"Oh, Lord, this is the end of me," Cora Lee said just before the flying fragment of broken rail smashed her apart like a cotton sack filled with so much loose meat.
MELVIS CUPPER'S BEEPER went off within fifteen minutes of the derailment at Essex.
He was at the Omaha airport bar, knocking back frosty Coors, lamenting the wretched unfairness of life and improvising old railroad choruses as the spirit moved him.
Oh, her eyes were Conrail blue, She wore a Casey Jones cap. But she lusted after maglev speed. Which everyone knows is crap. So now I'm off my feeeeeed.
On that high note, the pager beeped.
"Oh, hell," Melvis said, shutting off his pager and seeking out a pay phone.
His supervisor was direct. "Got another one for you, Cupper."
Melvis groaned. "Where is it this time?"
"Essex, Maryland. Colonial slammed into a wrong-way Conrail diesel."
"Hell, Sam. You soused?"
"You're the one slurring his s's, Mel."
"I may be drunk as a boiled owl, but even I can remember through the haze that Essex, Maryland, was the site of that hellacious wreck back in '87. Colonial plowed into a Conrail humper then, too. Conrail hogger was on drugs."
"You always say that."
"That time it was true. He ran a signal he shouldn't, confessed and got his ass suspended for life."
"Damn. I remember it now. You're right. That's downright weird."
"Weird or not, I'm on my dang way," said Melvis, hanging up. It took him six tries. He kept missing the switch hook.
"Damn Jap phone," he muttered, handing the receiver to a bewildered child.
AN NTSB HELICOPTER was waiting for Melvis at the Baltimore-Washington international airport. He was on-site thirty minutes later.
"Don't tell me that's one of them new Genesis II engines," he moaned as the chopper was settling.
"What's that?" the pilot asked.
"Never dang mind," Melvis said, slapping on his Stetson and ducking out of the winding aircraft.
The on-site Amtrak director of operations shook his hand and said, "We're still processing bodies here."
Melvis said, "I aim to stay outta your way. Just want to get a preliminary gander at the point of impact."
The man pointed the way and rushed off.
Melvis walked down, picking his way carefully. He almost tripped over the bottom half of a leg that lay in his path. It was naked except for an argyle sock with a hole big enough to allow one cold toe to poke out.
"That boy shoulda listened to his mama about keeping up his socks," Melvis muttered, clapping his Stetson over his big chest out of respect for the dead and dismembered, which were plentiful.
The train cars had performed every acrobatic stunt from flying sideways to gouging their wheels into trackside ballast, Melvis saw as he passed the mangled mess.
The compacted engines were as bad as in Nebraska. The monocoque body of the Genesis had gotten the worst of the deal. There was a joke in the industry that the Genesis looked like the box the real locomotive had come in. Now it looked like the box thrown out after Christmas Day.
The Conrail freight engine was an SD50 diesel. By some freak it had bounced back from the point of impact.
Melvis decided he should check out the Conrail cab, in case he had another inconvenient headless engineer on his hands.
Climbing up the tangle of blue steel that had been the access ladder, he heard voices, paused and muttered, "Naw. Couldn't be."
A wrinkled ivory face peered out at him through the shattered glass of the gaping nose door. "You are too late," said Chiun.
"Hidy, old-timer," Melvis said with more enthusiasm than he actually felt. "Hell of a way to run a railroad, don't you think?"
Chiun withdrew so Melvis could step in. Remo was there with him, looking unhappy-which seemed to be his natural condition.
"You boys are sure tramplin' up my patch."
"We got here first," Remo remarked.
"You did, at that. What you find-anything?"
"No engineer. No blood."
"So I see," said Melvis. "Well, let me show you how we do things at the NTSB. Follow me down into the necessary."
Melvis led them down into the toilet compartment, where he lifted the seat and sniffed expertly. "Crapper here ain't been used recently," he pronounced. "Not in at least two hours."
Returning to the console, Melvis checked the controls. What he saw bothered the fool out of him.
"Damn controls are set for highballin'. The engineer would have had to jump clear to escape. But if he had, he would surely have splattered his dumb ass all over the trackage. Guess we walk the dang tracks," he said.
"You sniff a toilet and look over some dials and that's your conclusion?" said Remo.
"That," said Melvis, "is why I get the buck buckaroos. C'mon."
They walked the track. A mile, two, then three.
"I see no body," Chiun sniffed.
"This is powerful strange," Melvis admitted.
"Why's that?" asked Remo.
"Why's that, you say? Those freight controls have an interrupter on them. If the engineer doesn't respond to a beep every forty-five seconds by resettin' a switch, the air brakes will clamp down and stop her cold. Fifty seconds at an estimated eighty miles per means if he didn't jump clear by this point, he didn't jump clear. Period."
"Maybe it was radio controlled," Remo said.
"It's possible. Controls were set. But you're single-footin' down a trail I don't care to follow-if you take my meanin'. "
"We are doing this incorrectly," said Chiun.
"How's that, old-timer?"
"We are looking for a dead engineer when we should be looking for a live Japanese."
"Lordy, don't say that! Not out loud. I took a vow of silence I wouldn't breathe a word about what happened up there in Nebraska. Don't make me go back on my solemn word."
"So we're just going to put this one down as drugs?" Remo said.
"This? No, not this little shivaree. This is the second time that has happened here. That spells bad track or maybe a chronic switching or signal problem. Now, if you fellers will excuse me, I done all I can until they get all the dead ones cleared away. I'm gonna find me a nice clean motel and grab me some shut-eye. I'm beat down lower than a flapjack."
WATCHING MELVIS walk away, Remo growled, "Remind me to tell Smith to have Melvis's ticket punched."
When Chiun said nothing, Remo looked around. The Master of Sinanju was sniffing the still air.
"What's up?" Remo asked.
"Use your nose as I do, lazy one."
Remo tasted the air.
"Do you smell it?" asked Chiun.
"What?"
"The foul, reeking odor."
"All I smell is corn," Remo said.
"This is not a place where corn grows."
"You saying our samurai is lurking in the brush?"
"We will follow the scent and see with our own noses," said Chiun, taking off.
Sighing, Remo followed. A mile up the line the scent trail drifted inland. Chiun changed direction, eyes switching and sweeping, face determined.
The ground was flat and undisturbed. After a while a pair of footprints suddenly appeared and continued along. They were heelless. Remo recognized them. They were identical to the tracks found near the Mystic and Texarkana wrecks.
"Unless somebody parachuted down and walked off with his chute, I think we have something here," Remo muttered.
Farther along, in a copse of spreading hickory trees, the footsteps stopped. The ground was disturbed in a circle, then the tracks continued. But they had changed. They became Western shoes, with deep heels. Where the tracks changed character, the ground was well-scuffed and full of indentations.
"What are these marks?" Remo wondered aloud.
"This is where the ronin removed his armor," said Chiun. "Look, the unmistakable imprint of a do."
"If you say it's a do. I don't know what a do is."
"I probably would if I knew what that was."
"The do is the breastplate of the ronin."
Chiun set his sandaled feet into the new tracks. They were the same size.
Nodding, Chiun continued, saying, "Come, slow one."
"I'm not the one nursing a missing fingernail."
At that, Chiun swirled and blazed his eyes at Remo. "You insult me!"
"No, just pointing out that I'm a full Master, not a spear-carrier. How about a little respect?"
"When we again encounter the ronin, it will be your duty to remove your finger and fling it in his face."
"I'll think about it," said Remo.
They walked on. Chiun folded his hands into his kimono sleeves. "A true Master would not hesitate," he sniffed.
"How about I just give him the fickle finger of fate instead?" Remo undertoned.
The track stopped at a busy highway. They looked up, then down. There was a Burger Triumph and a Taco Hell in one direction. The other was deserted except for a sign that said Chesapeake Hotel.
"We will try there," said Chiun.
"What would a ghost ronin be doing in a hotel?"
"Awaiting his doom," said Chiun, who picked up his skirts and strode toward the motel.
Remo followed, thinking he had never seen Chiun so determined before.
THE DESK CLERK at the hotel was extremely accommodating when Chiun asked for the room number of his Japanese friend, whose name slipped him at the moment.
"Mr. Batsuka is in his room. Three-C."
"Did he say Batsucker?" asked Remo as they waited for the elevator.
"Batsuka. "
"That a first name or a last name?"
"We will wring the answer from the wretch's very lips before we grind his skull to powder," Chiun vowed.
"Don't forget we need to wring some explanations for Smith before the grinding begins."
"If I become carried away in my anger, Remo, I will count on you to restrain me until the all-important answers are ours."
The elevator let them off on the third floor. Room 3-C was to their immediate right, down a red-carpeted hall.
Standing outside the door, they put their cars to it.
"I hear CNN," said Remo.
"And I hear a human heartbeat I have heard before," said Chiun.
"Knock or kick?"
Chiun considered, his facial wrinkles quivering. "We must not alarm him, lest he commit seppuku."
"Knock it is." Remo knocked. "Maintenance! Gotta look at your john!"
His ear to the door, Chiun listened. "He is ignoring us," he whispered.
"Bad move on his part," said Remo, knocking again. "Maintenance man!"
Chiun withdrew and his eyes narrowed. "Await me."
Then he disappeared around the corner.
Remo figured Chiun was going to the balcony to cover that escape route. But when the hotel fire alarm started buzzing, he wasn't sure what to do at first.
Chiun flashed around the corner, eyes excited, demanding, "Has he emerged?"
"No. And don't tell me you threw the alarm!"
"It will flush him out."
It didn't. Instead, other doors flew open, including one that disgorged Melvis Cupper, wearing his NTSB Stetson and boxer shorts decorated with longhorn skulls.
"What's doin'?" he asked sleepily.
Chiun shushed him. He placed his ear to the door panel, listening. His face broke apart in shock.
"He has escaped! " he squeaked. "I hear no heartbeat."
Remo slammed the door with his palm, and it jumped off its hinges with such force it rebounded into the hall. Chiun plucked Melvis out of its path just in time. Remo ducked into the room, moving low in case a sword ambush waited him.
He found instead an empty room. The TV was on, showing coverage of the derailment less than a mile away. On the bed sat a heavy stainless-steel box with carrying straps and assorted switches and buttons on top. It was half in and half out of a black leather bag Remo recognized immediately.
It was the ronin's head bag.
On the end table the telephone was off the hook.
A check of the bathroom and closets showed them to be empty. There was no connecting door to adjoining rooms.
"I'm getting a flash of deja vu here," Remo said. He went to the telephone, scooping it up.
"Hello?" he said.
He got a rush of static, indicating an open line.
"Anybody there?"
"Try moshi moshi, " hissed Chiun.
"Moshi moshi," said Remo into the receiver.
The static hissed on. Remo hung up.
"I'll be switched," said Melvis, hefting the steel box on the bed. "If this ain't one of them newfangled RC units. See? It's got that little silver ball on the transmit-power switch just like that fickle little filly said."
Chiun floated up, took one look and said, "Behold, Remo. It says Nishitsu."
"Damn Japs will be making our engines before you know it," muttered Melvis.
Going to the telephone, Chiun picked up the receiver and hit Redial.
The phone started ringing.
When the other end lifted, a thin voice said, "Nishitsu."
Remo's and Chiun's eyes met.
Chiun hissed a question in Japanese, and the voice challenged him in the same language. An argument ensued, at the end of which the Master of Sinanju hung up, ripped the telephone from its wall socket and flung it through the glass balcony door and into the pool, where it caused a fat man to roll off his inflatable sea horse.
"Nice going, Little Father," Remo complained. "Now they know we're on to them."
"The better to strike fear into their craven hearts," spit Chiun.
"Let's find out where our ronin ended up."
BACK IN THE LOBBY the desk clerk wasn't as cooperative as before.
"We need the phone charges for 3-C," he said.
"Can't you see I have my hands full?" said the distraught clerk, who was explaining to the unhappy hotel guests that the commotion was only a false alarm.
Remo placed one hand on his shoulder and took his tie in the other. "Show you a trick."
The tie became a blur, and when Remo stepped back, the clerk's hands were dangling just beneath his Adam's apple, held together by a tight paisley knot that had been his tie.
The clerk tried to extricate himself. The harder he pulled, the redder his face became. When it shaded toward purple, he realized he was strangling himself and stopped. The purple went away, replaced by a helpless expression.
"Room charges," Remo repeated. "Three-C."
"Uggg," the clerk said, pointing with both hands to an open office door where a freckled redhead chewed gum at a switchboard.
"Much obliged," said Melvis, tipping his hat.
The hotel operator provided the last number dialed and told them Mr. Batsuka had checked in only a few hours before.
"Got a first name?"
"Furio."
"Thanks," said Remo.
From a lobby pay phone Remo called Harold Smith.
"Smitty. Pull up a number for me."
"Go ahead, Remo."
Remo read off the number.
A moment later Smith said, "It is the number of a Nishitsu car dealership in Eerie, Pennsylvania."
"Damn. Our phantom ronin was here. Looks like he used a radio-controlled transmitter to run the Conrail engine onto the Amtrak track. The same transmitter he used to wreck the California Zephyr, from the looks of things. All he had to do was find the right frequency and he was in business."
Smith said nothing to that.
"He left the transmitter behind, though. It says Nishitsu on it. We had him cornered in a hotel room, but when we broke in, all we found was an off-the-hook phone. But we got a name. Furio Batsuka."
"That is very interesting, Remo. The strands are coming together to form a pattern."
"Not one I recognize. None of this makes sense."
"I have just com
pleted a deep background check. Nishitsu is the parent corporation of the Gomi and Hideo brands."
Remo whistled. "What do you know?"
"Nishitsu technology explains everything we have encountered thus far. We know that the Krahseevah, in his dematerialized atomic state, had the power to transmit himself through telephone lines. That is how he eluded you and Chiun."
"That much I figured out. But what's the point? Why are they attacking our rail system?"
"I know," squeaked Chiun.
Remo looked at him.
"To destroy a nation's roads is the same as sucking the blood from its veins. It was so with Rome. It is so here in the new Rome. We must save our gracious trains from the foreign brigands."
"Railroads aren't that important anymore, Little Father."
"Philistine. Antirailer. "
Into the phone Remo said, "You catch that?"
"Never mind. Remo, I have been analyzing my files over the last hour. Recall that there has been a lull in rail accidents over the last three months."
"If you say so."
"Suddenly events have been happening at an accelerated rate, beginning with the Texarkana disaster."
"I'm with you so far," Remo said.
"In almost every recent incident, the engines involved have been new, state-of-the-art vehicles." Smith paused. "Someone is attempting to discredit U.S. motive-power units."
"Couldn't it be just coincidence? I mean, this guy is hitting everything that runs on rails. He's bound to topple a few new engines."
"A pause, and then an accelerated program. The pause was to regroup and restrategize. Recall that these derailments have been commonplace for three years now."
"Yeah."
"Obviously the initial plan was not working. The mind behind this has shifted tactics. The plot is approaching a crescendo."
"So what's the point?"
"I wish I knew," Smith said helplessly. "But we cannot stand by and chase derailments. We must take the initiative."
"None of this would have happened had the foolish white race not abandoned steam," said Chiun loud enough for all to hear.
"I'll drink to that," said Melvis from the other side of the lobby.
"Remo, book a room in that hotel and await instructions," said Smith.
"If you say so," Remo said reluctantly.
Hanging up, Remo faced the Master of Sinanju. "It's a new ball game. We're dealing with a second-generation Krahseevah. Smitty says so."
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