The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  “What’s that?”

  “The axle’s seizing up.”

  “And what does that mean?” MacTaggart asked.

  “We’ll have to cut that boxcar out of the train the first chance we get. That’s at Wingate Station.”

  “No one cuts a boxcar from this train without my say.”

  “Mister, you’d better speak fast,” Telford said. “If we don’t remove that car we could have hell’s own fire. It’s sparking right now. You can smell the smoke from the caboose. Some more heat, and that boxcar could burn.”

  “That’s possible?”

  “It’s happened,” Telford said. “I’ve agreed to slowing the train. When we reach Wingate Station we’ll shunt the car with the hot-box on a siding for repairs.”

  “How long with that take?”

  “It will depend on how long it takes the crew at Wingate Station to form up.” Telford removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Perhaps you know what is in the fourth car forward of this one?”

  “It’s not the paper,” MacTaggart said.

  “You’d better make plans.”

  “Can we hold the train at Wingate Station while the boxcar is repaired?”

  “I don’t think it’s practical,” Telford said. “As it is, we’ve tied up the track all the way west to Montreal. This shipment is certainly important, but so’s the rest of the war.”

  “That’s the decision?”

  “That’s it.”

  MacTaggart went looking for Lieutenant Foster. He found him in the middle coach writing a letter to his new wife by the beam of a flashlight.

  “I need you,” MacTaggart said. He led the young officer into the car where Captain McGuire was sleeping.

  The telegraph began its brittle tapping all of a sudden. The corporal, by then, was on his feet showing how a certain ballplayer had swung and missed a third strike. He swept the air with his clenched fists and an imaginary bat. Randy said, “Do that again,” and he pretended that all his attention was on the corporal’s stance. It wasn’t. He was reading the telegrapher’s hand. A different man. Faster and with an exact spacing and a sure rhythm. It was too professional, and Randy missed about as much as he got.

  He pushed the gym bag under the bench when the ticket clerk–telegrapher acknowledged the message. He stood next to the corporal and said, “You’ve got to get your hips into it,” and he took an exaggerated swing. “Like this.”

  Behind the ticket counter the clerk left the table where the key was and pulled the phone toward him. He gave the operator a number.

  “Like this?” The corporal put his hips into the swing at the imaginary baseball.

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Brian,” the ticket clerk said, “how soon can you get a crew together?”

  “He’s got it, hasn’t he?” Randy said to Clark.

  “The sooner the better.” The clerk tapped a pencil on the counter. “The special’s got a hotbox, and they’ll be shunting off one car here in Wingate.”

  “He’s my clean-up man,” Clark said.

  “On the siding in front of the roundhouse. How long?”

  Randy backed away and sat on the bench next to Clark.

  “The estimate is twenty-one-thirty hours.”

  Randy reached under the bench and pulled the gym bag forward.

  “See you then.” The ticket clerk placed the receiver on the hook and cleared his throat. The corporal looked over his shoulder and discarded the batting stance. “Over here,” the clerk said to the corporal.

  Randy watched the back of the corporal as he leaned across the counter to listen to the ticket clerk.

  “I said it would work. I told them.”

  Clark looked away. Pride and the fall that came after it. In time, all in good time.

  “How big a guard detail?” Captain McGuire leaned forward and stifled a yawn.

  “What can you spare?” MacTaggart asked.

  “Fifty men if we have to.”

  Lieutenant Foster stared past McGuire. “What happens with this detail after the boxcar’s repaired?”

  “There’ll be a relief engine sent from Halifax. Perhaps from a town closer if there’s one available. The relief engine will pick up the boxcar when it’s ready to roll again. The detail will remain with the car until it catches up or it reaches its destination.” MacTaggart closed his eyes and tried to remember the schedule. “That would be at Montreal. Of course, the stop at Montreal won’t be that lengthy. Only long enough to shunt off three boxcars.”

  “So there’s a chance that the relief engine won’t catch up with the main train?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Eight men and a sergeant,” Lieutenant Foster said.

  “Twenty,” McGuire countered.

  “No.” Foster dipped his head toward MacTaggart. “Can you promise another car or two won’t go bad between here and Montreal?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Twenty men on the detail would stretch us thin. Say these disasters come in threes. Twenty men with this car, twenty with the next detail some miles down the track. Where would we find the men for the third detail?”

  “I’m not sure I agree with the premise of the threes.” Captain McGuire grabbed the headrest of the seat in front of him and pulled himself to his feet. He kept most of his weight on his good leg until the stiffness left the crippled one. “But I do agree that we should be cautious with our manpower. That’s a point well taken.” McGuire’s left hand rubbed at the hip joint. “Mac, what’s the value of the cargo in the one boxcar?”

  MacTaggart looked over his shoulder. “Somewhere between three and four million pounds Sterling.”

  McGuire let out a low whistle. “Then it can’t be a sergeant. It has to be an officer.”

  “We have more sergeants than officers,” Foster said.

  “The detail will consist of an officer, a sergeant, and eight men.”

  Foster smiled. “What I meant is that we only have two officers.”

  McGuire returned the smile. “We have Mister MacTaggart with us. He was an officer in the last war.”

  “Hardly.” MacTaggart let a rumble of laughter go. “My highest rating was that of lance-corporal.”

  “In that war lance-corporal outranked most wet-eared lieutenants.”

  Young Foster blushed at the teasing. “I’ll pick my men.”

  “The next detail’s mine,” the captain said.

  “The third one’s mine.” MacTaggart patted McGuire on the shoulder as he passed him. He headed up the aisle toward the Railway Express coach. Maybe it had not occurred to Telford that, when the crippled boxcar was repaired, they would need a coach to transport Foster and his squad to Montreal and perhaps beyond that city to Ottawa.

  Gunny opened his eyes. A heavy cloud of cigarette smoke floated above him.

  Harry Churchman pushed away from the tailgate of the Bulldog where he’d been sitting and squatted next to him. “You look done in.”

  “I’m out of shape,” Gunny said. “I’m too old to be running around dark streets.” He took a deep breath and didn’t hear a rasp. The rest had helped him. “How’s the time?”

  “Nine o’clock on the button.”

  “No sign of the train?”

  “No need to worry,” Harry said. “We’ll hear it.”

  “It set?”

  “Everybody’s here but the Frenchie.”

  Gunny got to his feet. His legs felt weak, but he covered the trembling by leaning against the wall until he was stronger. “What’s the drill, Harry?”

  “With this group, who can tell?”

  Harry turned and nodded in the direction of the captain and the major. They sat cross-legged in the center of the building. They were drawing lines and circles in the dirt floor.

  “Last-minute changes?” Gunny asked.

  “More like last-minute decisions.” Harry tapped Gunny on the arm. “Let’s see what stew they’re cooking up now.”

  Captain Whitma
n looked up from the dirt drawings. “You don’t have a mortar with you, do you?”

  “Not with me,” Harry said. “It’s back at the hotel.”

  “Too bad. I’d like to put a few rounds on the track at both ends of the boxcar before we make our push.”

  “Grenades,” Harry said.

  “How do we get close enough?” Johnny pointed at the drawing in front of him. The lines and circles represented the siding, the roundhouse, and the road that ran past it toward the south.

  Harry put his toe on the road line and pushed it south. “A pass in the trucks.”

  “How?”

  “Easy. We roll them off the tailgate as we go by.”

  A moment of hesitation before Johnny said, “It might work.”

  It was 9:05. The Frenchie still hadn’t arrived.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Henri Leveque slapped the dashboard of the stolen Ford with an open palm. “Stop here,” he said. He could see the faint, leaked light from the seed-and-feed building. It was straight ahead, half a block away on the right.

  It was 9:10.

  The Ford had wooden sides and a plank bottom. It was used to transport crates of chickens, and the cab smelled of their droppings. Back in the load space, feathers were caught, almost imbedded in the planking. There was crude lettering on both cab doors: WILLIS POULTRY COMPANY.

  Lafitte had fingered the truck for them. It had been parked for the last week on a side street. The owner, Phil Willis, was in Montreal having a goiter removed from his throat. He had left the key with Lafitte before he took the train. He was not expected back from Montreal for at least another week.

  Pete Bouchard cut the engine. He switched off the headlights.

  Henri Leveque had no illusions about the intelligence of the Bouchard cousins. A leader could not always choose the tools he used. “Once more,” he said, and he could feel the restless shifting. “The important matter is that you don’t lose us. Stay close enough that you can follow but not within the distance that they will know you are there.”

  “We understand that,” Pete Bouchard said.

  Henri hoped they did. He got out of the cab of the Ford and closed the door carefully so there would be no audible slam. He leaned on the window of the cab. “It will not be long. You will know that it is time to prepare when you hear the train arrive.”

  “You can depend on us,” Charlie Bouchard said.

  “I do.”

  Henri Leveque walked away. The Bouchard cousins watched him until he stepped from the sidewalk and turned right and went out of sight.

  Neither man knew exactly what Leveque expected of them. It was easier to pretend that they did.

  “Well,” Harry said as he stepped away from the door, “I guess we can start the dance now. Everybody we invited is here.”

  Leveque watched Harry walk away. Then he turned and latched the door that led to the street. “I assume that I did not miss much. I decided upon a nap and overslept.”

  “You didn’t miss much,” Harry said. “We decided on how we’d divide the Crown jewels. You weren’t here so we figured you didn’t want a share.”

  “Americans have such a fine sense of humor.”

  “Is that right?” Harry whirled around and grinned at him.

  “It is in all their films,” Leveque said.

  “We don’t make those films in Texas.”

  Pierre Picard, from his position in the brush below the track bed to the east of town, saw the train first. The probe of the headlight on the engine could be seen several miles away. It was a pinpoint at first, even before he could hear it, and then the train was closer, and the noise was deafening, and the light flooded the tracks and the track bed on both sides as far as the recently cut brush.

  When the train was closer, seconds before it passed him, he saw the cascade of sparks. Those and the plumes of smoke came from under a boxcar about two-thirds of the way back toward the end of the train.

  When that boxcar passed Pierre, he could smell the burning, the hot iron and steel and the scent of wood overheating and about to burst into flame.

  The caboose clacked by. Pierre climbed to the track bed. The smells were stronger, more acrid there, and he saw wisps of smoke from the undergrowth where the sparks had landed. He stood in the middle of the tracks and waited until he was certain there would be no fire. Then he took the twin bundles from under his arm. He placed them as the American, Vic, had shown him, one bundle in each trench beneath the rails. He duck walked between the tracks as he spread the pig-tailed fuses.

  He was ready. He sat on the rail and waited. It was a warm night, and he took off his battered felt hat and fanned himself.

  After a couple of minutes the scent of the burning had blown away.

  Randy heard the train first. A few seconds later Clark caught the low sound. His head jerked around, and he saw Randy’s dip of his head and slow wink.

  It was thirty seconds later before the corporal heard the train approaching the station. He rushed from the bench to the door that led to the platform. “You can wire that it’s arrived,” the corporal said over his shoulder to the ticket clerk.

  The telegraph key started up as the corporal rushed outside.

  Randy shifted down the bench until he was closer to Clark.

  “We didn’t plan on him,” Clark said.

  “He seems friendly enough.”

  “He’s armed.”

  “So are we,” Randy said. He touched the gym bag with the side of a shoe.

  It was a short message. Information had been passed down the line that the special train had reached Wingate Station.

  Johnny pushed open the double doors and said, “Let’s go shake the peach tree.” Vic was behind the wheel of the Mack Bulldog on the left. Johnny passed two of the Thompsons through the driver’s side. Before he entered the passenger side he circled the tailgate and received four grenades from Gunny.

  Vic kicked over the engine and started backing into the street. Gunny yelled, “Hey, there, Vic.” Vic braked and waited for Gunny to place his shotgun in the back and step in with both hands clutching grenades.

  Richard Betts placed two prepared charges of dynamite on the seat of the other Bulldog and stepped in and rammed the sliding door closed. Tom dropped four grenades on the seat next to the explosives and braced a Thompson against his knee before he closed the passenger door.

  “All right,” Gunny shouted.

  The first Bulldog backed through the building doorway. When it reached the street Vic turned it and pulled forward far enough to clear the driveway. He edged to the curb and braked.

  Henri Leveque stood to one side. He’d watched the first truck leave the building. Now he stared at the second one. Harry passed him and dumped four grenades in his hands. Harry pointed at the second Bulldog. “You can ride with me.” He followed Henri and caught his elbow and boosted him over the tailgate. Harry stepped around the side of the truck.

  “Move it,” he said to Richard Betts.

  Betts backed out. Harry watched him clear the doorway. He stood in the center of the barnlike room and looked around for his final check. It was clear except for the suitcases. The men had checked out of the hotel after supper and moved their gear to the meeting place.

  Satisfied, Harry lowered the wick on the lamp and blew across the globe to extinguish the light. He replaced the lamp on the nail on the beam, and, leaving the building, he closed the doors and attached the padlock. He climbed into the second truck beside Henri.

  Vic put the lead Bulldog into gear and pulled away from the curb. The headlights swept across a battered Ford truck with wooden sides and a wide bed that was parked across the street.

  Vic slowed when the truck was beyond the back lot. He wanted to be sure Richard was behind him. He caught the streak of the headlights in the road as he began the right turn that took them toward the main street where the Wingate Inn Hotel was. A left on the main street and he drove past the hotel. At the corner beyond the hotel he too
k a right. The train station was dead ahead, a block away on the right.

  “Pull over here,” Johnny said.

  Vic pumped the brakes and edged to the curb. He cut the engine and switched off the lights. Straight ahead, a few feet this side of the railroad tracks, there was a flashing light and a barrier that had lowered into place.

  The barrier was a good touch, Johnny thought. He didn’t want to cross the tracks yet anyway.

  “We’re going to look silly,” Vic said, “if they don’t drop that freight car off for us.”

  Even as Vic spoke, the train began to back up, passing the crossing. The caboose went by, then three lighted coaches and the first of the boxcars rolled by. The fourth boxcar that passed the crossing threw out a shower of sparks.

  “Tell me,” Johnny said, “if those sparklers don’t look golden to you?”

  There was a shaking sound, a noise like thunder, as the train was braked. There was a short wait, and then the train moved forward again. The caboose, the three coaches, and the first three freight cars had been uncoupled. The last boxcar now was the damaged one. Smoke and sparks poured from under it, even though it was hardly moving at more than five miles an hour.

  “We’re lucky or good.” Vic hunched forward and planted his elbows on the bottom curve of the steering wheel. “They’re switching our bank to the siding.”

  “You know something about trains?”

  “Only what I learned stealing in the Detroit yards.”

  The yard crew from Wingate Station hadn’t arrived yet. Crewmen from the train accomplished the uncoupling and the switching.

  While the engine nudged the crippled boxcar onto the siding, MacTaggart and McGuire swung down from the last coach. They were on the south side of the tracks. They stood aside as Lieutenant Foster, a young sergeant, and eight men dropped from the same doorway and formed up.

  “Good luck, lad,” MacTaggart said as the detail marched by.

  Captain McGuire called out, “Stay alert, men, and I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  The detail marched toward the road. When they reached the point where the tracks and the road met, they took an oblique turn and angled for the center of the separated boxcar.