Warren Murphy: Terminal Transmission

The trio were slapping at their arms and faces. Their fingers came away bright with tiny drops of blood.

"Ouch! Ouch! What hit me?"

"Shrapnel," said Remo. "Now go spread the word. Anyone caught making noise after dark ends up picking plastic out of his face-if I'm in a good mood."

The trio looked to the shattered box, to Remo, back to the box, and fled.

As he walked back to Castle Sinanju-as Chiun called it-Remo muttered, "Beats evicting the entire neighborhood."

From the squat Gothic steeple, windows aglow on all four sides, issued a sudden shriek of anguish. Chiun.

"Now what?" said Remo, whipping through the front door.

Remo burst into the meditation room and stopped in his tracks.

The Master of Sinanju was hopping about the room, his hands clutching at the puffs of cloudy hair that floated over each ear.

"Don't tell me it's another blackout!" Remo said.

"Worse! Worse!" Chiun leveled an agitated finger at the screen.

Remo looked. There was the stony face of Don Cooder, looking steely-eyed into the camera. He was speaking.

"In our efforts to bring you up to date on the crisis along Network Row, we are preempting Eyeball to Eyeball with Cheeta Ching for a special live 24 Hours. Tonight: '24 Hours on Blackout Street.' "

"What about Cheeta!" Chiun cried.

"Cheeta Ching will be seen at this time next week," Cooder said. "Unless, of course the big moment arrives, in which case BCN will cut in live for special labor coverage."

"They're planning to broadcast the birth?" Remo grunted.

Chiun said, "Of course. It will be a day of celebration."

"Bulldookey," said Remo. "Look, I'm sorry Cooder's horned in on Cheeta's face time, but these things happen."

"Why do these calamities keep happening to Cheeta? It is not fair!"

"Hey, you got your dose of Cheeta for the night. Lighten up."

"My evening is ruined."

"Why don't we just watch this? Who knows, Cheeta may start having contractions and you'll get to see it all in its gory glory."

As Remo settled onto one of the mats facing the screen, the Master of Sinanju ceased his pacing.

"Why are you interested in this?" he asked suspiciously.

"Smitty thinks that blackout may be something for us. Might as well get current."

"It is not the work of that bearded ruffian, Castro, is it?"

"Smith doesn't think so. We threw a pretty good scare into him last time. He still hasn't shown his face in public."

"No doubt his beard has not yet regrown itself," Chinn sniffed.

"Rat's nests aren't built in a day," said Remo cheerfully.

They watched in silence. A graphic filled the screen. It showed a green circle indicating the area of broadcast interference. It was a big circle. All of the U.S. as well as most of Canada and Mexico were in what Don Cooder referred to as "the null zone."

"While the source of this disruption has not yet been identified," he was saying, "sunspots cannot been ruled out. For more on this important story and how it may affect you, here by telephone is vacationing BCN science editor Frank Feldmeyer."

As a Quantel graphic still of Feldmeyer showed on the screen, the correspondent's comments ran as a voice-over. He was a square-faced man whose features were made smaller by oversized horn-rimmed glasses.

"Don, this phenomenon, if it is a natural one, is utterly baffling. Somehow, all video output was intercepted and substitute audio broadcast in its place. Sunspots might account for one, but not the other."

"Frank, are you saying this could be man-made?"

"Don, there doesn't appear to be any other explanation. Beyond that, it's too early to tell."

"It's too early to tell," Cooder intoned.

"Didn't Feldmeyer just say that?" Remo asked Chiun.

Chiun said nothing. His hazel eyes were narrow in thought.

Cooder was back on the air now. His ruggedly handsome black-Irish face was fixed. There were bags under his eyes large enough to double as coin pouches.

" 'It's too early to tell,' " he repeated. "Portentous words. What can they mean? Is this just a glitch of the electronic age, or-something more? Something that will darken all of our lives? For another perspective, here is White House correspondent Sheela Duff."

The picture cut to the White House correspondent standing, appropriately enough, on the White House lawn. She was speaking into a handheld microphone that looked like a candy box with a giant BCN logo.

"Don, here at the White House there is no sign of a crisis atmosphere."

"That's because there's no freaking crisis," Remo grumbled.

"But reliable sources assure us that the President is aware of the situation and cognizant of its meaning."

Cooder asked, "Sheela, as you know, Havana tried to jam U.S. airwaves not long ago. Is this an unscheduled rerun of that old crisis?"

"No, Don. As the graphic you just showed indicates, Cuba is not the epicenter of the so-called null zone. In fact, reliable reports are that Cuban TV and radio were knocked off the air at the same time. In fact, Havana is angrily pointing the finger of blame at Washington. As are, I might add, the Canadian government and the Mexicans."

Cooder came back on. "Let's look at that graphic again, shall we?"

The graphic came on. Remo leaned into the screen.

"Looks like he's right," he said. "Can't be Cuba. Otherwise the blackout would reach clear down to Peru. The transmitter must be in the U.S."

"I understand none of this voodoo," Chiun said darkly.

Don Cooder was saying, "If I read this graphic correctly, and I want to be sure I understand this . . . Frank Feldmeyer, are you still with us?"

"Yes, I am Don."

"I know you can't see the graphic, but it shows a circle encompassing most of North America. What should we be looking for?"

"The center."

"For those of us not well grounded in science, that's the middle, correct?"

"Exactly, Don."

"Actually it looks to me like Canada is the center," Remo muttered.

"The epicenter appears to lie in the heartland of the United States itself," announced Don Cooder.

"Any idiot can see it's Canada," Remo complained.

Don Cooder went on, obviously making it up as he went along. "For those just tuning in, at this hour, the known facts are these: U.S. TV blacked out for seven minutes. Cause: Unknown. Motive: Unknown. Suspicion: Somewhere in the U.S. heartland a pirate transmitter waiting patiently. For-what? No one knows."

Don Cooder paused, fixing the camera with his unblinking eyes. "For the story of those most affected by this, here's our national correspondent, Hale Storm."

The image changed to show the prettily handsome face of BCN national correspondent Hale Storm, looking as dashing as if he had stepped out of a soap opera-which he had. BCN had hired him from one of their own soaps in an effort to broaden their female audience base.

"What was the first thing to go through your mind when the blackout hit?" Storm asked an off-camera figure.

The face of Don Cooder, looking pensive, appeared. He was informal in a fawn-brown cardigan sweater.

"I was at the anchor desk-we call it the Chair around here-and had just read the lead-in headlines when the producer noticed the line monitor had gone black. At first, he thought it was an internal glitch, but I knew that couldn't be. Here at BCN we have the finest technical staff in television. I immediately pitched in and, sensing something more serious amiss, discovered that the other networks were black too."

"Very astute, Don."

Don Cooder offered his trademark forced smile and said, "Don Cooder has been in this news game a long time, man and boy. He can smell a story."

Chiun nudged Remo. "Why does he refer to himself in the third person?"

"Maybe he's schizo," Remo offered. "What I want to know is why are they interviewing each other. Shouldn't they be talking to the man in the street?"