Terminal Transmission td-93

by Warren Murphy

  Today, the current crop of anchors left much to be desired, so Smith had swallowed hard and invested in home cable, paying out of his own pocket the installation charge and the monthly access fee despite the fact that he was well within his rights to charge the fee to either of his operating budgets.

  Smith had two. The lesser of them was the operating budget for Folcroft Sanitarium, a sleepy but efficient private hospital on the shores of Long Island Sound in Rye, New York. Harold Smith was Folcroft's director, and had been since his retirement from the CIA back in the halcyon days of Huntley and Brinkley.

  The other operating budget was Smith's to do with as he wished. It wasn't literally true, but in practice there was no one above Smith to tell him that no, he could not siphon off $53.50 each month to equip his Rye, New York home and Folcroft office with cable. Even if he had been subject to auditing, the paltry $53.50 would have been hardly a blip on a CPA's radar screen.

  For Smith's total annual operating budget, the budget in which Folcroft was a minor expenditure, exceeded many millions of dollars in taxpayer's money.

  Harold W. Smith was the head of CURE, sanctioned by the President of the United States-but answerable to no lawmaker, no congressional oversight committee, no one. It had been set up in the early 1960s to operate outside the constraints of lawful government. Its mission: to keep order in an increasingly chaotic society, resorting to extraconstitutional activities when deemed necessary by Harold Smith.

  In those difficult early days it had often been necessary. Smith had run the organization from his Folcroft office until the day a successor to the martyred president who had set up CURE in the first place had given Smith authorization to take the next necessary step: create an enforcement arm.

  A candidate had been chosen. An ordinary man, soon to be made extraordinary. First Smith had the subject executed. The subject had been a Newark cop, seemingly no different than others who pounded the urban streets of a declining America.

  Smith had arranged for his badge to disappear, only to reappear in an alley beside the bludgeoned body of a pusher. The death penalty had been in effect in those days, and the subject had been quickly railroaded into a death cell.

  It had all been arranged in advance. The execution had been a fraud. The "body," in a pill-induced coma, was spirited to Folcroft, where a plastic surgeon went to work on the subject's face, while Harold Smith, in his Spartan office, went about the grim task of covering his tracks. All records of the declared-dead Newark cop were purged from Social Security, IRS, and Marine Corps records. The man had been an orphan, unmarried, and thanks to Smith, disgraced. So it was a simple matter to virtually wipe all but the fading memory of one Remo Williams from the official record.

  Smith had felt no remorse. A greater good would be served. And it was, once Smith had presented Remo Williams with the cold choice-volunteer or die for real. Remo had been placed in the hands of the last Master of Sinanju, a forgotten line of assassins on the verge of fading from the human stage, for training in the ultimate martial art, called Sinanju, which had taken its name from a desolate village in the bleakness of Communist North Korea.

  In time, Smith had his enforcement arm-a human killing machine, professional, unstoppable, invincible, which he had code-named "Destroyer."

  For twenty years, Harold Smith had fielded innumerable crises as head of CURE, the supersecret government agency that officially did not even exist, drawing vast sums from a secret operating budget, sanctioning covert operations that involved mayhem, murder, and extortion, utterly unaccountable to anyone, yet in all that time he had personally accounted for every penny to the highest authority Harold Smith personally knew-his own conscience.

  The president who had invested Harold Smith with his enormous power and responsibility had never lived to see how Smith had exceeded the trust placed in him. But if he had, he would have experienced absolutely no misgivings.

  And so, on a Tuesday evening in April, Harold Smith sat in a comfortable overstuffed chair in the privacy of his home enjoying a night alone, with his wife away at his sister-in-law's, and saw the greatest crisis in his career of public service begin as a KNNN update.

  "This just in to Kable Newsworthy News Network News," the cool-voiced anchor had said. "As they were preparing their evening news programs, the three major broadcast networks experienced a unusual simultaneous service interruption. The disruption appears to be nationwide. More on this story as it becomes available."

  Smith took his remote from his coat pocket and pointed it at the cable box. The channels marched before his eyes. It took him only one cycle before he realized two incontrovertible facts.

  First, that all satellite reception and cable-only stations were broadcasting unimpeded.

  Second, all other stations were blacked out, UHF and VHF.

  He listened to the sonorous voice advising viewers that the trouble was not in their sets and, not being a watcher of episodic television, failed to recognize it as an old program theme opening.

  That was not important. For Harold Smith recognized something more important that he was witnessing the tip of an iceberg more terrible than any that had threatened the democracy he had sworn to safeguard.

  Smith turned on a tabletop radio, and the sonorous voice broadcasting on all TV stations issued from the radio speaker in perfect time with the TV. There was no tape delay.

  Turning off the radio and lowering the TV volume, he picked up a well-worn briefcase that was never far away. Smith placed it in his lap, defused the explosive charges in the locking latches, and exposed a portable computer and telephone handset.

  This was his link with the secret computers at Folcroft, the nerve center though which he monitored the affairs-public, secret and subversive-of a computerlinked nation. He lifted the handset, dialed a number from memory, and was relieved to find his enforcement arm reachable.

  Only after he had put Remo Williams on standby did Harold Smith call the President of the United States, the only person outside CURE to know about the organization.

  Smith had not spoken to the new president, who had taken office months before, trusting to the outgoing chief executive to have broken the news of the existence of CURE. He imagined the revelation of the secret organization that kept American democracy stabilized for nearly thirty years had come as a distinct shock to the new man. Normally, Smith left it to each successive president to make contact with him.

  But this was a crisis. He just hoped he could convince the latest occupant in the White House of its gravity.

  The President's raspy Southern voice was curious.

  "Smith?"

  "Of course," said Smith. The phone was tied by computer link into the dedicated line that had rung a red dialless telephone in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House. No president since CURE's inception ever failed to answer it. Harold Smith did not make casual calls. "Mr. President, I am calling to warn of a grave danger to this country."

  The President's tone lifted an octave. "What is it?"

  "Are you aware of the nationwide television blackout?"

  "Yes. But the White House is wired up for cable. We weren't affected."

  "Sir, a powerful force has showed itself. For what reason, I do not know, but it has the capability to knock broadcast television off the air nationwide."

  "They're saying it's sunspots," said the President.

  "Who are saying this?"

  "The networks."

  "Sunspots would not do what this power has accomplished," Smith returned. "Somehow, by some science I cannot fathom, this power has managed to intercept all TV video signals, at the same time broadcasting an audio signal of its choosing."

  "Could this be the Cubans up to their old tricks?"

  "Doubtful. This appears to be a quantum leap beyond Havana's technical capability. Let me explain the situation as I see it. For years we have feared Cuban interference with our broadcast reception. We know that they possess a transmitter that could be boosted to over 100,000 watt
s-powerful enough to overwhelm U.S. TV transmissions nationwide. In short, they would override ordinary signals across all frequency bands with an overriding multifrequency signal of their own."

  "I follow, Smith."

  "This is not the phenomenon we are witnessing here."

  "No?"

  "No, Mr. President. This power is somehow preventing the outgoing signals from every local broadcast station from getting onto the air. At the same time, it is able to put out an audio signal of its own."

  "Science isn't exactly my field, Smith."

  "My limited grasp of television theory tells me that this is an amazing and very threatening breakthrough. The power behind this has tonight tested his equipment. Now that he know it works, he will show his hand."

  "How?"

  "He will jam every TV station in his broadcast radius. Soon. Within the week at the very latest. And if there are demands, he will broadcast them."

  "That's a heck of a lot of deduction from a seven-minute blackout."

  "Mr. President, I have placed my people on alert. I suggest you do the same. Particularly, be prepared to triangulate the audio signal so that we may trace this interference to its source or sources."

  "You think there is more than one source?"

  "While it is possible to drown out all TV signals through one centrally positioned broadcast tower, we can't discount an array of jamming stations. Each of them must be tracked down and terminated."

  "I'll start the machinery, Smith. Please stay in touch."

  "Of course, Mr. President," said Harold Smith, hanging up.

  It has gone as well as could be expected, Smith reflected. The succession had gone as it always did, noisy but bloodless. Still Smith was going to miss the old President. He was probably the last one of Harold Smith's generation.

  Sadly he closed his briefcase, shucked off his slippers, and drew on his well-polished wing tip shoes. He had not so much as loosened his tie upon coming home, but he tightened the knot as he stood up.

  Smith was a tall graying man of retirement age, the flesh tight on his prominent bones. His face was pinched, a pair of rimless glasses perching precariously on his patrician nose. A congenital heart defect gave his skin an unhealthy grayish pallor that matched the hue of his three-piece suit. His eyes, faded from years of dull bureaucratic work, were a similar gray. Even his fingernails looked gray. His Dartmouth tie was hunter green.

  For the work that lay before him, Smith would need the speed and power of his Folcroft mainframes. He picked up his worn briefcase.

  Smith went out into the night, a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had tried to impress upon the President the seriousness of the event, but he doubted the President had fully grasped the potential for harm tonight's seven-minute blackout foreshadowed. The man had not turned down the music that had been playing in the background during their conversation. It had sounded like Elvis Presley.

  As he drove his battered station wagon to Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold Smith hoped the President would not have to deal with it.

  For just the tip of the iceberg filled Smith with dread.

  Chapter 4

  Remo Williams was on boom-box patrol.

  Ever since he and Chiun had moved into the converted-church condominium-occupying all sixteen units-in the city of Quincy, Massachusetts, Remo had been stuck with boom box patrol. It was one of his least favorite duties.

  There was a high school next to the Gothic-Swiss-Tudor fieldstone building Chiun considered his castle, and at night teenagers sometimes hung out, playing loud music. Mostly rap. Remo hated rap. He despised heavy metal. Disco gave him headaches. Rock was okay-as long as it was pre-Beatles rock. Why was it, he wondered, that each successive evolution moved further away from melody and toward pure beat? He figured popular music was on its way to extinction. Not that it mattered much. If the local kids were playing Mozart at an estimated 130 decibels, Remo would still have to put a stop to it.

  Loud music was offensive to the Master of Sinanju's easily offended ears. Especially with Eyeball to Eyeball with Cheeta Ching about to come on.

  So Remo had slipped out the front door and was moving toward the disembodied squawk of a rapper extolling the virtues of shooting uncompliant girlfriends in the face with his Glock.

  "This is a no-noise zone," Remo called out by way of greeting.

  "And this is a free country," a voice shot back. The voice sounded black but the face was white as bleached flour.

  "This is a no-noise zone before it's a free country," Remo countered.

  "That's not what they taught us in school, man."

  As Remo approached, he saw that the loiterers were a mixture of white and Asian kids, wearing sweatshirts and turned-around Red Sox caps. Somewhere he had read that the biggest, deepest secret in the music industry was the fact that rap music was strictly a suburban teenager phenomenon. Remo wasn't sure what urban kids listened to. Bluegrass, for all he knew.

  The sight of the Asian faces alarmed him more than the music bothered him. Chiun had a thing against Asians. True, he was no fan of white people, considering them inferior to Koreans, especially North Koreans, especially North Koreans from his village, and particularly inferior to Chiun's immediate family, but especially inferior to the Master of Chiun himself.

  But white Europeans had never invaded Korea, nor their kings cheated previous Masters of Sinanju. Much.

  When Chiun had discovered that he had moved into an area with a healthy Asian population, he had all but gone ballistic. It had been all Remo could do to talk him out of embarking on an Sarajevo-style ethnic cleansing campaign.

  Reluctantly, Remo had agreed to go door to door and ask his Asian neighbors to kindly, if it was not too much trouble, move to another city. He was almost relieved to discover that almost none of them spoke a word of English. That let him off the hook. But Remo began to feel awkward himself. He personally preferred neighbors who spoke English.

  Approaching the mixed white and Asian teenagers listening to black music, his mixed feelings returned. He represented a five-thousand-year-old Korean tradition-the first white man to become a Master of Sinanju-spoke fair Korean himself, and was more comfortable shopping at the local Asian market than the nearby supermarket. He could eat the stuff from the Asian market and survive the experience. The supermarket stuff was 99 percent lethal to his Sinanju-refined digestive system.

  Remo had been raised by nuns at St. Theresa's orphanage in Newark. For a long time, he had felt torn between the country of his birth and the honor and responsibility that had been placed on his shoulders. Somewhere along the line, he had become more Sinanju than Newark.

  "Tell you what," Remo said in the spirit of compromise, "you can stay if you behave, but the box shuts down."

  A quick hand reached for the volume control knob. Remo started a smile that became a grimace when his eardrums were abruptly assaulted by a screeching voice emanating from the dual speakers.

  Remo swept in, grabbed up the box and thumbed the off switch.

  "Show you a trick," he said.

  And like a basketball player, Remo heaved the box into the night sky with both hands. He made it look casual. Five thousand years of Sinanju Masters stood behind the gesture. Five thousand years of unlocking the secrets of the human mind and body. Five thousand years of applying principles Western learning had not even approached.

  All eyes shot upward. The box receded into a silvery gleaming dot. And kept going.

  This impressed the trio.

  "Whoa!"

  "Way cool!"

  "I wouldn't stand there if I were you," Remo remarked.

  "Why not?" one teenager asked, not dropping his gaze from the seemingly stationary gleam above.

  "It's going to come down."

  "Yeah, I know. And I'm going to catch it. It cost me $47.50."

  "It'll cost you both arms of you're lucky enough to catch it," Remo said.

  "Says you."

  "Says Newton's third law. What goes up
, must come down."

  "Newton's third law says for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction."

  Remo shrugged. "So sue me. High school was a million years ago."

  The trio kept their eyes on the night sky. Various expressions played over their young beardless faces. One twitched. Another, the truth dawning on him, took three giant steps backward, his eyes going very wide.

  "It's sure taking a long time to fall," one muttered.

  "Take the hint," said Remo.

  Then the third teenager shouted, "I see it! I see it! It's coming back."

  "I got it! I got it!" said the first teenager.

  They bumped heads, jockeying for position.

  Remo was tempted to let nature take its cruel course, but at the last minute relented.

  He swept in, caught a shirt collar in each hand and pulled the two bumping would-be boom-box rescuers out of the way as the box screamed back to earth and shattered into a thousand bits of plastic and electronics, incidentally cracking the asphalt noticeably.

  The trio were slapping at their arms and faces. Their fingers came away bright with tiny drops of blood.

  "Ouch! Ouch! What hit me?"

  "Shrapnel," said Remo. "Now go spread the word. Anyone caught making noise after dark ends up picking plastic out of his face-if I'm in a good mood."

  The trio looked to the shattered box, to Remo, back to the box, and fled.

  As he walked back to Castle Sinanju-as Chiun called it-Remo muttered, "Beats evicting the entire neighborhood."

  From the squat Gothic steeple, windows aglow on all four sides, issued a sudden shriek of anguish. Chiun.

  "Now what?" said Remo, whipping through the front door.

  Remo burst into the meditation room and stopped in his tracks.

  The Master of Sinanju was hopping about the room, his hands clutching at the puffs of cloudy hair that floated over each ear.

  "Don't tell me it's another blackout!" Remo said.

  "Worse! Worse!" Chiun leveled an agitated finger at the screen.