The news wires were humming now. The multiple accidents were becoming hourly bulletins. And all were Amtrak trains. Another shift in tactics. The reasoning was self-evident. Derailed passenger trains meant significant loss of life compared to freight accidents: Amtrak was not hauling cabbages.
"Someone is deliberately bringing enormous pressure to bear on the U.S. rail system, both materially and politically," Smith said aloud.
The why remained elusive.
While his search programs trolled the net for more incidents, Smith began reviewing the state of the U.S. rail system.
For three years accidents had been an unrelenting plague.
For four, freight traffic was booming. Even the Midwest floods and washouts of '93 had not crimped it.
Amtrak, on the other hand, was in trouble. Service cutbacks had begun to bite. Ridership levels were up, but Smith had begun to suspect some of that could be explained by the opportunists looking for a free ride into lifelong insurance benefits if they survived a rail accident. The so-called Railpax, which allowed Amtrak to utilize existing freight lines on a favored-nation basis, was at an end.
With Congress considering terminating funding, Amtrak's future appeared bleak.
But what possible motive would the Nishitsu Industrial Electrical Corporation have for derailing Amtrak?
There was no clear answer. Smith returned to the matter of the murderous teleporting ronin.
Every time one of the phone cards was used, the call was logged by the issuing company's computers. Smith got a readout of the originating call and its destination as they took place. They came up as simple phone charges. In reality they represented the most efficient form of transportation known to man.
And a Japanese company owned it exclusively.
No other Japanese names bubbled up from the ongoing search programs. And every time one of those cards was used, without fail, a rail accident followed within minutes.
Somewhere in the fiber-optic maze of the nation's telephone system, a deadly predator was moving unseen and unsuspected. Soon, Smith knew, the ronin would attempt to send the Sunset Limited tumbling into Bayou Canot.
It was just a matter of time. If only, he found himself hoping, their nameless enemy would strike at Bayou Canot sooner than later. The carnage piling up was horrendous.
THE SUNSET LIMITED first showed itself as a distant gleam of light in the shadowy distance.
"Here it comes," said Remo.
Chiun's head swiveled about, left then right. His sensitive ears were hunting for sounds. "I hear no ronin. "
"Don't forget. If he's dematerialized, we won't hear his heartbeat. Just like in that boxcar."
"If he skulks amid this eerie backwater, my eagle eye will spy him."
Remo nodded. His eyes were also searching.
Foliage rustled. Herons. Somewhere the muscular splash of a restless alligator disturbed the night.
And down the line the gleam of the twin-beam headlight grew to a white, widening funnel. The trestle began to vibrate.
Remo stepped back. He was looking at the trestle supports. If the ronin was going to strike, he would strike here.
A wind picked up. It seemed to be moving ahead of the oncoming train. The light grew, changing the shadows, making them crawl. And lining up on the trestle, the Sunset Limited threw the full blaze of her engine headlight along the bridge, making the rails gleam and sparkle.
The Sunset Limited hit the bridge at a thunderous seventy miles an hour. The bridge vibrated in response. It rattled for barely two minutes to the thunder of the passing train.
Then the Limited was gone. The shadows returned. Night closed in again.
And Remo and Chiun stood at the foot of the bridge and looked at each other.
"Guess Smitty was wrong."
"We must get word to him," said Chiun.
"How? We're in the middle of nowhere."
"Did you not say that trains have telephones now?"
"Yeah. But we're a little late to catch the Sunset Limited. "
"Not if we hurry," said Chiun.
THEY PUSHED THE BOAT into the water and sent it racing down the waterway.
The tracks wound in a serpentine in and out of the bayou. That made it possible to beach the boat at a point down the line before the Sunset Limited reached it.
Taking up positions at trackside, Remo and Chiun waited as the headlights bored toward them.
Gauging its speed, they began to run, ahead of the train and parallel to the track.
The silver train had slowed to fifty miles per hour. Remo and Chiun got up to that speed and held it.
The engine barreled past. They let the forward coaches do the same.
The end car was baggage. Since they were traveling at the same velocity, it was easy enough to hop on at the back, cling a moment, then force the rear door open.
When they worked their way forward to a passenger coach, Remo and Chiun attracted no more attention than normal.
Remo found a rail phone. He activated it with a credit card.
"Smitty. You guessed wrong. The ronin didn't hit the bridge."
"I know, Remo," Smith said wearily. "He has been creating carnage in several other places instead. There are many casualties."
Smith filled Remo in on the new pattern of recreated derailments.
"So why'd he skip this one?" Remo asked. "Some of those other crashes are pretty small potatoes."
"He is building toward something. Perhaps he is saving Bayou Canot. "
"Saving it for what?"
"That," said Harold Smith with an audible grinding of teeth, "is the question of the hour."
"Well, I may have part of the answer."
"Go ahead, Remo."
"We came across a guy laying fiber-optic cable along the tracks. Did you know they're laying cable along rail bed all over the country?"
"Yes. That is how the SPRINT company has created its telephone system."
"SPRINT?"
"It stands for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Telephone."
"The railroads are in the telephone business?" Remo blurted out.
"Yes. Some."
"Well, now they're laying cable for the information superhighway, too. Mean anything to you?"
"The Nishitsu Corporation is attempting to sabotage our computer links!" Smith snapped. "This has nothing to do with the rail system at all."
"That's how I read it."
"Excellent work, Remo."
"You are both wrong," sniffed Chiun. "The Japanese are envious of American railroads. Their destruction is the insidious goal."
"Tell Chiun that the Japanese rail system is far more sophisticated than our own," Smith said. "And please return to Folcroft immediately."
Hanging up, Remo said; "You hear that?"
"The man is an inveterate rationalist."
"You're just jealous because I was right and you were wrong."
"You are never right and I am never wrong."
Just then the conductor accosted them and asked if they had tickets.
"I entrusted mine to this lackey," said Chiun, pointing at Remo while breezing haughtily past the conductor.
Chapter 23
Dawn was breaking over Folcroft Sanitarium when Remo and Chiun finally got back.
"What's the latest?" asked Remo.
Chiun flew to his steamer trunk, checked the lock to make sure it hadn't been tampered with, then relaxed.
Harold Smith was hollow of eye and voice. "There have been a half-dozen derailments and rail accidents overnight. The loss of life is significant. Almost thirty people."
Remo grunted. "You lose more people in one average plane crash."
"That is not how it will play in the morning papers," said Smith. "The National Railroad Passenger Corporation is known for its comparatively good safety record. This will be seen as a symptom of its decline and unworthiness to continue operating."
Remo frowned. "What's the National Railroad Passenger Corporation?"
"Amtrak."