"At once, Brother Colonel."
Under Al-Mudir's direction, steel cables were hitched to the hornlike buffer rods protruding from the engine. "Now tell them to push."
"Push!" Al-Mudir called.
Lobynian workers got behind the engine and struggled to get it moving.
Colonel Intifadah started the jeep. It bumped over the railroad ties. The cables straightened, and held. Under their combined efforts, the engine inched forward. It began to roll. Momentum took over. The wheels spun; drive rods pumping with each revolution.
Looking back over his shoulder, Colonel Intifadah smiled. It would be a glorious night. Within minutes this mighty engine of death would be loaded into the Accelerator and hurled into the night sky. Its boilers crammed with nerve agent, it would tumble over the Atlantic and fall more or less in the vicinity of Chicago, Illinois. It was not Washington, but it was a major American city. Even Colonel Intifadah had heard of it.
He pushed down on the gas pedal, anxious for the moment of ultimate revenge.
The great bunker doors yawned ahead. The gleaming, starlit rails disappeared inside. Soon, soon, he thought happily. Then the smile was erased from his face.
Out of the tunnel flashed two men. One was tall and skinny and all in black. His eyes were as dead and determined as a vengeful afrit's. And beside him ran an Oriental, shorter and older, but with fire in his clear, wise eyes.
The whoosh of their passing knocked the green service cap off Colonel Hannibal Intifadah's head. They passed on either side of him and disappeared behind the back of the locomotive.
From there came the satisfying brief bark of gunfire. Remo hit the Lobynian crew like a truck. He scattered them to either side. Those who had sidearms touched them only long enough to send futile bullets into the sand or the sky.
Chiun descended upon the others. They flew in all directions. Most of them went up into the air. Some landed on the hard rails. More than one Lobynian skull split and spilled its contents.
"The terrible smell is strong here," Chiun warned.
"Gas. Some kind of gas. This engine stinks of it."
"Or is filled with it," Chiun suggested.
"Nahh!" Remo said. "What kind of a madman would do that?"
Then they both heard Colonel Hannibal Intifadah demand to know what was happening in loud Arabic.
"Does that answer your question?" Chiun asked.
"Yeah," Remo said. "And it gives me an idea. Listen." Remo bent over and whispered in Chiun's ear.
"It will be dangerous," Chiun said. "Even to us."
"We gotta knock this whole place out once and for all. Intifadah too. And it should work if we time it right."
"Then let us begin."
Remo set himself at one side of the locomotive's rear, Chiun at the other. They dug in their feet and strained to start the mighty machine moving once again.
The locomotive lurched forward, picked up momentum, and chugged for the bunker entrance with increasing speed. Colonel Intifadah saw the locomotive start up again and knew that his loyal Lobynians had made short work of the interlopers. But before he could hit the gas pedal, the locomotive bore down on him with more speed than even twenty strong Lobynian backs could manage. The engine knocked the jeep ahead and carried it forward at higher and higher speed.
It was impossible. The engine should not be moving this fast. It was not operative. The boiler could not work. It was filled with nerve agent.
"Filled with nerve agent," Colonel Intifadah whispered hoarsely as the tunnel walls swept past and the open breech of the EM Accelerator came to him at express-train speed.
Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard the mournful whoooo-whoooo of a working train.
It was crazy.
Then he saw the two interlopers rush past the jeep. The tall one was making the whoooo-whoooo sound. It sounded very realistic. It echoed through the launch area even as the two men disappeared into the breech of the Accelerator and pulled the hatch closed after them.
The hatch was the last thing that Colonel Intifadah saw before the gates of paradise opened for him. The last thing he heard was the grinding scream of the rupturing locomotive as it mashed the tiny jeep against the hatch. The last thing he smelled was the nerve gas as his lungs filled with blood. His blood.
General Martin S. Leiber was panicking. There was a terrible grinding of metal. An explosion followed by another explosion. And the damned power wrench wouldn't work. He couldn't understand it. It was government-issue. Then he looked at the label. He had purchased the damned thing himself. Bought it on the cheap from a Taiwan manufacturer at thirty-nine cents per unit and marked it up to sixty-nine dollars and thirty-nine cents.
You'd think for a sixty-nine-dollar item it would at least work long enough to loosen these damn lugs....
Then General Martin S. Leiber's lungs stopped working and his eyes closed forever.
Remo and Chiun raced up the EM Accelerator barrel at top speed. Momentum carried them through the steeper portion of the run. The gas followed them. They could sense its insinuating influence even through the closed hatch.
They popped out on the surface and hit the sand on their feet.
"Quick!" Remo said, getting on the other side of the concrete cover. Chiun joined him. They pushed. The cover slid along its steel tracks, sand gritting with every inch.
They got the launcher muzzle covered. Then they ran because they knew that the gas would penetrate almost everything.
They were fifty miles away, from the Accelerator before they stopped. Remo sat down in the sand, not because he was tired, but because he was so filled with nervous energy that he knew he would just pace the desert floor if he stood.
Chiun settled beside him delicately.
"A job well done," Chiun remarked. "The demon trains are no more."
"Now all that's left is to get a ride out of this godforsaken place," Remo said, reaching into a back pocket for his communicator. He fiddled with the thing and spoke into it. "Smith, if you can hear us, we need a pickup."
Then he offered the dispenser to the Master of Sinanju. "Candy?" he asked.
Chapter 33
It was high noon in Washington and the President of the United States felt like Gary Cooper without a gun.
The lines to Dr. Smith were all dead. There weren't even any voices on the wire. And General Martin S. Leiber wasn't answering his phone either. According to the joint Chiefs, he had vanished. The Joint Chiefs also claimed he was some kind of procurement officer. It was unbelievable.
The one good thing was that the storm of locomotives seemed to have abated for the moment. None had struck since early morning, when one splashed down in Lake Michigan. And the latest reports indicated there were no significant casualties or damage incurred-unless the heart attack that struck the managing editor of the National Enquirer as he frantically sent his reporters scurrying to cover each impact counted.
The Joint Chiefs would stand down a few hours longer. But what would happen when the next strike came?
In the solitude of the Oval Office the President took an aspirin. His head hurt. Then he heard a ringing in his ears. The ringing continued. It sounded like a phone. A familiar phone.
The President bolted from his desk. "Smith!"
He raced to his bedroom and pulled out the nightstand drawer. The old red phone was where he had left it. He had tried that line several times, but to no avail. Eagerly the President scooped up the receiver.
"Mr. President." It was Smith's voice, strong, more focused now. "The crisis is over."
The President collapsed on the edge of the bed. "Thank God. Who and how?"
"My people neutralized the launch site. It was in Lobynia. Colonel Intifadah was the culprit. But my people report that there were Russian-language dials on the control unit. It's clear the Soviets put them up to it."