Engines of Destruction td-103

by Warren Murphy

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

  "Ah-hah!"

  "Ah-hah what?"

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

  "So why wasn't I ambushed?"

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

  "Beats ignoring reality."

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 14

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

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

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

  It was a hell of a thing to watch.

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

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

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

  "Just like pickup sticks," Melvis said happily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Oklahoma City. Remember it?"

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

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

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

  "You blamed the engineer."

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

  "They found his head in a tree."

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

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

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

  "What really derailed that train?" asked Remo.

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

  The two looked blank.

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

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

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

  "Flying glass?"

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

  "Then what did?"

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

  The two exchanged hard looks.

  "How'd the head get up the tree?"

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

  The two looked at each other again.

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

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

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

  "What's that?"

  "The poor engineer was decapitated-"

  "Beheaded," said Chiun.

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

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

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

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

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

  "That so?"

  "You can't say different."

  "Come with me," said Chiun, beckoning.

  Reluctantly Melvis followed them past the track gang.

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

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

  "These look familiar to you?" asked Remo.

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

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

  Melvis rubbed his blunt jaw thoughtfully. "Hmm."

  "Big Sandy, remember?"

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

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

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

  "Definitely," said Remo.

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

  "He was at Oklahoma City too."

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

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

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

  They walked away.

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

  They kept walking.

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

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

  "Right," said Remo.

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

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

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

  "Possibly," said Chiun.

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

  "You ask too many questions," said Remo.

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

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

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

  "Da-yam."

  "What is it?" asked Remo.

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

  "Derailment?"

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

  Remo said, "A what?"

  Chiun gasped. "No!"

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

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

  "Well, I don't."

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

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

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

  Chapter 15

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

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

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

  "Narrow," said Chiun.

  "No foolin'. Elephant ears?"

  "Elephant ears are African."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "No," said Remo.

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

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

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

  "Avert your eyes, Remo," Chiun warned.

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

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

  "White lightning?"

  "Worse. Yellow kernels."

  "Never heard of that brand of moonshine."

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

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

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

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

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

  "No."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "What do you see?"

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

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

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

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

  "Which engine?" asked Remo.

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

  Remo looked at Melvis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "That? Why, it's a . . ."

  They looked at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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