"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.
"Stay in tight," Steele muttered. His eyes sought the IFF display again. Friendly. Definitely friendly.
"So why no answer?" his backseat wondered.
"Oh, damn," the wingman croaked. "They're locking onto us."
"I see it," Steele cried. Radar told him that the F-16's were arming and locking their missiles onto them. He called for a split. He sent his F-15 left. The wingman went right. The two bogeys were not yet visible. But it wouldn't take long. They were approaching one another at over thirteen hundred miles per hour.
Steele radioed the airborne-warfare commander at Davis. He explained the situation and got a Weapons Hold command. He was not to fire unless fired upon. And his instrumentation was screaming that he was about to be fired on.
"It's our asses," he growled. "Screw it. Master armament on," he told his backseat officer.
"Master arm on," backseat called back.
The oncoming planes whipped between the separating F-15's so fast they were a blur.
"Did you see them?" Steele radioed his wingman. "F-16's. Confirm. They're ours."
"Then why the hell did they lock on?" Steele said anxiously, twisting in his cockpit to get a fix on them. "Attention, unidentified F-16's, this is Captain Steele out of Davis-Monthan. Do you copy? Over."
The helmet earphones were eerily silent as Steele sent his bird careening around in a slow 180. The unresponsive planes were also coming back.
"Bogeys are jinking back," the wingman warned. "I got them."
"They're trying to lock on again."
"Okay, wingman, we have to assume they got a good look at us too. We can't assume these are friendly birds. Repeat. These are not friendly birds."
"Roger. Good luck, Steele. "Stay sharp."
Steele saw the F-16's closing on him. Thirty miles separated them. Then twenty-five. Steele maneuvered the nose of his jet until the T-for-target symbol on his canopy lined up with a dot projected by the fire-control system.
"Select Fox-1," he called. "Roger. "
Steele kept his bird steady. Twenty miles. Then nineteen. Eighteen. He was within firing range now. He hesitated. These were American birds. What if their radios weren't working? He dismissed that thought instantly. Not both planes. Not at once.
"Seventeen miles," he called tightly. "Fox-1!"
A Sparrow missile fwooshed out from under the wing. Steele banked sharply. Sky and earth swapped perspectives. When he came back around, his radar man was screaming excitedly.
"Good hit. Good kill!"
Steele didn't see it until he got the jet level again. The sky was a pristine blue. There was a blot like floating ink. Falling from it, trailing fire and smoke, was a pinwheeling aircraft. As he watched, one wing separated from the fuselage like a broken blade.