"Not if a good czar rises first," said Chiun.

  The Yak dropped lower, its engines straining. Remo took a second glance at the slipknot snugged against his midriff. In the flat distance, the most prominent landmark of Baikonur Cosmodrome showed-a gantry complex of squat, girdered towers. Support buildings ranging from broad hangars to white monoliths of blank sheet metal were arrayed around the gantry area. There were two runways-one very long and the other seemingly endless.

  "Do you know that I am a Kazakh?" Rushenko asked Chiun as the noisy engine straining made the cabin rattle alarmingly.

  "It is written on your brutish face."

  "Thank you. Kazakhs belong to the same ethnic family as Turk and Mongols and Koreans. There may be some of your blood in my veins."

  "I may search for it after I have slain you," said Chiun in a thin voice.

  Colonel Rushenko shut up. He grabbed for his armrests. One broke off in his hand. He hid it under his seat in shame.

  The plane was lifting on one wing as it banked into a steep approach turn for the extremely long Cosmodrome runway.

  "We will be using the same runway the Buran uses," Rushenko said expansively. "For our shuttles land at the same place they are launched from-a feat the West is incapable of."

  "At least our shuttles carry live people," said Remo.

  "Which is unnecessary, for robots are capable of most shuttle operations."

  A moment later, Rushenko's eyes were drawn to the western horizon.

  "Look. A sun dog!"

  Remo and Chiun jerked their heads to their respective windows, Chiun taking care to touch Colonel Rushenko's throat with a deadly fingernail in case this was some Russian trick.

  In the high sky, a hot ball of yellow light burned.

  "I do not recognize this," said Chiun.

  Rushenko said, "It is what is called a sun dog. A reflection of the solar orb upon ice crystals high in the atmosphere. I have never seen one like this, however."

  A column of intolerably incandescent light sizzled past their ship a second later. It struck the ground with a dull boom.

  Buffeted by a blast of heat, the Yak actually turned over once. Only their seat belts kept them from bouncing off the ceiling.

  The ship righted itself with agonizing slowness, then came level. The engines found their normal pitch after an uncertain blooping.

  "What has happened?" muttered Rushenko, holding his throat.

  "Looked like a big beam of light," said Remo.

  "The breath of the sun dragon," said Chiun, his wrinkled face touching the window to peer below.

  "You mean sun dog," said Colonel Rushenko.

  "He means sun dragon. And don't ask."

  "Proklyatye!" Colonel Rushenko exploded. "Look!"

  Below, there was a round, smoking hole where a long blue hangar building had stood a moment before. Remo had been looking at the building before the sun dog appeared. Now it was thoroughly obliterated.

  Smoke rose from the black patch, but not much. It was as if whatever had burned down from the daylight sky had so scorched the earth that there was almost no natural fuel left to give off smoke.

  "I am without words," Colonel Rushenko said thickly.

  "What was it?" asked Remo.

  "Mother Russia has been attacked."

  "This is Kazakhstan," Chiun reminded him.

  "Yes. I am sorry. I forget. It is my home soil, but no longer part of Russia. Still, the impossible has happened. The United States have launched a terroristic strike at an ally of Russia. This can have one certain consequence. Total war. We are mortal enemies again. Not that we were not before."

  And Colonel Rushenko turned completely pale under the weathered Kazakh skin. He looked like a man no longer concerned about preserving his own life because no one's life had any value now.

  Chapter 30

  There was an Mi-8 helicopter waiting with rotors turning slowly as the Yak-90 came to the end of its rollout. The crew piled out as fast as they could and ducked under the fuselage, where they waited with chattering teeth and shivering limbs for another bolt from the endless blue sky of Kazakhstan.

  Remo, Chiun and Colonel Rushenko stepped off casually, their eyes fixed on the same unthreatening sky.

  "No clouds," said Remo. "Couldn't be lightning. Though it boomed like lightning."

  "It was a sun dragon," said Chiun.

  "I saw a sun dog," insisted Colonel Rushenko.

  "A sun dog's never been known to burn a building down like that one," Remo argued.

  "No," admitted Colonel Rushenko.

  "Then shut up."

  "It looked solar."

  Remo looked at him. "What?"

  "I said solar," repeated Rushenko. "A great but terrible beam of sunshine."

  Remo's eyes went to the sun. It burned as it always had. "It's one theory," he admitted.

  They were waved into the helicopter by a man in an insignialess Russian uniform. He had a side arm.

  Remo relieved him of it by the simple expedient of yanking his belt off and throwing it and the holstered weapon as far as he could.

  When it landed, a tiny puff of dust almost two miles west, the Russian soldier decided not to object to his uncavalier treatment. Meekly he climbed aboard, and the helicopter lifted off in a clattering halo of sound.

  "What has happened here?" Colonel Rushenko asked the man.

  "The shuttle complex is no more."

  "Both shuttles?"

  The man nodded grimly. "Nothing but burning dirt remains."

  Colonel Rushenko looked to Remo and said, "I do not comprehend this."

  "I do. Somebody's covering up."

  "Nonsense. A cover-up would not require the destruction of the Russian shuttle fleet."

  "Some fleet. They fly once and are mothballed forever."

  "Overfly the site," ordered Colonel Rushenko.

  "I will allow this," said Chiun.

  The helicopter skimmed low. Emergency crews were moving toward the blast site with all speed. As they came to the zone of scorched area, they slowed, then slewed to a rolling stop.

  "The ground must be real hot," said Remo.

  "Of course it is hot," Rushenko flared. "Everything that stood upon it is now gone."

  "I mean really hot. The tires on their trucks are melting."

  Colonel Rushenko peered through the Plexiglas and saw the tendrils of gray smoke curling up from the front tires of the vehicles that had ventured into the charred zone. Soldiers were jumping from their trucks, running a few paces then hopping back, their boot soles smoking.

  "Better not land," Remo warned. "Unless you want a serious hotfoot."

  "We do not need to land. It is obvious what has happened here," Rushenko said tightly.

  "Not to me."

  "A solar weapon was used. Obviously the West is more advanced in their Star Wars technology than we dreamed."

  "It wasn't us."

  "You are the only superpower remaining. Except, of course, Russia. Who else would have the technology and the will to attack Russia?"

  "Kazakhstan," corrected Chiun.

  "Thank you. My question remains unanswered," said Colonel Rushenko.

  "No way would we hit our own shuttle to test a superweapon," Remo said flatly.

  "Hah! The contrary. It is a brilliant maneuver. A masterpiece of Western disinformation. No one would suspect Washington of complicity in its own disaster."

  "You sound like an old Cold War rerun."

  "I live for the next Cold War," Rushenko admitted.

  "Don't count on seeing it," said Remo. "Put this thing down," he added.

  Colonel Rushenko gave the order in Russian, which Chiun verified.

  The helicopter dropped down at the edge of the charcoal zone. Remo got out, and the waves of residual heat brought sweat popping out on his face and bare forearms. No sooner had they broken through the skin than the same heat waves turned them to faint wisps of steam curling up lazily.

  Feeling the body moisture draining from his body at an alarming rate, Remo retreated a few paces and, as the heat began to abate, he approached again.

  The area of scorched earth was a perfect circle, the edge sharp as crop circles. Concrete lay fused and cracked, riddled with glass specks and bubbling patches of tar here and there.

  There was no sign that a giant hangar had stood here, housing Russian's grounded shuttle fleet. People had died here. Remo could detect the faint smell like burned pork-only it had human constituents. Whoever had been burned, they left behind no bones and no mark of their passing other than a pungent vapor.

  Returning to the helicopter, Remo said, "You know what this looks like?"

  "What?" asked the Russian.

  "Like a giant magnifying glass was focused right on this spot."

  Colonel Rushenko laughed at the thought.

  Chiun said, "And you scoff at sun dragons."

  "Well, that's what it looks like to me," said Remo.

  The helicopter carried them to the operations building, where Colonel Rushenko found the Kazakh official who nominally controlled the site. In fact, it was a joint Russian-Kazakh command now that the former Soviet Union had found itself in the embarrassing position of having their primary space center sitting in a foreign country.

  The Russian representative refused to accept Colonel Rushenko's request for information. But the Kazakh was only too happy to cooperate with a fellow Kazakh national.

  They were shown to a windowless, soundproof room, and Colonel Rushenko spoke urgently as Chiun monitored the exchange of Russian and Kazakh for dark glimmerings of impending treachery.

  Colonel Rushenko asked fewer and fewer questions as the exchange wore on. He got noticeably paler, though.

  "This is unbelievable," he said as he faced Remo.

  "Spit it out."

  "According to this man, the Buran payload was not a Russian or an American satellite, but the product of a third country entirely."

  "What country?"

  "Paraguay."

  DR. HAROLD W SMITH was shouting across more than a dozen international time zones.

  "What?"

  "Paraguay," shouted Remo.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said the Paraguayans hired the Russians to launch that thing up there!"

  "What thing?"

  "The space thing!" Remo shouted.

  "Perhaps you should redial," Colonel Rushenko suggested helpfully.

  "It took me an hour and a half to get this connection," Remo shouted back. "I'm sticking with it."

  "Sticking with what?" Harold Smith yelled.

  Remo bellowed, "Listen, Paraguay launched that thing!"

  "Remo, you are breaking up."

  "It melted the Soviet shuttle fleet."

  Colonel Rushenko smiled nostalgically at the American's lapse.

  Smith's voice grew shrill and nasal. "What?"

  "The shuttles are all vaporized."

  Harold Smith's reply was drowned in the cannonading boom that followed.

  All eyes went to the nearest window.

  Off to the north stood the spidery launch gantry, where the big Energia rockets lifted the Buran fleet aloft, approximately once every eight years.

  The gantry stood in the column of searing light. It hurt the eye to look at it. The air made a dull boom, then the light seemed to withdraw back into the heavens.

  There was no gantry on the spot where it had stood.

  Instead, there was only a grayish haze of smoke that was being pushed outward by a spreading heat wave.

  Even through the sealed window, they could feel the heat wave overtaking the operations building. Window panes crackled in their frames.

  "That's never happened before," Remo said worriedly.

  "What are you saying? It happened only ninety minutes ago," said Rushenko.

  "It's happening twice in the same place. It's never happened twice before."

  Chiun allowed a flicker of worry to touch his seamed visage. "This is not a good place to be. The dragon seems especially angry at us," he intoned.

  "I do not accept the existence of dragons," said Colonel Rushenko bravely.

  "Believe it or not, that thing up there is trying to wipe out all trace of Baikonur," said Remo.

  "Leninsk. And I agree with you. We must go."

  The helicopter shuttled them back to the Yak. The crew was back inside the aircraft, hiding in assorted lavatories.

  Remo got them out and into their seats, and they took off into the sky ahead of a third white-hot column of sizzling heat from the sky. It was followed by another thundering boom that shook the aircraft.

  Out the windows they could see what remained of the sprawl that was the Baikonur Cosmodrome complex.

  There were three patches of blackness. All of identical size. In a staggered row.

  "Almost makes you believe in angry Martians," said Remo.

  "Perhaps they are spelling out a message," said Chiun.

  "Get off it."

  "I am only glad to be out of it," sniffed Chiun as the Yak screamed for higher altitude and more distance from the smoking cosmodrome.

  They watched through the window as long as it was possible to watch.

  There was no fourth cone of light. No one was disappointed.

  "Sure hope Smith understood what I was saying," said Remo.

  "Who is Smith?" asked Colonel Rushenko conversationally. "Your Mr. Waverly, perhaps?"

  "Remind me to kill you later," said Remo.

  Colonel Rushenko subsided. But he made a mental note of the name Smith. Probably an alias. But Americans were so devious it was best not to discount anything they said.

  Chapter 31

  The destruction of the Baikonur Cosmodrome and the Russian shuttle fleet hit the Kremlin with all the force of a nuclear detonation.

  In the old days, it would have led to the highest state of alert. The old Strategic Rocket Force would have been placed on alert, their SS-20 and Topol-M missile crews put on prelaunch posture.

  But this was post-Soviet Russia.

  It took an hour for the first report to reach the Kremlin. Another hour to bring the leadership up to speed. A third to argue over a response.

  By that time, everyone from the president of Russia to his defense minister was thoroughly drunk.

  "We must have someone to blame," the president said, pounding the table with his hammy fist.

  "America!" an adviser bellowed.

  "Da. America."

  So it was decided America was to blame.

  Then the call was put in to the Strategic Rocket Force to go to maximum alert and to be prepared to launch a retaliatory strike at an instant's notice.

  "At whom?" the general in charge wanted to know.

  "Who else? America!" the defense minister bellowed drunkenly.

  "But they will strike back with overwhelming force, obliterating us all."

  This was considered on an open line with another bottle of Stoli being the only casualty.

  "You make a good point. Target a portion against China, too."

  "Yes, General," the Strategic Rocket Force commander replied, gulping.

  With that settled, the Russian leadership went back to drowning their sorrows. Somewhere in this, someone remembered to call Major-General Stankevitch at FSK.

  "General Stankevitch, I regret to inform you that Baikonur Cosmodrome has been obliterated by the same superweapon that has struck America two times this week."

  "Then the U.S. is not to blame."

  "You are mistaken. There is no one else."

  "What?"

  "There is no one else to blame but the US. They have the technology. We do not. Your task is to prove this."

  "What if it is a lie?" asked Stankevitch.

  "Prove that, too. But you must hurry. The fate of mankind and the Motherland depend upon learning truth. Go now. Learn things. Assemble facts. Report immediately."

  And to Major-General Stankevitch's utter horror, the phone went dead with an audible bonk. No one hung up. The handset had simply fallen from a drunken fist.

  Quietly the General replaced the butter-colored receiver on his end and sank into his chair.

  He had the most difficult decision of his life to make. And if he made the wrong one, mankind was doomed.

  Clearly, he thought, reaching into the locked bottom drawer of his desk, it was time for a drink.

  Chapter 32

  The President of the U.S. received the report from the National Reconnaissance Office of the National Security Agency by telephone.

  "Sir, it appears that Baikonur Cosmodrome has been destroyed by the same power that obliterated our shuttle."

  "Then it can't be the Russians," the President blurted.

  "Sir?"

  "The Russians wouldn't target their own space center, would they?"

  "That's a jump we at NRO are not prepared to make," the NRO director said guardedly.

  "Why not?"

  "Could be a diversionary tactic."

  "Explain."

  "They hit two of our targets, then hit Baikonur to throw us off the scent."

  "But their own space center?" the President asked incredulously.

  "Why not? Except for Mir, Russia's space program is all but defunct."

  "The cosmonauts up on Mir can't get home if there's no place to launch their Soyez ships from," the Chief Executive argued.

  "They still have Krunishev."

  "Didn't he die a long time ago?"

  "You're thinking of Khrushchev, Mr. President. I was referring to the Krunishev Space Center."

  "Oh, right."

  "It's possible the Mir cosmonauts are on a suicide mission," the NRO director continued. "If they don't ever return to Earth, they can't tell what they know about the operation."

  "I don't buy it," the President snapped.

  "We only report what our satellites find, Mr. President."

  The President called Harold Smith with the news. Smith listened carefully then said, "My people were at Baikonur when it happened," Smith said.

  "And you didn't tell me first! I had to hear it from NRO?"

  "I did not want to precipitate a crisis," Smith explained calmly.

  "It's already a crisis!"

  "Now that you have been officially informed, yes, it is. Your advisers are trying to convince you this is a Russian superweapon."

  "It could be."

  "Their counterparts in the Kremlin are doubtless telling your Russian counterpart it's a US. superweapon."