Chiun made a face. "Goody for them."
"They're going through a book on trains. I know it sounds crazy."
"Why is it crazy? Did I not already tell you the KKV was a locomotive, and did you not just now admit that I was right?"
"Yeah, but a locomotive, for crying out loud."
"It is a clue."
"To what?"
"To our enemy. It tells me that he does not have proper rocks."
"That doesn't make sense."
"We will look for a desert kingdom. Yes, a desert kingdom," Chiun said, girding his skirts decisively. He strode back to the rubble, Remo trailing along.
By the time they got there, the Air Force officers had made a positive identification.
"It's a La Maquinista," said the major. Remo noticed that his name tag said "Cheek." He was Major Cheek. Remo and Chiun looked over his shoulder. There was a drawing of a La Maquinista on page 212.
"How do you know?" Remo asked reasonably, comparing the massive locomotive pictured in the book with the accordion of metal lying in the ruins.
"See the shape of the flame-deflector plates?" Major Cheek said, tapping the illustration. "I'll bet when we hammer the plates on that monster back to normal, we get this shape instead of these other designs."
"That's pretty smart," Remo said with admiration.
"Of course we're going to conduct exhaustive tests to be certain, but it looks like a positive- Hey, who are you two?"
"Casey Jones and his friend Choo-Choo Charlie," Remo said, knowing that their dust-covered faces would make them impossible to identify later. "Mind if I borrow that?" he asked, tearing the page out of the book without waiting for an answer.
"Hey! I need that. Dammit! This is national security."
"Do tell," Remo said, skipping away, with Chiun floating after him.
When the Air Force officers ran around the corner after them, they walked into a tiny cloud of dust and stopped to cough their lungs clear. When they got organized again, they saw their quarry running away, their bodies no longer covered with powder.
Chapter 20
General Martin S. Leiber was adamant. "It's not that bad," he insisted.
The President of the United States glared at him. They were in the Situation Room of the White House. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were seated around a long conference table. With them was an exasperated Acting Secretary of Defense.
General Leiber stood before two giant blowup photos of an Alco Big Boy and a Prussian G12, which he had made in a local photo lab for five dollars each, but which would be billed to the Defense Department at three thousand dollars as "photographic targeting-expansion simulations."
"Six blocks of prime Manhattan real estate lie in ruins," the President said sternly. "Upwards of a thousand people dead a week after I had assured the nation that there was no danger. How can you say it's not that bad?"
"It all depends on how you look at it," General Leiber said firmly. "The collateral damage is negligible."
"The what damage?"
"Collateral damage. It's what we military like to call civilian casualties."
"A thousand people is not negligible!"
"Not if they were all personal friends, no," the general admitted. "But compared to the current U.S. population, which is roughly two hundred and fifty million, it's a drop in the bucket. We lose more people every month to highway accidents."
The President's mouth compressed into a bloodless line. He turned in his seat to face the joint Chiefs. The Joint Chiefs regarded him with stony expressions. They were not about to contradict General Leiber, because he was using exactly the argument they would have used. The commandant of the Marines looked as if he were about to volunteer something, but Admiral Blackbird kicked him under the table.
"But the man is a damned procurement officer," the commandant whispered to the admiral.
"Look at the President's face. Do you want to tell that to him at a time like this?"
The commandant subsided.
"I have to take this before the American people," the President said at last.
"Respectfully, Mr. President, I think you should stonewall," Admiral Blackbird suggested.
"Impossible."
"Sir, think of the political consequences. What could you tell the nation?"
"That we've been attacked. "
"By Intercontinental Ballistic Locomotives?" The President's face lost its resolve.
"If the Russians get wind of this-assuming that they aren't behind it it will show us up as the proverbial paper tiger. Hell, they'd read it as a sign of weakness and maybe launch an all-out attack themselves."
"I have to say something."
"How about that we've been loked?" the Acting Secretary of Defense piped up.
Everyone looked at him quizzically.
"It's like nuked," he offered, "only not as bad. Tell them that."
"Loked?" the President repeated.
"Attacked by Intercontinental Ballistic Locomotives. Or ICBL, for short."
"It'll never fly," Admiral Blackbird insisted. "We must invent a cover story. Something plausible about a gasmain explosion. We have no choice. The American people are in a near-panic. They've had war jitters for a week. If they thought this was an attack, think of the pandemonium. No one would believe they were safe."
"The trouble is," the President said gravely, "they are not. What protection do we have against these things?"
"Our nuclear deterrent is useless without a target," the Air Force's Chief of Staff said soberly. "And even if we had one, it's politically questionable to nuke someone who hasn't nuked us first. Bad precedent."