Then Burris's foot encountered a soft, heavy weight that gave slightly.
Reaching down with both hands, he started feeling about. His heart was pounding now. This was grisly work, but it had to be done now. Before the bodies got washed out to sea irretrievably or bloated up and were nibbled on by crabs. Bodies in the water turned horrible pretty fast, and folks naturally preferred open-casket wakes for their loved ones.
Burris's fingers swished and gurgled in the water, groping until what felt like seaweed threaded between his splayed fingers. He clamped down, both hands, and knew because they weren't slimy or slick that he had captured human hair.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled.
A little girl's head broke the surface, and her china blue eyes were wide open, her face a ghastly blue-gray. Burris just wanted to bawl like a baby. But he didn't. He gathered up the sopping form and lifted his voice. A frog that he didn't know was lurking in his throat tangled up the words. He cleared it, tried again.
"Body!" he called.
Two rescue workers came sloshing down off the bank and took the body tenderly from his arms. Swallowing hard, Burris resumed wading.
It was bad, yeah, he told himself. But it could have been worse. It could have been the dead of winter. In the dead of winter the water would have been too cold for efficient rescue operations, and the little girl with the innocent blue eyes would have spent the entire night down there. Maybe two. She had suffered enough. No one should lie unclaimed in the cold, cold water even if he or she was dead and beyond all pain and feeling.
Yeah, it could have been worse. But it was bad. It was real bad.
THE ACCIDENT SITE WAS under floodlights when Remo pulled off the road and got out.
Orange Coast Guard Jayhawk helicopters were traveling back and forth, targeting their spotlights on the purly water, where two cars lay half-submerged in the rainbow stink of diesel fuel. Fireboats bobbed in the darkness like ducks in profile.
"Looks bad," Remo said quietly.
Chiun said nothing. They worked their way toward the crash site.
A temporary morgue had been set up on dry ground, where noisy gas generators powered ground lights. The pup tents were stark pyramids in their back-glow. EMTs were rushing in and out, clutching plasma bottles, a besieged urgency in their faces.
Remo grabbed one on the fly. "We need to find out about a friend."
"Tent 3 has the casualty list," the man said breathlessly.
"Thanks," said Remo, moving on.
At tent 3 a harried nurse was working a cell phone and checking off names on a handwritten list.
"A friend was on the train," Remo told her.
The nurse looked up. "Name?"
"Smith."
"Hold on a second," she told the person the other end. Glancing at her list, she said. "No Smith on my list."
"What's that mean?"
"Anything. Body not recovered. Body not identified."
"What if he's injured, not missing?"
"That's the only list I have. Sorry. Try the morgue. A service rep will point you in the right direction." Into the phone she said, "Hello? Sorry. Listen, do you have any more AB negative?"
Returning to the busy night, Remo said, "Guess we try the morgue."
"Yes, it is what we should do. After we are finished here."
The Master of Sinanju was looking into an openflapped pup tent where two bodies lay on cots, sheeted and still.
They entered. Chiun lifted first one sheet and then the other. Neither was Harold Smith.
Going to the next tent, they found a tangle of arms and legs shrouded by a plastic tarp big enough to floor a room. When Chiun raised one end of the sheet, he found only feet. Going to the other, he got the same display.
Whipping the entire sheet away, he discovered that it was no single body. Only parts. No heads. Chiun replaced the sheet, his wrinkled face stiff.
"Let's check the water," suggested Remo.
Chiun nodded grimly.
An Amtrak cop tried to shoo them back from the water. But Remo said, "No time." Taking his shoulder, Remo spun him around.
The cop spun in place like a top and went whirling and staggering away. When he got himself organized again, Remo and Chiun had slipped into the dark water.
Searchlights cutting into the water made the marshy cove weird, as if something monstrous lurked under the oily water, ready to pounce into the world of oxygen.
The water closed over their heads, and they found themselves swimming through slow-moving tunnels of vertical light. They could see the submerged cars lying on their sides in silt, undercarriage fans turning lazily.
One coach was completely underwater and filled like an aquarium. Inside, dim faces were pressed to the window glass, some with their eyes closed as if napping while leaning against the glass. Others wore twisted expressions, their open mouths full of brine. A tiny fish was pecking at the exposed teeth of a black man with only the bloodshot whites of his eyes showing.
Releasing carbon dioxide bubbles slowly from their mouths, Remo and Chiun floated from window to window, trying to see inside. None of the faces was familiar. Most looked ordinary. Just ordinary people, Remo thought. Ordinary people on their ordinary way to homes or vacations or businesses. Now they were dead, drowned in a steel cage from which their weak bodies could not escape.
Remo wanted to let them out, but attracting attention was against Smith's highest directive. Remo was normally ready to violate that directive whenever it suited him. Now, thinking Smith dead, he felt like respecting it.
Noticing a flutter like a stingray, Remo saw that Chiun was at a door. He got it open. A blooping bubble of air came wobbling out and floated upward. Chiun slipped inside.
Remo followed.
They swam the length of the car, using their eyes to the fullest and taking advantage of the crisscrossing searchlights. Where it was too dark to make out faces, they used their sensitive fingertips, visualizing the cold facial planes they encountered.
Harold Smith's patrician features were not among the dead in this coach, they concluded when they reached its end. Swimming back, they left the dead in peace. Others would redeem them.
Bobbing to the surface, they treaded water, facing one another.
"Guess we try the city morgue," said Remo.
Chiun nodded.
After wading back to shore, they walked the twisted tracks to the engine that had slammed into a tangle of yellow metal with catastrophic results.
"Looks like a bulldozer," said Remo.
Chiun examined the twisted tangle critically.
"What does this contraption do?"
"It's used to push dirt and move it someplace else."
Chiun frowned. "What was it doing on the rails?"
"Search me. Maybe it was crossing."
"We are by the water. There is no crossing here."
"Good point," said Remo. "Let's go."
"Hold," said Chiun. Kneeling, he picked up a bent twist of metal. He brought this up to the light. There was a name on it. And a company emblem-four disks in a circle.
"Looks like a nameplate," Remo said.
"It is Japanese. It says Hideo."
"So? It's a Japanese bulldozer."
"What is a Japanese bulldozer doing on these rails?" Chiun said thinly.
"It doesn't matter that it's Japanese. Come on. Let's check out the morgue."
The nameplate disappeared up Chiun's wide kimono sleeve, and Remo started to object but decided the nameplate wouldn't matter to the investigation.
AT THE MYSTIC MORGUE they were told they were too late.
"What do you mean, too late?" Remo demanded. "The deceased Smith was claimed," the attendant said distractedly as he walked down a line of sheeted bodies, checking toe tags.
"By whom?" asked Chiun.
"Another Smith. Who else?"