Warren Murphy: Rain of Terror

The dune shed its covering of sand and revealed itself as a great concrete octagon painted to match the surrounding desert. The octagon was sliding sideways along buried tracks.

"See! A hole," Chiun said, approaching the area that had been uncovered.

Remo looked down. The giant hole contained what looked like an enormous I-beam girder pointing up into the sky. There was a square hole in the girder's end. Remo leapt to the girder and got down on hands and knees. He peered down the square hole, which was very deep and easily large enough to swallow a steam engine. "I can't even see the bottom," he said.

"Perhaps it's the secret entrance to the place of the flying locomotives," Chiun suggested.

"One way to find out," Remo said. He lowered himself over the side.

"This may not be a good idea," Chiun said slowly.

"Why not? I don't see a better hole."

"I do not know about this," Chiun went on.

"Look," Remo said, hanging by his fingers, "what could happen?"

And then the abyss under Remo filled with blue-white sparks and the crackle of the lightning bolts. Remo looked down. He found himself staring at the blunt, illuminated nose of a steam engine. It was moving. At him. And it was moving at a speed greater than Remo could possibly react. This is it! Remo thought. I'm dead.

General Martin S. Leiber listened to the voices. They were giving up again. Good. Once they went away, he could attack the locking lugs on the inside of the coffin-shaped container with his battery-operated power wrench. Then he would burst out with his gun blazing. He just wished he had thought to bring along a few extra clips. Eight bullets wasn't a lot. Especially when it sounded like there were quite a lot of Arabic-speaking unfriendlies on the other side and General Martin S. Leiber hadn't fired a weapon since 1953.

But he was not afraid. He was doing this for his country. But more to the point, he was doing this to save his ass. Remo felt himself go up into the air. Everything spun before his eyes. He felt no pain. Probably the impact of a multi-ton engine had shocked his nervous system so badly there was no pain. Or maybe, he thought, I'm already dead.

He forced himself to open his eyes. The stars stared down at him. He felt at one with them. At peace. His only regret was that he hadn't had time to say good-bye to his friend and mentor. Maybe it was not too late. Maybe Chiun would hear him. "Good-bye, Little Father," he whispered.

"Why?" retorted Chiun's querulous voice. "Are you going somewhere without me?"

"Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju's parchment face stared down at Remo.

"What are you doing here?"

"That is not the question," Chiun scolded. "The question is: what are you doing playing in the sand when there is work to be done?"

"But the locomotive?"

Chiun pointed up into the night sky. "There."

A starlike streak arced across the sky. The thundercrack of a sonic boom filled the air.

Remo looked around. He was lying in the sand. "How did I get here?"

"I threw you there. And is a thank-you too much to ask for one who has saved your miserable life?"

"You pulled me out of the way?"

"I had no choice in the matter. You have the beeper. Without it I would not be able to summon a ride home."

"I'm thrilled you weren't inconvenienced," Remo said. He got to his feet. His knees shook a little. He forced them to steady. He didn't want Chiun to know how scared he had been.

"Thanks," Remo said solemnly.

"We have found the place of evil locomotives."

"No shit," Remo said, forcing himself to be flip. "Now what?"

"I think it will be safe to descend now. I see no more locomotives."

"You first," Remo said.

Chiun looked at Remo's wobbling knees and nodded quietly.

They used the rails, letting themselves down like silent spiders. The angle turned shallow, and at the bottom they were standing on a nearly flat surface. The rails stopped flush at a stainless-steel wall.

"This looks like a door or hatch," Remo said, touching the slick surface. "Hey, open sesame, somebody."

The hatch hummed open.

"Congratulations," Chiun said. "You said the magic word." They peered out into a dimly lit area where an elevated control booth overlooked a set of railroad tracks. The tracks were an extension of the set under their feet. Workers in green smocks hurried about busily.

"I take back my compliment," Chiun said. "They did not hear you. I think they are preparing for another attack."

"Look," said Remo. "The head cheese himself. Colonel Intifadah."

"Looks like the green cheese," Chiun remarked as he watched Colonel Intifadah step into an olive-green jeep and drive off.

"We get him and we have the problem licked," Remo said, stepping out of the breech.

Chiun eyed a keypad mounted beside the hatch and hammered it with the heel of his hand. Keys fell out like bad teeth.

"Good move. I'll take care of the control booth," Remo said. He rushed for the door. A guard saw him and raised an automatic rifle. He opened fire. Remo raced ahead of the first bullet. The guard kept correcting his aim. He shot the hell out of the control console trying to nail Remo. When his clip ran empty, Remo sauntered up to him and said, "Thank you." Then he kicked the man through the rear wall.

Chiun joined him in the booth. "I have accounted for the other garbage," he said. Remo looked through the shattered Plexiglas. Pieces of Lobynian workers lay scattered about.

"You were pretty hard on them," Remo pointed out.

"We are in a hurry. Now let us get the green cheese."

"I'm with you," Remo said, and they raced down the railroad tracks up to the distant speck of light that was the other end of the access tunnel.

Colonel Intifadah wheeled his jeep into position on the railroad tracks. He backed the jeep until its rear spare tire was only a foot away from the nose of the silent locomotive. It gleamed. Its nose was webby with wound carbon-carbon filaments.

"All is well," said Hamid Al-Mudir.

"Excellent! Excellent!" enthused Colonel Hannibal Intifadah. "Now. Quickly. Hitch the engine to the back of the jeep."

"At once, Brother Colonel."

Under Al-Mudir's direction, steel cables were hitched to the hornlike buffer rods protruding from the engine. "Now tell them to push."

"Push!" Al-Mudir called.

Lobynian workers got behind the engine and struggled to get it moving.

Colonel Intifadah started the jeep. It bumped over the railroad ties. The cables straightened, and held. Under their combined efforts, the engine inched forward. It began to roll. Momentum took over. The wheels spun; drive rods pumping with each revolution.

Looking back over his shoulder, Colonel Intifadah smiled. It would be a glorious night. Within minutes this mighty engine of death would be loaded into the Accelerator and hurled into the night sky. Its boilers crammed with nerve agent, it would tumble over the Atlantic and fall more or less in the vicinity of Chicago, Illinois. It was not Washington, but it was a major American city. Even Colonel Intifadah had heard of it.

He pushed down on the gas pedal, anxious for the moment of ultimate revenge.

The great bunker doors yawned ahead. The gleaming, starlit rails disappeared inside. Soon, soon, he thought happily. Then the smile was erased from his face.

Out of the tunnel flashed two men. One was tall and skinny and all in black. His eyes were as dead and determined as a vengeful afrit's. And beside him ran an Oriental, shorter and older, but with fire in his clear, wise eyes.

The whoosh of their passing knocked the green service cap off Colonel Hannibal Intifadah's head. They passed on either side of him and disappeared behind the back of the locomotive.

From there came the satisfying brief bark of gunfire. Remo hit the Lobynian crew like a truck. He scattered them to either side. Those who had sidearms touched them only long enough to send futile bullets into the sand or the sky.