"Big surprise there."
"A bomb whose chief stabilizing ingredient is junk mail," added Smith.
"No kidding."
"And here are plans to fill up a mail truck with the concoction."
"A mail-truck bomb?"
"Yes. And I would wager such a weapon was responsible for the disaster at the General Post Office."
Smith's eyes suddenly jumped behind his glasses. "My God!"
"You keep saying that. How many times can you be surprised at what these guys are capable of doing?"
"I am looking at one of the claims faxed to the FBI in the wake of this afternoon's mailbox bombings."
"So?"
"Several were received. Some came from the usual terror and jihad groups. A few were organizations never before heard from, such as the Eagles of Allah and the Warriors of God."
Remo looked to Chiun. "W.O.G.?"
The Master of Sinanju shrugged. "Are messengers of Allah not usually wogs?"
"It is very likely that these new groups are in fact one and the same," Smith went on. "It is common practice among Middle Eastern terrorist groups to operate under multiple names in order to confuse the issue and make themselves seem more numerous and threatening than they really are. One new group called themselves the Islamic Front for the A.P.W.U. This is the name on this fax file."
"What's 'A.P.W.U.' stand for?"
"See for yourself."
Remo did. He looked. Then looked again. "Isn't that-?"
"The eagle graphic we saw before, yes. I recognize it now. It is the new emblem of the United States Postal Service. But look below it."
Remo's eyes went where Smith's bony finger pointed. He read aloud. "'Islamic Front for the American Postal Workers' Union.' A terrorist group has infiltrated the postman's union?"
"No, it is far graver than that."
Abruptly Smith turned in his chair. It swiveled to the big picture window. Smith looked past them at Long Island Sound, which was turning fiery orange in the dying afternoon light.
"A terrorist cell has infiltrated the United States Postal Service," he said, his words like flint being scraped. "That means they could be operating in every city and town and village in the nation, unknown and unsuspected. Wearing mail-carrier uniforms, they can enter any public building unchallenged and unquestioned, from the most public office building to the most secure federal facility. No one can question a mailman. I doubt if many security guards bother to ask them to walk through metal detectors. Certainly no one can look into their bag. The mail is protected from casual scrutiny."
Smith's voice was hollow. He was staring into space, looking at nothing. He was talking, but not to them. It was more as if he was thinking out loud.
"There are an estimated four hundred thousand postal employees in the nation. In some towns, the postmaster is the only representative of the U.S. government. Virtually every town and city has its own post office. There are more post offices than military bases in this country. These terrorists have theoretical bases in every corner of the nation. They have government vehicles at their disposal. On virtually every street in America, there are relay boxes just like the ones that exploded today. And these devils have the power to booby-trap any one of them. No one is safe. No building is secure."
"So what are we waiting for? Let's get them."
Smith snapped out of it. "How?"
"Can't you trace them through the Internet?"
"They communicate through an automatic anonymous server, which relays their communications to the final server site, this Gates of Paradise entity. All these e-mail files are stored there, not in the systems the terrorist cells used to access them."
"Can you trace this server?" asked Remo.
"I already have. It is near Toledo, Ohio. But I cannot follow the audit trail to the Gates of Paradise host site without accessing the Toledo site."
"So let's get a move on."
"I have already instructed the FBI to get on it. I need you for the serious work that lies ahead."
"Just point us in the right direction, and we'll do what we do best," said Remo.
Chiun made a grandiose gesture with the ornate jade nail protector. "Yes, O Smith. You have merely to instruct us, and Muslim heads will fall at your feet like so many pomegranates, and equally as red."
"No doubt Al Ladeen was the driver of the mailtruck bomb that destroyed the General Post Office, covering his tracks and killing himself in the process. That is what these people do. It is one of the others who will act next."
"Yeah. If only we knew their real names."
The system beeped again, and Smith leaped on the keyless keyboard.
"Here we go again," said Remo.
The bulletin was a follow-up to an earlier one. Smith scanned it, instantly judging it as not mission critical. "It is just more on the Oklahoma courtroom shootout," said Remo.
Smith scanned the text with eager eyes. "We may have a lead," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"According to this, the shooter in Oklahoma City is believed to be a disgruntled postal employee."
"Not another one."
"They have all gone mad," said Chiun.
"This could be a simple case of one postal worker going over the edge," Smith said tightly as he worked his keyboard. "It may not be connected to the events in New York."
"Doesn't fit the MO," agreed Remo.
"If we are fortunate, the preliminary findings of the FBI have been logged into the computer in the Oklahoma City branch office of the FBI."
"Would they work that fast?" "Everyone files on computer these days."
"Except you and I. Right, Little Father?"
Chiun sniffed, "I will have no truck with machines that beep at one like a nagging wife."
Smith was keying so furiously that his fingers, tapping the flat white letters and numbers on the desk, caused them to flare briefly.
"I have something!" he said hoarsely. They crowded around.
The screen displayed an FBI computer form that had been filled in. Their eyes raced down the entries. Almost at the same time, they alighted on the same line. It was headed Suspect Name.
The name typed on the glowing amber line was one they all recognized: Joseph Camel.
Chapter 13
It was perhaps inevitable that Yusef Gamal would come to be called Abu Gamalin-"Father of Camels."
Even as a boy, he had shown the strength of his namesake, the camel. He possessed camel shoulders. His curly hair was reminiscent of a camel's thick coat as well. And perhaps not as noticeably, he had the prominent nose of a camel.
A mighty nose it was, too. It was the first thing one noticed about Yusef Gamal, eventually to be known as Abu Gamalin.
So it was not strange that in his early years, the other Palestinian boys nicknamed him Al Mahour-"the Nose."
"That is not a bad nom de guerre, " his father had told him.
"It is not a warrior's name," Yusef lamented.
"There are worse things to be called," said his father in a strange tone of voice. He was looking at Yusef's face when he spoke those fateful words. And if he was looking at his face, Yusef remembered thinking, he had to be looking at his nose. It was unavoidable. Like looking up at the sky and seeing the sun. By the time Yusef turned thirteen, his voice had yet to break and the hairs on his lower body were thin and unimpressive. By then, he had killed several men, for this was what Palestinians of his age did in those days. For the intifada was in full cry in the Occupied Territories, where the Zionist entity was most vulnerable. His skill at killing Israelis came to the attention of Hezbollah, and Yusef had been summoned to Lebanon, making contact with others of his kind. There on the banks of Nahr-al-Mawt-the River of Death-he was trained in the lethal arts, wearing fatigues and a checkered kaffiyeh over his face.
They were glorious days, filled with bloodshed and maiming. Through it all, Yusef fully expected to die. He longed to die. He prayed to Allah the Compassionate that he die in mortal combat, for he had been taught that the gates of Paradise could only be opened by breaking them down with Zionist skulls.