Terminal Transmission td-93

by Warren Murphy

  "Then we're not slipping you anything," snapped Doppler.

  "First man who slips me a readable front page will be interviewed on my next newscast."

  Paper started cramming and bunching up under the door so fast it tore. Don Cooder pulled pieces free and began to assemble them on the studio floor like a jigsaw puzzle.

  A headline read:

  TV BLACKED OUT!

  Is Captain Audion Don Cooder?

  Another said:

  NO NEWS FIT TO BROADCAST

  Newsprint Makes a Comeback

  "Let us in, Don."

  But Don Cooder wasn't hearing the pleading of his colleagues. He was looking at a sidebar story that showed a photograph of St. Clare of Assisi, two hundred feet high, standing atop a mountain in Canada.

  "I've changed my mind," he said suddenly. "You can both broadcast."

  And he flung open the door.

  Tim Macaw and Ned Doppler plowed in and tackled the anchor seat like opposing linebackers.

  They were literally pulling it and their clothing apart in their frenzy to be the first to plant his posterior in the rickety bentwood chair, as Don Cooder, a feverish gleam in his eyes, slipped out the building bundled up in a belted trenchcoat, dark glasses, and Borsalino hat.

  No one in the growing crowd surrounding the big TV screen overlooking Times Square noticed him as he ducked into an idle cab.

  "Kennedy Airport, driver," he bit out.

  "Wanna wait another minute, pal? Don Cooder should be back on any second now."

  "Don Cooder does not wait for Don Cooder. Drive on, driver."

  Chapter 33

  At the BCN studio lobby, security had been tripled in the wake of the death of rival anchor Dieter Banning.

  "We're looking for Don Cooder," Remo told the ring of guards who looked at him with hands on holstered revolver grips.

  One shouted, "Look, isn't that Wing Wang Wo, the Korean Dragon!"

  The Master of Sinanju saw the finger pointing at him and naturally looked over his shoulder.

  There was no one there.

  "What is this, Remo?" he demanded.

  "A long story," Remo whispered. "Look, we admit it. That's who he is. And if you don't want to end up separated from your head, you'll tell us where to find Don Cooder."

  "He's missing."

  "I heard he was broadcasting," said Remo.

  "Yeah. From Times Square. But he deserted his post."

  "Damn."

  At a payphone, Remo called Smith. "Cooder took a powder. No one knows where he went."

  "One minute, Remo."

  The clicking of computer keys came over the line.

  "According to his telephone records, he has not used his home telephone today. Nor his office telephone." More keys clicked. Then:

  "According to his credit cards records, Don Cooder took a five o'clock flight to Montreal, Canada, connecting with Fort Chimo in Northern Quebec."

  "He's our man!"

  "Do not jump to conclusions. Remember Dieter Banning."

  "Here, you tell it to Chiun," said Remo, handing the phone to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Master Chiun, I am ordering you to Canada," said Harold Smith.

  "Speak their names and their heads will be yours by nightfall," Chiun cried.

  "I do not want heads. I want answers. Kill no one unless provoked. Now put Remo back on."

  "What's our next move, Smitty?"

  "Remo. Go to MacGuire Air Force Base. An Air Mobility Command transport will be waiting for you. I am sending you to Quebec."

  "What do you think we're going to find?"

  "I do not know. But that statue is squarely on the parallel of latitude line and it is also in the area where there had been a rash of missing car batteries."

  "How would car batteries fit into this?"

  "That is only one of the answers I expect you to find. Good luck, Remo."

  After Remo hung up, he faced the waiting Master of Sinanju.

  "You have been telling fables about me, again," Chiun accused.

  "Save it. We're off to Quebec. And there's a good chance we'll find out what happened to Cheeta when we get there."

  The Master of Sinanju raised clenched fists and a voice like distilled grief to the open sky. "Cheeta! Do not despair, precious one. We are coming to succor you!"

  Cheeta Ching was past despair. She was beyond agony. Being flayed by rusty razor blades would be infinitely preferable to the exquisite tortures that were wracking her sweat-soaked body.

  She was in her sixteenth hour of labor. Her swollen, jittering belly felt like it was trying to launch into orbit using her splayed legs as launch rails.

  If only the damned brat would come out.

  "Come on, you little bastard!" she grunted between contractions. "Get out of here or I'll pull you out by your miserable scrotum!"

  The door opened and the figure of Captain Audion pushed in. He was lugging a car battery which he added to a growing pile.

  "Can I get y'all any little thang?" he asked, turning the blacked-out screen of his square head in Cheeta's direction.

  "Yes," Cheeta said through clenched teeth. "A coat hanger."

  "Say what?"

  "I going to abort this useless little dink if it's the last thing I do!"

  "Settle for a jackknife?"

  Don Cooder was arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables the moment he opened his passport for the Montreal customs inspector.

  "You can't do this to me. I'm Don Cooder. Premier anchor of our age."

  "The charges will include extortion, interfering with the airwaves of a sovereign nation, espionage, and air piracy," said the RCMP sergeant, whose serge coat was a disappointing brown, not scarlet.

  "Air piracy? Captain Audion didn't hijack any planes-did he?"

  "Then you admit that you are Captain Audion?"

  "That dog won't hunt and you know it," Cooder snapped.

  The constables stared at him, eyes unreadable under their big yellow-banded hats.

  "Would Don Cooder, if he were Captain Audion, telecast his own face to the world?" Don Cooder challenged.

  "Whose own face?" he was asked.

  "Don Cooder's."

  The constables looked at one another.

  "Yes, he would," they said in unison.

  "Why would he-I mean I-do that? Were I not me, that is?"

  "Ratings," said one.

  "Ego," added the other.

  "How can there be ratings when all TV is blacked out?" Cooder returned.

  The sergeant said, "Perhaps the judge will have a theory."

  "Look, I've entered your country to expose Captain Audion for who he is."

  "And who is he, if not you?"

  "I can't say."

  The Mounties took him roughly by the elbows.

  "Wait. Wait. I can't say publicly. It would be libel."

  They continued along, despite Cooder's dragging heels.

  "But I could broadcast it," he added.

  The constables stopped.

  "See," Cooder explained. "it's libel if I accuse him without proof, but if I unmask him on television, it will be news. A different kind of libel altogether. Legal libel."

  "How can you do that with all television out of commission?"

  "That's the tremendous part. I think I know where the transmitter is. We can go there with a remote uplink, knock out the transmitter, and broadcast the unmasking. It will be the ratings sensation of all time!"

  "We will have to let the judge decide this."

  The judge listened patiently.

  "The man is mad!" he exploded.

  "He has that reputation," one of the constables said dryly.

  Frowning, the judge addressed Don Cooder.

  "Your story is preposterous. I will ask you to divulge your suspicions and leave this matter to Federal troops."

  Don Cooder pretended the judge was a camera lens and fixed him with unflinching eyes. "I stand on my first amendment rights."

&
nbsp; "Well spoken. Except that you are standing on Canadian soil, and have no such rights. And please do not insult this court by suggesting that you are innocent until proven guilty, We subscribe to the Napoleonic code here. You are guilty until proven innocent."

  "Then I stand on my principles as a journalist and a Texan-not necessarily in that order."

  "Then I have no choice but to remand you into custody."

  "You're a mean man in a knife fight, judge. But if you do like I say you're bound to land in tall cotton."

  The judge looked to his constables. Everyone shrugged.

  In the end, he relented. His country was at loggerheads with the United States of America, and everyone wanted the crisis to end. If only to restore good programming to the people of Canada.

  "You will be shackled during every moment of the quest," he warned in his sternest voice.

  Don Cooder grinned happily. "No problem. Just tell the cameraman not to shoot below my clavicle."

  Chapter 34

  Captain Roger Nodell understood the mission.

  Fly from point A to point B, and drop off two passengers.

  He just didn't understand what the hell he was doing in an FB-111 Stealth bomber violating Canadian airspace.

  Oh, he could take a wild stab and guess it had something to do with the broadcast blackout that had the northern hemisphere tied in knots. That part was easy. But what the hell did it mean? The Canadians were blaming Washington. Some nut with a TV set for a head was taking all the credit, there was panic in the streets, the military was on the highest state of alert, and here he was flying across the Hudson Strait into Quebec.

  As he passed south of Baffin Island, he turned on his radio.

  Captain Audion was speaking in a voice that sounded like a synthesized version of Don Cooder's voice. If he wasn't going off the deep end, he was doing a great imitation.

  "I know something I can't tell. Nah Nah Nah . . ."

  Nodell turned off his radio. It was like this all over. Every frequency from the CB bands to the military channels was masked by the unauthorized transmission. It was screwing up the already jittery upper echelons.

  So he flew on over the most godforsaken desolation he had ever seen. There was literally no place to land for miles around. It was all hard rock and frozen lake chains and some kind of swampy green stuff they told him was called muskeg.

  After a while he asked his copilot to take over, and Captain Nodell went back to speak with his mysterious civilian passengers.

  He found them arguing over, of all things, television personalities.

  "Jed Burner is behind this," the Caucasian was saying. "I saw him kidnap Cheeta with my own eyes."

  "Wrong!" the old Asian in black snapped back. "Don Cooder is the villain. He has revealed himself and so must die."

  "Nobody famous is going to die. Those are our orders. One Dieter Banning is enough."

  Then they noticed him and lapsed into a sullen silence.

  "So far, we're doing okay," Nodell told them. "The Royal Canadian Air Force hasn't scrambled a single bird."

  "The barbarians," snapped the old Oriental.

  "Excuse me, sir?"

  "It is bad enough to scramble the eggs of fowl. But to subject the poor mother birds to such torture is typical of Canadian cruelty."

  Nodell chewed his cheek while trying to think of a proper response, but nothing came.

  "The radio's still bollixed up," he said. "We're maintaining our assigned heading and keeping our eyes peeled."

  "Good," said the Caucasian.

  "So, where are we going?" Nodell asked.

  "Look for a mountain with a nun in white standing on it."

  "A what?"

  The civilian passed him a folded newspaper clipping, and asked, "Think you can spot that from the air?"

  "If I miss this," Nodell said, looking at the photograph, "I should be shot for dereliction of duty."

  "That will never happen," said the Oriental.

  "Glad to hear it."

  "I will personally fling you from this aircraft if you embarrass us."

  Nodell started to crack a grin, but the civilian added, "He means it."

  Captain Nodell decided two pairs of eyes were needed in the cockpit. The casual manner in which the tiny little Asian man was using his long fingernails to score the titanium floor made him nervous.

  Harold W. Smith monitored the steady stream of data flowing in from across the nation.

  He was limited in what he could gather. Without broadcast television or radio, news traveled slowly. He had sent a security guard out for an extra. They were appearing every two hours, like clockwork, fat as the Manhattan Yellow Pages.

  Meanwhile, Smith monitored computer bulletin boards. They were all choked with reports, some obviously spurious.

  One interesting report came out of A. C. Neilson.

  It seemed that in certain localities, people had begun to watch their TVs again. Some of it was the curiosity factor of the bizarre spectacle of Captain Audion. But in localities where reception consisted of snow, they were watching, too. Watching in numbers that were estimated to be greater than regular programming.

  BCN, for example, was enjoying its best ratings in five years.

  But that minor quirk paled before the magnitude of the growing crisis. The stock market had lost over a hundred points in anticipation of a long television siege and the resulting body blow to the national economy.

  The word had gotten out that Alaska lay outside the interference zone, and airlines were so overbooked by citizens eager to relocate to the only state in the union still serviced by regular programming that they had quadrupled ticket prices.

  Professional sports was at a standstill. The commissioner of baseball instituted an emergency moratorium on all games, pending the resumption of commercial broadcasting.

  Irate fans, egged on by ringleaders later identified as bookies, picketed TV stations in all major cities.

  They had to fight for sidewalk space. Angry soap opera addicts-mostly housewives-usually got there first.

  In most cities, the soap opera addicts forced the sports fans to retreat behind police lines, where they felt safe.

  National Guard units had been activated in eight states to help keep order. The President was considering federalizing guard elsewhere.

  It was, Smith knew, just the beginning. Unless Remo and Chiun could come through for America.

  Chapter 35

  The Master of Sinanju looked up, tension on his face, as the American captain stomped clod-footed into the rear of the bomber.

  "We've spotted it!" he exclaimed.

  "Great," said Remo.

  "Land," said Chiun.

  "We can't land. You two are supposed to be airdropped. Those were my instructions."

  The Master of Sinanju arose from his place in the center of the great bomb bay. He padded up to the captain who, although young, towered over him.

  Chiun reached up as if to take a speck of fluff from the callow one's chin. The movement was swift and it brought swift results.

  "Ow ow ow!" said the captain, dropping to his knees as the exquisite sharpness of Sinanju-hardened fingernails met with his earlobe caught between them.

  "Better change your mind," Remo said. "I saw him do that for three hours straight once. The guy had to be committed afterward."

  "Okay, okay! We'll land."

  Chiun released the young captain. "Thank you," he said and returned to his place on the floor.

  Soon, soon, he would find Cheeta Ching. If only it was not too late . . .

  Harold Smith's hand seized the red telephone before the first ring had stopped.

  "Yes, Mr. President?"

  "The Secret Service has finished interrogating an ANC employee they caught sabotaging one of their microwave relay towers. He's given up his employer."

  "Who is it?"

  "A man I've never heard of. Frank Feldmeyer."

  "Frank Feldmeyer is the science editor for the Broad
cast Corporation of North America," Smith said grimly. "He would have the technical background to engineer this operation."

  "This is like a bad mystery story. The villain is someone no one would have suspected."

  "We have not yet determined that he is Captain Audion. He may be a lieutenant."

  "Maybe there isn't a Captain Audion. This guy on my set looks like a cross between Don Cooder and Max Headroom's second cousin."

  "I'm sorry. Mr. President. I do not understand the reference."

  The President started to explain, and when Smith realized it was some irrelevant trivia, he cut him off.

  "Does the Secret Service have a line on Frank Feldmeyer?" Smith asked.

  "No. BCN management tell me he's on vacation."

  "Where?"

  "Quebec is all they have."

  "Thank you, Mr. President. Keep me informed and I will do the same."

  Smith returned to his computer, his dry features concerned. It was going to be difficult working with a president who had no foreign experience and watched pointless popular television programs.

  He returned to his prowling of BCN employee records. One by one he had been identifying those who had been placed in other networks and alerting the Secret Service to pick them up. A number had already confessed . . .

  The RCMP cars had been trundling south of Fort Chimo for three hours. They had flown up from Montreal in an official De Havilland Otter and transferred to RCMP cars.

  In the back of the lead car, shackled hand and foot, Don Cooder sat ramrod straight, unflinching, unafraid.

  "This," he said, "is going to be the biggest story since Hurricane Andrew. That will go down in broadcast history as one of Don Cooder's finest hours. Makes me feel young again. Like Hurricane Carla, back in '61. I cut my teeth on that blow. But this is bigger than any old hurricane."

  The RCMP guards were growing bored. One yawned.

  "Are there any trees around these parts?" Don Cooder asked suddenly.

  "Why do you ask, Yank?" asked the major in charge of the search. His voice was guttural in its French accent.

  "Even an anchor has to take a leak from time to time."

  The Mounties broke out into peals of rough-hewn laughter.

  Don Cooder smiled sheepishly.

  He was still smiling when they escorted him to a gully, their .38 caliber Smith volvers holstered and flapped at their sides.

  Stopping to unzip, Cooder said, "Mind turning your backs? Bashful kidney."