Page 4 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Car? Yes, the car. Well, the Earl of Too Many Sandwiches was on the pier arguing with the porters about his luggage and his driver was just standing around. I saw you steal that wagon, so I figured I might as well steal something a bit more practical.”
Bell laughed. “You are a marvel.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
All around them were warehouses and small industrial concerns with tall chimneys belching black smoke into the already hazy air. There were countless trucks and horse-drawn wagons and menshouting orders. A heavy booming sound came from a foundry as massive trip-hammers flattened cold-rolled iron. While the thieves could have turned off onto any one of the side roads crisscrossing the commercial area closest to the docks, there was only one major artery out of the maze, and logic dictated that the men would want to put as much distance as possible from the scene of the crime.
The area gave way to some open land and a proper road heading inland. Traffic was light.
“There,” Bell shouted, pointing. Up ahead was an open-backed truck moving faster than the rest of the cars on the road, passing where it had barely any room to maneuver.
“Hah!” Marion whooped and tried to sink her foot through the floorboard. The four-cylinder engine responded like a thoroughbred and they quickly started passing the cars that the truck had just rushed by.
As they turned slightly north, back toward the canal and the Mersey River, an odd structure appeared out of the haze. It was a bridge of some sort, but unlike anything Bell had ever seen before. It consisted of two towers nearly two hundred feet tall with a thousand-foot-long steel latticework truss lancing across the river about halfway up. The massive weight of the steel girders was supported by wires like a conventional suspension bridge from the tops of the towers. The span was eighty or so feet above the water, giving clear passage for all but the largest ships. Bell couldn’t understand how anything could cross the bridge. There were no ramps up to the truss like those used to access the Brooklyn Bridge back in New York.
Then he noticed a platform big enough for several trucks as well as hundreds of passengers dangling from the truss on a cableway system like an aerial tram. The passenger area was glassed in like agreenhouse, but was as ornate as a decorative birdcage. Above it was a glass-enclosed cupola for the operator. The entire structure had the delicacy and industrial grace of Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
The cable car hung just a dozen or so feet above the water, so its trips across had to be timed to avoid ships headed toward Manchester or heading west back to the Irish Sea.
“It’s a transporter bridge,” Bell said as he suddenly recognized the hybrid structure. “Never seen one before. Not as efficient as a suspension bridge, but a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to build.”
“Judging by how slow that platform is moving, if we can’t make the same trip across as the thieves, they’re as good as gone.” Addressing her own concern, Marion flashed past a lorry loaded with bails of barbed wire, doing nearly twice its speed.
“Easy,” Bell cautioned. “They don’t know they’re being followed yet and I don’t want to lose that advantage. There’s a couple of them and only one me.”
“You’ve got me,” Marion said with a defiant lift of her chin.
“I do, but I only have one gun.”
“What about the derringer you always carry?”
“Dropped it between two running horses,” he admitted.
“Nicely done, Keystone.”
The thieves’ truck started across the bridge’s access pier. Marion’s deft driving had managed to get them only a couple of cars back. They would make the crossing together.
“Shouldn’t you arrest them now?” Marion asked.
“Too many people,” Bell said. A large crowd was gathered next to the road, where they waited their turn to cross the Mersey River on the large cableway platform. “If those guys are armed it could turn into a massacre. Better we confront them in a less-crowded spot.”
The transporter reached the loading ramp. A worker was ready to open the safety barrier, while behind him at least fifty people had left the sheltered passenger compartment and waited to rush off the platform. Most were workers from the industrial sprawl on the far side of the river and at least half were boys barely in their teens, while the others were older men nearing retirement. It was a stark reminder that the young men of England were shoulder-deep in muddy trenches across the breadth of France.
The platform came to a stop with a slight slam of metal on metal that caused a few of the passengers to sway. The barrier came down and the throng of people rushed from the transporter, eager to get to their next destination. Then two trucks trundled off the platform followed by a wagon being pulled by a lone pony.
The worker made a hand gesture and the next set of passengers stampeded onto the transport, rushing for the enclosed area to get out of a misting rain that was intensifying. Bell could see ahead that the thieves were ordered onto the platform under the guidance of a worker, who wanted them to park at a specific set of marks.
Next aboard were two Austin sedans a few years older than the one Marion had lent herself. Then came a wagon pulled by a single horse, and finally it was their turn. Mindful that she was driving an unfamiliar car, Marion was easy on the clutch, inching the car onto the platform as if she had all the time in the world.
Without warning, the transporter lurched away from the loading ramp. It took just a second for the platform to pull itself from under their car’s front wheels. The bridge worker who directed traffic had a horrified look on his face at the disaster unfolding before his eyes. Marion didn’t have time to react. The transport platform slid out from under their Austin and the car’s nose fell so that the chassis justbehind the engine hit the loading ramp and the vehicle began to teeter over the edge, balanced as if on a knife’s edge. The engine stalled and the dying vibration set the car rocking in ever larger arcs.
The sudden drop had slammed Marion into the steering wheel, and had Bell not braced himself at the last instant, he would have likely been launched through the windshield. Their view out the windscreen was of the green waves of the Mersey at ebb tide rushing past at a ferocious speed.
The car continued to rock like a child’s teeter-totter. The transport platform was already a few yards away, the worker still standing in shocked awe with a couple of passengers at his shoulder staring in horror at what was about to happen.
Keeping his left arm braced against the dash, Bell used his right hand to grab the back of Marion’s coat and pull her back so she was pressed into her seat.
“Don’t move. Don’t even breathe hard,” he cautioned in a whisper. “We’re one toot away from toppling into the river.”
