"Thank me by allowing me to accompany you."
"Why do you want to do that?"
"So that I may say a proper good-bye to my faithful steed. "
"Then let's go before Rambo changes his mind," Remo said, climbing behind the wheel. Chiun settled into the passenger seat and Remo got the truck in gear and headed for the Folcroft gate.
"Oh, he will not change his mind. I explained everything to him."
"You did, huh?" Remo said skeptically. "I didn't know you spoke elephant."
"I do not. I spoke truth. Even elephants understand the truth."
"Right," said Remo, and piloted the truck down the road. He wondered where the nearest zoo was. He would have to ask at the first gas station.
As the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium receded in the rearview mirror, Remo noticed a frantic figure in gray running after them and waving his arms. Smith. He probably wanted to say good-bye to the elephant too. Remo decided to pretend he didn't see him. He hit the accelerator, knowing that Smith's ancient car would never catch up. No way was he going to stop until he found a zoo.
Chapter 7
General Martin S. Leiber was beginning to enjoy himself. He was senior officer at the Pentagon now. When he spoke, other officers jumped. Word had gotten around that the President had left him in charge during the crisis. No one knew what the crisis was and General Leiber wasn't about to tell anyone, except to hint that it was very, very dire.
When he realized how much power he wielded, he sent out for lobster. Might as well grab the perks while he could. He was cracking the last claw when the phone rang.
"General Leiber," he said through a mouthful of lobster meat. Melted butter ran down his chin.
"General, this is CINCNORAD."
"Who?" asked Leiber. He fumbled through a Pentagon directory. He knew what NORAD was, sort of. But what the hell was a CINC?
"I've been in touch with the joint Chiefs and they tell me you're in charge out there."
"That's right. Who did you say you were again?"
"Commander in chief of NORAD. You mean you don't recognize my designation?"
"It's starting to come back to me," said General Leiber, who usually didn't associate with real military types. He was more at home among lobbyists and defense contractors. Where the true power lay.
"Under orders from the joint Chiefs, we've completed our tactical search. I thought you should have the results as soon as possible."
"Shoot," said General Leiber, wondering what the heck he was talking about.
"We've been over our logs and satellite reconnaissance photos a dozen times. We find no evidence of any hotspots or launch blowoffs."
"Is that good or bad?" asked General Leiber, wondering what a blowoff was.
"I'm not sure," said the other man. "It's very strange. We've been assuming a ground launch, but our recon photos show that all Soviet missile silos are on standdown. So are the Chinese launch sites. There have been no ground launches from any known missile sites we monitor."
"Then it's a submarine launch, right?"
"That would be a logical guess, but Spacetrack would have detected it before PAVE PAWS. They didn't. In fact, Spacetrack inventory lists nothing going up. Nothing at all."
"Well, it didn't drop out of deep space."
"I don't think we should discount that possibility," said CINCNORAD.
"Correct me if I'm off base here, but we don't currently have a defense against extraterrestrial hostiles, do we?"
"No, General, we do not."
"What do I tell the President?"
"If I were you, I'd advise him to lie low until we have the straight skinny on this incident."
General Leiber hung up the phone, trying to decide if it would be better to call the President now or after he heard back from Andrews. He decided to polish off the last lobster claw first. If he ended up in the stockcade, it would be a long time before he tasted hot melted butter again. Maybe never.
But the last lobster claw went uncracked. The phone rang again. Leiber picked it up. It was Major Cheek. "What have you got for me?" he barked.
"Progress, sir," Major Cheek said crisply.
"I don't give a hang about progress. Can you identify the hostile?"
"We can narrow it down to a limited number of possibilities."
"Good. Then it's a known threat."
"Well, yes and no," the major said unhappily.
"What do you mean-yes and no?"
"Well, sir, I think we can determine exactly what the object is, but the threat factor may be up to others to evaluate. We may know more after we go through some reference books. I've sent a man out to buy some."
"Buy? You don't have one lousy copy of Jane's at Andrews?"
"Jane's Aircraft won't help us here, sir. The object is definitely-repeat-definitely not found in Jane's."
"Goddammit, man, stop talking in circles. Spit it out."
"It's like this, sir. Once we had the brick ovens-"
"High-Temperature Organic Kiln Constructs. Remember that if we're questioned later. No way will the taxpayers pay three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for ordinary brick ovens."
"Yessir. In any case, we isolated the pieces and restored what we could to their original shapes. A lot of it was slag, of course, from reentry heat, but we estimate only the leading third of the object was incinerated. The back two-thirds was intact right up until impact."
"Go on, man."
"Well," the major said hesitantly, "fortunately, several sections of what I guess you'd call the propulsion system survived. I had the smiths-excuse me, the Metallurgical Consultants-I had them try to weld what they could of it together. The propulsion system told us a lot."
"Look, I don't care about how it got here. I want to know about its offensive system. How many kilotons? What's the yield, man, what's the yield?"
"It doesn't have a yield. Exactly."
"Exactly what does it have?" the general asked, touching the remaining lobster claw with his thumb. It felt cool. He couldn't eat it now.
"Um, as I was saying, General, when we put together the propulsion system, we were able to measure one of the rods. By that time we had a fair idea of what we were dealing with. The gauge turned out to be four feet, eight and a half inches. That's very important. It told us right away the object was American-made. Because the rods in the European versions are usually three feet, six inches."
"It's American-made," General Leiber said angrily. "What kind of traitor would sell out his own government?" Then he wondered if he had sold any nuclear missiles lately. He couldn't remember having sold anything that big. "Give me specifics, will you? I'm writing this down."
Major Cheek vented a hot sigh. "We estimate the object to weigh approximately five hundred tons at ... er ... launch."
"God, I've never heard of a missile with that kind of throw weight. Thank God it didn't detonate."
"Actually, there was no danger of that, General."
"Why not?"
"It couldn't. I mean, it's not possible."
"It wasn't armed?"
"No, sir. I can safely say that it was not armed."
"If it wasn't armed, then what the hell was it supposed to do?"
"As near as I can tell, sir, it was meant to impact with maximum damage."
"Well, of course, you idiot."
"But it's neither explosive, nor nuclear, nor chemical in nature."
"I'm not following you."
"Sir, perhaps you should come down here yourself. I don't think trying to explain this over the phone can really do the situation justice."
"I'll be right over," said General Martin S. Leiber. General Leiber was allowed through the Andrews gates only after he shouted down the guards. They tried to tell him the base had been declared off limits except to cleared personnel.
"I know, you noncommissioned jerk," Leiber shouted, flashing his Pentagon ID. "I'm the man who ordered it." They waved him through.