Engines of Destruction td-103

by Warren Murphy

  "Want us to hold him upside down and shake the truth out of him?"

  "Be discreet."

  "Chiun will be wearing a flaming red kimono trimmed with silver-and-gold salamanders. That discreet enough for you?"

  "Why are you being so testy, Remo?"

  Remo leaned against the brick. "Oh, I don't know. I guess thinking you were dead and finding out I kinda missed your sour old puss put me in a mournful mood. Now I wish you'd go back to being dead. I liked you better dead."

  "I am not dead. Go to Texarkana. Report as needed."

  "And happy rebirth day to you, too," said Remo, hanging up.

  BACK AT THE BELL TOWER, Remo broke the news to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Bad news. Smith is alive."

  "He gave you the secret password, naturally?"

  "What secret password?"

  "Arrgh! You failed to verify it was Smith! Must I do everything myself?"

  "Believe me, it's Smith. Two minutes into the conversation, I started hating the sound of his voice and he gave us a dippy assignment."

  "What assignment?"

  "We're looking into the train derailments, starting in Texarkana."

  "I do not know that place."

  "Oh, believe me, Chiun. You'll love Texas. And Texas will love you."

  "Is that one of the flat, square provinces far to the west where the buffalo roam and the roughnecks play"

  "The phrase is rednecks and I'm sure we'll bump into a few of those."

  "We will go because we are obliged to go. And Texas will be the last place the faceless ronin will seek us."

  "Let's go," said Remo as Chiun turned to pick over his steamer trunks. They were half-packed. The open ones spilled elaborate brocaded kimonos, tatami mats and many of the papyrus scrolls Chiun had brought from Sinanju, on which were inscribed the inked histories of his village.

  "You will take the silver trunk with the lapis lazuli phoenixes."

  Remo groaned. "Not that one again."

  "Do not drop it, and above all do not open it under any circumstances."

  "Didn't I lug this thing across half of Mexico last time out?"

  "Now you will lug it to exotic Texarkana, where men's necks are red and never a discouraging word is heard."

  "I think I'm going to rewrite that last part of the song," grumbled Remo, lifting the trunk onto his shoulders.

  Chapter 11

  Melvis O. Cupper didn't like what he was hearing.

  "No drugs," the Texarkana medical examiner was saying.

  They were in the county morgue. The body of Southern Pacific engineer Ty Hurley lay on the porcelain autopsy table, his head and a few disconnected parts piled at the top of the table, above the main portion of his torso.

  Hurley looked as if he was about to be sewn back together. But Melvis knew nothing would ever put the poor bastard together again. Out of respect for the dead, in his big red hands he held his white Stetson with the black letters NTSB stenciled on the crown.

  "Mind closin' his eyes for me?" Melvis said.

  "They bother you?"

  "I'm fixin' to talk about the poor fella behind his back and all, I don't care to have him starin' at me like that."

  The ME shrugged and dropped a sheet over the head and loose parts. Somehow that made it creepier. Melvis could have sworn the shrouded eyes were peering through the thin cloth. He thought he could see the outline of the pupils against the whites.

  "You sayin' absolutely no dope?"

  "No drugs, no liquor. Not even aspirin traces."

  "What about amphetamines? Surely you found some of those. After all, he was a dang engineer. They live on the stuff."

  The ME shook his head in the negative. "No illicit substances in the system."

  "Check the stomach?"

  The ME lifted a clear plastic bag that sagged with a blackish substance.

  "What's that?" Melvis grunted.

  "His last meal. Moo Shi pork."

  "Looks like regurgitated saw grass to me. How can you tell?"

  "Same way I can vouch that the blood is clean. Analysis."

  "Dang, I was countin' on dope."

  "The dead man struck a stalled car. You know just as I do that wasn't his fault."

  "I know that. But why didn't he brake?"

  "He was decapitated."

  "That's the part that bothers the fool out of me, I don't mind sayin'," said Melvis Cupper in the cool fluorescent atmosphere of the county morgue. "There wasn't enough glass in the cab to chop him up like that."

  "Impact forces can sometimes wrench a man's head clean off."

  "I got a good look at the neck stump. Looks like a clean cut. And a wrenched-off head would pull out all manner of plumbin', wouldn't it?"

  The ME frowned. "I must admit you're right about that. Well, there are some factors we haven't accounted for yet."

  "That's what I been sayin', Doc. What happened is plumb inexplicable. That's why I was hopin' it was dope."

  "Drugs wouldn't explain what happened here."

  "Not to you and me. But I gotta tell you, when I run into somethin' I can't otherwise explain away, dope fills the bill. Covers up a wealth of sins and omissions. In fact, I highly recommend it to you."

  "You have a different way of looking at your responsibilities than I do," the ME said firmly as he sheeted the headless nude body.

  "Appreciate you not takin' that tone with me, Doc. I got more of these fandangled derailments these last two, three years than I care to count. There's a big one back East right this minute I'm supposed to look into once I get done here."

  "You'll have to find your answers elsewhere," the ME said formally. "My report will say no drugs in the system. And death by traumatic decapitation."

  "Dang."

  A voice from the suddenly open door asked, "Melvis Cupper in here?"

  "That's me," Melvis said, turning.

  The first one through the door didn't make Melvis's eyebrows quirk up much. He was six footish. On the lean side. Short dark hair and deep-set eyes that sank back into his head so he seemed to have hollows instead of eyes, like on a skull. His wrists were mighty big, though. Reminded Melvis of Popeye the Sailor Man.

  He wasn't Texan. Not in a white T-shirt, tan chinos, fancy leather loafers and no self-respecting hat on his head.

  "Who might you be?" Melvis demanded.

  The man flashed an ID card, identifying him as Remo Renwick from DOT-the Department of Transportation.

  Melvis was handing it back when the second man popped through the swinging door.

  Now, here was an entirely different article. He swam in silvery silk skirts like a lady. But he was a man. Old as sin, too.

  "And this 'un?"

  "Chiun. Derailment specialist on loan from Washington."

  "Him?"

  "Yes," said the little old Asian. "I am very familiar with trains."

  "That so? You don't look much like a railroad man from the cut of your skirts."

  The face of the tiny Asian stiffened. "I am old enough to have ridden steam locomotives."

  "That so? What kind?"

  "My first engine was a Mikado 2-8-2."

  Melvis's eyes popped like white grapes. "You don't say! And where might that have been?"

  "The Kyong-Ji Rail Line."

  "Never heard of it. Must be east of Texas."

  "West. For this train wended its way through my native Korea many years before you were born."

  "Do tell."

  "Can we get on with this?" Remo asked.

  "What's the rush?" Melvis countered.

  "The Department of Transportation is very interested in this derailment."

  "NTSB has it covered. You gents can wait for the official report like everyone else."

  "The preliminary one says drugs."

  Melvis cleared his throat noisily. They had him there. "We just been discussin' that little detail, the doc and me. Ain't that right, Doc?"

  "Drugs are not present in his system," the ME said flatl
y.

  "So much for the preliminary report," Remo Renwick said pointedly.

  "Now, don't get all carried away. We're still compilin' data."

  Remo Renwick drifted over to the dead engineer on the dissection table. "This the engineer?" he asked.

  "Yep. I wouldn't lift that sheet if I was you. It's kinda raw under there."

  Ignoring him, Renwick lifted the sheet, picked up the head and examined it as if it were 4 basketball he was checking for leaks, then tossed it to the old Korean. The little guy caught it as if catching heads was something he did all the time.

  "See now!" the ME protested.

  "Let 'em have their fun," Melvis said. "They look like right ready boys."

  The old one had the head upside down and was looking at the stump. The younger man was poking about the other stump.

  "Check this out, Chiun," he said.

  The little guy drifted up to the neck stump, which was red but bloodless. It had been thoroughly washed and disinfected.

  "Decapitated, plain as day," Melvis said.

  The little guy shook his head. "No."

  "If that isn't decapitation, what is?" Remo asked.

  "I will explain later." His eyes went to Melvis and the ME. "Away from these prying ears."

  "Those are right unfriendly words to use around a fellow public servant."

  "His head came off. That's decapitation," Remo was telling the old Korean.

  "Later," Chiun argued.

  Remo looked Melvis in the eye. "Give me a rundown."

  "You read the preliminary report?"

  "I did. He didn't. Let's hear it."

  "Engineer hit a sport vehicle at the crossing at Big Sandy. Tore the thing apart, dragged it a few miles down the line, then plowed smack into the freight yard at Texarkana. Engineer ended up discombobulated. A lot of rail fouled and boxcars on their side. Not much else to tell."

  "Where did the man lose his head?" asked the little Korean, going right to the jackpot.

  "That answer we ain't exactly shook loose. Some think it was at the crossing." Melvis eyed the ME. "There's others who hold that it came loose in the big freight-yard wreck."

  "What's your opinion?" asked Remo.

  Melvis rocked back on his ostrich-skin boot heels, squeezing his white Stetson in both hands. "I'm reservin' judgment on that particular point."

  "I would like to see the place where this tragedy took place," said Chiun.

  "Which? The first wreck or the big one?"

  "The beginning."

  "Suit yourself. I got a car outside."

  As they started out of the autopsy room, Melvis remembered something. "Doc, you keep that sorry fella on ice. I got me a feelin' we ain't done with his sorry ass just yet."

  On the way out Melvis's hard-bitten attitude softened as he asked Chiun, "You really ride steam locomotives in your youth?"

  "From Kaesong to the railhead at Sinanju. And back. Many times."

  "Man, I was born eighty years too late. I hanker for the clean smell of steam and coal smoke."

  "Steam is heavenly, I agree."

  Remo looked at them both as if they were crazy.

  WHEN THEY RETURNED to the rental car, Remo took the wheel and waited for Chiun to close the passenger door.

  "What's this about steam?"

  "It is my cover," Chiun said airily. "I am conversant with trains."

  "Just let me do the conversing, okay?"

  "We will speak of this later."

  "For crying out loud, we have a fifty-mile drive ahead of us."

  "You drive. I will think."

  "Suit yourself," said Remo, waiting until Melvis pulled out of his parking slot. Then he fell in behind him.

  On the way out of town they drove past the freight yards. A derailment team was putting a boxcar back on the rails with a pair of Caterpillar tractors.

  Chiun craned his neck to see the operation.

  "What are you watching?"

  "It is very interesting to see how they do it in this day and age."

  "Huh?"

  "When I was a youth, oxen were employed."

  "They really had trains in Korea way back then?"

  "Yes. In Pyongyang they were called ki-cha, which means 'steam cars.' We called them cheol-ma."

  Remo blinked as he searched his mind for the English translation.

  "Iron horse?"

  "Yes. We called them iron horses."

  "Funny. That's what the Indians used to call them in the days of the transcontinental railroad."

  "Why should that surprise you, Remo? My ancestors settled this land."

  "Let's not get carried away. Just because one of your ancestors came across the Bering Strait and pitched a tent doesn't mean every Hakawi and Poohawk is Korean."

  "I have been reading of late. Your historians claim that America was settled by Koreans."

  "Tell that to Leif Eriksson. Or Columbus, for that matter."

  "It is true. This was a barren land until Koreans came. We conquered the wilderness to live in harmony with the land. Until the evil white man came, despoiling all."

  "You been watching that Kevin Costner series again?"

  "He actually wept when describing the horrors whites inflicted upon my ancestors' noble Cheyenne cousins."

  "He could use an egoectomy," Remo grumbled.

  "I am thinking of petitioning Emperor Smith for the return of my ancestors' stolen lands."

  "Never happen."

  "Oh, I do not want it all, Remo. Just all the land west of the Kutsen River."

  "Where?" asked Remo, recalling kutsen was Korean for "muddy."

  "You occupiers call it the Mississippi," Chiun sniffed.

  "Save us all a world of grief. Don't even bring it up."

  "Only the land closest to Korea is of interest to me, Remo. I do not think my ancestors traveled very far west, I do not recognize the eyes of the Powatans or the Mohawks. I suspect them of being Mongol vagabonds."

  "Pocahontas was a Mongol? Is that what you're saying?"

  "I defy you to find a trace of Koreanness in that tart's face," sniffed Chiun.

  They followed Melvis's car through piney scrub hills. Oil-derrick farms bristled here and there. Finally they turned off onto a dirt road that ran alongside a rail bed. A freight train barreled by, and the Master of Sinanju's eyes went to it. A faint smile came to his thin lips.

  "What are you looking at?" Remo asked.

  Chiun sighed. "There is something about a train."

  "You weren't kidding him back there?"

  "I admit it. I am a buff."

  "I admit it. I couldn't care less about trains. They're slow, noisy and they take too long. And I'm surprised you don't share that opinion."

  "Barbarian. You have never known the sublime joys of steam."

  "Cross my heart and hope to avoid it, too. I thought the only steam you cared about fluffed your rice."

  "Have I never told you of my first train ride, Remo?"

  "Yeah. No need to plow old ground. We have a busy day ahead of us"

  "No, I insist."

  "Look, you told it to me. I know it by heart. Give it a rest."

  "Excellent," said Chiun, beaming. "Now, you tell it to me."

  "Why do you want to hear your own story back?"

  "Because I would like to savor the memory without the distraction of having to recount the details."

  Remo said, "Tell me why that engineer wasn't decapitated and I'll tell you your story back."

  "I will think about it," Chiun said vaguely.

  And Remo smiled thinly. He had gotten out of a tough one. He couldn't remember Chiun's railroad story to save his life.

  THE CROSSING at Big Sandy bore few signs that an accident had occurred. Fresh gravel lay in the rail bed, mixed in with older, rain-discolored ballast. The rails gleamed unbroken.

  Melvis Cupper stood at trackside as he explained things. "SP hauler hit the sport vehicle along this stretch. Broke it apart and carried it three miles east, thro
win' off sparks and hot steel."

  "What happened to the driver?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "No one knows."

  "Anybody run the plate?"

  "Never found a dang plate."

  "Isn't that kinda strange?"

  "Like I said, metal was Hang off for three miles. It's probably in the bluebonnets somewhere."

  Remo looked at the tracks. They were sunk flush with the ground. Wooden sections lay on both sides of the track for the convenience of crossing vehicles.

  "Rail's not very high."

  "Yeah. That's so the cars can mosey across."

  "Looks to me like you'd have to have four flats to stall out on this spot."

  "Maybe he run out of gas."

  Remo looked at Melvis Cupper. "You're full of easy answers."

  "After this I gotta head east to look into that Amtrak spillover. I got my hands full. This was a common freight derailment. One dead hogger. No frontpage headlines. Gotta file it, forget it and move on. Way things are pickin' up, there's more comin'."

  Remo noticed the Master of Sinanju lying down beside the rails. He placed one fragile ear to the rail, closing his eyes.

  "Is he doing what I think he's doing?" Remo asked Melvis.

  "Does my heart proud to see a foreigner who comprehends high iron. Way the Asiatics are floodin' in, you'd think the old ways are not long for this sorry world."

  Remo said nothing.

  Having satisfied himself that no train was coming, Chiun stood up and began walking the track.

  "I guess we walk," said Remo.

  They walked. The hot Texas sun beat down, and Melvis Cupper adjusted his Stetson, saying, "You boys really ought to get yourselves hatted up Texas style. Do you a world of good."

  "Pass," said Remo,

  "What about you, old fella?"

  "I have known many summers. I do not fear the sun." His eyes were fixed on the ties.

  "Suit yourself. But sunstroke ain't nothin' to wish away."

  When they came to the section of track where the wood ties were scorched from the sport-vehicle gas tank going up, Chiun abruptly left the rail bed.

  "Where we goin' now?" Melvis asked Remo.

  "Where he goes."

  "That don't answer my interrogative, as we say in east Texas."

  "Learn to go with the flow," suggested Remo.

  Chiun came to a flurry of footprints. He stooped, examining these. Remo watched him.