Dead Man's Tunnel (29 page)

Right now the sack called out to him. He crawled beneath the covers just as Scrap's crane roared into life. Exhausted, he put the pillow over his head and fell asleep despite the noise.

But at some point, he stirred, dreaming of missing dogs and of a baby carriage sitting on a crossing. When black smoke boiled onto the horizon, he ran to the rescue. His heart hammered in his chest, his ears rang, and just as he reached the carriage, the steamer roared onto the crossing. In that last dying moment, he looked into the carriage to see the lieutenant staring up at him.

He sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the bunk. Sweat trickled down his cheeks, and his heart thumped out of control. He rubbed his face to make certain he'd awakened. Rarely did he dream, and never something as vivid as this. He could sleep anywhere, in a boxcar, on the rods, or in a culvert under the tracks.

Perhaps the Cream of Kentucky had caught up with him, or perhaps his subconscious had awakened him. The years had taught him not to ignore it, to pay attention, because it often spoke truth.

Maybe the lieutenant had more to do with all this than he'd admitted to himself. Maybe he'd failed to look hard enough because he didn't want to know.

He lit a cigarette and thought about the lieutenant's eyes staring up at him from out of the carriage. He rose and looked out the window at the main line. Darkness had fallen. He'd slept longer than he thought.

The note he found in her brief had said to deliver J.B. on the seventh at 0100 hours and to secure all points. The only J.B. he could think of was John Ballard, the name she'd scribbled on the hotel notepad. But this was the sixth, not the seventh. He squashed out his cigarette in the ashtray. 0100 hours, military time, would put it an hour after midnight, which would make it the seventh.

Who was this John Ballard, and why would the lieutenant deliver him anywhere? In the end, only she had the answers, and he delayed far too long in getting them.

*   *   *

Hook took his coat and walked through the darkness to Scrap's office, pausing at the copper cars long enough to check his watch. If he could wrangle transportation out of Scrap, he should have plenty of time to locate the lieutenant if she was in town.

When Hook walked in, Scrap was sitting behind his desk working on his books.

“It's late, Scrap. You counting your money?”

“What the hell happened to your head?” he asked, looking up.

Hook touched his temple. “Fell out of bed.”

“If you'd drink buttermilk instead of blue john, that wouldn't happen, Hook.”

“I didn't come for advice from a junk dealer on how to live my life.”

“You can stop living it altogether far as I'm concerned.”

“Look, I need to borrow your jeep. I only need it for a while. It's urgent.”

Scrap took out his pipe, pulled the stem off, and blew through it.

“Well, I don't know,” he said, putting it back together. “There's a little matter of gas. I got demands on my funds.”

“Like what?”

“Like buying milk for the babies,” he said.

“You don't have babies.”

He filled his pipe. “That may be true, strictly speaking. But if I
was
to have babies, there'd be no milk, would there?”

“I'll put gas in the jeep.”

He pulled the jeep keys from his pocket. “I guess I can make the sacrifice this once.”

“What about the lights?”

“I ain't had time for fine-tuning no lights, Hook.”

“Lord help me,” Hook said, taking the keys.

*   *   *

When Hook pulled onto the road, the power lines and the tops of the trees lit up like daylight, but the road ahead disappeared into the darkness.

When at last he made it to the motel, he took a look around the parking lot. A number of cars had pulled in, but no signs of the lieutenant.

He decided to check with the manager and found him sitting behind the desk listening to the radio. He turned it down and looked at Hook through dusty glasses.

“We don't give out information on our customers,” he said.

Hook showed him his badge. “Railroad security,” he said.

“This ain't the railroad,” he said.

“Track crews
used
to stay here,” Hook said. “They're not likely to again.”

“A female lieutenant, you say?”

“That's right. Drives a staff car.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She left not long ago.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“She didn't say nothing. Paid her bill and left.”

“Thanks,” Hook said.

“Pretty, though,” he said.

“Right.”

“Wasn't alone either. Had a man with her. Probably nothing to worry about, though. She paid for separate rooms.”

*   *   *

Hook sat in the jeep, rocking the steering wheel. He could think of only one other place she might be. He pulled off for the Johnson Canyon Tunnel.

The night had turned clear as ice, and his headlights shot off into space as he navigated the road next to the tracks. The moonlight raced along the rails, and the smell of juniper filled the night air.

A good distance from the tunnel, he coasted to a stop, far enough away so as not be spotted. From there, he could see the lantern in the guardhouse window and the lieutenant's staff car parked at the bottom of the steps.

He moved in closer just as the door opened, and the lieutenant came out on the porch. A man followed her, and they talked for several moments. The man went back in the guardhouse, and she made her way down the steps.

Hook slipped in closer to the car and waited. When she opened the car door, he stepped out and clamped his hand over her mouth. She struggled, but he held tight, all the while pulling her back into the shadows.

When safely out of sight, he said, “Lieutenant, it's me, Hook.” She squirmed under his hold, and her heart thumped against his wrist. “Take it easy. I'm not going to hurt you. We have to talk. I'm going to let you go now, but you must stay quiet.”

The lieutenant nodded, and he released his hand. She turned and faced him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for answers,” he said.

“There's a lot you don't understand. Go now. I can't explain.”

He took her arm. “I've been running in circles, Lieutenant, and each time the tracks lead back to you.”

“Please, go. Time is short.”

“Then you better get started, hadn't you?”

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

“You've been lying to me. I want to know the truth.”

The lieutenant looked up at the guardhouse. “There are things I can't discuss. Can't you just trust me on this?”

“I have an unexplained death on railroad property. I can't let that go. And I have enough information to turn things upside down around here if I have to.”

She looked up at the guardhouse again and then back at him.

“Alright,” she said. “You don't leave me much choice, do you?”

 

35

“F
IRST, WHO IS
it you really work for?” Hook asked.

“I did work for Transportation like I told you, but a few months ago, they assigned me to OSS.”

“OSS?”

“Office of Strategic Services. Army intelligence.”

“Jesus, you're a spy?”

“No. It's kind of an operation.”

He took her arm. “Lieutenant, I'm already in this up to my eyeballs. This railroad is my jurisdiction, and I can raise more different kinds of hell with an operation than you can imagine.”

The lieutenant pushed her hair back from her eyes. “You could get me into real trouble.”

“Exactly.”

“A nuclear locomotive,” she said.

Hook stepped back and looked at her. “What did you say?”

“A nuclear locomotive. The Naval Research Laboratory has developed a small reactor that's cooled by helium. It has been put in a locomotive. It's a steam-driven turbine and can generate up to six thousand horsepower. They believe it has the potential to run thirty thousand miles without refueling.

“If this thing works, the technology could then be adapted to all manner of transportation, even airplanes. Just think of it. The world will never be the same.”

Hook said, “I know these folks are pretty smart, but even an old cinder dick like me knows better than to strap a bomb on wheels and roll it down the track.”

The lieutenant said, “I'm in the army, Hook. It's my duty to carry out orders, and our future may well depend on us developing nuclear-powered transportation.”

Hook walked over to the staff car then back. “They're going to do a test run, aren't they? That's why the line upgrade and why the corridor is closed?”

“A tow engine is deadheading the prototype from Kingman Army Airfield tonight and is due to be here at 0100 hours. There will be a passenger car attached for the technical crew. The nuclear engine will be coupled onto those loaded boxcars down there on the tunnel siding to get a traction analysis.”

“Has Division been in the know all along?”

“Only that it's a military operation. They were eager enough to receive funds for the upgrade.”

“I don't know much about this nuclear stuff,” Hook said. “But anything that could slug a locomotive thirty thousand miles without taking a breath has to come with some risks.”

The lieutenant turned her face into the moonlight. “That's why all the precautions. Contained, its power is immense and productive. Uncontained, as you know, it can blow up a continent.”

“That's just crazy,” Hook said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I admit to not being the smartest guy around, but I've been riding the rails in one fashion or another for some time now. I have a fair idea how fast a gully washer can take out a bridge, how a hotfooter, half asleep or drunk, can straighten out a curve, how a cinder cruncher, thinking about quitting time, can throw the wrong switch and send a freighter screaming up the wrong track.

“Given these things happen in spite of the railroad's best efforts, how does it make sense to take the guts out of an atomic bomb, put it inside a locomotive, and fire it down the track? Knowing all the while that there's no way of preventing bums, saboteurs, and local morons from throwing the switch or changing the signal. Add that to the possibility of a leaky boiler, which happens with some regularity, and you're running the risk of killing every breathing creature from here to Albuquerque. I don't get the odds.”

The lieutenant said, “All I know is that nuclear power is too important to be denied. The United States knows it and so does the enemy. It's too late to pretend it doesn't exist, so we can only hope to make it our own. The process has to start somewhere. The potential is simply too great to ignore.”

“For Christ's sake, Lieutenant, this is something Scrap West would dream up.”

“There are concerns,” she said. “That's why all the secrecy involved in this project. We're not the only ones in the game either. If we don't do it, someone else will. Germany and Japan have been working on this for a while, even Russia has been scrambling to harness nuclear power since the dropping of the bomb. We're further along, and they know it. There's nothing they'd like better than to delay our progress.”

Hook pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket and then put them back.

“But why here? Why in this place?” he asked.

The lieutenant rubbed her arms against the chill.

“The line is remote, and it has the steepest grade in the United States. If that engine can make this run with deadweight, it can go anywhere. After the test, the engine will be towed back to Kingman Army Airfield. By daylight, we should know the answers.”

“And who is this John Ballard?”

“You know about him, too?”

“Your note in the hotel,” he said.

“Careless of me,” she said. “He's the nuclear physicist who designed the prototype, the brains behind the project. It has been his baby from the beginning. We brought him in from Schenectady for the test run, keeping him as low profile as possible. I've been charged with his security. Without Ballard, there would be no prototype, and he's up there in the guardhouse right now.”

“And so you are the one who had me tailed?”

“After Sergeant Erikson's death, we couldn't take any chances with anyone involved. That included you. By the way, you nearly scared the life out of our agent in that alley.”

“Did Sergeant Erikson know about this test?” he asked.

“The decision had been made to keep both him and Thibodeaux on as guards throughout the process. Even though they probably knew something was going on, they had already been cleared by security to guard the tunnel. Our plan was to reassign them and bring in our own people at the last minute. We figured the less attention we brought to this matter the better. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way.”

“You never thought that Erikson died from an accident, did you?”

“At first I thought just that. You were the one who convinced me that something else might be going on.”

“And Thibodeaux?”

“He's being interrogated as we speak. A petty thief, we believe, but he's caused us plenty of worry. Although we thought his information was minimal, we couldn't be certain. I must say, you were helpful with Thibodeaux as well.”

“I'm a helpful kind of guy,” he said. “Especially when I don't know what the hell is going on.”

“I can understand you being upset, but we had no choice. We had to keep as few people in the know as possible.”

“And those two replacement guards?”

“Folsom is Navy Intelligence,” she said. “Severe is regular military police.”

“That would be
Captain
Folsom, I assume?”