“We’re not going to buy a bomber, Jack!”
“Aw, jeez, Pops!” Jack signed off and scowled into the stratosphere. “Fine. I’ll build my own dam airplane.”
The cylinders tumbled just seconds before righting themselves, and then they were ultra-aerodynamic, slipping through the thickening atmosphere in virtual silence. They were black, without signal lights, so they remained unseen. The coating of paint on the exterior allowed military scanning waves to slip over them as easily as the airstream. The ground control that was constantly monitoring the skies over Washington, D.C., never even knew the oversize Christmas ornaments were above them.
The Fastbinder jet never entered restricted airspace, simply followed its flight plan up the coast. The cylinders would plummet straight into the ocean until they brought out their guidance wings, which were scarcely more than ridges distending from the metal. They created just enough of an alteration in the course to steer the falling cylinders inland, still unnoticed. The ridges guided the cylinders directly over the White House, then pulled inside to allow the free fall to continue.
The tremendous speed of the cylinders might have punctured all the way into the underground bunker levels, but bombing the President wasn’t the intention.
The intent was to make a soft landing on the White House lawn and snatch up the most high-tech rodents in existence. FEMbots had an estimated black market value of thirty-five million dollars each.
The cylinders contained no living tissue that might be crushed by the sudden deceleration of the most severe High-Altitude/Low-Opening jump in history.
The first cylinder burst and loosed a compacted wad of dense fiber the size of a bed pillow, which unfurled into thousands of black streamers—a cloud bigger than the entire White House itself. The streamers were torn away in a millisecond by the intense force of the wind, but not before slowing the cylinder markedly and not before pulling out a second wad of compact fiber. Another billowing cloud of paperlike streamers. And a third. Finally the cylinder had been sufficiently slowed to deploy a trio of extreme heavy-lift parachutes, which opened in series and brought the cylinder to a crunching, 11-G deceleration. If there had been a man inside the cylinder, he would have become human remains in that instant.
The three huge parachutes carried the cylinder for only three more seconds before the ground loomed up beneath it and the cylinder’s tapered end penetrated the lawn soil. The landing looked smooth, but again it would have turned human occupants to jelly.
The three parachutes transformed simultaneously into flames that consumed them and vanished in a moment, allowing the second cylinder to land without tangling.
When you watched airspace over the White House, you used protocol. You never, ever deviated from the proper vocabulary of the operation.
But Sergeant Julian Cleary couldn’t help himself. There had been one alert tonight already, still unexplained, and the watch crew was tense. Cleary was nervous. So what if he used a few nonsanctioned exclamations?
“Mother of crap!” He got a hold of himself and reported, “We’ve got an eminent catastrophic strike. It just showed up, at two hundred feet!”
His commander appeared. “Too slow to be a bomb.”
“To fast to be anything but—shit!”
On his screen, the warning lights blinked and the audible alerts screamed and the tiny indicator showed the twin objects coming to a stop on the White House grounds within seconds of each other.
Sergeant Cleary and his commander rolled their eyes up to the ceiling. They were the on-site watch team, so whatever the objects were, they had just come down right above them.
They frantically began making alert calls, which were redundant since the event had been witnessed by three other watch teams stretching from Washington, D.C. all the way to NORAD in Colorado. The military response was already launching.
Which left Julian Cleary with nothing to do except watch and listen. Any second now, he was sure to feel the tremors of the explosion that would erase the White House from existence.
What the hell were they waiting for?
Chapter 36
Remo watched the first display as if it were the Fourth of July—great clouds of paper appeared and disintegrated instantly. He also saw the effect it had on the falling objects. They slowed greatly. Then came three parachutes, which slowed the devices more but still dropped them to the earth hard. The tapered lower ends were lengthy enough to, penetrate the earth before deforming into an accordion of crumpled metal, further cushioning the impact
Remo was moving fast, hoping Chiun had the same idea he did since there wasn’t exactly time to discuss it. That idea was to move in fast and take out these amazing mechanical mothers before they got a chance to user their proton-ray thingamajigs.
Chiun was right beside him as he drifted across the grounds at inhuman speed, like a pursuing wraith, and used the flat of one foot to knock the cylinder off its pedestal before it was even fully settled. The impact was greater than Remo had counted on. Whatever the cylinder was made of, it was tough stuff.
Instead of wrenching off the base, the base bent and the cylinder slammed into the ground broadside. An eight-foot panel ejected from the cylinder on small explosive puffs and revealed the contents.
“Whaddaya know, Ironhand lives again,” Remo said, snatching the metal door panel out of the air. The metal had a strange lightness to it, as well as incredible heat from the friction of the descent. He began vibrating his fingers, not allowing them to contact the metal long enough to absorb the great heat.
Ironhand threw its arms into the air as Remo brought the metal panel down. It was a fast move, but not fast enough. Remo turned the panel and slipped it past the robot arms, cutting deep into the chest cavity. Remo didn’t know why, but he felt this was where he needed to create damage to prevent the debilitating proton discharge.
Ironhand scissored its legs and launched itself to its feet with the corner of the panel imbedded deep in its chest. It stepped out of the cylinder with a skip of its feet.
“You look like Tobor the Great playing hopscotch,” Remo said, slipping up alongside the mass of metal. Ironhand struck at Remo fast. Very, very fast.
“New arms, I see. Very shiny.” Remo held one and twisted it at the shoulder socket. And he kept twisting.
“Learned a thing or two about dealing with your type,” Remo said, easily stepping under the blow Ironhand sent at him with its free arm. “First of all, you guys broadcast your moves worse than professional wrestlers. Also, you may be shiny but you’re not too bright.” At that moment, Remo steered Ironhand’s free arm into its face and wiggled the hand so fast it made gray smoke.
When he let go, Ironhand’s fingers were ultrasonically welded to its face. The robot began rotating its torso rapidly in both directions, trying to free it. “I gotta hand it to ya,” Remo said, yanking off the other arm and slamming it into the chest of the robot “Get it? Well, do you?”
The chest panel dropped off. Remo reached in and yanked out a chunk of quarter-inch-thick steel plating, then several other pieces until he had the guts of the robot exposed.
What’s a proton emitter supposed to even look like? Because there were lots of different gizmos mounted inside the mechanical man and Remo couldn’t begin guessing what any of them were for. But he knew he had to find out quick. Ironhand was like a landed fish, flopping around trying to get its hand freed, which forced Remo to weave and bob as he began yanking out parts.
There was a flash of electricity as something shorted out and Ironhand came to an abrupt halt. Remo could feel the surge of electricity coursing through the man machine, then draining away abruptly. Ironhand was out of power.