"What is it? What's happening?" Linda asked breathlessly.
"We don't know," Miss Head hissed. "They want us to assemble outside."
"But why? Who are they?"
"The assistant principal thinks they're with the movie. But look at how they're behaving. I think it's real."
"I know it is," Linda said, holding up her hand. It was stiffening. Miss Head saw the already-browning blood and put her hand in front of her mouth.
Then they were both prodded toward the front doors by insistent bayonets. There, the children were being forced to sit on the grass, their hands clasped behind their heads like POW's in a war movie. It would have been cute had it not been so grotesque.
Rough hands segregated Linda and her colleague from the milling children. They were made to stand with a growing knot of teachers.
Linda found herself shoved next to the principal, Mr. Mulroy. "Can this be for real?" she asked.
"They're serious. Rothman and Skindarian are dead."
"Oh, no!"
"No talking!" a voice barked.
When the last of the children were forced onto the ground, the soldiers turned to the teachers. One wearing captain's bars directed the others. The faculty was forced to stand in a line as a camera was set up.
"Look, they're filming this," Miss Head whispered. "Maybe it is a movie, after all."
That happy thought lived only as long as it took for several soldiers to drag the blood-spattered corpses of three fallen teachers out into the sunlight.
No one believed it was only a movie after that.
The Japanese captain waited tensely for the cameraman to signal him. He nodded back. Then the captain called, "Rorring. Fire!"
The camera hummed. And AK-47's slapped to uniformed shoulders. The gunfire came in single shots, execution-style.
The entire teaching staff of the Ronald Reagan Elementary School were executed without benefit of blindfolds or final words. The captain went among the dead and delivered a vicious kick to each body. Those who groaned had a bayonet plunged into their throats.
The children watched this in silence.
All over Yuma, the schools were cleared and the staffs put to death. Every food outlet was placed under armed guard. The gun shops were quarantined. All roads were closed and the Amtrak rail beds were dynamited.
Three hours into the Battle of Yuma, the electricity went out. The Yuma reservoir was placed under occupation control and water supplies shut off. Telephone lines to the outside world were severed. All television and radio stations were seized and taken off the air.
The police station was surrounded by T-62 tanks, which opened up with their .125-millimeter smoothbore cannon until the one-story stucco building was a shattered tumble. Individual police units were hunted down and crushed. The National Guard headquarters was seized and its weapons stores confiscated.
By noon, the tanks and the bodies had convinced the majority of the population that this was no film. Those with firearms took to the streets. For two more hours, pockets of resistance, snipers and roving groups of citizens, fought back with hunting rifles and handguns.
Then, at 2:06 in the afternoon, tanks blocking the runway of Yuma International Airport rolled aside to allow a squadron of five propeller-driven planes to take off. They lined up and crossed the sky under the high cirrus clouds. Simultaneously, each plane emitted a puff of white vapor. Then another puff.
Across the sky, in fluffy dot-matrix-style letters, the skywriting planes spelled out a message: RESISTANCE WILL END OR YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE!
All over the city, sporadic gunfire began to die down. Not all citizens threw down their weapons at first. A few-those without families-kept on fighting. Those who weren't hunted down by Japanese troops were quelled by Yuma citizens with children at risk.
By six P. M. the city was quiet. The chill of afternoon deepened into a still cold. Fires burned at scattered locations, sending smoke into the air. Tanks prowled the streets with impunity. The sun fell behind the mountains, casting long, forlorn purple shadows on the surrounding sea of sand. It was magic hour.
Yuma, Arizona, had fallen to the Nishitsu Corporation.
Chapter 16
The closer she got to the Yuma city limits, the more afraid Sheryl Rose became. Yuma was her home. She had been born in Yuma, gone to school there, and after graduation from nearby Arizona Western College, got a job at a local television station. A scary day was when she got the cue cards out of order.
Sheryl fiddled with the radio. Stations as far away as Phoenix came in clearly. But none of the hometown stations were on the air.
If Sheryl hadn't been in broadcasting, it might not have hit her as hard. But the dead air was like a knife in her stomach.
"They got the radio stations," she sobbed. "How could this happen? This is America."
"And Rome was Rome," said Chiun gravely. "It, too, fell when it became old. Where is the Greece of days gone by? The Egyptians no longer rule their part of the world. Do not think because your nation has existed without knowing the tread of an invading army, that it could never happen. It has. Now we must deal with what has taken place, not deny it."
Bill Roam spoke up for the first time since they had left Luke.
"You're acting like Yuma has fallen to the Nazis," he said. "It's only a movie company. Sure, they've gone crazy, but they can't hold an American city indefinitely. And they sure can't widen their area of operations. They barely have the manpower to hold this city. When the shock wears off, the people will grab their guns and beat them off. You watch. You'll see."
No one responded to that. They came to the roadblock. The two T-62 tanks were still in place. But now they were quiet. As the Ninja passed them, the sound of its engine caused the trapped Japanese crews to begin pounding and shouting for attention.
"What happened to them?" Bill Roam wanted to know, looking back in bewilderment.
"He did," Sheryl said, jerking a thumb at Chiun.
"You must know some right powerful medicine, chief," Roam said.
"Yes," Chiun said. "Very powerful."
"Well, I know a few tricks myself," Roam said, his eyes on the desert. "Maybe I'll get to use them before this is done. I helped three planeloads of airmen step into eternity out there. Only blood will redeem that."
Chiun's eyes were on the desert too. He said nothing. They followed Route 8 through the city. Abandoned cars burned, releasing smudgy smoke that hung in the air like the visible stench of defeat. They stopped at a roadside pay phone at Chiun's insistence, but he returned complaining that it was broken.
Every pay phone they encountered was out of order. "Face it," Roam told him. "They've cut us off from the outside world."
"Oh, my goodness," Sheryl said in a small shocked voice. "Look!"
Off the road, there was a school. A desert-camouflage armored personnel carrier stood parked in front like some absurd ice-cream truck. Uniformed soldiers stood guard over the grounds, where rows of children squatted, their hands folded behind their heads. Other soldiers dragged adult bodies back into the building.
"Jesus!" Bill Roam muttered. "This can't be happening. "
"Stop the car," said Chiun.
"Are you crazy?" Sheryl cried. "They look like they'd shoot us as soon as look at us."
"I cannot allow those children to be threatened." Sheryl grabbed Chiun's sleeve.
"Look," she pleaded. "Think this through. There are more of them than there are of us."
Chiun looked into Bill Roam's weather-beaten face. "I'm up for it," Roam said quietly.
They both looked to Sheryl.
"All right," she said reluctantly. "But I don't think I'm going to be much help. My knees are shaking so hard I can barely keep my feet on the brake."
"Just keep the engine running, little lady," Bill Roam said as the jeep pulled over to the side of the road a ways beyond the schoolgrounds. "The chief here and I will do the rest."