"I'm telling you that Dr. Loveless is alive!" James West slammed his fist down on the desk of the Deputy Director, causing the inkwell and several other items to rattle on the verge of upset.
"We've been over that a dozen times before Mr. West." The man said calmly as he set the photograph of his wife and daughter back upright. "By your own report the flooding of his installation was too severe for he and his associates to have been able to escape, the only submarine craft we detected was the one you and Mr. Gordon used, the depth was too deep for anyone to have swum to the surface, face it gentlemen, Miguelito Loveless now rests in a watery grave."
"How can you be so sure?" Artemus Gordon snapped as he leaned over the desk until he was almost nose-to-nose with the Director. "Have you found any bodies?"
"Well no, not yet. We're still assembling a team of divers to try and enter the remains of the base to conduct a search."
"Loveless has been dead before," West said folding his arms, "And has found a way of coming back. Why should this be any different?"
"If that is so gentlemen," The director answered leaning back in his chair, "Then where is he?"
Dr. Loveless pulled his head up from the innards of the missile he was working on with a pair of German Scientists at Antoinette's call. The device consisted of a large cigar shaped cylinder with short stubby wings and a pylon at the rear that supported a chemical fueled rocket motor that propelled it through the air. It was in effect, a flying bomb packing enough explosive power to level a city block, and how it worked was fiendishly clever. Launched from a ramp and guided by gyroscopes, it flew through the sky until its fuel was exhausted somewhere above its intended target and it plummeted back to Earth to wreak devastation. Where it would actually come down was unpredictable, meaning a potential enemy had little, if any chance to prepare, or mount a defense.
"I brought your lunch." Antoinette said as she set down a basket on a nearby workbench while Loveless wiped grease from his hands with a rag. "Is it ready?" she asked looking at the missile he and his fellow scientists had been working on.
"It will be." He responded as he opened the basket and took out a fried chicken leg. "We should be able to conduct the first tests in another week."
"Is this part of it?" She asked picking up a small and complicated looking device sitting on the bench next to a several plans.
"Of this model, no. But I have been working on a smaller version, that can be guided to its target." Loveless took the device from her. "This is part of the guidance mechanism. If it works it will home in on the heat being given off by the intended target, such as a ship's boilers, a factory's furnaces,"
"Or a train's locomotive?" Antoinette prodded.
A wide grin spread across Loveless' features as he thought of a certain locomotive, pulling a certain train, containing a certain pair of thorns in his side. "Precisely my dear, precisely!"
"Jim will you relax? You're starting to make me nervous!" Artemus stood in the reception room off the Oval Office in the White House, dressed in his best evening apparel, a beautiful woman on his arm, watching as his partner and friend paced back and forth.
"Artie what are we doing here?" Jim asked angrily as he stopped and his own lovely companion took his arm before he could start pacing again.
"To be decorated by the President for our part in thwarting the plans of Professor Falcon, you do remember him don't you, Mad genius who'd built himself a super cannon and was wiping out cities with it?"
"We should be out trying to find another mad genius," West seethed.
"Jim, it's been weeks, face it, Loveless is really gone this time. They even found what was left of him and his associates, why can't you accept it as I have?"
"Because they've turned up proof of his death before Artie, and yet he's managed to come back just the same."
The doors to the Presidential office opened and a liveried functionary beckoned, "The President is ready for you now Gentlemen." He said crisply.
Two months later.
With fire streaming from its tail and emitting a banshee howl, the missile made a wide turn as it swooped down towards the train chuffing along the single track in the dessert. It neared the locomotive and seemed ready to strike when at the last moment it veered away and slammed into a outcropping of rock, erupting in a fireball.
Muttering a stream of curses as he slammed his fist into his palm. Loveless watched the funeral pyre of yet another test of his heat-seeking weapon. Despite all the work he and his colleagues had done, the guidance system still was being distracted from its intended target by stray heat sources, such as the sun-baked rocks of the outcropping. Of course the weapon was not a total failure; the ship killer version had proven successful due to a lack of distracting influences out on the open sea, but there was still some adjustments to its design to be made, such as a means of it being able to adjust its trajectory to avoid the tops of waves in heavy seas.
Scribbling some notes in the small book he carried, Loveless retreated to the large tent set up next to the test area. As he was about to enter, there was a loud blast and he looked towards the direction it had come from, then turned away while rubbing at his eyes, his brilliant mind refusing to accept that he had seen what he thought he saw; a coyote, man sized and walking upright, stumbling away from the epicenter of the explosion.
The man who had greeted him upon his first waking up after he and his companions had been rescued from their undersea base was waiting for Loveless inside the tent, seated at the table on which were arrayed several sets of plans. One that caught his eye was a version of his missile that had a human operator. Oriental writing indicated that the plans originated in Japan or perhaps China. Loveless looked up at his guest.
"We have reciprocal exchange arrangements with some of our brother organizations in other countries," The man explained. "There is currently a power struggle among some of the Shoguns to usurp the Emperor. Your new weapon could be the key to his retaining his throne."
"I don't see a means for the pilot to escape once the missile nears the target." Loveless commented.
"He's not supposed to. You are familiar with the Japanese concept of Bushido?"
"Yes," Loveless said slowly. His thoughts turned to West and Gordon. As large as his hatred of them was, it was not so large that it would prompt him to take them with him in a suicidal fireball.
"Your last test did not go well I see." The man commented.
"It was the guidance system again." Loveless sighed as he sat down. "It is still being distracted by stray heat sources, but I'll soon crack it."
"In the meantime, might I offer the words of an associate of mine? 'I like to play with things awhile, before annihilation.' Before your dispatch West and Gordon, why not have your fun with them?"
"What do you mean?"
"I understand you have recently perfected your mind reprogramming helmet with our help, and some of your colleagues have developed a variant of the chemical agent you had invented to induce humanity to destroy itself, but now it blanks the memory and renders the brain receptive to outside stimulation and suggestion. Both need to be field tested, and can you think of any more deserving test subjects then your two former adversaries?"
Loveless rubbed his hands together in glee as he chortled, "When do we start?"
A week later"Artie, where's our train?" West stood staring at the empty siding where just yesterday, a 4-4-0-steam locomotive, a sixty-foot combine and a sixty-foot luxury railroad coach, all weighing several tons had stood. Now all three had vanished, seemingly into thin air.
"Jim, that's the least of our worries," Gordon replied tilting his head towards the bags of cash and coin slung over the saddles of his and Jim's horses and the approaching hoof beats of an enraged posse.
"Artie, I think you and I are in some serious trouble." West said slowly as he shook his head.
"That's an understatement Jim, if we don't find that train, they'll be taking it out of our pay until we're gray bearded old men."
"Artie, you know what I mean."
"Absolutely Jim, question is; how did we get in this fix?"
To be continued
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