The Color of Fear

Destroyer 99: The Color of Fear

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

PROLOGUE

No history book ever recorded it, but the first shot of the Franco-American Conflict of 1995 was fired on a Civil War battlefield outside the city limits of Petersburg, in Virginia.

This time civil war would escalate beyond the shores of the continental United States.

Before it was all over, two long-standing allies would launch punishment raids upon one another's most sacred institutions in a new kind of war, one never before witnessed in human history.

And two men, one famous and one obscure, both of whom the world believed long dead, would collide in mortal combat.

All because Rod Cheatwood misplaced his TV remote control.

History never recorded that fact, either.

Chapter 1

If Colonel Lester "Rip" Hazard had known as he sped down the Richmond-Virginia Turnpike toward Petersburg that before the sun again rose over his beloved Old Dominion he was destined to fall in what history would call the Second Battle of the Crater, he would have driven even faster.

That was the kind of man he was. Virginia born and bred, he loved the land of his birth, which to Lester "Rip" Hazard meant Virginia first and the good ole U.S.A. second.

It was not that Hazard was no patriot. He had served in Panama and again in the Gulf War. He had fought for his country and he had killed for it. And when he had returned from Kuwait, whole in body but tormented by a nagging cough that forced him to resign from the Virginia National Guard, he swallowed his bitter disappointment in manful silence and devoted himself to software support. A gentleman of the Old South did not complain, and so he did not. His great-great-grandfather, Harlan Hunter Hazard, had died with both legs blown off and his lifeblood oozing into the dark and bloody loam of the land he had loved, and it was passed down through the years that Captain Harlan Hazard had died dry of eye and bereft of regret while humming "Dixie."

That was during the 1864 Battle of the Crater, soon to be renamed by historians the First Battle of the Crater.

If Colonel Hazard could only know, his eyes would have shone with pride, for he loved his heritage far far more than he loved his life.

Instead, he piloted his silver Lexus at high speed while checking in with the caterers by cellular phone.

"Ah'm running a mite late," he told the caterer's office. "Them eatables been trucked in yet?"

A honeyed voice said, "Yes, Colonel Hazard."

"Right dandy. On account of mah boys and me expect a hard siege on the morrow, and they need full bellies and satiated souls to get them through the coming ordeal."

"According to the invoice," the voice continued, "you are getting hardtack, salt pork and red-eye beans sufficient to feed a party of thirty-five."

"That sounds about right, honey."

"No meat?"

"Mah great-great-grandpappy ate no meat unless you count rancid pork for the last six weeks of his God-fearing life. What was good enough for Grandpappy Hazard is right suitable enough for me and mah boys. Let them Yanks come loaded down with pork and beef. We'll whip 'em good and chase 'em clear back to perdition or California--whichever is furthest from Old Dominion."

"Good luck, Colonel. All of Virginia will be with you tomorrow."

"Amen," said Colonel Rip Hazard, his voice choking up. It was not for nothing that the Richmond News Leader had taken to calling him "the Hope of Virginia."

At the big brown sign that read Petersburg National Battlefield, he pulled off East Washington Street and followed Crater Road past Napoleon cannon batteries and earthen battlements to the rest area he knew so well. It was dark and so easy to imagine the fortifications as they were when newly erected, back when this was Jerusalem Plank Road.

At the parking area Rip Hazard pulled the Lexus in beside a beat-up '77 Chevy Impala that had been painted over a flat Confederate gray, the stars and bars of the Rebel flag covering the battered hood big as life.

That would be Robins's car. A good boy, that Robins. They were all good boys, but by this time tomorrow, God willing, they would have become men, baptized in bloody hand-to-hand combat with a fearsome and implacable foe.

Hurriedly Rip Hazard opened his trunk and removed the thousand-dollar replica Confederate uniform with blue piping and the gold stars of his rank, a three-hundred-dollar forage cap, yellow buck gauntlets and vintage Spencer repeating rifle. Removing his prescription glasses, he replaced them with 1864 coin-silver spectacles and retreated to the woods to change.

More than a change of outfit came over Colonel Hazard as he donned the regalia of his honored forebears. His dreamy blue eyes turned to flint, his soft face hardened and, leaving the raiment of the twentieth century behind, he strode into the piney woods a true son of Grandfather Harlan Hazard.

He felt as if he were walking back through time. Had he fully understood what lay in store for him, Colonel Hazard would have gone to his maker with a glad smile on his face. He loved the America that had given him his freedom, but he yearned for the South of old and, more importantly, for the South that never was, the victorious Confederate States of America led by wise old President Jefferson Davis.

But he knew none of these things. Only that a great battle impended and the first order of business before him was to break the difficult news to his men. Hazard didn't know how they would take the dire tidings. He couldn't imagine what they would say. But if they were gentlemen and patriots, they would buck up and endure as their forebears had.

As he walked, accoutrements jingling, his campaign saber scabbard slapping his lean blue thigh, Colonel Hazard detected the smell of fresh chicory coffee over the tang of salt pork frying.

Camp food. There was nothing like it on God's green footstool.

Then he heard the familiar harmonica strains.

"God damn those damn-fool pups!" Hazard snapped, breaking into a run.

The harmonica strains begat words, and the first sweet lyrics floated through the pines.

The years creep slowly by, Lorena, The snow is on the grass again. The sun's low down the sky, Lorena, The frost gleams where the flowers have been.

"Damn them!" Hazard cursed.

His men were bivouacked beyond the crater itself, in the shadow of Cemetery Ridge. Their too-innocent faces burned in the crackling camp fires.

It was Price who worked the harmonica across his mouth, eyes closed, oblivious to all except the rising voices of his fellow volunteers.

The years creep slowly by, Lorena, I'll not call up their shadowy forms. I'll say to them "lost years sleep on," Sleep on, nor heed life's pelting storms ....

"Turn out! All of you!"

The men jumped to their feet. All except Corporal Price, who sat transported by the strains of his own playing.

Colonel Hazard fell on him like a thunderclap, cuffing the offending instrument from his shocked hands and dragging Price off his stony perch with a strong right arm.

"At attention, you thoughtless cur!" he raged.

"Colonel Hazard! Beggin' your pardon, sir."

"Ah gave you no leave to speak."

Price swallowed. He pulled his fattish body to attention.

"But, sir," another voice quavered, "we were only singing."

Hazard whirled on the speaker. "A song Stonewall himself banned on account its doleful strains set good soldiers hankering for home and hearth. Ah'll have no sloppy sentimentalism in mah ranks. Is that clear to one and all?"

"Yes, sir," a subdued chorus of voices murmured.

"Sing a song Ah care to hear," Hazard snapped.

"Yes, sir!" the men of the Sixth Virginia Recreational Foot shouted in unison.

"That's the kind of refrain suitable for soldiering," Colonel Hazard said, mollified. It cut him deep to upbraid his men so harshly, but war was nigh. Upon the shoulders of the Sixth lay the burden of the future, and there would be no result but total victory if Colonel Rip Hazard had any say in the matter.

"Fetch up some of that coffee and hardtack," he said.

"The hardtack is really hard this time, sir," Price said. "The catering service; went a mite overboard, I fear."

"Then fetch up a pan and we'll soften it up in bacon grease," Hazard snapped.

The order was carried out, a dented tin cup of black coffee was proffered and Colonel Rip Hazard hunkered down with his men to sup.

The sun fell, the shadows grew dreary and at length a full moon rose in the southern sky to bless the hallowed soil on which they had bivouacked. The granite obelisk consecrated to the supreme hero of the Crater, Major General William Mahone, became an eternal candle in the night. Somewhere a screech owl gave warning.

Colonel Rip Hazard stared long into his pan of brown bubbling bacon grease as he softened the hardtack to edible consistency, his thoughts roiling. A difficult day loomed before them. Only he knew how difficult it was to be, Hazard ruminated.

In that, he was sore mistaken. Only God knew how terrible the coming day would be. Not only for the Sixth. But for the Union.

Shadows of night filled the grassy cup of the crater where one of the the worst battles of the Civil War had been contested. Whippoorwills called eerily through the pines.

"Favor us with an air appropriate to the occasion, Mr. Price," Hazard said at length.

Price stood up, his uniform already dirty. Tucking instrument to mouth, he rendered a doleful tune everyone recognized as "My Maryland." Eyebrows shot up until Hazard muttered, "Mr. Price's kin hail from Baltimore originally."

Everyone then shrugged in vague acceptance. After all, Maryland was just as southern as Virginia. The eastern part, at any rate.

When the interminable melody finally wound down, Colonel Hazard cleared his throat and said, "Very good, Mr. Price. Mighty fine playing."

Hazard stood up. The others remained sprawled and hunkered around the simmering camp fires.

"Gentlemen," he began, his voice gathering pride and dignity and a kind of mortal thunder with each syllable, "Ah stand here enduring proud to be a son of Virginia. On this spot, six score and eleven years ago, mah honored great-greatgranddaddy perished for the cause he believed in. This is hallowed ground to me. This is the very soil that nurtured the first American rebel, George Washington, who, had he enjoyed a longer span, Ah firmly believe would have fought for Davis during the great rebellion."

"Amen," a voice murmured.

"Mah granddaddy gave up his last precious drop of blood to consecrate this battlefield during the Siege of Petersburg, and Ah can do no less."

A chorus of murmured assent came.

"Tomorrow our dread foe will march upon this sacred place, intent upon despoiling it."

A low growl like dogs who are cornered arose.

"As sons of our honored fathers, we cannot allow this travesty to come to pass."

"And we won't "

"But we are but thirty-five in mortal number, and the legions even now gathering to annihilate us are many."

"We can outshoot 'em," Price piped up.

Hazard raised a quelling hand.

"Well said. But you men do not know war as Ah know war. You have not stood amid its din, inhaled its bitter smoke, heard comrades and foes alike screaming in pain and crying for their God and their mothers so far away and unheeding. Ah have." His voice cracked. "Ah have seen the elephant, as our forefathers so eloquently put it. Accordingly Ah will not lead you brave and willing boys into dismal defeat."

A rebel yell went up, spooking the screech owl to flight and silencing the whippoorwills.

Hazard smiled. This was the spirit of Dixie. Clearing his throat anew, he pressed on with his odious duty.

"As your commanding officer, Ah have taken measures to ensure that come the morrow we will stand victorious against the hated foe."

Another rebel yell howled forth.

"These measures include certain liberties that may be difficult for true men of the South to endure without complaint." He made his voice metallic. "But endure them without complaint you will, for Ah will have obedience and discipline, and in return for these presents, Ah will give you the final victory over the enemy."

This time the men of the Sixth Virginia Recreational Foot grew silent. They could see the emotion in the colonel's face. It was the face a military man wore in defeat, or in the aftermath of defeat. They listened intently.

"At dawn the Yankees will arrive."

"Damn Yankee devils," a man growled.

"I thought the Yanks weren't due till noon?" another asked.

"You're thinking of the other damn Yanks. The California Yanks who have come carpetbagging into our preserves."

"Aren't there some Florida Yanks amongst them?" asked Belcher.

Hazard nodded. "You speak God's own truth, soldier," Hazard averred. "But the Yanks who will come at sunup are a different breed, pledged to our cause, not against it."

This pronouncement was met with stony silence and some blinking of fire-dappled eyes.

"As your commanding officer, Ah took the liberty of enlisting the aid of the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Weekend Artillery."

No one spoke. They leaned toward their commanding officer.

"They are, even as we speak, speeding south to succor us in the coming siege. Behind them follow the First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry."

"The First Massachusetts!" Belcher blurted. "Didn't we whup their raggety tails once?"

Hazard nodded heavily. "At the Second Manassas Reenactment. They were stout soldiers and true, even if their cause was unjust, but they share our outrage at the thing that is about to be done to this sacred place where good men both gray and blue fell in tumultuous combat."

The silence that followed was brittle. Colonel Hazard surveyed the faces of his men. He was asking them to do a bitter thing in this dark hour, and there was no predicting their mood.

"Ah need not remind you men that on this spot on July 30, in the year of our Lord 1864, Union and Confederate regulars engaged in battle. Tomorrow they will engage in battle once again. But this time they will stand shoulder to shoulder as united Americans to fight a foe more odious to each than they are to one another. Now if these Union boys can lay aside their differences and join cause with us Rebels, how can we fail to do the same in return?"

The longest silence in Colonel Hazard's woefully short life came in the wake of his last wavering plea. On this moment turned the fate of the Petersburg National Battlefield and the honor of the South. Hazard held his breath until his ribs hurt.

"Well, hell," a man said, "if the Yanks care about old Virginny enough to swallow their pride, I guess we can chow down on a little cold crow and accept their help."

"Beats this hardtack and flap-doodle," another barked.

"Not that they'll be much comfort in battle, being New Englanders. Everyone knows New Englanders can't shoot worth a lick."

Colonel Rip Hazard let the hot, pent-up air of Virginia out of his Southern lungs and closed his ears to squeeze back the stinging tears of pride.

"With the North and South reunited against a common foe," he said in a choking voice, "how much chance does the thrice-damned enemy have?"

". . . HOW MUCH CHANCE does the thrice-damned enemy have?"

At a mobile command post van south of Petersburg, Virginia, a short-sleeved man removed headphones from his ears and snapped a console switch.

"This is Task Force Coordinator Moise," he said into a filament mike suspended before his mouth.

"Go ahead, Task Force Coordinator Moose."

"The Sixth Virginia Recreational Foot has enlisted the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Artillery and the First Mass Cavalry to stand against us."

"Damn good-for-nothing Rebels."

"Advise, please."

"Continue monitoring operations. If fighting breaks out, decamp."

" Roger. Moise out."

AFTER THE VITTLE were consumed and the last of the coarse-grained chicory coffee imbibed, Colonel Rip Hazard ordered his men to turn in for the night. They repaired to their five-hundred-dollar replica pup tents and pulled the coarse wool blankets high to their chins to keep out the evening chill. One by one they dropped off to fitful sleep, knowing that with the dawn the hated Union would return to a place it had not been welcome since the malevolent moles of the Fortyeighth Pennsylvania had tunneled under the Confederate fort and set off eight thousand pounds of black powder, blasting some three hundred Johnny Rebs into eternity while creating the infamous crater to these one hundred thirty unforgiving years ago.

The enemy did not come with the break of dawn. They skulked in before first light.

Corporal Adam Price had picket duty. He leaned against an oak tree, fortified with camp coffee and listening to his bowels grumble and gurgle as they struggled to move nineteenth-century bacon-grease-softened hardtack through his twentieth-century digestive system.

Somewhere a twig snapped, and he snatched up his custom-made replica Harper's Ferry Minie musket and advanced, calling softly, "W-who goes there?"

A Minie ball came whistling back to shatter his rifle stock and right arm with a single resounding crash.

The explosion of pain in his brain sent him crashing backward, stumbling and crawling blindly. When his vision cleared Corporal Price lay on his stomach.

Through the dense thicket, men in smart blue uniforms with gold shoulder boards and light blue piping advanced purposefully, faces hard and muskets pointed at him. Some wielded the dreaded Sharps carbine.

"You-you men be from the First Massachusetts?" he asked, gulping.

Before an answer could come, a familiar voice called, "Price! Call out, man!"

"Colonel Hazard!" Price screamed. "It's them Yank devils!"

"'What?"

"The infernal Yankees! They've a-come early! And they're firing lead ball!"

A volley of Minie balls converged on Corporal Price's head, shattering his thick skull like a ceramic bowl.

And the Second Battle of the Crater was on.

HISTORY WOULD DULY RECORD that the Sixth Virginia Recreational Foot fell defending its ancestral territory from a low-down Northern incursion. Of the thirty-five men in the regiment, all but eleven were lost that day, including Colonel Lester "Rip" Hazard, who would be buried on the spot where he died with the true words "The Hope of Virginia" inscribed on his marble headstone.

Most of the defenders were shot dead in their tents as they stirred at the first dull sounds of skirmish.

Colonel Hazard perished giving a good account of himself after stumbling upon the ruined body of Corporal Adam Price. He had his Spencer repeater up to his shoulder when the Minie balls began arriving in the general vicinity of his head and rib cage, which were promptly shot to kindling. Hazard got off four consecutive point-blank shots before succumbing to his wounds.

History did not record that he fired blanks. Some truths are too painful to endure.

THE NEXT MORNING the ragged survivors of the Sixth Virginia Recreational Foot lay in wait along the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike outside Petersburg, Virginia, for the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Weekend Artillery.

When the Forty-fourth Rhode Island obligingly came roaring up the road in their chartered buses, pickup trucks bearing Virginia license plates rolled out of concealment, blocking their path.

Elements of the Forty-fourth Rhode Island stepped out of their vehicles in curiosity and confusion. They saw familiar gray uniforms pop up from behind the barricade. Those without rifles in hand reached instinctively for them. Old hatreds die hard.

The Forty-fourth Rhode Island were cut down to the last man by the Sixth Virginia Foot, who this time were not firing blanks.

This engagement was dubbed by the victors the Battle of Redressment and by the losers the Massacre at Colonial Heights.

By the time the motorcycles of the First Mass Cavalry happened along an hour later, the Virginia National Guard had been called out and everyone was packing live ammunition.

The Second American Civil War had commenced. And no one suspected it was only prologue to a wider conflict.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was on strike.

"No results, no work," he said into the telephone receiver, and promptly hung up. The phone immediately began ringing.

Remo let it ring. As far as he was concerned, it could ring forever and ever.

A squeaky voice called from the floor above. "Why does that noisy device continue to vex us?" the voice asked in a querulous tone.

"It's only Smith," Remo called back.

"He has work?" the squeaky voice demanded.

"Who cares? I'm on strike."

Faster than seemed possible, a wispy figure appeared in the doorway of Remo's sparsely furnished bedroom. "You have struck Smith?" asked Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, in hazel-eyed horror.

"No," Remo explained patiently, "I've gone on strike against Smith."

Chiun's almond eyes narrowed to slits. "Explain these white words I cannot fathoms."

"Smitty's been stalling. He promised months ago to track down my parents. So far, all I get are lame excuses. He needs motivation. So I'm striking until I get what I want."

"You will do no work?"

Remo folded his bare arms defiantly as the telephone continued to ring. He wore a white T-shirt and tan chinos. "I'm not budging."

"I must find out what Emperor Smith requires of us."

"Be my guest," said Remo, unfolding his arms and plugging his ears with his forefingers. "I just don't want to hear it."

"And you will not," said Chiun, reaching for the telephone. Suddenly he pivoted. A curved fingernail nearly as long as the finger backing it licked out, seeming to brush Remo's forehead slightly.

Remo got his ears unplugged before the paralyzing electricity of the Master of Sinanju's touch shut down his nervous system.

Remo stood frozen while Chiun answered the telephone, an expression of dull shock on his strong, highcheekboned face. His deep-set dark brown eyes seemed to say "I can't believe I fell for that."

Ignoring him, Chiun spoke into the receiver. "Hail, Emperor Smith, dispenser of gold and welcome assignments. The Master of Sinanju awaits your bidding."

"We have a problem, Master Chiun," said Dr. Harold W Smith in a voice that sounded the way lemon-scented dishwashing detergent smells.

"Speak, O understanding one."

"Something terrible is going on in Virginia," Smith said breathlessly. "A skirmish has broken out between Civil War reenactors"

"These reactionaries are doomed."

"Reenactors, not reactionaries."

Chiun wrinkled up his bald head. "I do not know this word."

"Reenactors are people who dress up in the costumes and uniforms of the American Civil War and recreate the major battles."

"They fight a war that has already been decided?"

"They don't use real bullets."

Chiun's forehead puckered. "Then what is the purpose of fighting? For without death, no war can ever be decided."

"It's purely ceremonial," said Smith. "Please listen carefully. It appears a Union regiment bushwhacked a Southern regiment, decimating the latter."

"If they were not dispensing death, why does this matter?"

"This time the Northern shots were real. The survivors in turn ambushed another Union regiment, annihilating them to the last man. When the Virginia National Guard was called in to put down the disturbance, they took the side of the Southern regiment and captured another Northern regiment."

"Then the rebellious ones have won?"

"Not yet. If we don't get to the bottom of this, we may have a second Civil War on our hands. Master Chiun, we must head off further violence."

Chiun shook his aged head. "It is too late."

"What do you mean?"

"Assassins head off wars before they start, not after. You have called us too late, Smith."

"I called as soon as word reached me. But Remo refused to accept my call."

Chiun made a dismissive hand motion that was lost on Smith. "It does not matter. It was too late even then. For once men in uniform begin to fight, they cannot be stopped until one army surrenders to the other. It is a soldier thing."

Smith's voice grew firm. "Master Chiun, I have reports of other reenactors mobilizing in other states. Volunteers are coming out of the woodwork and appear to be converging on a Civil War battlefield at Petersburg, Virginia. There is talk of the Rhode Island National Guard descending upon Virginia to avenge the dead reenactors, some of whom belonged to the Rhode Island National Guard unit."

"It is possible something can be done," Chiun mused, eyeing Remo dubiously.

"Yes?"

"If the general behind this calamity can be found and separated from his head, it may be his army will melt in fear before the swift hand of Sinanju."

"But we don't know that any general is behind this. These men are not true soldiers. They are ordinary citizens who perform on national holidays. It makes no sense."

"It is typically American," said Chiun vaguely. "Would you like to speak with Remo?"

"Er, he is not speaking to me."

"You have not approached him in the proper manner," said Chiun, lifting the receiver to one of Remo's unprotected ears. "You may speak freely now that my pupil's undivided attention is focused on your every syllable."

"Remo, I desperately need your help," Smith said.

Remo stood unmoving as Smith spoke.

"I have been diligently seeking answers to your questions, but you must realize it is difficult. You were orphaned as an infant. There is no backtrail to your parents except the name found on the note on the basket-Remo Williams. Williams, as I have told you a thousand times, is one of the most common surnames in the Western world. Without more to go on, I am at an impasse."

Remo said nothing.

"Remo, are you listening?"

"His wax-laden ears have absorbed your every word, Emperor," Chiun assured Smith.

"And what is his reaction?" Smith asked doubtfully.

"He makes no protest," Chiun said blandly.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Smith ventured.

"Since you are emperor over this divided land, and your every word law, can your surmises fail to achieve equal perfection?" asked Chiun, and hung up.

Standing before his pupil, Chiun looked up. He was a full foot shorter than his pupil, who stood about six feet tall. The Master of Sinanju was a frail wraith of a man with a mummylike face resembling papyrus that might have soaked up the wrinkles of the passing centuries. He looked old, very old. But there was a wise humor in his eyes that belied the fact that he had been born near the end of the previous century and suggested an inner vitality that would carry him into the next. The years had robbed him of his hair, leaving only a tendril clinging to his tiny chin and a cloudy puff over each ear. The kimono sheathing his frailseeming body was black and trimmed in scarlet.

"If you wish to continue on strike," he said pleasantly, "I will be happy to leave you in this stricken state."

Remo stood without reacting. A tendril of perspiration trickled out from under his scalp.

"Or," continued Chiun, "I can release you from this state, and you may be allowed to accompany me as my official translator and gofer."

Remo had no reaction.

"I will give you one opportunity to reply. If your reply is not to my liking, I will return you to this unfortunate state and be on my way."

The fingernail touched Remo in the exact center of his forehead, and he snapped alert once more.

"I am not doing any more assignments, Smitty!" Remo barked.

"It is too late," Chiun said lightly. "For I have hung up the telephone, and we are late for our flight to Virginland."

Remo hesitated, one eye on the fingernail hovering just before his chin. The other flicked to the open door, and he calculated his chances of getting out of the room before the Master of Sinanju, who had taught him everything he knew of value, could react. Remo decided his chances were about equal to his sprouting wings.

"I want proof of Smith's good faith before day's end," said Remo.

"And I wish to see evidence that the wisdom I have poured into your thick white head has not leaked out through some hitherto unsuspected hole. Never in the past would you have succumbed to my paralyzing stroke so easily, Remo. For shame. Your head is full of useless dreams and longings, and they have befogged your brain to the point of its former roundeyed denseness. Next you will be consuming burned cow patties once more. O, that I lived to see you sink to this low state," Chiun moaned, throwing back his head and resting the back of an ivory hand against his smooth forehead. He held that pose until Remo spoke again.

"Knock it off. This is important to me."

"Yes, of course. Your roots. You must find your, roots. O, that you had only been born a tree so that they would always be at your unmoving feet, where you could admire them. But you were born a man. You have no roots. You have feet." Chiun looked down at Remo's feet, which were encased in handmade Italian loafers. "Large, ugly, club knobs, but still recognizable as feet. You have no roots. Have I not told you so a thousand times?"

"Somebody gave birth to me," said Remo.

"Possibly," Chiun said thinly

"Someone else fathered me."

"This, too, is within the realm of the possible," admitted Chiun.

"I want to find out who they are and why they left me on that orphanage doorstep."

"Why do you need to know this trivia? Is is not enough to know that you were abandoned? If you had hitched a ride in an automobile and the driver abruptly stopped to leave you by the side of the road, would you dedicate your adult life to discovering this cretin's life story?"

"It's not the same thing."

"But it is. Those who brought you into the world cast you away like a broken toy. Is there not a more ungrateful and callous act imaginable?"

"I need to know why. Everything that's happened to me in life happened because of it. If I had not grown up in an orphanage, I probably wouldn't have ended up a cop or joined the Marines and gone to Nam. Without Nam, I wouldn't have met MacCleary, who fingered me so Smith could frame me for that killing. Because I was an orphan and had no family, Smith figured I was the perfect candidate for CURE. Think how my life would have gone if I'd never met Smith."

"You would never have met me." And because the bond between them was strong, the Master of Sinanju looked up into his pupil's angry face with expectant eyes.

Remo hesitated. "All I wanted was a normal life."

"Instead, you got an extraordinary life. No white person has ever been so blessed as you. Since the first Master emerged from the caves of mist, only my ancestors were considered worthy of learning the art of Sinanju, the sun source of all fighting arts, and only the best of them. Only Koreans, the most perfect creatures to tread the earth. No whites. Until you. And you are not happy."

"I never wanted to be an assassin."

In the act of pirouetting about the room, Chiun abruptly whirled to fix his pupil with triumphant eyes.

"And you are not!" he crowed. "You are a Sinanju assassin. The finest of this era or any other."

"I don't want to be an assassin anymore. I want to find myself."

"You do not need to find yourself, Remo Williams. Now that you have been discovered by Sinanju."

"You make it sound like I'm some new specimen."

"You are a white Sinanju Master. My ancestors would be proud to know that I have taken a lowly white and raised him up to near-Koreanhood." Chiun caught himself. "After they finished castigating me for squandering my talents on so pointless a task. But times were hard, there were no suitable clients in this modern world and I had to make do with the meager offers that came to me. I have taken a white foundling and made him a Master of Sinanju. O, wonderful me."

"Stuff it. I'm through with CURE. I don't want to be an assassin or a counterassassin."

"Do not speak that horrid white word in my presence."

"I'm finding myself. After that, I'll take what comes."

Chiun fixed Remo with one steely eye. "You have been taking what came to you all your life. Why show initiative now?"

Remo said nothing.

"You will come with me to the Province of Virgins?"

"Virginia," corrected Remo.

"Good. It is settled."

"Wait a minute! I didn't promise anything. I'm on strike. Besides, it's Memorial Day. A national holiday."

This time Remo actually saw the Master of Sinanju's fingernail arrow toward his forehead. He stepped forward as if to offer himself to the paralyzing nail, then slipped down and out of the way so elegantly the Master of Sinanju had to catch himself before he impaled the white-painted wall of Remo's bedroom.

Recovering, Chiun took his wrists in his hands and let the wide sleeves of his kimono close over them. A tinge of pride suffused his aged mummy face.

"Perhaps not all of my training has been a waste after all," he murmured with a hint of fatherly pride.

ON THE FLIGHT, Chiun was saying, "Listen well. We go to put down a rebellion. It is a difficult thing, being different than a war between nations."

"I don't think a new civil war is breaking out."

The plane sat at the gate at Boston's Logan Airport. Passengers were still coming on board. A potbellied man wearing the full sideburns and blue uniform of the Union Army was boarding.

A stewardess stopped him. "Sir, you'll have to check that pistol." She pointed to his gun-belt holster.

"It is only a replica Dragoon," said the man in an exaggerated New England twang that Remo had never heard spoken on the street-only by comedians playing broad-dialect New Englanders. "It's a blackpowder weapon. Perfectly legal."

"Nevertheless, it constitutes a firearm, and I'll have ask you to check it."

Reluctantly the faux Union soldier surrendered his pistol, gun belt and all. Glum-faced, he made his way down the narrow aisle to take a seat across from Remo and Chiun, gold buttons straining to contain his paunch.

"Looks like another would-be combatant," Remo undertoned.

"Why does he wear the uniform of Napoleon III?" asked Chiun.

"Huh?"

"That uniform. French soldiers who followed Napoleon III wore such uniforms, according to the scrolls of my ancestors."

"Little Father, that's a Union Civil War uniform."

"It is French."

"Maybe it looks French. But I know an authentic Union uniform when I see it. See the blue piping? That means he's infantry."

"If that man is flying to Virginland to fight a war that his people long ago won, he is infantile, not infantry."

"Whatever," said Remo.

The cabin door was secured and turbines began to spool up. Conversation became difficult. They sat in silence as the plane lumbered to the runway, picked up speed and vaulted into the sky over Boston.

When the 727 had leveled out and was hurtling southward, Chiun resumed his lecture. "A war between nations is always about treasure."

"Treasure?"

"Yes. Sometimes it is a treasure one emperor wishes to wrest from the other. Now, this treasure need not be in gold or jewels or wealth. Helen of Troy was a treasure, even if she was but a white Greekling with a crooked nose."

"Helen of Troy had a crooked nose?"

Chiun nodded. "Today it is called a deviated septum. Paris did not know. He would have spent the rest of his days enduring her insufferable snoring."

"You should talk," said Remo.

Chiun snorted and went on. "Even when wars between emperors are not over treasure, but something insignificant, treasure is still at the heart of all such conflicts. For each emperor requires treasure to sustain war. Soldiers must be fed and weapons secured. No one works for free. Even in a war."

"Gotcha. "

"But a civil war is another matter."

"I don't think this is a civil war, Little Father. It's probably just a Memorial Day misunderstanding gone ballistic."

"We will see. For if treasure lurks behind these events, this war will not be what it appears to be."

Remo was looking at the potbellied Union soldier across the aisle. His squashed-down blue service cap grazed the overhead air-conditioning blower. "That uniform doesn't look French to me."

"It is French. I will prove it." Chiun lifted his voice. "Kind sir, what is the name of your cap?"

"It's a keppie."

Chiun allowed himself a self-satisfied smile. "See, Reno? Kepi is a French word. It means cap. You white Americans have created nothing new, but have stolen your ideas from all other lands. Your way of government comes from the Greeks, your dream of empire is very Roman. There is hardly a nation on earth you have not looted of ideas, only to call them American."

"What did we take from the Koreans?" asked Remo, genuinely curious.

"The best years of my life," said the Master of Sinanju, lapsing into injured silence while he monitored the wing on his side of the plane for signs that it was about to tear loose.

Except for the stewardess bringing refreshments and an offer to carry Remo's child, the rest of the flight was peaceful.

Chapter 3

By all rights the Second Civil War should have been snuffed out on the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike before the embers of misunderstanding could ignite a national conflagration.

The governor of Virginia had ordered in the National Guard. The unit that had responded rolled out of Fort Lee, whose grounds abutted Petersburg National Battlefield. They had been on Memorial Weekend maneuvers. No precious response time would have been lost. Their orders were to quell a disturbance the local police could not handle. Armed with modern M-16 rifles, tanks and other implements of twentieth-century warfare, they were easily equal to the task of suppressing a group of weekend warriors equipped with muzzle-loading black-powder muskets.

Except for the unfortunate fact that the National Guard unit mobilized was descended from the legendary Stonewall Brigade. When Captain Royal Wooten Page called his unit to halt, he was prepared for a scene of civil disobedience, if not riot.

Instead, he came upon a scene that stirred his deep pride in his home state and Dixie.

For there by the side of the road stood encamped a regiment of Confederate infantry, standing guard over a field of captured and bedraggled bluecoats. Their motorcycle steeds lay stacked in a sorry pile.

"Well, Ah swan," he said, thinking of great-great-grand-uncle Beauregard E. Page, who had fought at both the First and Second Manassas. "Rest a spell, men," he said in his native drawl, "whilst Ah investigate further."

Approaching the encampment, Captain Page dropped his gun belt and came forward with upraised hands.

A voice called, "Halt! Friend or foe?"

"Ah am and always will be a friend of the uniform you wear, suh, seeing as how Ah am proud to carry forward into the coming century the proud banner of the Stonewall Brigade; What unit do Ah have the honor of approaching?"

"We be the Sixth Virginia Foot. Recreational."

"Then you would know Colonel Rip Hazard"

"Ah would. Ah had the sad duty of burying his noble husk this very morning."

"Colonel Hazard is dead?"

"Gunned down by treacherous blueclads."

"Ah served alongside Colonel Hazard in this very unit."

"And Ah served under him in this proud regiment."

Captain Page was allowed to approach. He shook hands with a rangy individual who wore Confederate gray and muttonchop whiskers.

"These the Yanks dastards in question?" Page inquired.

"Nope. We annihilated them early on. These be reinforcements. The First Massachusetts."

"Ah hear they can't shoot."

"Never heard tell of a New Englander that could." After they had shared a moment of grim laughter, Captain Page asked, "What are you planning on doing with these skulking New England bluebellies?"

"That hasn't been decided. But they're our prisoners."

Page frowned tightly. "Mah orders are to put down this unfortunate uprising."

"That's a right troubling notion, Ah'd say."

"To you and me both, suh."

"Especially what with the true enemy so nigh and all," the Confederate soldier said, looking north to Petersburg with grim mien.

Captain Page gave this dilemma some thought. "What time are them infernal carpetbaggers due?"

"High noon."

"What say we gather up these Yanks and repair to the Crater to await developments?" he asked carefully.

"Will your men follow you?"

"Will yours?" countered Page.

"They be Virginians, as are yours."

"Then let us be about our marching, suh. "

Captain Page returned to his waiting tank column and explained the situation. "These fine soldiers were clearly provoked into defending themselves and their honor," he related. "Moreover, they were ambushed while asleep, taking their last rest before meeting the siege army that you all know-if you read your morning paper or watch the TV-is due to descend upon Old Dominion like so many greedy locusts.

"The place where they were cut down is known to one and all, Ah am sure. It is the spot where the malevolent moles under the command of Colonel Henry Pleasants-an ill-named rogue if ever one was spawned-dug the cowardly tunnel under the finest soldiers of the Confederacy and set a powder keg to light. The resulting blast reverberates to this day, for Ah know personally that some of you men had kinfolk maimed or lost in that unholy blast."

A hateful murmur raced through the unit.

"That awful hour was the darkest of the Siege of Petersburg," Captain Page continued, "and even though the doughty forces of Major General William Mahone repelled the Federal advance that followed, it shall never be forgotten. And now a new siege is about to be laid on that fair and shining city. Ah cannot but assume that the Union devils who wrought this modern calumny were inspired in their villainy, if not in league with, the very foe whose name you all know and which Ah will not sully the pure Virginia air by repeating. To that end, Ah am prepared to pledge this unit in common cause with our grayback brethren."

Utter silence attended this statement.

"Of course, Ah cannot demand that you boys follow me into this new cause. So Ah will give you the opportunity to consider this weighty matter."

When they were done, Captain Page said, "Ah aim to stand by mah fellow Virginians until this matter is understood and the true culprits brought to book. What say you, men?"

There were no objections.

The Union captives, bound and hangdog, were loaded aboard the National Guard trucks and tanks, to which Confederate soldiers clung, waving their service caps and beaming in victory.

"On to the Crater!" shouted Captain Page.

A yipping rebel war whoop drowned out the firing of the engines, and what history would later call the Unified Confederate Disunion Alliance rolled south down the section of Interstate 95 called the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike entirely unopposed.

When word of this revolt reached the governor of Virginia, he knew exactly what to do. He called the President of the United States.

After he was fully briefed, the President of the United States knew exactly what to do, too. He thanked the governor of Virginia and buzzed his wife, the First Lady.

"There's trouble brewing in Virginia," he said when the First Lady entered.

"I heard. Can't you federalize the Virginia National Guard or something? This is ridiculous."

"I do that, and I'll be lynched the next time I go home to Little Rock." The President was going through his desk drawers. "You seen that T-shirt of mine? The one that says Smith College?"

"Why do you have to go running to that Smith person every time there's a crisis?"

"How many times do I have tell you," the President said testily, "that subject is off limits."

The First Lady glared at the President. "What will you trade for that T-shirt?"

"The golden opportunity to serve out your term as First Lady," the President said glumly. "Because if this nation is facing a new Civil War, we'll both be run out of this office by the Fourth of July."

The First Lady snapped out of her glare as if stung by a hornet. "I'll leak it to the press that you're going for a jog," she said hastily. "That way the cameras will be sure to televise the shirt."

The door to the Oval Office shut behind her as the President stood up to look out the latticed window that faced the South Lawn. It was the same view his predecessors going back to Abraham Lincoln-the most tormented Chief Executive in US. history-had enjoyed. Not even the imperfect, object-distorting glass had changed.

But the burden on the man who held the office had. Lincoln had had a young nation to hold together. That was burden enough in the nineteenth century. Here in the twentieth, more often than not the President had a fractious family of nations to watch over, as well as domestic concerns.

But in over one hundred years the essential mission had not changed. Hold the union together. For Lincoln it had been a matter of the North and the South. How simple that seemed today. For while modern America might be unified, it was still fractured along a thousand invisible fault lines. The great Democratic experiment was imperiled by forces that had insinuated themselves into its very cultural and political fabric.

Thirty years before, a great President-destined to be martyred as was Lincoln-had come to a terrible realization. America was doomed. Its laws and leaders were no longer sufficient to hold it together. A tide of lawlessness was sweeping the land. The institutions of government could not hold it in check because the threats all came from within.

Crooked courts and judges and lawyers had all but shredded the Constitution. It was no longer the shield it was intended to be. It was in truth a hindrance to the survival of the greatest nation in human history. Something had to be done. Something drastic.

The long-dead President had considered martial law, repealing the Constitution and sacrificing his own Presidency on the same granite altar of national salvation that had cost Lincoln his life a century before.

Instead, he chose another option.

In secret he created CURE. It was an organization headed by one handpicked man. The letters were no bureaucratic acronym. CURE was simply a harsh remedy for an ailing nation. Bitter medicine, true. But if it worked, the union might endure to the turn of the century and perhaps beyond.

Officially CURE did not even exist. To admit to the existence of CURE was to admit America didn't work. Its mandate was to right the ship of state by extraconstitutional means. Domestic spying. Wiretapping. Even framing of criminals outside the law who could not be gotten within it. No option was too extreme. The utter survival of the nation had been at stake.

Over time the mission expanded even as the nation's ills worsened. In time assassination was sanctioned as a means of last resort. Nothing seemed to be enough. But like a keel CURE kept the ship of state from being swamped by domestic storm. The general public never dreamed it existed. Congress never suspected. Successive Presidents came and went, each sworn never to reveal the secret-except to the man who followed him. Each was shown the red hot-line telephone-kept in the Lincoln Bedroom-that connected with the faceless man who headed CURE.

A man named Smith. The same man handpicked so long ago.

As the President gazed out past the magnolia tree planted by old Andrew Jackson and maimed by a suicidal pilot only months before, toward the cold finger of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial beyond it, he bitterly cursed the still unexplained accident that had severed the hot line to Smith, wherever he was. It had been a hell of a lot easier to just pick up that phone than to put on a Smith College T-shirt and go jogging for the cameras in the hope that Harold Smith would be watching his TV and get the message.

But knowing Dr. Harold W Smith, the man already had his people on this ruckus in Virginia.

The President just hoped the bodies wouldn't make too high a pile this time. Last time had been a bitch.

Chapter 4

At Richmond's Byrd International Airport a minor skirmish broke out when Flight 334 from Boston landed and one Franklyn Lowell Fisk deplaned in Union blue.

As it happened, a civil engineer named Orel Ready simultaneously deplaned from a flight from Atlanta, wearing Confederate gray.

They encountered one another at the baggage carousel.

Ready took one look at Fisk and Fisk at him, and pungent characterizations were exchanged with the riddling vehemence of canister fire. A small but intrigued crowd gathered.

It might have blown over except for the regrettable fact that their baggage arrived just then. In the heat of the moment Ready pulled his cavalry saber from his Tourister luggage, and Fisk extracted his fully functioning Third Model Dragoon commemorative pistol with its walnut grips and 24-karat gold trigger guard and back strap from an overnight bag.

They glared at one another for an eternity of dislike.

"Bushwackin' Johnny Reb!" Fisk snarled.

"Back stabbin' blackguard!" Ready retorted.

History never recorded the name of the instigator of the Byrd International Airport Skirmish. Some witnesses swore that Ready lunged at his opposite while others averred that Fisk let fly with a .44-caliber Minie ball in a cloud of black powder smoke before the sword point could begin to move toward his heart.

Either way steel flashed and lead flew-but neither man flinched at the specter of incoming death.

Which was just as well, because they were in no immediate danger.

NO ONE NOTICED the wispy little Asian man in black bustle out of the fringes of the gathering crowd. He stood at least three heads shorter than most, and all eyes were fixed on the two combatants. Or on their weapons, rather.

In the blink of an eye something broke the lunging saber in midstroke. During that eye blink-caused by the discharging of the mail-order replica Dragoon-a force no one saw and both antagonists felt deflected the Minie ball from the dark gray breast of Orel Ready.

With a metallic clang, the ball caromed off something and buried itself into a khaki knapsack that just happened to come sliding down the baggage chute.

When the echoing report stopped and eyes flew open, Frank Fisk stood with Orel Ready's saber seemingly buried in his unprotected stomach while the Dragoon muzzle lay smoking over Ready's heart.

Fisk and Ready each sized up his situation at the same time.

"Dear Lord, Ah am undone," Ready howled.

"You have run me through, you rebellious Johnny," Fisk moaned.

Then both men promptly fainted dead away. Ready still held on to his saber, which-when it came away from Fisk's chest-was shown to have been sheered off to a blunt end like a broken butterknife. There was no smoking hole over Ready's heart, either. Nor any exit wound. No blood, either.

The crowd gathered closer to inspect the honored fallen of the Byrd International Airport Skirmish. An insurance agent from Savannah was the one who found the broken saber tip lying under the men, and held it up so the round dent in the fine-tempered steel could be seen by one and all.

"Day-am!" he said. "'Pears to me the ball broke the tip off this frog-sticker and saved both their lives."

WALKING AWAY from the altercation, Remo said to the Master of Sinanju, "Nice move, Little Father. You avoided a major battle back there."

"You could have helped," sniffed Chiun.

"I'm on strike."

"Does this mean that you are a union sympathizer?"

"I'm an Ex-Marine. That means I'm in sympathy with nobody who puts on a uniform they haven't earned. Why do you ask?"

"Union sympathizers are always going on strike in this mad nation."

"This isn't that kind of union," said Remo.

"What kind is it?" asked Chiun.

Noticing fistfights breaking out all over the airport, Remo grumbled, "A weak one if you ask me."

"All republics are destined to collapse from within."

As they passed knots of belligerents, Chiun took the opportunity to drift up to some of the more hotheaded and surreptitiously inserted a long fingernail into the fray.

The nail flicked in and out so swiftly that when those stung by it finished yelping and examining themselves for puncture wounds, they never connected the insult with a tiny little man in black who glided past, a serene and unconcerned expression on his wrinkled countenance.

Very quickly the airport was evacuated and bee catchers were called in to deal with what airport officials insisted were "a swahm of teeny-tiny killer bees."

But no infestation of bees was ever found.

Thus ended the Skirmish of Byrd International Airport, about which songs would one day be sung.

THE AIRPORT car-rental agent looked Remo and Chiun over with a critical eye. "North or South?" he asked.

"North," said Chiun.

"That's not the north he means," Remo told Chiun.

"What north do you mean?" demanded the rental agent in a suspicious tone.

"He thinks you mean North Korea," said Remo.

"That where he hails from?"

"Yes," said Chiun. "I am hailed in North Korea."

"One north is as bad as another, carpetbaggers," the agent snapped. "Ah ain't renting you no car." He pronounced it "cah."

"That your last word on the subject?" inquired Remo in a cool voice.

"Cross mah heart and hope to die humming 'Dixie.'"

As it turned out, these were the last words the stubborn rental agent ever spoke. For the rest of his life, he hummed. Doctors could find no explanation for his voice-box paralysis. Many articles were written, and medical texts were revised to include the condition, but no similar case ever again surfaced.

All the agent knew was that a thick-wristed hand reached for his face, and while his eyes were fixed on that looming hand, a thumb came out of his left peripheral field of vision and did something sudden and unpleasant to his Adam's apple.

After that, all he could do was hum. And glumly surrender the car keys to the outstretched hand.

Remo drove south. It seemed pleasant country, very green and picturesque. Farms predominated, but there were lowlying swamps, too. Every mile or so signs dotted the land proclaiming this colonial site or that preserved attraction. At first it was interesting. After a while the signs blurred past in unending and mindnumbing numbers.

The surviving chimneys of homes that had been burned flat by the Federal Army of the Potomac during the Siege of Petersburg were carefully maintained like precious scars in the lush countryside. Wherever a Confederate officer, horse or camp dog had fallen, the site was commemorated by a carefully painted and maintained sign or marker. There were Confederate cemeteries galore. Once, the highway actually cut through a large burial ground whose flagdecorated tombstones lined the shoulder of the road.

"Why do these people flaunt the shame of their many defeats?" Chiun asked.

"Search me," said Remo, paying attention to his driving. "Maybe they like to complain, like some other people we both know," he added.

Chiun maintained an injured silence.

After a while Remo remembered something. "I thought Paris was killed during the Trojan War, before he could run off with Helen of Troy."

"Gossip," Chiun said dismissively.

"So what's the real poop?"

"Paris feigned his death and they eloped to Egypt in secret. Some claim that King Proteus slew Paris to win fair Helen, but in truth Paris, driven to distraction by his bride's unendurable snores, committed suicide. Any anti-Korean slander to the contrary is baseless and untrue."

"Wait a minute! Did the House ever work for King Proteus?"

Chiun gazed out the window, his face a parchment mask. "I do not recall," he said thinly.

"My butt!" Remo was silent a moment. "At least we didn't do Helen of Troy."

"Not that there were not offers," said Chiun. "Low ones."

They skirted Petersburg without incident, and all seemed calm, except for the helicopters overhead. Remo spotted state-police helicopters, a few Marine and Army ships, as well as those belonging to various news organizations, all headed in the same direction they were.

"So much for our going in unsuspected," complained Remo.

"What do you mean, we?" sniffed Chiun. "You are a guide and badger only."

"You mean gofer, don't you?"

"Just remember your place, burrowing one."

A mile before the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield off Interstate 95, there was a roadblock. Virginia State Troopers were stopping traffic. They were respectful to vehicles bearing Virginia license plates, as well as those belonging to North Carolina and adjacent Southern states. Vehicles with Northern plates were being turned back and in some instances detained.

At first they were polite when it was Remo's turn to pull up to the checkpoint. A solitary trooper in a gray Stetson sauntered up to Remo's side of the car.

"From around here?" he asked Remo. His uniform, Remo wasn't surprised to see, was Confederate gray with black trim.

Remo decided to bluff his way through.

"Why, shore," he said, hoping Virginians sounded like Andy Griffith, the first Southern voice that popped into his head.

"That's good to hear. We're conducting a little roadside eye test. Take but a minute." He held up a flash card. It read Portsmouth.

"Now, what's that say?" the trooper asked Remo.

"Portsmouth," said Remo.

"Nope. It's Porch Mouth," said the trooper.

"It says Portsmouth, not Porch Mouth."

"Try this next one, won't yew?"

"Isle of Wight," said Remo, reading the next card.

"Nope. It's Isle of White."

"It says Wight."

"It's pronounced white," said the trooper without humor.

"I don't see any h," Remo said.

"It's a Virginia h. Only Virginians can see it."

"Ah'm from Tennessee," said Remo, guessing at Andy Griffith's home state.

"Let's try one more, shall we?"

The trooper held up a card that clearly said Roanoke.

"Roan-oke," said Remo, pronouncing it the way it was spelled because that was the way Sister Mary Margaret used to pronounce it during American-history lessons back at the orphanage.

"Nope. Ro-noke."

"There's an a after the o, " Remo pointed out.

"And there's a bluebelly in the woodpile," the trooper retorted. He gestured to a nearby trooper. "Hey, Earl, we got us another carpetbagger come to make trouble here."

Two more troopers came up to join him, hands on side arms.

In the passenger seat the Master of Sinanju said, "Remo, I must not be delayed if I am to bind this nation together once more."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Remo asked out of the side of his mouth.

"I must save my strength, for I have a great task before me."

Remo sighed. "Oh, all right."

"Kindly step out of that car," the trooper with the flash cards said before the pain signals from his knees informed his brain that they had been ambushed by a suddenly opening car door.

The trooper let out a creditable rebel yell and doubled over to grab his throbbing kneecaps. While he was bent over, Remo removed his Stetson and threw it at the approaching Virginia troopers like a Frisbee.

It whizzed over their heads, spun in place and came back like a boomerang to slap the running troopers about their faces with the whipping chin strap.

Momentarily distracted, they failed to see Remo descend upon them. By the time they realized there was a problem, their fingers had been squeezed together in groups of five and expertly dislocated.

Remo stepped back as the troopers stood about shaking their numb but limp digits, which hung like fat, dead worms off their unfeeling hands.

"What'd yew do to us?" asked the flash-card trooper in a stupefied voice.

"It's called the Sinanju handshake," said Remo pleasantly. "It goes away if you hurry home and make love to your wife."

"What if we don't?"

"Your peckers fall off by sunset at the latest."

"Ah don't believe that for a goldurn moment."

"It's your pecker," said Remo, climbing back into his rental car and driving around the roadblock.

In the rearview mirror the stunned state troopers could be seen imploring motorists to drive them back to the city.

"I have never heard of this Sinanju handshake," sniffed Chiun, rearranging his kimono skirts.

"It's a new wrinkle. Invented it myself."

"I do not like these new wrinkles of yours."

"Then don't use them," said Remo.

"Rest assured, I will not."

WHEN THEY REACHED the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield, a bus came rolling up from the other direction. It veered off the road and came to a stop blocking Crater Road. When the doors opened, out poured two dozen fighting men wearing red fezzes, short blue jackets, baggy red pantaloons and carrying antique muskets.

They set themselves in a skirmish line, and a color banner went up.

"Which side are they on?" Remo wondered aloud.

"I do not know," admitted the Master of Sinanju. "Let us inquire."

They approached with open faces and empty hands, the better to put a potential enemy off guard.

A group of muskets swung in their direction, fixing them in their sights.

"Halt!" a man shouted. He might have been an officer. Then again, he might not. His colorful costume was no more or less ornate than anyone else's.

Remo and Chiun kept coming.

"We're unarmed," Remo called out.

"Which army?"

"Neither."

"You sound like a Northerner."

Remo and Chiun kept walking. Remo read the legend on the banner. It said Louisiana Costume Zouaves.

"Louisiana sided with the South," Remo undertoned to Chiun. "But what a Zouave is, I don't know."

"It is a French word," hissed Chiun.

"Big deal. So is souffle. Maybe they're the Louisiana Souffle Brigade, come up to feed the Confederate troops."

"It is French for clown soldier, " said Chiun.

"Guess that makes them the Bozo Brigade."

"I say again, halt and identify yourself," one of the Louisiana Zouaves ordered.

"Press," said Remo, reaching for his wallet, where he kept cover ID cards for all occasions.

"Then ya'll are spies!" a harsh voice snarled. "Shoot the damn Yank spies!"

And six muskets boomed forth lead balls and clouds of black-powder smoke.

Remo had been trained and trained by the Master of Sinanju until he had unlocked every cell in his brain. Modern science had always claimed that twentieth-century man had never learned to access his whole brain, only about ten percent of it. Scientists speculated that within that untapped ninety percent lay vast potential, powers man might command should he ever fully evolve, as well as skills he had long ago lost when he dropped down from the trees to walk upright and forage the savanna for food.

Centuries ago the Masters of Sinanju began to harness these powers. Their first halting steps planted the seeds for all the Eastern martial arts from defensive kung fu to paralyzing jujitsu. It fell to Wang the Greater, in the darkest hour in the history of the House of Sinanju--which served the thrones of antiquity-to achieve full perfection in mind and body. The Sinanju Master who had trained Wang died before Wang could be taught the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of those who had come before.

It should have been the end of the House of Sinanju. But Wang went out into the wilderness to fast, subsisting on rice hulls and grass, meditating on the fate of the village of Sinanju on the rock-bound coast of West Korea Bay, which for generations had survived only because the cream of its manhood went out into a hostile world to ply the trade of assassin and protector of thrones.

One night a ring of fire appeared in the sky before Wang and spoke in a clear voice.

"Men do not use their minds and their bodies as they should," said the voice of the ring of fire to the Great Wang. "They waste their spirit and their strength."

And in a single burst a flame, the ring off fire imparted the ultimate knowledge that came to be known as the art of Sinanju, then vanished forever.

What Wang had learned he passed down to Ung, and Ung to Gi and on until in the midtwentieth century the last pure Master of Sinanju, Chiun, passed it on to Remo Williams. Remo dismissed ninety percent of the colorful stories and legends that accompanied the teaching of Chiun-especially the ring of fire, which sounded like a medieval UFO sighting-but emerged from his training breathing with his entire body, which in turn awakened his entire brain and unlocked the limitless potential of his body.

Among these abilities were increased reflexes, heightened senses and near-absolute control over his body. It had long ago ceased to be a conscious thing. It had become ingrained. Second nature. Remo no longer had to think about the simple tricks like climbing sheer walls, sensing enemies and dodging what the first Master who encountered them had called "flying teeth" and today are known as bullets. Remo's body performed those maneuvers automatically.

Remo heard the sound of the black-powder explosions before the first lead musket balls whistled toward him. That much was unexpected, because modern rounds fly at supersonic speed and usually reached his vicinity before his ears heard the shot.

Remo had been trained to never wait for gunfire. Instead, the click of a falling hammer or the jacking of a round into a chamber was the trigger for the bullet-dodging reflexes to come into play. There were many techniques. Remo liked to let the bullets come at him, tracking their trajectories until the last possible moment and then casually sidestepping out of their deadly path and back into place so it seemed to a gunman that the bullet had passed harmlessly through his target.

It was easy. Remo's ears might not be able to hear the shot because even supersensitive ears had to await the arrival of the sound, but the eyes read threatening motion as fast as light. So Remo tracked bullets as they came and got out of their way.

These lead balls were to a modern round what a Ping-Pong ball was to an arrow. There was no comparison. His reflexes, accustomed to the supersonic speed of approaching death, hardly stirred.

One ball came toward his side. Remo didn't even have to dodge it. He just leaned to the right slightly, placing his left hand on his hip.

The musket ball obligingly whistled through the open space between his rib cage and his bent left elbow.

Another ball arced toward his head.

Remo bent his knees. The ball grazed the top of his dark hair. Normally that would have been bad form and cause for a severe rebuke from Chiun, but the big lead ball was so clumsy and unthreatening that Remo experienced a playful urge, as if someone had tossed a big blue beach ball in his direction. It was more fun to let it touch hair than do a full evade.

A third ball, probably because it hadn't been rammed down the musket barrel with enough force, dropped desultorily toward his shoe. Remo kicked it back like a golf ball, and it dropped a Zouave, who went down clutching his crotch.

Grinning, Remo turned toward Chiun, and his jaw dropped-

A second volley had been fired at the Master of Sinanju. Remo hadn't been aware of the fate of the first. Only that if he could so easily dodge lead musket balls, so could Chiun.

Four balls came at the Master of Sinanju so slowly they all but announced their arrival.

The Master of Sinanju simply stood there. Remo's grin widened. Chiun was playing, too. But as the balls converged on his frail black-clad form, the old Korean did not move.

Remo's smile froze.

Then Remo was moving in on an interior line-an attack line. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. The Master of Sinanju was not defending himself.

Remo would have to intercept those suddenly deadly spheres himself. Intercept and deflect-even if it cost him his hands.

Chapter 5

Remo Williams had both arms extended, with hands open to their fullest, to capture the hurtling lead balls before they could impact upon the sweetly wrinkled features of the unmoving Master of Sinanju. Then Remo felt a stinging sensation in the center of his chest that knocked his legs out from under him, along with the wind from his powerful lungs.

I'm hit, he thought wildly, even as his brain told him that was impossible. No slow-moving lead ball could strike a full Master of Sinanju without warning.

But his body told him he was in great pain.

Flat on his back, through the pain, Remo stared up in surprise.

And beheld the Master of Sinanju withdraw the extended arm that had struck Remo in the chest to calmly bat the musket balls back at those who had the effrontery to hurl them at his awesome presence.

Chiun used the heels of his palms. He had formed the kind of half fists most often used for striking short blows, fingers curled high and tight against themselves so that the palm flesh lay exposed.

With quick, sharp motions, Chiun struck glancing blows at the unmoving balls. Two blows per hand, four balls in all.

Caroming off his palms with meaty smacks, they careered back toward the muskets that had loosed them. Not with quite the velocity of the black powder explosions that had sent them winging out of their musket barrels, but still with enough energy to sting mightily when they struck flesh.

A smoking musket shattered along its barrel. A man was thrown back from the bone-breaking impact of a lead ball hitting his shoulder. Another went down with a shattered kneecap. The fourth received his ball back square in the breastbone and flew backward as if mule-kicked.

"That was how Kang fended off the flying teeth when boom-sticks were first inflicted on civilization," said Chiun as Remo climbed to his feet.

"Fine," Remo said tightly. "But that doesn't mean you had to knock me flat."

"You were about to throw away your thick fingered hands for nothing, thick one. Observe and you, too, will be able to duplicate a feat infant masters in training achieve in their first week. Korean masters in training, of course."

"Bull," said Remo, who nevertheless watched closely as a third volley came whistling toward the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun pressed his hands together before his face in an attitude of prayer. Two balls made for his face. Remo had to hold himself back, because Chiun stood completely immobile, with no body vibration warning that he was prepared to dodge or strike back.

Instead, when the lead balls were a scant three inches before his unblinking eyes, the Master of Sinanju made his hands fly apart, knocking the balls away at right angles with dull smacks. They flew toward two other musketeers who were aiming their weapons at them.

The pair yelped and stumbled to the ground, severely chastised.

"Let me try it," said Remo as another small volley was loosed.

He had to restrain himself from moving in to meet the spinning balls. They were just too slow in coming. But when they did arrive, Remo used the heels of his hands to redirect them.

Technically, flesh never touched hot ball. Instead, Remo drove a cushion of compressed air ahead of his fast-moving hands. The balls struck the air pillows, made hard as steel by the blinding speed of his hands, and rebounded off so that he felt their heat but not their impact.

Remo's redirection technique was good, but the return arc was off. Both attackers went down after each took a ball in the top of his head. They might not wake up for another day or three. But they would wake up.

Until he had a handle on what the hell was really going on, Remo didn't feel like taking anyone out permanently.

"Let's address the troops," he told Chiun.

As they approached, the still-standing Louisiana Costume Zouaves were busily ramming lead balls down their musket barrels. It looked like hard work. Most were sweating.

One soldier had the ramrod jammed down the gun barrel and set the muzzle against an oak tree. He kept trying to force the musket into the tree so the ramrod would go in. Instead, the ramrod snapped clean in two.

"I broke it," he sobbed as Remo tapped him on his blue silk shoulder.

"You won't be needing it."

"But it cost me a month's pay."

"That's the biz," said Remo, extracting the musket from the man's unresisting hand and plunging the barrel into the ground until he hit hard stone. Remo pulled the trigger, and the musket barrel split from sight to stock. Then he threw the foully smoking pieces away.

The man screamed in horror.

"It's only a rifle," Remo pointed out.

"It's my hobby."

"Let me get this straight," said Remo. "You came all the way from Louisiana to fight the Yankees because it's your freaking hobby?"

"That ain't it at all," he said. "I ain't come to fight Yanks."

"Then who?"

"I come to battle the First Virginia Recreational Foot."

"Aren't they from the South, too?"

"They are," the Zouave soldier admitted.

"Then they're on your side, aren't they?"

"Not in this sacred conflict!"

"You're siding with the North?"

"Never! My heart belongs to Dixie."

"And your brain belongs in the Smithsonian," snapped Remo. "If you're not with the North, who are you with?"

The soldier drew himself up proudly. He had to catch his tilting fez with both hands. "I came here to take a stand for palpable history."

"I don't follow."

"That is because you are trying to communicate with an idiot," said the Master of Sinanju, drifting up. "You! Cretin. What have the French to do with this outrage?"

"Nothin'. Except our uniforms are copied from a French-Algerian drill team that passed through the nation in the early 1860s. "

"Huh?" said Remo.

"It's true," the Zouave said. "At the beginning of the Civil War both sides took their uniform design from the French. Heck, it wasn't until the second year of the war that they got the uniforms standardized. Me and my troupe prefer the Zouave outfit. It kinda sets us apart from the common herd."

"Do tell," said Remo, eyeing the man's outlandish costume with a skeptical eye.

"And do tell us what lies behind this madness," said Chiun.

The Zouave soldier opened his mouth to speak. Musket fire crackled well back in the open area that was Petersburg National Battlefield.

Remo and Chiun looked west. Puffs of smoke were visible some distance away. They rose and mingled as volley after volley followed.

"What are they shooting at?" asked Remo.

"They are shooting up," Chiun decided.

Remo shaded his eyes with both hands. "Nothing's up there but news and Army helicopters."

"They are firing at the Federals perhaps," the Zouave soldier suggested.

"Could be they're firing at the press," Remo speculated.

It was impossible to tell. The choppers scattered like so many clattering, frightened birds. And the volleys kept coming.

"Maybe someone's trying to rescue those captured Union guys," said Remo. "Let's move in and see what we can see."

"What about these clowns?" said Chiun, indicating the cowed Zouave troupe.

"You wreck their muskets?"

"Better. I broke their ramrods, without which they cannot fire their foul-smelling blunderbusses."

"Fair enough. They're out of the fight for now."

"You bunch better stay out of trouble until we get back," Remo warned the others who stood about looking dejected.

The Zouaves said nothing.

Remo and Chiun entered the park.

"Wait till the press conference," the Zouave soldier shouted after them. "That's where the real battle will begin."

"Did he say press conference?" Remo asked Chiun.

"He is an idiot and speaks idiocy," scoffed the Master of Sinanju.

There were pickets set up at various points, watching the main approach, Crater Road. All wore Confederate gray with the squashed-down forage caps that Remo knew were also favored by the Union, except they wore blue versions.

The sentries were easily avoided, never suspecting that two of the most dangerous human beings on the face of the earth were slipping through their lines like drifting mist.

Remo and Chiun soon came to an open area where they saw the Crater itself.

It lay in open field, backed by a high hill. The hill was covered with grass, and the Crater, in the century or more since it had been blown in the earth, had healed over in a depressed scar of grass. It looked to be about one hundred fifty feet long, fifty feet wide and perhaps fifteen feet deep. Remo had expected something round like an impact crater from a meteor, but this was more along the lines of a gash. It was ringed by Confederate sentries, who guarded it while their comrades-in-arms methodically reloaded their muskets and pistols and poured enfilade fire into the sky.

After the helicopters had withdrawn to a respectful distance, the firing abated.

"That sure scared 'em off," a soldier chortled.

"You sure it was them?"

"I tell you, I saw the rodent's ears. Painted on the side of that contraption as big as all outdoors."

"I didn't see no rodent ears," another man grumbled.

"Maybe so, but they was there."

"They wouldn't have sent him in by helicopter. They wouldn't dare."

"Well, they don't dare send him in now. Them TV helicopters captured all the fuss on film."

"What are they talking about?" Remo asked Chiun.

"I do not know, but I aim to find out."

And tucking hands into the sleeves of his redtrimmed black kimono, the Master of Sinanju advanced upon the Confederate lines.

THE FIRST TO spy the tiny little man in black was Captain Royal Wooten Page of the Stonewall Detachment of the Virginia National Guard.

He looked harmless. He looked very harmless. Captain Page knew his Civil War history, as should a true native of Virginia, which meant he knew it very well indeed. Virginia had been the heart of the antebellum South. Richmond was the proud capital of the Confederate States of America. The Virginia theater had been the largest and most important theater in the arduous and bloody conflict. Page knew that in the early months of the war, before both sides had mustered true armies, the matter of uniform was left largely to each man. The blue and the gray of the later war years had not been established. Men went into battle wearing any old thing, uniform or not. Some wore turbans and fezzes. A few even marched off in their kilts.

Captain Page, who had appropriated a Confederate slouch hat to replace his National Guard helmet, did not quite recognize the uniform of the approaching man. It was not exactly in the Zouave style, which both sides had affected for a time. Nor was it a Garibaldi Guard uniform. But there was one thing Page did recognize. The red piping.

When the little man drew near, Page asked, "Artillery, sub?"

"I spit upon artillery."

Page flinched as if stung. "That is no way for a son of the South to talk."

"I am from the North."

For the first time Captain Page saw the little old man's almond eyes clearly.

"Well, Ah declare. You look more Eastern to me, at that."

"You command this legion?"

"It has fallen upon mah care-worn shoulders. Ah am Captain Page, at your service, suh. "

"And I am Chiun, Reigning Master."

"Ah do not know that rank, suh."

"I am at the service of the emperor of this land, who has sent me to this province to discuss terms."

Page blinked. "Terms of surrender?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it a mite early in the day to surrender? The true battle for these blood-blessed grounds has not yet been waged. "

A voice off to Captain Page's right. said, "The battle's over, pal. You just haven't got the word yet."

Captain Page started. Just behind him stood a Yankee completely out of uniform. Unless a T-shirt and pants could constitute a uniform, but to Captain Page they did not.

"And whom do Ah have the pleasure of addressing?"

"Remo."

"First name or last?"

"Isn't that a National Guard uniform?" Remo asked.

"It is"

"What kind of hat is that?"

"Mah ancestors called it a chapeau."

"That is French for hat, " whispered Chiun.

"Hold the phone," Remo shot back. "What are you doing with these weekend warriors?" he asked Captain Page.

"Commanding them, suh. By what right do you challenge mah authority?"

"Washington wants to know what the heck's going on down here."

"Why, the South is rising again. Ain't you got eyes?"

"I have a brain, too, and as near as I can tell, this whole thing started over a scuffle between Civil War reenactors. "

"In that, you are sorely mistaken. This is a fight for the honor of Virginia in which traitorous reenactors have elected to take the wrong side. The enemy is due at high noon, and we will not surrender this hallowed ground which our ancestors defended so mightily."

"What enemy?"

"Ah will not profane this discussion by mentioning his cursed name."

"Better rethink that attitude," warned Remo. "Uncle Sam doesn't take no for an answer."

"Ya'll are with Uncle Sam?"

"Didn't I say Washington sent me?"

"It is hardly the same thing, suh. "

Remo frowned. "Since when?"

"Since Uncle Sam has vowed to pillage this fine state, just as he looted the treasury of Old Dominion."

"I told you treasure was involved," said Chiun.

Remo lifted his hands. "Hold the phone. Something's not right here. Who looted the state treasury?"

"The godless forces of Uncle Sam."

"The your-country-needs-you Uncle Sam?"

"Hardly."

Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Remo asked Chiun.

"You never think," spat Chiun.

Remo turned to Captain Page and asked a seemingly unrelated question. "You got a phone around here I can borrow?"

"Why do you ask?"

Before Remo could answer the question with a hard, angry squeeze of the captain's neck, a black helicopter rattled overhead.

All eyes naturally went to it. It circled once and slowed, hovering over the Crater itself.

Something large and spherical and the color of stainless steel swung from the undercarriage, between the skids.

"What in tarnation is that?" Captain Page asked.

"It looks like a bomb," said Chiun thinly.

"I never saw a bomb like that," said Remo. "It's got lenses all over it."

It was true. The object resembled an old-fashioned steel bathysphere, except instead of portholes, it was pocked with great round lenses, every one a dull, glassy yellow.

"Looks to me kinda like a traffic light," muttered Captain Page.

"Traffic lights are red, green and yellow. That thing has only yellow lights."

Just then, the lights flared into life, warming to a mellow yellow.

"Yellow naturally indicates caution, does it not?" asked Captain Page.

"On a traffic light, yeah," said Remo. "But that isn't a traffic light, so I don't know what it means."

"It is a bomb," repeated Chiun, stroking his wispy beard uneasily.

"Bombs don't light up," Remo said. "They detonate."

The yellow-lit sphere continued to hang off the hovering helicopter, swinging less and less as the seconds ticked by.

"Do they not also fall?" wondered Chiun.

"Sure. Old-fashioned aerial bombs. But that's not a bomb. Looks more like an Easter egg, or maybe a Christmas-tree ornament."

Then, with the sharp snap of a parting cable, the stainless-steel object dropped free.

Captain Page shouted, "Take cover, men! We are under attack! Take cover!" And he threw himself flat.

Remo grabbed him up and tucked him under one arm, then followed the Master of Sinanju as he ran with ungainly speed as far away from ground zero as possible in the few seconds left before impact.

Behind them everything turned as yellow as an exploding sun.

Chapter 6

There was no explosion. That is, no sound accompanied the powerful detonation. The sky turned sunflower yellow as far as the eye could see. The green grass turned momentarily blue. Trees changed color, too. But not a leaf shook. There was no shock wave, no screaming chunks of superheated shrapnel, no shrieks of wounded or dying men.

Except for the overwhelming sunburst of yellow, nothing much happened.

Until men began pouring out of the Crater.

They were running for their lives, faces twisted and full of horror. Unarmed, they wore the Union blue of the captive First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry. Clearly the object that had fallen in the grassy pit among them had spooked them so much they all but trampled their erstwhile captors in their mad rush to escape.

It didn't exactly hurt their chances that the Confederate troops were flat on their stomachs, heads cradled in their hands, awaiting an explosion that had already taken place. They had no reaction time. Their prisoners were well on their way to freedom by the time the Rebels lifted their faces with expressions that could only be interpreted as asking, "When's the explosion coming?"

Remo paused to drop Captain Page to the greensward and called ahead to Chiun, "Looks like a dud, Little Father."

"We do not know this," Chiun shot back. "Do not stop!"

A ragged line of bluecoats surged in Remo's direction, eyes wide as saucers, faces ghost white.

Remo stepped in their path. "What's the rush? It didn't go off."

Like frightened Boy Scouts, the men in blue charged past. They wore the expressions of men chased by angry wasps.

Casually Remo reached out and snared one by the arm. He lifted him over so quickly the man ran on air until his feet scuffed grass again.

"Talk to me," said Remo.

"I-I'm scared."

"Take it easy. It's over. They can't hurt you. They're still crouched down."

"It's not the Johnnys I fear," the man said in a feardistorted voice. "It's that damn thing that fell into the pit."

"What about it?"

"It turned yellow."

"Yeah?"

"It was the most yellow thing I ever saw in my life. It scared the living bejesus out of me."

"Anyone in the pit hurt?" asked Remo.

"No. I-I think we all got out."

"So what's the problem?"

"I tell you, it was yellow. It was the most hideous yellow I ever saw. It was an unearthly yellow. Nothing should be that yellow. Nothing sane."

"I take it yellow isn't exactly your favorite color."

The bluecoat wiped his sweaty brow. "I always liked yellow. Until today. I don't ever wanna see anything so yellow for the rest of my life." The soldier cast fearful eyes back toward the Crater and started struggling.

"I think you've been sitting in the sun too long," said Remo, not relinquishing his grip.

"Don't mention the sun to me. It's yellow, too."

The soldier continued struggling to break Remo's grip. He might as well have been trying to break the clutch of a steam shovel, but seeing the abject fear in his face, Remo decided to let him go. The Union reenactor ran off like a scared rabbit.

Another bluecoat came close enough for Remo to snare him without too much trouble, so he did.

"Calm down," Remo told him. "It's all over. You've been liberated."

"It was yellow," the man quavered.

"So I hear."

"It was an awful yellow. An evil, twisted yellow. It was so yellow I don't think it was really yellow."

"Yellow's a nice color," Remo suggested. "Buttercups are yellow. And daisies."

"So's fire. This was a fiery, burning, horrible yellow." He tried to look up at his own forehead. "Is my brain on fire?"

"Does it feel like it's on fire?" Remo asked.

The man clutched his head as if afflicted with a migraine. "I can't get the yellow out of my brain. My brain feels yellow."

Captain Page was on his feet, examining his ripped chapeau forlornly. "Ah never thought Ah'd see a Yank with such a yella streak in him," he said in a disgusted voice. He addressed the Union man. "Suh, Ah would advise you to get a grip on yourself. You are babbling something fierce."

The Union soldier's nervous eyes moved wildly in their orbits. "The yellow got into my brain through my eyes. Are they okay?"

"They look scared," Remo told him.

"They are scared. I'm scared. My-my eyes aren't yellow, are they?"

"No. Why?"

"If they turned yellow, I think I'd have to gouge them out. Otherwise, I couldn't stand to look into a mirror ever again."

"Aren't you taking this antiyellow thing a little too far?" said Remo.

"Can I go now? I have a long walk back to Massachusetts."

"Why not fly home?"

"I would, but I'd have to ride to the airport in a taxi. It might be yellow."

"Have a nice stroll," said Remo, turning his attention elsewhere as the bluecoat ran off.

The puzzled Confederate soldiers were up on their feet now. Some had crawled gingerly to the edge of the Crater and were looking down into it.

The Master of Sinanju approached Remo cautiously. "You are unhurt?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"You are very active for one who is on strike," Chiun said thinly.

"I got interested in things," Remo said distractedly. "So sue me."

"What was wrong with those men?" Chiun asked.

"They were yella," said Captain Page, spitting out his disgust.

"Get off it," said Remo. "They were just scared by the thing that landed in the Crater."

"It was a bomb," said Chiun. "As I warned you, Remo."

"A dud."

"A dud bomb."

"A miss is as good as a mile," said Remo carelessly. "Let's check the thing out." Remo motioned for Captain Page to accompany them and, when the good captain balked, Remo swept a hand out and took hold of him by the back of the neck and started off.

Captain Page told his brain to make his body resist. He knew his brain got the message because his mental thoughts were perfectly clear and understandable. Unfortunately, somewhere in the neural net of his brain a dendrite must have been down or something because his legs obligingly carried him along at the same pace as the civilian named Remo.

It was very strange. When Remo slowed, Page's legs slowed, too. When Remo topped a rise, Page's legs knew exactly what to do even though all during the hike to the Crater, Captain Page was firmly informing his brain that he did not want to go near the damn Crater.

Page felt exactly like a docile puppet. He wondered if it had something to do with the way Remo manipulated his spine during the walk, tapping vertebrae to hurry him up and squeezing when he wanted Page to slow down.

When they reached the Crater, the Confederates had gotten themselves organized. Seeing Captain Page a prisoner, they leveled their muskets. Others went to work with their ramrods.

"Anyone who wants to walk around for the next month with a ramrod shoved up his backside," Remo said casually, "has my permission to fire."

There were three takers. They let go and then used their hands to bat away the thick black-powder smoke to see how badly their target had been hit.

When the smoke thinned, there was no sign of the skinny man with the thick wrists and dead-looking eyes.

Reflexively they reached for their belted ramrods. And encountered emptiness.

"Oof! Oof! Oof!" the three said several seconds apart. Then a firm hand guided their hands to the missing ramrods.

They found that the missing implements were stubbornly stuck in something and, when they turned around to look, they saw that they were somehow stuck in the seats of their Confederate gray trousers.

The trio formed a daisy chain and tried to help one another out of their rectal predicaments.

After that, the Confederate troops decided it was high time for a long coffee break and set to boiling chicory in their battered tin field cups over open fires. One man surreptitiously began coaxing his camp coffee along with a Zippo lighter.

Meanwhile, Remo guided Captain Page to the lip of the Crater.

The object had landed off center, gouging a raw brown wound in the grassy gash before it had rolled down to the deepest part of the Crater. Most of the lenses had shattered, leaving dull yellow glass shards lying about.

And next to the object a Union reenactor sat sobbing uncontrollably.

"Looks like we got a casualty here," said Remo, starting into the Crater. Captain Page obligingly followed. Or at least his feet obliged. His face scowled in a very ungentlemanly manner.

"These Yanks are a sorry lot," mumbled Page when they reached the man.

"What do you expect?" said Remo. "It's not like they're professional soldiers."

Remo tapped the Union soldier's dusty boot with a toe. "Lose your musket?" he asked solicitously.

The man looked up, face warped and dust smeared. "It was awful."

"What was?"

"The color of the thing," the Union soldier sobbed.

"Let me guess, it was sunflower-colored. The worst, ugliest, most hideous yellow you ever saw. Right?"

"Yellow? It was blue. A searing, crushing, soulflattening blue. I just want to die."

"You said blue?"

"Yes."

"Not yellow?"

"No."

"You sure about that?"

"I know my colors," the man spat.

Remo let that go. "The blue make you afraid?"

"No, it made me depressed. I feel like the world's come to an end. First we get captured by the people who we come south to succor, then they drop some kind of depression bomb smack on us."

"The other guys ran away."

"I wish I could. I don't even feel equal to standing up."

"Let me give you a hand, soldier," said Remo, offering a thick wristed hand.

The Union soldier simply sat there dejectedly, his head hanging so low his chin was buried in his chest. His shoulders looked like a wire coat hanger that had been bent down at each wing.

"This is a very unhappy man," said Chiun.

"This is a guy who doesn't know his yellows from his blues," said Remo.

"I have never seen a more unhappy man."

"I'll give you that," said Remo.

"He is a disgrace to his uniform," declared Captain Royal Wooten Page.

Remo gave Page a scornful look. He was now wearing a plumed Confederate officer's bicorne hat that looked as if it had been taken off a dead French admiral circa 1853. "You should talk."

"Ah am a proud son of the South, suh"

"Who deserted his unit to join a bunch of weekend warriors playing at war."

"This is a right serious matter," Captain Page said stiffly. "The state treasury has been looted, the governor co-opted and the legislature is about to sell out the land of their fathers for mere gold."

"Gold is not mere," sniffed Chiun. "It is gold. Therefore, it is perfection."

"These guys probably have some excuses," Remo went on. "They're probably all 4-F's. But you're a real soldier. What got into you?"

"Virginia."

"Huh?"

"Virginia is in mah blood. Ah make no bones about it, suh. Ah would die for the soil that nurtured me." And throwing his head back, Captain Page burst into mournful song:

Take me back to the place where Ah first saw the light, To mah sweet sunny South, take me home. O'er the graves of mah loved ones Ah long for to weep, Oh, why was Ah tempted to roam?

Remo reached around for the back of the captain's neck, intending to deaden the man's speech centers when from somewhere inside the broken stainless-steel bomb, a siren began wailing.

"What the hell is that?" he said.

"The bomb is about to explode," Chiun said. "Quickly, Remo, we must escape."

"Bombs don't make sounds like fire engines."

Chiun got behind Remo and began pushing urgently. "Hurry, clod-footed one."

Remo scooped up Captain Page and the Union soldier, one under each arm, and started out of the Crater. The siren sound swelled and grew in pitch like an angry ghost following them.

When it was screaming at its most urgent, and the entire battlefield was thumping with Confederate soldiers running from the Crater, the explosion occurred.

This explosion wasn't yellow. Or even blue. It was on the order of a thoom. Not a big, earthshaking thoom, but a substantial thoom nonetheless. A pillar of blackish smoke crawled out of the Crater, seeking the climbing sun.

After that the Crater hissed like grease in a giant frying pan.

"Hold up, Little Father," said Remo as the hissing reached his ears. He stopped.

Chiun hesitated. "The smoke may be dangerous, Remo."

"Maybe. But I still don't think that was a bomb."

They stood and watched the black smoke coil and twist up from the great Crater to be picked apart by an intermittent southwesterly breeze.

When nothing else happened for five more minutes, Remo walked back to the Crater rim.

"Mind setting us down, suh?" a voice requested.

Remo looked down and saw that he was still carrying the depressed Union soldier and a docile Captain Page under his arms.

"Sorry. Forgot," Remo apologized, dropping the men to the ground.

They hung back at a careful remove while Remo looked down into the Crater.

At the bottom the stainless-steel sphere was a puddle of hot, smoking slag. It bubbled and spread, scorching the grass as it lost its round shape and became flat.

"Guess we won't ever know what it was now," Remo said unhappily.

"I do not mind," said Chiun, "just so long as we do not ever encounter its like again."

". . . JUST SO LONG as we do not ever encounter its like again."

At a mobile command-post van a man removed his earphones and snapped a console switch. "Moise reporting. "

"Go ahead, Moose."

"According to the field mikes, we hued them good and proper. Opposition forces have abandoned the battlefield."

"That's our read from above. We just sent out the slag command."

"They're talking about it right now. The technology remains secure."

"Roger. Continue monitoring. We may need additional field support come H-hour."

"Standing by. Moise out."

The man in the mobile command post cut his mike and returned the earphones to his head. "I hate being called fucking Moose," he muttered to himself.

Chapter 7

On the ground overlooking the smoking pit history had dubbed the Crater, Remo searched the sky with his eyes. The black helicopter that had dropped the weird device that was now so much superheated steel slag was gone. It was not among the clustering choppers that hung off in the western sky, well out of musket range.

Captain Page turned to Remo and said, "Earlier, suh, you spoke of surrender terms."

"That's right," said Remo.

"Well, Ah am prepared to offer them."

"Offer? You're going to surrender to us."

Captain Page jutted out his cleft chin with pride. "Never. Ah would sooner die."

Remo flexed his fingers to limber up. "That can be arranged."

Page took a step backward. "Ah will ask you to keep your cotton-picking hands to yourself, if you do not mind."

"No problem," said Remo, folding his lean arms.

Captain Royal Wooten Page relaxed visibly.

"Now you are being reasona-aayaaah!"

Captain Page fancied himself a singer of sorts. Mostly of the soap-and-shower variety. Old-timey tunes were his stock-in-trade. "Lorena." "Rebel Soldier." "Barbara Allen." "Shenandoah." He could manage middle C, especially if the water turned suddenly cold. For the first time in his life, he hit top C. And while he was, technically, singing, lyrics had nothing to do with his impressive performance.

The pain seemed to shoot through his entire body, paralyzing it with shock. It was remarkable pain, far beyond even that time on maneuvers when a halftrack had run over the toe of his combat boot. Once, he had experienced something like it. He had been a teenager and gotten some candy cane stuck between two teeth one Christmas morning. For want of a toothpick or dental floss, he had taken some tinsel off the tree and used it to saw the offending particle out from between two back molars.

The pain had been electric and excruciating.

Later he figured out that the aluminum tinsel rubbing between the amalgam molar fillings had generated some kind of primitive electric current. At the time the pain could only be called exquisite.

This pain was anything but exquisite. It was as if his nervous system had been hooked up to a car battery and the juice pumped straight in.

Captain Page dearly wanted to run away, but the pain rooted him. He did manage to jerk his head around because he had the idea the pain was coming from his left. It was, he plainly saw.

The old Oriental gentleman in the black kimono with the red artillery piping had hold of his earlobe. That was all. Just the earlobe. Captain Page wasn't aware of any particular sensitivity in his earlobes. From time to time, in the hot weather, he might develop a pimple in the fleshiest part, but that was it.

The old man was squeezing the lobe between two quite wicked fingernails. Yet they seemed so fragile in their elegantly curved length. Now they were stern, hot needles bringing proud Captain Royal Wooten Page to his quivering knees.

"Now, about that surrender," said Remo.

"Would you prefer total surrender, or would abject surrender suffice?" Captain Page moaned.

"Whatever wraps up this idiocy quickest."

"This idiocy, suh, will never be wrapped up so long as Virginia is threatened from without."

"Who's threatening it?"

"Ah told you. The evil forces of Uncle Sam."

The terrible fingernails withdrew.

"Did you hear, Remo? It is Uncle Sam who is behind this."

"Hold your horses," said Remo. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Page, spell it out for me."

"Surely you know of the assault upon our sovereign state of Old Dominion," Page said, getting to his feet.

"I know two groups of idiots are fighting the Civil War all over again."

"It was the Yanks who started it, as Ah have it. Ah was not actually present at the Second Battle of the Crater, you understand."

"I understand exactly nothing."

"The Sixth Virginia Foot had camped out on these very grounds to stand against the would-be plunderers of ole Virginia, Colonel Rip Hazard commanding. He fell when the advance guard of Union troops swooped down upon them in their sleep. It was a slaughter, suh. The Sixth Virginia were not prepared for true combat. Their muskets were tramped down with powder and wadding only. No balls."

"No brains, either," said Remo.

"Ah take violent exception to that."

"Feel free," invited Remo.

"The valiant survivors lay in ambush when the Forty-fourth Rhode Island came along and paid them in their own coin. When the First Massachusetts followed, they were overwhelmed without loss to the Confederate side, Ah am pleased to report."

"Let me guess, no balls, either."

"You have that right." Captain Page frowned. "Ah must admit that portion of the tale has me flummoxed."

"How so?"

"Colonel Hazard had requested the assistance of the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Weekend Artillery and the First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry in the coming unpleasantness, and it was his impression that he was betrayed by one or the other. Yet both Northern regiments, when subsequently engaged, were firing paper and powder. They were woefully unprepared for battle."

"Wait a minute. Back up. What coming unpleasantness?"

"Why, the Siege of Petersburg National Battlefield, of course."

"Who's laying siege to this patch of grass?"

"Why, the dreaded Sam Beasley Company, of course. Don't you read the newspapers?"

"Bingo," said Remo.

"The carpetbaggers subverted our state government, extracted millions of taxpayer dollars for road and highway improvements and had the unmitigated gall to think they could erect a so-called Civil War theme park on Virginia soil, despoiling land that has only recently shrugged off the terrible wounds of the late unpleasantness."

"What late unpleasantness?" asked Remo.

"The War between the States, naturally."

"I wouldn't exactly call the Civil War late," Remo said dryly.

"You are obviously no Virginian, suh. These wounds lie deep, and the scars still fester."

Remo looked around. "I can see that."

"They will never build on this hallowed ground. They failed at the Third Manassas, and they will surely fail here."

"Third Manassas?"

"They desired to build in the vicinity of Manassas National Battlefield Park, but the good people of Manassas chased them away. Their alternative site is just a stone's throw from here. But before God Almighty, we wall run them off also or ourselves lie buried in the Crater."

"Third Manassas wasn't a battle, but a public-relations victory, is that it?"

"It is a victory nonetheless." Page thumped his chest once. "Ah only wish Ah had participated personally instead of succumbing to inglorious defeat at your wicked Yankee hands."

"Forget it. We have a beef with Uncle Sam Beasley, too."

"If only he had lived," Page said, wet-eyed. "The kindly old gentleman would never have allowed this vile travesty to be carried out in his name."

"And Colonel Sanders was a friend to chickens," said Remo.

"Suh?"

"Never mind. I want to talk to someone who was at the first ambush."

"My pleasure." Page called over to the men in gray drinking bitter chicory coffee with even more-bitter expressions. "Fetch Mr. Huckabee over here."

"Huckabee has been confined to quarters for dropping character by virtue of being out of period," a sergeant hollered back.

"What was the nature of his offense?"

"Zippoing his coffee, the lazy shirk."

"These men take their soldierly duties quite serious," Captain Page confided to Remo. Remo rolled his eyes.

"Sergeant, you survived the dastardly attack on your fine regiment. This man would appreciate an opportunity to treat with you."

"He won't hurt me, will he?"

"What kind of soldier talk is that?" Captain Page said angrily.

"I'm recreational, sir."

"I only hurt people who keep me waiting," Remo said loudly.

The sergeant cleared thirty yards of clipped grass in jig time.

"Sergeant Dinwiddie reporting as threatened," he said, saluting Remo smartly.

"Here now, you don't salute a civilian," Captain Page said.

"Beggin' your pardon, Captain, but I have been witness to this individual's manhandling skills, and have no wish to enjoy his wrath."

Captain Page rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "Carry on, then."

Remo addressed the sergeant. "You get a clear look at the unit that attacked you last night?"

"Before God, I did."

"They wore Union blue?"

"They did."

"What color piping?"

"It was light blue."

"Not artillery red?"

"No."

"Not cavalry yellow?"

"Light blue, as I have said."

Remo turned to Captain Page.

"Light blue piping is infantry, right?"

"It is indeed," Captain Page said slowly. "Ah declare, Ah was unaware of a Union infantry reenactment regiment on maneuvers in these parts."

Sergeant Dinwiddie spoke up. "There was none, Cap'n. Just the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Weekend Artillery and the First Mass. Interpretive."

"Great," growled Remo. "You were set up and you fell for it."

"It was dark, sir," the sergeant said apologetically. "And we lost our beloved Colonel Hazard in the first engagement. He would have set us straight had he lived. I am plumb sure of it."

Remo said to Captain Page, "I asked for a phone a while back. You have one?"

"No, suh. Ah ordered the field phones destroyed."

"Why?"

"So headquarters would not recall us before the press conference. Or worse yet, federalize us under the command of Washington and set us against our fellow Virginians." Captain Page visibly shuddered at the thought.

"The Beasley people are coming here?"

"At high noon." Captain Page sank to one knee. "Suh, Ah beg of you. Let me and mah brave boys stand against the Yank devils."

"Only if you behave yourselves. No shooting. No taking prisoners. And if your unit commander orders you to pull out, you'll obey orders."

"Who are you to talk of duty?"

"I was a Marine. I learned to obey my commander."

"We had a senatorial candidate in these parts who was a Marine and did not let orders stand in his way."

"He win or lose?"

"Lost."

"That should tell you something," said Remo, walking away.

The Master of Sinanju followed him, sere of face, his hands tucked into his kimono sleeves. He looked like an angry monk. "Uncle Sam has shown his steely hand at last, Remo."

"Looks that way to me."

"We will have to deal with him, for it is Smith's highest instructions to vanquish the fiend once and for all."

Remo frowned. "It's not going to be easy."

"It was your task to find him."

"Look," Remo said angrily, "I ran my tail off. Sam Beasley World. Beasleyland. Euro Beasley. Beasleyland Tokyo." He held two fingers so they nearly touched. "I was this close to nailing him in Florida, but he flew the coop in a helicopter."

Chiun's frown deepened, making his wrinkles gullies. "It was a helicopter that dropped that bomb," he said, stroking his wispy beard thoughtfully.

"That helicopter was black. The one I chased down in Florida was red and green."

"Are you still on strike?"

"Not where Beasley is concerned. He got us embroiled in a war that first time when he invaded Cuba and tried to turn it into a theme park."

"That was when you should have dispatched him."

"Not me. I grew up watching his cartoons. The best place for him was in a Folcroft rubber room."

"Until he escaped."

"Not our fault," said Remo.

They reached the entrance to the park. The road was filled with white news trucks sporting microwave dishes. The trucks were being held at bay by newly arrived Confederate troops with muskets leveled. The Zouaves were nowhere to be seen.

"Let's take the low road," suggested Remo.

Moving low to the ground, they slipped around the Confederate lines and across the highway, which they crossed unseen, finally coming to an outlying news van that was parked a discreet distance from the rest. Like the others, it was white. The blue letters on the side said Europe 1. The o in Europe was either a plum or a blue apple.

"Behold, Remo-proof of French intrigue."

The Master of Sinanju was pointing to a blond woman in a fashionable blue slip dress who wore a black beret.

"She's wearing a beret. Big deal. Anybody can wear a beret. That doesn't make her French."

"She smells French."

"How do French women smell?" said Remo.

"Like cheese."

Remo sniffed the air. "I smell wine."

"Some French women smell like cheese and wine," Chiun admitted.

"Nice try, but this is a Sam Beasley operation all the way. The French have nothing to do with it."

"Let us prove it to your satisfaction by asking the sinister Frenchwoman for the use of her telephone."

"Fair enough," said Remo, changing direction.

The woman in the beret failed to notice Remo's approach, but so would a tiger, a hawk or any other wild creature possessing preternatural senses.

Remo moved with an easy harmony of bones and muscles and tendons that left no spoor for a predator to follow. His natural scent clung to his lean form like an aura instead of trailing betraying odor molecules after him. His feet made no impression in the dirt, and when he passed over grass, the blades sprang back like springs instead of lying crushed and exuding telltale juice.

So when Remo drew up behind the woman in the beret, he had scoped her out completely before she first became aware of his nearness.

She was blond with short-cut hair, limber limbs and a modest chest. Not Remo's type at all. He willed his sex-attractant pheromones to stop producing and let his body slouch slightly. With luck she wouldn't be attracted to him. It was a continual problem. Masters of Sinanju were trained to be masters of their bodies, and the result was not exactly lost on the opposite sex.

"Can I borrow your phone?" he asked quietly.

The woman whirled, green eyes sparking with anger and surprise.

"Who are you to sneak upon me, you--you American clod?" She pronounced "American," "Americain."

Remo frowned. "Take it easy. My car broke down a ways back. I need to call AAA."

"I do not know zis AAA.."

"Doesn't matter. I'm a motorist in distress."

"And I am a journalist on a story. Ze line must be kept clear to my producer."

"French?"

"What is it to you?"

"Unusual to see a French reporter on a story like this."

"Zis is a major international story. If you rootless fools are going to tear your nation asunder, it is of concern to ze people of France. After all, you are an ally. Of sorts."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence. Next time Paris falls, remind me to quote you to my congressman."

"If you expect gratitude for somezing zat 'appen' an impossibly long time in the past, you are very much mistaken. Now, if you will excuse me, I 'ave a story to cover."

"You're welcome," said Remo, returning to Chiun.

"You were right," he said. "She's French. Typical winning personality, too."

"They were no more pleasant when the Romans first discovered them living in hovels along the Seine and named them Gauls."

"That one sure had a lot of gall," Remo grumbled.

"I am surprised you did not employ your masculine charms to convince her of the errors of her ways."

"Not my type."

"My," Chiun clucked, "how you have grown. There was a time when all white cows were your type."

"Knock it off. We gotta call this in to Smith."

"Agreed," said Chiun.

A man whom Remo recognized as a national correspondent for a major network was pacing before a microwave van, a cellular phone jammed against one ear, saying, "What's going on? Where are our helicopters? What's going on at the battlefield?"

"It's over," Remo told him.

The man stopped pacing and said, "What?"

"It's over."

"It's over?"

Remo nodded. "Over."

"Who won?"

"America."

"That's not a victory."

"If you're American, it is."

"I'm from Washington."

"Maybe you'll be allowed to join the rest of us if you behave. In the meantime I need to borrow that phone."

"I'm talking to Washington."

"You should be talking to America," Remo told him, and removed the cellular handset from his hand before his fingers could tighten defensively.

"Only be a minute," said Remo, walking off. An excited voice was chattering in his ear when he brought the handset to his head.

"What's going on? The helicopter feed is down."

"The South surrendered," Remo told the voice from Washington.

"Already? This story's only six hours old. Damn. We just preempted 'As the Planet Revolves.' We can't interrupt a bulletin and say it was all a misunderstanding."

"That's the biz, sweetheart," said Remo, hitting the switch hook. When he got a dial tone, he thumbed the 1 button and held it down. A continuous 1 tone was the foolproof telephone code that would connect him with Dr. Harold W. Smith at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Folcroft was the cover for CURE.

Smith picked up the phone before the first ring sounded on Remo's end.

"Guess you've been standing by the phone, huh, Smitty?"

"Remo. How bad is it in Petersburg?"

"Not bad at all," Remo said amiably. "We have clear skies, a nice breeze and, except for the network news vans, not a cloud in sight. How about you?"

"The Rhode Island National Guard has been stopped at the Virginia border. It's a standoff. The Ninety-ninth Vermont Holiday Sharpshooters is mustering its entire force. The Stonewall Thespian Brigade is being reformed and is moving on Petersburg."

Smith paused. "Strange. Stonewall was a Southern unit. These men are out of New York City." Smith went on. "On a layover in Austin, a commercial flight carrying the Texas Juneteenth Rifles has been detained on the ground by armed and unreconstructed Texas Rangers."

"Texas-what Rifles?"

"Juneteenth. They are an all-black regiment who take their name from the date when the Negro slaves were freed. I believe the actual date was June 19."

"They stopped being called Negroes a long time ago, Smitty."

"They were called that when they were freed."

"Point taken."

Smith's voice became more urgent. "Remo, we are witnessing the dawn of a second Civil War. It must be stopped. The President went for a jog two hours ago wearing a Smith College T-shirt. When reporters asked him to comment on the situation in Virginia, he said he hoped to find a cure for this new kind of divisiveness."

"Oops."

"I sent him an E-mail message assuring him we were on the matter, and warning never to use the word cure in public again. Now we must have results. It is unbelievable how quickly the situation is escalating. One moment."

The line hummed. Remo listened for the familiar plasticky clicking of a computer key and, when he didn't hear anything, suddenly remembered that Smith had upgraded to a noiseless keyboard.

"Remo, my computers have just picked up a story moving on the wire. Old Ironsides has sailed out of Charleston naval yard. An air unit of the Georgia National Guard have deserted in their helicopters and are moving north to the area. A group calling itself the Thirteenth Illinois Improvisational Engineers has hijacked a Chicago-to-Dayton flight and is demanding to be flown to Richmond. What in God's name has gotten into people?"

"Get a grip, Smitty. We have the situation in hand."

"Say again?"

"We liberated the First Massachusetts, and the Sixth Virginia Foot have laid down their arms."

"Then it's over?"

"Unless all those other idiots get here and stir the hornet's nest back up."

"I will see that they are intercepted if they have to be destroyed."

"Let's try and remember we're all one nation under God."

Smith's lemony voice became flinty. "If a second Civil War comes to pass, Remo, we will all have to choose up sides. This nation is already divided enough as it is. Imagine a Civil War today. Instead of North versus South, it might be east against west. Midwest versus Northwest. Any combination is possible. And that is without foreign nations taking sides."

"Well, the French are already here," Remo said.

Chiun spoke up. "It is true, Emperor. The untrustworthy French have already arrived."

"He means a French news team," explained Remo. "Apple 1 or something."

"Odd."

"I thought so."

"This story is only a few hours old. How could a French news agency have people in place already?"

"Maybe they were in the country doing a story on Memorial Day. They owe us big for Normandy."

"I have not noticed a great deal of gratitude of late," Smith said in a chilly voice. He had served in the OSS during World War II, in his pre-CIA days.

"I hear that," said Remo, looking in the direction of the French newswoman, who was now atop her van scanning the battlefield with a pair of binoculars.

"Listen, Smitty. We have good news and bad."

"I would prefer to hear the bad news first."

"I knew you would. Here goes, according to the Confederate side, they had called down two Northern regiments to help them. But they were bushwhacked by a unit from the North firing real ammo. That's why they attacked the units from Rhode Island and Massachusetts."

"Who were these bushwhackers?"

"They thought it was one of the two New England units."

"How can that be if they intercepted them traveling south as reports have it? It is not logical."

"Logic doesn't fly very high down in these parts, Smitty. When I asked around, these clowns admitted that it was an infantry unit that attacked them. But the New England units were artillery and cavalry."

"Some hitherto unknown reenactment unit goaded them into a fight," Smith said slowly.

"But here's the important part. This whole thing started because reenactors from both sides decided to take a stand here against a common enemy."

"Who?"

"The Sam Beasley Company."

There was silence on the line. And then a groan-long, low and heartfelt.

"Tell me this is not another Sam Beasley scheme."

"They want to build a Civil War theme park around here," said Remo.

"This was triggered by a theme park?"

"Hey, the Trojan War was over a girl who snored."

Smith's voice darkened. "Remo, I want Uncle Sam Beasley found, captured and terminated."

"Wait, Smitty. Think about this a minute. This is Uncle Sam Beasley. We can't just kill him."

"Kill him," Smith said in a brittle voice. "He dragged us into an incipient war with Cuba just to expand his global entertainment empire. Now this. I thought confining him to Folcroft until the end of his days would solve the problem, but I was wrong. Beasley is a menace to the American way."

"Some people think he is the American way."

"Find him and destroy him."

"I'm on strike."

"He is not!" Chiun cried out. "He told me so himself."

"If you cannot execute this mission, Remo, have Chiun do it," said Smith.

"I would no more kill the beloved Uncle Sam than I would harm a kitten," Chiun said loudly.

"Then bring him here alive, and I will put a bullet through his brain myself," Harold Smith said tightly. "Do you understand, Remo?"

"Got it. There's a press conference scheduled for noon. We'll let it play itself out, grab a Beasley vice president or something and work our way back to the big cheese."

"Report as necessary," said Harold Smith, who then hung up.

Remo snapped the antenna shut and told the Master of Sinanju, "We have our marching orders."

"I will harm no hair on his venerable head."

"We'll see if it comes to that."

They tossed the cellular back at the network correspondent and started back to the battlefield.

"You did not tell Smith about the bomb that brought terror," Chiun said pointedly.

"He hung up before I got to that part."

As they approached the park entrance, a line of cars roared up the road. They were all a flat primer gray, their chrome trim painted canary yellow.

"What are those?" asked Chiun.

"From the color of the piping, Confederate cavalry," said Remo.

The cars turned up Crater Road. They were waved in by cheering Confederate sentries, who threw their slouch hats and forage caps into the air with raucous whoops of joy.

"We'd better shake a leg. Looks like reinforcements. If they stir up Southern passions, we'll have to put down the rebellion all over again."

Chapter 8

Mickey Weisinger was the second-highest-paid CEO in human history. He had a stock-option plan that enabled him-virtually on whim-to buy company stock at five dollars a share and resell it at market value. Typically he doubled his thirty-minute investment.

But he was not happy. He was never happy. He would never be happy.

Not until he was the highest-paid CEO in human history.

For the man who ran the company that made all of America and most of the industrialized world smile, Mickey Weisinger lived as if existence was a constant struggle against the piercing paper cuts of life.

Nothing was ever enough. No success could fulfill him.

Yet the successes kept coming and coming. All through the eighties and nineties, under President Mickey Weisinger the Sam Beasley Corporation could do no wrong. Under Mickey Weisinger the Beasley culture expanded, was packaged and exported to other countries.

It began with Beasley Tokyo. Everyone knew the Japanese loved all things American-and what was more American than Mongo Mouse, Mucky Moose and Silly Goose? The Japanese lapped it up, but when the quarterly financial reports came in, Mickey Weisinger saw only failure.

"We thought too small," Mickey lamented.

"The park is raking it in."

"We gave them too damn many concessions. We licensed the damn thing. We should have built it ourselves. We should own Beasley Tokyo lock, stock and castle moat."

"But if it had flopped," he was reminded, "it would have dragged Beasley stock right into the tank."

"Beasley never fails," Mickey Weisinger railed, pointing to the portrait of founder Uncle Sam Beasley, at that time dead for two decades despite persistent rumors he was being kept in cryogenic suspended animation until medical science could discover a cure for his damaged heart, and shouted, "Beasley is America. We are America and next time we're going to own it all."

And they did. They geared up their licensing operation, computerized their animation department, tripled theatrical releases and flooded the planet with Beasely products until they had a gross national product equal to the smaller European countries.

But it still wasn't enough for Mickey Weisinger.

"I want more!" he raged. "More! Find me revenue. Create more toy lines. I want a product stream equal to US. military production in World War II. If anyone puts out a coloring book, cartoon or film that even smacks of Beasley, I want the ears sued off the bastards. It's not enough to bury the enemy in product, we gotta crush him before he can get his own product line established. From now on we're like sharks. If you don't keep swimming forward, cruising for fresh red meat, you're on the bottom spilling blood for our enemies to sniff out and devour."

So the word went out, and Beasley exported itself, expanding and conquering. With the untimely death of Beasley CEO Eider Drake, Mickey Weisinger was promoted to chief executive officer.

When it was time to establish a beachhead in Europe, Mickey Weisinger personally oversaw negotiations. He handpicked a site outside Paris in rural Averoigne and, when negotiations were in the final stages, he turned around and made the same offer to the government of Spain.

Pitting the two nations against one another, Mickey succeeded in extracting concessions from the French until they were literally salivating to break ground at Euro Beasley.

Buffeted by the worst recession and coldest European winters in living memory, Euro Beasley underperformed with crushing losses, and Mickey Weisinger watched his stock-both personal and professional-plummet.

"We're pulling out of Euro Beasley," he told the board of directors one chilly morning at the corporate headquarters in Vanaheim, California, pounding the conference-room table emphatically.

"We can't! We own nearly fifty percent."

"Not if we default. Then the banks and the French government will be left holding the bag."

"We can't do that. It'll make the Beasley name mud."

"I don't care about the Beasley name. I care about my name! " roared Mickey Weisinger, who, like so many CEOs in the late twentieth century, cared more about his resume than the stockholders or the business he was charged to captain.

"If we pull out of France, we might as well surrender Europe to rival theme parks," complained Chairman Bob Beasley, the nephew of Sam and the only Beasley family member left on the board. "Already the Lego people have an outpost in Switzerland. And Banana-Berry Studios are looking at Berlin."

"I don't care. Let Lego have Europe. We'll concentrate on Asia and South America. We're too exposed in Europe."

"That wouldn't have happened if we'd have licensed the damn thing," a voice grumbled.

"Who said that?"

No one raised his hand.

"That sounded like a vice president's voice," Mickey Weisinger said suspiciously, patrolling the room. "Which vice president?"

No one volunteered.

So Mickey Weisinger fired all the VPs on the spot.

At the next meeting a flock of newly installed VPs voted to a man to pull out of France.

Until Bob Beasley quietly objected.

Mickey Weisinger hesitated. No one bucked Bob Beasley. He was considered all but the proxy of the dear departed spirit of Uncle Sam Beasley.

"I think we should lay this before a higher authority," he drawled, scratching at the trademark family mustache.

"Uncle Sam?"

"Uncle Sam."

Weisinger sighed. "What'll it be this time? Tarot? Ouija board? I Ching? Or do you want me to dim the lights while you try to channel him?"

It was New Age bullcrap, Mickey Weisinger privately thought, but this was southern California, where people took their poodles to shrinks at five hundred bucks an hour and arranged their furniture according to two-thousand-year-old Chinese superstition.

"I think we should pay Utiliduck a little visit," Bob suggested. "We have that new command-and-control wing down there. You know, the one we built in the event of thermonuclear exchange."

Mickey scowled. "The cold war's over. The wall fell. Hell, Moscow has been faxing us feelers on a Russo Beasley project, but we'll never bite. If French winters are this rough these days, Russia's bound to be an iceberg."

"Take a walk with me, Mickey," said Bob Beasley in his folksy voice, clapping an arm over Mickey Weisinger's broad shoulders and steering him out of the conference room.

They took the monorail over Beasleyland, walked through the park, and for a moment Mickey Weisinger's sour mood lightened. Even he was not immune to the spell of Beasleyland under a glorious California sun. Everyone seemed to be having a great time. Except the park employees-the only slice of the American public the Sam Beasley Corporation treated with naked disdain.

Mickey's good mood lasted until Screwball Squirrel minced up, bushy tail quivering, and stuck the cold steel muzzle of a MAC-11 into his back.

"What the hell is this?" Mickey growled.

"Just come along quietly, Mickey," said Bob Beasley in a new tone. One completely without respect.

"What is this, a furschlugginer coup?"

"Not exactly," said Beasley as Mickey was escorted to a turn-of-the-century apothecary shop on Main Street, U S.A., and into an open elevator.

Down in Utiliduck, where the trash was processed and the rides and attractions were controlled by massive mainframes, Mickey Weisinger walked along stainless-steel corridors to the hardened wing of Utiliduck.

A door emblazoned with the three overlapping black circles representing the silhouette of Mongo Mouse's round-eared head lifted like a dull guillotine, and he was pushed through.

A pleasant plastic sign featuring Mongo wearing a policeman's uniform and lifting a white-gloved hand traffic-cop style greeted them. The sign said Unauthorized Persons Not Allowed Beyond This Point. Intruders Will Be Shot.

"Isn't that a little extreme?" said Mickey Weisinger.

"Not down here," said Bob Beasley. "You've never been to this wing, have you?"

"No," said Mickey in a very small voice because he felt like a Brooklyn hood being taken for a ride in the trunk of a Buick.

The room Mickey Weisinger was taken to was as warm as a steam bath. He started sweating immediately. It was a control room, he saw. Grid after grid of wall video monitors showed every cranny of Beasleyland above, including, he saw with shock, his private office.

At the far end a man sat at a chair, punching buttons.

"Uncle, he's here."

"Give me a fucking minute," a grumpy voice said.

Then the chair turned, and Mickey Weisinger found himself staring at the man whose place in the Beasley corporate structure he had usurped.

"Uncle Sam?" he blurted.

"You were expecting Tinker-fucking-belle?"

It was Uncle Sam Beasley, all right. Not much older than on the day he had been buried three decades ago. His mustache was whiter, almost like hairs of frost. One eye looked glassy. The other was protected by a white eyepatch emblazoned with the corporate logo-Mongo Mouse's black silhouette. And where his right hand should be was a gauntlet of articulated steel.

"Wait a minute, you're radio-animatronic," Mickey blurted.

"That's right," said Uncle Sam Beasley.

Mickey breathed a hot sigh of relief. "Whew. For a minute I thought you-you, you know-" Mickey swallowed "-were back."

"I am."

"This is a joke."

"No, you're the joke."

"Hey, I won't have a robot talk to me like that."

"I'm not a robot, you bagel-munching moron."

"You can't talk to me." Mickey turned to the others. "Who programmed this anti-Semitic hunk of junk?"

Then the hunk of junk lifted itself out of his chair and walked across the room.

Mickey Weisinger stared. He knew the science of radio-animatronics. The concepteers at the Sam Beasley R pioneered the science of freestanding radio-animatronic marionettes. They could move, after a fashion, simulate motion and voice and the semblance of life well enough to make Buccaneers of the Bahamas the most popular attraction in any and all theme parks the world over.

But one thing they had never learned to do was walk.

Mickey Weisinger felt a chill climb his spine under his three-thousand-dollar raw silk Versace suit as the thing that should not walk came striding toward him.

"Somebody turn this thing off," Weisinger commanded.

"You can't," said Bob Beasley in an affable voice.

"Then shoot it."

"I couldn't do that," Beasley said. "Not to my Uncle Sam."

And before he could react, the thing that looked shudderingly like Uncle Sam Beasley reincarnate took Mickey's soft, fleshy hand in his steel grip and pumped it with hydraulic force.

Through his own screaming, Mickey Weisinger heard the famous voice of Uncle Sam Beasley croak, "Aren't you going to welcome me back into the fold, Mickey my boy?"

"Yahhh!" said Mickey Weisinger as the room turned a dull optic red before irising down into a smoldering blackness.

WHEN HE AWOKE, Mickey Weisinger lay on his back, blinking up at the hideous face of Uncle Sam Beasley.

"They tell me you're the fuck wit who's been running things in my absence."

"That's true."

"When people used to come to work for me, I would tell them straight out. You're here to promote the good name of Sam Beasley. If you buckle down and work your tail off for me, we'll get along fine. If not, you can haul your ass out of my office."

"I tell my people the same thing, only more nicely."

"You've been running my corporation like it was your private fiefdom!" Uncle Sam roared.

"But---"

"But it's not," Uncle Sam snapped. "It's my private fiefdom. Where do you get the nerve to run it into the ground?"

"It's expanded wonderfully."

"You built a fucking cold-climate theme park with my name on it. We've been hemorrhaging dollars over there."

"Euro Beasley's turned around lately," Mickey pointed out.

"Yes. No thanks to you. It's a good thing I escaped from that damned loony bin."

"What damned loony bin?"

"Never mind. I'm back and, since I was on ice when you climbed aboard the good ship Beasley, let me dispense with the usual pep talk."

Mickey Weisinger was wondering if "on ice" meant what he thought it meant when Uncle Sam's face came up to his own and turned ferocious.

"You work for me, asshole, and you dedicate yourself to the advancement of the name Sam Beasley. If there's any other agenda, you can leave now."

"Can-can I think about it?"

"Go ahead. But this isn't like the old days. You know I'm alive. Can't have it getting out. The government's trying to commit me. The only way you're leaving Sam Beasley is in a pine box."

"This isn't the Mafia."

"True. The Mafia is built on loyalty. There'll be none of that sentimental guinea crap here. I pay you, I own you. It's that simple."

"Did Bob tell you about the park in Virginia?"

"Tell me? It was my fucking idea."

"I thought Bob came up with it."

"My idea. He was just the mouthpiece. Old Bob's been feeding you my ideas for months now."

"Exactly how long have you been back, Uncle Sam?"

"Remember that time Sam Beasley World disappeared into a Florida sinkhole a couple years back?"

"Yeah..."

"I was around then. Then I had a little problem and had to drop out of sight for a while."

"You've been out of sight since the sixties," Mickey pointed out.

"There's different ways of dropping out of sight. Never mind. I'm back and I'm running the show again. You've been screwing up. First this Euro Beasley and now Beasley U S.A."

"We have the state legislature of Virginia on our side. The governor's practically in our pocket."

"And you got us chased out of Manassas. From now on we're digging in for a knock down, drag-out battle. We break ground on Beasley U.S.A. by next year, or I break ground on you. "

Mickey Weisinger gulped.

"You're going to Virginia."

"Anything you say, Uncle Sam."

Mickey Weisinger's teeth clashed as a steel hand patted him on top of his head with brute affection. "That's my boy. I have a plan to break all resistance to Beasley U.S.A. But I need someone to whip up local passions."

"I'm a great corporate cheerleader. You should review the commercials I've been doing."

"I have. You have the smile of a shark."

"I'll get my teeth fixed."

"Keep 'em. I need a shark for this. I want a guy out there people hate. I want you to be at your most insincere."

"I'm not an actor."

"Just act natural. If my plan backfires and people look ready to lynch you, I'll step in and save the project."

"And me, too, right?"

"If it's not inconvenient. Remember, I own you."

"But I'm the second-highest-paid CEO ever," Mickey insisted.

"A Beasley serf is a Beasley serf," said Uncle Sam Beasley as he clumped over to his control console and punched up different camera angles on his empire.

Chapter 9

Narvel Boggs never celebrated Independence Day. Never. Instead, he wore a black armband every July Fourth. What was there to celebrate when the nation into which he had been born, the late lamented Confederate States of America, had been cruelly vanquished a century before he had been born into this sorry world?

Narvel had once celebrated Memorial Day. Proudly. Back when it was a proud Southern holiday known rightfully as Confederate Memorial Day. Then a few years back Washington federalized an obscure Yankee holiday called Decoration Day, renamed it Memorial Day and killed Confederate Memorial Day for good and longer.

It was one of the last aftershocks of the War Between the States, and the fact that it had taken place in 1971 hadn't made it sting any less to an unreconstructed Southerner like Narvel Boggs.

Probably no one was more unreconstructed than Narvel Boggs of Savannah, Georgia.

As boys, some fantasized of pitching for the Braves, circling the earth as astronauts or, if their imaginations were particularly unfettered, crashing around the universe as Superman.

Narvel's youthful fantasies had been especially unfettered. When he was eight years old, he began to imagine himself as Colonel Dixie, Scourge of the South, wearing a smart gray leotard and a cape patterned after the glorious Stars and Bars. Colonel Dixie's mission in life was to change history. Southern History.

In his imagination Narvel Boggs had been a lowly Confederate corporal who, when the cruel tides of history threatened to swamp the grand forces of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, reversed his uniform, pulled on the very colors he carried into battle and launched into action as Colonel Dixie, superhero.

Narvel saved the day at both Manassas, Antietam and Cold Harbor. He salvaged Jeb Stuart's life with a transfusion of his own supercharged blood and, in his favorite fantasy, single-handedly stemmed the repulse of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, thus saving the Confederacy, which, no longer held back by Yankee foot-dragging, ultimately put an Atlanta boy on the moon in 1948.

As he'd grown, the character of Narvel's fantasies naturally altered. It became harder and harder to sustain a Confederate victory even in daydreams when you opened your eyes and there was the cold concrete of the hateful Union. So Narvel contented himself with rescuing old Jeff Davis from his Union prison at Fort Monroe, rebuilding scorched Atlanta, flying an astonished and trembling Abraham Lincoln to odious exile in faraway Liberia and once in a while leading a twentieth-century uprising to restore the Confederacy.

When puberty had hit, Colonel Dixie flew less and less often through the landscape of Narvel Boggs's imagination. And when he'd settled down and married Eliese Calkins, Narvel Bogg's invincible alter ego stowed away his battle-flag cape for good. A man had to raise a family, even if he didn't breathe quite free in his home state.

Years passed as Narvel drifted from job to job. Eliese lost her easy Southern-belle smile and moved out. And of late Colonel Dixie had begun to peer out of the closet door of Narvel's interior life more and more, wondering if there was a place for him in the world. Once in a while Narvel let him fly around for an hour or so. After all, it was all transpiring inside his head. Who would know any different?

So when the radio crackled the news that there was new Confederate skirmishing up Petersburg way, Narvel Boggs climbed down off the roof he was shingling, piled into his primer gray Plymouth Fury and lit out for a piece of the action.

If the South was about to rise again, Narvel was going to be in the thick of it. Civil war came along only once a century, after all.

On the drive to Petersburg, Narvel got on the CB and, using his Colonel Dixie handle, recruited some like-minded souls until a line of primer gray cars occupied an entire lane of Interstate 95 and no one dared stop him. The entourage stopped only for beer and guns and the necessary roadside piss.

At one stop Narvel bought a Confederate uniform and flag. He put it on, tied the Stars and Bars around his collar, then turned around until the breeze sent it skimming smartly off his shoulders.

"What are you supposed to be?" a good ole boy named Hoyt asked from around a plug of chewing tobacco.

"Just call me Colonel Dixie," Narvel said proudly.

When no one laughed, Narvel got into his Dixiomobile and sent it roaring toward Petersburg, hope in his Southern heart.

BY THE TIME cheering pickets waved Colonel Dixie's Raiders onto the grounds of Petersburg National Battlefield, Narvel Boggs saw himself a man of destiny. Who needed superpowers when he had a cause both good and true?

When the Crater came in sight, he put a yellow-gauntleted hand out the window and called, "Cavalrrryyy---halt!"

The convoy of gray cars screeched and slid to a halt with only two or three crumpled fenders.

Narvel stepped out, throwing back his Confederate cape so the wind caught it good and said, "Colonel Dixie's Raiders reporting for action."

"You're too late," said a man in a uniform that combined the Confederate cavalry and the Virginia National Guard.

"Who or what the hell are you?" Narvel demanded.

The man threw a salute. "Captain Royal Wooten Page, at your service, suh. Stonewall Detachment of the Virginia National Guard."

Narvel hesitated. Did a superhero colonel salute a lowly military captain? He decided what the hell and returned the salute.

"Colonel Dixie, savior of the Confederacy." A freshening wind flung his cape across his face with a slap.

"Ah fear you are a mite late with your messianic favors, Colonel. We have agreed to lay down our arms."

"You done surrendered?"

"We are obliged to cease all rebellious operations until such a time as the dread foe is met and sent whirling back to the lower regions from whence he came."

"What dread foe be that?" demanded Narvel, falling easily into the speech patterns of his ancestors. After that PBS special a few years back, it had begun to catch on with the more unreconstructed among them.

"The vile forces of Uncle Sam Beasley, naturally."

"What about them durn Billy Yanks?"

"It appears some form of misunderstanding has been perpetrated upon us."

"Day-am!" said Narvel, fighting to keep his whipping cape out of his eyes. "My raiders didn't come all this way to protest that idiot theme park. We come to lift up the South and deliver it from durance vile. We come to shoot bluebellies." Colonel Dixie turned, thumped his gray chest manfully and said, "Ain't that right, boys!"

"Day-am right!" chorused his raiders, brandishing an assortment of shotguns, squirrel guns and semilegal machine pistols.

A lieutenant in the uniform of the old Army of Northern Virginia stepped up and said, "We can't allow you men to go about toting them things."

"What in hell's wrong with them?" Narvel bellowed.

"They're not in period."

"In what?"

"Period. They're post-Reconstruction, except for them old squirrel guns. They're maybe okay, depending on what ammo you're using."

Narvel Boggs stared in stupefied amazement.

"And you'll have to get them newfangled cars off the battlefield, too."

Narvel Boggs couldn't believe the words he was hearing. "Ain't you fellas been listening to the damn radio?" he barked.

"Radios are twentieth century. Not permissible."

"There's an angry regiment of the Ninth Pennsylvania Memorial Day Sappers barrel-rising this way, according to the radio."

"If they come in peace, Ah imagine we'll give them a right passable welcome," said Captain Page.

"The Rhode Island National Guard has sworn bloody vengeance and is camped out on the Washington side of the Potomac. If they ever ford the river, it'll be a plumb shooting bee."

"Imagine they've calmed down a mite by now," Captain Page allowed.

"And up in New York City they've organized their own Stonewall Brigade."

"How can that be, suh? Ah am proud to lead the only descendant of that mighty band."

"They ain't exactly forming up no sons of Stonewall Jackson, if you take my meaning."

"What other Stonewall is there?"

"The Stonewall Riots kinda Stonewall. It's a, you know, fairy kind of brigade. Call themselves the Stonewall Thespian Company. By that I figure they got some hairy-chested women littering their ranks."

Captain Page paled noticeably. "They have usurped our good name?"

"Usurped, besmirched and appear hell-bent on dragging it through mud and muck and mire and doubtless worse."

"This is a most grievous insult," said Captain Royal Wooten Page in a harsh voice.

"No telling what their unmanly antics will do to the good name of the true Stonewall Brigade."

"If they come," vowed Captain Royal Wooten Page, raising a trembling fist to the pure blue sky of Old Dominion, "we must smite them to the last man."

"Or whatever," added Narvel Boggs, a.k.a. Colonel Dixie, who then turned to his waiting raiders and announced, "We came to fight and we fight to stay!"

A fiendish rebel yell leaped from every lip.

THREE MILES away the war whoop was reproduced in a set of headphones clamped around the head of Mickey Weisinger, CEO of the Sam Beasley Corporation.

"These fucking yokels sound serious," he said thickly.

"They are," said Bob Beasley in an utterly unconcerned voice.

"I can't just drop in there and make a speech. They'll tear me limb from fucking limb."

"There are worse things."

"Name one."

"Oh," said Bob, ticking off items on his fingers, "pissing off my Uncle Sam, betraying my Uncle Sam and finding your balls clutched tightly in my Uncle Sam's hydraulic right hand."

In the mobile communications van, parked in a thicket of piney Virginia woods, Mickey Weisinger crossed his legs protectively and croaked, "When do I go in?"

"After the shooting starts," said Bob Beasley, snapping a microphone on.

"Shooting? What shooting? Who's going to shoot who?"

"Everybody."

"Huh?"

"Everybody's going to shoot everybody else once the California Summer Vacation Musketeers break through Rebel lines."

"Whose side was California on during the Civil War?"

"Our side," said Bob Beasley. He brought his lips close to the mike and said, "Musketeers, it's your day to howl."

Mickey Weisinger wiped his moist brow with a silk handkerchief. "I just hope it isn't my day to die."

Chapter 10

The line of primer gray cars disappeared up Crater Road in a dusty cloud. The trailing car, windshield smeared with dirt, fell more than five car-lengths behind the others. It was a four-door sedan, Remo noticed.

"Quicker to ride than to walk," Remo suggested.

"Agreed," returned the Master of Sinanju.

They started off, moving with an easy grace that oddly enough seemed to slow the faster they ran. The great worm of brown dust that had all but consumed the trailing Confederate car swallowed them up, too.

Coming up on the sedan, Remo broke left while the Master of Sinanju veered to the right-hand side. Their hands snagged the rear door handles, popped them, and with a skipping hop they bounced into the backseat cushions. The doors closed with a perfectly synchronized double thunk.

Ensconced in the rear, they rolled past the Confederate pickets who guarded the entrance to Petersburg Battlefield Park. Remo saw that they wore no boots. No shoes or socks, either.

He and Chiun exchanged puzzled glances and settled down for the short ride back to the Crater. They sat perfectly still, knowing that the human eye was sensitive to sudden movement, and if they kept still the driver was unlikely to notice them in his rearview mirror.

They would have probably ridden all the way to the Crater undetected except for the fact that a front tire hit a chuckhole and let go with a pop and a low hiss. The left forward corner of the car began to settle, and the driver tapped the brakes and banged his steering wheel with a hammy fist.

He turned in his seat to reach for the tire iron that sat on the drive shaft hump. A helpful hand attached to a thick wrist obligingly handed it to him.

The driver recoiled as if brushed by a stinging jellyfish.

"Who the hay-ell are you two!" he thundered.

"Passengers," said Chiun in a voice as bland as his papery expression.

"Passengers in a hurry," clarified Remo.

"Get the hell out of my car!"

"When we have reached our destination," said Chiun.

"And not before," added Remo.

The driver threw open the door, cupped his hands over his mouth and set his elbows on the car roof. "Hey, you Johnnys! Lend a hand here. I just caught me two Yank spies!"

The slapping of bare feet came up the road. Confederate troops surrounded the car on all sides. They began shoving musket muzzles in through the driver's window, some with their ramrods still jammed in.

"Who are you boys?" a quavering voice demanded. It belonged to a cadaverous blond man with the double bars of a Confederate first lieutenant on his collar. His droopy mustache puffed out with every syllable.

"I was just about to ask you the same question," said Remo in a cool, unconcerned voice.

"We be the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band."

"Is that a military unit or a musical group?"

"Well, we do a little pickin' and grinnin' now and again," the lieutenant admitted. "But just 'cause we prefer the banjo to the bullet don't meant we can't scrap when we get a mind to."

"Do tell," said Remo.

"Now, are you gonna come out or do we perforate your skulking Yank breadbaskets?"

"Open your window, Little Father," said Remo to the Master of Sinanju.

"Gladly," said Chiun.

The windows came rolling down, and more muskets intruded into the car interior, vying for a clear bead on the captured Union spies.

"Are you a-comin' or are you a-dyin'?"

"Neither," said Remo, snatching the lieutenant's musket from his unresisting fingers, along with a clump of adjoining weapons.

He laid them at his feet. They clattered atop the bunch the Master of Sinanju had already harvested.

"Hey! That ain't fair. You give us back our ordnance, hear?"

"No," said Chiun.

"Not until you change that front tire," said Remo.

The lieutenant took a step back and raised his voice to a bellow. "Men! Commence firin'!"

More musket muzzles crowded in through the windows-only to be clapped flat as they were met by the hands of the Master of Sinanju and his pupil. They withdrew as if sprained.

"Reinforcements!" the first lieutenant cried in a harried voice. "We be needin' reinforcements hereabouts."

Additional knots of rifles angled in through the three open windows and were as quickly confiscated to form a kneehigh pile on the floorboards.

After that no more muskets intruded.

The first lieutenant tried to bluff it out. "You are surrounded. And must come out," he said firmly.

"Not a chance," said Remo, slapping away a stealthy hand that tried to slip in and recover a weapon.

"There is no escape. We are not a-gonna go away."

"Fine."

"We are prepared to starve you out," the first lieutenant warned earnestly.

"Go whistle 'Trixie,"' sniffed Chiun.

"That's Dixie,"' Remo reminded.

"Please," begged the first lieutenant, "this be my first real fuss, and Ah don't wanna go home to my pappy with my honor all in tatters."

"Fix the tire and we'll think about it," Remo told him carelessly. And during the hesitant pause that followed, he lifted a filigreed musket from the pile and began taking it apart with steel-boned fingers.

An anguished wail near the trunk became a semiarticulate "That's my great-great-great-great grandpappy's 1861 Springfield. He shot it from Chickahominy clear to Spotsylvania! It's a prized family heirloom!"

Remo wrenched the firing lever loose and tossed it out the window, saying, "Bet I can fieldstrip this antique before you guys can get that tire changed."

Remo lost that bet, but not by much. A jack came out of the trunk, the car cranked up, lugs spun off, a fresh tire swapped for the flat and the sedan dropped back on four good wheels before Remo could separate the barrel from its mounting.

"Nice time," said Remo as the sedan finished rocking on its springs.

"I was a pit-crew chief at Talladega six years runnin'," an eager voice told him, adding, "Can I have grandpappy's Springfield back now?"

"After you drive us to the Crater," said Remo.

"We will have to accompany you, a-course," the first lieutenant said sternly.

"Why don't you drive?" suggested Remo.

"A singular suggestion," said the first lieutenant, ducking behind the wheel. He started the engine, then called out to his troops. "You men form a double column behind this redoubtable war wagon and follow smartly. Ah will drive at a suitable trot."

Driving at a trot was the first lieutenant's sincere plan, but once the car began bouncing along the road, his foot became exceedingly heavy on the gas. He started to wonder if his barefoot state had something to do with the problem when he felt the steely fingers clamping the back of his neck and realized they had been there some minutes.

"What are you doing, you confounded Northern spy?" he demanded.

"Steering," said Remo, giving the first lieutenant's head a sharp twist to the left. The First Lieutenant's hands on the wheel obligingly steered to the left, taking the coming turn at very high speed. He had nothing to say about the matter, he was astonished to discover. In the rearview mirror the Kentucky Boot less Bluegrass Band, straining to catch up, broke into a dead run.

"We are putting my band behind."

"They'll catch up," Remo assured him.

As they approached the loop in the road before the Crater, the first lieutenant noticed the olive drab tanks parked here and there among the Confederate gray cars.

"Whose tanks be these?" he asked.

"Stonewall Brigade."

"Sure they ain't Sheridan's?"

"Search me," said Remo. "Keep your shoulder down. I need to see to steer."

A finger came off one of the first lieutenant's neck vertebrae and tapped another. The lieutenant's foot came off the gas and tapped the brake more smartly than if he had had something to say about it. The gray sedan eased to a stop, and the rear doors fell open.

The first lieutenant grabbed for the door handle when a thick wristed hand reached in through the open window and snapped the steel lever clean off, then threw it away.

"Why don't you set a spell?" Remo told him.

"Ah can get out the other door, you know."

"Barefoot boys have crunchy toes," Remo pointed out, shattering a stone under the heel of one shoe.

"Reckon Ah'll await my men," said the first lieutenant, tucking his precious toes under him where they would be safe from the Yankee devil spies. After all, he was a picker, not a fighter.

THE MASTER of Sinanju following, Remo walked over to a knot of good ole boys brandishing assorted shotguns and modern rifles.

A man in some sort of gray buttoned tunic, the Stars and Bars of the late Confederacy whipping from his broad shoulders, turned at their approach. He had a wide, beefy face and thick black hair piled high on his head in a lustrous Elvis pompadour.

"What manner of soldier is that one?" asked Chiun.

"Looks like a Confederate Captain Marvel."

"Nonsense, Remo. He is at least a general. Behold the many golden stars upon his proud shoulders. As ranking Master, it is my duty to treat with him and accept his abject surrender."

"Ranking Master?" said Remo, but Chiun had already hurried ahead. Remo didn't bother picking up his pace. If there was going to be trouble, Chiun could handle it. After all, Remo had driven the car.

NARVEL BOGGS, a.k.a. Colonel Dixie, Scourge of the South, saw the tiny little man approach. His eyes went past him to the fruity white guy who brought up the rear.

"Looks to me like an advance guard of them New York Stonewalls," one of his trusty raiders muttered.

"He does have that look about him. Not exactly swishy, but them's certainly faggy garments."

"'ppears to be a chore for Colonel Dixie," said Narvel Boggs, hitching up his golden sash and striding forth to meet the walking insult, the good ground of Virginia quaking with his tread, his black eyes striking intimidating sparks like twin meteors streaking toward his foemen.

On the way he passed the impossibly old Asian, who greeted him. "Hail, O illustrious general of the South."

"One side, slope," growled Colonel Dixie, who threw his protective cloak around the fair flower of Southern womanhood and the cream of Dixie manhood, but no other persons.

In that moment Colonel Dixie, the Meteor of the Second Civil War, stood poised on the brink of eternity. And never dreamed it. The face that launched a thousand comic books, TV cartoons, lunch boxes, coloring books and CD-ROM games stood a hairbreadth away from being peeled from its skull by a flurry of exceptionally long fingernails, when from a screen of trees just west of the Crater came a bloodcurdling battle cry.

"HURRRAAAH!"

And out of the pines came a wave of blue uniforms pushing shot and smoke and the stirring storm of battle ahead of it.

The deadly fingernails withdrew.

And the Third Battle of the Crater was under way.

Chapter 11

The California Summer Vacation Musketeers poured out of the trees, screaming like banshees, fully two hundred strong. They wore Union blue, with light blue infantry piping, and welded assorted muskets, including Maynard rifles, Brown Bess shotguns and Sharps carbines.

For a frozen moment the Unified Confederate Disunion Alliance stood rooted, the Sixth Virginia Foot, Stonewall Detachment of the Virginia National Guard and Colonel Dixie's Raiders alike. Down Crater Road the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band skidded to a callused stop, hesitated and then came pounding up, venting a whooping rebel yell that froze the blood.

Over the din a lone voice called, "Prepare for action, men!"

It was the ringing clarion voice of Captain Royal Wooten Page, CSA. He clambered atop a tank and spearing his plumed bicorne hat on a cavalry saber, leaped fearlessly into the fray, waving it aloft for all to see. "Follow me!" he cried.

He got about a dozen feet before the dashing figure of Colonel Dixie swept in, tripped him and appropriated his saber.

"For God and Dixie!" Colonel Dixie bellowed, slashing at the sky with the saber-speared hat. "Not necessarily in that order!"

All along the Union line officers followed suit, lifting their chapeaus high on their swords.

Drawn inexorably by ancient enmities their ancestors had believed laid to rest in a courthouse surrender at Appomattox, two opposing waves of men surged toward one another, collided and ran together like oil and water mixing.

At first the overwhelming Union numbers stood to take the day. But the Kentucky Bootless Bluegrass Band, recovering their muskets from the back seat of the car where they had been stashed, made a flanking maneuver and opened up with a withering enfilading fire that cut many a man down.

Unfortunately, due to the confused disposition of the opposing forces, they struck down nearly as many Confederate brethren as Union foes. History recorded it as a brilliant if desperate stroke, but of course the unwritten truth was that it was an equal mix of panic and sheer idiocy.

From other quarters reinforcements put in their appearance.

The First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry, which had been hiding in the easternmost reaches of Petersburg National Battlefield, came slipping up to see what all the commotion was about. When they grasped the enormity of what their startled eyes beheld, they picked up stones and sticks and waded in.

The Louisiana Costume Zouaves also poured into Crater Field. They took one look and after some hesitation took the Union side of the engagement. Confusion ensued.

Confusion became a close-quarters tumult, and tumult gave way to a ferocious frenzy of clubbing and fisticuffs as the nearness of friend and foe alike precluded reloading of muzzle-loading rifles.

"BEHOLD, Remo," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju. "Your long-lost roots."

"Looks like a giant barroom brawl," Remo Williams remarked from the high ground of Cemetery Ridge.

Chiun narrowed his eyes to imperious knife slits. "Once begun, the madness of war cannot be halted."

"You saying there's nothing we can do?"

"The madness must be allowed to run its course."

"I'm for stepping in and stepping on toes."

"What will that accomplish?"

"You can fight or you can hop. But you can't hop and fight at the same time."

"True, but an army possesses toes in multitude. You have only two feet to stamp with."

"We can't let this go on all day."

"They are doing no more killing. See? The vultures have realized this and even now circle hungrily."

Remo looked up. TV news helicopters were beating near, camera lenses angling around like the electronic orbs of robotic voyeurs.

"Vultures is right," said Remo, picking up a rock and letting it fly. The stone whizzed skyward and bounced off a Plexiglas chopper cockpit. The cockpit spiderwebbed, turning white as snow. The pilot wrestled his ship to an open patch of turf. The other ships withdrew out of what they assumed to be the range of stray musket balls.

"I can't just watch," Remo said, starting down off the ridge.

"You can if you are on strike," Chiun pointed out.

"I'll strike in another way," Remo said, and moved into the fray.

"And I will help you, if only to hasten you along in your folly," sighed Chiun, following reluctantly.

MICKEY WEISINGER HEARD the not very distant thud and jostle of battle from the open clearing where Beasley technicians were laying great colorful swatches of silk on the grass as the hot-air engines began firing.

He said, "I think the shooting's died down."

"Our musketeers are under strict instructions to close with the enemy as quickly as possible so things don't get too bloody," Bob Beasley said affably. "After all, this is a media event."

"The radio says it's practically civil war."

"Think of it as a sort of a made-for-TV movie with light casualties."

The first balloon began to take shape. It was pink. They were all pink. Even the wicker baskets were painted a creamy pink. As the fabric filled, the smiling face of Monongahela Mouse, world-famous mascot of the Sam Beasley entertainment empire, swelled into merry life.

"That's your car," Bob Beasley said, guiding Mickey to the waiting basket. Beasley concepteers were fitting giant pink disks to each side of the basket, from which trailed insulated wires.

"What the hell are these things?" Mickey wanted to know.

"Mongo's ears."

"Mongo's ears are black. These are pink. Hot pink."

Bob Beasley chuckled. "You don't know how right you are."

"Huh?"

"Just climb in."

Mickey clambered in, finding himself standing amid a profusion of wiring and stacked car batteries.

Other balloons filled with hot air, revealing the faces of Dingbat Duck, Mucky Moose and other famous Beasley characters. All were smiling the identical vacant grin that, market researchers informed Mickey Weisinger when he'd first ordered them redesigned, people interpreted according to their own moods. And since they reflected each person's mood exactly, they could not be improved on.

Every basket was fitted with four pink Mongo Mouse ears, like lollipops made from frozen pink lemonade, so no matter what angle they were viewed from, the famous mouse ears jutted unmistakably. As he looked closely, Mickey realized that they were transparent plastic, like lenses. Inside each ear networks of filaments and semiconductors formed electronic webs.

"Do these things light up?" he asked.

"Do they ever," Bob Beasley grinned as he climbed aboard.

"Huh?"

"You'll catch on. In time."

"If I fucking live," muttered Mickey Weisinger.

The ground crews released the anchor ropes, and before his fear of heights could kick in, Mickey Weisinger was high in the sky over the peaceful Virginia countryside. Only then did he notice who rode the other balloons.

They were the concepteers, wearing official Beasley greeters costumes. One basket contained Gumpy Dog, wearing a Confederate soldier's trappings. Dingbat Duck also wore gray, as did Mucky Moose, Screwball Squirrel and others. Missy Mouse was dressed in the hoop skirt of a Southern belle.

In the second balloon, grinning like the idiot he was and waving inanely, stood Mongo Mouse. In Union blue of course.

"This isn't so bad," Mickey Weisinger said, relief in his voice. "This is kinda like an observation balloon, isn't it? We're going to observe the battle from a safe height, aren't we?"

"No," said Bob Beasley. "We're going to land smack dab in the thick of it"

"Meshugga schmucks," muttered Mickey Weisinger, clutching one of the guy ropes for support.

REMO WAS COLLECTING keppies. It was the Master of Sinanju's idea. As they moved into the fray, Chiun pointed out how the battle surged like tidal pools, with waves and streamlets of men following the officers who swirled about with a mad frenzy of their own. In the thick of battle, all men blended into a riot of milling uniforms. But the officers could be picked out from the rest by their upraised sabers holding keppies aloft.

It was just a matter of getting to the officers.

Chiun, being short, simply ducked low and flitted between combatants until he got within range. A stabbing fingernail to an elbow brought a Confederate saber and forage cap into his hands. He moved on.

Remo stood taller than most of the soldiers. The bulk of the fighting was being done with musket stocks, heavy stones and the stray bowie knife. Remo weaved out of the way of them all, his exposed skin functioning like an enveloping sensor array. He felt the body heat of attackers, shifted wide, and sensing the advancing shock waves of muskets aimed at his skull, artfully evaded all until he zeroed in on an officer.

Harvesting the keppies was simple enough. The officers fired off their Dragoon pistols, but since their free hand was occupied with their keppie banners, they couldn't reload. So they contented themselves with waving saber and pistol and accomplished nothing more useful than to shout themselves hoarse leading their men. Mostly about in circles.

Remo grabbed Union saber wrists, bent them against the natural flex and the sabres dropped obligingly into his waiting hand.

"Much obliged," Remo made a point of saying before moving on.

When they had collected every officer's saber on the battlefield, Remo and Chiun broke all but two and threw the others away. Remo went one way and the Master of Sinanju went the other, holding up opposing headgear.

It was a good plan. Perhaps brilliant strategy. The opposing forces, thinking most of their officers were down and needing leadership to carry them through the fog of war, began moving in opposite directions. Fighting began to break off.

That was the point when the balloons appeared.

They were hard to miss, hanging in the sky like great pink clusters of grapes, but amid the din no one noticed them arrive. Except the news helicopters, which hastened to get out of the way lest their rotor wash cause an aerial catastrophe.

When they were almost directly overhead, the pink mouse ears began to glow.

The sky turned pink. The entire battlefield was bathed in a hot pink glow.

All eyes were drawn to the source of the radiance.

And the magic began.

WHEN THE FIRST CHRONICLES of the Second American Civil War were penned, it was set down that the Third Battle of the Crater was halted by an angelic light streaming down from heaven. And when the forces of the two Americas looked up toward heaven, their anger was smitten by the smiling faces of familiar creatures who reminded them of their shared culture, their common heritage and their deep and abiding love of cartoon characters.

At least that was the way the Sam Beasley Corporation press release represented the event.

ON THE GROUND battle-sweaty men turned, faces lifting then slowly softening, curious eyes filling with a blazing pink radiance.

"Day-am! That be the pinkest pink I ever did behold!"

"Never had much truck with the hue myself, but I purely like that particular shade."

"It's a powerful shade of pink, all right."

"Right purty."

All across the battlefield hands that a moment before had been turned against other men because of the color of their uniforms or the queerness of their accents fell quiet. Arms hung slack in unthinking hands, all faces turned to heaven as the bright pink lights drew closer and closer.

"Ah do believe Ah spy the famous ears of Mongo Mouse," said Captain Royal Wooten Page, spanking dust off his hybrid uniform.

"Could be. But seems I recollect that mouse sports ebony ears."

"There's no mistakin' them hearin' appendages. Must mean Mongo Mouse hisself is a-cumin. "

And as the hovering balloons began venting hot air, dropping them toward the Crater in a silent string, the unmistakable figure of Mongo Mouse, waving from the lead balloon, became visible to all.

Forage caps and chapeaus were pulled off heads and clutched to chests both blue and gray in worshipful respect.

"It's that day-am mouse, all right."

"Gotta admit, it brings a catch to my heart to see his grinnin' ole puss."

"Shouldn't we be shooting that varmint?" Colonel Dixie asked in a wary tone.

"You wouldn't ventilate ole Mongo, now, would you?"

"He's come to despoil Old Dominion, ain't he?"

A man spit on the ground. "That mouse never harmed a fly."

"What about that other guy?" Colonel Dixie said unhappily, pointing to the strained white face in the second balloon. "Ain't that that Weisinger scamp who's pushing Beasley U.S.A. down our throats?"

"Sure, but we can hear him out."

"Yeah. Besides, he's with the mouse. Anybody with Mongo is all right with me until I see different."

Colonel Dixie's broad, slab-of-beef shoulders drooped. "What's got into ya'll? That be the high enemy cumin'."

But not a hand was raised as the balloons dropped into the Crater, pink bags collapsing.

The combatants, fingers well away from triggers, crowded close to the long gash that was the infamous Crater.

The roar of trucks came up Crater Road, and the few heads that could tear their gazes away from the angelic pink radiance spilling up from the Crater saw that they were TV satellite trucks.

No one moved to stop them.

Then, as camera crews leaped out and began recording events at a safe distance, a white flag bearing the three welded-together black circles that emblematized the most famous mouse that ever lived came out of the Crater and fluttered in the wind. When it was not shot to rags, the peas shaped figure of Monongahela Mouse himself came out and planted his flag into the good rich soil of Old Dominion, as if daring a thousand muskets to cut him down.

But no one fired a shot. Faces impassive to the point of tranquillity, the soldiers simply leaned on their rifles, awaiting developments.

Then Mickey Weisinger stumbled up from the pit, escorted by polyurethane cartoon animals wearing Confederate gray.

"WHO IS THAT ONE, Remo?" the Master of Sinanju said with quiet interest. "I do not remember him from any cartoon."

"That's Mickey Weisinger."

"Who is Mickey Weisinger?"

"CEO of Sam Beasley Corp.," said Remo without concern.

"No doubt he is the perpetrator of this madness."

"The big cheese, without a doubt."

Chiun looked to his pupil. "Are you not going to seize this big cheese as planned?"

"Not now. I'm on strike again." Remo looked down. "How about you?"

"I feel a strike coming on, as well."

Remo nodded. "That's a nice shade of pink."

"A most excellent shade," Chiun agreed.

"Peaceful," said Remo. "I'm not big on pink, but the guy who came up with that shade knew what he was doing. I haven't felt this relaxed in years."

The Master of Sinanju lifted his bearded chin. "He may be a vassal of wicked overseers, but Mongo Mouse is a great mouse."

"The greatest," said Remo.

As they watched, the cartoon figures upended a wicker basket for Mickey Weisinger to climb atop.

He was greeted with a polite ripple of applause, which he acknowledged with a Richard Nixon-like raising of arms.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he began, "I have come in peace."

More applause. Smiles.

"On this glorious Memorial Day weekend, I offer a truce to the people of Virginia. I know we've had our past differences, but I think they can be worked out."

The smiles grew broad in faces washed with a warm pink glow.

"I have come not to exploit history, but to enhance it. The Sam Beasley Corporation is willing to work not only with the gentle people of Virginia, but with its noble reenactors. Those who desire them will have jobs."

Sustained applause.

"You hear that? He's offering us jobs!"

"He's been offering you'uns jobs for months," Colonel Dixie barked. "I thought you folks said never."

"He didn't offer it to us face-to-face like that."

"Yeah. He comes across right sincere in person."

"Sincere and in the pink."

"Pink?" said Colonel Dixie.

"Can't you see the honest pinkness of his words?"

"Search me. I got me a spell of color confusion."

"What say?"

"I don't see my colors right. Get my reds and greens kinda mixed up. Pink might as well be purple to me."

"You're missing out on one of the great pleasures of life if you can't see the color pink."

"You don't say?" said Narvel Boggs, wondering what had gotten into folks.

"And because we respect the sentiments of Virginians and other Southerners," Mickey Weisinger went on, "when we build Beasley U.S.A. we will have an If the South Had Triumphed Pavilion."

A rebel cheer went up.

"And virtual-reality games in which the South always wins."

A greater cheer. Even the Union reenactors cheered.

"You will know what it was like to have been a slave!"

An even greater cheer.

"Of course," Mickey added, "we will also serve history by reflecting the true denouement of the events of the-"

Mickey Weisinger replaced the earphone that had popped out of his ear.

"War Between the States, you jackass," came the crusty voice of Uncle Sam from the earphone.

"War Between the States," said Mickey Weisinger to the cheering of the Union reenactors. The Southerners also cheered. They cheered as if the outcome of the Civil War was a cause for great jubilation and always had been.

"Before all these cameras," Mickey went on, "I would like to close ranks with you men, bury the hatchet and ask for your support in this great project."

Reenactors surged forward with such suddenness that Mickey Weisinger hastily jumped off the wicker basket and would have sought the safety of the Crater except that Gumpy Dog and Mucky Moose grabbed him and pushed him back atop his wicker-basket soapbox.

Outstretched hands reached eagerly for his. Mickey shook them as fast as they came.

Then, with a crack and flutter, like canvas in the wind, a gray-and-scarlet figure surged through the crowd to lay a choke hold on Mickey Weisinger's thick neck.

"Urrk!" said Mickey.

"Maybe all the rest of you have turned milk-liver," thundered Colonel Dixie, "but Ah ain't! Ah aim to break this Jew Yankee's neck."

"No, no, don't."

"Please don't, Colonel Dixie."

"He's Mongo's pal. He don't mean no harm."

"Urrk!" said Mickey Weisinger as the world and Virginia turned dark all around him and a roar like a distant ocean began in his ear canals.

Over the roar a harsh voice said, "I can see everything that's happening. Promise him--"

"I can make you rich," Mickey Weisinger said in a squeezed voice, repeating the words in his ear.

"Colonel Dixie don't need wealth. His heart is pure as Georgia rain."

"I can offer something better than wealth. I can make you an official Beasley licensee."

"Huh? How's that again?"

"You'll join the honored family of Beasley characters."

The hands slackened their strong, choking grip.

"You mean pal around with Mongo?"

"Tell him, Mongo."

"Sure," Mongo squeaked from off to the right, gesturing with his yellow-gauntleted hands. "We'll have tons of neat adventures together."

"Will I get my own comic book?" Narvel asked his captive.

"Comics, cartoon shows, video games and all the personal appearances you want. We'll make you Beasley U S.A.'s official mascot."

"It's a damn deal," said Narvel Boggs, who had shingled his last home and because of the events this day would ultimately be worth a quarter-billion dollars by the turn of the century.

Mickey Weisinger hacked and coughed as the red went out of his face and his lungs resumed normal functions.

"MAYBE THIS WAS ALL a misunderstanding," Remo was remarking to the Master of Sinanju as Mickey Weisinger and Colonel Dixie were lifted on the shoulders of the cheering throng.

"Wars are always fought over treasure. This land is the treasure, and now those who contested it have reached a truce. The war is over."

"Guess we can go home now," said Remo. His head suddenly turned as he tracked a moving figure.

"What is it, Remo?"

"There's that French reporter."

The woman in the beret and blue slip dress was creeping around the periphery of the Crater, which was jammed with fighting men turned peaceful. She had a satellite phone up to her face and was talking into it with obvious vehemence.

"What's she saying?" Remo asked. "I don't understand French."

"She is saying that the battle is over."

"It sure is," agreed Remo.

"But she cannot discover why."

Remo shrugged. "She'll figure it out."

But she didn't. She hung well back of the mob, moving back and forth like a wary tiger. Eventually she backed toward Remo and Chiun, unawares.

"J'essaie de constater cela, " she was muttering. "I am trying to ascertain this."

"Boo!" said Remo.

She whirled, face a stark white. "You again!"

"Yep. Me."

She straightened and the spooked light went out of her eyes. She smoothed her skirt with a nervous gesture. "Perhaps you can 'elp me."

"If we can," Remo said agreeably.

"I did not see what 'as 'appen' here. Ze fighting 'as ended. Can you not tell me why?"

"They saw the balloons."

"Oui. I saw ze ugly balloons descended, as well. But why would zey stop fighting? Were zey not against ze Beasley people?"

"I wouldn't call them ugly."

"Zey 'ave giant uncouth cartoon faces on zem."

"Watch what you say about an American original," said Remo. "Besides, you have to admit the light show was spectacular."

"I saw only zat it was very bright."

"Struck me as more soothing than bright."

"What is soothing about bright white light?"

"White? It's pink."

"Oh. I am, how you say, daltonienne?"

"Say what?"

"Color-blind."

"Must be nice," said Remo.

She looked at him questioningly. "Was ze bright object zat fell from ze black 'elicopter also pink?"

"How do you know it was black if you're colorblind?"

"Answer my question, s'il vous plait."

"No. It was yellow. Petrified the guys it landed on, too."

"You say yellow?"

"Yes."

"But now pink?"

"Yeah."

"Ze yellow scared some men, and now when ze pink light comes zey all lay down zeir arms and cease fighting?"

"I don't know if there's a connection, but sure, it might be that way." Remo looked at the girl under the beret more closely. "Anyone ever tell you you have a nice accent?"

"Yes," Chiun chimed in, "you have a very nice accent for a Frankish wench."

The girl glowered at them.

"What's your name?" asked Remo.

"Avril Mai."

"Nice name."

"Yes, you have a very nice name for a lying Frank," said Chiun.

Remo and the girl looked at the Master of Sinanju.

"She has just told you her name is April May," Remo told Chiun.

"Must be a Taurus. Are you a Taurus?"

"I am a Cartesian."

"It is an impossible name for a Frank," said Chiun without rancor. His hazel eyes swept back to the warm pink shine coming up out of the Crater.

The girl began backing away. "I must be going," she said quickly. "I ' ave a story I must phone in."

"Good luck," said Remo.

"Au revoir," said Chiun, waving her away with a graceful flutter of fingernails.

As she walked away, she began hissing words into satellite phones intently.

"What's she saying?" asked Remo.

" 'La charade se perpetre avec lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs. Les lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs sont la clef'," Chiun repeated.

"In English, I mean."

"The charade is being perpetrated with very bright colored lights. The bright colored lights are the key."

"What charade?"

"I do not know," said the Master of Sinanju, who had caught the eye of Mongo Mouse and exchanged friendly waves with the upright rodent. "And I care even less."

Chapter 12

Dr. Harold W. Smith was tracking the progress of the Second American Civil War on his office computer when he got the call.

On an amber map of the continental United States he was carefully plotting the position and movement of the converging forces.

The rogue Rhode Island National Guard unit was still camped out on the District of Columbia side of the Potomac, just above Arlington, under the watchful eye of D.C. Capitol Police while elsewhere other units were on the move.

It was an astonishing sight. On the screen, which was buried under the black tempered glass of his desktop where only Smith could see it, it looked as if mighty armies were on the march to Petersburg, Virginia.

Smith had assigned tags to each unit. The Confederate regiments were represented by amber numbers while the Union troops were assigned letters. These were keyed to a list of regimental names that kept scrolling by on the left-hand side of the screen like marching soldiers.

That they went by designations like the 13th North Carolina Unreconstructed Signal Corps, 5th Tennessee Butternut Guerrillas or the 501st Motorized Michigan Touring Teamsters did not detract from the deadly earnestness of the situation.

Bands of men with guns were converging on Virginia, armed and intent upon fighting the Civil War all over again. Passions had been inflamed. In many states, both North and South, law-enforcement agencies, unable to put aside their sympathies, refused to intercept or put down these rogue units of weekend warriors.

And from Petersburg National Battlefield was coming the first sketchy reports of a pitched battle under way.

It was high noon. Memorial Day, 1995. Perhaps the last Memorial Day in U.S. history if the tides of battle were not quickly reversed.

When the blue contact telephone began ringing, Harold Smith was so intent he didn't register the sound at first. It took three rings before his aged hand reached out and brought the receiver to his pinched gray face.

Harold Smith was a New England Yank, but his colors were Confederate gray. He wore a gray threepiece suit enlivened only by his Darmouth college tie, which was hunter green. His eyes were gray behind rimless glasses. His sparse hair was a grayish dusting on his head. Even his dry skin had a grayish cast, the manifestation of a congenital heart defect.

When he spoke, his voice was as flinty as the granite hills that had birthed him.

"Yes?"

"Hey, Smitty," said Remo in a bright voice.

"Remo, I have reports of a battle going on at Petersburg National Battlefield."

"Guess that's why they call it a battlefield, right?"

"Remo, this is serious!"

"No," corrected Remo, "this is over."

"Over?"

"Over. As in the boys can start going home now."

"But I have reports of other reenactment units moving on Virginia."

"Well, when they get here they can move right out again. The Blue and the Gray have patched things up."

"What happened?"

"Mongo Mouse dropped by, and everybody came to their senses."

"Remo, you are babbling."

A squeaky voice piped up. "No, Emperor, everything Remo says is true. Mongo came, along with Dingbat and others of his gallant company."

"They dropped down in balloons," Remo added.

"Balloons, Remo?"

"Big pink ones. Lit up like bottles of calamine lotion with light bulbs inside."

"Remo, you are not yourself."

"Hey, I just had a pleasant afternoon. Don't spoil it with your ulcerous crabbing."

"Ulcerous crabbing? For the first time in over a century we have civil war!"

"I told you," Remo said patiently. "It's over. It was a great big misunderstanding. When the balloons showed up, everyone simmered right down. Mickey Weisinger made a big reconciliation speech and won 'em all over. They've laid down their muskets, and there won't be any more trouble. Chiun and I hardly had to do anything. Isn't that great?"

There was a pause on the line.

"Remo," Smith said in a cautious voice, "I have some bad news for you."

"Shoot."

"I have hit another stone wall in the search for your parents."

"Aw. Too bad. But I know you'll keep trying, Smitty."

"That is just it," pressed Smith. "I have reached an absolute dead end. There is no other avenue to search."

"Gee, that's disappointing," said Remo.

"I am calling off the search. Do not ever raise this subject again."

Remo's voice diminished as he turned from the telephone and said, "Chiun, he's calling off the search for my parents."

"At least he tried," said Chiun without concern.

Remo's voice came back to the telephone receiver. "I know you tried, Smitty. Appreciate it. Really."

"Remo, you are not talking or acting like yourself."

"Who else would I talk and act like? Daniel Boone?"

"You are too calm, too relaxed, too accepting."

"I told you I feel pretty mellow."

"Remo, what happened out there today?"

"Told you. The war's over. Hallelujah."

"Remo, did anything unusual happen out in the park?"

"Well, lemme see," Remo said slowly. "I can't think of anything except the yellow bomb."

"What yellow bomb?"

"You hung up before I could mention it last time. A black helicopter buzzed the Crater, dropped this thing that looked like a traffic light except all the lights were yellow and when it hit, everything turned really yellow."

"What do you mean-everything turned really yellow?"

"We were running away because we thought it was a bomb."

"It was," inserted Chiun calmly.

"It didn't explode. But there was flash, I guess. The sky turned yellow. So did the grass and trees and everything. Then the Union prisoners started pouring out of the pit, and were they scared. Every one of them babbling about the yellow light."

"Then what happened?"

"Chiun and I went to investigate and when we got to the Crater, the bomb or whatever it was started screaming and melting into a puddle of slag."