The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  He finished dressing. Before he left the room he found the mapped tracks, the sketches Randy and Clark had put together the last two hundred miles or so on the way to Halifax. He’d been over the maps with them. It had been a surface look. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. The Gipsons were supposed to do the reading for the captain and the major. And now the Gipsons, damn them, had decided to take a vacation.

  Maybe he knew enough. Just maybe.

  He was late. He found Captain Johnny seated on a high-backed bench in the waiting room. His head was back; his feet blocked the aisle between the benches. The bustle, the crush, in the train station was incredible. Uniforms and more uniforms, and here and there a woman or a woman with small children. Harry looked at the women and he knew, from his day’s walk around Halifax, that the chance of housing was zero. Good luck, ladies.

  He stopped in front of Johnny, who had his eyes closed. Harry was about to speak when he felt a touch on his shoulder and looked around. It was Major Renssler, freshly shaved, with his kit under his arm.

  “By yourself, Harry?”

  He nodded.

  Johnny opened his eyes. He stood. “Let’s walk and find some fresh air.”

  They pushed their way outside. There were a couple of battered taxis at the curb. They passed them by and walked a few blocks until they found a greasy-spoon café. It was almost empty. Johnny led the way to a table in the back of the café, apart from the few diners. There wasn’t much choice in the dinner menu. They selected the broiled fish.

  There’d been little talk on the street. Johnny had said that they would be taking the next train out. That was about two hours away. “I feel like a goddam rubber ball,” Johnny had said.

  Now, after the waiter left with the menus, Tom planted his elbows on the table. “Where are the Gipsons?”

  “I wish I knew.” Lying wouldn’t do any good. “They slipped me an hour ago while I was in the tub.”

  “You were supposed to hold them down.”

  Harry looked at Johnny. “I can’t take baths with them.”

  “What do you think?” Tom said.

  “A hundred or so is missing from my pocket. I think they’re visiting the pro ladies.”

  “You think they’re coming back?”

  Harry nodded. “Otherwise they’d have taken more than the hundred.”

  Johnny looked grim. “Slap them down when they come back.”

  “My pleasure.” And it would be.

  “They do the charting?”

  “They did.” Harry dug the folded pad sheets from his hip pocket and made room on the table so that he could spread them. “These are composites. It’s what they put together from the charting Randy did on one side of the train and Clark on the other.” He put a fingertip on Halifax and moved it left along the crossed twin lines that stood for the tracks. His finger stopped at a big X with the square block of a house drawn next to it. “This is Wingate Station. It’s about a hundred or a hundred and five miles out from Halifax.” His finger moved past the X and followed the track until a thin line curled away from the double lines. “This is a siding about forty miles or so farther out. That puts it about a hundred and forty or forty-five miles from Halifax. The way the Gipsons see it, even if the hotbox goes bad after the train passes the Wingate Station, they’ll decide to back the train up and uncouple at Wingate rather than use this siding.”

  “Why?” Tom rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  “The size of it,” Harry said. “Randy says there’s a crew there. And there’ll be telephones and a telegraph, and there are a couple of sidings.” Harry tapped the siding about a hundred and forty miles out. “This one is just a siding in the woods. Nothing else.”

  “How do they figure …?”

  Tom broke off as the waiter arrived with their suppers. Broiled fish, watery potatoes, and green peas.

  The waiter left. Harry had a bite of fish and then, guessing, he finished Tom’s question in his mind and answered it. “Randy says they’ll try to use whatever crew there is at Wingate to repair the hotboxes. That way they won’t have to send a crew from Halifax. The Wingate crew does the work while a spare engine comes redballing out to pick up the cars when they’re ready to move again.”

  “What happens if they decide to fix the hotboxes while the whole train waits?”

  “Randy says that won’t happen. It’s an important shipment, and he’s sure they’re going to have a clear track for it. But they’re not going to tie up the track for hours. Randy says they’ll shunt off the cars with the bad hotboxes, and the rest of the train will leave. For one thing, they’ve probably got a schedule to meet. That and not tying up the track all day.”

  Johnny turned the chart toward him. He studied it while he ate. “We’re going to look silly if we’re waiting at Wingate and that train roars past … and don’t come back.”

  “That’s the risk,” Harry said. “But Randy says, and Clark backs him, that if we mess with those hotboxes, there’s no way those freight cars are going to get far beyond Wingate Station.”

  “That worries me. Having to put much store in anything the Gipsons say.”

  “They’re your experts,” Harry said.

  “Damn them,” Johnny said.

  Tom asked if he’d made contact with the train crew.

  “Easy as pie. And they’re short of crew now. The work’s essential, draft exempt, but a couple got patriotic and went off and volunteered. They haven’t been replaced yet. Also, by the time that ship reaches port here, that early crew is going to need two more good men. I’ve got it planned they’ll be bone short.”

  They finished the meal in silence. Johnny settled the bill, and they walked back to the train station. There were still about fifty minutes before the train headed back toward Montreal.

  Johnny and Tom wouldn’t have to ride it the whole way. If there were no hitches, they’d meet Gunny and the other two at Gilway, about two hundred miles down the line from Halifax.

  Harry left them outside the station and walked his way through the darkening streets to the boarding house. The angry burn was in him all the way. He wanted to kick some ass. Those rednecks had made him look bad with the captain and the major. But he still needed the Gipsons, and they knew it, and they were playing it for all it was worth. That meant he couldn’t kick and stomp. He’d just rough them up and add some bruises around the edges.

  That decided, he kicked off his shoes and stretched out on his bunk. He needed the rest, and Lord knows when the Gipsons would run short of money. He hoped it would be soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As soon as Johnny Whitman settled into the coach seat at Halifax his head went back and his eyes closed. Within ten minutes he was asleep.

  All the rail travel hadn’t tired Tom Renssler that much. He felt it in his lower back, and he told himself that another six or eight hours on horsehair seats and he’d have saddle sores. He wasn’t like Johnny, who had the athlete’s looseness, an ability to drop off for an hour at any time and any place. His body seemed to tell his mind to shut up, and that was all there was to it.

  It was a grace that Tom didn’t possess.

  Twenty minutes out of Halifax, the coach lights dimmed now, Johnny began to dream. The even breathing changed to a series of grunts and snorts.

  Enough. More than enough.

  Tom left his seat. He stood in the aisle for a time. He tried to remember the train as it was when they’d boarded it. And then, not sure he was going in the right direction, he went looking for the canteen car. If there was one. He wasn’t sure there would be. What he wanted, more than a cup of coffee or a beer, was to get away from Johnny Whitman for an hour or so. With any luck, Johnny’s dream would have ended by the time he returned to his seat.

  He passed through several cars. The train was crowded. Uniformed men—Army and Navy—filled most of the seats. Here and there, spotted about the cars, were the usual card games that went on either by the dim overhead lights or by hand-held flashlight.
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  He didn’t ask directions. It was almost a child’s game. Even if he didn’t find a club car or a canteen, the time spent away from Johnny’s animal dreams was its own kind of reward.

  I’m getting warm, he thought. That was when he entered a Pullman car. Two stewards, too busy to notice him, were converting the coach into a series of beds. He passed them and pushed through the rear door. He stopped in the connector section between cars. It was drafty there, and then he lurched for the door handle and caught it and entered the next car.

  The smell stung his nose. It was the smell of a hospital. The strong disinfectant felt harsh in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He lurched and caught his balance, and then he narrowed his eyes so that he could see.

  It was like a Pullman car, but the bed litters were open. War wounded, he thought, and he turned and would have gone back the way he came. What stopped him was the panic-constricted voice of a young man off to his right.

  “Sister? Is that you, Sister?”

  “No,” Tom said. “I’ll find her.”

  “Please …” the man said.

  Tom leaned in. The man was on one of the bottom litters. “What is it?”

  “It’s the one above me,” the wounded man said.

  Tom squatted, and, on level with the man, looked up. A dark stain covered the canvas of the litter. It was blood, and as Tom watched, he saw the blood dripping on the man who’d called out to him. The same dark stain covered the man from the neck to his knees.

  Tom stood. “I’ll find the nurse.”

  He backed away, hit the door, and then he was in the connector. The fresh air cleared his lungs, and he was leaning against the door, coughing and gagging, when the Sister, the nurse, passed him. While the door to the hospital car was closing Tom heard the same man calling out to the nurse.

  He moved to the window and looked out at the passing land, the lights in the distance. A few more seconds, a few more deep breaths, and he could head back to his seat in the coach.

  It happened that MacTaggart’s rounds—his inspection of the magazine where the bullion was stored—matched that of Sub-Lieutenant Carr’s on the morning of June 29. H.M.S. Emerald was two days out of Halifax.

  MacTaggart had requisitioned a light for his inspections. That is, he found a poor, lost, orphan flashlight on a shelf in an empty compartment as he’d passed by. He’d stuffed it into his shirt before anyone realized that it was lost.

  He spent twenty minutes checking out the floor plates around the stacked cargo. It wasn’t that he was worried about the Emerald. Frisky girl that she was, if her knickers got a tear in them, there was always the dockyard at Halifax for repairs. What he had nightmares about, unlikely as it was, was that the angle irons might bend, the floor plates buckle, and several crates of the gold bullion might tumble into the area below the magazine. Down there, wherever that was, the cargo would be plunder for the souvenir hunters aboard the Emerald. It was not a happy thought to the man who’d signed for the shipment: each and every man on the ship having his own personal twenty-seven-pound bar of gold stored away in his seabag.

  Carr joined him about the time he’d finished. MacTaggart stood aside while Carr tested the incline of the floor plates. Done, Carr switched off his light.

  “She’s bearing up,” Carr said.

  “No worse?”

  “A fraction. I suspect it’s acceptable under the circumstances.”

  They walked single file down the narrow passage. Carr led the way.

  “The captain decided not to throw it overboard?”

  Carr turned and laughed. “I’m afraid Captain Flynn didn’t even see the humor of my suggestion. He had a double handful of my fur about it.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Carr.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  They reached the passageway that led to MacTaggart’s compartment.

  “A cup of tea, Mr. MacTaggart?”

  “A pleasure.”

  At the Officers’ Wardroom, Carr filled two mugs with tea from the urn and brought them to the table. He added milk to his. MacTaggart shook his head and took his straight.

  “I suppose it’s about done for you,” Carr said.

  “The consignment?” He had a sip of the tea and burned his tongue. “Hardly.”

  “I thought …”

  “Two things could happen on the voyage. Both bad. The storm could break up the ship and we’d sink, or the Germans might find us and sink us. We’ve passed the storm, and I have it on good authority that we won’t meet U-boats or raiders this far west.”

  Carr nodded. “Their hunting grounds are behind us. The closer we get to land, the more we come under the air-search umbrella. U-boats don’t like air search.”

  MacTaggart blew the steam from his cup. “You ever been to Canada?”

  “Only to Nova Scotia,” Carr said.

  “Not into the interior?”

  “Not even beyond Halifax,” Carr admitted.

  “My responsibility for the shipment doesn’t end when we reach port.”

  Carr sipped his tea.

  “I understand,” MacTaggart said, “that it is a vast, vast country inhabited by bands of marauding redskins.”

  Carr smiled at him. He waited to see what MacTaggart would add to that statement. He added nothing. He sipped his tea, his eyes closed, for all the world looking like a dozing cat.

  Harry heard the door ease open.

  He wasn’t half puma and half alligator for nothing. He sat up and dropped his legs over the side of the bunk bed. He was fully dressed except for his shoes. His feet touched the board floor and he told those boards not to squeak. They didn’t.

  Harry was two paces from the doorway when a hand from the hallway caught the doorknob and jerked the door to a stop, open just wide enough for a man to step through sideways. A triangle of light ran across the floor of the room.

  Harry knew the first man through the doorway. It was the runt, Randy.

  Give your soul to Jesus. Planting his left foot firmly, Harry hit Randy in the stomach. He pulled the punch at the last moment, until it was only about three-quarters strength. There was enough left. The rank breath blew out of Randy. He staggered and grabbed his gut and doubled over and sucked for breath.

  There wasn’t any fight in him. Harry caught him by the shoulders and half walked, half dragged him across the room to his bunk. Harry lifted him, shook him, and tossed him into the bottom bunk. He was limp as a bag of rags. “Not a word out of you,” Harry said. He backed away and found a match and struck it on his pants leg. He lit the kerosene lamp on the card table. He trimmed the wick so that the light was dim. He capped it with the glass chimney.

  He had his look at Randy. Sweaty and about to puke. Harry put his back to him and went to the door. Clark stood there, blinking at him.

  “Come in,” Harry said. “This is where you live.”

  Clark wobbled past him. He smelled of rotgut and something else. “You do remember where you live, don’t you?”

  And then the smell fixed itself in Harry’s mind. Jesus, pale Jesus, the kid has been sheep-dipped in perfume and cunt.

  “You going to hit me, Harry?” Clark didn’t put up his hands to defend himself.

  “Not tonight. Your night’s been busy enough.” He backed away from Clark and sat on the edge of his bunk. He stripped off his socks and dropped them in his shoes. “How was she, Clark?”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Halifax of 1940. Who the hell do you think I mean?”

  The kid started crying. His face twisted up and then he was blubbering. “I didn’t want to.”

  “None of my business,” Harry said. “Go to bed. You get four hours sleep before you go socializing with the morning crew again.”

  “I told Randy … ”

  “Go to bed.”

  Randy had his breath back. “Shut up, Clark.”

  Clark climbed into the top bunk above his brother. He didn’t undress. Harry looked at the two of them. Dogshit that wa
lked. Then he blew out the lamp and finished undressing in the dark.

  He set his body clock. Up in four hours.

  He listened to the breath gasping, the easing on the lower bunk. For a few minutes more he heard the sniffling from Clark. Then it turned into a mumbling that could have been a prayer.

  What a crew.

  Dogshit.

  If he got through the next day or two …

  And then he was asleep.

  Gunny Townsend wasn’t sure exactly when the major and the captain would arrive at the Gilway railway station. He and Vic Franks, relieved from time to time by Richard Betts; drove all night. At dawn they stopped for breakfast. The Mack Bulldogs could get out and run, a lumbering, awkward, ground-eating trot. Vic kept his ears on the engines, listening to them talk, and what he heard pleased him. Lord, they are like coon dogs that have been locked up all summer and now it is fall, and they can smell the leaves burning, and they know they will run off the summer fat as soon as they smell that first coon.

  Stopping only for fuel and a sandwich or a soft drink, they continued the eastward run. They reached Gilway in the early evening, near dark, and drove down the two blocks of main street and parked on a side street.

  Betts and Franks remained with the trucks. Gunny walked around town. It wasn’t more than five minutes in any direction. Gunny found a deserted barn on the edge of town, off to the northwest, and he asked around until he found the owner. The house he got sent to was diagonally across the street from the barn. A dour, ruddy-faced man named MacGregor gave Gunny his keen Scots look and said that he might rent Gunny the barn for the night for ten dollars American. He’d furnish a lamp, but they couldn’t smoke or cook in the barn.

  Gunny agreed. He returned with the trucks ten minutes later, and MacGregor was waiting in front of the locked doors. MacGregor kept them waiting while he unlocked the padlock and spread the high doors. He stood aside and watched the trucks pull inside and park. Then MacGregor held out the padlock key, and Gunny passed the ten-dollar bill to him.