The cry split the still air. The Japanese froze, for it was no war cry, no shout of defiance, but a scream of pure anguish. It shook their inflexible robot faces.
Then the Oriental was among them. He slapped bayonets away with curt blows. The bayonets quickly shifted back. Some began to poke at the Oriental's vermilion kimono. They seemed to score several hits, but the Oriental was unfazed.
Then a Japanese screamed. A comrade's bayonet was sticking through the fleshy part of his forearm. Another Japanese lunged at the Korean. Somehow he managed to impale the man who had been behind him.
The Oriental whirled, going deep into the knot of men. The Japanese lunged, never realizing that they were being manipulated like chess pieces. For they soon became a hurricane of hate, whose object defied the eyes.
Japanese struck Japanese. Honda shouted at them. Others went down. Blood squirted. They were at too close quarters to shoot. But they might as well have, for those who did not fall victim to their comrades found cold hands drifting toward their throats. One man's collar split and his jugular gushed like a fountain. He placed a hand over it and staggered off.
First A. D. Honda saw his men turned into self-mutilating buffoons and realized his honor was at stake. He raised a pistol to shoot the Korean and aimed carefully. He shut one eye, blinked the other in that millisecond of adjustment, and it turned out to be Honda's final millisecond.
His stiffened arm compressed like a spring. He fell, his gun hand buried in a cauliflower of flesh that had been the flesh and blood of his arm.
"What the hell is going on?" Bill Roam yelled when Chiun reappeared in front of him. "Are they on drugs?"
"I will explain later," Chiun said. "You will take me to the body of my son, Remo."
"Remo! He's your son?"
"I will explain later," Chiun said. "We must hurry. The roads are fast becoming impassable."
Sheryl Rose saw the expressions on the faces of Chiun and Bill Roam when they appeared in her rearview mirror. They filled her with dread.
"Drive," Chiuri said when they got in.
"What's happened, Sunny Joe?"
"The drop went bad. They're all dead."
"Including Remo." Chiun s voice was a tight string. Sheryl checked his austere profile for tears. She saw none. It surprised her.
"Where are we going?" she asked dully. "Where can we go?"
"To the place where the bodies fell," Chiun said. "We'll have to go through town to do that."
"Then we will go through town."
"I'm afraid of what we'll find when we get there."
"I understand your fear. Mine lies out in the desert, but I will go to it bravely, for what else have I on this terrible day but my own courage?"
Chapter 14
The first indication the outside world had of the situation in Yuma was when Wooda N. Kerr switched channels to watch his favorite program.
Wooda lived in a house trailer in Mesa, Arizona. Mesa was 150 miles northeast of Yuma, but it received the Yuma TV stations. KYMA showed Tombstone Territory reruns at ten A. M. and Wooda never failed to watch it, even though he had seen each episode a dozen times.
Today he saw only static on the channel. Wooda grumbled as he fiddled with his rabbit ears. When they didn't help, he went next door to John Edwards' trailer. John got cable.
The door was open and Wooda stuck his head in. "Hey, John. Can you get Channel Eleven?"
"Let me see, now," John said, reaching for his remote control. He got static too.
"Now, don't that beat all?" Wooda said. "I can't figure it out. TV stations don't broadcast static like that. The least they do is run a test pattern."
"Channel Nine is dead too," John grunted. "That's a Yuma station. Let me check Two."
Channel Two was dead as well. All the local stations were coming in fine. Those from Yuma were off the air. "What do you think it is?" Wooda wondered, playing with the turquoise stone of his bola tie.
"Cable from Yuma must be on the fritz," John Edwards ventured.
"That don't explain why I can't get it off the air," Wooda pointed out. "I'm gonna ask my sister, Mildred. She's down there. This has got my curiosity tweaked." But when he dialed his sister's phone number, all Wooda Kerr got for his pains was a recorded message saying, "We are sorry but all circuits are busy at this time. Please hang up and try your call later."
Wooda did. The operator told him that the lines to Yuma were down.
Wooda shrugged and ended up watching The Dating Game. He was sixty-seven years old, and thought it was the most outlandish nonsense he had ever seen. He became a regular viewer.
By late morning the lack of telephone communication with Yuma was known in Phoenix, the state capital. It was unusual, but hardly important enough to warrant special attention. Yuma was, after all, way down in the desert by the Mexican border. Back before telephones and the automobile, it had been a rough little outpost. The people could get along without their phones for as long as it took to get them fixed.
Telephone crews were dispatched to the city. They did not return. That was not thought unusual either. It was a big desert.
The abrupt cessation of television and radio signals emanating from Yuma went completely unnoticed by the state government. Thousands of people missed their favorite soap operas and game shows, but when they were unable to get through to the Yuma stations to complain, they simply switched channels and forgot about it.
Official Washington became aware of the developing situation slowly. It began when telephone traffic between Luke Air Force Range and the Pentagon stopped. Calls did not go through. On an ordinary day, this might have been shrugged off, except that the Air Force's senior general was anxious to know how the Bartholomew Bronzini filming was going. He ordered radio communication established with the base.
The radio calls went unanswered.
"This is damned strange," he muttered. He put in a call to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.
"We can't raise Luke," he told the base commander. "Send up a couple of planes to check it out."
Ten minutes after the general had hung up, two F-15 Eagle combat jets were streaking over the Santa Rosa Mountains, east of Yuma.
Captain Curtis Steele watched the endless desert crawl under his wings. The other F-15 flew on his left, and in his ear was the tinny voice of his backseat fire-control officer, saying, "What do you suppose is up at Luke? It's spooky, no radio contact at all."
Steele laughed. "Maybe they went Hollywood on us. "
"Yeah, probably living it up with some babes right now. But this is one party they're gonna pay for!"
Just then, the cockpit radar beeped and Steele called out, "Look sharp! I have two bogeys at angels twenty-three. Seventy miles and closing."
Steele checked his IFF display-Identify Friend or Foe. A graphic display would tell him if the two aircraft closing on him were American or not.
Steele was not surprised when an F-16 Fighting Falcon graphic appeared on his heads-up display. "They're ours," he said. Then, in a louder voice he called, "Come in, come in, this is Echo oh-six-niner. Come in, I say again, this is Echo oh-six-niner from Davis-Monthan. Do you read?"
Staticky silence came over his helmet earphones. "I don't like this," Steele's wingman said flatly.