Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78

by Warren Murphy

  Chiun placed the flat of his hand to the wall. He closed his eyes and there was a long silence in the room.

  "It is cool to the touch," he said, opening his eyes. "Cool, but not cold."

  "I don't understand," Robin said.

  "There is often a cold spot in hauntings such as this."

  "Hauntings!" Robin exploded. "Wait a minute. I didn't say anything about ghosts." She turned on Remo, her eyes striking sparks. "I thought you said he was a technical consultant. What's this chickenshit about a haunting?"

  "Process of elimination," Remo said quickly. "He's just eliminating a few of the less likely possibilities. He's very thorough. Honest."

  "I don't believe in ghosts," Robin Green said firmly. "I never reported a ghost. I reported what I saw, nothing more, nothing less. I have a career with the Air Force, buster, and I'm not going to have my hard-earned clearances jerked because of some pint-sized Charlie Chan in a silk housedress."

  "You are very excited for someone with nothing to hide," Chiun said levelly.

  41

  Robin Green turned to find that the tiny Korean was suddenly behind her.

  "Look," she told him. "It took me three solid days of convincing before they let me continue this investigation. I had to pull strings like crazy, and I would never have agreed to outside help, but it was either compromise or die. I like the Air Force. I want to stay in it. I don't want to end up in a rubber room because my superiors think I've been seeing spooks."

  "Remo, please tell this woman to lower her voice," Chiun said imperiously. "She is disturbing the delicate vibrations of this room." He turned on his heel.

  The Master of Sinanju made a circuit of the room, sniffing the air delicately.

  "This is scientific?" Robin Green asked Remo.

  "He has the nose of a bloodhound," Remo answered. "What do you smell, Little Father?"

  Chiun's button nose wrinkled up. "Tobacco smoke. It is ruining everything."

  "This was Risko's room," Robin explained. "He was a smoker. Poor guy."

  "Did he die?" Remo asked.

  "Worse. They put him in charge of special projects and transferred him to Loring Air Force Base."

  "That doesn't sound so terrible."

  "Special-projects duty is reserved for launch-control officers weirded-out from being down in the hole too long and other emotional basket cases the Air Force is afraid to turn loose on the civilian population."

  "Oh," Remo said, understanding.

  "Pah!" Chiun said in disgust, joining them in the corridor. "Take me to the other places."

  At the walk-in freezer, Robin Green calmly explained how, on four successive nights, she had sat in front of the big stainless-steel door waiting for the thief. "No one ever came near the place," she said. "That door was never opened, not even to inspect it during my watch. Yet steaks were missing each time."

  42

  Remo pulled on the freezer-door handle and looked in. The interior was like a refrigerator, except that a person could walk into it.

  Robin Green took them to the rear, where the meats were racked. There were several thick steaks on a shelf.

  "See?" she said, condensation coming from her mouth. "There's only one door. Only one way in or out. Yet somehow he-it . . . whoever-got in. And out again. It's purely impossible! How'd he pull it off, with blue smoke and mirrors?"

  "Spirits do not smoke," Chiun muttered audibly as he stalked around the freezer, sniffing.

  "Smell anything, Little Father?"

  "No, it smells of dead animals. There is no live scent here."

  "Never mind the scent," Robin Green spat. "What about getting in and out again? If there was ever a locked-room mystery in real life, this is it."

  "This would pose no problem for a spirit," Chiun announced. "They are allowed to come and go as they desire. It is part of being a ghost."

  "There he goes again," Robin said. She turned to Remo. "Look, you, tell me that this isn't going to turn into some kind of circus."

  "Hey, don't talk to me, talk to him," Remo protested. "This is his show. I'm just an understudy."

  "All right, you," Robin said, turning to Chiun. "Let's get this ghost thing out of the way right now. One: there is no such animal. No ghosts, no phantoms, no spooks, no specters or apparitions. Two: ghosts-even if they did exist-aren't substantial. They might be able to walk through a wall, but they sure can't lift a steak, any more than I could kiss a bear. And three: even if we allow for one and two, what would a ghost want with several porterhouse steaks, two pairs of size-thirty-two Calvin Klein stone-washed jeans, and an assortment of Minuteman missile parts ranging from

  43

  a complete guidance package to an arming and fusing system?"

  Chiun paused, his mouth half-open. He shut it. He frowned.

  "She's got you there, Chiun."

  Chiun lifted his troubled features.

  "Show me the place from which these parts disappeared."

  "Come on," Robin Green said, stomping off. Remo followed at a decorous distance.

  "She is very excitable," Chiun remarked.

  "You're one to talk. And what do you think of what she said? A ghost wouldn't have any use for all that stuff."

  "Korean ghosts, no. American ghosts, about which I am less conversant, may be a different matter. When my investigation is completed, I may be able to offer a correct and reasonable explanation for why an American ghost would have a need for such things."

  "That alone might be worth the trip," Remo said with a chuckle.

  But his chuckle died as they followed Robin Green down the corridor. A Klaxon suddenly broke into song. And suddenly the halls were filled with running uniforms and worried faces.

  Robin broke into a run. She flung herself into the FSC's office.

  "What is it? What's happening?" she demanded.

  "Trouble at Fox-4. We got a cooking bird!"

  "Oh, my God!"

  She pushed past Remo and Chiun as if they weren't there.

  "Come on, Chiun," Remo called. They followed her out of the building. She jumped behind the wheel of Remo's jeep and got the starter working.

  Remo jumped into the passenger seat, and as the jeep screeched around, heading for the gate, Remo shot a look back and saw that Chiun was running after

  44

  them. He hopped aboard, and perched on top of his trunk. He clutched his stovepipe hat to keep it from blowing off.

  "I suppose it's too much to hope you're not this excited because someone left a Thanksgiving turkey in the microwave too long?" Remo shouted.

  Robin Green sent the jeep tearing through the gate. It rolled back just in time.

  "A 'cooking bird' means that we've got a missile about to launch itself," she bit out.

  "That's what I was afraid of," Remo said as rows of corn flashed past like fleeing multitudes.

  4

  The Minuteman III missile in the underground silo designated Fox-4 had been ANORS for two days.

  Captain Caspar Auton couldn't have been happier. ANORS meant Assumed Non-operational. A computer in the underground launch facility indicated that the bird had developed a glitch. No one knew what the glitch was, but no one was worried. At any given time, five percent of American nuclear missiles were on either NORS or ANORS status-they were down or assumed to be nonoperational. It happened with a certain regularity because these devices were so complicated.

  Captain Caspar Auton was launch-control officer for Fox-4. He wore the gold launch key around his neck. So did his status officer, Captain Estelle McCrone. She sat at a launch-status console identical to Auton's. It was only twelve feet away in the narrow equipment-packed room. They were paired together as part of the Air Force's new female integration program, in which women officers were paired with men wherever possible. Despite spending eight hours a day, three days a week with Captain McCrone, Auton barely knew her. Which was fine with him. She had a hatchet face and a body like a Bangladesh train wreck.

  It wasn't tha
t Auton had anything against ugly captains. It was just that he had no desire to spend his last minutes on earth in the company of one.

  45

  46

  When the female integration program was first announced, the other male launch officers joked that when the time came, they would do their duty, then get down on the floor with their female officers and indulge in a quickie before being incinerated in their underground launch-control room.

  In time of war, or when the balloon went up, as it was euphemistically known, it would be Captains Auton and McCrone's duty to remove their keys from around their necks, insert them into the paired consoles, and, after inputting the proper presidential launch codes, simultaneously turn the keys. This action would launch the Minuteman III in the nearby silo.

  Today, receiving presidential authorization was far from Captain Auton's mind. He sat at his console doing crossword puzzles. He was on duty because even though the bird was ANORS, there was no way to confirm this until a technician looked it over. If a launch was called for, it was reasoned that there was no harm in attempting to launch the defective birds too. Nobody was going to be alive fifteen minutes after a first strike was called anyway. So what difference did it make?

  But Captain Auton was nevertheless in a relaxed mood. He was trying to figure out a six-letter synonym for "frigid." With a mischievous smile, he penciled in the name "Estelle." The final E didn't fit, so he erased it and tried again.

  He glanced over at Captain McCrone to see if she noticed his smile, when he saw her start suddenly. Her pinched face went white. Dead white. The blood seemed to go right out of it. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

  Then Auton noticed that his status board had lit up.

  "L-1-launch sequence initiated!" McCrone sputtered.

  "Stay calm," Auton called over. "Remember your training. We get these from time to time. We'll go through standard launch-inhibit tasks."

  47

  Frantically Auton activated a timer. According to the loose-leaf operating manual that always lay open before him, when the timer completed its short cycle, the launch sequence would be overriden.

  But when the rimer stopped, there was no change. The digital launch countdown was still going.

  "Mine didn't take," Auton called hoarsely.

  "Nothing's happening on my board either," McCrone said shrilly.

  "Digiswitches! Let's go."

  Flipping through his manual, Auton found the lockout codes, and with both hands reset ten small black thumb-wheel digiswitch knobs to the designated number sequences.

  Nothing.

  "I hope to hell you have some good news for me, McCrone," Auton said. "Because I got none for you."

  "No," McCrone choked out. "What do we do?"

  "Keep trying!" But Auton knew it was of no use. His board wasn't responding. The computer commands were just not taking. Somehow. Despite every fail-safe and backup. He picked up a phone handset and called the LCF.

  "Situation, sir. We have a launch enable going here. We can't override."

  "Keep trying," he was told. "We'll do what we can from here."

  "He says keep trying," Captain Auton shouted, as he worked frantically. He couldn't understand it. His key was still around his neck. No codes had been entered. Yet the big bird was about to fly. A panel light lit up, indicating the silo roof was blowing back. She was going to fly for sure. And the last thing on Captain Auton's mind was rolling around on the floor with his status officer.

  He was in a white staring panic.

  The silo roof was a two-hundred-ton concrete form

  48

  set on dual steel tracks. Dynamite charges exploded, sending it shooting along those tracks as the jeep carrying Remo, Chiun, and OSI Special Agent Robin Green cleared the protective fence and bore down on the now-exposed silo in a swirling tunnel of dirt.

  "The roof's blowing back!" Robin cried. She pressed down on the accelerator. The silo hatch slammed into the sandbag bulwark at the end of its short track, stopping cold.

  "Shouldn't we be driving in the opposite direction?" Remo wondered aloud.

  "Get ready to jump."

  "What?"

  "Jump! Now!" Robin cried.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Just jump," Robin repeated. "Both of you!"

  Remo started to turn around. "What do you think, Chiun?"

  But Chiun wasn't there. Remo saw him alight in a puff of road dust. His lacquered trunk was floating down beside him. With quick movements Chiun grabbed it by one brass handle and spun like a top, redirecting its fall. It landed intact when Chiun eased it out of its orbit.

  "Are you going to jump too?" Remo asked Robin.

  "If I can. Now, go!"

  "Suit yourself," Remo said, pushing himself out of his seat. He hung momentarily to the jeep body like a paratrooper about to hurl himself into space. In an instant, Remo's eyes read the speed of the ground moving under him, calculated the velocity with a formula that had nothing to do with mathematics, and flung himself into a ball. He spun in the air, and when he threw out his limbs, his left foot touched the ground, dug in, and Remo went cartwheeling like an acrobat. When his centrifugal force dissipated, Remo found himself standing on solid ground. He watched Robin Green send the jeep barreling toward the open silo.

  49

  Remo knew the missile lay just below the ground level, even if he couldn't see it.

  The jeep raced for the silo rim. When it was on the verge of going in, and only then, Robin Green jumped.

  The driverless jeep vaulted the rim, seemed to hang in the air, wheels spinning over the big circular maw, and flew like a brick. Straight down.

  Remo flattened out and covered his head. He waited.

  There was no explosion. The sound was more like a car crash. Then there was silence, except for the jeep's motor, which continued racing.

  Remo looked back and saw that Chiun was anxiously examining his trunk. Robin Green had rolled into the shelter of an angled flame-deflector vent, and lay there with her arms clamped over her bright red hair. Presently she crawled to the silo and peered down.

  "It's okay!" she called back to him.

  She was on her feet and dusting off her blue uniform when Remo sauntered up to her.

  He looked down into the silo. The jeep had struck the missle's white reentry vehicle and pushed it in like a punched nose. It was now wedged between the missile and the yellow silo walls, hung up on a tangle of black imbilical cables, its rear wheels spinning at high speed.

  "That was pretty slick," Remo said admiringly as Robin shook dust from her hair.

  "We do this all the time," she said distractedly.

  "You do?"

  "You'd be amazed how often we have near-launches."

  "I sure would," Remo said, taking another look at the missile. It was huge. Downturned floodlights illuminated its entire length. "No chance it will launch?"

  "They usually don't, but we can't take any chances. Normally we get here in time to drive a jeep or truck onto the roof hatch. The weight is enough to keep the hatch from blowing. The system is programmed not to

  50

  launch until the hatch clears. But this one went through the sequence pretty damn fast."

  "Well, that's that," Remo said casually.

  "Not really. We gotta find out what caused this. And we'd better get clear anyway."

  "Why?"

  "Just come on."

  Remo shrugged, and followed her. As they walked away, the silo suddenly erupted.

  Remo hit the dirt, taking Robin with him. He looked back and there was a boiling black worm of smoke emerging from the silo. The flash had been momentary.

  "What the hell was that?" Remo asked, openmouthed.

  "The jeep went up," Robin said laconically.

  "As long as it was only the jeep," Remo said as he started to climb to his feet. He offered her his hand.

  "And what's the idea of knocking me down like that?" she said, slapping Remo's han
d away. She grabbed it after she struck him. "Owwwww! You're harder than you look, for such a skinny guy."

  "Special diet," Remo said, grinning.

  "Just keep your cotton-picking hands to yourself, okay? I'm a trained professional. I don't like doors being opened for me or any of that chickenshit. I pull my own weight."

  "More than your own weight," Remo said sincerely.

  "If that's some kind of sexist remark about my bosom, I'll have you know I had heard every breast joke ever created before I was fifteen. Twice."

  "Hey." Remo said. "I didn't mean it like that."

  "Sure, sure."

  "No. Really. Honest."

  "Save it for your report to Congress."

  They approached the Master of Sinanju in awkward silence.

  Chastened, Remo attempted to lighten the mood.

  "Did you see what Robin just did, Little Father? She kept the missile from launching. Pretty brave, huh?"

  51

  "She is an imbecile," Chiun spat. "I nearly lost my trunk. It has been in my family since the days of Yui, my grandfather. Has she no respect for the property of others?"

  "What did you want me to do?" Robin hurled back. "It was a nuclear emergency!"

  "You might have stopped to let me off."

  "There was no time!" Robin sputtered. "If that bird had gone up, the launch plume would have incinerated us all anyway."

  "I am not interested in your lame excuses," Chiun retorted. "Remo, you will carry my trunk. Let us see what we can do to prevent further atrocities such as nearly happened here."

  Robin Green watched the tiny Oriental walk huffily down the dusty access road, her mouth hanging Open. She shut it and put a question to Remo:

  "Did he understand one iota of what almost happened here?"

  "Probably. Who knows? One thing I've learned is to avoid arguing with him. I never win. You won't either."

  "I'll take that as a challenge," Robin said, starting off after the Master of Sinanju.

  "Wonderful," Remo muttered under his breath as he hoisted the big trunk across his thin shoulders. "I think all my troubles just went ballistic."

  5

  The Fox-4 silo could be reached from a fenced-off access hatch in the middle of an oat field. Robin Green led Remo and Chiun down this and into the underground Field Maintenance building. They had no special clearance to enter the silo itself. So while the necessary red tape was being cut, Robin left Remo and Chiun in the missile-parts storage area.