Warren Murphy - Engines of Destruction

Oddly enough, the mosquitoes didn't seem to have an appetite for them. They stayed off a ways, like careful moths shrinking from a flame.

"Can't stop," he called ahead in his friendliest voice as he approached the pair. "Got a schedule to make."

The tall, skinny one spoke up. "Is that a plow?" Yep.

"Kinda late in the year for clearing snow."

"Or early," Billy Rex returned sociably.

They were walking alongside him now. Not threatening, just interested. Billy Rex began to relax.

"What is this?" asked the little guy, pointing at the serpentine cable dropping into the fresh-turned earth.

"Fiber-optic cable. We're laying the information highway."

"Along railroad track?" the skinny one blurted.

"Hell, phone lines have been strung along the right-of-way and buried beside it for years and years. This here is just the latest wrinkle."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, a body learns something new every day, doesn't he?"

They were approaching the bridge now. The mosquitoes were really biting now. If the engineers were on the money, the cable would run out about now.

It did. The last plopped into the trench, for later splicing. Billy Rex hit the lever that raised the plow. Then he sent his machine up onto the tracks, jockeyed it true and prepared to cross the bridge as fast as reasonable.

"I wouldn't follow me any farther," he said, slapping at his arms. "Ain't safe."

Suddenly there was a business card in his face. He couldn't read it too well by moonlight, but the skinny guy's voice said, "Remo Bell, FCC," in a voice so self-assured, Billy Rex naturally accepted it. "Pull over."

"This is rail I'm on, not blacktop. I can't pull over."

"Then stop this vehicle or face the consequences," said the squeaky voice of the little old Asian.

"What consequences?" Billy Rex naturally asked.

That's when the bulldozer stopped. Dead. Billy Rex yanked out a flashlight to see what it had hit.

The tracks were clear, except for the leather shoe. It had arrested the plow somehow. Inside the shoe was the foot of the skinny guy from the FCC.

Deciding to be sociable, Billy Rex killed the engine.

"What can I do for you fellas?"

"Spot check."

"Check away."

They looked over his cable, peered under his vehicle as if looking for a bomb, checked his ID and for some reason looked real hard at the bulldozer manufacturer's plate before saying, "Okay, you can go now."

"Much obliged."

"You are very wise to buy American," the Asian squeaked.

Then they watched him start up and negotiate the bridge, ponderous tracks gripping steel rail it wasn't designed for.

The mosquitoes followed, as mosquitoes would. If any malingered to sample the two odd ones Billy Rex left behind, it wasn't noticeable.

AFTER THE BULLDOZER was lost in the darkness, Remo turned to Chiun and said, "I think I know what they're after now."

"And you are wrong," Chiun sniffed.

"I didn't say what I was thinking yet."

"You are wrong, whatever you are thinking."

"We'll see about that." Remo looked up at the moon, whose position in the sky verified what his internal clock was telling him. The Sunset Limited was due before long.

They retreated into the undergrowth to watch the bridge for trouble. The night was full of mosquitoes. But all avoided them as if their pores exhaled a natural insecticide, which was closer to the truth than not.

HAROLD SMITH WAS reading the first AP bulletins of the derailment of Amtrak's City of New Orleans at Poplarville, Mississippi, when the link-analysis program began reporting results.

There were three active phone cards.

One was issued to an Akira Kurosawa. The second to a Seiji Ozawa. And the third to Furio Batsuka.

A horrible thought crossed his mind. What if there was more than one ronin?

Double-checking the times of each accident, Smith decided not. Multiple saboteurs would not explain the short intervals or the lack of simultaneous crashes.

Smith then ran a check on the first name. Akira Kurosawa came up as a famous Japanese director of samurai movies. Seiji Ozawa was the Japanese-American conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Smith's brow furrowed distastefully at the dual significance of the word conductor. He detested opponents with humor.

The news wires were humming now. The multiple accidents were becoming hourly bulletins. And all were Amtrak trains. Another shift in tactics. The reasoning was self-evident. Derailed passenger trains meant significant loss of life compared to freight accidents: Amtrak was not hauling cabbages.

"Someone is deliberately bringing enormous pressure to bear on the U.S. rail system, both materially and politically," Smith said aloud.

The why remained elusive.

While his search programs trolled the net for more incidents, Smith began reviewing the state of the U.S. rail system.

For three years accidents had been an unrelenting plague.

For four, freight traffic was booming. Even the Midwest floods and washouts of '93 had not crimped it.

Amtrak, on the other hand, was in trouble. Service cutbacks had begun to bite. Ridership levels were up, but Smith had begun to suspect some of that could be explained by the opportunists looking for a free ride into lifelong insurance benefits if they survived a rail accident. The so-called Railpax, which allowed Amtrak to utilize existing freight lines on a favored-nation basis, was at an end.

With Congress considering terminating funding, Amtrak's future appeared bleak.

But what possible motive would the Nishitsu Industrial Electrical Corporation have for derailing Amtrak?

There was no clear answer. Smith returned to the matter of the murderous teleporting ronin.

Every time one of the phone cards was used, the call was logged by the issuing company's computers. Smith got a readout of the originating call and its destination as they took place. They came up as simple phone charges. In reality they represented the most efficient form of transportation known to man.

And a Japanese company owned it exclusively.

No other Japanese names bubbled up from the ongoing search programs. And every time one of those cards was used, without fail, a rail accident followed within minutes.

Somewhere in the fiber-optic maze of the nation's telephone system, a deadly predator was moving unseen and unsuspected. Soon, Smith knew, the ronin would attempt to send the Sunset Limited tumbling into Bayou Canot.

It was just a matter of time. If only, he found himself hoping, their nameless enemy would strike at Bayou Canot sooner than later. The carnage piling up was horrendous.

THE SUNSET LIMITED first showed itself as a distant gleam of light in the shadowy distance.

"Here it comes," said Remo.

Chiun's head swiveled about, left then right. His sensitive ears were hunting for sounds. "I hear no ronin. "

"Don't forget. If he's dematerialized, we won't hear his heartbeat. Just like in that boxcar."

"If he skulks amid this eerie backwater, my eagle eye will spy him."

Remo nodded. His eyes were also searching.

Foliage rustled. Herons. Somewhere the muscular splash of a restless alligator disturbed the night.

And down the line the gleam of the twin-beam headlight grew to a white, widening funnel. The trestle began to vibrate.

Remo stepped back. He was looking at the trestle supports. If the ronin was going to strike, he would strike here.

A wind picked up. It seemed to be moving ahead of the oncoming train. The light grew, changing the shadows, making them crawl. And lining up on the trestle, the Sunset Limited threw the full blaze of her engine headlight along the bridge, making the rails gleam and sparkle.

The Sunset Limited hit the bridge at a thunderous seventy miles an hour. The bridge vibrated in response. It rattled for barely two minutes to the thunder of the passing train.