"I already did."
"You flooded the engine," the PIO leader accused.
"How could I?" Babcock whined. "We were driving fine. It just stopped. It must be the neutrino wave."
Aruch growled, dropping back in his seat. "Now what am I supposed to do? I cannot walk back to my office. They will slaughter me in the street."
"What about this stuff?" Babcock suggested. He lifted a few articles of clothing that had been left on the seat by Fatang and the other bodyguard. Aruch's facial stubble gathered into a prickly frown. Reluctantly grabbing the clothes, the PIO head improvised a disguise.
Aruch abandoned his beloved checkered family kaffiyeh for a more traditional, less cumbersome head wrapping. A pair of dark sunglasses obscured his crazed, unblinking eyes. That was it. On another man, two minor changes like these wouldn't have mattered, but on Nossur Aruch they managed to obliterate his two most distinctive features.
"I shame my ancestors to dress like this," Nossur Aruch complained as he stuffed his beloved head covering inside his wrinkled fatigue jacket.
Disguise in place, he grabbed the door handle. The door refused to budge.
"What is this devilry?" Aruch demanded, furiously rattling the handle.
"The neutrino wave would have fused virtually all metal on metal," Babcock grunted from the front seat. He, too, was attempting to open his door. It was stuck fast.
The shatterproof windows refused to power down. "So how do we get out?" Aruch snapped.
It took twenty more minutes and the removal of the back seat. On their backs, both men were able to kick open the sedan's trunk. Sweating profusely, they climbed out the back and onto the rock-strewn street.
"What's that noise?" Bryce Babcock panted when they were safely outside the car. His khaki shirt was drenched.
Aruch tipped his head. "It sounds like a mob," he replied, puzzled. "But if it is, it is not like any I have ever heard before."
The two men headed off into the city, threading their careful way to Aruch's Hebron office.
They had not gone far before they found the source of the noise.
Aruch had been right. It was a mob-and it was also unlike any he had seen in his lifetime.
"They are not using guns," Aruch breathed to the interior secretary, his voice a hoarse lisp.
"They wouldn't work, either," Babcock explained. "Metal on metal, remember?"
The crowd had formed a semicircle around a short, garbage-strewn alley. The center of attention, an emaciated old man stood at the far end of the lane.
Men had gathered up chunks of crumbling buildings and roads. Laughing and shouting, they hurled the rocks at the cowering, bleeding old man.
"He has a gun," Aruch hissed, indicating a man who had just joined the crowd.
The man aimed his weapon. Aruch watched in interest.
As soon as the new arrival depressed the trigger, there was an explosion. However, it didn't come from the barrel.
The gun blew up in the man's hands, ripping them to shreds. Screaming in pain, he fell to his knees. The crowd didn't notice. Their stone throwing had reached a fever pitch. The pathetic old man surrendered to the jagged rocks without so much as a sigh. He died in a bloody heap at the rear of the alley.
Aruch turned to Babcock. When he peeked over his sunglasses, there was sad understanding in his eyes.
"No guns?" he asked, disappointed.
"I told you," Babcock replied nervously.
"But this was to be the Great Holy War," Aruch complained. "The Jews have lost their teeth. Detonating that bomb was a symbol for my people to rise up for a free Palestine. How can we have a proper jihad without arms?"
"Please, Nossur," Bryce Babcock begged. He was thinking of all the peace bomb was supposed to have done. It was supposed to be a shining example to the rest of the world. Not a prelude to chaos. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. This was supposed to be for the good. Like when I set those leopards loose in Pennsylvania. If you'd only surrender to the loving embrace of peace, all will be well." His attempt at a benevolent smile made him look constipated.
Aruch's expression fouled to disgust.
"Peace is for those who have not the stomach for war," the PIO leader proclaimed. He raised a stubby, threatening finger to the interior secretary. "And for your sake my beloved missile had better work," he menaced.
Whirling from Babcock, he hurried from the mob, heading deeper into the city. Casting a last, frightened look at the bloodied dead man, Bryce Babcock hustled in Aruch's wake.
Chapter 30
The desert storm screamed off into the arid hills where it had been born, and was gone.
Remo had concentrated on weightlessness during his time hurled through the air and so was featherlight when he finally landed softly on his stomach, a quarter of a mile back from the spot where the forward rush of air from the neutrino bomb had caught his truck.
The wind had not yet died away before he sprang up. Unharmed, his worried eyes scanned for the Master of Sinanju. He found him immediately. The old Korean was up and padding across the desert toward him, his face a stony frown.
"Your driving skills are appalling," Chiun accused as he approached. "If you wish me dead so that you may assume Reigning Masterhood, please tell me. I would rather send myself home to the sea than participate in any more of your one-man demolition derbies."
"Don't start on my driving again," Remo warned, masking his intense relief. "Even you can't possibly blame me for that."
At Remo's side now, Chiun puffed out his chest. "Perhaps," he admitted. "Nevertheless, you are crashing carriages with alarming frequency of late. When we return home, I am enrolling you in a driver's-education program."
As before, Remo detected a light undertone-very faint. He now suspected he knew why.
"Look who's talking," he replied. "Ted Kennedy laughs at your driving."
He looked back to the point they both knew to be ground zero.
The mushroom cloud was dissipating into thin smears of puffy lines above the hills. Even the wind was dying down.
"I guess we were far enough away to avoid the radiation," Remo commented.
"It is in the air," Chiun pointed out.
"Not bad," Remo said. "The sun on a weak ozone day."
"Nonetheless, we should leave this area." Remo nodded.
They walked a half mile down the road when they came upon what was left of their truck.
The roof was crushed as if beneath a dinosaur's foot. The bed was twisted to a right angle from the cab. One axle had snapped. Half of it-along with the attached tire-was missing altogether.
"I guess we don't really need it anymore anyway," Remo commented. "It's pretty obvious we won't be bringing the neutrino bomb back with us."
"What of the emperor-in-exile?" Chiun asked.
"Yeah, the President," Remo said, exhaling. "He was going after Aruch. If we're lucky, we'll find both of them together. Assuming we can scrape up transportation."
"Ye of little faith," Chiun replied, eyebrow arched. He nodded down the road.
When Remo turned, he saw that a group of men on camelback was riding in from the north. They had seen the cloud and survived the terrifying gust of wind and were now coming to investigate the cause of the strange phenomenon.
When Remo turned back to Chiun, he was shaking his head.
"I am not riding one of those things," he said emphatically.
"We haven't a choice," Chiun insisted.
"They could probably give Ronaldman's wig lice lessons," Remo groused. "And I thought thanks to Master Na-Kup that you didn't like Mountain Monsters or Hill Humps or whatever the hell the Sinanju scrolls call camels."
"Hush," Chiun admonished. "I am about to negotiate with bedouins-the most crafty and avaricious hagglers in the world-and I do not need your constantly flapping lips as a distraction."
"Yeah? Well, I hope you have a plan," Remo muttered.