"What?" he groaned.
"Surely you recognize it," Colonel Intifadah's voice asked. Pyotr Koldunov turned his stiff neck around.
Colonel Intifadah was looking up at him, resplendent in a pea-green uniform.
"Look again, comrade," he suggested.
Pyotr Koldunov looked. And understood. He was staring at the open firebox of a boiler. His arms hung from the maze of pipes overhead. He was in the cab of a vintage steam engine.
"Oh, no. No, Brother Colonel."
"I do not need you, Koldunov," Colonel Intifada said. "But it will please you to know that you will do me a great service in your last hours."
"No, please."
"We have just filled a locomotive with nerve gas. Fully loaded, it weighs the same as this engine-plus one hundred and fifty pounds."
"I do not understand."
"I will make it clear to you, Russian," said Colonel Intifadah. "You know better than I that the weight of one of these brutes affects where it will land. I need to know where this locomotive will impact before I send its brother aloft. Just in case this one goes into the ocean, where it will kill only fishes. If so, then I will correct the launcher's aim. But I need that additional one hundred and fifty pounds of ballast. And I do not need you."
Colonel Intifadah threw his head back and laughed like a hyena.
Pyotr Koldunov hung his head. He did not plead for his life. The Colonel's crazed laugh told him it was useless to do so. Instead, he closed his eyes and heard the sounds as Colonel Intifadah exhorted his men to load the engine into the breech.
The great machine lumbered into the breech. The burnt-metal stink awakened bitter memories in Pyotr Koldunov's mind. He had built this thing. It had stunk like this since the first test firing.
The light seeping through his eyelids shut off. The breech hatch had hummed shut. There was no escape now. But there had never been any escape for Pyotr Koldunov. Not since that day he had left Mother Russia with the Accelerator's crated components.
The silence lasted several minutes. And then the humming began. The hairs on Pyotr Koldunov's arms and legs and head shot up as the primary electric charge filled the tinny air.
And then there was a burst of blue-white light so intense it burned through Pyotr Koldunovs's closed eyelids and he seemed to see the black muzzle of the EM Accelerator hurtle at him at incredible speed. And his head was snapped back so quickly, his neck broke.
Pyotr Koldunov was dead before the steam engine cleared the desert sands. The wire hawsers on his wrists held under the terrific stress of hypervelocity acceleration. Unfortunately his wrists did not.
Long before the engine raced over the Atlantic Ocean, he was a rag doll tumbling to the desert sand below. He fell with his arms pointed earthward, as if to break his fall. But he had no hands at the ends of his wrists.
Pyotr Koldunov hit the ground in a puff of sand. The sand settled over him like a shroud. Soon the sand-laden ghibli wind would cause the shifting dunes to cover him up. The cool of the evening and the dry heat of the day would eventually mummify his tissues. And there he would rest until the year 2853, when an archaeological graduate student from Harvard University would dig him up and make him the subject of his doctoral dissertation.
Chapter 32
The Master of Sinanju was not going to change his mind. "Look," Remo pleaded. "All of America is at risk here. Please."
"No!"
"Who's going to see you? It's all desert down there."
"One Peeping Tom bedouin would be too much," said Chiun. He folded his arms across his simple black kimono. Remo was also in black. It was night over Lobynia. The Air Force jet had come in over Algeria. The Lobynian air defenses had probably already picked them up. But there was no danger. They were probably heading for cover, fearing another bombing run.
Remo finished buckling on his parachute.
"You beat everything, you know that? I thought you'd have problems with the jump."
"That too. But it is my modesty that comes first."
"What's the problem?" asked the Air Force liaison assigned to oversee their jump into Lobynian territory. Remo threw up his hands.
"He doesn't want to jump."
"I don't blame him. Who in his right mind would talk a little old guy like him into a night drop into unfriendly territory?"
"Who are you calling little?" Chiun demanded, lifting on tiptoe to stare up at the officer's startled face.
The Air Force colonel discovered that his stomach hurt. He looked down. The old Oriental's index fingernail was the cause. It looked as if it had speared him like a fish.
"Leave him alone, will you?" Remo shouted. "He's on our side."
"He insulted me."
"No, he did not," said Remo, pulling the colonel onto a seat. The colonel hugged his stomach and experimented with his breathing.
"Look, there's gotta be a solution. Maybe we can tie your kimono skirts together."
"What are you talking about?" gasped the colonel.
"He refuses to jump because he's afraid someone will look up and see his underwear. He's very fussy about stuff like that."
"You mean he's not afraid of the jump?"
"Masters of Sinanju fear nothing," Chiun sniffed.
"Let me at least try, okay, Chiun? Please. For America. Not to mention the whole freaking world, if this locomotive thing gets out of hand."
"Try," said Chiun, extending his arms.
Remo slipped the shoulder straps of the parachute pack over Chiun s arms. Then Remo knelt down and bunched Chiun's kimono skirts around his upper thighs. Holding the black silk in place, he quickly buckled the lower straps over the bunched cloth. The webbing held the kimono material in place.
Chiun looked down. He found he could walk after a fashion, if he took short steps.
"What if it comes loose?" he demanded.
"It's desert, for Christ's sake!"
"We're coming up on the drop zone," the colonel called suddenly.
Remo turned to Chiun. "Now or never, Chiun."
"Now."
Hydraulic doors in the cargo bay dropped open. Air swirled into the cabin.
"It's easy," Remo said. "Count to ten and pull the ring."
"What if I forget?"
"No one ever forgets. just follow me and do what I do." And without another word, Remo jumped from the open bay. Slipstream plucked him away.
"Wait for me," Chiun cried, leaping after him. His leap caused his bunched skirts to come loose.
Remo felt the updraft push against him. He might as well have been skydiving into a pit. The desert below was as black as the sky above. The stars were incredible. He looked for Chiun.
"Oh, no," Remo moaned. Chiun was tumbling end over end. Worse, his skirts were flying all over the place. "He'll kill me," Remo said bitterly.
Remo cracked his chute. He swung from the black silken bell.
Chiun tumbled past him, still in freefall. His mouth was open. From it emerged a keening sound.
"Wheee!" called the Master of Sinanju joyfully.
"Pull the freaking ripcord," Remo called after him.
"It is too soon," Chiun called back.
"It's never too soon," Remo responded.
And with his heart in his mouth, Remo watched the Master of Sinanju tumble into the enveloping blackness. "Please. Please pull the cord."
Out of the blackness came the crack of silk.
Remo heaved a sigh of relief. Then came Chiun's agonized wail. "Aaiieee! My skirts!"
"Great. He noticed," Remo groaned.
Remo hit the ground, dug in, and jettisoned his chute all in one breath. The wind carried it away.
He looked around for Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju was on the ground. The billowing parachute bell was settling over him. He did not move. It covered him completely.