Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

"What the hell is that?" he said.

"The bomb is about to explode," Chiun said. "Quickly, Remo, we must escape."

"Bombs don't make sounds like fire engines."

Chiun got behind Remo and began pushing urgently. "Hurry, clod-footed one."

Remo scooped up Captain Page and the Union soldier, one under each arm, and started out of the Crater. The siren sound swelled and grew in pitch like an angry ghost following them.

When it was screaming at its most urgent, and the entire battlefield was thumping with Confederate soldiers running from the Crater, the explosion occurred.

This explosion wasn't yellow. Or even blue. It was on the order of a thoom. Not a big, earthshaking thoom, but a substantial thoom nonetheless. A pillar of blackish smoke crawled out of the Crater, seeking the climbing sun.

After that the Crater hissed like grease in a giant frying pan.

"Hold up, Little Father," said Remo as the hissing reached his ears. He stopped.

Chiun hesitated. "The smoke may be dangerous, Remo."

"Maybe. But I still don't think that was a bomb."

They stood and watched the black smoke coil and twist up from the great Crater to be picked apart by an intermittent southwesterly breeze.

When nothing else happened for five more minutes, Remo walked back to the Crater rim.

"Mind setting us down, suh?" a voice requested.

Remo looked down and saw that he was still carrying the depressed Union soldier and a docile Captain Page under his arms.

"Sorry. Forgot," Remo apologized, dropping the men to the ground.

They hung back at a careful remove while Remo looked down into the Crater.

At the bottom the stainless-steel sphere was a puddle of hot, smoking slag. It bubbled and spread, scorching the grass as it lost its round shape and became flat.

"Guess we won't ever know what it was now," Remo said unhappily.

"I do not mind," said Chiun, "just so long as we do not ever encounter its like again."

". . . JUST SO LONG as we do not ever encounter its like again."

At a mobile command-post van a man removed his earphones and snapped a console switch. "Moise reporting. "

"Go ahead, Moose."

"According to the field mikes, we hued them good and proper. Opposition forces have abandoned the battlefield."

"That's our read from above. We just sent out the slag command."

"They're talking about it right now. The technology remains secure."

"Roger. Continue monitoring. We may need additional field support come H-hour."

"Standing by. Moise out."

The man in the mobile command post cut his mike and returned the earphones to his head. "I hate being called fucking Moose," he muttered to himself.

Chapter 7

On the ground overlooking the smoking pit history had dubbed the Crater, Remo searched the sky with his eyes. The black helicopter that had dropped the weird device that was now so much superheated steel slag was gone. It was not among the clustering choppers that hung off in the western sky, well out of musket range.

Captain Page turned to Remo and said, "Earlier, suh, you spoke of surrender terms."

"That's right," said Remo.

"Well, Ah am prepared to offer them."

"Offer? You're going to surrender to us."

Captain Page jutted out his cleft chin with pride. "Never. Ah would sooner die."

Remo flexed his fingers to limber up. "That can be arranged."

Page took a step backward. "Ah will ask you to keep your cotton-picking hands to yourself, if you do not mind."

"No problem," said Remo, folding his lean arms.

Captain Royal Wooten Page relaxed visibly.

"Now you are being reasona-aayaaah!"

Captain Page fancied himself a singer of sorts. Mostly of the soap-and-shower variety. Old-timey tunes were his stock-in-trade. "Lorena." "Rebel Soldier." "Barbara Allen." "Shenandoah." He could manage middle C, especially if the water turned suddenly cold. For the first time in his life, he hit top C. And while he was, technically, singing, lyrics had nothing to do with his impressive performance.

The pain seemed to shoot through his entire body, paralyzing it with shock. It was remarkable pain, far beyond even that time on maneuvers when a halftrack had run over the toe of his combat boot. Once, he had experienced something like it. He had been a teenager and gotten some candy cane stuck between two teeth one Christmas morning. For want of a toothpick or dental floss, he had taken some tinsel off the tree and used it to saw the offending particle out from between two back molars.

The pain had been electric and excruciating.

Later he figured out that the aluminum tinsel rubbing between the amalgam molar fillings had generated some kind of primitive electric current. At the time the pain could only be called exquisite.

This pain was anything but exquisite. It was as if his nervous system had been hooked up to a car battery and the juice pumped straight in.

Captain Page dearly wanted to run away, but the pain rooted him. He did manage to jerk his head around because he had the idea the pain was coming from his left. It was, he plainly saw.

The old Oriental gentleman in the black kimono with the red artillery piping had hold of his earlobe. That was all. Just the earlobe. Captain Page wasn't aware of any particular sensitivity in his earlobes. From time to time, in the hot weather, he might develop a pimple in the fleshiest part, but that was it.

The old man was squeezing the lobe between two quite wicked fingernails. Yet they seemed so fragile in their elegantly curved length. Now they were stern, hot needles bringing proud Captain Royal Wooten Page to his quivering knees.

"Now, about that surrender," said Remo.

"Would you prefer total surrender, or would abject surrender suffice?" Captain Page moaned.

"Whatever wraps up this idiocy quickest."

"This idiocy, suh, will never be wrapped up so long as Virginia is threatened from without."

"Who's threatening it?"

"Ah told you. The evil forces of Uncle Sam."

The terrible fingernails withdrew.

"Did you hear, Remo? It is Uncle Sam who is behind this."

"Hold your horses," said Remo. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Page, spell it out for me."

"Surely you know of the assault upon our sovereign state of Old Dominion," Page said, getting to his feet.

"I know two groups of idiots are fighting the Civil War all over again."

"It was the Yanks who started it, as Ah have it. Ah was not actually present at the Second Battle of the Crater, you understand."

"I understand exactly nothing."

"The Sixth Virginia Foot had camped out on these very grounds to stand against the would-be plunderers of ole Virginia, Colonel Rip Hazard commanding. He fell when the advance guard of Union troops swooped down upon them in their sleep. It was a slaughter, suh. The Sixth Virginia were not prepared for true combat. Their muskets were tramped down with powder and wadding only. No balls."

"No brains, either," said Remo.

"Ah take violent exception to that."

"Feel free," invited Remo.

"The valiant survivors lay in ambush when the Forty-fourth Rhode Island came along and paid them in their own coin. When the First Massachusetts followed, they were overwhelmed without loss to the Confederate side, Ah am pleased to report."

"Let me guess, no balls, either."

"You have that right." Captain Page frowned. "Ah must admit that portion of the tale has me flummoxed."

"How so?"

"Colonel Hazard had requested the assistance of the Forty-fourth Rhode Island Weekend Artillery and the First Massachusetts Interpretive Cavalry in the coming unpleasantness, and it was his impression that he was betrayed by one or the other. Yet both Northern regiments, when subsequently engaged, were firing paper and powder. They were woefully unprepared for battle."