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Bell considered ramming the roller gate, but it was made of heavy-gauge steel and looked impervious. The other option was to drive through the flames, but Brewster and Hall were in the back and they would have been burned alive.
He looked back across the garage. Through the deepening smoke, figures scurried in hopes of finding a spot where the flames weren’t growing higher and more fierce.
There was no other way.
Warry O’Deming opened his door and had to shout over the roaring chorus of the fire when he said, “I know what you did for the others, Mr. Bell. Just make sure I’m buried in a Catholic cemetery or my sainted mother will make heaven hell for me.”
He ran across to the closed door, forcing himself to stand mere feet from the flames. The chain dangling from the hoist mechanism had been exposed to heat for many long minutes and doubtless burned the Irishman’s hands as he yanked on it to open the door. No sooner had the door risen a few inches than the influx of fresh oxygen caused the fire to expand in nearly every direction as though the air itself was combustible.
Bell was protected by the dump truck’s enclosed cab, and Brewster and Hall were afforded some protection by the high sides of the truck’s body, but Warry took the blast of flame full force. His hair burned off like a flaring match and his clothes were alight, yet he didn’t stop working the chain, sacrificing himself so the others could live and complete their mission.
Isaac Bell had never witnessed such an act of bravery in his life.
Even before the door was high enough, Bell put the truck in gear and started gunning for the exit in the vain hope that somehow Warry could be saved. But welding tanks near the gate just then reached critical temperature and exploded with the force of a bundle of dynamite.
Warry O’Deming ceased to exist.
Bell slammed on the brakes as blinding white flame rolled over the truck’s cab and rocked the vehicle on its suspension. The mechanic Bell had seen earlier had been fortunate enough to be sheltered from the blast by the truck’s steel body, but the concussion wave left him dazed, and he started walking back toward the center of the building rather than picking his way through the burning debris toward the exit. Bell opened his door enough to grab the man’s arm and guide him up onto the running board. He then raced through the inferno and out onto the street, the truck trailing smoke from where the fire had burned off some paint.
He braked a half block from the fire, and looked the mechanic in the eye. “I just saved your life. Do what you were told to do in there but don’t mention the dump truck. Understand?” The man was too frightened to speak. “Nod your head if you understand.”
The man nodded, and Bell released his grip. The mechanic stepped down onto the road. Bell yelled for his companions. The two men, sooty but unharmed, climbed down from the back of the truck and joined Bell in the cab. They accelerated away while crowds of onlookers began to gather to watch the fire consume the local crime boss’s garage.
39
No one spoke during the ride back to the abandoned cotton mill where they’d stashed the byzanium. Rather than empty the crates into the dump truck so the ore looked like so much gravel, Bell decided to load them filled and just bury them with more dirt from behind the mill. The truck was more than powerful enough for the extra weight. Vern Hall was no help with any of the physical labor, and while Brewster was willing, he was too weak and wasted to be of any use either. It fell on Isaac Bell to load the hundred-pound crates and shovel a few hundred pounds of dirt on top.
They were back on the road around suppertime. Bell circled as far around Birmingham as he could before turning south. The men kept their own counsel while they drove. The only sound in the truck was the growl of the engine and the hiss of the tires on the pavement. They stopped for food and fuel once, but then kept going. It was only when they were about ten miles north of the Port of Southampton that Bell turned the truck off the main road and followed a country lane into the rolling farmland. The truck’s headlamps barely cut through the darkness, forcing Bell to drive at a walking pace. Ancient rock walls lined parts of the road and divided some of the pastures.
“Where are we going?”
“We have thirty-six hours before we need to board the ship. I have a healthy aversion to anyplace Foster Gly might lay an ambush, so I thought we’d wait it out in the countryside. I saw a sign back there for a little town. They’ll hopefully have an inn. Or at least a pub for a meal and a barn where we can sleep.”
As it turned out, Southby wasn’t much of a town at all and had neither inn nor pub and barn. The place was all but abandoned, with only a few thatch-roofed homes showing any light. They passed a church and were back out into pastureland. A half mile later, Bell spotted a gate that had been left to rot. He turned onto a narrow track that led to a house with a collapsed front wall, but the barn behind it was intact, if not a little run-down. The silence when Bell killed the engine was soon filled with the sound of a gentle breeze moving through the tall grass and rustling the leafless trees.
“We’ll try to get food in the morning,” Bell said, knuckling kinks out of his lower back.
The barn door only closed partway, and most of the floor was bare earth, but one stall was packed with hay bales left from the previous autumn. They had hardened over the winter, but a little pulling and twisting loosened enough straw to make them comfortable enough for exha
usted sleep.
When they were settled in, Vern Hall said, “That was a hell of a thing Warry did for us back there.”
“Aye,” Brewster replied, but in such a way as to indicate he didn’t want to talk about it.
Bell changed the topic by asking, “Do you remember anything about what happened on the train with you and Johnny and Alvin?”
“Some,” Hall said. “It was Johnny. When you went back to uncouple the cars, Johnny hit Alvin with the blade of the coal shovel without warning and shoved him right off the train. He swung at me and did a good number on my head, but I think I got ahold of the sledgehammer they use to break up bigger chunks of coal and swung it back just before my legs went out from underneath me.”
“So, it was Johnny who was working for the French,” Bell said.
“Must be,” Vern said.
“I wonder why,” Bell mused.
“I’ve been thinking about that, Mr. Bell, and there’s something I’ve kept secret.”
“What’s that?” Brewster asked with suspicion. “What secret?”
