The trouble was, the longer it took, the more catastrophes the U.S. rail system suffered.
As he waited, the system beeped again.
This time it was in Boise, Idaho. Another Amtrak crash. The Pioneer had derailed in Boise on that exact same spot back in 1993. And Smith had a sudden flash of understanding.
The ronin was duplicating past accidents because time was running out, and it was easier to reengineer a successful derailment than create one anew.
Running out for what? Smith wondered.
REMO HEARD the strange sound long after darkness had fallen.
"What's that?"
"I do not know," said Chiun, head lifting.
As they listened, it became a monotonous metallic creaking, like slow gears going through a laborious cycle. An engine muttered.
Reaching in a back pocket, Remo pulled out an Amtrak schedule he had grabbed at the car-rental agency.
"According to this, the Sunset Limited isn't due for another hour."
Chiun cocked an ear. "It does not sound like a train, but a devil wagon."
"What's a devil wagon?"
"In the days of the renowned Kyong-Ji Line, a railroad man would ride before the locomotive on a wagon he propelled by pumping a seesaw handle. This was to examine the track to insure the way was secure. Also to lure lurking bandits to their doom."
"You had bandits on the Kyong-Ji?"
"Until the Master of that time, my father, ridded the countryside of these brigands-in return for a private coach."
"No gold?"
"The coach was filled with gold. Shame on you, Remo. It goes without saying."
"Let's see what it is."
BILLY REX DAUGHTERS WAS getting worried. Here it was after dark, and he had another ten miles of cable to lay.
The bulldozer creaked beside the rails at a sedate walking pace, its tracks grumbling as the giant spool paid out fiberoptic cable. It came out of the spool and followed the curve of the specialized frontmounted plow, falling flat into the trench as it was excavated. Later a work crew would tamp it down.
It was the damnedest thing, he thought, not for the first time. Laying the information highway of the twenty-first century on twentieth-century rail with a plow not much different from what men first used to till the soil back in the Stone Age.
But there it was.
And here he was. And if Billy Rex didn't get a move on, the Sunset Limited was going to catch him and his dozer on the Bayou Canot bridge and mash man and machine into the trackage like a discarded can of pop.
As he approached the great span, the mists rising from the sluggish waters below made him think of the spirits of the dead who had died in the diesel-soaked, alligator-infested waters below. Billy Rex slowed. There had been a heavy fog the night the Limited went into the bayou. It smothered the span so that the hapless engineer thought he was running over solid rail right up until the moment he rode his diesel into oblivion.
Trouble was, slowing down encouraged the damn mosquitoes. They began swarming.
THE TWO FIGURES materialized on either side of the right-of-way like ghosts from the Bayou Canot incident.
"Hold!" one said. He was a strange one, he was. Old as the hills and dressed for a Chinese square dance.
The other was a regular fellow. Lean as bamboo, with wrists like railroad ties. Neither exactly looked like track men. But they looked harmless enough.
Oddly enough, the mosquitoes didn't seem to have an appetite for them. They stayed off a ways, like careful moths shrinking from a flame.
"Can't stop," he called ahead in his friendliest voice as he approached the pair. "Got a schedule to make."
The tall, skinny one spoke up. "Is that a plow?" Yep.
"Kinda late in the year for clearing snow."
"Or early," Billy Rex returned sociably.
They were walking alongside him now. Not threatening, just interested. Billy Rex began to relax.
"What is this?" asked the little guy, pointing at the serpentine cable dropping into the fresh-turned earth.
"Fiber-optic cable. We're laying the information highway."
"Along railroad track?" the skinny one blurted.
"Hell, phone lines have been strung along the right-of-way and buried beside it for years and years. This here is just the latest wrinkle."
"I didn't know that."
"Well, a body learns something new every day, doesn't he?"
They were approaching the bridge now. The mosquitoes were really biting now. If the engineers were on the money, the cable would run out about now.
It did. The last plopped into the trench, for later splicing. Billy Rex hit the lever that raised the plow. Then he sent his machine up onto the tracks, jockeyed it true and prepared to cross the bridge as fast as reasonable.
"I wouldn't follow me any farther," he said, slapping at his arms. "Ain't safe."
Suddenly there was a business card in his face. He couldn't read it too well by moonlight, but the skinny guy's voice said, "Remo Bell, FCC," in a voice so self-assured, Billy Rex naturally accepted it. "Pull over."
"This is rail I'm on, not blacktop. I can't pull over."
"Then stop this vehicle or face the consequences," said the squeaky voice of the little old Asian.
"What consequences?" Billy Rex naturally asked.
That's when the bulldozer stopped. Dead. Billy Rex yanked out a flashlight to see what it had hit.
The tracks were clear, except for the leather shoe. It had arrested the plow somehow. Inside the shoe was the foot of the skinny guy from the FCC.
Deciding to be sociable, Billy Rex killed the engine.
"What can I do for you fellas?"
"Spot check."
"Check away."
They looked over his cable, peered under his vehicle as if looking for a bomb, checked his ID and for some reason looked real hard at the bulldozer manufacturer's plate before saying, "Okay, you can go now."
"Much obliged."
"You are very wise to buy American," the Asian squeaked.
Then they watched him start up and negotiate the bridge, ponderous tracks gripping steel rail it wasn't designed for.
The mosquitoes followed, as mosquitoes would. If any malingered to sample the two odd ones Billy Rex left behind, it wasn't noticeable.
AFTER THE BULLDOZER was lost in the darkness, Remo turned to Chiun and said, "I think I know what they're after now."
"And you are wrong," Chiun sniffed.
"I didn't say what I was thinking yet."
"You are wrong, whatever you are thinking."
"We'll see about that." Remo looked up at the moon, whose position in the sky verified what his internal clock was telling him. The Sunset Limited was due before long.
They retreated into the undergrowth to watch the bridge for trouble. The night was full of mosquitoes. But all avoided them as if their pores exhaled a natural insecticide, which was closer to the truth than not.
HAROLD SMITH WAS reading the first AP bulletins of the derailment of Amtrak's City of New Orleans at Poplarville, Mississippi, when the link-analysis program began reporting results.
There were three active phone cards.
One was issued to an Akira Kurosawa. The second to a Seiji Ozawa. And the third to Furio Batsuka.
A horrible thought crossed his mind. What if there was more than one ronin?
Double-checking the times of each accident, Smith decided not. Multiple saboteurs would not explain the short intervals or the lack of simultaneous crashes.
Smith then ran a check on the first name. Akira Kurosawa came up as a famous Japanese director of samurai movies. Seiji Ozawa was the Japanese-American conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Smith's brow furrowed distastefully at the dual significance of the word conductor. He detested opponents with humor.