The cylinder, much wider and shorter than the first cylinder, bonged against another seat but tumbled out of the jet and started the journey to earth. The journey would take a long, long time as free falls go.

  “Pops,” Jack radioed.

  “Yes, Jack, are they on their way?”

  “Yeah, Pops, but I think that fat tick-tocker bent the seats, just like in the tests. We need a better jet. I’m getting tired of replacing passenger seats in this little prissy thing. We need something with real bomb doors. Maybe the Canadians—”

  “We’re not going to buy a bomber, Jack!”

  “Aw, jeez, Pops!” Jack signed off and scowled into the stratosphere. “Fine. I’ll build my own dam airplane.”

  The cylinders tumbled just seconds before righting themselves, and then they were ultra-aerodynamic, slipping through the thickening atmosphere in virtual silence. They were black, without signal lights, so they remained unseen. The coating of paint on the exterior allowed military scanning waves to slip over them as easily as the airstream. The ground control that was constantly monitoring the skies over Washington, D.C., never even knew the oversize Christmas ornaments were above them.

  The Fastbinder jet never entered restricted airspace, simply followed its flight plan up the coast. The cylinders would plummet straight into the ocean until they brought out their guidance wings, which were scarcely more than ridges distending from the metal. They created just enough of an alteration in the course to steer the falling cylinders inland, still unnoticed. The ridges guided the cylinders directly over the White House, then pulled inside to allow the free fall to continue.

  The tremendous speed of the cylinders might have punctured all the way into the underground bunker levels, but bombing the President wasn’t the intention.

  The intent was to make a soft landing on the White House lawn and snatch up the most high-tech rodents in existence. FEMbots had an estimated black market value of thirty-five million dollars each.

  The cylinders contained no living tissue that might be crushed by the sudden deceleration of the most severe High-Altitude/Low-Opening jump in history.

  The first cylinder burst and loosed a compacted wad of dense fiber the size of a bed pillow, which unfurled into thousands of black streamers—a cloud bigger than the entire White House itself. The streamers were torn away in a millisecond by the intense force of the wind, but not before slowing the cylinder markedly and not before pulling out a second wad of compact fiber. Another billowing cloud of paperlike streamers. And a third. Finally the cylinder had been sufficiently slowed to deploy a trio of extreme heavy-lift parachutes, which opened in series and brought the cylinder to a crunching, 11-G deceleration. If there had been a man inside the cylinder, he would have become human remains in that instant.

  The three huge parachutes carried the cylinder for only three more seconds before the ground loomed up beneath it and the cylinder’s tapered end penetrated the lawn soil. The landing looked smooth, but again it would have turned human occupants to jelly.

  The three parachutes transformed simultaneously into flames that consumed them and vanished in a moment, allowing the second cylinder to land without tangling.

  When you watched airspace over the White House, you used protocol. You never, ever deviated from the proper vocabulary of the operation.

  But Sergeant Julian Cleary couldn’t help himself. There had been one alert tonight already, still unexplained, and the watch crew was tense. Cleary was nervous. So what if he used a few nonsanctioned exclamations?

  “Mother of crap!” He got a hold of himself and reported, “We’ve got an eminent catastrophic strike. It just showed up, at two hundred feet!”

  His commander appeared. “Too slow to be a bomb.”

  “To fast to be anything but—shit!”

  On his screen, the warning lights blinked and the audible alerts screamed and the tiny indicator showed the twin objects coming to a stop on the White House grounds within seconds of each other.

  Sergeant Cleary and his commander rolled their eyes up to the ceiling. They were the on-site watch team, so whatever the objects were, they had just come down right above them.

  They frantically began making alert calls, which were redundant since the event had been witnessed by three other watch teams stretching from Washington, D.C. all the way to NORAD in Colorado. The military response was already launching.

  Which left Julian Cleary with nothing to do except watch and listen. Any second now, he was sure to feel the tremors of the explosion that would erase the White House from existence.

  What the hell were they waiting for?

  Chapter 36

  Remo watched the first display as if it were the Fourth of July—great clouds of paper appeared and disintegrated instantly. He also saw the effect it had on the falling objects. They slowed greatly. Then came three parachutes, which slowed the devices more but still dropped them to the earth hard. The tapered lower ends were lengthy enough to, penetrate the earth before deforming into an accordion of crumpled metal, further cushioning the impact

  Remo was moving fast, hoping Chiun had the same idea he did since there wasn’t exactly time to discuss it. That idea was to move in fast and take out these amazing mechanical mothers before they got a chance to user their proton-ray thingamajigs.

  Chiun was right beside him as he drifted across the grounds at inhuman speed, like a pursuing wraith, and used the flat of one foot to knock the cylinder off its pedestal before it was even fully settled. The impact was greater than Remo had counted on. Whatever the cylinder was made of, it was tough stuff.

  Instead of wrenching off the base, the base bent and the cylinder slammed into the ground broadside. An eight-foot panel ejected from the cylinder on small explosive puffs and revealed the contents.

  “Whaddaya know, Ironhand lives again,” Remo said, snatching the metal door panel out of the air. The metal had a strange lightness to it, as well as incredible heat from the friction of the descent. He began vibrating his fingers, not allowing them to contact the metal long enough to absorb the great heat.

  Ironhand threw its arms into the air as Remo brought the metal panel down. It was a fast move, but not fast enough. Remo turned the panel and slipped it past the robot arms, cutting deep into the chest cavity. Remo didn’t know why, but he felt this was where he needed to create damage to prevent the debilitating proton discharge.

  Ironhand scissored its legs and launched itself to its feet with the corner of the panel imbedded deep in its chest. It stepped out of the cylinder with a skip of its feet.

  “You look like Tobor the Great playing hopscotch,” Remo said, slipping up alongside the mass of metal. Ironhand struck at Remo fast. Very, very fast.

  “New arms, I see. Very shiny.” Remo held one and twisted it at the shoulder socket. And he kept twisting.

  “Learned a thing or two about dealing with your type,” Remo said, easily stepping under the blow Ironhand sent at him with its free arm. “First of all, you guys broadcast your moves worse than professional wrestlers. Also, you may be shiny but you’re not too bright.” At that moment, Remo steered Ironhand’s free arm into its face and wiggled the hand so fast it made gray smoke.

  When he let go, Ironhand’s fingers were ultrasonically welded to its face. The robot began rotating its torso rapidly in both directions, trying to free it. “I gotta hand it to ya,” Remo said, yanking off the other arm and slamming it into the chest of the robot “Get it? Well, do you?”

  The chest panel dropped off. Remo reached in and yanked out a chunk of quarter-inch-thick steel plating, then several other pieces until he had the guts of the robot exposed.

  What’s a proton emitter supposed to even look like? Because there were lots of different gizmos mounted inside the mechanical man and Remo couldn’t begin guessing what any of them were for. But he knew he had to find out quick. Ironhand was like a landed fish, flopping around trying to get its hand freed, which forced Remo to weave and bob as he began yanking out parts.

  There was a flash of electricity as something shorted out and Ironhand came to an abrupt halt. Remo could feel the surge of electricity coursing through the man machine, then draining away abruptly. Ironhand was out of power.

  Something started up, something whirred, and Remo was abruptly cast into a pit of lifeless blindness. Ironhand was recharging itself, and Remo Williams’s senses were cast into a void.

  He thrust out his arms as he collapsed onto his knees and felt his hands come in contact with something that burned and froze and began sucking out his own existence, like a chain from Hell tugging on his soul. Had his fingers closed on the thing itself, the proton emitter? Did he feel Ironhand moving to strike him down? Was he even still alive?

  Remo didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, but he exerted his will, or he attempted to, or he thought he did, and as blackness fought to claim him, he imagined he was wrenching the heart out of the machine man.

  Chapter 37

  Jack Fast wasn’t a happy boy. “Those meatballs gutted the Big I, Pops!”

  “Get out of there, Jack,” Fastbinder ordered, his voice distorted by the digital satellite feed.

  The laptop sitting on the copilot’s seat beep shrilly and Jack jumped. “I got a fix on Ballboy, Pops! He’s sending!”

  “Jack, don’t do anything risky.”

  “What in tarnation is happening? You seeing this, Pops? This is all freaked out.” Jack could hear his voice rise as he grew more agitated every second. “He’s not on the White House grounds anymore. He’s moving away. His gyros are totally out of whack.”

  “They apprehended him,” Fastbinder said. “They will get him away fast as possible, just in case he is wired to blow zee House up.”

  “I’m not buying it, Pops. If it was the Service they’d have stuck him in a sealed vehicle so he couldn’t get communications out. Ballboy is still sending full-strength, it’s just all messed up. The GPS is fluctuating like—like— Hey, Pops, Ballboy is rolling down the street!”

  “That is unlikely, Jack.”

  “Yeah, look at the fluctuations in the GPS feed. It’ll model out to pi, I guarantee it. It must be those weirdo friends of Senator Whiteslaw who nabbed him. It isn’t the Service at all…”

  Fastbinder read volumes in the thoughtful tone in his son’s voice. “Jack, please do nothing that is foolish.”

  “I gotta know, Pops. These jerks have caused us nothing but trouble since the beginning. They killed Ironhand, Pops! He’s an heirloom. He’s what we’re all about.”

  “He’s a machine only, Jack. He can be reconstructed.”

  “You’re not getting it. Pops. It’s not about Ironhand—it’s about this pair of reprobates who keep ruining everything we do. We gotta stop ’em. We gotta.” Jack Fast steered the aircraft into a bank so sharp he felt the blood travel into his legs. Time to return to the scene of the crime.

  Fastbinder was still talking on the radio, trying to convince the teenager to keep his distance. “We will get them sooner or later. You risk getting caught or shot down.”

  “They’ll never catch me. Pops. Not if I dive.”

  There was a moment in which Fastbinder said nothing. “Do not dive—I beg this of you.”

  “Sorry, Pops,” Jack said, “I’m diving already.”

  Chapter 38

  The Air Force general opened the door fast and hard, breaking the nose of the lieutenant who collapsed to the floor, the coffeepot he’d been rushing to refill shattering against his head.

  “Your lucky day. Lieutenant,” the general barked. “If there had been coffee in that pot you’d be looking at years of skin grafts.”

  “Yeth thir, General,” said the lieutenant, holding his spurting proboscis in one hand and his gashed scalp in the other.

  “Have this cleaned up,” the general snapped at his assistant.

  The assistant, a captain and decorated fighter pilot, snatched at his lapel and spoke into the clip-on mike. “Cleanup in Command Control.”

  General Elvgren “Sick Puppy” Rover was already shoving his way through the crowd around one of the banks of flight controllers. “Show me.”

  “Right here, sir,” said a button-pusher.

  General Rover looked at a dot on the screen. It was different from the other dots because it had a red circle blinking around it.

  “What of it?”

  “It came out of nowhere. Sir. One second it wasn’t there, the next second it was just there. Now it’s going Mach 4, Sir.”

  Rover shouted, “It’s a missile, you idiots! Shoot it out of the sky!”

  “When it first showed on the screen it was going Mach point five, General, Sir.”

  “What the hell is this geek going on about? Captain! Where the hell—?”

  “Here, Sir!” His assistant had just now elbowed his way through the pack of onlookers. He withered under the disapproving glare of the general, then quickly straightened. General Elvgren “Mad Dog” Rover disdained any sign of weakness. “He’s saying the aircraft is an aircraft. Sir. One-half mach is too slow for a missile. Sir.”

  “You screwed up the ID, son, that’s all,” the general accused the flight controller. “You got some dinky plane and this missile mixed up together.”

  The flight controller tried to decide how best to defend himself against the accusations of General Elvgren “Ruff! Ruff!” Rover. He decided on the straightforward truth. “It is not my identification, Sir. NORAD’s had a lock on it since it entered the ECUSSA.”

  “Excuse you what?” Rover demanded.

  “East Coast United States Secure Airspace,” Rover’s pet captain explained.

  “What happened to Secure East Coast Air Watch?” The crowd tittered. The air traffic controllers looked at their screens to hide their amusement, and even a visiting Pentagon official scratched his ear to hide his mirth. A janitor rolled his eyes as he pushed his mop bucket into the hall in a big hurry.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” Eivgren “The Bitch” Rover exploded.

  “The SECAW designation was retired more than a month ago.”

  “What? Why?”

  “To allow the new designation to be used—District of Columbia And Surrounding Environs Coastal Airspace Watch Perimeter. DOCASECAWP. It failed to roll off the tongue. Sir. The designation was therefore changed to ECUSSA.”

  “Why in blazes didn’t they just change it back to SECAW, then?” demanded General Eivgren “Fido” -Rover.

  There was silence. The flight controllers looked at one another questioningly, and the officers mulled it over or pretended they knew the answer. Rover’s captain said simply, “Nobody thought of that. Sir.”

  “That’s why they call me ‘Smart Puppy’ Rover, Captain.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  The Pentagon official, who had once worked in acronym development, was feverishly writing notes on his palm with a ballpoint.

  “What about the BOIID?” interjected the controller, who added quickly, “The Belligerent of Indeterminate Identification.”

  “Shoot dat BOIID. Didn’t I say that first thing when I walked in here? What’s everybody still talking about it for? Captain, I want court martials for every man in the room. You, too.”

  “A moment of your time, Sir,” the captain said.

  The exasperated Air Force general accompanied his assistant into a private corner. “We can’t shoot it down, Sir. That’s why I asked you to be consulted in this matter, Sir. The aircraft is behaving like an EVIDA—it’s an Extreme Velocity Intrusion Delivery Aircraft.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “In development by the Navy. Top security. But the grapevine says the prototype was stolen recently. No other aircraft we know of could go from a slow stealth airspeed to Mach 5. EVIDA is designed for it, Sir.”

  General Elvgren “Sly Dog” Rover nodded thoughtfully. “The Navy’s, you say?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Shoot it down.”

  The captain turned to the loiterers in Command Control. “General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID.”

  “General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID,” echoed the Pentagon official, who appeared to have some authority here.

  “General’s orders. Shoot down dat BOIID,” radioed the controller whose task it was to relay such orders.

  General Elvgren “Bow-Wow” Rover asked quietly, “You sure I’m not supposed to know anything about this Evita?”

  “EVIDA, Sir. No, Sir. Even I am not supposed to know.”

  “Good. Let’s get out of here before they start singing.”

  The room continued echoing with calls of “Shoot down dat BOIID,” and did, indeed, come dangerously close to becoming a chorus.

  “Evening, Little Father.”

  “Hello, Remo. Rested?”

  Remo got to his feet, evaluating the grinding of bones in his chest.. “Small fracture,” he said offhandedly. “Nothing too serious.”

  “I know this, of course,” Chiun said The smell told Remo he was no longer on the grounds of the White House. He found they were standing in an alley.

  “What did you bring that for?” he asked.

  “This contrivance?” Chiun asked. “I deemed it could be of value to us. We shall present it to the Emperor for evaluation by his laboratory hirelings.”

  “It’s Clockwork. It’s the robot we saw helping Ironhand in Providence,” Remo said. “The one from the TV show. He had a key in his back for winding him up.”

  The robot’s body was a copper ball more than two yards in diameter. Out of the gasketed opening at the top protruded a scrawny copper tube of a neck, topped with a copper sphere of a head the size of a basketball. He had ears that were pounded out of tin and riveted in place. A mouth was etched into the metal surface and almost hidden under the layer of scratched stealth paint that coated it head to toe.

  “He is not a windup toy,” Chiun said. “He was once powered by a device such as this.” Chiun held up a small egg-shaped lump of steel with dangling wires.