Clive Cussler - Isaac Bell 02 - The Wrecker by Clive Cussler

Author:Clive Cussler [Cussler, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-03-13T06:00:00+00:00

26

THE FOLLIES ORCHESTRA STOPPED PLAYING ABRUPTLY. AN eerie silence gripped the theater. Then debris clattered on the tin roof like a thousand snare drums. Glass flew out of the skylight, and everyone in the theater—audience, stagehands, and chorus girls—began screaming.

Isaac Bell and Archie Abbott moved as one, up the aisle, through the canvas rain curtains and across the roof to the outside staircase. They saw a red glow in the southwest sky in the direction of Jersey City.

“The powder pier,” said Bell with a sinking heart. “We better get over there.”

“Look,” said Archie as they started down the stairs. “Broken windows everywhere.”

Every building on the block had lost a window. Forty-fourth Street was littered with broken glass. They turned their backs on the crowds surging in panic on Broadway and ran west on Forty-fourth toward the river. They crossed Eighth Avenue, then Ninth, and ran through the slums of Hell’s Kitchen, dodging the residents spilling out of saloons and tenements. Everyone was shouting “What happened?”

The Van Dorn detectives raced across Tenth Avenue, over the New York Central Railroad tracks, across Eleventh, dodging fire engines and panicked horses. The closer they got to the water, the more broken windows they saw. A cop tried to stop them from running onto the piers. They showed their badges and brushed past him.

“Fireboat!” Bell shouted.

Bristling with fire monitors and belching smoke, a New York City fireboat was pulling away from Pier 84. Bell ran after it, jumped. Abbott landed beside him.

“Van Dorn,” they told the startled deckhand. “We have to get to Jersey City.”

“Wrong boat. We’re dispatched downtown to spray the piers.”

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