Warren Murphy: Rain of Terror

Firemen lugged hoses as close as they could and poured water down the hole. That was a mistake. The water turned to steam. Those closest to the pit were scalded and had to be rushed to the hospital. The hoses were dragged back and, from a safer distance, the firemen tried again.

The next jets of water brought more steam. From deep within the hole there came loud snapping and hissing like water on a skillet magnified a thousand times. For several hours the Washington fire department sprayed water into the hole. Every hour, there was less steam. Gradually the cherry glow turned dull orange, then yellow. Finally it faded altogether.

The fire chief put on an oxygen mask and, carrying a heavy flashlight, approached the edge of the pit. He lay on his stomach and peered down. The rising air hit his exposed brow with tropical humidity. He turned on the flashlight.

The hole was much deeper than he'd expected. Whatever had hit, it had impacted with incredible force. The bottom of the pit was very black and buried under a foot of water. There was no way to discern what lay under the water, although the fire chief spent the better part of twenty minutes trying. He gave up when he leaned over too far and the flashlight jerked from his hand. It disappeared in the water.

It was nearly dawn by the time an Air Force investigation team arrived. They wore white anti-contamination suits and raced around the now-quiescent hole with clicking Geiger counters. The counters picked up only normal background radiation. The suits came off and heavy equipment was brought up as the firemen were ordered to vacate the site by a two-star general.

General Martin S. Leiber kept his suit on. He was a senior procurement officer with the Pentagon. No way was he going to get a face full of radiation. In fact, he wouldn't be here at all, but he happened to be senior officer at the Pentagon when word came from the White House. The President wanted to know if Washington was still standing. General Martin S. Leiber promised the President of the United States that he would look into the situation and get back to him within a few days. The fact that Washington looked perfectly normal from his office window was of little consequence. General Leiber was only five years from retirement. No way was he going to get his ass in a sling this close to the jackpot. Especially with a new President.

General Leiber had returned to his poker game, looked at his hand, and decided to play it out. A major beat his two pairs with a royal flush. General Leiber called the game and ordered the major to get the poop on the Washington survivability question. That would teach the bastard.

When the major returned with word of the possible missile strike on Lafayette Park, General Leiber saw stars. Specifically, one more on each shoulder. Although it was against his best bureaucratic instincts, he personally led the Air Force team to Lafayette Park. But just to make sure, he put Major Royal Flush in operational command.

Now, with the sun climbing toward noon, the general walked up to the major, a serious expression on his gruff face.

"What do you think this sucker is?" he demanded.

"We have unusually high levels of magnetism," the major said. "But no radiation or other lethal agents. I think we should fish for a piece of whatever's down there."

It sounded noncontroversial, so General Leiber said, "Do it!"

A derrick was driven onto the dead grass. Its treads sank into the mushy ground at the edge of the hole. It looked as if it would tip into the pit, but eventually it stabilized.

The steel jaws descended into the hole. And got stuck.

They finally came up with a jagged swatch of metal that dripped water. The metal was black and pitted. The derrick deposited it on a white tarp that had been laid on the ground.

The Air Force team swiftly surrounded it. The major tapped it with a retractable ball-point pen. The pen stuck too.

"I don't understand," he said softly.

"What's that?" General Leiber asked.

"Iron. This appears to be solid iron."

"I never heard of a nuclear missile with iron parts."

"We don't know that this is any such thing," the major pointed out. "Could be a meteor. They contain a lot of iron."

"Bull," said General Leiber. "NORAD picked it up at apogee. It was ballistic. What else could it be, if not a missile?"

"Let's find out," the major suggested. "Bring up another piece."

The next piece was iron too. Cast iron. So was the third. General Leiber began to feel very strange.

Then the derrick brought up a crushed and charred object that was somehow attached to a pitted iron stanchion. Everyone took turns examining the object.

"I'd say this crushed part is not iron," the major said, scraping at the charred surface with a thumbnail. He exposed a line of shiny brownish-yellow metal. "Looks like it was hollow and the impact compressed it. See this lip here? Some kind of opening or mouth."

"What's that thing sticking out, then?" General Leiber asked. "A tongue?"

The major looked. Out of the flattened mouth protruded a tiny ball of metal on the end of a rod. His brow wrinkled doubtfully.

"This thing looks familiar. I can't place it. Anyone?" The object was passed from hand to hand.

Finally someone offered a suggestion.

"I don't know if this is possible, but I think this was a bell."

"A what?" asked General Leiber.

"A bell. A brass bell. You know, like you would hang in a church steeple."

Then everyone looked at everyone else with the expression of children who had wandered into a very wrong place.

"Let's get it out of the hole," General Leiber said swiftly. "All of it. Every piece. I'll requisition an empty hangar at Andrews. You boys can reconstruct it there."

"It may not be that simple," the major said reasonably. "It's badly compressed and fused. We don't know what it might be. Where would we start?"

"Here," General Leiber, said, slapping the crushed blob of brass into his open hands. "Start with this. If that thing in the hole is some new kind of enemy weapon, the future of your country may depend on learning what it is and what it was supposed to do."

"What if we end up with a church steeple?" the major joked.

"Then you better get down on your knees, son. Because if the Russkies have turned God Almighty to their side, America doesn't have a prayer."

The major started to laugh. He swallowed his mirth. The general was not smiling. In fact, he looked serious. Dead serious. The major hurried off to carry out the general's orders.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he couldn't remember ever being in this much trouble before.

As he ran down the wooded road, his deep-set eyes searching the trees on either side, Remo Williams did not look like a man in trouble. He looked like a jogger. Except that he wore shoes of excellent Italian leather, gray chinos and, even though the temperature was hovering just under the freezing mark, a fresh white T-shirt.

He clutched a coil of rope in one fist. The skin was drawn tight over his high cheekbones. His dark eyes looked stricken.

A sporty red Corvette zipped past him and Remo broke into a floating run. Showing no apparent effort, he caught up with the Corvette and, checking the two-lane road to see that no cars were coming at him from the opposite direction, he drew alongside the driver's side of the car.

The car was doing a decorous forty-five miles an hour. Remo knocked on the driver's window.

The window hummed down and a blue-eyed woman with mahogany hair looked him up and down with a dreamy expression.

"I'll bet you could go all night, too," she said. She didn't seem surprised to see a man keeping pace with a speeding automobile. Remo looked so ordinary that some people refused to accept the evidence of their eyes when they saw him perform the impossible.