Engines of Destruction

It was similar. Only it fell within acceptable accident parameters. A driver tried to beat a train at a crossing. It happened with numbing regularity, like squirrels leaping into the paths of cars.

The decapitation of the engineer and subsequent behavior of the runaway Southern Pacific freight train was a different matter. It warranted investigation. Yet the preliminary NTSB report mysteriously cited drug use. It was a conclusion completely unsupported by available facts.

So when Remo had called, Smith sent him to the site, knowing that the Mystic investigation could wait. They were in the salvage stage now. There was nothing for them to do there. NTSB was still en route.

SMITH HAD MADE no progress by the time Remo checked in from Texas.

"Go ahead," Smith said, upon picking up the blue contact phone.

"Smitty, we found something."

"Yes?"

"The engineer was beheaded."

"I know that."

"No, you're thinking of decapitated. This guy was definitely beheaded according to Chiun."

"What is the difference?"

"The difference is a sword."

"I beg your pardon, Remo."

"According to Chiun, the engineer was deliberately beheaded."

"By whom?"

"Well, that's where it gets sticky."

"I am listening."

Remo's voice moved away from the receiver. "Here, Little Father, you tell him. It'll sound better coming from you."

The Master of Sinanju's squeaky voice came on the line. "Emperor, I bring difficult tidings."

"Yes?"

"Your servants have determined that foreign elements have been at work."

Smith said nothing. Chiun would tell it in his own way.

"These crimes have been perpetrated by Japanese agents, possibly only one."

"Why do you say that?"

"In both places Japanese vehicles were employed to block the right-of-way."

"How do you know this, Master Chiun?"

"In the place truly called Mystic, I myself beheld the name of the yellow machine. It was Hideo."

"Yes. That is a brand name."

"Here in this land of roughnecks, a Ninja was employed to work the same end."

"Excuse me-did you say ninja?"

"He means a Nishitsu Ninja," said Remo.

"Japanese-made vehicles are very common these days," said Smith. "I doubt this is anything more than coincidence."

"There is more, Emperor. In both places the unmistakable bite of a katana blade marked the site of this fiend's depredations."

"Did you say katana?"

"You know it?"

"I believe it is a sword used by the ancient Japanese."

Chiun's voice shifted away. "Remo, Smith recognized katana. Why did you not?"

"I'm having a slow week," Remo said sourly.

"Since 1971?"

"Get off my back!"

Smith interrupted the impending argument. "Master Chiun, I can think of no reason why-"

"There is more. Last night I encountered a foe the like of which I have never encountered."

"Yes'"

"A ronin. Do you know this word?"

"No."

"See?" said Remo. "Even Smith never heard of it.

"Hush. A ronin is a masterless samurai," explained Chiun.

"The samurai clans died out long ago," Smith said.

"Would that it were truly so," Chiun said, sad voiced. "I myself beheld one with my own eyes. He escaped. Stealing our dragon."

"It's Dragoon," Remo inserted.

"With which the fiend made his escape. Otherwise, we would have vanquished him utterly, just as you would wish."

"Er, did Remo see this samurai?"

"This ronin-no. He emerged from the sea while Remo was busy elsewhere. I alone saw him. He moved with great stealth. Fierce was his mien. Great was his skill."

"From the sea, did you say?" asked Harold Smith.

"Yes. Why?"

Smith frowned. A hazy memory tickled his brain. What was it he had seen?

"Nothing," he said, unable to shake the cobwebs from his brain. "It is nothing. Go on."

"Now that we have solved this mystery, we crave a boon, O Emperor."

"What is it?"

"My pupil and I are in dire need of a vacation. We are thinking of sojourning in sweeter climes. Just for a month or two. No more. We will return if needed."

"This assignment is not over."

"I told you he wouldn't fall for it," said Remo.

"Hush, unwise one. O Emperor, will you not reconsider?"

"This assignment is not over. And I do not accept your findings."

"What is wrong with them?"

"If a-er-samurai blocked the right-of-way with a Nishitsu Ninja, how did he get into the cab to behead the engineer?"

"Perhaps he flung his blade into the man's face."

"In that case the blade will be in the wreckage of the cab."

"Not if the samurai recovered it."

"How? The engine traveled over fifty miles before crashing."

"A mere detail."

"You might look into the engine. If a katana turns up, I may reconsider my evaluation."

"It will be done, O Smith."

The line went dead.

"I TOLD You he wouldn't fall for it," said Remo after Chiun hung up. The receiver shattered like so much black glass from the force of Chiun's angry gesture.

"That man is impossible."

"You didn't tell him the whole story."

"It is family business and none of his concern."

"Now what?" asked Remo.

"You overheard all. We will examine the engine."

"Even though you know we won't find any katana. The ronin was carrying it last night. A whole night after this mess."

"We have our instructions," Chiun said thinly.

"You just want to hang around where the ghost samurai don't roam."

They rejoined Melvis Cupper, who was working a pay phone in a local saloon. He clutched a sweating can of Coors in one hammy fist. After a minute he hung up.

"Just got my marchin' orders. I'm Mystic bound."

"We want a look at the engine," said Remo.

"Well, it's in the direction I'm headed, so I guess I can take a little detour."

THE ENGINE LAY on its side in the shattered remains of the Texarkana freight yard. It was a long gray monster, its formerly blazing red nose now scorched black by the exploding utility vehicle.

"Man, it about busts my heart to see one lyin' on her side like that," Melvis said unhappily.

"It's only an engine," said Remo.

"Shows what you know. That's an MK5000C. Sweetest thing this side of steam. Another generation or two, and diesel will finally match the tracktive effort of the old Challenger steamers. Never thought I'd live to say it, either."

Remo was looking at the forward windscreens. They had shattered into crazy spiderweb patterns, but the glass had held. Only a small piece was missing.

"No sign of an entry puncture," he said.

"Entry?"

"Never mind."

There was a gangplank platform hovering over the side access door. They climbed the steps and lowered themselves down.

The interior cab walls were crusted reddish black with dried blood. A few flies buzzed about.

Remo and Chiun looked around. The cabin hadn't sustained much damage.

In the rear of the cab was a long rip in the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the power plant.

"What's this?" Remo wondered aloud.

"A hole," said Melvis.

"Made by what?"

Melvis shrugged. "Flyin' something or other."

"You find the something?"

"They ain't got to the engine yet."

Remo said to Chiun, "What do you think, Little Father?"

Chiun looked the rip over carefully. "Katana."

"You sure?" asked Remo.

Chiun nodded. "The blade passed through this hole."

"Okay. How'd it enter the cab?"

"Sorcery."

Remo looked dubious.

"You fellas care to share your opinions with a jugeared good of boy?"

"Let's see that engine," Remo said.

"Probably birds-nested all to hell."

They opened the engine covers, exposing the monster diesel engine. It was still new, a factory-fresh coat of primary yellow paint making it gleam.

"Man, is that a mess," Melvis said.

It was. Wires and metal components lay everywhere. In places the yellow was scorched and blackened. It looked like a bird's nest after it had been picked at by squirrels.

Melvis shook his head. "Never seen one birdsnested so bad."

Remo asked Chiun, "Think it's inside the engine block?"

Chiun shook his head. "It passed through, impaling itself on the tie. You saw it."

Remo shook his head, "Couldn't. If it struck the tie, the trailing cars would have mangled it. And someone would have noticed it among the car parts. Therefore, it's in the engine block if it's anywhere."

Chiun frowned like a death mask drying. "There is an explanation," he said.

"Sure, always is. Look in the engine block."

"First we will look under the engine," said Chiun.

They looked. There was no exit hole in the bottom of the engine. Nor in the back.

"It is a conundrum," said Chiun, absently stroking his wispy beard.

"That's a rabbity kinda word for what we got here," Melvis Cupper allowed.

"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," said Remo.

"Yes," said Chiun, raising his arms so his wide kimono sleeves slid back to his elbows, exposing pipestem arms resembling plucked chicken wings.

Remo turned to Melvis Cupper. "Think you could find a flashlight?"

"I guess I can rustle one up. You wait here now."

Melvis Cupper was gone only five minutes, long enough to forage a flashlight from the freight yards. He was loping back when he heard the wild straining and shriek of metal.

He broke into a run. "Dad-gum it all to hell!"

Remo and Chiun were climbing out of the cab when he got there. Remo was holding a short black sword of some kind.

"What's that?" Melvis demanded.

"Katana. "

"I can see that. I got eyes. Where'd you get it?"

"From the engine block."

"How?"

"Reached into the rip in the back of the cab," said Remo as they fell to examining the blade. Melvis clambered into the cab and examined the rent. It was bigger now. Very big. It looked as though someone had used clevis hooks to open it wide.

He poked his head out again. "What kinda tool you boys use?"

"Handy ones," said Remo, not taking his eyes from the blade.

Melvis rejoined them, looking mad. "You DOT boys ain't got no right to poke your noses into my investigation."

"You'd never have discovered this without us."

"Fine, then. That there frog-sticker is NTSB accident evidence."

Remo moved it out of Melvis's reach. "Sorry. Finders keepers."

"I plan on writin' you uncooperative boys up."

"Feel free," said Remo, turning the sword around in his hands.

Melvis's eyes kept going to the blade. "That's what chopped that poor soul's head clean off, you reckon?"

"Looks that way."

"Lopped it off and buried itself into the bulkhead, is what you're sayin'?"

"That's right."

"If that be the case, why ain't it banged up or broke?"

"Good question," said Remo.

The blade was straight, true and without nicks or scratches.

"And while we're gnawin' at the subject, how'd it get in there in the first place?"

"Through the windscreen."

"No hole in the windscreen. Not one big enough to pass that sucker through. Explain that if you can."

"We cannot," said Chiun.

"Then your theory falls all to hell and gone."

"That's life," said Remo.

"Yes, that is life," echoed Chiun.

Melvis Cupper eyed them skeptically. "For DOT boys you two seem powerful casual about your work."

They started off.

"We'll see you around the old camp fire," said Remo.

"Not if I see you gents first," said Melvis Cupper, slapping on his NTSB Stetson.

Chapter 13

On the flight back east, Remo had one question for the Master of Sinanju. "What do we tell Smith?"

"The truth," said Chiun.

This wasn't exactly the answer Remo expected, so he asked another question. "All of it?"

"Of course not."

"What part are we leaving out?"

"The important part."

"Which is?"

"Family business. It is not for the emperor's ears."

"So we just tell him a loose samurai-"

"Ronin."

"-is responsible for these derailments and let him take the ball from there?"

"He is emperor. His wisdom will guide us."

Remo settled back into his seat. "I can hardly wait to hear his reaction."

HAROLD SMITH LOOKED at the short sword as it was laid on his tinted-glass-topped desk at Folcroft Sanitarium.

Behind him a picture window let in afternoon light. Long Island Sound danced placidly. There wasn't a cloud in the sky or a shadow on the water.

The sword was ebony of handle and black of blade. Smith extracted a pearl gray handkerchief from the breast pocket of his gray suit.

Lifting the sword, he dropped the handkerchief onto the upraised edge. The gray cloth settled, hanging over each side. Reaching under, Smith grasped the dangling ends and gave a firm but gentle tug.

With a faint popping, the linen handkerchief parted like old cheesecloth.

"This is a genuine katana, " Smith pronounced.

Remo grunted in surprise. "You know that from the sharpness of the blade?"

"Of course. I spent time in occupied Japan after the war."

Chiun favored Remo with a silent look Remo read as How does he know of this and you do not?

Remo shrugged in response.

"You say you found it in the locomotive?" asked Smith of Remo.

"It went through the bulkhead in back of the cab and embedded itself in the engine block. I had a hard time pulling it out."

"Impossible."

"Why do you say that?"

"For this blade to have sliced into the engine block is impossible. If possible by some freak of chance, it would have been hopelessly mangled upon impact, if not melted by engine heat."

"Look, I'm just telling you where I found it."

"We found it," corrected the Master of Sinanju.

"Right," said Remo. "There's more."

Laying the blade on the desktop, Smith looked up expectantly.

"You start," Remo told Chiun.

Smith's gray eyes tracked to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun stood with his hands in the sleeves of his kimono, his favored position when at rest. "What I am about to relate may strain your imagination, O Emperor."

"Just tell it plainly," invited Smith.

"On the previous night, in the place correctly called Mystic, I came upon footprints that came from the sea," said Chiun.

"Yes?"

"I followed these and encountered a ronin, a masterless samurai, as I have told you."

"How do you know this was a ronin, not a samurai?"

Chiun's wispy eyebrows shot up in surprise.

"Er, I looked the word up after we spoke last," Smith admitted.

Chiun eyed Remo as if to ask, Why do you not ask such intelligent questions?

Remo pretended to be checking the shine of his shoes.

"I know him to be a ronin because his armor bore no mark of his allegiance upon his shoulder."

"No clan crest, in other words?"

"Yes. No Bode -jirushi. Thus, a ronin, not a samurai."

"Continue, Master Chiun."

"As I stalked this wave-tossed one, so-called because that is the meaning of ronin, not because he emerged from the sea, I spied the bite of a katana blade in the bole of an alien tree."

Smith's eyes eyes flicked to the katana on his desk.

"Coming upon the ronin in question, he challenged me and I him. We battled. His blade cleaved the air in mighty thrusts, but to no avail, for I am the Master of Sinanju."

"Of course," said Smith.

"Alas, he got away."

Frowning, Smith steepled his bony fingers. "How?"

Chiun made a dismissive gesture. "He was exceedingly crafty. No craftier foe have I encountered. Ever."

Smith's puzzled expression indicated that he wasn't satisfied with the answer.

"Tell him about the fingernail," said Remo.

"What fingernail?" asked Smith.

Chiun winced. "Another matter entirely," he said flatly.

"Oh, come on, Chiun. You can tell Smith."

"Yes. You can tell me, Master Chiun."

Chiun's features tightened. His fisted right hand dropped so the down-sliding sleeve almost covered it. "I lost a nail to the masterless cur."

Smith's puzzled expression gave way to a startled one. "You?"

"A fluke. I am still the Master of Sinanju. No mere ronin could best me. But his blade clipped my avenging nail, and it was lost."

Smith looked incredulous.

"No doubt that in my concern for your loss, I allowed myself to be distracted."

Smith nodded. Chiun relaxed. Remo rolled his eyes.

Chiun then continued. "I would have pursued the wretch to the very ends of the earth had not Remo come along bearing your all-important briefcase."

Smith's eyes went to a chair where the briefcase now lay, noticeably warped from its recent immersion.

"Knowing that this was more important than any other matter," Chiun continued, "I allowed the ronin to escape with his worthless life. I would not have done this had I suspected the truth I now reveal to you.

Smith's eyes dropped to the katana. Chiun allowed himself a faint smile. He had cleared the first hurdle. Now for the second.

"Had I suspected that this wave man was responsible for the train wreck of the previous night, I would have slain him twice over. For the very footprints I discovered in eerie Mystic were present in the sandy soil of the Big Sandy, also correctly named."

"This cannot be the same katana he wielded in Mystic," Smith declared. "Not if you found it in the engine block in Texarkana."

"Obviously the resourceful ronin availed himself of another. And thus we have a path to this fiend."

"Yes?"

"Contact all sword makers in your land and see who has recently forged a fine blade such as this. For I judge this particular example to be excellent. Possibly the work of a descendant of Odo of Obi."

"Odo of Obi?" said Remo. "Sounds like Star Trek Meets Star Wars. "

"Ignore this benighted one's prattle, O Emperor. I am sure that Odo of Obi is known to you."

Smith adjusted his Dartmouth tie uneasily. "Er, I doubt this blade was manufactured outside of Japan."

Chiun gestured toward Smith's desktop. "Your oracles may tell you otherwise."

"That will take time."

"There is another way, O Smith. This ronin has taken up a new katana. It is required that he bloody it. Usually this is done by beheading a luckless commoner. It is a custom known as the crossroad cutting."

"I hardly think that-"

"Your oracles will tell you of any beheading in the provinces near shunned Mystic."

Smith's hands went to his keyboard. "It is worth looking into, I suppose," he said without conviction.

Almost at once he was lost in thought. His gnarled fingers tapped the illuminated keyboard. He stared into his desktop like a man at a Ouija board.

"My God!" he croaked.

"Ah-hah!" Chiun cried in triumph.

"There was a rash of beheadings in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The first was of a state trooper who pulled over-" Smith swallowed hard "-your APC, Remo."

Remo threw up his hands. "Great. Now I'm wanted for beheading a Connecticut State trooper."

"I can fix that," said Smith, performing some manipulation on the computer.

Remo came around to Smith's side of the desk. "What are you doing?"

"I am changing the APB on the LEAPS system."

"LEAPS?"

"Law Enforcement Agency Processing System." Smith finished inputting commands. "Now the cover name in which the APC was registered no longer traces back to you."

"Who gets the blame instead?"

"A low-level Mafia soldier who has thus far eluded justice."

"Good luck to him," grunted Remo.

Smith returned to the matter at hand. "The trail ends in Reading, Pennsylvania," he announced, reading off the screen.

"Then it is cold," said Chiun. "For three beheadings are more than enough to test his blade. He will waste no more strokes."

Frowning, Smith logged off.

He picked up the captured katana again. He was examining the hilt when his thumb, encountering one of the many ornate studs, suddenly depressed one. The blade went click.

Like a fury Chiun reached in and snatched the blade from Smith's hands. It happened so fast, Smith had only time to blink. His eyes read the sudden absence of the blade, and he blurted out the thing his brain told him had happened.

"It self-destructed!"

Chiun's voice lifted. "No. I hold it in my hands. Remo, quickly, check your emperor's fingers for barbs or punctures."

Remo moved in, turning Smith's hands up and down. "Looks clean," he said.

"Sometimes the crafty Japanese ensure that their own weapon is not turned against them by certain artifices," said Chiun. "Poisoned barbs are very common. But I see none here. This is only a stud, but it does nothing."

"We need to return to the matter at hand," said Smith, taking his hands from Remo's grasp. Remo stepped away.

"Why would a man dressed like a samurai derail two trains in different parts of the country?" Smith wondered aloud.

"A ronin, not a samurai, and who can fathom the mind of a cruel Japanese?" said Chiun, returning the katana to the desktop.

"We don't know this man is Japanese."

"He is a ronin. Of course he is Japanese."

"Did you see his face?"

"No, it was . . . masked."

"He could be anyone."

"Smith's right, Chiun. How many times have the police nabbed some dip dressed like a ninja breaking into a house? They aren't really ninja."

"Even ninja are not really ninja," spit Chiun. He paced the floor. "Smith, accept the word of your loyal assassin. The man is a ronin. Seek no one else."

"If he is Japanese, there is a way we might prove this."

"How?"

"To reach Texarkana from Connecticut in less than a day requires air travel. I will search the computerized airline-reservation files for Japanese travelers."

Chiun beamed. "Excellent thinking." His gaze grew sharp as it fell upon his pupil. Remo pretended to be interested in the katana.

Harold Smith went to work. He logged on and off several times, but when he was done, his face was glum.

"No Japanese nationals left any of the major Texas airports for Connecticut on the day in question."

"Any land in Connecticut?" asked Remo.

"A few. But from other locations. None trace back to Texas."

"We're back to square one," said Remo. "What do we do now?"

Smith was thinking. They could tell because his pinched nostrils were distending methodically. Otherwise, he looked as if he had fallen into a trance.

"The central question at the moment is not whom, but for how long?"

Remo and Chiun looked at him. Smith took up his rimless glasses and began polishing them.

"By that, I mean is this samurai-"

"Ronin," Chiun corrected testily.

"-responsible for the most-recent derailments, or could the last three years of incidents be laid at his doorstep?"

"No doubt he is newly arrived on these shores. Otherwise, we would have heard of his depredations before this," suggested Chiun.

Smith shook his gray head. "No, we can assume nothing."

Chiun turned on his pupil. "Remo, you witnessed a train derail only a year ago. Tell Emperor Smith that you saw nothing out of the ordinary."

Smith's gaze went to Remo.

Remo blinked. "That's right. Remember last summer, Smitty? Chiun had me running all over creation performing the Rite of Attainment?"

Smith nodded.

"I was in Oklahoma City when a cattle train derailed. I pitched in to help."

"Was there anything usual about the derailment?"

"As derailments go, it was a bloody mess. Dead cows everywhere. Other than that-" Remo's face suddenly went strange.

"What is it?"

"Yes. Remo, speak," urged Chiun.

"When I was walking the tracks, I saw something weird. The engineer's head was up a tree."

"Up a tree?"

"Yeah. I figured he'd been decapitated in the wreck, and his head just bounced upward."

Chiun made a low moan and glared at his pupil. Remo avoided his cold regard.

"Last summer, you said?" Smith murmured.

"Yeah. July."

Smith pulled up his Amtrak file, got the incident on the screen and read in silence.

"It was a Santa Fe train. The NTSB cited traumatic amputation as a result of drug use on the part of the deceased engineer."

"Drugs?" said Remo.

"Yes, it says drugs."

"That wouldn't be a Melvis Cupper report, would it."

"Yes, how did you know?"

"He was trying to blame the Texas mess on a drugged-out engineer, too."

Smith's bloodless lips thinned noticeably. "Perhaps we might talk with Cupper again."

"Shouldn't be hard. Last we heard he was on his way to Mystic to check out the mess up there."

Chiun spoke up. "O Emperor, is there not a more pressing need your loyal assassins might fulfill?"

"Master Chiun?"

"Is this not a task for the FBI, those stalwarts? We are assassins, not sleuths. I am Chiun, not Fetlock."

"Matlock," growled Remo.

"If this marauder is found, we will be happy to dispatch him, but is it necessary to squander our valuable time chasing this fiend? Is not our place here at your side? You have only just escaped death. Who knows that this is not some Japanese scheme to unseat you? I offer my pupil and myself as bodyguards until this dire crisis has passed."

"It is highly unlikely that I was targeted. I had an unreserved ticket. No one could know I was on that train. And if my life was sought, there was no reason to derail a freight train in Oklahoma City a year ago."

"Logic is a dangerous trap," warned Chiun.

"Is something the matter?" asked Smith of Remo.

"Chiun just doesn't want to lose another fingernail to the phantom samurai," Remo suggested.

Chiun puffed up his cheeks like a Korean version of Old Man Winter, ready to vent a blast of angry air in Remo's direction.

"I am certain you will be able to deal with him when the time comes-if it comes," said Smith.

Subsiding, Chiun bowed as if in agreement. His bobbing posture covered the angry glance he threw in Remo's direction.

Remo mouthed the words Nice try.

"Talk to Cupper," said Smith. "I will look into the Oklahoma City parallels, if there are any."

"As you wish, O diligent one," said Chiun, bowing out of the room.

"Later," said Remo, following.

Outside the building Chiun exploded. "Are you mad, dragging an old head into this!"

"Look, it may prove this samurai-"

"Ronin."

"-has been active for a while."

"So?"

"That means he's not your wave-tossed ghost ronin just washed up on shore."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because if he were after the House, he'd have found you long before now."

"You were in Oklahoma City when that train of beasts fell over on its side?"

"Yeah . . ."

"Where in Oklahoma City?"

"Sleeping in a hotel room behind the tracks, hiding from you."

"Ah-hah!"

"Ah-hah what?"

"The toppling of the train was to lure you into an ambush."

"So why wasn't I ambushed?"

Chiun's face froze. His mouth paused in open mode. "Why must you and Smith insist upon heaping white logic on everything?" he sputtered.

"Beats ignoring reality."

"You would not know reality if its brazen talons roosted upon your thick head and looked down into your face with its blazing ruby eyes," said Chiun, getting into the rental car.

"You know," admitted Remo when he got behind the wheel, "it is kind of a big coincidence that that train should derail when I was in Oklahoma City and another one when Smith was riding it."

"We will resolve to ride no train for the rest of our days-bitter and galling as the prospect may be."

"Suits me just fine," said Remo, sending the car through the Folcroft gates. After the Dragoon, it felt like driving a Tonka truck.

Chapter 14

Melvis Cupper was watching the track hands rerail the baggage car at Mystic, Connecticut.

He liked nothing better than watching the rerailers work. They were a special breed. And since part of his investigation involved observing the proceedings but prevented him from actually participating and therefore breaking a sweat, he took his ease at trackside while the Hulcher crew set the clevis hooks at the four corners of the car.

Two side-mounted Caterpillar tractors were hunkered down on either side of the right of way. A supervisor was on his stomach looking up at the work. He wore a white safety hard hat. All eyes were on him. Or rather, on his hands.

It was a hell of a thing to watch.

With only hand gestures, he signaled the boom hands to lift the north end of the car. The twin Cats screeched as they strained to lift the car off the soft, gouged earth. The wheel assemblies dangled uselessly.

In less than a minute they walked the car over the rail bed and dropped her down, true as an arrow, onto the blocks.

The supervisor got off the ground and wiped his hands, signaling the crew to move to the next car in line.

"Just like pickup sticks," Melvis said happily.

An hour later the last car had been rerailed, the track crew brought up a bucket and began to attack the bent rail.

The dreaded cry, "Watch the rail!" rolled out, and Melvis dropped off his perch and betook himself to a point well back of the festivities.

The bucket dropped down and started bringing up rail section. Most of it came up easy, but there was no way of telling when a stressed or bent length of steel would snap or break with catastrophic results.

Melvis was watching this operation when he felt a hard tap on his shoulder. The tap came just as the bucket dug in again.

"Lordy, I've been hit. God da-yam!" he howled, clutching himself.

"Relax. It's just us," said a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

Still holding his numb shoulder, Melvis turned. His eyes squinted up. "You fellas again. Next time don't come sneakin' up on a man like that. Was sure a block of rail bit me. What'd you use to get my attention anyway? Crowbar?"

Remo Renwick wriggled his index finger. The old Korean named Chiun stood beside him, face unreadable.

"You must bench-press lead sinkers with that thing, then. Hey, you forget to fetch me that old tanaka sword?"

"Sorry. It's still being looked at."

"Had to leave it out of my report, you know."

"You leave a lot of things out of your reports, don't you, Melvis?" Remo said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oklahoma City. Remember it?"

"Yeah. A damn mess. All those dead folks and twisted-up cars. Sure hope they hang the horse-thievin' dastard what blew up that building."

"I mean the derailment last summer. Cattle train."

"Oh, that one. A Santa Fe. Warbonnet, too. Damn shame. They're threatenin' to get rid of the warbonnet color scheme now that the Santa Fe has merged with Burlington Northern."

"You blamed the engineer."

"Man was on drugs. Why won't these freight hoggers ever learn?"

"They found his head in a tree."

"Hey! How'd you know that? It wasn't in the official report."

Chiun spoke up. "We know many things that we should not. It will go better for you if you tell us all you know."

Melvis hesitated. "What do y'all want to know?"

"What really derailed that train?" asked Remo.

"Impossible to tell for sure. That's why I put down dope. When in doubt, the engineer was high as a kite or strung out. Covers a multitude of sins. Also NTSB expects a nice neat and tidy answer for the final report. Trouble is when a train hits the bumpers it leaves such a dang mess you can't hardly tell a push-pull consist from a cow-and-calf set after the dust is all done settlin'. "

The two looked blank.

"Tell us about the engineer," Remo asked just as a section of rail snapped behind them.

They looked back. The track gang was okay. Nobody hurt.

"Man's head was sheared off as sweet as honeysuckle," Melvis replied. "By that, I mean it might have been chopped by a guillotine. 'Cept for the conspicuous lack of a blade."

"Flying glass?"

Melvis nodded. "Plenty of it. But I don't think that's what got him."

"Then what did?"

"I couldn't tell back then. But now that you bring it up, a sword like what you boys pulled outta that big block coulda done it."

The two exchanged hard looks.

"How'd the head get up the tree?"

"That's the part that had me plumb bumfoozled back then. The head couldn't have been ejected by the derailment. But as you boys surely know, toss a basketball out a window and it'll describe a downward arc. This head was stuck way high up that tree. Can't see how traumatic ejection would account for it. Someone had to have hung it up there."

The two looked at each other again.

"But I put down dope because, like I said, it covers a passel of sins. Not to mention inexplicables."

Chiun eyed him coldly. "There is more. I can see it in your beady eyes."

"You're right sharp, you are. I left out one little item."

"What's that?"

"The poor engineer was decapitated-"

"Beheaded," said Chiun.

"-a few miles back of where his head was actually found. In other words, I think someone was in the cab with him, lopped his pumpkin right off, causin' that terrible wreck. She was goin' mighty fast on the turn where she wiped out."

"Someone got in the cabin, cut off his head but managed to jump clear after the derailment?" asked Remo. "That's what you think really happened?"

"And tossed the head into the tree for reasons known only to the Almighty and the lunatic what done it. Now maybe you can see why I wasn't about to write that whopper up. It ain't natural, not to mention sensible. The NTSB abhors such things."

"What's your read on this mess?" Remo asked, indicating the rerailed train, whose cars stood dented and muddy on a good section of rail.

"This? Now, this one is textbook. Piece of heavy equipment on the rail. Engineer couldn't have seen it in time to stop. Smashup with cars in the water. Happens all the time."

"That so?"

"You can't say different."

"Come with me," said Chiun, beckoning.

Reluctantly Melvis followed them past the track gang.

"I sure hope you boys aren't about to upset my little red wagon. I've been pullin' her a long old time and I hope to pull her a lot longer before I go for my gold watch and that last lonesome terminal."

The pair said nothing. They walked off the rail bed on the landward side of the line. In a section of forest they showed him a patch of dirt where footprints had disturbed the earth.

"These look familiar to you?" asked Remo.

"Sure. Looks like your friend here was walkin' about."

"What about these?" Remo said, pointing to another scatter of imprints.

Melvis rubbed his blunt jaw thoughtfully. "Hmm."

"Big Sandy, remember?"

"That's your friend's footprints. You can't fool me."

"They are the same size, true, but not the same," said Chiun. And placing one sandaled foot beside a print, he pressed down. When his foot came away, it was obvious they were not the same. Just similar.

"You sayin' the fella what jumped the track at Big Sandy was here, too?"

"Definitely," said Remo.

Melvis Cupper contorted his face in thought. He chewed his lower lip. He squinted one eye shut, then the other. "If that don't beat all," he muttered.

"He was at Oklahoma City too."

"That's conjecture. Pure, unabashed conjecture. I don't hold with conjecture. No, sir. Don't hold with it a-tall. "

"Tough," said Remo. "You're stuck with it."

"Yes," says Chiun. "Put that in your report and smoke it."

They walked away.

Melvis hurried after them. "Now, wait a goldang minute."

They kept walking.

Puffing, Melvis drew abreast. He walked in front of them, stepping backward and trying not to trip over ground roots.

"You fellas came along the other way, am I right?"

"Right," said Remo.

"So how y'all know those tracks were there?"

"That is for us to know and you to find out," said Chiun.

Melvis eyed them pointedly. "You were here before."

"Possibly," said Chiun.

"You were here before NTSB! How is that possible? There wasn't time for you to get on-site before me."

"You ask too many questions," said Remo.

"Yes. Of the wrong person. Better you learn to ask the correct questions at the proper times," Chiun warned.

Melvis was trying to think of a good comeback for that when his beeper went off. "Oh, hell. I hope this ain't another one."

It was. Melvis ran to his rental car and dialed a number on his cell phone.

"Da-yam."

"What is it?" asked Remo.

"You boys might want to check in with your supervisors, too. There's big doin's out Nebraska way."

"Derailment?"

"Worse. Looks like they got what they used to call in the old-timey days a cornfield meet."

Remo said, "A what?"

Chiun gasped. "No!"

Remo did a double take. "You know what that is?" he asked Chiun.

"Of course he does," spit Melvis. "Any man who rode steam locomotives before they turned antique knows what a cornfield meet is."

"Well, I don't."

"I rest my case," Melvis Cupper said. Turning his attention back to the cell phone, he barked, "I'm on my way. This one was only a crossing derailment anyway. Happens every dang day."

When he hung up, Remo and Chiun were looking at him like a pair of unhappy Sunday-school teachers.

"Nobody has yet proved different," Melvis retorted defensively.

Chapter 15

Over Nebraska, Remo began to suspect why a cornfield meet might be called that. Rows of waving corn marched in all directions like a green-clad army on parade drill.

The waiting NTSB helicopter had taken off from Lincoln, Nebraska, and picking up a double ribbon of tracks running due west through flatland country, followed them. After a while a parallel set of tracks appeared.

Over the rotor whine, Melvis Cupper was peppering the Master of Sinanju with questions. "Tell me more about that steam loco you used to ride when you were a young 'un. Narrow gauge or standard?"

"Narrow," said Chiun.

"No foolin'. Elephant ears?"

"Elephant ears are African."

"Bumpers instead of a cowcatcher, am I correct?"

Chiun made a yellow prune face. "Cowcatchers are a white innovation. Even the Japanese do not use them."

"You ride coach or first-class in them days?"

"My family was given its own coach by the oppressors in Pyongyang."

Melvis slapped his knee with his hat. "No foolin'! You had your own private coach? Goldang!"

"It still resides in Pyongyang, awaiting the call to serve," Chiun said blandly.

Melvis turned to Remo. "You hear that? He has his own railroad coach. Man, that is the way to fly."

"Yes." Chiun allowed a trace of pride in his eyes. "There is something sublime about steam travel."

Remo interrupted. "How come I never heard about this?"

"The next time we are in Pyongyang, I will treat you to a ride. If you do not displease me before then."

"No, thanks. I'm not big on trains."

"What's a matter?" Melvis grunted. "Never own a Lionel set when you were a shaver?"

"No," said Remo.

"You missed out big, then. I feel sorry for a man what never owned a train set growin' up."

"Save it," said Remo, scanning the horizon.

There were over the flat heartland of Nebraska now. Cornfields as far as the eye could see. Below, the corn was tassling, showing golden gleams here and there.

"Avert your eyes, Remo," Chiun warned.

"I'm looking for whatever it is we're looking for," Remo complained. "I am not thinking of corn."

Chiun confided in Melvis. "Recently he has become a corn addict."

"White lightning?"

"Worse. Yellow kernels."

"Never heard of that brand of moonshine."

"He has Indian blood, and you know how they are about corn," whispered Chiun.

"Say no more. We had piles of Injuns down in the Big Empty-before we chased their savage asses off."

"I see something ahead," said Remo. Melvis leaned past the pilot.

"What? Where? I don't see nothin'" Melvis gave the pilot's right earphone a snap. "Do you?" The pilot shook his annoyed head.

"Train wreck," said Remo. "It over on its side?"

"No."

"Well, you're lookin' at the rear end. It's the head end I'm frettin'," Melvis said, leaning back and licking his lips. "Brace yourselves. A cornfield meet is one hellacious sight if you've never taken one in."

"I see the cornfield," said Remo, "but not the meet part. Is that meet with two e's or meat like in beef?"

Melvis shuddered visibly. "If it's as bad as I fear, it could be a bloody blend of both."

It was, Remo saw as the helicopter buzzed the train.

There was an Amtrak passenger train down below. Twelve cars long. The last car sat perfectly on the rails as if waiting at a crossing. The rest were all over the place. Two trailing Amtrak coaches, still coupled, formed a big silver V across the right-of-way. Another lay on its side. One was split open like a foilwrapped package that had exploded.

The train resembled a long silver snake with a broken and dislocated spine.

The head end was where it was really messy. And as they overflew it, Remo understood exactly what a cornfield meet was.

Both engines were still on the rails. The silvery Amtrak engine was mashed into the nose of another engine, a black one. It looked old and spidery some how, even though it had telescoped in a third of its length. The Amtrak engine had come through the impact no better. It had taken hits in both directions. The following car had slammed into its rear. Consequently the Amtrak engine body had folded up like an accordion.

"Oh, man," Melvis moaned. "Headlight to headlight. They're the worst kind of head-ons."

As they dropped down, they could see the fatigue pup tents where the injured were being treated. Stretchers lay in rows, empty but spattered with red. A few were completely red like flags. Ambulances sat about the cornfield, but it was obvious the worst of the triage was over.

All at once Melvis Cupper began moaning, "Oh, Christ. O sweet Jesus. Tell me it ain't so."

"What do you see?"

"Oh, the horror. I can't look at it no more." And he tore his eyes from the engine. A second later they gravitated back. It was as if he were seeing it for the first time all over again.

"Oh, my momma. I just wanna bust out cryin'. Oh, to die so young like that."

"What're you talking about?" asked Remo, not seeing any bodies.

"The damn engine! Look at it. Oh, will you look at that sweet monocoque body all banged up to hell and gone."

"Which engine?" asked Remo.

"The Amtrak, you idjit. That there's a brandspankin'-new Genesis Series 1. GE built. Unibody monocoque design. Bolsterless trucks. They even got a Holster cab at the rear of the unit so one crewman can move it forward and back. Jesus, there ain't hardly five or six in operation yet and now one's dead."

Remo looked at Melvis.

Melvis looked back. "Hell, I'm about fixin' to cry. Excuse me."

And he grabbed a handkerchief and busied it about his eyes.

Remo looked to the Master of Sinanju. "Who knows how many people are dead, and he's weeping over the engine."

"He is a fool. Only steam is worthy of his tears."

Remo said nothing. His eyes were on the wreck, which was growing larger every second.

The chopper settled, flattening the prairie grass like hair under a blow dryer. They got out.

Melvis walked up to the engine, saying, "Oh man, I just hope she ain't derail prone. Cause if she is, then you can kiss Amtrak goodbye. This was supposed to be the locomotive of the future. One of 'em, anyways."

"What's this other thing?" Remo asked, pointing to the black engine.

"That? Why, it's a . . ."

They looked at him.

"Give me a second now. It'll come to me."

Melvis scratched his head on both sides and scrutinized the scrunched engine from front, back and sides.

"Don't rightly know," he admitted. "Looks like it might be some kind of switcher or work train."

"What is it doing on the same track as Amtrak?"

"Fair question. Over yonder lies the Union Pacific lines. They haul freight. Uncle Pete livery is what they call Armor yellow, so this ain't one of theirs.

Don't know what else runs on this line. This ain't exactly my neck of the woods."

Melvis led them around to the other side of the joined-at-the-nose Siamese engines. The stink of diesel fuel was high in their nostrils.

When they rounded on the other side, they walked into a camera. It went click in their faces.

Reacting to the sound, Remo and Chiun suddenly broke in opposite directions. They came to a dead stop, a safe distance away.

Feeling the breeze, Melvis turned. "Thought you boys was right behind me."

"Who are you talking to?" a musical, twangy voice asked.

Melvis took one look at the willowy girl in fringed buckskin jacket and bright blue bib jeans and asked, "Who in heck are you?"

The woman let her camera hang down in one hand as she dug a business card out of her jeans. "K. C. Crockett. Rail Fan magazine."

Melvis's face lit up. "Rail Fan! Why, I subscribe to that." He yanked out a card. "Melvis O. Cupper, NTSB. And if I gotta tell you what the initials stand for, you ain't who you say you are."

"Thank you kindly," said K.C., taking the card. She had a corn-fed smile and hair only slightly less red than copper. Her eyes were electric blue.

Remo and Chiun came up.

Melvis jerked a thumb at them. "These here are two boys from DOT."

"Can I have your cards too?" K.C. asked brightly.

"I do not have a card," said Chiun.

Remo offered his. "Can I keep it? I collect them," K.C. asked.

"Sorry," said Remo, taking it back. "Only one."

"They're from back East," Melvis told K.C. Eyeing Chiun, he added, "Way back East."

"Pleased to meet you all. I was riding the California Zephyr when it hit. Sure was an experience, let me tell you. But I got some nifty shots of the wreck. Maybe I can make the cover this time."

"You were on the train?" Remo asked.

"Last car. We were going along right smooth when smash! Lights out, boom-boom-bang-ba-boom and we were in the ditch faster than pooh through a possum."

"You're a right lucky lady," said Melvis.

"All except for being defiled in the middle of the Nebraska flatlands," K.C. said ruefully.

"That's means left behind," Melvis told Remo and Chiun.

"We have an investigation to conduct. Remember?" Remo said.

"Right. Right. We're gettin' to that." Addressing K.C., Melvis said, "Me and the DOT boys here were just tryin' to make out what this other engine was. Maybe you know, bein' with Rail Fan and all."

K.C. squinted one eye and then the other at the black engine. She wore a green-striped white engineer's cap on her head, and she adjusted the bill several times.

"It ain't a switcher."

"That's for sure," Melvis agreed.

"Not an Alco, either."

"Don't have any livery to speak of. Which in itself is plumb peculiar. K.C. gal, you happen to know whose track this is?"

"Burlington Northern."

"Sure ain't a Burlington Northern diesel. Their color scheme is Cascade green."

K.C. nodded. "Whatever it is, it sure don't belong on this line."

"Sure is a shame about this Genesis."

K.C.'s face fell. "And it was my first Genesis, too!"

"Hate to break it to you so rough, but it may be your last if Amtrak loses the good fight. This wreck sure won't persuade Congress to keep her goin'."

K.C. broke down at that point.

"Now, don't you get me started," Melvis blubbered. "I'm a sentimental cuss when it comes to high iron."

While they shared a handkerchief, Remo and Chiun started looking through the scattered debris.

"Maybe one of these pieces will tell us something," Remo said.

Melvis called over, "Man, if true rail fans like me and K.C. here can't tell by lookin' at the back end, no fragments will help."

"It's gotta be something."

"Perhaps it is Japanese," suggested Chiun.

Melvis perked up. "Think you'd recognize her if she were?" To K.C., he said, "That little fella used to ride steam trains back in Korea all the time. Family had their own private car."

"Golleee," K.C. said, eyes drying. "Doubly pleased to meet you, sir. Would you kindly consent to an interview for my magazine? I don't think we've ever run an article on Korean steam."

"Can we save this for the next convention?" Remo demanded.

"Allow me to examine this beast for clues to its ancestry," Chiun said loftily.

The Master of Sinanju began to walk around to the black engine, Remo and Melvis following, while K.C. peppered him with questions.

"What kinda engine was it?" K.C. asked.

"A Mikado 2-8-2," Melvis said proudly.

"Never heard of it. Was it a narrow gauger?"

"Yep," Melvis said.

"Elephant ears?"

"No ears. No cowcatcher. Just bumpers," said Melvis.

"Whose tale is this?" Chiun demanded.

"Sorry," said Melvis, grinning sheepishly.

To Remo, Chiun said, "Why do you not hang on my every word as these two do?"

"My brain hasn't been steamed," Remo grumbled.

"Aw, you're just sore on account of you were born too late to catch the steam bug."

"You could run every train on earth off Niagara Falls, and I wouldn't care," said Remo.

Melvis and K.C. gasped like two old maids.

"Such language!" K.C. said. "Shame on you. This great nation was built on rails. Trains don't pollute, fall out of the sky like planes or lose a body's luggage, either."

Chiun came to a dead stop. Throwing his head back, he struck a heroic pose, hands fisted, tight to his hips. "It is not Japanese," he pronounced.

"How do you know?" asked Melvis.

One long-nailed finger-on the undamaged, left hand, Remo noticed-pointed to a sooty string of seemingly meaningless letters and numbers low on the side of the black engine.

"Japanese do not use the English letter l. "

"You got a point there."

"So what is it?" asked Remo.

"Look," K.C. said, whirling.

Remo and Chiun whirled in unison, eyes going in the direction of her excitedly pointing fingers.

On the parallel UP track, a train was coming. The engine, Remo saw, was painted in mottled desert-camouflage livery.

"Do I see what my eyes are tellin' me I'm seem'?" Melvis asked breathlessly.

"If you're not dreaming, neither am I," K.C. breathed.

"What is it?" Remo asked, concern in his voice.

"I do not know," Chin said grimly, "but it is painted a warlike color."

"That there must be one of the last units on the Union Pacific still tricked out in Desert Storm camouflage colors," Melvis said, awe coloring his tone.

"What?"

"It's true. Back durin' Desert Storm, the Union Pacific painted a number of their SD40-2's just like that one yonder to show support for our troops in the Gulf."

"Kinda takes your breath away, don't it?" K.C. said.

"Amen. Diesel always makes my heart go hippityhop."

As the engine rattled by, both Melvis and K.C. took off their hats and laid them over their hearts. The rest of the train consisted of old boxcars painted in assorted colors, their sides dusty and peeling.

"Makes your heart pound like an old kettledrum to see such a rare sight, don't it?" Melvis said. "And look at them HyCube boxcars. They're runnin' on eight-wheeled trucks. I never saw the like of it."

"Down Sonora way I once saw an Alco RSD12, highballing like a bat out of hell." K.C. blushed. "Excuse me-Hades."

"High nose or low?" Melvis asked as the railcars flitted by.

"High. Painted burned orange."

Melvis sighed. "Life can be sweet sometimes."

"I got pictures of it. Wanna see 'em?"

"Swap you an Alco RSD12 for a FPA4, with Napa Valley wine-train livery."

"Deal!"

As Remo watched with increasing incredulity, they pulled out their wallets and began exchanging snapshots of diesels they had known and loved.

While they were lost in reminiscences, Remo found a thin piece of twisted black metal. "This look like a piece of a fan blade to you, Little Father?"

Chiun examined it with narrowing eyes. "Yes."

"Awful big fan."

Remo called over to Melvis. "How big of a fan on the Genesis?"

He had to repeat the question and go spin Melvis around in place before he got his attention refocused.

"Hey, none of that now!" Melvis roared.

"What's this look like to you?" Remo demanded, holding the metal in front of his face.

"Looks like a whopper fan blade."

"Off what?"

"Ain't off the Genesis," K.C. said.

"That's a fact. Looks too old."

"So it's off the other engine?" suggested Remo.

"Gotta be."

"The fan blades are mounted on top for cooling the engine, right?"

"Yeah, but that looks too big to be off an enginefan blade."

"So that leaves what?" Remo asked impatiently.

"You know," K.C. said, "I once heard about a critter called a rail zeppelin."

"Ain't no such animal," Melvis insisted hotly.

"Is, too."

"Let her tell it," Remo said, giving Melvis an eyepopping neck squeeze.

"Back in the thirties, when they were experimenting with high-speed rail, someone built a streamlined railcar with a great big old airplane engine attached."

"Do tell," said Melvis, fingering his collar.

"It's true. The propeller was in back, pusher style. When she started to spin, the rail zep took off like nothing natural."

"How fast she go?" asked Melvis.

"Don't rightly recollect. But they broke a few landspeed records for that time."

"This doesn't look like an airplane blade," Remo said.

"He's right, at that," K.C. said.

"So that means what?" said Remo tiredly.

"Hell, only thing I can think of is a rotary-plow train," said Melvis.

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"You seen snowplows?"

"Sure," said Remo.

"Imagine a big old engine with a big old rotaryplow blade framed in the front, like a big old lamprey's mouth with whirlin' fan blades instead of teeth."

K.C. looked back at the squashed black engine. It had round portholes on its sides instead of windows.

"Could be a rotary-plow engine, at that."

"Except for one dang thing," Melvis inserted.

"What's that?" Remo asked.

"It's the middle of summer. What would a plow engine be doin' out on the middle of corn country goin' the wrong way on a passenger line?"

"Causing a derailment," said Remo.

"You sayin' this is calculated sabotage?"

"Look at it. Wrong-way engine. Head-on collision. What else could it be?"

Melvis scratched his head. "Maybe the engineer was on dope."

"Which one?" asked K.C.

"Why, the plow engineer, of course. Otherwise, why would he take her out six months after the last snowfall and be goin' the wrong way on occupied track?"

"Sounds sensible to me, much as I shrink from the notion of an engineer on drugs," said K.C.

"They don't raise engineers like they used to," Melvis said sincerely.

"Or engines," said K.C., looking at the demolished Genesis.

Melvis rocked back on his boot heels. "Yes, siree, this could be the end of Amtrak."

"You keep saying that," said Remo. "Why?"

"Yes. Why?" asked Chiun.

"Don't you two know? The Amtrak contract with the freight lines runs out this year. Congress is fixin' to defund it. Amtrak can't pull her weight financially, except on the Northeast Corridor and a few other places. The freight boys are all bet up because they gotta give passenger traffic the priority, sidelinin' their consists when they got goods to haul, while Amtrak just blasts on by."

"So the freight lines would like to see Amtrak out of business?" said Remo.

"Sure as shootin' they would."

"Perhaps they are behind this outrage," said Chiun.

"That's a good theory. Except for one teensy little fact."

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"The freight boys are experiencin' more derailments than Amtrak. They're gettin' it worse by a ratio of three to one."

Chiun piped up, "Perhaps they seek to throw suspicion from themselves. It is often that way on 'Fetlock.'"

"Which?" asked K.C.

"Never mind," said Remo.

"Look," Melvis said hotly. "It can't be the freight lines. See those tangled-up rails? Somebody has to clean them up. And that same somebody has to pay for the cleanin' up. It sure ain't Amtrak. They don't hardly own a solitary stretch of high iron in the nation. The freight lines control it all. They're the ones eatin' the cleanup bill." Melvis suddenly looked around. "That reminds me. Shouldn't the Hulcher boys be here by now? What's keepin' them?"

Remo asked, "Who are they?"

"Hulcher. They're only the kings of rerailin' train sets. You saw them workin' back at Mystic."

"You were at Mystic?" K.C. said excitedly. "Jiminy, that was a wreck. Wish I'd seen it."

Remo squeezed her neck, and she subsided, too.

Of Melvis, he asked, "Hulcher the only people in that business?"

"No, just the biggest and best."

"Every time a train goes off the tracks, they make money, right?"

"Oh, don't you blaspheme," K.C. cried, her buckskin fringes shivering in anger. "Don't you speak against Hulcher."

"Hell, don't even think what you're thinkin'," said Melvis. "They're railroad men. They wouldn't cause wrecks. Besides, they don't have to. These rail lines are over a hundred years old. They're bound to throw a train or two just from age and orneriness. No, Hulcher ain't back of this. No way, no how."

"Well, someone is."

"I say it's dope. Dope is a scourge upon the land. Show me a derailed GE Dash-8 or a flipped-over Geep, and I'll bet my momma's Stetson there's cannabis in the air."

"Either that, or the evil antirail Congress is at work," said K.C. with a perfectly straight face.

"Let's at least find out where this plow engine came from before we go blowing up Congress, shall we?" suggested Remo.

Chapter 16

The rotary-plow engine was out of Hastings, the next stop for the California Zephyr.

It was normally kept in a shed by a siding. The shed was still there, but there was no engine inside. No yardman, either.

"Maybe the yardman took her out and went the wrong way, accidental-like," Melvis said.

"If it isn't snowing, is there a right way?" asked Remo.

"Now that you mention it, no."

"They're too slow to run on the same track as a fast train, even going the right way," K.C. interjected.

"What's fast about the California Zephyr?" Melvis grunted.

"The old California Zephyr was fast."

"This ain't the old California Zephyr, I hate to tell you."

K.C. grinned. "It suits me. I'm only heading to the big Rail Expo."

"The one in Denver?" Melvis said, face brightening.

"That's the one."

"Man, do I yearn to go to that shindig! They're gonna have every brand-new kind of spankin' engine there is from every nation on earth. And a few old ones too."

"And I aim to bag 'em all," said K.C., lifting her camera.

Melvis cleared his throat and asked, "Anybody ever tell you you got the prettiest Conrail blue eyes?"

K.C. blushed like a beet. "Aw, shucks."

"Can we get back to the investigation?" asked Remo.

Melvis grew serious. "Allow me to kindly remind you this is an NTSB investigation. That there's an NTSB chopper what brung us here. And if you don't like it, you can lump it and walk."

"If we leave," Chiun said haughtily, "we will take our stories of the famed Kyong-Ji line with us."

"Now, hold on a cotton-pickin' moment here! I wasn't meanin' you, old-timer. Just your skinny-ass friend here. He can hightail it back to whatever he's from. You and I, on the other hand, are gonna do some serious confabulatin' about Korean steam. I ain't hardly asked all the questions I got stored up in my poor brain."

Chiun's eyed thinned. "I will consider this offer if the investigation goes well."

"Well, let's get a move on." Melvis looked around. "I guess that dang plow engineer is the meat in a cornfield-meet sandwich for sure."

A changing breeze brought a metallic scent to Remo's and Chiun's sensitive nostrils. They began sniffing the wind carefully.

Melvis eyed them dubiously. "You boys turn pussycat all of a sudden?"

"I smell blood," said Chiun.

"Ditto," said Remo.

Melvis joined in tasting the breeze. "I ain't smellin' nothin' but diesel and ripenin' corn."

"Blood," said Chiun, walking north.

Remo followed him. The others fell in line.

THEY FOUND the man's head before they found the man. The head was in two parts. He had been split down the center of his face, the line of separation falling between his eyes, dividing the bridge of his nose perfectly. He must have had a gap between his two front teeth, because on either side of the two halves the teeth had survived the sudden cleaving intact and unchipped.

The blade had come down that perfectly.

The Master of Sinanju picked up the two head halves and clapped them together like a husked coconut. It was evident from the horrified expression on the dead man's face that the swordsman had been facing his victim.

"One stroke down, separating the two portions, and one across the neck," said Chiun grimly. "The Pear Splitter Stroke, followed by the Scarf Sweep."

K.C. said, "I ain't never seen such a thing."

Melvis piped up, "Honey, I seen a lot worse. Why, once down Oklahoma way I saw a man's head up in a tree like a pineapple just a-waitin' to be picked. The look on his face was about as hornswoggled as this poor soul's, come to think of it."

"The rest of him must be around here," Remo said, looking around.

They found the body a short distance away. He lay on his stomach in the high prairie grass, with his hands tucked under him, as if he'd fallen in the act of unzipping his fly.

"Musta spliced the poor feller as he was takin' his last leak," Melvis muttered. "A right unkind thing to do, you ask me."

Remo turned the body over on its back. It rolled over as easily as a log. And just as stiff. Rigor mortis had set in.

The hands were frozen at his belt line, as if they had held something before he died. His fly was closed.

"My mistake," Melvis said.

Kneeling, Remo examined one thumb. It was rash red, and a slight indentation was visible in the fingerprint area.

"What's this?" Remo wondered aloud.

"His dead thumb," said Melvis, winking in K.C.'s direction.

"I mean this indentation."

Melvis got down and took a hard look. "Search me."

"Let me see," said K.C. She got down with them and looked the thumb over. "You know, way up in Big Sky country I did a photo feature on those new RC units."

"RC?'

"Radio Controlled. They got transmitters now that can move a locomotive around the switching yards without an engineer in the cab. The transmit-power switch has a little silver ball at the end of it. Makes a deep dent just like this one has."

Melvis scratched his own thumb absently. "You don't say."

"Sure. It's got the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers union all in a lather. The freight bosses can cut the crews down to two, sometimes one, by giving a yardman one of those contraptions and have him move rolling stock around without need of engineers."

Melvis set his Stetson over his heart and looked mournful. "A way of life is surely evaporatin' when even an engineer is prone to layoff."

"Ever heard of a rotary-plow engine run by RC?" Remo asked K.C.

"No, but that don't mean it couldn't be."

Remo stood up. The others followed suit.

"Whoever killed this guy took his RC unit and ran the plow down the track," he said.

"It's possible," Melvis admitted.

"Except for one thing," said K.C.

"What's that?"

"I think that thing glinting in the sun over yonder is the RC unit in question."

They went over to the glint. It was the RC unit. It had a stainless-steel case and shoulder straps so that it could carried, leaving the hands free to work the controls.

"So much for that theory." Remo said.

"Looks like it's been busted open," Melvis muttered.

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Got me," said K.C. "Maybe he wanted to get the radio frequency."

"So where's the desperado what skragged this poor feller?" Melvis wanted to know.

"Perhaps he was in the plow engine," said Chiun.

"Suicide," Melvis said, smacking one fist into a meaty palm. "Suicide! That's it! Suicide. Drug-induced suicide. Man cut up his fellow worker and in remorse lit off with the plow engine and run smack dab into the California Zephyr, going out in a blaze of diesel glory."

"Sounds thin," said Remo.

"Maybe he had diabetes to boot."

Everyone looked at Melvis with expectant expressions.

"There was a Brit who had diabetes," Melvis explained. "Couldn't get his leg amputated for love or coal, so he lay down on a track and let a highball do it for him. Bad leg came off clean as bamboo. Maybe this feller had a terminal illness, and this was his way of goin' out."

"What manner of imbecile would commit suicide by crashing into an approaching locomotive?" Chiun demanded.

Melvis and K.C. looked at one another. Out of their mouths came the same answer.

"A rail fan!" they exclaimed.

THEY TOOK the transmitter back to the crash site. K.C. got it working and threw the train into reverse.

No one expected a reaction, but a beacon light atop the train began flashing yellow and the train lurched backward, dragging the Genesis with it. It crawled painfully for all of two feet, then stopped dead.

K.C. shut down the transmitter. "They're rigged to control only one train at a time. You got to reset it for another."

"How much of a range?" asked Remo.

"Maybe twenty miles. With repeaters, more."

"So the murderer could have stood way back at the shed and sent the rotary plow this way without having to see what was happening?"

"It's possible. All you gotta do is set the cab controls and start her up by RC. If you're looking to run it smack into the California Zephyr, all you need is the right track and the correct direction. It's not like you gotta steer anything."

"The question is, who?" said Remo.

"All we gotta do is pry them two sad-sack engines apart and maybe we'll get our answer," Melvis offered.

"An excellent suggestion," said Chiun, throwing back his silvery sleeves with a flourish.

He marched up to the mashed locomotive pile.

"What's he up to?" Melvis asked Remo.

"He's going to separate the locomotives," Remo said casually.

"You mean he thinks he's gonna separate the locomotives."

"He thinks it, too."

Reaching the wreck, the Master of Sinanju examined it carefully. He turned. "I may need assistance."

"Hah," said Melvis.

"Back up the ugly engine."

"Won't do nothin'. You saw that with your own eyes."

"Do it anyway," said Remo.

"I got it," said K.C. Raising her voice, she said, "Just call out when you're ready. Hear?"

"I am ready," returned Chiun.

Melvis turned to Remo. "Ain't you gonna stop him? He could hurt hisself."

Remo shrugged. "I learned to let him have his way a long time ago."

K.C. threw the plow locomotive into reverse.

The engine grunted, clashed backward. Tangled steel and aluminum groaned like a tortured beast.

And the Master of Sinanju inserted a hand into the tangle. He did something very quick with his hands. Abruptly, with the sound of a giant spring letting go, the plow engine backed off from the mangled Genesis, trailing thin struts and pieces of flat black blade.

"Did you see that!" Melvis exploded. His eyes were popping from their sockets.

"No," said Remo.

"See what?" said K.C., her head coming up. "I was looking at the controls."

"Nothin'," said Melvis. "But I sure heard a sprungin'."

"I heard it, too," said K.C. She grinned. "Guess we got lucky."

Melvis gave Remo a sharp eye. "A lotta that around these two. Hope it's catchin'. "

They ran up to the separated engines. The exposed noses were mashed flat. The housing containing the snow-eating fan blades now looked like a grille. The Genesis snout resembled a kicked-in loaf of bread. Crushed air hoses and power conduits drooped from the bottom, as if a hand grenade had gone off in a snake pit.

"Well," Melvis commented, "they say the Genesis is the homeliest loco since the old Union Pacific M-10000, but a head-on sure didn't improve her profile any."

Blood was streaking down the one side. It was enough to tell the Genesis engineer had taken the brunt of the impact.

Remo climbed the access ladder of the Genesis, looked in the broken window and climbed back down.

"Dead," he said.

"Too bad."

"But he still has his head."

"Why wouldn't he?" Melvis demanded.

"Never mind," said Remo, jumping down.

They circled around the other engine. The entire front end had been pushed back into the firewall, cab and all.

"If he's in here," Melvis said, "he's mashed flatter than an elephant's pillow."

"Only one way to find out," said Remo. He started up the twisted access ladder.

"Now what do you think you're loin'?"

Remo said nothing as he reached the engine roof. Kneeling there, he examined the steel roof plates under him.

"Find me a crowbar," he called down.

"Take more than a crowbar to open that sardine can. You need a can opener the size of a canoe paddle."

"Humor me," said Remo.

"Come on, little lady. We can swap lies while we look."

And when they started off for the emergency crew farther down the line, Remo got to work.

He used his fist. Bringing it down, he popped a line of rivets. Moving his fist, he popped another. He worked quickly, striking key stress points until the rivets began hopping in place like tiny animated toadstools.

When he had the roof plates nice and loose, Remo lifted them free and looked down.

There was still a little space left in the cab. About three inches. It was a tangle of metal. But there were no body parts or any smell of blood, brain or bowels.

Standing up, Remo called after Melvis and K.C. "Never mind the crowbar. I got it open."

Remo had to repeat it three times before the pair stopped talking with their hands and looked back.

They came charging back whooping and hollering.

Melvis climbed up as Remo jumped down. He gawked at the open roof, looked down inside and asked, "How'd you do that?"

"I popped the rivets."

"I can see that. With what?"

"Pocket rivet popper," said Remo. "Forgot I had it on me."

"Fingernails of the correct length would have been more seemly," Chiun undertoned.

Melvis climbed down again and said, "I wouldn't mind havin' me a handy gadget like that. Let me take a gander."

"Sorry. Get your own."

"You know what you just done up there ain't within the purview of the DOT."

"Sue me," suggested Remo.

"NTSB might just do that little thing."

"There's no engineer," Remo argued.

"He coulda jumped clear."

"Not if he were suicidal," K.C. remarked.

"You keep your pretty little cowcatcher out of this. Pardon the expression."

K.C. offered a frown and yanked her engineer's cap low over her eyes.

"No engineer means you can throw drugs, diabetes and accidental derailments out the window," said Remo.

"Let's not be rushin' events. Maybe that guy back there set the engine to runnin' and had an accomplice lop his head off."

"Couldn't happen that way," K.C. said.

Melvis squinted up his homely face. "How's that?"

"See this here tilt reset switch?" she said, indicating the RC control panel. "If the engineer falls over or drops dead, the tilt function comes on, signaling the air brakes to clamp down."

"A fail-safe?" asked Remo.

"Yep. Once the RC is dropped, you have to reset everything. And that poor guy back there is too long dead to have been the one to wreck the train. It was the one who killed him that did the deed, sure as the corn grows high in July."

"You don't say," Melvis blurted.

K.C. stuck out her tongue at him. Melvis grinned back.

"Enough," said Chiun. "This deed is the work of a ronin. "

"A what?" Melvis and K.C. asked in unison.

"A ronin."

"Never heard of a ronin. You, K.C. gal?"

Reaching into the bib of her farmer's jeans, K.C. extracted a dog-eared paperback book. Remo saw the title: Kovac's Engine Handbook.

"Ronin, ronin, " she murmured. "How you spell it.

Chiun said, "R-o-n-i-n."

"Nope. No Ronin locomotive in here."

"He's not talking about an engine," Remo said.

"Then what is he talking about?"

"A ronin is Japanese."

Melvis grunted. "No wonder. Kovac's covers only U.S. of A. motive-power units."

"Diesel or electric?" K.C. asked.

"Neither. Samurai."

They blinked.

Just then Melvis Cupper's pager started beeping.

"Sure hope that ain't what I think it is," he complained, charging off in the direction of the emergency crew.

They took their time following him. When they caught up, Melvis was handing a cellular phone to an Amtrak worker in a white plastic hard hat and orange safety vest.

"We got a haz-mat situation down the line a piece," Melvis bellowed. "Not twenty miles from here."

"How's the engine?" K.C. asked in a stricken voice.

"Dunno. Look, I can't take you boys with me on account of it's a hazardous-materials situation, and you're general pains in the butt anyway. Adios and happy trails."

Melvis tried to push past the Master of Sinanju, whose right sandal suddenly darted between Melvis's ostrich-skin boots.

Melvis fell flat on his face, and the Master of Sinanju stepped onto his back.

"I will not allow you to stand again until you have agreed to take us with you," Chiun said with measured vehemence.

"You're a nice old geezer, I do admit it," Melvis grunted. "But if you don't get offa my back in five seconds, I'm gonna rear up and wash over you like the Galveston flood."

Face bland, Chiun shifted his sandals apart.

"Better tell your friend to do what Mel said," K.C. said anxiously. "He can't weigh much more than ninety pounds."

Remo shook his head. "He's on his own."

"How can you say that about such a sweet old man?"

"I meant Melvis," said Remo.

"Last chance," bellowed Melvis. "I'm countin' backward from three."

Chiun tucked his hands into his kimono sleeves.

"Ready? Three!"

Chiun closed his eyes. He seemed to be concentrating.

"Two." Melvis arched his back.

Chiun showed no sign of moving.

"One! "

Chiun tapped one toe softly.

Melvis suddenly collapsed like a deflated tire. He went "Oof!" as his face jammed into the soft soil. He began making strenuous noises like a rooting hog. His blunt fingers gouged the earth as he strained to lift the incredible weight of the old Korean from his broad back.

The Master of Sinanju simply stood there, eyes closed, serene, a vagrant breeze snatching at his wispy beard.

Puffing, Melvis twisted his face around so he could breathe through his gulping mouth.

"What'd you do-set a boulder on my back? That ain't fair."

"There ain't nothing on your back except that little old man," K.C. pointed out.

"Don't you prevaricate at a fellow rail fan. I know a dad-gum boulder when one lights on my poor spine."

"I will step off if you agree to take us with you," said Chiun.

"Dang it, you got me flummoxed. Okay, doggonit, I agree."

And Chiun stepped off. He alighted gently as if he weighed no more than a small child.

Melvis got himself turned around, stared up at the Nebraska sky and concentrated on getting air in and out of his wheezing lungs.

"What the hell happened?" he gasped at last.

Chiun smiled thinly. "I thought like a boulder."

"That's some powerful imaginin'. You near to squashed me flat."

"To squash you flat would have required thinking like an elephant. I did not wish to do that to you, a fellow appreciator of steam."

"Appreciate that," wheezed Melvis. "I surely do."

THEY FLEW approximately thirty miles due east, over the Union Pacific track. Corn and prairie predominated.

"What's in the big trunk?" K.C. asked Remo after they had lifted off. Melvis had insisted three freeloaders were as inconvenient as two, so what the hell.

"I don't know," Remo said truthfully.

"Then why are you guarding it like it contains the family jewels-pardon the indelicate expression."

Remo cocked a weary thumb in Chiun's direction. "Ask him."

"What's in the trunk?" Melvis repeated.

"Sloth."

"You got a sloth in there?"

"That is not the sloth I speak of." Chiun eyed Remo, who watched the flat green ground surging beneath them.

"The only sloth I know of climbs trees and eats grubs."

"There is another species of sloth. It is a cousin to shame."

"That is definitely a different critter."

"Why is she coming along?" Remo asked Melvis.

Melvis leaned over and lowered his voice. "I kinda like the shimmy of her caboose-if you know what I mean."

Remo was about to point out the undeniable fact of the ten-year age difference between them when they came upon the wreck.

"It's the Desert Storm consist!" K.C. said.

"Yeah, and if it ain't in a pickle, I'm an unhung rapscallion."

Chiun's eyes flashed. "Why are soldiers guarding that train?"

"Take her down lower, pilot," Melvis said, jerking the pilot's right earlobe like a sash cord.

The chopper pilot sent the helicopter angling down.

That caught the attention of the soldiers. As if hooked up to the same nervous system, they turned in unison, and pointed their weapons at them.

"Dang if they don't look like they're hijackin' that train!"

The tiny figures lit up their tiny weapons. Tiny flashes of stuttering light showed here and there.

The arriving rounds were tiny, too. But they stung.

"Up! Pull her up," Melvis howled as the Plexiglas bubble began to spiderweb and frost up before their eyes.

Chapter 17

Before the helicopter dropped out of the Nebraska sky, Major Claiborne Grimm figured it couldn't get any worse.

He was wrong. And it was already as bad as he could imagine it ever getting.

Short of all-out thermonuclear exchange, that is.

The desert camouflage Peacekeeper train had been rolling on high iron en route to the Strategic Air Command airbase in Omaha, making good time. It was a routine train movement. Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino, California, to Omaha. A month later it would retrace the trip.

No one would know it wasn't an ordinary freight consist of the Union Pacific line. It looked ordinary. The production-model SD40-2 diesel engine was right off the line. The modifications enabling her to operate in wartime were indistinguishable even to the most ardent rail fan. Her armor, bulletproof glass, silvery flash curtains and hidden surveillance cameras wouldn't show up if the unit were photographed at a dead stop with a telephoto lens and made into a Rail Fan magazine gatefold.

The desert camo livery was getting old, but the beauty of it was that it was functional.

Back in the early days of the MX missile program, the brass would never have dreamed of slapping military-style camouflage coloration on a Peacekeeper train. The whole idea was to disperse the nation's MX arsenal along its rail system, staying mobile so the Russkie spy satellites couldn't pinpoint them. If they couldn't pinpoint them, they couldn't target the U.S. nuclear force for a surprise first strike.

It was a gigantic shell game, and it had cost the American taxpayers untold billions of dollars in research-and-development costs until Congress slashed defense funding and the Air Force voluntarily abandoned the MX program.

Congress thought that was the end of it. The American public thought that was the end of it. But it was not the end of it.

The Air Force had possession of the only multibillion-dollar train consist in human history and it wasn't about to mothball it. Not in the uncertain post-Cold War world, where the once-mighty Soviets had reverted to being the plain old Russkies-and who knew which way they would jump?

So Major Claiborne Grimm found himself riding the rails every month or so in the launch-control car overseeing train operations.

It was a routine run until he got the nervous call from the first car in line, the security-command car.

"Major. Airman Frisch here."

"Go ahead, Airman."

"Engineer reports we have a man on the track."

"Jesus."

"He wants to know if we should brake."

"Of course he should brake. Tell him to brake."

"But, Major, security-"

"Brake the damn train. If we run a civilian over, we'll have local authorities crawling all over our HyCubes. All we need is for it to get out that we're running an unauthorized nuclear program and all our asses will be decommissioned."

"Yes, Sir."

The sudden screaming of the air brakes warned Grimm to grab for something solid. Still, he was thrown off his feet when the train began decelerating.

His eyes went to the launch-control officers sitting at their dual consoles, one at end each of the launch-control car.

They signaled they were okay. Grimm wished he could say the same. His heart was up in his throat, and his stomach was butterflying something fierce.

"Man, just please don't have hit anyone," Grimm moaned.

With a clashing of tight-box couplers, the consist finally knocked to a dead stop.

Only then did Grimm lever himself off the stainless-steel floor and hit the intercar intercom.

"Engineer, say status!"

The engineer's voice was tight and strangled.

"Too late," he said. "He went under my engine."

"Damn civilians," he said, not sure which man he was thinking of-the careless fool under the trucks or the engineer, who was himself a civilian sworn to secrecy.

Grimm hit the button connecting him to the security car. "Security team. Detrain. On the double."

Turning to his second-in-command, Grimm said, "I'm turning operational control over to you. Do not under any circumstances open this car to anyone except myself. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And the password of the day shall be-'Hotbox.'"

"Hotbox. Yes, Sir."

"If this is a hijacking and I give 'Redball' as the password, you have my permission to take off with all due speed leaving me defiled. Do you understand?"

"No, Sir. What is defiled?"

"To be defiled," Major Grimm said, unlocking and sliding open the single escape door, "means to be left in the dust."

Stepping down, Major Grimm saw that the security team was all over the consist.

Running over to the security officer, he said, "Report."

"We hit a man on the tracks. We're looking for him now."

"Man on foot?"

"Yes, Sir."

Grimm looked to the train. His eyes automatically went to the second boxcar, where the MX Peacekeeper missile crouched like a cougar awaiting the launch command. For as long as he had been in charge of ferrying the beast through cornfields and prairie, he wondered if he was carrying a live one. His superior officers refused to confirm or deny that the aluminum-tipped titanium warhead packed live Mark 21 reentry vehicles or inert dummies. The possibility that they might be dummies offered absolutely no comfort at all.

His empty side-arm holster slapping his thigh, Grimm joined the search.

"Any sign?" he asked, bending down to join an airman peering past the unique eight-wheel trucks, cocked .45 in hand.

"No, sir."

Grimm could see plainly that no body or any detached parts thereof lay under the consist.

Getting up, he walked the length of the train.

At each checkpoint he received "No, sir" and puzzled faces.

Someone handed Grimm a pair of field glasses, and he trained them down the length of track. It ran straight as a ruler, and if there was a body mashed into the ties, it was bound to show.

But it didn't. Grimm climbed to the roof of the last car.

Kneeling, he scanned the line. No body. No splash of red to show that a civilian had been struck. The surrounding prairie was likewise clean.

Clambering back down, Grimm said, "Anybody see anything? Anything at all?"

"Just the engine," the security officer reported.

"I think we should talk to the engineer," Grimm said, loping back to the engine. "Have your men stand ready."

"Yes, sir."

THE ENGINEER REFUSED to open his cab until Grimm gave him the password of the day.

"Hotbox."

"Wasn't that yesterday's password?"

"Yesterday's was 'Reefer.'"

"That's right, it was." The door banged open. "C'mon in."

Grimm climbed the ladder. He shut it behind him. "We can't find a body," he said tightly.

"We ran right over the poor dumb SOB."

"What'd he look like?"

"Dressed all in black, like one of them whatchamacallits." The engineer was snapping his fingers as if that would help his memory.

Grimm pitched in. "Bikers?"

"No."

"Protesters?"

"No. No. One of those Jap skulkers."

"Ninja?"

"Yeah! That's it. He was dressed like a dirty lowdown, egg-sucking ninja. Face all muffled sneaky-like and everything."

"Oh, shoot," said Claiborne Grimm, jumping from the cab. "We got a ninja on board! We got a ninja on board!" he called out.

The security officer looked blank as a blackboard. "Sir?"

"A ninja! You know what a ninja is?"

"No, sir, I do not."

"Japanese spy. Dressed all in black. They say they can get close enough to spit in your eye before you notice 'em. Masters of stealth, camouflage, infiltration-the whole nine yards."

"Oh, shoot."

"That's what I said. We gotta do a car-to-car search. I want security teams stationed at each end of the train. The minute he shows his ninja face, blow his head clean off. We can't take any chances."

The security teams were deployed.

Grimm led the search team. The security officer took another contingent to the rear-end car.

They worked from car to car, going over every square inch.

The rail-garrison consist was set up to be self-sufficient. There were bunks, a shower and even a kitchenette. In theory, they could remain mobile for weeks at a time. The downside was the consist was as cramped as a nuclear submarine.

Grimm's team checked the engine cab, the crapper and the security car, even though the security team had been stationed there all during the contact.

He skipped the second Hy-Cube car, which housed the missile. The only way in and out was through a locked access hatch or if the roof doors split open on command. Even though it made no sense to do so, he returned to the launch-control car.

"Hotbox," he said. The door fell open.

Back inside, he asked the second-in-command, "Everything okay here?"

"Yes, sir. Did-did we hit him?"

"I wish we had. We may have a ninja aboard."

"Oh, God."

There was an immediate search of all available hiding places. They even emptied the wall waste receptacle.

"No ninja in here, Major."

"Let's keep it that way. Don't open the door for anyone except me."

Grimm passed through to the next car just as the rear-end security team was entering from the other end.

"Any sign of that fool ninja?"

"No sir, Major sir."

"Damn. Could we have messed up?"

"Not possible, sir. All hiding places checked out clean."

Grimm went to the intercom and got the security car. "Security cameras. Anything?"

"No, Major. Nothing visible on the outside of the car. Sensors indicate nothing crouching along the right-of-way."

"Damn. He must be on the train. He's not on board. So where the hell is he?"

"Did you check the missile-launch car?"

"Now, how would he get in there? It's locked up tighter than my mother-in-law's constipated ass."

"Well, he is a ninja, Major. You know how they are."

"I'm beginning to get a nasty inkling," Grimm said bitterly.

Exiting the car, they locked it up and surrounded the Hy-Cube car.

Grimm faced his security team. "I need a volunteer to enter the MLC car."

Several airmen raised their hands. One stepped forward. Grimm decided he liked the man's initiative. "You game for this, Airman?"

"Yes, sir. I've seen a lot of ninja movies. I know what the little buggers are likely to do."

"Okay. Just don't get yourself strangled."

Two airmen ducked under the Hy-Cube car and undogged the underside hatch with a special tool. The volunteer airman crawled under next and, flashlight in one hand and side arm in the other, started to squeeze in.

"See anything?" Grimm hissed.

The airman's "No" was hollow.

His belt disappeared, and then his legs pulled up and out of sight.

They waited for word. Five minutes by Major Grimm's watch. When it was ten, Grimm hissed, "What's keeping that airman?"

The security officer shrugged helplessly.

Taking a flashlight, Grimm crawled under and used the light. He washed light all over the access tunnel and saw nothing.

"Airman. Call out."

Silence came back.

"Airman!"

"Maybe he can't hear way in there," someone suggested.

"Damn. Somebody rap on the side of the car."

Flashlights banged the side of the modern Hy-Cube boxcar.

"Airman!" Grimm shouted.

The airman failed to respond or reappear.

Ducking out from under the car, Major Grimm said, "I need another volunteer. One with ninja movie-watching experience preferably."

This time Grimm got sheepish expressions instead of waving hands.

"The national security of the U.S. of A. may be at stake here. If I don't get a volunteer, I'm going to have to pick one."

Two men stepped forward, faces stiff.

"Fine. You both go in. One first and the other right behind him. Make a human chain. That way, we don't lose voice contact."

It was an excellent plan. It fell apart when the first airman thrust his upper torso into the access hatch and fell back down on his butt-minus his head.

The head tumbled down to fall into his lap. It looked very surprised. The mouth opened and it seemed to be trying to say something when the eyes rolled up to show whites, and a tiny sigh escaped from both ends of the severed windpipe.

"Get that body out of the way!" Grimm snapped.

The security team started dragging and vomiting.

"Okay. We have the ninja cornered. All we got to do is flush him out. Suggestions?"

"Can we open the roof doors?"

"Not without activating the launch sequence."

No one seemed to cotton to that idea.

"Where's that other volunteer?" wondered Grimm, looking around.

The second volunteer was standing in the back of a knot of airman like a shy gym student trying to escape the coach's gaze.

"You! Yes, you. Your turn."

"Yes, sir," the airman said in a thick voice.

"Here is what you do. We're going to hoist you in feetfirst."

"Yes, sir."

"You go in that way so he can't get at your neck."

"Yes, sir," said the airman, blood draining from his face.

"You know he's in there. He knows you know he's in there. Maybe he's crawled back a ways. You go in with your combat knife and you hunt him down. Blade to blade. You stick him good. A dead ninja's just as good as a live one, if not better. Got that?"

The airmen felt his side arm being pried from his stubborn fingers.

"Can't have you shooting in there," Grimm said. "Not with all that propellant."

"Yes, sir," gulped the airman.

They got him into position and, on the count of three, they hoisted him feetfirst.

The lower body went in fine, but the heavier upper body was where they got stuck.

"Push harder," Grimm hissed. "Get him the hell up in there."

The poor airman was standing on his hands, and his hands were being supported by the strong blue backs of several security airman. They were arching and grunting in their effort to get him all the way up there.

For his part, the airman looked as though he wanted to cry. Then he did. "Help!"

"What is it?" Grimm hissed.

The airman's eyes were frightened china saucers. "I'm going in!"

"That's what we want."

"No! Something's got my legs. Pull me back! Pull me back!"

And the airman's voice was filled so full of horror that Major Grimm hastily countermanded his order. "Out! Pull him back! Now!"

But it was too late. The airman went up slicker than a fox into a rabbit hole, torn right out of the hands of the security team.

A single drop of clear liquid fell back. They never figured out if it was drool or a tear.

They heard the swish, a meaty thunk, and then the airman's loose head dropped down.

It didn't die all at once. The mouth was distinctly working.

Reaching in, Major Grimm grabbed it. "Speak to me, Airman. What did you see?"

A puff of foul air came from the mouth. Then it dropped slack.

The light in the eyes looking into Grimm's went out.

Distaste on his own face, Grimm passed the head to his security chief, who looked sick and angry at the same time.

From the open hatch a leakage of blood came. It stained the ties a bright red.

"Enough of this damn pussyfooting. We gas the little cockroach out."

Gas masks were donned. Two grenades of CS gas were thrown in and the hatch hastily shut and locked. Not a tendril leaked out of the missile-launch car. It was airtight.

They gave the gas ten minutes to work, then a nervous airman was ordered into the smoking hatch.

Shortly his gas-masked head tumbled down.

"There' s only one thing left to do," Major Claiborne Grimm said tightly.

"Sir?"

"We gotta initiate a cold-launch sequence."

"We can't do that without authorization," his security chief sputtered.

"Well, then, we're damn well going to have to get authorization, aren't we?"

THE CALL to SAC headquarters in Omaha was booted up the line to the desk of General Shelby "Lightning" Bolton.

"You have a what, Major?" Lightning thundered.

"A ninja."

"In your missile-launch car, you say?"

"That's an affirmative, General. We send men in, and he sickles their heads clean off."

"How many casualties so far?"

"Four so far."

"Try gas."

"We did. Evidently the ninja has his own gas mask."

"Damn. There's gotta be a way to smoke that rascal out."

"There is, sir."

"I'm listening, major."

"A cold-launch sequence would open the roof doors. We can get the drop on him from above, then halt the sequence before the missile flies."

The silence on the line was thick as grease.

"Do it," said Lightning Bolton.

"I'll need the launch codes," Grimm said, throat clogging.

A rustle of papers came over the line. "Got 'em right here. Somewheres."

"General, I thought-"

"Hold on."

When the general came back, Grimm finished his thought. "I thought the President was the only man supposed to have those codes."

"For the silo-based stuff, sure. But the Commander in Chief doesn't know the MX program is still hanging on. And it's critical he doesn't. Savvy?"

"Understood, General."

"Good. Now, fire up your on-board fax."

THE LAUNCH CODES IN HAND, Major Grimm explained the situation to his launch-control officers.

"We're going to start her up. You men know the drill. We take each step one at a time. When I say abort, you both abort."

"Yes, sir," they said in unison, eyes glassy.

Going to the on-board wall safe, Major Grimm spun the dial and got it open. He took out the matched launch-control keys and with quiet ceremony surrendered them.

The launch-control officers resumed their seats and inserted the keys on command.

"Turn," said Grimm, who was standing in a film of his own cold sweat. He used to have nightmares about this very scenario.

The keys turned.

Grimm jumped out of the car.

The roof doors were already lifting. Side-mounted stabilizers began deploying. Like great feet they dropped to the roadbed and dug in, stabilizing the MLC car against blast and launch recoil.

Simultaneously the gleaming white MX missile lifted into view, driven by gas actuators.

When fully erect, it was pointing toward the great brazen dome of the noonday Nebraska sky.

At a signal from Grimm, the security team began climbing the Hy-Cube access ladders.

It was the most nerve-racking moment of Major Claiborne Grimm's entire life.

Then the angry rattle of the approaching helicopter filled the air, and the nightmare went into overdrive.

"Shoot that damn thing down!" he roared.

Chapter 18

Remo watched the helicopter bubble turn to frost under the storm of bullets, heard the overhead turbines clutch up and knew they were about to crashland.

Every instinct said to bail out. They were low enough. He had a fighting chance to jump clear and maybe come out of it alive.

There were only two problems.

Chiun.

And the precious lapis lazuli steamer trunk balanced on his lap.

Remo's eyes went to the Master of Sinanju.

"Let no harm befall my precious trunk if you value your life," Chiun said.

"Look, we're going to crash."

"Protect my trunk with your dead body if necessary," said Chiun.

"I can't believe you said that."

"And I can't believe you two are jawin' while we're droppin' like helpless stones," Melvis Cupper wailed, clutching his seat.

The rotor cut out completely. It still turned, but not under power.

"Hang on!" yelled the pilot.

"To what-the damn chopper?" said Melvis. "I'm holding on to it. What's it gonna hold on to?"

Air, as it turned out.

The spinning rotor blades went into autorotation mode, acting as a parachute and brake at the same time.

The storm of bullets abated when the soldiers on the ground realized they had bagged the helicopter.

The aircraft landed hard on its runners. Everyone bounced in their seats. In a minute the grounded bird was surrounded by hard-faced soldiers in camo fatigues.

"Out! Out of there now!" a red-faced major was shouting.

No one moved at first. They were still getting used to being alive.

"Are these guys on our side or the other?" Melvis undertoned, keeping his hands in plain sight.

"What other?" asked K.C.

"You got me."

Remo spotted the arm patch on the major's shoulder. It showed a freight train superimposed over a vertical missile. Two United Nations-style stalks of wheat framed the image.

Around the circular edge of the patch were the words Rail Garrison Peacekeeper.

"I think they're on our side." said Remo.

"Yeah? Someone should point that useful little fact out to them," muttered Melvis.

The pilot stepped out carefully, hands held high.

Two soldiers fell on him and forced him to his knees at the point of M-16s. Flexible plastic handcuffs pinned his wrists behind him.

The rest stuck their M-16 muzzles in through the cockpit door he had left hanging open.

"What's in that box?" a soldier demanded of Remo.

Remo indicated Chiun with a toss of his head. "Ask him. I'm just minding it."

The soldier looked at Chiun and said, "You Japanese"

"Watch your tongue!" Chiun squeaked.

"What's in the box, sir? I need an answer."

"None of your business," sniffed Chiun.

"Major, we appear to have a Japanese national and a box of unknown origin here."

The major came up to see. He took one look at the steamer trunk with the lapis lazuli phoenixes and two looks at Chiun and stepped back hastily. "These people are obviously accomplices. If they move, shoot them."

"You can't shoot me," said K.C. "I'm a US. citizen and photojournalist." As proof, she snapped their pictures.

A soldier spoke up. "Sir, her camera appears to be of Japanese origin."

K.C. subsided.

"Nobody talk." The major turned, calling back toward the train. "Find him?"

A handful of soldiers balanced on top of a huge boxcar with an open roof signaled back.

"No."

"What the hell is that stickin' up outta that there Hy-Cube?" Melvis asked.

"Nothing," the major said.

"It's a powerful big length of nothin' to be nothin'."

"Avert your eyes."

"I'll have you boys know I'm with the NTSB," Melvis said. "And I don't appreciate your form of hospitality."

"Just stand easy."

"I am getting out," said Chiun in a loud voice.

"Here we go," groaned Remo.

The major snapped. "No. Don't get out. You-in the T-shirt. Hand over that box."

"Remo, if you surrender that box, I will never speak to you again," Chiun promised.

"I'm not handing over the box," said Remo.

"If you don't surrender that box, I will have you shot where you stand," the major said in his steeliest voice.

"I'm sitting," Remo pointed out.

"For God's sake, hand him the dang box!" Melvis yelped. "It ain't worth gettin' skragged over. Especially if you ain't got a notion what's in it."

"If I hand over the box, there'll be trouble," Remo said.

"If you don't hand over the box," the major snapped, "I will assume you are in league with the enemy."

"What enemy?" asked Remo.

"Forget I said that. Now relinquish the box."

"I am getting out now," Chiun repeated in a loud voice. "Please do not shoot me with your fearsome weapons."

"Not until we have secured the box."

"That will never happen."

As it turned out, the Master of Sinanju was absolutely correct. It never happened. Something more dramatic occurred, distracting everyone from the box in question.

An airman called over from the big boxcar with the missile sticking up from it like a gigantic tube of white lipstick.

"We found him!"

The major whirled. "The ninja?"

"What ninja?" asked Remo.

"I didn't say that word."

"No, sir. Airman Dumphey!" came the reply.

"What about the you-know-what?" the major shouted.

"The ninja's not in here."

"If he's not in there, where can he be?"

That question was answered indirectly but in the most dramatic fashion possible.

MAJOR CLAIBORNE GRIMM had one eye on the Hy-Cube and the other on the captured helicopter when it happened. His side arm was trained on the chopper.

As far as he knew, everything was under control. They had the ninja cornered, the missile in prefiring position and the helicopter crew under control. It was just a matter of getting everyone locked down for interrogating.

The very last thing Major Grimm expected to hear was the gigantic sound like a massive shotgun blast, the overwhelming whoosh that preceded by mere seconds the mushroom cloud of boiling white steam generated when the detonating explosive charge in the missile canister turned thirty gallons of stored water to instant steam, scalding the airmen atop the boxcar and sending the MX Peacekeeper missile vaulting into the sky like a piston ejected from a mortar tube.

The tip of the missile popped up from the expanding steam cloud.

It was the last thing Grimm expected to see.

"Oh, dear God," Major Grimm said in a small, horrified voice. "We have launch."

The next thing was no surprise. Given the changed circumstances.

Vaulting two hundred feet above the train, the missile paused, seeming to hang in the air like a long white balloon. A heartbeat elapsed. Grimm's stricken eyes went to the cold exhaust bell of the stage-one engine.

Once it ignited, there was no calling the MX back.

Grimm waited for the eruption of flame that would send the missile streaking downrange toward its unknown destination. They had not input any targeting coordinates. It could come down anywhere. Russia. China. Hawaii. Even Ohio.

For a heartbeat the future of humanity hung in the balance, and Major Claiborne Grimm saw himself going down in history as the man who triggered nuclear Armageddon-if there was anyone to record anything past this fateful day.

"Please drop into the Atlantic," he beseeched the God he suddenly believed in with all of his pounding heart. "Or the Pacific. Or anywhere harmless."

The MX obliged him. It came down in Nebraska some two thousand yards south of the train. The stage-one engine nozzle never fired. The force of its steam-driven expulsion expired, and gravity took hold, pulling the long tube back to earth. It struck lengthwise, exploding into a fireball that looked for all the world like a raging mushroom cloud.

The blast of heat withered prairie grass and wilted the standing ears of corn, while everyone with sense dropped to the ground.

EXCEPT REMO WILLIAMS.

He threw himself over the streamer trunk and waited for the shock wave to roll over the helicopter.

It wasn't much of a wave. More heat than force. The chopper wobbled like a big bubble. That was all.

By the time everyone realized they were not going to be incinerated, the Master of Sinanju had calmly collected all Air Force side arms and rifles in the vicinity from the fear-stunned hands of various airmen and was methodically dismantling them.

Remo figured it was safe to leave the trunk on the seat, and joined the Master of Sinanju.

He found Chiun standing on the back of the major.

"Get off me!" the major demanded.

"Not until you apologize," Chiun said.

"For what?"

"For referring to me by that unspeakable word."

The major grunted and strained. He cursed such a blue streak that K.C. Crockett covered her ears as her face turned the color of beets.

Finally Grimm gave up. "What word?" he asked.

"The J word."

"He means 'Japanese,'" Remo said helpfully.

"I apologize for calling you Japanese," the major said with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

"And you will never do this again," Chiun prompted.

"And I will never do this again."

"So help me Jesus," added Melvis.

Remo looked at Melvis.

"Just keepin' things honest," he said.

"I will allow use of the other J word," said Chiun.

"So help me Jesus," the major gasped.

"It pays to make certain," said Melvis in a satisfied voice.

The major got to his feet, saying, "They're going to bust me down to airman once this gets out."

Remo asked, "What's this about a ninja?"

The major stiffened. "Claiborne Grimm. Major. United States Air Force. Serial number available upon request."

Remo handed him a business card. Grimm took it.

"FBI?"

"Let me see that!" Melvis said, taking the card from the major. He read it once, and his eyes jumped to Remo's composed face. "You told me you were with DOT. And your last name was Renwick."

"Cover," said Remo.

"Remo Llewell?" Melvis said, reading the name aloud.

Remo retrieved the card. To the major, he said, "We're interested in your ninja. "

"If you can find him, you can keep him," Grimm said in a bitter voice.

Major Grimm led them to the train. He explained the problem in a surprisingly small number of words, considering how many were cusswords.

Chiun drifted up to Remo's side. "See, Remo? Did I not assure you Japanese were behind these horrible crimes?"

"Not now," Remo muttered.

"What I don't understand is how that durn MX launched without orders," said Major Grimm.

"MX? Didn't they scrap that program?" Remo asked.

"They canceled the program. We didn't throw away the prototype train."

"Are we talkin' new-clear here?" Melvis demanded.

"If we were," Major Grimm said, "we wouldn't be standing here exercising our jaws right now. We were carrying a dummy-warhead array. Thank God."

"Amen," said K.C.

"You the guy that called in the haz-mat situation?" Melvis wanted to know.

"My superior must have," Grimm admitted.

Remo blinked. "You have a top secret, unauthorized nuclear program and you reported a hazardous-material problem to the NTSB?" he blurted.

Grimm shrugged lifelessly. "State environmental regulation."

"Well, you got a pretty hazardous situation goin' on over on that cornfield," Melvis drawled. "I can still hear that sucker a-poppin' away."

"Popcorn," said K.C. She smiled. "Smells good, too."

Chiun eyed Remo. "Remo, do not think what you are thinking. You have risen above your corn-eating redskin ancestors."

"I'm thinking about the ninja, " Remo said sourly. "Let's see where he is."

THEY DIDN'T FIND the ninja. But they discovered where he had been.

The two launch-control officers were at their consoles, hands on keys, keys in their slots and turned all the way over to the final launch-firing position.

Their heads were on the floor looking astonished.

"Da-yam," said Melvis, pushing K.C. back. "You better not see this, gal. It's a mess."

A camera was pushed in. "Take pictures?" K.C. asked. "For my magazine."

Stepping into the command car, Major Grimm looked at his dead launch-control officers and said, "It's impossible."

"What's impossible?" Remo asked.

"We had that slippery ninja cornered in the missile car. The car was surrounded. There is no access from that car to this one. How did he get in?"

Chiun was looking at the raw neck stumps, which oozed blood in the last, slow gulps of the dying hearts below them.

"A katana did this," he intoned.

"You sure, Little Father?"

"No ninja did this deed."

"My engineer reported a ninja on the tracks," Grimm insisted.

"Let's talk to your engineer," suggested Remo.

THE ENGINEER WAS ADAMANT. He spit a string of tobacco juice, dug in his heels and made his voice boom so it could be heard over the snap, crackle and pop of the burning MX missile.

"It was a ninja. Short as a tree stump, all muffled in black and as mean looking as an oncoming barrel-assing Baldwin diesel."

"You sure?" said Remo.

"Abso-positively. He even had on one of them funny-looking ninja hats."

"Hats?"

"You know-the kind that sorta look like a fireman's helmet from the back."

"Ninja don't wear helmets," said Remo.

"I know a ninja when I see one."

The Master of Sinanju used his sandaled toe to draw an outline in the dirt.

"Like this?" he asked, indicating an ornate flanged helmet.

"Yeah. You got it. Exactly like that."

"That," said Remo, "is a samurai helmet."

"Samurai-ninja-what's the blasted difference? The little bastard was chock-full of mischief any way you spell it."

"Why would a samurai attack my train?" Major Grimm demanded.

"He is not a samurai, but a ronin, " sniffed Chiun.

"What's that?"

"A masterless samurai."

"You mean he was free-lance?"

"Yes."

"My question stands. What would he want with my train?"

"To derail it," sniffed Chiun. "Obviously."

Major Grimm looked over the mess that was his Peacekeeper train. Dead, scalded airmen were being lowered down from the missile car. Other bodies were being laid out and covered with Air Force blue blankets, while the surviving security team attempted to sort out which unanchored head went with which truncated corpse.

And out in the field, corn was popping and hissing as the MX missile slowly melted into incandescent aluminum slag.

"When this gets out, they're going to bust me down to toddler," Grimm moaned.

"We still have a samurai to catch," reminded Remo.

"Ronin," corrected Chiun. "Why can you not get it right?"

Chapter 19

"There's only one thing to do," Remo said as he surveyed the stopped Peacekeeper train.

"What's that?" asked Major Grimm, whose expression now matched his family name.

"Take the train apart, car by car."

"This consist costs upward of sixty billion dollars. That's billion with a b. And I'm responsible for it."

"How low can they bust you down to?" Remo asked.

"I said toddler before, but now I'm thinking sperm."

"Maybe you'll meet a nice egg and get to start fresh," said Remo, starting down the tracks.

Grimm followed, feeling helpless, and the old Korean took to the other side. They walked from car to car, setting their ears to each car as they came to it.

Hearing nothing, they moved on.

At the equipment car, the second-last of the train, Remo stopped. Dropping to one knee, he signaled the Master of Sinanju on the other side.

Remo went to one end and Chiun the other.

The sound that came next was hard to describe. It might have been a coupler knuckle fracturing under pressure. That, of course, was impossible, Grimm told himself. It would take a collision to snap a tightbox coupler. Or a shaped charge.

No one saw what happened, but when Grimm saw Remo and the old Korean rejoin each other on the other side, they gave the last two boxcars a hard push.

The cars started rattling down the tracks, in reverse.

The sheared-off coupling came into view at that point. The broken face gleamed the color of new steel. The cars slowed to a natural stop.

Major Grimm waved a contingent of security airmen to surround the detached boxcars.

"We got him isolated from the rest of the train," Remo told him.

"What happened to that coupler?"

"Gave way," said Remo.

"It's a tight-box coupler. They don't break easy."

"This one did."

"Can't argue there," Grimm admitted.

"Watch this end," said Remo. "Come on, Little Father."

They went around to the other end of the boxcar, and this time the noise was like metallic thunder.

Then the end car was rolling free. The prairie was flat, so it didn't roll far. Just enough to isolate the equipment car.

Remo hovered beside the equipment car. "He's definitely inside."

"How do you know?"

"We can hear his heartbeat."

Grimm experimented with listening. "I don't hear anything."

"Rock and roll will do that to your eardrums."

Remo addressed the old Korean. "Okay, Chiun. Do we go in or just take the car apart?"

Chiun's face frowned into a tight mask of determination. "We must be careful. There is no telling what deceits this ronin has at his disposal."

"Why don't we just shoot the fool out of that thing?" Melvis suggested.

"We do things our way," said Remo.

"This man has an excellent idea," snapped Chiun. Spinning, the Master of Sinanju raised his voice in the direction of the Air Force security team. "Shoot the Japanese fool out of this car!"

Remo shrugged.

At Major Grimm's direction, a firing squad was assembled. They lifted their M-16s into line.

"Ready... aim . . . fire!"

The M-16s blazed away. Smoking cartridges hopped into the Nebraska sunlight, falling to earth like spent brass grasshoppers.

The boxcar side shivered under the drumming storm of rounds. Paint peeled. Indentations like silver washers cratered the peeling boxcar paint.

When they had expended their clips, Major Grimm ordered the firing squad at case.

Remo walked up to the boxcar. He put his ear to it. "I don't hear anything."

"He is dead," intoned Chiun.

"I thought he was dead to start with," muttered Remo.

"Now he is doubly dead, if not triply dead."

"What say we crack her open, then?" Melvis suggested.

Remo started for the door. "I got it."

That was as far as he got.

The samurai jumped from the boxcar. He came out through the closed door without bothering to open it.

Everyone was caught off guard. Including Remo.

Remo's entire body was one gigantic sensing organ. That was why he usually left his arms bare. So his sensitive body hairs and skin were receptive to shifts in air currents and other atmospheric vibrations.

Remo hadn't been aware the samurai was coming at him until he emerged from the door.

He popped from the blank door like a black soap bubble, landed in a crouch and came clumsily to his feet.

His katana was sheathed. Over his shoulder was slung a black leather bag, which hung heavy under the weight of its contents.

It was broad daylight, so everyone got a good look. The sun gleamed on his black plates, made the ornate helmet smoulder and most unnervingly of all, showed very clearly that the samurai had no face.

"Mercy!" said K.C., who started backing away. A dozen steps later, she turned and ran.

Remo moved in on the samurai. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chiun flitting in from another angle.

They intercepted the apparition at the same time.

The ronin had no chance to draw his blade. Remo and Chiun were on him.

They each threw a blow, Remo directing the heel of his hand at the flat, blank face, intending to turn it to jelly. The Master of Sinanju came around spinning, one sandaled toe seeking a fragile kneecap.

Both connected. Remo struck the featureless face dead center. Chiun's foot bisected the knee joints. And passed through.

Encountering no resistance, Remo found himself plunging through the black, solid-looking form.

The Master of Sinanju spun past him, his flashing toe nearly catching Remo on the fly.

Recovering, Remo reversed. He brought an elbow back. It sank into the back of the samurai's flanged helmet.

The ronin strode on unconcerned.

Hissing like an angry cat, the Master of Sinanju recovered from his wild spin and stamped his feet hard. "Ronin! Hear me!"

The ronin may have heard, but he walked on, arrogant, purposeful, sword flashing from its sheath. He waved it from side to side to warn any other challenger he meant business. He looked like a batter warming up.

Major Grimm thought he was seeing things. But it had happened so fast he couldn't be sure. Appropriating an M-16 from a stupefied airman, he lined up the muzzle on the samurai's advancing chest. "Halt or I will shoot."

The samurai declined to halt. Or so his body language indicated.

So Major Grimm opened up.

The bullet track was noisy but abbreviated. There was no way he could have missed.

In fact, the boxcar directly behind the menacing figure began collecting more bullet indentations.

The samurai kept coming, unfazed by the noise and the hammering lead.

"Hand me another," Grimm called.

Another rifle was clapped into his hands. He raised the weapon, planted his feet wide apart and laid the sight on the precise center of the shielded face.

Grimm waited until they stood nearly toe-to-toe, then opened fire. The clip was only half-full. Still, sufficient rounds snarled out to obliterate the head, helmet and all.

The samurai walked into the still-chattering muzzle. Major Claiborne Grimm saw the last muzzleflashes disappear into the black face. The muzzle sank all the way in as the samurai came on. It looked as if he was deliberately and contemptuously swallowing the weapon.

Major Grimm was brave. Not to mention stubborn. He held his ground. Right to the point when the samurai walked into his body.

Then he fainted on the spot.

Grimm missed the rest of it.

Remo and Chiun got in front of the ronin, once more blocking its way.

They rained blows, punches, snap-kicks and, in the case of the Master of Sinanju, assorted invective on his unperturbable head.

The ronin didn't so much as flinch from any of it. He just walked on, swinging his blade with slow menace.

Chiun followed him, kicking at the back of his knees with strenuous fierceness, while Remo settled for taking the occasional swipe.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Remo complained.

"I do not care," said Chiun, kicking out again and again.

"Wonder what's in that sack?" said Remo.

"It is a kubi-bukuro. It is for carrying captured heads."

"Looks full to me."

"Just take care that your head does not join his collection," spit Chiun, shaking his fists in the ronin's glassy face.

The ronin trudged on, head lowered like a striding bull.

Eventually they had to give up trying to arrest him.

WALKING BEHIND the ronin, Remo and Chiun lowered their voices.

"You see, Remo?"

"Okay. It's just like you said."

"The House is haunted."

"If the House is haunted, why is he walking away from us?"

"That is not the question. The question is where is the Nihonjinwa walking to?"

The answer developed before very long. The ronin, ignoring them with a pointedness bordering on insult, swinging his blade from side to side, looked east, then west. He was looking for something.

But all that lay ahead was the still-smoldering MX missile and the unending cornfields of Nebraska.

"This is starting to look like Field of Dreams in reverse," said Remo.

"What do you mean?" demanded Chiun.

"Once he gets into the corn, he's going to be tough to stay with."

Chiun hitched up his kimono skirts resolutely. "We cannot let him get into the corn."

"Any idea how to stop him?"

"We must draw him into battle."

"Feel free."

Suddenly the Master of Sinanju hurried up. He got in front of the ronin. Blocking the way, he set his hands against the waist of his kimono and made his face fierce.

"Jokebare!" he thundered.

The ronin slowed.

"Jokebare!" Chiun repeated, then launched into a bitter stream of invective Remo had trouble following. Some of the words sounded vaguely Korean, but most did not. Probably Japanese, he decided. The two languages shared a lot of words in common.

To Remo's surprise, the ronin stopped dead in his tracks.

He stamped one foot into the ground. The ground didn't respond. Not with sound or a trembling of dirt.

Lifting his katana high, he laid it across one shoulder, then the other.

"What's he doing?" called Remo.

"I do not know," Chiun said, low-voiced. "I am not familiar with this stance."

"Well, he's gotta be doing something."

The ronin was. On his third draw back, he suddenly swung his blade all the way around. His squat upper body turned with it. When he let go, the katana unexpectedly flew toward Remo.

Remo's eyes saw it coming. His other senses detected nothing. It flew fast, going into a methodical spin like a helicopter blade winding up.

"Remo! Take care!" Chiun called.

Normally Remo could dodge bullets blindfolded by sensing the advancing shock waves. There was no wave here. According to his senses, the sword didn't exist. But his eyes read it coming. His Sinanju training, receiving conflicting signals, told him to dodge and not dodge at the same time.

Since to his heightened senses, it was all happening in slow motion anyway, Remo studied the phenomenon.

The blade was coming on a horizontal spin, exactly at the level of his neck. It meant to behead. But a blade that could not slice air had no hope of cleaving flesh.

Remo folded his arms.

The blade spun closer.

Chiun voice was a high, batlike squeak. "Remo! Remember the finger!"

So Remo flipped the ronin the bird.

The spinning blade was only inches away now.

At the last possible moment, something changed. The air roiled not an inch from his face. A swishing sound reached his ears. Strangely it started in midswish.

And as the first warning signals reached his brain, Remo started to duck. It was pure instinct. He was going down before his brain started processing the incoming information.

A meaty smack sounded just above his head.

That was Remo's first indication that the blade had struck something.

But what?

Fading back and to the side, Remo straightened.

There stood the Master of Sinanju. He was holding the katana by its ebony hilt. His other hand joined the first, and he lowered the blade resolutely.

Remo blinked. "What happened?"

"I saved your worthless life."

"No way. I had already ducked."

"I arrested the blade before it could separate your dull melon of a head from the magnificent body I have trained."

"Not a chance," Remo said, returning Chiun's side.

The Master of Sinanju held the blade firmly in both hands, the blade tip touching the ground, making a dent. It was real. It had weight.

Then they remembered the ronin. Remo and Chiun turned their heads in unison.

A vile greenish black smoke was boiling out of the downed missile. The flames were dying down, but the smoke was thickening. It rose into the sky like a black dragon in the throes of its death torment.

The surrounding flatlands were hazy with chemical smoke. The wind was blowing away from them, but the haze in the air started to sting their eyes anyway.

There was no sign of the ronin anywhere in the haze.

"He's in the corn," said Remo.

"No, he walked into the fire," insisted Chiun.

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he can with impunity," said Chiun.

They ran to the burning MX missile.

"No tracks that I can see," said Remo as they approached.

"Of course not. Ghosts do not make tracks. Except when they wish for devious purposes."

"If he's a ghost, shouldn't his blade be a ghost, too?"

"Do not split hairs with me, Remo. We must find him."

They didn't.

The poisonous smoke from the destroyed MX missile prevented them from getting too close. Moving upwind, they examined it from every angle with searching eyes.

If the ronin had walked into the smoking missile, there was no way to tell.

"I say we try the corn," said Remo.

"One of us must stay to see that he does not emerge from the smoke."

"I'll go."

"No, you will only gorge yourself on corn."

"Okay, you go."

"Yes, I will go. See that he does not not escape under your very nose."

And Chiun flashed into the corn.

Remo watched the smoking missile, one eye on the corn.

The tall ears waved in a soft breeze but otherwise didn't move or rustle. Chiun was slipping through the rows with such stealth the ronin would never see or hear him coming.

THE MASTER of SINANJU plunged into the lurid forest of corn. Its scent called to him. Its golden allure whispered of forbidden pleasures. He ignored them all. He had one goal, one purpose.

Unfortunately he also faced many paths. North or south? Perhaps west. His hazel eyes raking the ground discovered no tracks. His ears heard nothing of his foe. And the only scent on the wind was the maddening reek of uncooked corn, which swayed like brazen harlots with long yellow hair.

In the end it was the overwhelming numbers, not his illusive foe, that defeated him. Holding his nose, he raced through the cornrows back in the direction he had come.

AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES, the Master of Sinanju emerged, looking unhappy.

"No luck?" Remo asked.

"Luck has nothing to do with what has happened in this riceless land," Chiun spit. "He is not in the corn."

"In other words, you lost him."

"Pah! My senses were dazzled by the malevolent miasma of raw corn."

By this time Melvis Cupper trotted up. "I seen it all and I deny it ever happened," were his first words.

Remo looked at him. "You're a big help."

"It ain't my idea. That major woke up and said that was the way it was going to play. I see no reason not to oblige him."

"You know as well as we do that a samurai caused both train wrecks."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about. I got only one wreck. This here's a haz-mat situation. No derailment. No striking train. No cars in a ditch."

"What about the missile?"

"I don't do missiles. I'm strictly a high-iron-and-steel-wheel man." Melvis lowered his voice. "Somebody should drop a dime in the general direction of the EPA, though."

"So what are you going to report caused the Amtrak collision?"

"That? That was suicide. Yessir, naked suicide."

"Homicide is more like it," said Remo.

Melvis puckered up his weather-beaten face. "Tell you what. We'll split the difference. Let's say for the sake of sayin' there was these two sexually confused persons. One gave the other AIDS. The infected party takes the head off the party of the second part and then goes out in a blaze of diesel and glory. End result-homo-suicide."

"That's bull and you know it," said Remo.

Melvis put on a crooked grin. "You knew I was weak from the first time you laid eyes on me."

Chapter 20

They waited until the MX Peacekeeper missile burned itself out.

A cursory examination of the white-hot slag heap that remained led to one inescapable conclusion.

"Looks like he went into the corn after all," said Remo.

"Pah," said Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju paced back and forth before the slag, face tight, eyes squeezed to slits that reminded Remo of the seams of uncracked walnuts. He shook his fists at the ascending smoke.

"We're going to have to report this to Smitty," he reminded.

"I do not care."

"We're going to have to get our stories straight."

Chiun frowned like a thundercloud getting ready to rain. "I no longer care. I have been twice bested by a mere ronin. My ancestors are surely weeping tears of blood over my shame."

K. C. CROCKETT WAS waiting for them at the helicopter. She gave them a nervous corn-fed smile as they approached.

"Thought I'd guard your box for you," she said sheepishly.

Chiun bowed in her direction without saying anything.

"You didn't catch your spook, did you?" she asked.

"No," said Melvis. "It was the durnest, dangest, most spiflicated thing you ever did see. And I take my hat off to the Almighty that I don't have to write it into any report."

"Just as well. It ain't good to catch spooks."

"We're going to need a lift back to Lincoln," Remo told Melvis.

"Suits me fine." Melvis showed K.C. his Sunday smile. "Don't suppose I could interest you in a ride goin' my way?"

"Thank you kindly, but I'm bound in the opposite direction. The Denver Rail Expo awaits."

"I might be persuaded to fly thataway. Eventually."

"Mighty neighborly of you. If I don't get a passel of pictures for my magazine, it's back to the farm for me."

"Gonna shoot a lot of steam, are you?"

"That, too. But my assignment's to get all I can on the new flock of maglev trains."

Without warning, Melvis staggered back as if hit on the head by a falling steer. "Maglev!" he barked. "Why you have to go fool with that heathen crap?"

"Maglev's not crap!" K.C. flared. "It's the future."

"In a pig's ass!" Melvis roared. "How can you be for steam and maglev both? It's like prayin' to Satan and St. Peter."

"You are a close-minded old reprobate, you know that?"

The two glared at one another. There was blood in Melvis's eyes and disappointment in K.C.'s.

"Guess I can forget about that lift, huh?" K.C. finally said in a soft, dejected voice.

Melvis looked as though he wanted to bawl. He squared his shoulders manfully. He yanked down the brim of his Stetson to shadow the pain in his eyes.

"I'm a steel-wheel man. I don't hold with maglev. It's against the laws of God, man and nature. I'm sorry, but you and I have got to go our separate and distinct ways."

"Guess it wasn't meant to be. I'll just hafta hitch a ride on that there Desert Storm train."

"Adios, then," muttered Melvis, turning away.

"See y'all," K.C. said to Remo and Chiun. Pulling the bill of her engineer's cap low, she loped off, shoulders slumping.

Walking back to the helicopter, Remo asked Melvis, "What was that all about?"

"That," spit Melvis, "is the chief reason Hank Williams sung so lonesome and died so young. And if you don't mind, I can't talk about it no more. I'm plumb heartbroke."

Glancing back at the Master of Sinanju for understanding, Remo saw Chiun brush a vagrant tear from the corner of one eye before averting his unhappy face.

HAROLD SMITH was feeling better. He no longer smelled mulch when he exhaled. His coughing had almost abated. He had traded the hospital wheelchair for his comfortable executive chair. And his secretary had brought him two containers of his favorite lunch-prune-whip yogurt.

He was deep into the second cup when his computer beeped, and up popped a report of a head-on collision between the California Zephyr and an unidentified engine in the Nebraska flatlands.

Smith read the report, instantly categorizing it. It looked like a serious accident. He captured the report and added it to his lengthening Amtrak file.

The file was quite extensive now. He had been analyzing it all morning. The train crashes and derailments over the past three years were almost evenly divided between the Amtrak passenger system and the various long-haul and short-line freight railroads. A few tourist and excursion lines had been affected, as well. Even a Philadelphia streetcar line reported an accident.

There was no pattern. No line had been targeted over any other. No one kind of engine bubbled up over any other. It was not equipment failure of the roiling stock. Crew fatigue or negligence was cited with the most regularity, but Smith knew train crews were a convenient NTSB scapegoat. His computers had already crunched the numbers and discounted some twenty percent of those attributions as NTSB laziness and scapegoating. The Oklahoma City cattlecar wreck of last summer and the more recent Southern Pacific disaster at Texarkana proved that.

The yogurt was a fond memory when the blue contact telephone rang, and Smith scooped it up.

"Smitty. Remo."

"What have you learned in Connecticut?"

"Not much. We're in Nebraska. We hitched a ride with our good buddy Melvis, who by the way is full of beans, beer and bull."

"I suspected as much. You are on top of the Nebraska collision, I take it?"

"That was last hour's wreck," Remo said dryly. "We're at the MX railcar disaster now."

Smith frowned. "Do you mean CSX?"

"No. MX-as in rail-launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missile."

"Remo," Smith said patiently, "the MX program was voluntarily abandoned by the Air Force more than three years ago for budgetary reasons."

"Surprise. The Air Force has been playing a little shell game with Congress. They've been running an MX train through corn country all this time."

"I will put a stop to that," Smith said, his voice turning steely.

"Save your dime. The program was just scrubbed. They lost their missile, and the train is kinda banged up."

Smith's voice became urgent. "Remo, begin at the beginning."

Remo explained what he'd discovered at the California Zephyr crash site, up to and including the beheaded rotaryplow engineer.

"The ronin again!" Smith gasped.

"Yep. We didn't see him at the crash, but he was all over the MX train. There are a lot of U.S. airmen without heads, and one MX missile in the corn. Good thing it was a dummy."

Smith swallowed his horror. "You saw this ronin?"

"Saw him, chased him, lost him in the corn. Sorry."

"Why would a ronin attack the US. rail system?"

"Maybe he knew about the MX train and was trying to nail every train he could until he found it."

"That theory is farfetched."

"Maybe you'd like Chiun's theory better."

"Put him on."

"I'd better tell it," said Remo. "Chiun thinks this guy is the same one who had a run-in with an old Master centuries ago and is only now catching up with the House."

"Preposterous!" Smith exploded.

"Chiun, Smitty says your idea is preposterous: Unquote."

Harold Smith heard the Master of Sinanju say something pungent in the Korean language.

"What did he say?"

"You don't want to know, Smitty. Look, he may not be a ghost but he sure as hell acted like one. He popped out of a boxcar like an amok hologram. We couldn't lay hands on him. He was there but wasn't, if you know what I mean."

"How did he get away?"

"We followed him. He got tired of that and threw his katana at me. That was the weirdest part, Smitty. On the way it suddenly turned solid. I kept my head only because I ducked."

"You kept your fool head because I arrested the deadly blade!" snapped Chiun.

"Take your pick, Smitty," Remo said wearily.

"You have the katana still?"

"Yeah. Want it for your collection?"

"Yes. And I want you both here."

"Gotcha. We're on the next flight."

Hanging up, Remo looked down at Chiun's unhappy face. "You heard?"

"Every word. You explained my side of the story improperly. It is fortunate that Smith has recalled us, so that I may rectify your many errors."

"Don't forget to tell Smitty which assassin lost the ronin in the corn."

Chiun made a sound like a steam valve hissing.

FIVE HOURS LATER, Remo and Chiun stood in Harold Smith's Folcroft office once more. The second captured katana lay on the desk beside the first. Smith was examining the workmanship of the new blade.

"It is identical to the first," he said.

"Big deal," said Remo. "See one katana, you've seen them all."

"You have located no blade-smith, Smith?" asked Chiun.

Smith shook his gray head. "No such blades are being forged in this country."

"For a ghost," Remo said, eyeing Chiun, "this guy sure has a ready supply of cutlery."

Chiun frowned. "He is a ghost. You cannot deny that, Remo."

"He was ghostly. That much I'll go along with."

"A ghost is a ghost."

"Ghosts don't go around derailing trains as part of their earthly penances. Especially ronin."

"What logic is this?" spit Chiun.

"He's Japanese, right?"

"A Nihonjinwa," spit Chiun. "A stupid Japanese."

"So why is he wrecking US. trains? Shouldn't he be wrecking his own?"

"You call that logic?"

"Yeah, I call that logic. If he were after the House, he wouldn't be in the derailing business. He would be in the beheading business."

"He is in both!" Chiun flared.

"He's more interested in derailing than beheading."

A phone started ringing. It wasn't the blue contact phone nor the Rolm phone Smith used for Folcroft business. The ring was muffled.

Reaching down, Smith drew open a desk drawer and took up a fire-engine red telephone receiver.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

Smith listened. So did Remo and Chiun.

"Yes, Mr. President. But you understand as Chief Executive you are not empowered to order CURE into action. You can only suggest missions."

Smith listened to the President of the United States.

"I will consider the matter," said Smith. "Thank you for the call." And he hung up.

"That was the President," Smith said, closing the drawer.

"Do tell," said Remo.

"He wants the organization to look into these derailments."

"So you told him no?"

"No. I told him that I would consider it. There is no point in alarming him with our recent findings at this juncture."

"I'd say all the dead bodies, not to mention the near-nuclear catastrophe over the last day or two, is worth an alarm or two."

"This President would be ordering us into action at the drop of a hat if encouraged to think of CURE as an instrument of executive-branch power," said Smith. His eyes went to the new katana.

"Be careful," said Remo. "It's got a button on it like the other one. We avoided touching it."

Smith nodded. Removing a Waterman pen from his vest pocket, he tapped the handle. It sounded solid. Carefully he laid the blunt end of the pen to the button and pressed it.

The button made a distinct click.

And the blade sank into the black glass of his desktop as if slipping into a pool of still black water.

Aghast, Smith recoiled.

"Did you see that!" Remo exploded.

Everyone got down on the floor and tried to see under the desk. They saw nothing at first. Then the blade reappeared.

Like a falling feather, it floated through the kick space, touched the floor and promptly sank into the varnished pine planking.

"What's under this floor?" Remo asked.

Smith croaked, "The laundry room."

"Have it evacuated," Remo said, racing for the door, Chuin, a flapping silvery silk wraith, at his heels.

Smith grabbed the telephone.

BY THE TIME they reached the laundry room, the door was hanging open, and two workers in starched whites were outside, looking rattled.

"You see a floating sword by any chance?" Remo demanded.

"You tell us. Did we?"

"Not if you value your jobs," said Remo, going in.

Inside they looked up at the ceiling. It was unbroken. But that was to be expected. They looked down at the floor. No sign of any blade. There was nothing in the big industrial-size washing machines except hospital laundry.

"The basement!" said Chiun.

Exiting, they warned the laundry-room staff to stay out of the room until told otherwise. They looked more than happy to comply.

They bumped into Harold Smith as he stepped out of the elevator.

"We think it's in the basement," said Remo. Smith nodded.

They took the stairs. At the foot of the creaky wood-plank steps, Smith flicked on the lights.

He didn't get much in the way of illumination.

"You know, you might have sprung for light bulbs brighter than twenty-five watts," Remo said.

"This is not a work area," said Smith.

They searched the basement and found nothing.

"It has dropped into the very earth itself," Chiun intoned. "Never to be seen again."

"What's directly under the laundry room?" Remo asked Smith.

Smith blinked up at the pipework radiating from the big boilers and furnaces that supplied Folcroft with heat and steam. He seemed to be reading them like a map.

"The computers!" Smith gasped. Hastily he took a key ring from his vest and strode to a concrete wall broken by a wooden door.

Unlocking the door, he opened it. A steady industrial humming became audible. Reaching in, Smith tugged at a drop cord, and a dangling naked light bulb came on-another twenty-five-watter.

They entered.

The room was a small space crammed with mainframe computers and short jukeboxlike optical WORM drive slave units. They were the source of the low humming-and the heart of CURE's information-gathering network.

In the center of the floor, looking as solid as the concrete on which it lay, sat the katana blade.

Gingerly they surrounded it.

"Looks solid to me," Remo said.

"Looks can be deceiving," Chiun warned.

Smith bent down and touched it. Feeling substance, he picked it up.

"Solid one minute and then the next not," he murmured.

Remo nodded. "Just like in Nebraska."

"Pressing the button caused it to dematerialize," said Smith.

"What caused it to undematerialize?" asked Remo.

"Sorcery," said Chiun.

"There is a logical, scientific explanation for this phenomenon," Smith insisted, "and I intend to discover it."

BACK IN SMITH'S OFFICE, the two katana swords lay on the black-glass-topped desk.

"Matter obeys fixed laws," said Smith.

"Sorcery obeys others," suggested Chiun.

He was ignored.

Leaving the second katana blade, Smith picked up the first. He pressed the button. Nothing happened.

"A button suggests what, Remo?"

"Turning something on or off, I guess."

"And that suggests. . ."

"Electricity."

"Exactly." Smith held up the end of the hilt, examining it carefully. He squeezed. He pushed. He pulled. But he obtained no result.

"You're not looking for batteries, are you?" asked Remo.

Chiun said, "The white mind is like a runaway train. It always follows the same track. Emperor, this is beyond your plodding white science. Do not attempt to fathom what you cannot comprehend."

"Let me try;" suggested Remo.

Smith handed over the katana.

Remo looked over the blade hilt.

"Feels pretty solid to me," said Remo, hefting it.

Chiun bustled up, saying, "Therefore, it is not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That I am correct and you are not."

"Who lost the ronin in the cornfield?"

And while they were arguing, Remo squeezed the hilt and the end popped open like a flashlight.

Instinct caused Remo to release the hilt. Both he and Chiun flew to opposite sides of the room before the blade struck the floor. It bounced, and out from the open hilt spilled a train of short yellow cylinders.

Smith was coming around from behind his desk as Remo and Chiun approached the fallen blade with caution.

Smith picked up one of the cylinders. "A battery," he said.

"What make?"

Smith blinked. "I cannot read it."

Chiun took it from Smith hands. "Japanese! I was right! Look, Smith, it is Japanese."

"What is the brand name?"

"Who cares? It is Japanese. That is all that matters."

"I would like to know the brand name, please."

Chiun read the label.

"Gomi."

Returning to his desk, Smith got his computer up and running.

"What are you doing?"

"Researching the Gomi brand name."

"What good will that do?" asked Remo.

"The power required to enable that blade to defy scientific law is not likely to be something one purchases off the shelf. These batteries are specially made."

"For katanas?"

Smith nodded. "For katanas."

A minute later Smith said, "Gomi is the industrial brand name for Gomi products, and the brands Gomi and Hideo are connected to Nishitsu."

"Hideo was the name of the dozing yellow bull of Mystic," Chiun crowed.

"He means the bulldozer that was parked on the tracks at Mystic," explained Remo.

"Remo," Smith said slowly. "Has it occurred to you that everything we have seen so far can be explained by the technology we know to have been pioneered by the Nishitsu Industrial Electrical Corporation?"

"Yeah, it has. But this guy isn't the Krahseevah."

"Do not speak that hateful name," said Chiun.

"We have twice before dealt with a foreign spy who was sent to this country to pilfer industrial and military secrets."

"Tell me about it. But that was a Russian kleptomaniac, tricked out in an electronic suit that gave him the power to walk through walls. He was a thief, but he never hurt anyone. Besides, he's dead as far as we know."

"What we know is very little. But the electronic garment he wore was designed by Nishitsu Osaka. And if they built one, they could duplicate it."

"The only time the Nishitsu name has come up in this was when the Southern Pacific train hit a Nishitsu Ninja," Remo pointed out.

Chiun smiled broadly. "It all now makes supreme sense."

"It does?" Remo and Smith said together.

"Yes. Emperor, your rails are under attack by the scheming Japanese. It is obviously part of a plot to humble your mighty nation."

Remo looked at Chiun with a vague, incredulous expression. "What happened to the finger-flicking ghost ronin?" he blurted.

Chiun composed his face into bland lines. "Do not be absurd, Remo. Whoever heard of a ghost whose sword required batteries?"

"I'll let that pass because I like clinging to my sanity. So answer me this-how does wrecking our railroads bring the U.S. to its knees?" Remo wanted to know.

"That is so obvious I will not deign to answer it," Chiun sniffed, presenting his back to Remo.

Remo and Smith exchanged glances.

"Actually it's as good a theory as we have right now," Remo admitted.

Chiun beamed. They were learning wisdom. It was almost enough to take his mind off his missing fingernail.

Smith was opening the first katana when his computer beeped.

He went to it. Remo came around when he saw the color of Smith's face go from light gray to ghost white.

"Another derailment?"

"Yes. A Conrail freight and an Amtrak passenger train. In Maryland."

"Anyone hurt?"

"Unknown at this time. Strange. This is very strange."

"What's strange?"

"This accident has happened before. Exactly this way." Smith swallowed. "And it was one of the worst in Amtrak history."

Chapter 21

Cora Lee Beall would never forget the sound as long as she lived.

That long scream of metal that preceded the dull crump of impact, followed by the booming cannonade of passenger coaches slamming into a suddenly stopped engine. Then an awful silence.

And after the silence, the horrible moans and screams of the injured rose up from the settling dust like fresh-made ghosts discovering their fates.

It had happened at her backyard right here in Essex, Maryland.

Cora Lee had been unloading her washing machine. The sound yanked her out of that household chore like a bluefin tuna pulled out of the Chesapeake Bay.

When she emerged from her house, she saw the coaches lying on their sides, piled and jammed together like foolish toys in her backyard. Big as they were, they reminded her of little toys.

One had skidded on its side, scalping the lawn and crushing her clothesline flat. The same clothesline she would have been standing at in another minute or two. Another coach lay open, as if an old-fashioned claw can opener had been taken to it, spilling its precious cargo.

It was a day and an experience Cora Lee would never forget and hoped never to witness again. The sound was what stayed with her. Not so much the blood and the torn of limb. After things got back to normal, in the first of the nights without sleep, Cora Lee heard those sounds again and again in her mind and ultimately came to the sorrowful conclusion they had cut her life exactly in half. After that first long, piercing scream of steel wheels on steel rail, her life was never again the same.

That was back in January 1987. Almost ten long years ago now. How the time had flown. Gradually the gouged earth softened, and the scars were healed over by the seasonal rains. New grass grew. Cora Lee got herself a brand-new washer-dryer stack, never again to air out her laundry in the backwash of the Colonial. She finally got to the point where she could look at the passing trains and not flinch.

True normalcy never did quite come back into her life, but the years took care of the worst of it.

So on a July day when Cora Lee was lounging on a redwood chair as the day's wash tumbled in the dryer, sipping a mint Julep and looking out over the rail bed, the last thing she expected on earth was to hear a long, familiar scream of steel under stress.

Cora Lee dropped her drink and sat frozen. Before, she had only heard the disaster. This time she saw it happen with her own eyes.

The Colonial came shrieking by, steel wheels spitting sparks. She knew what a hotbox was. When a moving wheel-set overheated, it would spark and begin to fly apart. This was no hotbox. Every wheel was in agony. The Colonial looked more like a groundskimming comet than a train. The wheels were locked, sliding not rolling. She knew enough about trains to know the air brakes had been applied. Hard and fast.

Her stricken gaze went to the engine, and her heart jumped and froze even as her body sat paralyzed.

Coming down the line on the same northbound track was a lone blue Conrail freight engine.

"This can't be happening," she said. Then she screamed it.

"This can't be happening. Oh, dear Lord!"

But it was. Exactly like 1987, when the Colonial slammed into a Conrail engine that shouldn't have been there, and sixteen had died.

The sounds that followed might have been played by the tape recorder of her memory and pumped out through a quadrophonic sound system.

The long scream of steel ended in a dull, ugly crump. Then like steel thunder the coaches slammed together and flung themselves about.

"Oh, Lord, this is the end of me," Cora Lee said just before the flying fragment of broken rail smashed her apart like a cotton sack filled with so much loose meat.

MELVIS CUPPER'S BEEPER went off within fifteen minutes of the derailment at Essex.

He was at the Omaha airport bar, knocking back frosty Coors, lamenting the wretched unfairness of life and improvising old railroad choruses as the spirit moved him.

Oh, her eyes were Conrail blue, She wore a Casey Jones cap. But she lusted after maglev speed. Which everyone knows is crap. So now I'm off my feeeeeed.

On that high note, the pager beeped.

"Oh, hell," Melvis said, shutting off his pager and seeking out a pay phone.

His supervisor was direct. "Got another one for you, Cupper."

Melvis groaned. "Where is it this time?"

"Essex, Maryland. Colonial slammed into a wrong-way Conrail diesel."

"Hell, Sam. You soused?"

"You're the one slurring his s's, Mel."

"I may be drunk as a boiled owl, but even I can remember through the haze that Essex, Maryland, was the site of that hellacious wreck back in '87. Colonial plowed into a Conrail humper then, too. Conrail hogger was on drugs."

"You always say that."

"That time it was true. He ran a signal he shouldn't, confessed and got his ass suspended for life."

"Damn. I remember it now. You're right. That's downright weird."

"Weird or not, I'm on my dang way," said Melvis, hanging up. It took him six tries. He kept missing the switch hook.

"Damn Jap phone," he muttered, handing the receiver to a bewildered child.

AN NTSB HELICOPTER was waiting for Melvis at the Baltimore-Washington international airport. He was on-site thirty minutes later.

"Don't tell me that's one of them new Genesis II engines," he moaned as the chopper was settling.

"What's that?" the pilot asked.

"Never dang mind," Melvis said, slapping on his Stetson and ducking out of the winding aircraft.

The on-site Amtrak director of operations shook his hand and said, "We're still processing bodies here."

Melvis said, "I aim to stay outta your way. Just want to get a preliminary gander at the point of impact."

The man pointed the way and rushed off.

Melvis walked down, picking his way carefully. He almost tripped over the bottom half of a leg that lay in his path. It was naked except for an argyle sock with a hole big enough to allow one cold toe to poke out.

"That boy shoulda listened to his mama about keeping up his socks," Melvis muttered, clapping his Stetson over his big chest out of respect for the dead and dismembered, which were plentiful.

The train cars had performed every acrobatic stunt from flying sideways to gouging their wheels into trackside ballast, Melvis saw as he passed the mangled mess.

The compacted engines were as bad as in Nebraska. The monocoque body of the Genesis had gotten the worst of the deal. There was a joke in the industry that the Genesis looked like the box the real locomotive had come in. Now it looked like the box thrown out after Christmas Day.

The Conrail freight engine was an SD50 diesel. By some freak it had bounced back from the point of impact.

Melvis decided he should check out the Conrail cab, in case he had another inconvenient headless engineer on his hands.

Climbing up the tangle of blue steel that had been the access ladder, he heard voices, paused and muttered, "Naw. Couldn't be."

A wrinkled ivory face peered out at him through the shattered glass of the gaping nose door. "You are too late," said Chiun.

"Hidy, old-timer," Melvis said with more enthusiasm than he actually felt. "Hell of a way to run a railroad, don't you think?"

Chiun withdrew so Melvis could step in. Remo was there with him, looking unhappy-which seemed to be his natural condition.

"You boys are sure tramplin' up my patch."

"We got here first," Remo remarked.

"You did, at that. What you find-anything?"

"No engineer. No blood."

"So I see," said Melvis. "Well, let me show you how we do things at the NTSB. Follow me down into the necessary."

Melvis led them down into the toilet compartment, where he lifted the seat and sniffed expertly. "Crapper here ain't been used recently," he pronounced. "Not in at least two hours."

Returning to the console, Melvis checked the controls. What he saw bothered the fool out of him.

"Damn controls are set for highballin'. The engineer would have had to jump clear to escape. But if he had, he would surely have splattered his dumb ass all over the trackage. Guess we walk the dang tracks," he said.

"You sniff a toilet and look over some dials and that's your conclusion?" said Remo.

"That," said Melvis, "is why I get the buck buckaroos. C'mon."

They walked the track. A mile, two, then three.

"I see no body," Chiun sniffed.

"This is powerful strange," Melvis admitted.

"Why's that?" asked Remo.

"Why's that, you say? Those freight controls have an interrupter on them. If the engineer doesn't respond to a beep every forty-five seconds by resettin' a switch, the air brakes will clamp down and stop her cold. Fifty seconds at an estimated eighty miles per means if he didn't jump clear by this point, he didn't jump clear. Period."

"Maybe it was radio controlled," Remo said.

"It's possible. Controls were set. But you're single-footin' down a trail I don't care to follow-if you take my meanin'. "

"We are doing this incorrectly," said Chiun.

"How's that, old-timer?"

"We are looking for a dead engineer when we should be looking for a live Japanese."

"Lordy, don't say that! Not out loud. I took a vow of silence I wouldn't breathe a word about what happened up there in Nebraska. Don't make me go back on my solemn word."

"So we're just going to put this one down as drugs?" Remo said.

"This? No, not this little shivaree. This is the second time that has happened here. That spells bad track or maybe a chronic switching or signal problem. Now, if you fellers will excuse me, I done all I can until they get all the dead ones cleared away. I'm gonna find me a nice clean motel and grab me some shut-eye. I'm beat down lower than a flapjack."

WATCHING MELVIS walk away, Remo growled, "Remind me to tell Smith to have Melvis's ticket punched."

When Chiun said nothing, Remo looked around. The Master of Sinanju was sniffing the still air.

"What's up?" Remo asked.

"Use your nose as I do, lazy one."

Remo tasted the air.

"Do you smell it?" asked Chiun.

"What?"

"The foul, reeking odor."

"All I smell is corn," Remo said.

"This is not a place where corn grows."

"You saying our samurai is lurking in the brush?"

"We will follow the scent and see with our own noses," said Chiun, taking off.

Sighing, Remo followed. A mile up the line the scent trail drifted inland. Chiun changed direction, eyes switching and sweeping, face determined.

The ground was flat and undisturbed. After a while a pair of footprints suddenly appeared and continued along. They were heelless. Remo recognized them. They were identical to the tracks found near the Mystic and Texarkana wrecks.

"Unless somebody parachuted down and walked off with his chute, I think we have something here," Remo muttered.

Farther along, in a copse of spreading hickory trees, the footsteps stopped. The ground was disturbed in a circle, then the tracks continued. But they had changed. They became Western shoes, with deep heels. Where the tracks changed character, the ground was well-scuffed and full of indentations.

"What are these marks?" Remo wondered aloud.

"This is where the ronin removed his armor," said Chiun. "Look, the unmistakable imprint of a do."

"If you say it's a do. I don't know what a do is."

"You would call it a cuirass."

"I probably would if I knew what that was."

"The do is the breastplate of the ronin."

Chiun set his sandaled feet into the new tracks. They were the same size.

Nodding, Chiun continued, saying, "Come, slow one."

"I'm not the one nursing a missing fingernail."

At that, Chiun swirled and blazed his eyes at Remo. "You insult me!"

"No, just pointing out that I'm a full Master, not a spear-carrier. How about a little respect?"

"When we again encounter the ronin, it will be your duty to remove your finger and fling it in his face."

"I'll think about it," said Remo.

They walked on. Chiun folded his hands into his kimono sleeves. "A true Master would not hesitate," he sniffed.

"How about I just give him the fickle finger of fate instead?" Remo undertoned.

The track stopped at a busy highway. They looked up, then down. There was a Burger Triumph and a Taco Hell in one direction. The other was deserted except for a sign that said Chesapeake Hotel.

"We will try there," said Chiun.

"What would a ghost ronin be doing in a hotel?"

"Awaiting his doom," said Chiun, who picked up his skirts and strode toward the motel.

Remo followed, thinking he had never seen Chiun so determined before.

THE DESK CLERK at the hotel was extremely accommodating when Chiun asked for the room number of his Japanese friend, whose name slipped him at the moment.

"Mr. Batsuka is in his room. Three-C."

"Did he say Batsucker?" asked Remo as they waited for the elevator.

"Batsuka. "

"That a first name or a last name?"

"We will wring the answer from the wretch's very lips before we grind his skull to powder," Chiun vowed.

"Don't forget we need to wring some explanations for Smith before the grinding begins."

"If I become carried away in my anger, Remo, I will count on you to restrain me until the all-important answers are ours."

The elevator let them off on the third floor. Room 3-C was to their immediate right, down a red-carpeted hall.

Standing outside the door, they put their cars to it.

"I hear CNN," said Remo.

"And I hear a human heartbeat I have heard before," said Chiun.

"Knock or kick?"

Chiun considered, his facial wrinkles quivering. "We must not alarm him, lest he commit seppuku."

"Knock it is." Remo knocked. "Maintenance! Gotta look at your john!"

His ear to the door, Chiun listened. "He is ignoring us," he whispered.

"Bad move on his part," said Remo, knocking again. "Maintenance man!"

Chiun withdrew and his eyes narrowed. "Await me."

Then he disappeared around the corner.

Remo figured Chiun was going to the balcony to cover that escape route. But when the hotel fire alarm started buzzing, he wasn't sure what to do at first.

Chiun flashed around the corner, eyes excited, demanding, "Has he emerged?"

"No. And don't tell me you threw the alarm!"

"It will flush him out."

It didn't. Instead, other doors flew open, including one that disgorged Melvis Cupper, wearing his NTSB Stetson and boxer shorts decorated with longhorn skulls.

"What's doin'?" he asked sleepily.

Chiun shushed him. He placed his ear to the door panel, listening. His face broke apart in shock.

"He has escaped! " he squeaked. "I hear no heartbeat."

Remo slammed the door with his palm, and it jumped off its hinges with such force it rebounded into the hall. Chiun plucked Melvis out of its path just in time. Remo ducked into the room, moving low in case a sword ambush waited him.

He found instead an empty room. The TV was on, showing coverage of the derailment less than a mile away. On the bed sat a heavy stainless-steel box with carrying straps and assorted switches and buttons on top. It was half in and half out of a black leather bag Remo recognized immediately.

It was the ronin's head bag.

On the end table the telephone was off the hook.

A check of the bathroom and closets showed them to be empty. There was no connecting door to adjoining rooms.

"I'm getting a flash of deja vu here," Remo said. He went to the telephone, scooping it up.

"Hello?" he said.

He got a rush of static, indicating an open line.

"Anybody there?"

"Try moshi moshi, " hissed Chiun.

"Moshi moshi," said Remo into the receiver.

The static hissed on. Remo hung up.

"I'll be switched," said Melvis, hefting the steel box on the bed. "If this ain't one of them newfangled RC units. See? It's got that little silver ball on the transmit-power switch just like that fickle little filly said."

Chiun floated up, took one look and said, "Behold, Remo. It says Nishitsu."

"Damn Japs will be making our engines before you know it," muttered Melvis.

Going to the telephone, Chiun picked up the receiver and hit Redial.

The phone started ringing.

When the other end lifted, a thin voice said, "Nishitsu."

Remo's and Chiun's eyes met.

Chiun hissed a question in Japanese, and the voice challenged him in the same language. An argument ensued, at the end of which the Master of Sinanju hung up, ripped the telephone from its wall socket and flung it through the glass balcony door and into the pool, where it caused a fat man to roll off his inflatable sea horse.

"Nice going, Little Father," Remo complained. "Now they know we're on to them."

"The better to strike fear into their craven hearts," spit Chiun.

"Let's find out where our ronin ended up."

BACK IN THE LOBBY the desk clerk wasn't as cooperative as before.

"We need the phone charges for 3-C," he said.

"Can't you see I have my hands full?" said the distraught clerk, who was explaining to the unhappy hotel guests that the commotion was only a false alarm.

Remo placed one hand on his shoulder and took his tie in the other. "Show you a trick."

The tie became a blur, and when Remo stepped back, the clerk's hands were dangling just beneath his Adam's apple, held together by a tight paisley knot that had been his tie.

The clerk tried to extricate himself. The harder he pulled, the redder his face became. When it shaded toward purple, he realized he was strangling himself and stopped. The purple went away, replaced by a helpless expression.

"Room charges," Remo repeated. "Three-C."

"Uggg," the clerk said, pointing with both hands to an open office door where a freckled redhead chewed gum at a switchboard.

"Much obliged," said Melvis, tipping his hat.

The hotel operator provided the last number dialed and told them Mr. Batsuka had checked in only a few hours before.

"Got a first name?"

"Furio."

"Thanks," said Remo.

From a lobby pay phone Remo called Harold Smith.

"Smitty. Pull up a number for me."

"Go ahead, Remo."

Remo read off the number.

A moment later Smith said, "It is the number of a Nishitsu car dealership in Eerie, Pennsylvania."

"Damn. Our phantom ronin was here. Looks like he used a radio-controlled transmitter to run the Conrail engine onto the Amtrak track. The same transmitter he used to wreck the California Zephyr, from the looks of things. All he had to do was find the right frequency and he was in business."

Smith said nothing to that.

"He left the transmitter behind, though. It says Nishitsu on it. We had him cornered in a hotel room, but when we broke in, all we found was an off-the-hook phone. But we got a name. Furio Batsuka."

"That is very interesting, Remo. The strands are coming together to form a pattern."

"Not one I recognize. None of this makes sense."

"I have just completed a deep background check. Nishitsu is the parent corporation of the Gomi and Hideo brands."

Remo whistled. "What do you know?"

"Nishitsu technology explains everything we have encountered thus far. We know that the Krahseevah, in his dematerialized atomic state, had the power to transmit himself through telephone lines. That is how he eluded you and Chiun."

"That much I figured out. But what's the point? Why are they attacking our rail system?"

"I know," squeaked Chiun.

Remo looked at him.

"To destroy a nation's roads is the same as sucking the blood from its veins. It was so with Rome. It is so here in the new Rome. We must save our gracious trains from the foreign brigands."

"Railroads aren't that important anymore, Little Father."

"Philistine. Antirailer. "

Into the phone Remo said, "You catch that?"

"Never mind. Remo, I have been analyzing my files over the last hour. Recall that there has been a lull in rail accidents over the last three months."

"If you say so."

"Suddenly events have been happening at an accelerated rate, beginning with the Texarkana disaster."

"I'm with you so far," Remo said.

"In almost every recent incident, the engines involved have been new, state-of-the-art vehicles." Smith paused. "Someone is attempting to discredit U.S. motive-power units."

"Couldn't it be just coincidence? I mean, this guy is hitting everything that runs on rails. He's bound to topple a few new engines."

"A pause, and then an accelerated program. The pause was to regroup and restrategize. Recall that these derailments have been commonplace for three years now."

"Yeah."

"Obviously the initial plan was not working. The mind behind this has shifted tactics. The plot is approaching a crescendo."

"So what's the point?"

"I wish I knew," Smith said helplessly. "But we cannot stand by and chase derailments. We must take the initiative."

"None of this would have happened had the foolish white race not abandoned steam," said Chiun loud enough for all to hear.

"I'll drink to that," said Melvis from the other side of the lobby.

"Remo, book a room in that hotel and await instructions," said Smith.

"If you say so," Remo said reluctantly.

Hanging up, Remo faced the Master of Sinanju. "It's a new ball game. We're dealing with a second-generation Krahseevah. Smitty says so."

"He is still a ronin, " Chiun returned. "And he is very dangerous."

"No argument there. But we're dealing with a guy in an electronic samurai suit. The House isn't haunted."

Chiun raised his nailless index finger. "If you fail to avenge this Japanese insult, I will haunt the House forever."

Chapter 22

Harold Smith was sorting files when his system beeped.

Hitting a key, he got a pop-up window and an AP news-wire report.

There was a derailment in Eerie, Pennsylvania, the town where the enemy ronin had presumably teleported himself. A Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circus train had gone off the tracks approaching Eerie.

Smith's file beeped again as he read the report. A flashing message in one corner of the screen said, "Match found."

Smith hadn't asked for a match, so he was frowning as he instructed the computer to pull it up.

What he read made him gasp.

The wreck in Eerie was identical in every particular to the one that had cost a half-dozen lives in Lakeland, Florida, two years before. It, too, had involved a circus train.

"The pattern is changing again," Smith muttered under his breath.

It was clear that it was. The demolished engine was an ordinary GE Dash-8. Not new. Not new at all.

Thirty minutes later another AP report popped up, and Smith knew without being told by the system that it would be a match.

It was.

The Lakeshore Limited had jumped the track near Batavia, New York. Casualty reports were yet to filter out. But his system matched it to an identical event two summers previously, where 125 people had been injured.

"He is re-creating some of the most catastrophic disasters in recent rail history," Smith blurted. "But why?"

A moment later Smith forgot all about the why. He had a new angle to pursue.

Frantically inputting commands, he commanded his system to list all of the significant rail disasters of the past three years, in order of loss of life and property damage.

The list was not long. But the first entry was headed, "Bayou Canot."

Smith remembered it well. September 22, 1993. The Sunset Limited was barreling south to Florida through Alabama bayou country. A towboat had taken a wrong turn and struck a trestle bridge, weakening it. When the Sunset Limited went over the bridge, three lead engines and four trailing Heritage cars tumbled into the water. Forty-seven people drowned. That one event doubled the total number of fatalities in Amtrak history overnight. To this day it remained the most deadly Amtrak accident ever.

Suddenly Smith doubted the official NTSB explanation. Odds were Bayou Canot was about to be repeated.

Dialing the Maryland hotel, Smith reached Remo. "Remo. Here are your instructions. Go to Mobile, Alabama. Find the railroad bridge over Bayou Canot." Smith spelled it. "Then guard that bridge from sabotage. I have reason to believe the ronin will attack it."

"On our way," said Remo.

Hanging up, Smith returned to his computer. There was a lot to do, and he had relatively little hard data.

But he did have a name: Furio Batsuka.

Smith began a search of his data base first. It was unlikely to be legitimate, but the possibility had to be factored out first.

Smith was surprised when the global search came up positive. His gray eyes scanned the scrolling blocks of amber text. His expectant expression soon turned sour: "Seattle Mariners slugger Furio Batsuka strikes out at All-Star Game."

Smith didn't bother to read the rest.

"The name is an obvious alias," he said unhappily.

Hunching his shoulders, Harold Smith tried attacking the problem from another angle. Dead ends were to be expected when dealing with industrial-espionage operations, as this assuredly was.

GETTING TO BAYOU CANOT involved a car ride and then renting a motorboat. It was nearly dusk by the time Remo and Chiun got to the boat leg of the trip.

They were puttering down the sluggish river, Chiun standing in the stern like a watchful figurehead while Remo piloted the craft. A mist was rising from the water. The air was moist and humid. And behind them, a lonesome alligator was following lazily in their wake.

When they found the great steel trestle, it was still standing.

"Looks okay to me," Remo said. "Maybe we're in time."

Chiun said nothing. He was waving to the alligator as it followed them to shore with lazy swishes of its tail.

The craft beached on a bank, and Remo hopped out to secure it. Chiun waited patiently in the stern for Remo to pull the boat nearly out of the water. Only then did he deign to step off onto dry land.

The alligator decided to join them.

"Better watch the lizard, Little Father," Remo cautioned.

"Better that the lizard watch me," said Chiun, turning to face the waddling saurian.

The alligator crawled out on his stubby legs and made a determined lunge for Chiun. Chiun watched him approach, his hazel eyes curious.

"This is an inferior specimen."

"Compared to what?" said Remo, eyeing the long, eerie span over their heads.

"The royal crocodiles of Upper Egypt!'

"If he gets hold of your ankle, you'll think differently."

That seemed to be the alligator's intent. He kept coming. Chiun let him get within a snout's length. Abruptly the alligator scissored open his jaws and, with a furious forward convulsion, snapped them shut.

If an alligator could show surprise, this one did.

Its lizardy eyes were gawking at the spot where Chiun stood. There was no Chiun. It whipsawed its long head. Right, then left.

And standing serenely on the creature's pebbled back, the Master of Sinanju reached forward to tap the gator on the top of its knobby brown head.

"Yoo-hoo," Chiun taunted. "Here I am."

The gator threshed. Its tail whipped back. Its jaws snapped around like a dog trying to bite its own tail. It bucked. It squirmed. It let out a rare alligator roar.

But the Master of Sinanju rode it as calmly as if it were a lumpy log, not a leathery, muscular eating machine.

"Chiun, will you stop teasing that gator?" Remo warned. "We have work to do."

"I am teasing no one. He is trying to eat me."

"Stop giving him reason to think he can."

And since it was a reasonable request, the Master of Sinanju stepped forward, slamming the gator's fanged jaws shut, simultaneously mushing its head down into the spongy riverbank.

The gator's entire body convulsed, tail slamming in anger, then determination, finally in unmistakable terror as it realized it was utterly powerless to unseat the skirted annoyance on its back.

Chiun waited for the gator to settle down. It lay flat, panting like a flattened, exhausted dog. Calmly, with a sandaled toe, the Master of Sinanju nudged the gator's ribs until it rolled over once, it legs kicking out helpless as broken chicken wings.

"Behold, Remo. A trick you do not know."

Remo ignored the commotion. He was moving through the rank undergrowth, checking the bridge supports.

So Chiun, using only his toe, nudged the helpless alligator over and over like a log, maintaining his balance with nimble steps, until the saurian rolled into the oily bayou waters with a defeated splash.

Chiun stepped off at the last possible moment.

"Good riddance to you, sandworm," squeaked Chiun.

The gator was only too eager to go away. It swam off, tired of tail and discouraged of spirit.

Chiun joined Remo, who was testing the trestle supports with his hands.

"They're solid. Let's go up."

They climbed because it was the easiest way up.

Up on the span, the tracks looked stable. They walked them to make sure. By this time night was upon the bayou. Below, the turbid waters muttered, dark and oily.

"Wonder why Smitty thinks this bridge will be hit?" Remo said.

"It only matters that he does," said Chiun.

"I don't like being way out in the boonies, out of touch, in case something happens somewhere else."

"What could happen? Smith's infallible oracles have whispered secrets to him, and we must all obey."

"Let's just hope we're on ground zero. It could be a long night."

HAROLD SMITH WAS TRYING to follow an audit trail through cyberspace.

The trouble was, trains kept crashing.

He had reasoned that the enemy was moving through the nation's telephone lines in order to attack its rail system. It was a logical deduction. Computerized airline-booking files showed no ticketed Japanese-surnamed passenger moving between the cities in question by air. Rail was too slow. As were cars.

Therefore, the Nishitsu ronin was traveling by fiber-optic cable, like a human fax. It had been the mystifying modus operandi of the Krahseevah before he had attempted to fax himself to Nishitsu headquarters in Osaka, Japan, in order to escape Remo and Chiun about three years before.

Nothing more had been heard of him since then. Smith had assumed that the Krahseevah-the name was Russian for "beautiful," which definitely did not fit the faceless white coverall garment he wore-had been unable to transmit himself via orbiting communications satellites as he did through fiber-optic cable. There was no reason to think otherwise. This new opponent's MO was different. He was engaged in acts of sabotage, not theft. And he displayed a callous disregard for human life, while the Krahseevah had never been known to harm anyone.

This was a different foe with a different agenda.

The audit trail assumed a telephone credit card was being used by the ronin to travel around. Smith was hunting for such a card.

As all over America new crashes, derailments and rail accidents were being reported, Smith input these new destinations into his exploding data base. Soon, he knew, something would bubble up. With luck only one or two phone cards were involved. The more they were used, the sooner the CURE system would make connections.

The trouble was, the longer it took, the more catastrophes the U.S. rail system suffered.

As he waited, the system beeped again.

This time it was in Boise, Idaho. Another Amtrak crash. The Pioneer had derailed in Boise on that exact same spot back in 1993. And Smith had a sudden flash of understanding.

The ronin was duplicating past accidents because time was running out, and it was easier to reengineer a successful derailment than create one anew.

Running out for what? Smith wondered.

REMO HEARD the strange sound long after darkness had fallen.

"What's that?"

"I do not know," said Chiun, head lifting.

As they listened, it became a monotonous metallic creaking, like slow gears going through a laborious cycle. An engine muttered.

Reaching in a back pocket, Remo pulled out an Amtrak schedule he had grabbed at the car-rental agency.

"According to this, the Sunset Limited isn't due for another hour."

Chiun cocked an ear. "It does not sound like a train, but a devil wagon."

"What's a devil wagon?"

"In the days of the renowned Kyong-Ji Line, a railroad man would ride before the locomotive on a wagon he propelled by pumping a seesaw handle. This was to examine the track to insure the way was secure. Also to lure lurking bandits to their doom."

"You had bandits on the Kyong-Ji?"

"Until the Master of that time, my father, ridded the countryside of these brigands-in return for a private coach."

"No gold?"

"The coach was filled with gold. Shame on you, Remo. It goes without saying."

"Let's see what it is."

BILLY REX DAUGHTERS WAS getting worried. Here it was after dark, and he had another ten miles of cable to lay.

The bulldozer creaked beside the rails at a sedate walking pace, its tracks grumbling as the giant spool paid out fiberoptic cable. It came out of the spool and followed the curve of the specialized frontmounted plow, falling flat into the trench as it was excavated. Later a work crew would tamp it down.

It was the damnedest thing, he thought, not for the first time. Laying the information highway of the twenty-first century on twentieth-century rail with a plow not much different from what men first used to till the soil back in the Stone Age.

But there it was.

And here he was. And if Billy Rex didn't get a move on, the Sunset Limited was going to catch him and his dozer on the Bayou Canot bridge and mash man and machine into the trackage like a discarded can of pop.

As he approached the great span, the mists rising from the sluggish waters below made him think of the spirits of the dead who had died in the diesel-soaked, alligator-infested waters below. Billy Rex slowed. There had been a heavy fog the night the Limited went into the bayou. It smothered the span so that the hapless engineer thought he was running over solid rail right up until the moment he rode his diesel into oblivion.

Trouble was, slowing down encouraged the damn mosquitoes. They began swarming.

THE TWO FIGURES materialized on either side of the right-of-way like ghosts from the Bayou Canot incident.

"Hold!" one said. He was a strange one, he was. Old as the hills and dressed for a Chinese square dance.

The other was a regular fellow. Lean as bamboo, with wrists like railroad ties. Neither exactly looked like track men. But they looked harmless enough.

Oddly enough, the mosquitoes didn't seem to have an appetite for them. They stayed off a ways, like careful moths shrinking from a flame.

"Can't stop," he called ahead in his friendliest voice as he approached the pair. "Got a schedule to make."

The tall, skinny one spoke up. "Is that a plow?" Yep.

"Kinda late in the year for clearing snow."

"Or early," Billy Rex returned sociably.

They were walking alongside him now. Not threatening, just interested. Billy Rex began to relax.

"What is this?" asked the little guy, pointing at the serpentine cable dropping into the fresh-turned earth.

"Fiber-optic cable. We're laying the information highway."

"Along railroad track?" the skinny one blurted.

"Hell, phone lines have been strung along the right-of-way and buried beside it for years and years. This here is just the latest wrinkle."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, a body learns something new every day, doesn't he?"

They were approaching the bridge now. The mosquitoes were really biting now. If the engineers were on the money, the cable would run out about now.

It did. The last plopped into the trench, for later splicing. Billy Rex hit the lever that raised the plow. Then he sent his machine up onto the tracks, jockeyed it true and prepared to cross the bridge as fast as reasonable.

"I wouldn't follow me any farther," he said, slapping at his arms. "Ain't safe."

Suddenly there was a business card in his face. He couldn't read it too well by moonlight, but the skinny guy's voice said, "Remo Bell, FCC," in a voice so self-assured, Billy Rex naturally accepted it. "Pull over."

"This is rail I'm on, not blacktop. I can't pull over."

"Then stop this vehicle or face the consequences," said the squeaky voice of the little old Asian.

"What consequences?" Billy Rex naturally asked.

That's when the bulldozer stopped. Dead. Billy Rex yanked out a flashlight to see what it had hit.

The tracks were clear, except for the leather shoe. It had arrested the plow somehow. Inside the shoe was the foot of the skinny guy from the FCC.

Deciding to be sociable, Billy Rex killed the engine.

"What can I do for you fellas?"

"Spot check."

"Check away."

They looked over his cable, peered under his vehicle as if looking for a bomb, checked his ID and for some reason looked real hard at the bulldozer manufacturer's plate before saying, "Okay, you can go now."

"Much obliged."

"You are very wise to buy American," the Asian squeaked.

Then they watched him start up and negotiate the bridge, ponderous tracks gripping steel rail it wasn't designed for.

The mosquitoes followed, as mosquitoes would. If any malingered to sample the two odd ones Billy Rex left behind, it wasn't noticeable.

AFTER THE BULLDOZER was lost in the darkness, Remo turned to Chiun and said, "I think I know what they're after now."

"And you are wrong," Chiun sniffed.

"I didn't say what I was thinking yet."

"You are wrong, whatever you are thinking."

"We'll see about that." Remo looked up at the moon, whose position in the sky verified what his internal clock was telling him. The Sunset Limited was due before long.

They retreated into the undergrowth to watch the bridge for trouble. The night was full of mosquitoes. But all avoided them as if their pores exhaled a natural insecticide, which was closer to the truth than not.

HAROLD SMITH WAS reading the first AP bulletins of the derailment of Amtrak's City of New Orleans at Poplarville, Mississippi, when the link-analysis program began reporting results.

There were three active phone cards.

One was issued to an Akira Kurosawa. The second to a Seiji Ozawa. And the third to Furio Batsuka.

A horrible thought crossed his mind. What if there was more than one ronin?

Double-checking the times of each accident, Smith decided not. Multiple saboteurs would not explain the short intervals or the lack of simultaneous crashes.

Smith then ran a check on the first name. Akira Kurosawa came up as a famous Japanese director of samurai movies. Seiji Ozawa was the Japanese-American conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Smith's brow furrowed distastefully at the dual significance of the word conductor. He detested opponents with humor.

The news wires were humming now. The multiple accidents were becoming hourly bulletins. And all were Amtrak trains. Another shift in tactics. The reasoning was self-evident. Derailed passenger trains meant significant loss of life compared to freight accidents: Amtrak was not hauling cabbages.

"Someone is deliberately bringing enormous pressure to bear on the U.S. rail system, both materially and politically," Smith said aloud.

The why remained elusive.

While his search programs trolled the net for more incidents, Smith began reviewing the state of the U.S. rail system.

For three years accidents had been an unrelenting plague.