This failed to get the attention of the struggling captives, until Remo lifted the glow stick and began waving it slowly back and forth. The captives found blessed distraction from panic in the swaying point of green light.
“My name is Remo and I’ll be your tour guide today. Not sure where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there, but! know one thing—it’s, going to be the ride of a lifetime. In fact, it’s gonna be the last ride of your lifetime unless you do what I say, okay?”
He briefly explained that he would have gladly made them all unconscious, but they needed to stay awake to keep their lungs saturated with oxygen. “Every breath could be your last one for minutes at a time, so make them last, people! Thanks for joining us today. I’d like to remind you that gratuities are not included in your tour price and are graciously accepted.”
All he got in response were rolling eyeballs. “It’s like we’re going into Splash Mountain with a bunch of Cookie Monsters,” Remo said.
Chiun offhandedly tossed Pods One and Three into the river current and gave them a few minutes’ start before stepping onto the last pod and nudging away from the shore with one sandaled toe. He crouched alongside Remo at the rear of the pod.
“We’re gonna kill them all. Little Father,” Remo said morosely as the pod picked up speed.
“Abandoning them would be worse.” Chiun shrugged. “They would starve until their hunger compelled them to feed on their dead companions. Giving them a slim chance of escape is better than condemning them to a few extra days of life as cave people.”
“You know, that actually made me feel better,” Remo said.
The hooting of the albinos called Jack’s attention to the window. A band of men was wading into the rocky shallows that served as the city docks.
More raiding parties were returning with their booty. Jack only hoped there was more to salvage than last time. The pod train from the Oklahoma raids was not in the best shape. In fact, half the raiding party was DOA.
He jogged downstairs and across the city, heading for the Fastbinder Docks, which were nothing more than a dam in the river created by blasting out the walls, widening it by a hundred feet and filling the riverbed until it was only as deep and strong as a woodland creek—even if it was a mile wide. It caught anything bigger than a cave minnow.
As he reached the docks his spirits sank. The latest arrivals were nothing but dead albinos, some still in pod chains. One wrecked pod rocked gently nearby, empty except for some tattered polystyrene foam.
“Anything to recover, Jack?” It was his father. The old man had to have been waiting nearby for the Wichita raiding party. He knew it was overdue. He couldn’t pass up a chance to rub failure in Jack’s face, could he? It was the old man’s new hobby.
Jack squinted into the darkness of the cave mouth. “More pods,” he announced.
These two were in better shape, although they had also become separated from each other. Fastbinder, standing on the higher shore and watching them emerge from the tunnel, shook his head sadly. Jack hated him for it but refused to ask what the old man saw.
Jack saw it himself soon enough. The pods were empty. No captives, no cargo. The rears of the frames swung open on their hinges.
“There’s one more still coming,” Jack reminded Fastbinder sullenly.
They waited in silence for ten minutes. Fastbinder was ready to leave when Jack said, “I see it.”
The remains of the last pod were only floating because the foam interior had broken up and lodged in the pointed nose of the frame. When the jabbering albinos dragged it onto the rocky shallows, the foam fell to the bottom. There was nothing else inside.
“Now do you see that this was a mistake?” Fastbinder demanded.
“We should have gone with the onion-layers design like I wanted,” Jack said, examining the last pod. “My fiberglass impact-mitigation panels would have worked. It will work.”
‘It’s wasteful, and the fiberglass panels are too expensive!” Fastbinder snapped.
“Foot transport would take days,” Jack called back, examining the wreckage.
“But it would actually get the goods and the prisoners to us. Do you realize that the only successful raid was the one you made in JED?”
Jack didn’t answer, but then he stood up quick. “Pops, these pods didn’t break down at all. Somebody broke them. See the cable ends? That cut is so straight it looks like a laser did it. Same in the front.”
“The assassins.” Fastbinder said. “They are coming!” He turned and strode off.
“’Bout time,” Jack Fast said.
Chapter 43
Paul Pirie tried begging.
“Please don’t leave us!”
“No,” said the man with the eyes of death. Paul Pirie tried bribery. ‘I’ve got lots of money. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“No.” They couldn’t see much of the man. The only light was the dim plastic stick he had on a cord around his neck. The glow was enough to cast his features into deep shadow, but you could swear something malevolent glimmered in his black eye sockets.
Finally, Paul Pirie pulled out the big guns. “You get me out of here, or I swear I will file a grievance with my local union representative.”
The cruel-looking younger man didn’t even dignity that with an answer. What kind of a man disrespected the unions so much that he could casually ignore such a threat? Even the company, the great enemy of all good, honest. God-fearing people, trod softly when it came to the union. There was only one possible explanation.
“You’re from Mexico!”
The man with dead eyes and unusually thick wrists said, “Yeah, whatever.”
Paul Pirie’s mind spun out of control, remembering all the wild talk he’d heard about the Mexicans conspiring to steal American jobs. Everybody knew the Mexicans stole American technology, they bribed the evil managers of American companies and, the sleaziest trick of all, those lousy Mexicans worked for a lower wage. But in the secure haven of the union hall, Pirie had heard people whispering about Mexicans who sabotaged American factories and the products they made.
“The Mexico guvmunt sends them Mexicans to take our best people down there. Like Phil Leary. Best foreman we ever had, and the Mexicans stole him away in the night!” The old man who explained this hadn’t missed a meeting of the union local in forty-three years, so he had some credibility—but it was widely known he hadn’t been sober in forty-three years, either, and was now senile to boot. So you took what he said with a grain of salt. But now Paul Pirie knew the truth. The old man was right.
“The old man was right,” Pirie declared forcefully.
“Who gives a hoot about the old man?” said Alma. “It’s the young stud muffin I want to get my hands on.”
She was chained up next to Paul Pirie in the battered pod. They had all managed to survive the grueling, endless second phase of their trip down the subterranean river, thanks to the two strangers, but the two strangers refused to let them out of the pod now that they had beached it.
“He’s a Mexican,” Paul accused.
“Doesn’t have a Mexican accent.”
“Alma, I know you’ve lost your marbles but you gotta listen. We’ve been captured by the secret Mexican technology railroad! We’ve discovered how they’re stealing America’s factories and stuff and taking it to their own places south of the border. It explains everything!”
“And you’re calling me crazy?” Alma scoffed. She said to Remo, “Where ya off to, big boy?”
Remo Williams tipped his imaginary hat. “You folks sit tight while we scout on ahead.”
“Why can’t we go with you?” demanded one of the other captives.