Warren Murphy - Bay City Blast

Nobile waited until he had gone before turning to Remo and swearing softly.

"What's wrong?" Remo asked.

"Those dumb bastards. They traced the pencils and they didnt bother to tell me about it till now."

"So what'd they find out?"

"The pencils were bought at the Cole Stationery Supplies, except they weren't really bought. A big guy came in and took the box and refused to pay for them. He was so big and nasty-looking that the owner just let it happen. He was afraid to call the cops."

"Big and nasty-looking? Anything else?" Remo asked.

"They described him as a big guy. Dark hair and muscular. Always scowling. Had glinty eyes and looked like a psycho."

Remo nodded. He knew the man. It was the pest who had come to their door to stop the ping pong practice. And Remo had just let him get away.

The tractor trailer was parked around the corner from City Hall. It took up parking spots at three meters and when the policeman on the beat first saw it at 10:20 A.M., he realized he had a problem.

Since the red flags were up on three meters, did he give it three parking tickets or one parking ticket? A difficult question but, under its last mayor, the Bay City police department had made it a point to send all their patrolmen to leadership training classes, and since he had graduated third in the class, the policeman did not hesitate more than a few seconds. He wrote two parking tickets, neatly halving the difference between regulations and compassion which was one of the things they learned in leadership class.

He also looked for the driver in the two luncheonettes on the block but did not find him. He therefore made another leadership decision. If he came back at 11 a.m. and the truck was still parked there, he would write one more additional ticket. That would total three tickets for three parking spaces. He regarded this as a neat solution to a complicated problem and told himself that neither the chief nor the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association would have been able to figure it out, because they were not part of the new breed of cops.

At ten to eleven, Sam Gregory, who had been leaning on a light pole across the street from City Hall, reading a newspaper, saw the mayor's car go into the City Hall parking lot. He started to walk back to the truck.

At two minutes to eleven, the patrolman again turned the corner at the end of the street. He saw the truck still parked there. He had his ticket pad open as he walked down the block toward it.

As he drew near the truck, the back doors of the vehicle swung open wide. Two heavy metal ramps clanged out of the truck onto the street. The cop stopped. It couldn't be.

He blinked and looked again.

It was.

An Army tank, painted olive drab, chugged down the steel ramps. The ramps buckled under the weight of the tank, but the war machine reached the pavement in one piece. It totaled a Volkswagen in the parking spot behind the truck, then made a U-turn and headed toward City Hall.

The policeman wondered what to do. Leadership training hadn't covered tanks. Maybe he should call headquarters. On the other hand, maybe it was a tank for a parade. But if they were going to have a parade, they should have told him about it.

Leadership required that. It wasn't Armed Forces Day. It wasn't even Memorial Day. But who the hell knew? Everybody had parades nowadays. The Germans and the Italians and the Irish and the Puerto Ricans. Who knew? Maybe it was the annual parade of the Palestine Liberation Organization. They might feature tanks. He decided he would not embarrass himself by calling headquarters and appearing dumb. He would wait until he saw what happened. He put his ticket book away and walked slowly after the tank as it lumbered down the middle of the block.

It turned the corner into the street fronting City Hall.

The driver of a white diesel Oldsmobile saw it coming at him and drove up on the curb, smashing into a parking meter to avoid getting hit. When the car's engine died, the driver realized it was the first time in weeks that his ears hadn't hurt from the motor's noise.

The driver shook a fist at the tank. He was about to charge it and scream at the driver when he realized the driver wouldn't or couldn't hear him. He continued shaking his fist. He wondered what else he could do to vent his anger, when he saw the turret of the tank open and a dark-faced man with a swoop of thick black hair over his forehead stick his head out. He was carrying guns in both hands. The Oldsmobile driver decided not to argue with the guns. The eyes of the man in the tank turret were darting little pinpoints, flashing as he looked from side to side.

The policeman who had been trailing the tank reached the corner just as the tank turned in the middle of the street so that it was facing City Hall.

The tank stood still but its motor kept chugging. The Oldsmobile driver realized that the tank idled more quietly than his diesel did.

"Hey," the cop called. "Hey, you in the tank." He had decided that this was no parade, and even if it was, the assembly spot sure wasn't the middle of the street in front of City Hall. The man in the top of the tank turned toward him.

"Hey, you can't park there," the cop yelled at Mark Tolan.

"No?" said Tolan. The cop drew his ticket book from his right hip. Tolan shot him in the left side of the chest.

Inside City Hall, Remo and Chiun were in the mayor's office with Rocco Nobile, who was hanging his jacket on the old-fashioned coat rack in the corner.

They all heard the noise out front and went to the window. As they looked out through the large double panes of glass, they saw the cannon on the front of the tank lift up, until it was pointing at them like a long accusing finger. On top of the tank, half in half out, Remo recognized the looney who hated ping pong. Behind him, in the street, was a dead policeman. Remo gritted his teeth, then turned to Chiun, but Chiun was not there. As Remo continued turning, he saw Chiun race across the room, dragging Mayor Nobile to the floor.

"Down, Remo," called Chiun and Remo hit the floor just as an artillery shell slammed into the side of the building just below the picture window. Brick and mortar flew into the room, dropping on Remo's body. A foot-wide hole opened in the front of the building. The glass above Remo trembled and cracked, and glass shards fell onto his body.

"To the door," Chiun hissed.

Remo moved toward the big oaken doors. Behind him he could hear the faint sound of another shell before it slammed into the wall of the building with an ear-splitting crash.

He pulled open the door and Chiun dragged Rocco Nobile out of the office. Secretaries were scattering. Remo closed the oaken doors and turned to Chiun.

"Get him out of here, Chiun," said Remo.

"Where are you going?"

"After those nuts," Remo said. "You get to the parking lot and get him out of here."

Chiun nodded. Remo moved out into the marble-floored hallway. Behind him he heard another shell rip the front of the building. It had been years since he had heard tank shells exploding around him.

When he got to the front steps of the building, the tank was still firing away at the mayor's office. Remo saw that the hard-faced man had gone from the tank turret and when he got outside, he saw the man, waving two guns, running down the block on the left side of the building.

That would take him to the parking lot, Remo realized. That could have been the plan all along. To drive the mayor out of his office by tank and then pick him off with a bullet in the parking lot.

Remo followed the man. As he passed under the open windows of the mayor's second floor office, another shell exploded above him and rocks and debris fell down toward his body. He dodged the flying rocks and got to the sidewalk just in time to see the hard-faced Mark Tolan climb the fence into the parking lot.