Angry White Mailmen td-104

by Warren Murphy

  "Open fire on that thing!" he ordered.

  Sharpshooters opened up. Their bullets dinged and spanged off the angular plates without effect. Then the remorseless behemoth came lumbering at them.

  There wasn't time to get the LAVs out of the path. So the men just scattered. It didn't matter. The giant monster of steel plate simply rolled over two LAVs, crushing them flat on exploding tires.

  "What is that thing?" a sharpshooter howled, get­ting out of its way.

  "I don't know. I better call this in."

  "Call what in? What is it?"

  "Damned if I know," Brophy muttered as they re­treated to watch the steely monster lunge across the median strip to straddle the Ohio Turnpike. "But if that isn't the postal-service eagle on one side, I'll eat my pension."

  The word went from the director of the FBI to the President of the United States, who saw his political life melt down before his blinking eyes.

  "What is it?" he croaked.

  "Unknown. But it's big enough to hog most of the Ohio Turnpike. That makes it too big for the Bureau. I'd call in the Air Force, were I you.''

  "I'll get back to you. Do nothing."

  "Nothing sounds very safe right now," the FBI di­rector said. "Politically speaking."

  The President reached out to Harold Smith.

  Smith was in the middle of one awful epiphany when the President handed him another.

  "Mr. President, I believe I have solved the riddle of the Deaf Mullah," Smith said, his gray eyes glued to his briefcase computer system as Abeer Ghula grunted helplessly in the background.

  "I don't care about him."

  "You should. He is behind this campaign of terror. My analysis of the facts indicates he tricked the FBI into arresting him and immediately letting him go, thinking he was only a double. Then the true double was arrested in his place."

  "Your analysis also says there was no such thing as the Fist of Allah," the President said bitterly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "While NORAD has been combing the skies, the Messengers of Muhammad have launched the damn thing on the ground."

  "Sir?"

  The President described the gigantic vehicle that had rolled out of the al-Bahlawan Mosque.

  "Why do you think this is the Fist of Allah?" asked Harold Smith.

  "Because FBI says there's a clenched fist painted on one side of the thing. And on the other is painted We Deliver For You. There's also the USPS eagle and one of those Islamic red-crescent symbols on the hood or nose or whatever it is."

  "A wheeled missile?"

  "They think it's a converted missile carrier."

  "It cannot be nuclear."

  "Do you want to bet the farm on it?" asked the President.

  "No, I do not. My people are on-site. Let me get back to you on this."

  Hanging up, Smith waited. If what the President said was true, it would be only a matter of minutes before Remo checked in.

  It was thirty-nine seconds later, by Harold Smith's Timex.

  "Smitty. Something big just blew out of the mosque."

  "I know, Remo. The President just informed me. Can you describe it?"

  "Imagine a cross between the mother of all tanks and one of those monster missile carriers." "Do you see a missile?"

  "No, it's armored up like crazy, though. And there are two guys driving it. One's Joe Camel."

  Smith's voice turned low and incredulous. "Then it is the missile."

  "What missile?" asked Remo.

  "The M.O.M. have threatened to launch a nuclear missile called the Fist of Allah."

  "If there's a missile inside that thing, I don't see how it can be fired. It looks like it's made out of welded surplus bank vaults."

  "No, it is the missile."

  "Huh?"

  "A suicide-bomber ground missile," Smith said in a nail-chewing voice. "Riding below radar, too big to stop or interdict by ordinary means. A low-tech death- delivery system of destruction. No doubt the two men inside are the suicide drivers."

  "So where's it headed?" asked Remo.

  "Your guess is as good as mine. But you must stop it."

  "It's too big to run off the road, but we'll give it a shot," Remo promised.

  "Keep me informed."

  Remo tore along the Ohio Turnpike in the wake of the Fist of Allah, saying, "It may be big but it sure isn't fast."

  "We will stop the monster," Chiun said firmly.

  Accelerating, Remo came up to the machine's rump, hung there pacing it while he said, "You can jump out and climb aboard, then I'll stop in front of it and do my thing."

  "Stop in front of it. Then we will both step out with the serene dignity we deserve and do our awesome things."

  "Suit yourself," said Remo, angling the wheel and nailing the accelerator to the floor.

  Yusef Gamal saw the speeding sedan race around on his side of the Fist of Allah and gave the wheel a jerk to the left.

  Seeing this, Jihad Jones gave his wheel a jerk to the right.

  "What are you doing?" Yusef complained. "I have the wheel."

  "I am trying to keep us on our Allah-blessed tra­jectory."

  "And I am trying to squash an infidel bug."

  Too late. The sedan pulled up alongside him and got in front.

  "You may squash him now," said Jihad Jones, re­linquishing his wheel.

  Up ahead, the car braked, slewing to a stop, block­ing the way, its tires smoking. The doors opened, and two men popped out.

  "Those infidels are crazy. They think they can stop the Fist of Allah's wrath?"

  "Squash them like the godless bugs that they are!" Jihad Jones exploded.

  Remo and Chiun took up a position before the Fist of Allah like two matadors facing the bull of bulls.

  "When they get close, break away and grab your side of that thing while I grab mine," Remo sug­gested. "Then we'll nail the guys inside."

  Chiun nodded. "Yes. This is a sound plan."

  And it almost worked.

  The monster of plated steel rumbled toward them, and Remo broke left while Chiun slipped off to the right in a flutter of ebony skirts.

  There were enough projections on the angular and irregular surfaces of the Fist of Allah that grabbing a handy one was no problem.

  Remo got ready. Lifting his feet off the speeding asphalt, he grabbed a jutting projection and started to climb.

  Partway up, he knew something was wrong.

  His vision started to cloud over, and his arms be­gan to tingle. A numbness crept down his body like a slow-acting poison.

  Fear touching his eyes, Remo looked up and saw the yellow disk with the three black triangles he knew from childhood fallout-shelter drills emblazoned on a sealed hatch.

  This thing was as radioactive as Chernobyl, he thought just before his grip gave way.

  Yusef Gamal made a point of crushing flat the car that had dared to block the path of righteousness, then settled down for the long drive east.

  "You have the map?" he asked Jihad Jones.

  "Yes. I am studying it now."

  "Where do we go, then?"

  "We follow this turnpike to Route 79 south, there. See?"

  Yusef looked over. "Yes. I see. Then what?"

  "Then we take the 80 to Wayne, New Jersey. Then south to Jersey City. From there, it is a short drive to our ordained target."

  "What is our ordained target, O brother?" "That is for me to know," Jihad crowed. "For I will be the favored one to drive the last holy mile to

  Paradise."

  Yusef tried to mask his disappointment by bluff. "If you drive the last mile, I will have the honor of arm­ing the Fist of Allah."

  "You are welcome to the honor. For he who pilots the Fist of Allah into Paradise will be the first to claim his houris."

  "My houris will not mind waiting a few mere mo­ments longer, eager as they are."

  "Attend to your driving, then. I must study my map."

  After a while, Yusef said, "I do not thin
k the Fist of Allah is going to take to the air, Jihad."

  "Of course it will not," Jihad said, contempt in his voice.

  "What manner of missile refuses to fly?"

  Jihad was silent a long moment. At length, he said, "An Islamic missile, of course."

  "Yes, you are undoubtedly correct. Only an Is­lamic missile is clever enough not to fly into heathen skies where it will be shot down before fulfilling its religious mission."

  Remo lay shaking on the ground until his body fin­ished isolating and purging the foreign elements that had paralyzed it. Metallic sweat oozed from every pore, instantly soaking his thin clothes. He shook his head once violently, throwing off hot beads of radia­tion-poisoned perspiration.

  Then he snap-rolled to his feet.

  On the other side of the highway, the Master of Sinanju was climbing to his sandaled feet, his wrin­kled face like a sweat-varnished raisin.

  "The brute is televisionactive, Remo."

  Remo shook a few final droplets of sweat from his forearms. "Radioactive. Yeah, I know. Radioactivity is like Kryptonite to us."

  "I do not know that word. But look. Our vehicle was destroyed by that lumbering steel beast."

  Remo's gaze fell where the jade nail protector pointed. The rental looked as if an asteroid had flat­tened the entire trunk.

  "Let's see if the car phone still works," Remo said, rushing toward it.

  At the World Trade Center, Harold Smith scooped up the briefcase satellite telephone handset when it rang.

  "You have succeeded," he said.

  "We wish," said Remo. "That damn thing is so ra­dioactive we can't touch it."

  "God blast it!" exploded Smith.

  "But we will try again, O Emperor," squeaked Chiun in the background. "Never fear."

  "Smitty, maybe you should just bomb the thing," suggested Remo.

  "Impossible! It is a nuclear device—it will deto­nate."

  "Well, the way it's barreling along, flattening ev­erything in its path, it's a sure bet it's going to deto­nate somewhere someplace soon."

  "Well, right now it's following the Ohio Turnpike east."

  "One moment."

  Harold Smith brought up a map of the continental U.S. and created a red blip that signified the Fist of Allah.

  He input its probable speed, trajectory and com­manded Ms system to extrapolate likely targets of na­tional significance, as well as times of impact.

  The system was fast. It came up with the possibili­ties in less than a minute. The highways and inter- states turned red as if flooding with arterial blood.

  There were three probabilities.

  Washington, D.C.

  New York City.

  Or a less important third option, possibly even in Ohio.

  The dilemma for Harold Smith was to identify the target and interdict the threat before the first nuclear strike on U.S. soil threw the West into collision with the Muslim world.

  The President of the United State ordered Air Na­tional Guard F-16 Flying Falcons of the 180th Bomber Group scrambled out of Toledo, Ohio.

  The aircraft launched, formed up into a screaming V and flew low cover down the Ohio Turnpike and back, ready to strike if ordered.

  Harold Smith told the President, "We cannot de­stroy it by conventional means. The risk of nuclear fallout is too great.''

  "Well, I can't just let it crash into any damn thing it wants to. This is worse than the mail crisis."

  "This is the mail crisis," Smith reminded. "It has escalated."

  The President's voice turned low and urgent. "I can't not take action, Smith. You know that."

  "I need more time."

  "How can I help?"

  "I require instant updates on the Fist's progress."

  "Last reports are it's skirting Lake Erie. You don't suppose it intends to vaporize the entire lake, do you?"

  "That is impossible. I still cannot accept that they have a nuclear device on board."

  "Your people said it was radioactive."

  "Radioactive is not nuclear," said Smith.

  The blue contact line light began blinking, and Smith excused himself.

  "Remo, where are you?" he asked.

  "About a mile behind the thing, or south of Dal­las, Texas—depending on whether you want to be­lieve my eyes or the satellite navigation system in this new rental car," Remo said wearily.

  "You have a navigational computer in your car?"

  "When it works."

  "Remo, can you remove it and attach it to the Fist of Allah?"

  "Can you tell me what to look for?"

  "Yes."

  "Gladly," said Remo.

  "Jihad, my brother," said Yusef Gamal as his con­trol wheel turned before him and the crescent- emblazoned nose of the Fist of Allah ate white line.

  "What is it now?" Jihad growled as he managed his wheel.

  "I have to make water.''

  "Why did you not go before we left?"

  "We were rushed. I did not think. There was no time"

  "I refuse to stop the vehicle now that I am pilot- martyr. Besides, there is no brake, as you know."

  "Then what do I do? I cannot enter the gates of Paradise with my trousers stained. My sweet houris would be shocked. I would make a terrible first im­pression on them."

  "I do not care what you do," muttered Jihad Jones, wrestling the wheel.

  "Then I will do what I must," said Yusef, unzip­ping his fly from the throat down.

  As a spattery tinkle filled the cockpit of the Fist of Allah, Jihad Jones muttered, "You are worse than a Jew. When we are dead and in Paradise, do not speak tome."

  "I will not."

  "Then do not, weak-bladdered one."

  "My Arab tool is still bigger than your Egyptian tool," Yusef boasted, zipping up again.

  Remo stayed on the tail of the Fist of Allah as it chewed up a long stretch of the Ohio Turnpike. The rear tracks spit gravel and gouged up pieces of as­phalt.

  Remo steered around them as F-16s crisscrossed overhead, low and menacing. A wind was coming down off Lake Erie, clean as fresh laundry.

  "Okay, I'll pull up alongside, you toss the naviga­tion thing. Just make sure it lands in one piece."

  "I will not fail," Chiun promised.

  "Because if you break it, it'll be no good and if it slides back off, it's useless."

  "I am not a child," Chiun sniffed.

  "Just don't blow it," said Remo, accelerating steadily.

  It should have been easy. But they had been ex­posed to hard radiation, and their systems were hy­persensitive to it now.

  Remo felt a tingling in his fingertips as he held the wheel straight.

  Coming up in the gargantuan rear deck that resem­bled the back end of an aircraft carrier, Remo cut around to the left and paced the gigantic vehicle. Its whirling tires dwarfed them.

  Chiun had one pipe-stem arm out the window and held the instrument package that Remo had extracted from under the hood.

  Chiun gave it a casual toss. It veered out and up to land with a clink in the V of an angled tailfin.

  Breaking, Remo watched.

  The package did not slide off. He picked up the cell phone and called Harold Smith.

  "Package delivered, Smitty."

  "I have the navigational signal," said Smith.

  "That didn't take long."

  "I acquired it while it was still in your possession."

  "Okay, what do we do now?" asked Remo.

  "I have arranged for an Army helicopter to pick you up."

  "Where are we going?"

  "You will remain with the Fist of Allah until you are needed."

  "Gotcha."

  Harold Smith watched the red blip on his computer screen. The Fist of Allah was now crossing the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. That meant ground zero was not in Ohio. That reduced the pool of target options. The only question was where they would go when the Ohio Turnpike petered out.

  "What are you doing?" Jihad Jones asked Yu
sef Gamal.

  "I am consulting the map."

  "I forbid this. I am custodian of the sacred map."

  "You are pilot-martyr right now. The map there­fore reverts to the martyr-navigator."

  "I am navigator."

  "When I have the wheel again, yes," said Yusef.

  "I forbid you to look at the target. It is haram. Es­pecially to a Jew such as yourself."

  "I will agree not to look at the target if you stop calling me a Jew."

  Jihad Jones was silent a long, fuming moment. "Very well," he snapped. "I will no longer denounce you as a Jew."

  "Good."

  "Gamal Mahour."

  "You cannot call me Camel Nose, either."

  "You did not stipulate this."

  "I think we should take Route 6," said Yusef, changing the subject.

  "The sacred map said to follow 80."

  "The Six is also good."

  "We will take Eighty."

  "And I will take the wheel again soon, for it is al­most my turn," said Yusef.

  "Until then, keep your camel's nose out of the sa­cred map."

  Harold Smith saw the red dot take Route 80 east, and automatically the tracking program displayed a new bar graph of optimum targets. Washington, D.C. was still possible. New York City, however, looked more likely.

  Smith input additional data and asked the system to narrow down the working list.

  The system responded with the same list. Mostly post offices along the route and significant military targets.

  Smith frowned. The limitations of the computer were the same as in his Univac days. To discover the truth, human reasoning would have to be brought to bear.

  In the Huey helicopter Remo watched the Fist of Allah roll along Route 80 and felt helpless. Pennsyl­vania State Police cars were following the giant ma­chine at a discreet distance, roof lights pulsating.

  "There's gotta be a way to stop that overgrown Tonka toy."

  "I agree," said Chiun.

  "But I can't think what that might be."

  "In the days of the Mongol Khanates, a Master of Sinanju encountered such a conundrum."

  "They had something like this back then?"

  "No, but there were war elephants in those days."

  "Yeah?"

  "In the best way possible."

  "I'm listening," Remo said.

  And leaning over beneath the rattling main rotor, the Master of Sinanju whispered in Remo's ear.