It had been examined by Brandy in the presence of Mister Garman and the two g-men to make very sure no one was hiding inside it—but that it really did hold Baby.
Then had come crate after crate of explosives. All top secret, until they blew sky-high and everyone in the same county forcibly became aware that they’d been there. Past tense. Enough of them to turn Garman’s boxcar to shrapnel and probably kill everyone in the two RPO cars sandwiching it—an “everyone” that would include him, Brandy, and his other agent, Kelly, too.
Dasinger watched Rusty drive off in the truck, then turned around to watch Brandy board the commandeered RPO car coupled ahead of the armored boxcar. From here on out, hopefully she’d just have to be a distraction, though she did carry a spray bottle of strong perfume to blind attackers with, not to mention a knife with a massive pommel suitable for bludgeoning, and a hidden pair of brass knuckles. Agent Powers rushed like a drooling schoolboy to board the same RPO car right behind her; Dasinger hoped she wouldn’t have to use any of her arsenal on him.
Only when Brandy opened a window and gave him the signal did he and his other regular employee, the burly brawler Kelly, turn and head for the RPO car behind Baby’s ride. Both he and Kelly had their usual “trouble” gear: brass knuckles and two guns apiece, plus knives riding in high ankle sheaths. Agent Dunhill walked behind them like a watchful teacher, and boarded with them.
Dasinger smiled inwardly. He had, of course, called a contact in the Bureau to confirm that the three agents were genuine; these days, doing so was a standard double-check to eliminate any possibility that agents of a foreign power—or just plain thugs—were masquerading as FBI agents. In this business, one couldn’t be too careful.
The g-men traded their own signals, terse nods were given to railroad men, and the train—without any whistle—groaned carefully, taking up the slack between cars, and then started to move. Slowly but inexorably, and gaining speed constantly, the creaking of the couplers and cars quickening to become a steady din. Dasinger took out the war surplus gas mask he’d brought along and put it on; seeing him do so, Kelly did the same. Dunhill gave them a sour look but said nothing.
Breathing in the reek of rubber, Dasinger wondered how soon the real trouble would begin.
Not long, if past experience was anything at all to go by.
***
“They’ve started,” one of the thugs muttered, eyes glued to his binoculars.
“Then let’s get going,” the man who paid them ordered, turning to the car. Under the long-peaked cap, his face—a face Dasinger would have recognized as FBI Agent Connell, though these four men knew him by a different name—was wearing a grim smile.
The plane was ready. Flying low, it would easily outpace the train to drop the four thugs where they would intercept it, in the mountains, and fly on to take him to Duncansville in plenty of time.
“I want a chance to properly check out that redhead, before this is over,” one of the thugs chuckled, as they got into the car.
“Guard your eyes. She carries perfume, and that’s where she likes to spray it,” Connell warned, handing out baseball bats to each of them.
The most-battered-looking of the thugs was shocked. “Perfume in the eyes? Geez! Chicks, these days!”
***
It was loud in the darkness of the boxcar, as the train rattled over the rail joints, and the wheels squealed on the tight turns. Hank Northrop had let himself out of the crate, but kept a hand on the door for balance as the car rocked and swayed.
If anyone had been inside the boxcar with a lantern, they’d have seen a short, silver-haired old man wearing a habitual gentle smile. Gramps. No threat at all.
Until he reached back into the crate, brought out on a strange-looking harness of buckled straps—a gas mask—and put it on.
If there was going to be an attempt to seize Baby at all on this run, the attack would come soon, now.
The noise suddenly rose into a roar, and the near-darkness became utter pitch darkness. They’d gone into a tunnel, one of the short ones high on a mountainside where the railroad had blasted a hole through the tons of ancient rock to avoid a long and perilous climb to the summit and back down the far side.
A clack and rattling came from close by. From the other side of the boxcar’s sliding cargo door.
The Old Hand smiled behind his mask, backed into the crate he’d come in, and crouched down. This was it.
The noise of squealing wheels and rail joints clacking under the train, the rhythmic sounds that grew as the boxcar approached them, cracked under it, then receded car by car into the distance, grew suddenly louder. The door was being slid open.
Then there were men in
the narrow open aisle Brandy had carefully left open inside the boxcar. Big, heavy men.
Light suddenly flared as a lantern was unhooded, and Northrop hastily ducked back so he’d not be seen. Four men, all strong, roughhouse types who’d been battered and had the scars to prove it. Unlit cigarettes dangled from two mouths, and all four were holding . . . baseball bats.
“This is the one we’re after, sure enough,” one of them said. The one beside him growled, “I don’t see anyone, but lookit the crate beside it. Standing open? That’s just gotta be something that chick and the g-men rigged up.”
The shortest and burliest of the four, who happened to be standing nearest, peered warily into the open crate, but could see nothing in the gloom. “Kreegan, gimme the lantern,” he growled. “Can’t see nothing—”
Something rushed out of the crate, ducking under his bat and around behind him before he fully realized what was happening. He turned with a snarl, to try to face whoever—or whatever—it was. “There’s a dog, or something!” he shouted, swinging his bat wildly but striking nothing but air. And then he toppled with a yell of startled pain, as someone punched him very hard in the back of his right knee.
Toppled, banged against the edge of the boxcar’s sliding door—and then his yell became a horrible shriek of astonished agony that faded behind the onrushing train.
“What the—?” Kreegan roared, shining the lantern around wild. “Cliff? Cliff?”
The light fell on a short, silver-haired little man, rushing towards them.
“Hey, it’s an old guy!”
“It’s the guy we saw drive the truck away! How’d he get here?”
“Don’t know and don’t care,” Kreegan snapped. “Get him!”
Three bats swung, the old man bobbed and weaved, and all three missed. Two of the bats struck each other, though, with numbing force. One of those two bats got dropped from nerveless fingers as both of their wielders yelled in pain—and the old man kicked the fallen, bouncing bat out the open side cargo door of the boxcar. It cracked off the tunnel wall, and—
Sudden sunlight flooded into the car, and the din of the rushing train died down. They were out of the tunnel, and gathering speed as the tracks headed down the mountainside.
There would be more tunnels and more mountains, all four men in the boxcar knew. Including the one Hank Northrop had just punched in the backs of both knees and sent groaning to the floor of the boxcar, where one of his fellows almost tripped over him and had to jump hastily back to keep his footing.
“Who the Sam Hill is this guy?” he demanded angrily. “A circus acrobat or something?”
The other thug, Kreegan, wasted no breath on talk. He still had hold of his bat, and hefted it threateningly as he slammed the lantern into his fellow thug’s stomach—to be caught and held with a startled curse—and then stepped carefully around his fallen comrade to get at the old man.
His advance was crouched and wary, and when he was close enough, he swung the bat.
The old man dodged, but the swing had been a feint. Kreegan grounded his bat and leaned on it for balance as if it was a crutch, as he swung a roundhouse left—and connected solidly with the side of the old man’s jaw.
Or would have, if the gas mask hadn’t been there to crumple and then fly off, trailing a broken strap, to clatter off a crate and bounce to the floor.
Where the other thug promptly stepped on it, slipped, and had to jump back with a curse.
Kreegan stared down at the man he’d hit, the beginnings of a sneer warm and growing within him—and then stopped and blinked, his mouth falling open and losing his cigarette to the floor.
The little old man was still standing. Not reeling or dazed, either, just smiling gently and murmuring, “Ah, now, this is more like it.”
In the instant before he sprang up into the air like a tiger, and returned the punch, with a vicious uppercut that bruised Kreegan’s throat before it took him under the chin and lifted him clear off the floor.
Kreegan landed on his heels, unsteadily, fighting for wind and with a weak, painful feeling in his jaw. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—
A right hand that was harder than anything he’d ever felt before—and he’d been dusted with brass knuckles a time or two—slammed into the side of Kreegan’s jaw, and the weak pain became fiery. He tasted blood as one of his own teeth sailed away in the lantern light, both of his fellow thugs swore—and the train, still descending, plunged into another tunnel.
Kreegan almost lost hold of his baseball bat.
Swearing, he hefted it and peered all around. The lantern wasn’t shining anywhere he needed it to, to show him the little old man. He flung a wild swing into the darkness where he thought his foe might be, bending to make sure his fist was low down, but touched nothing. Leaving him off-balance and stumbling in the darkness, to rebound off a crate and then the boxcar wall.
In time to see the old man, bathed in the light of the lantern more by luck than anything else, standing toe-to-toe with Redstone, the two of them punching like prizefighters. Solid, meaty punches that thanks to the difference in their heights, were mainly landing on the head and shoulders of the old man—and under the ribs and in the gut of Redstone.
Who was already groaning and shaking his right hand in pain where it had slammed into the solid bone of the old man’s noggin . . . a moment before a pile driver left slammed deep into the thug’s gut and left him on his backside on the floor, doubled up and groaning.
Kreegan went for the old guy, swinging his bat wildly back and forth and back and forth in front of him, not caring how messy it got and how many bones he shattered. This old guy was going down, and now, before—
The old man charged across the boxcar, feinted high with a right, Anderson flung up his hand to block it as he sidestepped—and his assailant batted the lantern out of his other hand to crash, and shatter, against a crate, plunging the boxcar back into darkness.
Which Anderson promptly greeted with the sob of a man who’s been hit hard in a very tender place.
And went down thunderously, whereupon there was a confused banging and a snarl from Redstone of: “Got you at last, you little germ! Die, gramps, just die!”
The din that followed was something Kreegan recognized all too well. Years ago, he’d killed his first policeman by banging the cop’s head repeatedly against the metal side of a truck. Well, the floor of a boxcar was even more solid and unyielding than the side of your average semi-truck ...
And then the train came out of the tunnel, and Redstone saw whose neck he had hold of, and the bloody, faceless, lifeless mess of what was left of Anderson’s head.
Kreegan saw it, too, in the brief instant before the old man bobbed up in front of him and landed a hard jab on his nose.
Blood spurted like a tap in a ketchup factory, and Kreegan lost hold of his bat in the exploding red mist of pain. As it bounced, he kicked out blindly at where the old man must have landed.
He connected solidly, was rewarded with a groan, and kicked again viciously before charging forward to pounce and grapple.
“Got you at last,” he snarled, before choking on his own blood. Kreegan spat it out and came down hard on a body that he rained punches onto before he recognized the roars of pain beneath him as Redstone’s.
Roars that ended abruptly. Kreegan blinked, saw Redstone’s head lolling back and forth on the boxcar floor with the movement of the train amid spreading blood that was probably Anderson’s, then saw his own bat rolling away, beyond Redstone—and then he looked around wildly for the little old man.
Just in time to collect a right cross that snapped his head around as if it belonged to a rag doll, and not Jase Kreegan, dock walloper and longtime criminal.
“Aaaargh!” he shouted, in helpless pain, and flung a flurry of wild punches at where he thought the old man must be.
But wasn’t.
He heard his bat bounce on the clinker outside the train, and came wavering to his feet to stagger at where
his assailant must be, to have reached the bat to fling it out the door.
The old man was waiting for him, fists raised and ready, for all the world like a pro boxer in a ring.
Kreegan glared at him, feeling the blood streaming down his face and dripping from his chin. Heck, he was tasting it, unlovely iron tang and all . . .
“Who are you?” he growled.
“They call me the Old Hand,” the silver-haired man told him, as politely as if they were two strangers who’d just been introduced at a wedding.
“Old Fists is more like it,” Kreegan growled—and hauled out his gun.
He grinned wolfishly as he saw the old man’s mouth drop open and his face go pale.
“Think I’m mad, do ya?” he asked. “When one stray shot could send this whole boxcar up like a bomb?”
He took a slow step closer to the old man, and added, “Well, my shots don’t go astray. If I deck you and shove your head out that door, then shoot you between the legs, well . . . even if it takes the top of your head off and spatters it all over the landscape, it won’t do a thing to all these explosives.”
He took another menacing step closer.
And then swept the gun up, reversed his grip on it, and brought it down, hard. “Then again, an unloaded gun makes a dandy—”
And that was as far as Jason Kreegan got, before a swift hand slapped the gun aside but let his swing continue and take him off balance—and another hand that was just as fast grabbed hold of the elbow of his gun hand and rushed him around and forward, in a helpless stumble that—
Took him out of the open boxcar door, shouting helplessly, as the train plunged into another tunnel, and its rushing fury took him away.
***
“Well?” Dasinger asked.
Northrop rubbed the side of his jaw thoughtfully. “A good brawl,” he informed the head of Dasinger Private Investigations happily. “Were my four the lot, do you think?”