Laboriously, the carrier got underway, its massive tires gouging and chewing the soft earth. A smaller truck followed in its wake, and was in turn tailed by an unobtrusive stepvan. The three vehicles joined up with a number of others on the main road and formed a slow column.
"Wait a minute!" Martin said, grabbing Amanda's field glasses. "Let me— Hah! I was right. Look— on the side of the thing like a delivery truck."
Amanda looked. "So? It's some symbol or some—"
"That's the symbol for nuclear stuff. You see them on fallout shelters all the time."
"So what?" Amanda snapped, pulling at her nose.
"I'll bet the warhead is in that small truck! Sure, they wouldn't load the whole missile if the warhead was still attached. It would be too dangerous."
"I think Martin is right, Amanda," Ethel said loudly. She was beginning to like Martin. And he was single.
"Quiet," said Amanda, who didn't like the idea of Martin being right about something for the second time in two days. "Even if that's true, we're still going to have to take on that whole group of trucks and soldiers."
But a moment later, they all saw the moving column divide, with the small truck that presumably bore the warhead taking another fork.
"This is our chance, everyone!" Amanda shouted. "Back to the van. We're going to head that truck off."
Even at a dead run, it took a while to return to the waiting van, which was outside the military cordon. Then they had to figure out where the truck was going in order to intercept it.
"Go south, and take the second exit," Martin told Amanda. "That should take us exactly where we want to be. You know, I'll bet they deliberately sent the warhead off in another direction. You know, that missile truck is so big, it's bound to attract attention. But who's going to notice a dinky little truck?"
Amanda pushed the accelerator to 80. "Maybe," she said.
There was no sign of the truck in question when they reached the road where they expected it to show up. Amanda stopped, and swerved the van so it blocked the road.
"Okay," she said. "Weapons at the ready. We'll just wait for it."
"I've a better idea," Martin said.
"I don't want to hear it," Amanda growled.
"But what's to stop the truck from backing up and going the other way when they see us?"
That made sense even to Amanda, who was doing a slow burn. Why were men such egotists, she asked herself. Always showing off and grabbing at the credit for everything.
"We'll split up and hide on either side of the road," Amanda said quickly, before anyone could make another suggestion, "then jump out and surround them when they stop."
"I was going to suggest that," Martin said.
"I'll bet you were," Amanda said sarcastically. "C'mon, let's get to it."
They got to it, and before long the stepvan with the black-circle-and-three-yellow-triangle symbol for nuclear energy rolled into sight. It stopped close to the gaudy FOES van, and the driver honked his horn twice sharply.
When half a dozen armed commandos jumped out of the trees, he stopped honking and threw the gears into reverse. A bullet knocked the passenger window all over the cab, and he ceased that effort, too. He threw up his hands as the black-clad group surrounded him.
"I'm unarmed," he called out, which was true. He noticed that most of his assailants were women, and at least two of them were on the chunky side. What the hell's going on? he thought, as he touched a floor button with his toe, causing a light to go on in the back of the truck, where it would alert a radiation-suited guard.
"Out of the truck," Amanda ordered.
The driver got out, and as he turned his back on her, Amanda clubbed him unconscious with a rifle butt.
"See? No killing," Amanda said to all concerned, as they dragged the driver off to the roadside, where he would later be run over by a drunken motorist.
That done, they tried to open the back of the truck. It was padlocked. Standing off to one side, Amanda fired three shots at the lock, two of which caused it to snap open.
When they opened up the back, they found a scarred and blackened nuclear warhead. They also found a guard whose white plastic radiation garments were streaked with his own blood. He gurgled once, dropped his rifle, and then dropped dead.
"Gee, Amanda," Ethel said, small-voiced. "You must have got him by accident."
"I couldn't help it," Amanda complained. "They should buy them bullet-proof vests or something. Anyway, we've got the warhead. Let's get out of here."
They shut up the truck. Amanda took the wheel. Ethel and the others returned to the van, and the two vehicles rapidly left the area.
* * *
At first, Thad Screiber was going to give his story to one of the wire services because they paid more than a newspaper would. But years of writing articles for Destiny magazine and Flying Saucer Factual had earned him plenty of money and little glory. So Thad decided to go for the glory and called the editor of the New York Times from the first pay phone he came across. After haggling for a minute, they struck an agreement, and Thad began dictating his eyewitness account of the salvage of a destroyed American nuclear missile, which would carry his actual byline— something that had not happened since his first reporting job on a hometown weekly.
It was a good feeling, Thad reflected, as he returned to his car. Perhaps this was what writing was really all about. You write what you believe in and are proud enough to sign your right name to it. Maybe it was time to retire all those phony pen names and go back to real reporting.
Then, just as he started his car, a brown van with a bubble roof and emblazoned with scenes right out of Thad's own articles sped past. It was followed by a stepvan plainly— but disturbingly— marked with the nuclear symbol.
Some long-dormant reporter's sixth sense told him that he should follow them both. It was only a hunch, but something about what he'd seen made him wonder if there might not be a connection between UFO activity in Oklahoma and the mysterious nuclear accident that had incapacitated a Titan missile.
Thad fell in behind the two trucks.
?Chapter Twelve
It has been the worst two days of Remo Williams's life.
Chiun had been mad at him before. Someone who didn't know the old Korean well could easily get the impression that Chiun was always mad at Remo, but that wasn't so. Chiun scolded Remo because that was Chiun's responsibility as Remo's teacher. To err might be human, but to err in Sinanju was to die. Chiun knew this and Remo knew this. And there had been a time or two when Remo had seriously offended Chiun. At those times, Chiun became a stranger, and Remo knew that his relationship with the man who was both father and teacher to him was in jeopardy. Usually, Remo's serious offenses were offenses against Sinanju and its traditions and not against Chiun himself. Not even Remo's close relationship with Chiun protected him there. But Remo, who respected Chiun and now belonged to Sinanju, never knowingly insulted Sinanju traditions and was always forgiven for what Chiun called his "unfortunate ignorance."
But this time it was different. Seriously different.
From the time the UFO had taken everyone except Chiun away, the Master of Sinanju had refused to speak to Remo. Remo had tried to convince Chiun to return to their hotel with him. Chiun had not refused. He had simply walked off. No abuse and no arguments. He just started walking in the general direction of Oklahoma City.
Remo had followed him.
"Don't tell me you intend to walk all the way back, Chiun," he said. "It's gotta be at least thirty miles. C'mon back to the car."
Chiun walked along in stiff silence.
"Look, if you want to be mad for some reason, you can be just as mad riding in the back seat as walking."
A breeze stirred Chiun's sparse hair as he walked.