Nancy sniffed, frowning. "I don't smell anything."
Remo followed his nose around the room until he came to a small purse lying on a chair cushion. He picked it up.
"Be my guest," Nancy said tartly. "I enjoy having my personal belongings rummaged through by men I dimly know."
Her mouth parted in surprise when Remo's hand came up holding a spent rifle shell.
"What are you doing with this?" Remo asked.
"I forgot all about that," said Nancy, coming out of her chair to join him. "I picked it up during the attack on the hauler. It struck me as strange, but I wasn't sure why."
"It's a blank."
"How can you tell?"
"I used to fire blanks for practice when I was a Marine," Remo explained. "They pour the powder into the cartridge and crimp the open end shut. When the bullet is fired, the crimping is blown open just like this."
"My God! That explains why no one was hurt during all that shooting. They were firing blanks!"'
"Who were?"
Nancy stopped, blinking like a moth fluttering at a lightbulb. "Well, take your pick. Either the Congress for a Green Africa or the Burger Berets. What on earth is going on?"
"Let's check out the place where you were attacked."
Less than a hour later, Remo pulled a rented car over to the side of a piney wooded road south of Dover. They got out.
"I'm sure this is the spot," Nancy was saying. "It was dark, but I recognize that big boulder over there. Yes, here's where the hauler went off the road. See the tire gouges?"
"Look for spent shells," Remo said.
Nancy paced, her eyes on the ground. "I don't see any now, but the ground was littered with them before."
"They must have sent back a cleanup team."
"Who did?"
Remo bent and lifted a dirty brass shell casing from the furrows of tire tracks.
"Bingo!"
Nancy peered at it closely. "It looks just like the other one, except for the color. What does that prove?"
"The Berets were armed with American assault rifles, right?"
"True."
"Remember what the other guys had for weapons?" "The same vicious little machine pistols they had in Africa."
"Yeah. Firing short rounds. Nine millimeter. Like this one. Let's see your shell."
They compared shells. Nancy's was distinctly longer and made of steel, not brass. But it had the same burned, ragged end as the other.
"That's a .223 cartridge you got there," Remo pointed out. "That means both sides were firing blanks. Might explain why no one got hurt in Africa, too."
"Oh, that can't be!"
"Why not?"
"It just can't." Nancy's frowning face fell into slack lines. "One moment. There was something off about one of last night's terrorists."
"Never met a terrorist who was on," Remo said dryly.
"No, this one spoke black English. American style. I had the feeling he wasn't part of the African unit that hijacked the train."
"A terrorist is a terrorist-unless they're shooting blanks."
"What is going on here?" Nancy breathed in an incredulous voice.
"Simple. It's some kind of publicity stunt."
"Staged for whose benefit? There was no press."
"Search me. But we gotta get you back in the saddle."
"How?"
Remo made an unhappy face. "I hate to do this."
"Do what?"
"But I don't think there's any other way."
"I hope this isn't what I think it is," Nancy said, her tone matching Remo's.
Remo nodded grimly. "I gotta call Chiun back into this."
"Wonderful. But what good will he be?"
"Chiun just happens to be a close personal friend of Cheeta Ching."
"The TV anchor?"
"I'll bet a Brontosaur to an Apatosaur she jumps on your story like a Tyrannosaur on a Dimetrodon. Literally. "
Nancy smiled grimly. "I'll take that action."