Seeing the smile, Al-Mudir shook his fist at Koldunov and called him a lazy pig. Then he went to work again with the sledgehammer.
It was the first good news Pyotr Koldunov had had since he replaced the damaged rails after the third launch, which had pulverized part of New York City. When the replacement rails had come in, they were of a higher grade of metal than the others. Koldunov had insisted upon replacements of the same cheap grade of railroad steel. But somehow Colonel Intifadah had figured out that better steel would resist the electrical forces more easily. He said nothing, but wondered where Intifadah had located this excellent metal. Probably the same source from which he had acquired the carbon-carbon.
Colonel Intifadah arrived in his jeep. It careened down the underground tunnel to the launch area.
Al-Mudir dropped his sledgehammer on his foot in his haste to salute. He did not even wince.
"A problem, Al-Mudir?" Colonel Intifadah asked amiably.
"No, Brother Colonel!" Al-Mudir replied.
"Yes," corrected Pyotr Koldunov from the console mike. Colonel Intifadah lifted his brutish face.
"What is it?"
"They cannot uncouple the two locomotives. And the others are lined up on the tracks and cannot be moved." Colonel Intifadah looked over the joined locomotives.
"Launch them both," he instructed, lifting a triumphant fist.
The green-smocked workers burst into applause. They applauded the Leader of the Revolution as a brilliant man. "I doubt if it would work," Koldunov said hastily, disappointed that Al-Mudir was about to escape with his life.
"And why not?"
"The couplers may not stand the stress of launch."
"I see strong men unable to break it with heavy tools."
"But the Accelerator has been programmed for the exact tonnage of the first locomotive. I will have to redo all my calculations."
"Then redo."
"As you know, Colonel, these are difficult calculations. I must compute the proper coordinates in order to drop a projectile where you wish it to go."
"So?" Colonel Intifadah said boisterously. "Perhaps you will miss. So what? I have many locomotives. If this one strikes England instead of America, I will not criticize you."
"Very well, Comrade Colonel," said Pyotr Koldunov. "Please instruct your people to prepare for launch." Hours later, the twin locomotives were stripped of paint, threaded with carbon-carbon filament, and repainted a bright green. Colonel Intifadah applied some of the final touches with a brush. He hummed as he worked:
The EM Accelerator breech lay open. Pyotr Koldunov had taken the precaution of opening it before Colonel Intifadah arrived. He had wiped the keypad beforehand. There was no way he was going to let the unlocking code fall into that crazed animal's hands.
The Lobynians pushed the locomotives into the breech, secured them, and then retreated to the console while Koldunov sealed the breech.
"I cannot guarantee where this one will land," he told Colonel Intifadah once he was again situated at the controls. "They may separate in flight."
"No matter, no matter. Let it be a surprise to us all." Koldunov lifted the protective shield and prepared to thumb the firing button. Colonel Intifadah's grimy finger beat him to it.
The Accelerator let out an ungodly screech. And then there was only silence in the control console. It would remain for Colonel Intifadah's spies in the U.S. to flash back word of what they had done.
"I think the Americans would call that a double-header," Colonel Intifadah said, breaking the silence.
"I do not understand."
"It is one of their baseball terms. But double-heading is also slang for linking two engines such as those two were joined. I have been reading about railroads, Koldunov. You see, I have become a buff."
"Oh," Koldunov said.
The twin engines hurtled into the sky, seemingly propelled by their wildly gyrating wheels. The magnetic field that had accelerated them held them together until they hit the upper edge of the atmosphere and began to fall. Gravity twisted them. The coupler snapped like a paper clip. The engines separated over the Atlantic.
At NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain complex, BMEWS radar feeds indicated a multiple reentry warhead and instantly the entire system jumped back to Defcon Two. CINCNORAD informed the President of the United States.
The President, after being assured that neither object posed a threat to Washington, put in a call to Dr. Harold W. Smith.
But Smith's line was busy. It had never happened before. Over the open line, the President heard only a soothing voice informing someone that the next shipment would go out on schedule.
"Do not worry," the voice said.
Worry? The President of the United States was petrified.
In Lubec, Maine, a dead whale washed up on the rockweed-covered shore. That in itself was not unusual. The reason the press was drawn to the beaching from as far away as Florida was the condition of the mammal. Although it had come out of the frigid waters of the Bay of Fundy, all thirty tons of the whale had been cooked as thoroughly as if boiled in a huge kettle.
Officials from the nearby Oceanographic Research Institute were privately puzzled. Publically they announced that the whale was obviously the victim of freak underwater volcanic action.
The fact that there were no known volcanoes, active or otherwise, in the North Atlantic was something the officials declined to comment on. They had no better explanation.
But residents of Lubec wondered if the whistling sound and the huge splash they had witnessed that morning had anything to do with the mystery of the parboiled whale. Their reports of a column of steam seen rising from the Bay of Fundy for several hours after the splashdown were dismissed as unusually heavy winter fog.
At an open-air service under a clear Southern California sky, Dr. Quinton T. Shiller exhorted his flock to dig deeper into their pockets.
"God bless you, my brethren," he said solemnly as coins and bills dropped into the collection plates passing from hand to hand. He stood before the official symbol of his Church of the Inevitable and God-Ordained Apocalypse, a cross superimposed against a mushroom cloud. "For holy nuclear judgment is coming, and when the end does come and you stand before the Almighty, the first thing he's gonna ask is: did you contribute to the work of his close personal friend Quint Shiller. So don't blow this golden opportunity. You never know when he might lower the boom."
As if to credit his claim, air-raid sirens broke into song from the nearest town.
"See?" Dr. Shiller said, congratulating himself that he had had the foresight to bribe the Civil Defense warden. "That day may be nigh. So while there's still time, let's see some coin."
Suddenly the air became parched. A shadow fell over the pinewood stage where Dr. Shiller stood, resplendent in his white-and-gold vestments. The shadow registered on the audience for a millionth of a second.
Then the stage was smashed to toothpicks under the crushing weight of a 116-ton Skoda locomotive. It obliterated Dr. Quinton T. Shiller in an instant, and sent his flock scattering from the superheated mass of metal that stood in his place.
Within a week, the congregation of the Church of the Inevitable and God-Ordained Apocalypse, which had once booked Madison Square Garden for a rally, couldn't displace water in a hot tub.
Under the red sands of the Lobynian Desert, Colonel Hannibal Intifadah cried, "Load the next revenge vehicle! We are on a roll!"
Chapter 29
General Martin S. Leiber had his feet up on his desk when the chairman of the joint Chiefs poked his head in. "Yes, Admiral?" Leiber said, dropping his feet.