National Transportation Safety Board Investigator in Charge Bill Holland had never seen anything like it in thirteen years of investigating air crashes.
From the air, it looked bad-real bad. Air Force One had come in on its belly, making an unusually long ground imprint. The tail had been knocked off and the nose mashed into the foot of one of the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. The plane looked like a graceful white Roc that had fallen from another world.
"Looks like the flight crew got the worst of it," the helicopter pilot told him.
"Better that than if she hit the side of the mountain in flight," Holland said aridly. "That's one hell of a long imprint. Who found her first?"
"Air Force. Spotted her at first light. Scuttlebutt is there are no survivors."
"There hardly ever are," Holland said as the chopper settled on the dusty ground, throwing up billows of fine brown grit.
A man in a conservative gray suit and polished wing-tips shielded his face against the sandy onslaught as he pushed into the rotor wash. He had FBI written all over him, Holland thought ruefully.
The man's first choking words confirmed that.
"Holland? I'm Lunkin, FBI. Special agent in charge. You'll be coordinating with me." He looked like a desk jockey, not a brick agent.
"What about the Secret Service?" Holland asked. "I heard they are hopping mad over this."
"They're still liaising with the Air Force, trying to get on-site."
"Good. Maybe I can get some work done before they arrive."
The site was guarded by a contingent of Air Force SP's in camouflage utilities, standing at attention, rifles at the ready. They looked to Holland as useful as balls on a ballerina.
"I understand there are no survivors," Holland said as the sand died down with the descending rotor whine.
"Confirmed."
"Then the President is dead."
"Unknown. We haven't found the body."
"God, I hope it didn't fall out of the tail when she came in," Holland moaned. "It would be a nightmare trying to find one body in these mountains."
"Could be," Agent Lunkin said as they walked past the unmoving SP's and into the open fuselage. "One body came out with the tail. The others are in rough shape. Some of the damage is pretty sickening."
"You get used to it," Holland said tersely as he pushed a dangling cabin partition aside. "Did the FDR survive?"
"What's Roosevelt got to do with this?"
"The flight-data recorder. It'll be a long black-and-yellow-striped box. Should be in the tail. From the look of the nose, I'd say the cockpit voice recorder is a lost cause."
"We didn't touch anything."
When Holland entered the presidential seating section, his tight-lipped expression tightened further. He had investigated countless air crashes, become inured to every conceivable freak of collision, from decapitated heads to side-by-side seats lying on runways, their intact passengers still calmly seated in them, holding hands in death.
It was not a body that surprised him. It was the condition of the seat cushions. They looked as if they had been torn to shreds by some wild animal.
"Any sign of animals when you got here?"
"No. The Air Force had already secured the site. We just counted the bodies."
Holland suddenly pinched at his nose. "What's that smell?"
"Shit."
"Smells pretty bad."
"Looks like someone lost it during the descent. They crapped right in the middle of the aisle."
Bill Holland blinked. He had never heard of such a thing. If anything, the pucker factor would have prevented anyone from defecating under the stress of an emergency descent.
"Show me," he said quickly.
FBI Agent Lunkin escorted Bill Holland to the press section.
"It's that sloppy puddle."
"No shit," Holland said, kneeling beside it. He sniffed, and had to turn away. The smell was strong here amid the members of the press corps.
Holland stood up.
"This is weird," he muttered. "Whoever made that mess had a bad case of the screaming shits. Montezuma's Revenge."
"Well, we are in Mexico," Lunkin pointed out.
Bill Holland looked at FBI Agent Lunkin as if to ask: How did you get hired?
"The plane never landed in Mexico," Holland said edgily. "Whoever made that mess did not belong with the passengers or crew."
"Diarrhea is not exactly unique to Mexico," Lunkin ventured.
"But the bacteria that causes it are. I know that smell. I've had the turistas myself."
Bill Holland pushed on toward the plane's nose, noting other anomalies on the way. The radar screen had been extracted from its housing and lay smashed two cabins back. Possible, but not probable. A corpse was missing its eyes. Another its teeth. Others had been skinned. No air crash Bill Holland had ever investigated, no ripping shards of glass or flying debris, could pull a man's eyes or teeth out of his head. Or skin him like a chicken.
"These bodies have been vandalized," Holland told Lunkin. "No question of it."
"How can you tell?" Lunkin asked, looking at one mangled corpse. Its yawning mouth exposed raw, toothless gums.
"Experience," Holland said. "Long brutal experience. Come on. I want to see if the FDR survived."
Holland found it bolted to the inside of the separated tail section. He tapped it with his knuckles. The heavy steel casing appeared intact.
"I'll want to ship this back to Washington on my chopper," Holland said.
"I think we'd better check with my office before we remove any evidence," Lunkin said cautiously.
"Check all you want," Holland shot back as he unbolted the FDR. "But I'm sending this thing back to Washington."
He lugged it back to the waiting chopper, thinking this was the damnedest crash site he'd ever seen. There were too many anomalies.
On the flight to Mexico City, Remo Williams tried to explain to the Master of Sinanju, for what seemed like the zillionth time in their long association, that although Harold W. Smith, as director of CURE, wielded enormous power, he was not a secret emperor and did not covet the Oval Office, which Chiun referred to as the Eagle Throne.
"He's not going to seize power." Remo insisted. "So forget it."
"Then he will allow the stripling President of Vice to assume the Eagle Throne without interference?" Chiun asked in disbelief.
"I know it sounds crazy, especially in this instance, but that's the way it works."
"The President's wife," Chiun mused. "She should be next in line. There have been many fine queens in history. Catherine the Great was an excellent ruler."
"Your ancestors worked for her, no doubt?" Remo said.
"Why are you changing the subject?" Chiun wanted to know.
"Look. If the President is dead, I got a feeling you and I are going to be pressed into overtime. It will be all Smith can do to hold things together while that airhead is in charge."
"I think it is a plot."
"What makes you say that?"
Chiun's hazel eyes squeezed into walnut slits.
"Last year, the surgeon general mysteriously disappeared. One moment he was on television constantly stroking his magnificent beard and issuing proclamations. Then he was gone." Chiun looked across the aisle for eavesdroppers. " I suspect he was done away with," he whispered, low-voiced.
"I think he resigned. There's a new surgeon general now, one that doesn't look like a Dutch admiral."
"If you say so. I had thought that the postmaster general or the Attorney General would be next, but they have continued to cling to power. Perhaps they are in league with the President of Vice."
"Right," Remo said, looking out at the mountainous ground below. "That Postmaster General. He's a pretender to the throne if one ever lived."
Chiun arranged his silken skirts, saying, " I am pleased you agree with me. We will bring this matter to Smith's attention at a propitious moment. More emperors have been toppled from their thrones by military coups than popular revolts. It is an unfortunate truism of history."