Page 47 of Buck Baxter and the Mysteries of Love

Everyone turned to see Bockenheimer’s lenses moving in and out and his robotic hand buzzing madly.

“Leave her alone! She’s mine!” With a whir, a cocktail swizzle stick spun on the end of his mechanical hand. “If you want to killthe others, then do as you please. But I’d like to escort the newfound object of my affection to the engine room. I would like her to see the wonders of my creations… before we raze Wilde City to the ground.”

Stella looked confused. “Am I seriously the newfound object of your affection?”

Bockenheimer’s telescopic lenses seemed to extend further than ever before. “Yes.” He happened to catch the string of drool with his swizzle stick. “Oh yes.”

Stella straightened her back. “Then I demand my friends get to see the engine room too! That includes the classy broad with the diamond necklace.”

She was, of course, referring to Mrs. Hart who was still crying by the side of her dead husband.

Harry was still in my arms. I looked into his eyes and asked, “Are you alright?”

He tried to turn his head to look at his dead father, but I caught his chin and turned his gaze back to me. “Hey, we’ll get through this. I’ll get us through this, I promise.”

He wiped his tears aside. “I know you will.”

Giving a hard shove, the one-eyed Hammer pushed us toward the engine car while Garbutt yanked Mrs. Hart to her feet. With Stella and Bockenheimer in the lead, we moved through the connecting passage between the Presidential Suite and the engine room.

Instantly the cacophony of sounds in the compartment struck us, along with the fact that nobody was steering this submarine. On a large console at the front of the carriage, numbered wheels spun, gears whirred, and levers turned of their own accord. It was like looking at the interior of a giant intricate clock, each moving piece beeping, clattering, buzzing, or flashing.

While the sight of such a diabolical machine of doom heightened my sense of dread, Stella simply shrieked, “There’s nobody drivingthis damn train!”

“Therein lies the genius of Herr Hart’s submarine locomotive,” Garbutt said. “Everything in here is automated. Everything almost has a mind of its own. He liked to call it ‘artificial intelligence’—machines doing the work of humans. One day, we’ll all be able to sit back and let machines do all the thinking for us.”

“If machines are doing the thinking,” I said. “Who’s in command?”

Garbutt laughed. “Why,weare, of course.”

“But if you let a machine do all the thinking, isn’t it just a matter of time before it outsmarts you?”

With a whizz of the drill on his robotic hand, Bockenheimer giggled maniacally. “Herr Baxter, perhaps it isyouwho is doing too much thinking. Fortunately, I can put a stop to all those ridiculous thoughts spinning around in your brain. If you just tilt your head a little to the left…”

Bockenheimer giggled maniacally as he came at me with his twirling drill.

“Herr Bockenheimer,” snapped Garbutt. “Restrain yourself, at least for the next few moments. We have a mission to complete.”

Bockenheimer gave an annoyed sigh, then slowly backed away, lowering his mechanical hand. “Very well, Herr Garbutt.” He turned to the moving, mechanical console, and with a push of a green button, two long hatches on each side of the compartment opened, revealing two large tubes. And inside each tube—

“Torpedoes,” I uttered. “Those weren’t just missiles we saw in the crates. They’re torpedoes.”

“Correct, Herr Baxter,” said Garbutt. “Together, their payload is capable of blowing our target to oblivion. Care to take a look?”

Garbutt stepped up to a periscope near the front of the compartment. He snapped the handles down into place, turned it and invited me to peer through its lenses.

The view was blurry, awash with waves, until soon I recognized Wilde City’s gasworks sitting on the shoreline. Beyond it,the cityscape touched the morning sky. “My God, you’re going to blow up the gasworks?”

“Not simply the gasworks, Herr Baxter. When the facility erupts, it will ignite every pipeline leading into the city. Every underground tunnel, every power generator, every apartment in every building will erupt like a volcano. Wilde City will, for all intents and purposes, become hell on earth. When the world hears about what has happened here, panic will spread across the globe like… what’s the expression? Wildfire.”

“You’ll kill hundreds of thousands of people,” Harry breathed in horror.

“That’s the idea.”

“And my father was a part of this twisted, evil plot?”

“Your father was instrumental in its conception. You look surprised. You shouldn’t be. The insatiable lust for power can make a man do the most unthinkable things. It can also cost him his life.” Garbutt snickered at the sight of Harry trembling with rage. “You feel betrayed by the man who raised you. Don’t worry, Master Hart, you will soon be joining him. By the time we reach Berlin, you, your friends, and everyone in Wilde City will be long dead. But enough talk. Our destination is nearing, and it’s time for Herr Bockenheimer to ready his weapons.”

Bockenheimer clapped one hand to his robotic hand with glee. “With pleasure.” As he stepped between the two devices lying inside the torpedo tubes, he muttered to himself, relishing the process that would lead to the city’s obliteration. “First, we set the timers on the weapons to exactly the same time. Taking into account the tide and currents, I’ve calculated that the torpedoes will reach the rock bed along the shoreline within ninety seconds, at which point the diamond drills will activate, allowing the torpedoes to burrow directly beneath the gasworks, which will take another four minutes. Setting the timer on each torpedo to seven minutes and thirty seconds will position the weapons at precisely the right point to rupturethe gasworks and flood every one of its pipelines with a tsunami of fire.” He couldn’t help but cackle as he took one last look through the periscope then pointed to a red button on the wall beside each torpedo tube. “All we have to do is hit those launch buttons for the torpedo hatch to close, the tube to flood, and the propulsion mechanism to launch the torpedoes on their one-way trip to annihilation. It is, if I do say so myself, the perfect plan. Tailored with the utmost precision. Nothing can possibly go wrong.”

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