Page 3 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
He rolled once, twice. The third time slowed him enough to get to his feet. The truck carrying off the safe was just pulling off theDuke of Monmouth’s relatively calm dockage and into the chaotic scene near the Canadian livestock transporter. Because that was a freighter and not a passenger liner, customs was handled far differently. There were no customs halls or immigration lines. It was all handled quickly and with minimal fuss so that the horses weren’t kept waiting unnecessarily. That meant that once the thieves passed the ship, they had an open lane between two brick warehouses and out into the town with nothing to stop them.
Few workers had paid much attention to what had just happenedand were thus startled when Bell tumbled off the unloading ramp. No one tried to stop him as he took off running after the truck, his Browning pistol already in hand.
With so many horses being moved from the Canadian ship, not to mention the mounted riders trying to keep them in a loose formation, the truck couldn’t make much more than walking speed as it crossed the quay, evoking the occasional curse from a cowboy whose horse they spooked with a blare of the vehicle’s horn.
Bell wasn’t making much better headway himself. He could dodge and weave around the horses, but there were so many of them milling about that it was like running through a roan-colored maze. Plus he had to be on constant alert because some of the more agitated horses bucked their back legs in explosive kicks powerful enough to stave in a man’s rib cage.
He kept losing sight of the truck and finally climbed up on a two-horse wagon loaded with a tightly bound wheel of hay that easily weighed a couple of tons. The thieves were far closer to the exit than he’d expected. With a quick motion he pulled the razor-sharp knife he kept strapped around his ankle and slashed the rope holding the eight-foot-diameter-round hay bale into the bed of the wagon. A snap on the rein jerked the wagon enough for the hay to fall off the back. It hit the dock with a thud and rolled only a couple of feet before its ponderous weight stopped it dead.
Bell snapped the rein again and the two horses hitched on either side of the disselboom put their shoulders into the chase. Unlike the truck or even Bell on foot, the unfettered horses heeded their herd instinct, and while they didn’t follow the charging wagon, they got out of its way.
In moments, he found that he’d closed the distance, but saw that they were nearing the narrow alley between the warehouses that ledout of the dockland. Once through, the truck would speed away and there was nothing he could do to stop them.
Bell was determined not to let that happen. The moment he’d hurled himself off theDuke of Monmouth, his professional reputation, not to mention his own sense of right and wrong, was on the line.
He’d holstered his pistol when he’d leapt onto the hay cart, but checked again that the automatic was secure under his left arm. He cracked the reins again to keep the horses after their target and stepped down off the wagon’s driver’s seat and onto the yoke pole between the two charging draft horses. The thunder of their hooves grew deafening now that he was standing just eighteen inches above the cobbled pier on a round length of wood no wider than his hand’s span.
The horses sensed him in the unfamiliar spot and immediately started sweating, waxy bubbles like sea foam forming under their leather tack. Bell moved like a tightrope walker on a swaying pole, inching himself forward without physically touching the horses because he didn’t know how they’d react. If he slipped he’d land under their rear hooves and then get run over by the wagon. Death would be preferable to the paralyzing injuries such a fall would likely produce.
He kept moving forward. The horses had caught up to the truck as it navigated the narrow alley, a darkened passage with just a trace of sunlight reaching down to the roadway. The animals’ chests were barely a foot behind the lorry’s tailgate. Bell could plainly see the stolen trunk in the bed, and he noted that neither man was looking at the vehicle’s side mirrors. They had no idea he was onto them.
Bell reached the end of the disselboom. While he was shimmying out, he’d been able to maintain his balance, but once he stopped hestarted swaying dangerously. He assumed the left-hand horse was the leader of the pair and so he momentarily steadied himself against the animal’s seesawing neck with a light touch.
The horse wasn’t the leader of the two. England drove on the opposite side of the road and so it was the horse in the right trace that kept the team working as one. Bell’s presence on the cart pole had been troubling enough, but once his hand touched the subordinate horse’s neck, its eyes rolled into its head so that only the whites showed, its tongue tried to snake around the bit, and it broke its gait. The lead horse tried to keep up the pace, but it was no use. His partner was in a full panic, and if not for the straps and yokes holding him in place, he would have bolted with every ounce of his considerable strength.
Bell realized his mistake the moment he’d made it, but the damage was done. The fleeting window of opportunity to leap from the wagon onto the truck was lost as the team slowed and the lorry pulled away.
He held on to both horses, cajoling them to slow. “Easy, boys. It’s okay,” he kept repeating. “No need to bother now.”
They emerged from the alley. The thieves were halfway across a mostly empty parking lot. In another thirty seconds they’d reach an unmanned gatehouse and turn onto the road leading away from the Runcorn docks. Bell stepped down off the pole and came around the front of the horses to pet their noses and calm them further.
A cowboy in a fleece-trimmed shearling coat and a Stetson rode up just then, pulling back on the reins hard enough for his mount to rear up for a moment. He dropped the reins across the horse’s back, a signal for the animal to freeze, and produced a braided leather whip, which he uncoiled so that its tip fell to the ground.
“You’re gonna lose a fair amount of flesh for what you just done,” he said in a low growl. “Move away from them horses.”
He just started to curl his wrist and raise the whip when Bell drew his 9 millimeter and aimed it dead on the cowboy’s beaky nose. “Drop the whip or I drop you.”
The cowboy had a big revolver hanging from his hip in a holster fitted with loops for extra bullets. Bell could see the gears turning behind the man’s eyes, calculating if he could toss the whip at Bell to foul his aim and draw his own weapon for a kill shot.
“I’m a private detective,” Bell said, still unsure if he’d have to shoot the man. “I was chasing thieves who just stole several million dollars in gold.”
Just then, a car entered the alley from the far end, its engine keening and its driver squeezing the horn’s bulb for everything it was worth. The fast-approaching vehicle was enough of a distraction to defuse the situation. Bell saw the tension run out of the cowboy’s shoulders and whip arm.
The car braked almost as hard as the cowboy’s horse moments earlier and the beautiful blonde from first class leaned out the window and said to Bell, “Get in. We still have a chance.”
Bell gave the cowboy an apologetic look and leapt for the car’s running board. The mission was officially over and he was off the clock, as they say, and so he no longer had to pretend his wife hadn’t been on the same steamer over from New York as he and Ed Tobin.
Marion Bell eased her foot off the clutch, over-revved the engine a bit, but got them rolling without stalling it. Forced to shift with her left hand in the right-hand-drive Austin 40, Marion had trouble synching the gears, but eventually meshed them with brute force and some unladylike oaths. Bell wrestled open the passenger door andgot himself seated as the car began putting on some speed. The truck was too far ahead to see, but for now there was only one way out of the port, so Marion drove with confidence they were going to catch their quarry.
“Where’s Eddie and where did you get this car?” Bell asked, unsurprised that she’d come to his rescue.
“Eddie was still trying to find a way up to first class so he could disembark and come after you himself. Remember, you heels in the lower-class cabins don’t get off the ship until us toffs are on our way.”
Bell cocked a dubious eyebrow. “You’ve been in England two minutes and you’re already using their slang?”
She threw him a cheeky smile. “I do love it here, you know. The car belongs to a Lord something pompous-sounding who was returning to England after meetings with the War Department. He was at the captain’s table the first night out and blathered incessantly. Then the weather turned so dreadful. I made it to the dining room a couple of nights, but His Lard Fatness remained in his cabin for the rest of the trip. Oh, and wasn’t that just a dreadful crossing?” Marion’s delivery was a rapid-fire staccato that was music to Bell’s ears.
“It was,” he agreed. “The car?”
