Remo was about to point out the undeniable fact of the ten-year age difference between them when they came upon the wreck.
"It's the Desert Storm consist!" K.C. said.
"Yeah, and if it ain't in a pickle, I'm an unhung rapscallion."
Chiun's eyes flashed. "Why are soldiers guarding that train?"
"Take her down lower, pilot," Melvis said, jerking the pilot's right earlobe like a sash cord.
The chopper pilot sent the helicopter angling down.
That caught the attention of the soldiers. As if hooked up to the same nervous system, they turned in unison, and pointed their weapons at them.
"Dang if they don't look like they're hijackin' that train!"
The tiny figures lit up their tiny weapons. Tiny flashes of stuttering light showed here and there.
The arriving rounds were tiny, too. But they stung.
"Up! Pull her up," Melvis howled as the Plexiglas bubble began to spiderweb and frost up before their eyes.
Chapter 17
Before the helicopter dropped out of the Nebraska sky, Major Claiborne Grimm figured it couldn't get any worse.
He was wrong. And it was already as bad as he could imagine it ever getting.
Short of all-out thermonuclear exchange, that is.
The desert camouflage Peacekeeper train had been rolling on high iron en route to the Strategic Air Command airbase in Omaha, making good time. It was a routine train movement. Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino, California, to Omaha. A month later it would retrace the trip.
No one would know it wasn't an ordinary freight consist of the Union Pacific line. It looked ordinary. The production-model SD40-2 diesel engine was right off the line. The modifications enabling her to operate in wartime were indistinguishable even to the most ardent rail fan. Her armor, bulletproof glass, silvery flash curtains and hidden surveillance cameras wouldn't show up if the unit were photographed at a dead stop with a telephoto lens and made into a Rail Fan magazine gatefold.
The desert camo livery was getting old, but the beauty of it was that it was functional.
Back in the early days of the MX missile program, the brass would never have dreamed of slapping military-style camouflage coloration on a Peacekeeper train. The whole idea was to disperse the nation's MX arsenal along its rail system, staying mobile so the Russkie spy satellites couldn't pinpoint them. If they couldn't pinpoint them, they couldn't target the U.S. nuclear force for a surprise first strike.
It was a gigantic shell game, and it had cost the American taxpayers untold billions of dollars in research-and-development costs until Congress slashed defense funding and the Air Force voluntarily abandoned the MX program.
Congress thought that was the end of it. The American public thought that was the end of it. But it was not the end of it.
The Air Force had possession of the only multibillion-dollar train consist in human history and it wasn't about to mothball it. Not in the uncertain post-Cold War world, where the once-mighty Soviets had reverted to being the plain old Russkies-and who knew which way they would jump?
So Major Claiborne Grimm found himself riding the rails every month or so in the launch-control car overseeing train operations.
It was a routine run until he got the nervous call from the first car in line, the security-command car.
"Major. Airman Frisch here."
"Go ahead, Airman."
"Engineer reports we have a man on the track."
"Jesus."
"He wants to know if we should brake."
"Of course he should brake. Tell him to brake."
"But, Major, security-"
"Brake the damn train. If we run a civilian over, we'll have local authorities crawling all over our HyCubes. All we need is for it to get out that we're running an unauthorized nuclear program and all our asses will be decommissioned."
"Yes, Sir."
The sudden screaming of the air brakes warned Grimm to grab for something solid. Still, he was thrown off his feet when the train began decelerating.
His eyes went to the launch-control officers sitting at their dual consoles, one at end each of the launch-control car.
They signaled they were okay. Grimm wished he could say the same. His heart was up in his throat, and his stomach was butterflying something fierce.
"Man, just please don't have hit anyone," Grimm moaned.
With a clashing of tight-box couplers, the consist finally knocked to a dead stop.
Only then did Grimm lever himself off the stainless-steel floor and hit the intercar intercom.
"Engineer, say status!"
The engineer's voice was tight and strangled.
"Too late," he said. "He went under my engine."
"Damn civilians," he said, not sure which man he was thinking of-the careless fool under the trucks or the engineer, who was himself a civilian sworn to secrecy.
Grimm hit the button connecting him to the security car. "Security team. Detrain. On the double."
Turning to his second-in-command, Grimm said, "I'm turning operational control over to you. Do not under any circumstances open this car to anyone except myself. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Sir."
"And the password of the day shall be-'Hotbox.'"
"Hotbox. Yes, Sir."
"If this is a hijacking and I give 'Redball' as the password, you have my permission to take off with all due speed leaving me defiled. Do you understand?"