Melvis spoke up. "Those tracks won't tell you a damn thing. That's where we all stood the other day, pokin' about."
Chiun stood up.
"Where are the tracks of the escaping driver?" he asked.
"Search me. Figure he hightailed it for Mexico by now."
"Has it rained of late?" asked Chiun.
"Naw. Dry as a bleached cow skull."
"There should be tracks of the fleeing one."
"Well, if you can find 'em, you're more than welcome to 'em."
Abruptly Chiun walked into the underbrush.
Remo soon saw why. A crushed sprig of mimosa showed that a man had walked here in the recent past.
Carefully Chiun placed his feet on the bare spot. His gait became deliberate, cautious.
Remo watched the ground as he followed.
"Who we followin'?" Melvis asked.
"Search me," Remo admitted.
"Hush!" said Chiun. His tone was very serious.
They walked into trackside woods. This was east Texas. Pine and sweet gum predominated. Without warning, Chiun stopped.
"What's wrong?" Remo asked.
"They stop," he said.
"What stops?"
"The tracks."
"Whose tracks? I see only yours."
"Come around. Carefully."
Remo did. Melvis hovered close.
The Master of Sinanju was pointing at the sandy yellow soil. Ahead of him stretched a short set of footprints. They looked like Chiun's. But Chiun hadn't walked this far yet. And Chiun left prints only when he wanted to. Remo followed them back and saw that Chiun was standing in a lone set. Only then did Remo realize that the tracks he'd thought were Chiun's were really older tracks Chiun's feet perfectly fit into.
"Wait a minute..." Remo said.
"Hush."
"What's goin' on?" Melvis muttered.
Chiun's eyes squeezed into slits of deep thought. "These tracks are two days old. Perhaps older. But no more recent."
"Yeah. You're right," said Remo.
Their eyes met. Chiun's chin lifted. A dusty breeze toyed with his wispy beard. He took it between two fingers, the short-nailed index finger and the second one.
"Two days," he repeated. "No sooner."
"No argument there..." said Remo.
Chiun turned on Melvis. "What manner of vehicle was destroyed here?"
"Lemme think now. It was a funny one. Oh, yeah. A Nishitsu Ninja."
"Hah!" crowed Chiun.
"Hah what?" asked Melvis.
"Weren't they recalled a few years back?" Remo said.
"Yeah. They kept tippin' over on tight turns. But a few folks spent the money to have 'em fixed up so they were stable. That's why I said it was funny. You don't see too many Ninjas on the road these days. Worst Burn rice-burner ever built."
Suddenly Chiun turned, hurrying back to the rail line. He walked them carefully, striding, his fists tight, hazel eyes scouring the rails, the ties and the surrounding brush.
"What's he lookin' for now?" Melvis asked Remo.
"You'll know when I do."
"You're not bein' very cooperative."
"Sometimes the dog wags the tail. Other times it's the other way around. I learned a long time ago to follow along and let the pieces reveal themselves."
Melvis spit. "You would last two days with NTSB."
Chiun stopped so abruptly that Melvis nearly bumped into him. They gathered around. Chiun was looking straight down.
In the center of a tie was a fresh gouge.
"I'm lookin' at a gouge, am I right?" said Melvis.
Chiun nodded.
"Looks like a hunk of metal hit it pretty hard. It's sound, though. No urgency about replacin' it. Am I right?"
"A katana did this," Chiun intoned.
"Oh-oh," said Remo.
"What's a tanaka?" asked Melvis.
"Katana. Sword."
"Sword, huh? I'd put it down as a flyin' hunk of axle or something."
"It's a sword cut," said Remo.
"What sword?"
"The blade that beheaded the engineer," said Chiun.
"You funnin' me? He was decapitated."
"Beheaded."
"What makes you say that?"
"Experience," said Chiun, abruptly leaving the rail.
"Where we goin' now?" Melvis wanted to know.
When Chiun stepped into the rental car, the immediate question was answered.
Remo leaned into the car. "Where to next, Little Father?"
"We must speak with Smith."
"Who's Smith?" asked Melvis.
"Our supervisor."
"I got a cell phone in my rig."
"We need more privacy than that."
"Well, there's gotta be a pay phone somewhere's around. After all, this is Texas."
"Not if he gets his way."
"Say again?" asked Melvis in a dubious voice.
"It goes back to the original settlers."
"The Mexicans? Never."
"No, before them," said Chiun.
"You mean the Injuns?" Melvis exploded. "I'd sooner see the dang Asiatics have it."
"You're getting warmer," said Remo.
Chapter 12
Harold Smith was at his desk when the blue contact phone rang. He had been cleared to work by the Folcroft doctors who had pulled him from the taxi and administered stimulants.
The first thing Smith had said upon regaining consciousness was, "I must get to my desk."
"It's the middle of the night, Dr. Smith," the head doctor said. "I prescribe rest."
"And I pay your salary," Smith snapped.
The Folcroft staff knew their director. They eased him into a stainless-steel wheelchair and rolled him to his Spartan office, where he peremptorily dismissed them.
Reaching under his desk, whose top was a slab of black glass, Smith pressed the button that activated the buried video terminal. It lurked under the tinted glass. When the screen came on, the amber phosphorescent sign-on cycle was visible only to Smith.
None of the Folcroft staff suspected the concealed terminal any more than they knew of the existence of the four mainframes that hummed quietly in the basement behind blank concrete walls.
This was the nerve center of CURE.
As soon as he had the system up and running, Smith called up incoming reports on the derailment he had just survived, downloading them into his ongoing Amtrak file.
Twenty-odd minutes into this he remembered to call his wife.
"I am fine," Smith said without bothering with a greeting.
"Why wouldn't you be, Harold?" Maude Smith asked sleepily.
"I was on the train that derailed but I am fine."
"Oh, Harold."
"I am fine," he repeated.
"Where are you now?"
"At work."
"You should come home, Harold. You sound tired."
"I will see you tomorrow," said Harold, hanging up and thinking that there was no reason to let Maude know he had been on that wreck. There was no sense worrying her needlessly.
That was hours ago. Smith had toiled through the night, pausing only when he experienced an uncontrollable fit of coughing. His tongue tasted brackish. His stomach was sour. He loaded it up with antacid pills and Maalox, all to no avail.
When his secretary showed up for work, he asked her for black coffee but said nothing about the accident.
The wire feeds on the Mystic derailment were still coming in. The death toll was mounting in slow increments. It looked as if the final fatality total would exceed forty. Smith read that information, making absolutely no connection with his own brush with death.
In his mind a person either survived an accident or did not. One is dead or living; there is no in-between. Harold Smith still breathed. Almost didn't count.
The first bulletins were fragmentary and under constant revision. The earliest reports simply attributed the derailment to excessive speed. This was revised to human factors, a euphemism f
or crew fatigue or drug-induced engineer impairment.
When he read that the train had struck a bulldozer, Smith frowned like a puckering lemon.
"What would a bulldozer be doing on the tracks?" he muttered.
A follow-up report referred to cable being laid in the vicinity of the derailment, and suggested the bulldozer had attempted to cross the tracks and become stuck. There were no witnesses and no missing workmen.
"Ridiculous," Smith said. "There is no crossing on trackage so close to the water and no place on the shore side for the bulldozer to go."
But there the reports stood. A bulldozer had blocked the tracks. That was the end of it as far as the media was concerned. All they cared about were facts-whether true or not.
Smith moved on, looking into the Big Sandy incident.
It was similar. Only it fell within acceptable accident parameters. A driver tried to beat a train at a crossing. It happened with numbing regularity, like squirrels leaping into the paths of cars.
The decapitation of the engineer and subsequent behavior of the runaway Southern Pacific freight train was a different matter. It warranted investigation. Yet the preliminary NTSB report mysteriously cited drug use. It was a conclusion completely unsupported by available facts.
So when Remo had called, Smith sent him to the site, knowing that the Mystic investigation could wait. They were in the salvage stage now. There was nothing for them to do there. NTSB was still en route.
SMITH HAD MADE no progress by the time Remo checked in from Texas.
"Go ahead," Smith said, upon picking up the blue contact phone.
"Smitty, we found something."
"Yes?"
"The engineer was beheaded."
"I know that."
"No, you're thinking of decapitated. This guy was definitely beheaded according to Chiun."
"What is the difference?"
"The difference is a sword."
"I beg your pardon, Remo."
"According to Chiun, the engineer was deliberately beheaded."
"By whom?"
"Well, that's where it gets sticky."
"I am listening."
Remo's voice moved away from the receiver. "Here, Little Father, you tell him. It'll sound better coming from you."
The Master of Sinanju's squeaky voice came on the line. "Emperor, I bring difficult tidings."
"Yes?"
"Your servants have determined that foreign elements have been at work."
Smith said nothing. Chiun would tell it in his own way.
"These crimes have been perpetrated by Japanese agents, possibly only one."
"Why do you say that?"
"In both places Japanese vehicles were employed to block the right-of-way."
"How do you know this, Master Chiun?"
"In the place truly called Mystic, I myself beheld the name of the yellow machine. It was Hideo."
"Yes. That is a brand name."
"Here in this land of roughnecks, a Ninja was employed to work the same end."
"Excuse me-did you say ninja?"
"He means a Nishitsu Ninja," said Remo.
"Japanese-made vehicles are very common these days," said Smith. "I doubt this is anything more than coincidence."
"There is more, Emperor. In both places the unmistakable bite of a katana blade marked the site of this fiend's depredations."
"Did you say katana?"
"You know it?"
"I believe it is a sword used by the ancient Japanese."
Chiun's voice shifted away. "Remo, Smith recognized katana. Why did you not?"
"I'm having a slow week," Remo said sourly.
"Since 1971?"
"Get off my back!"
Smith interrupted the impending argument. "Master Chiun, I can think of no reason why-"
"There is more. Last night I encountered a foe the like of which I have never encountered."
"Yes'"
"A ronin. Do you know this word?"
"No."
"See?" said Remo. "Even Smith never heard of it.
"Hush. A ronin is a masterless samurai," explained Chiun.
"The samurai clans died out long ago," Smith said.
"Would that it were truly so," Chiun said, sad voiced. "I myself beheld one with my own eyes. He escaped. Stealing our dragon."
"It's Dragoon," Remo inserted.
"With which the fiend made his escape. Otherwise, we would have vanquished him utterly, just as you would wish."
"Er, did Remo see this samurai?"
"This ronin-no. He emerged from the sea while Remo was busy elsewhere. I alone saw him. He moved with great stealth. Fierce was his mien. Great was his skill."
"From the sea, did you say?" asked Harold Smith.
"Yes. Why?"
Smith frowned. A hazy memory tickled his brain. What was it he had seen?
"Nothing," he said, unable to shake the cobwebs from his brain. "It is nothing. Go on."
"Now that we have solved this mystery, we crave a boon, O Emperor."
"What is it?"
"My pupil and I are in dire need of a vacation. We are thinking of sojourning in sweeter climes. Just for a month or two. No more. We will return if needed."
"This assignment is not over."
"I told you he wouldn't fall for it," said Remo.
"Hush, unwise one. O Emperor, will you not reconsider?"
"This assignment is not over. And I do not accept your findings."
"What is wrong with them?"
"If a-er-samurai blocked the right-of-way with a Nishitsu Ninja, how did he get into the cab to behead the engineer?"
"Perhaps he flung his blade into the man's face."
"In that case the blade will be in the wreckage of the cab."
"Not if the samurai recovered it."
"How? The engine traveled over fifty miles before crashing."
"A mere detail."
"You might look into the engine. If a katana turns up, I may reconsider my evaluation."
"It will be done, O Smith."
The line went dead.
"I TOLD You he wouldn't fall for it," said Remo after Chiun hung up. The receiver shattered like so much black glass from the force of Chiun's angry gesture.
"That man is impossible."
"You didn't tell him the whole story."
"It is family business and none of his concern."
"Now what?" asked Remo.
"You overheard all. We will examine the engine."
"Even though you know we won't find any katana. The ronin was carrying it last night. A whole night after this mess."
"We have our instructions," Chiun said thinly.
"You just want to hang around where the ghost samurai don't roam."
They rejoined Melvis Cupper, who was working a pay phone in a local saloon. He clutched a sweating can of Coors in one hammy fist. After a minute he hung up.
"Just got my marchin' orders. I'm Mystic bound."
"We want a look at the engine," said Remo.
"Well, it's in the direction I'm headed, so I guess I can take a little detour."
THE ENGINE LAY on its side in the shattered remains of the Texarkana freight yard. It was a long gray monster, its formerly blazing red nose now scorched black by the exploding utility vehicle.
"Man, it about busts my heart to see one lyin' on her side like that," Melvis said unhappily.
"It's only an engine," said Remo.
"Shows what you know. That's an MK5000C. Sweetest thing this side of steam. Another generation or two, and diesel will finally match the tracktive effort of the old Challenger steamers. Never thought I'd live to say it, either."
Remo was looking at the forward windscreens. They had shattered into crazy spiderweb patterns, but the glass had held. Only a small piece was missing.
"No sign of an entry puncture," he said.
"Entry?"
"Never mind."
There was a gangplank platform hovering over the side access door.
They climbed the steps and lowered themselves down.
The interior cab walls were crusted reddish black with dried blood. A few flies buzzed about.
Remo and Chiun looked around. The cabin hadn't sustained much damage.
In the rear of the cab was a long rip in the bulkhead that separated the cabin from the power plant.
"What's this?" Remo wondered aloud.
"A hole," said Melvis.
"Made by what?"
Melvis shrugged. "Flyin' something or other."
"You find the something?"
"They ain't got to the engine yet."
Remo said to Chiun, "What do you think, Little Father?"
Chiun looked the rip over carefully. "Katana."
"You sure?" asked Remo.
Chiun nodded. "The blade passed through this hole."
"Okay. How'd it enter the cab?"
"Sorcery."
Remo looked dubious.
"You fellas care to share your opinions with a jugeared good of boy?"
"Let's see that engine," Remo said.
"Probably birds-nested all to hell."
They opened the engine covers, exposing the monster diesel engine. It was still new, a factory-fresh coat of primary yellow paint making it gleam.
"Man, is that a mess," Melvis said.
It was. Wires and metal components lay everywhere. In places the yellow was scorched and blackened. It looked like a bird's nest after it had been picked at by squirrels.
Melvis shook his head. "Never seen one birdsnested so bad."
Remo asked Chiun, "Think it's inside the engine block?"
Chiun shook his head. "It passed through, impaling itself on the tie. You saw it."
Remo shook his head, "Couldn't. If it struck the tie, the trailing cars would have mangled it. And someone would have noticed it among the car parts. Therefore, it's in the engine block if it's anywhere."
Chiun frowned like a death mask drying. "There is an explanation," he said.
"Sure, always is. Look in the engine block."
"First we will look under the engine," said Chiun.
They looked. There was no exit hole in the bottom of the engine. Nor in the back.
"It is a conundrum," said Chiun, absently stroking his wispy beard.
"That's a rabbity kinda word for what we got here," Melvis Cupper allowed.
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," said Remo.
"Yes," said Chiun, raising his arms so his wide kimono sleeves slid back to his elbows, exposing pipestem arms resembling plucked chicken wings.
Remo turned to Melvis Cupper. "Think you could find a flashlight?"
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