Page 2 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)
The Duke of Monmouth had passed around Weston Point and was approaching the docks at Runcorn.
They were about nine miles from the sea.
The air was heavy with coal smoke and the other odors of the industrial revolution, but atop it was the farm smell of animal manure, which was somehow much worse, like the noisome discharge of a diseased herd already in the throes of death.
Another ship was tied to the dock that ran parallel to the canal.
She flew the Canadian ensign, a predominantly red flag with the Union Jack in one corner and the Great Seal of Canada toward the center.
She was an animal transporter about halfway finished unloading hundreds of horses destined for the front and hundreds more sheep destined for the soldiers’ mess.
The passage had to have been even worse for the animals than it had been for the passengers aboard the Duke of Monmouth because the quay was awash in loose dung.
Men with hand-pumped hoses were washing the treacle into the canal, but that did little to alleviate the cloying stench.
All the horses Bell could see stood with their heads low, their tails motionless, and their mien listless.
The sheep that had already been unloaded and fenced inside temporary corrals bleated miserably, their once-white coats stained down almost to the skin.
The cowboys who’d tended the animals all the way from Halifax, sleeping near their stalls and keeping them fed and watered despite the rough seas, were struggling to keep their charges together.
Only a few had mounts well enough to ride, leaving just a handful of the ranchers to coax the seasick animals into a semblance of a line so they could be herded to a nearby railhead.
From there they would be transported to farms around the south of England, where they would be acclimated and then trained to become warhorses.
Bell had read somewhere that the British were losing around three hundred horses per day on the front. It was early March. He doubted any of the animals on the pier would see the summer.
The Monmouth slid past the livestock transporter and came up against its pier, the harbor pilot working the ship’s rudder and engine to ease the liner up against the dock with barely a kiss.
Below, workers with scarves tied over their noses and mouths because of the smell prepared to unload the ship.
Bell assumed that whatever cargo and passengers she’d return with to North America would be loaded at her regular slot back in Liverpool.
Providing for a nation that was fielding millions of men in a foreign country to fight a war no one really wanted was an exercise in precision timing and industrial might on a scale never seen in all of human history.
One group of men on the pier caught Bell’s eye.
A couple were obviously dockworkers, but two looked different.
They wore plain clothes but had the look of cops, sharp-eyed and situationally aware.
They stood around an open back lorry with a canvas cover protecting the driver and passenger compartment.
The stevedores smoked cigarettes while the two police guards scanned the ship.
They knew he was coming in as a second-class passenger and so ignored the people on the top deck already getting ready to depart the ship via a long switchback set of gangways.
The second- and third-class passengers returning to Europe after working in America wouldn’t disembark until the premier passengers had all cleared customs and were on their way to London or wherever they were headed.
Just by interpreting their body language, the British police recognized the two Van Dorn men slouched against the Monmouth ’s railing.
While other passengers gawked at the sights of the harbor and the canal traffic still moving past or stared in fascination at the chaotic unloading of the horses, Bell and Eddie Tobin watched the cops.
The older of the two cops pointed in Bell’s direction. In turn Bell pulled a slender flashlight that was no bigger than a cigar and used the nonstandard AA batteries from his overcoat pocket and flashed the Morse code of his initials: Dot, dot. Dash, dot, dot, dot .
The policeman acknowledged the gesture. Bell swung his gaze toward the Duke of Monmouth ’s bow.
The forward hatch had already been knocked open and an operator was standing by the mast derrick.
Near him was the ship’s third officer, as previously arranged when the assignment had been discussed with the ship’s owner and captain.
Bell’s cargo would be the first off the ship and the police in charge to receive it would be well on their way before anyone else cleared customs with their luggage.
As the crane hook vanished into the hold, Eddie nudged Bell and pointed at something happening on the dock. “Hey, boss man, what is that thing?” he asked.
Bell wasn’t sure. It was a wheeled tower made of metal struts with a ramp that spiraled down from the top all the way to the ground.
The floor and outer wall of the helical were made of individual rollers that would spin freely if something were to pass over them or bump against them in the case of the outer wall.
“If I’d have to guess,” Bell said as the odd tower was wheeled closer to the ship, “it’s some Rube Goldbergian contraption for unloading steamer trunks.
A guy on the ship sets a trunk on top and with a little shove it coils down and around the ramp until it reaches the bottom and another stevedore is there ready to heave it onto a waiting truck.
If you notice, the struts can be jacked up or down depending on how high up on the ship the trunk storage compartments are. ”
“Damned clever.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Bell said. “The Brits are facing a massive labor shortage with all their men off in the trenches, so they need to get creative.”
Dockworkers pushed the unloading ramp toward the ship, while the crate Bell and Eddie had been hired to protect rose from the forward hold.
It looked like a standard packing crate, maybe with thicker-than-average wood, but unremarkable in all respects.
Once the crate was high enough to clear the ship’s rail, the boom was swung outward enough for it to lower the package directly onto the waiting truck.
The two cops stepped back as the stevedores craned their necks back and reached up with their arms to guide the load into position.
As soon as the crate landed on the truck’s open bed, a carefully set trap was sprung.