The Wrecker

53

THE WRECKER MOVED WITH INHUMAN SPEED. INSTEAD OF attacking Isaac Bell, he rushed James Dashwood. He ducked under the boy’s pistol, got behind him, and slid his arm around his throat.

“Is it all right now if I reach for my boot?” the Wrecker asked mockingly.

He had already pulled his knife.

He pressed the razor-sharp blade to Dashwood’s throat and sliced a line in the skin. Blood trickled.

“Table’s turned, Bell. Drop your gun or I’ll cut his head off.”

Isaac Bell dropped his Browning on the ground.

“You too, sonny. Drop it!”

Only when Bell said, “Do what he says, Dash,” did the revolver clatter on the wet ballast.

“Unlock this handcuff.”

“Do what he says,” said Bell. Dashwood worked the key out of his pocket and fumbled it into the cuff on the wrist that was crushing his windpipe. The cuffs clattered on the ballast. There was silence, but for the huffing of a single switch engine somewhere, until Bell asked, “Where is Archie Abbott?”

“The derringer in your hat, Bell.”

Bell removed his two-shot pistol from his hat and dropped it beside his Browning.

“Where is Archie Abbott?”

“The knife in your boot.”

“I don’t have one.”

“The Rawlins coroner reports a prizefighter died with a throwing knife in his throat,” said the Wrecker. “I presume you purchased a replacement.”

He cut Dashwood again, and a second trickle of blood merged with the first.

Bell lifted out his throwing knife and placed it on the ground.

“Where is Archie Abbott?”

“Archie Abbott? Last I saw, he was mooning over Lillian Hennessy. That’s right, Bell. I tricked you. Took advantage of your terrible penchant for caring.”

Kincaid let go of Dashwood and slammed an elbow into the boy’s jaw, knocking him senseless. He gave his knife a peculiar flick of his wrist. A rapier-thin sword blade flew at Bell’s face.

BELL DODGED THE THRUST that had killed his friends.

Kincaid lunged like lightning and thrust again. Bell dove forward, hit the crushed stone, tucked his long legs and rolled. Kincaid’s sword whipped through space he had occupied a second earlier. Bell rolled again, reaching for the double-action revolver Eddie Edwards had given James Dashwood.

As Bell extended his hand, he saw steel gleam as Kincaid got to it first. The needle-sharp tip of his telescoping sword hovered over the gun. “Try to pick it up,” he dared Bell.

Bell slid sideways, grabbed the brakeman’s signal flag that James had dropped, and rolled to his feet. Then he advanced in a fluid motion, holding the flagstaff in the en garde position.

Kincaid laughed. “You’re brought a stick to a swordfight, Mr. Bell. Always one step behind. Will you never learn?”

Bell held the tightly rolled cloth end and thrust the wooden staff.

Kincaid parried.

Bell responded with a sharp beat, striking the thin metal just below the tip of Kincaid’s weapon. The blow exposed him to a lightning thrust, an opportunity Kincaid did not waste. His sword pierced Bell’s coat and tore a burning crease along his ribs. Falling back, Bell delivered another sharp beat with the flagstaff.

Kincaid thrust. Bell avoided it and beat hard for a third time.

Kincaid lunged. Bell whirled, sweeping him past him like a toreador. And as Kincaid spun around swiftly to attack again, Bell delivered another hard beat that bent the front half of his sword.

“Compromise, Kincaid. Every engineering decision involves a compromise. Remember? What you grasp in one fist you surrender with the other? The ability to conceal your telescoping sword weakened it.”

Kincaid threw the ruined sword at Bell and drew a revolver from his coat. The barrel tipped up as he cocked it. Bell lunged, executing another sharp beat. This one rapped the tender skin stretched tightly across the back of Kincaid’s hand. Kincaid cried out in pain and dropped the gun. Instantly, he attacked, swinging his fists.

Bell raised his own fists, and said derisively, “Could it be that the deadly swordsman and brilliant engineer neglected the manly art of defense? That’s the clumsiest fisticuffs I’ve seen since Rawlins. Were you too busy plotting murder to learn how to box?”

He hit the Wrecker twice, a hard one-two that bloodied his nose and rocked him back on his heels. Holding the clear advantage, Bell moved in to finish him off and cuff his hands. His roundhouse right landed square on target. The punch would have knocked most men flat. The Wrecker shrugged it off, and Bell realized to a degree he never had before that the Wrecker was extraordinarily different, less a man and more an evil monster that had climbed fully born out of a volcano.

He regarded Bell with a look of sheer hatred. “You will never stop me.”

Switching tactics with astonishing agility, he snatched up a signal lantern, swung it high. Bell stepped nimbly aside. The Wrecker brought it low, smashing its glass against a rail. Kerosene spilled, and the lantern ignited in a ball of liquid fire, which the Wrecker hurled on the still form of James Dashwood.