Remo arrived at the outskirts of a facility surrounded by chain link and armed guards. Topping the chain link was razor wire, its lack of tarnish providing evidence that it was recently added. The snow landing on him did not melt, as Remo concentrated on keeping his surface temperature even with that of the air. After several minutes, the snowflakes had caked around his body, effectively camouflaging him against the whiteness of the surrounding landscape.
As he surveyed the layout of the compound and the position of the guards, an explosion to the west sent shockwaves through the ground and, Remo knew, into it as well. He muttered a curse that Mother Earth had gotten one more kick in the crotch because he hadn’t arrived sooner. No more, he decided. This had to end now, or everything else was going to end soon.
Remo ran silently atop the snow. His feet left no impression, and his breath emitted no steam. He approached the pair of guards at what he presumed was the main gate. He had one hour and forty-nine minutes before another blast would go off, and with Smitty tying up all the construction and mining projects in a sea of red tape, the odds were with him that the next explosion was going to be right here.
The guards conversed in their native Russian, sharing tales of how they were going to spend the exorbitant salaries they were being paid when they got back to civilization—where they could get such civilized things as hookers and vodka. It gave Remo a warm feeling that capitalism and western values had gained such a foothold in Russia—almost as warm as the feeling he got seeing the priceless expression on the guard’s face when he saw his partner’s head slump sideways onto his shoulder and lay there before rolling to his chest, attached to his body by nothing more than the skin of his neck. Remo’s snow-camouflaged body gave him an extra degree of invisibility on top of that already granted him through his Sinanju skills. The guard, assuming the attack had come from a shot in the distance, raised his rifle and aimed it in one direction, then another, desperately trying to focus on a target, any target. By that time, Remo had already gotten behind him. The Kalashnikov disappeared from his hands, and hit the ground in pieces. The guard gaped at the useless metal fragments, then his eyes rolled back as a tap to the base of his neck turned off the power to his brain.
The guards dispatched, Remo fingers flew over the chain link of the fence, disassembling the joints like a series of simple Chinese puzzles, unzipping the metal barrier until there was a hole large enough to slip through. But once inside the compound, Remo was confronted with a secondary fence—this one unguarded, but electrified. Remo could feel the hum of it as he approached, shaking his head that people still found something so fatally flawed to be a deterrent to entry. The technology was originally designed to contain cattle, and most people were not much smarter than that anyway. Remo shook his head in disgust at the lack of a challenge. He reached for the live feeder wire, feeling the current dance across his skin. He gave a short hop, both his feet leaving the ground before snapping the wire between his thumb and forefinger, severing both the wire and the flow of current while not being grounded himself; then he stepped between the barbed wires and made his way further inward.
“I could really use a mall directory right about now,” he muttered. Most of the buildings looked the same: mottled gray cubes with one gray door and no windows. “Smitty would love this. He could summer here and get away from all that dreadful color.”
Another guard stepped out of one of the doors Remo was passing. The door closed, and the guard would never go back in again.
Fifteen minutes had passed already, as Remo kept track in his mind, counting heartbeats to supplement what used to be an autonomic ability. At every turn he found another armed security guard to dispatch. Finally, he turned a corner and found a larger building near the center of the compound. It was wide enough to hold several semis, with a second floor for offices. More telling, it had windows, and some lights were on.
“Honey, I’m home,” he announced as he shouldered into the door.
Inside, he found five more guards, seated around a folding table playing poker, using potatoes as chips.
The first one to stand was the first one to die, as the outside edge of Remo’s hand made an upward sweep against the bridge of his nose, sending splinters of bone and cartilage up into the guard’s frontal lobe. A second dumped the table over, earning himself two seconds, as Remo leaped onto the edge and launched himself into a position that allowed him to take out the two guards on each side with a split kick, before swinging his right leg back in to crush the temple of the table-turner.
The remaining one was the smartest of the five, as evidenced by his showing the good sense to run away the moment the carnage began—buying him five yards and a squawk for help into a radio. Remo crouched to the ground and pressed his thumb against one of the scattered playing cards. A quick flick, and the card was embedded in the guard’s trachea, blood trickling down the torso of a one-eyed jack.
But the squawk had been enough. Through a set of double doors at the far end of the room rushed a half-dozen more guards. They had the advantage of not being caught unawares, and they were ready for a fight, with their weapons shouldered and ready to fire.
“How many boobs do they have around this place?” Remo marveled. The snow coating his skin now offered him no advantage, so he rejected it and it sloughed off in one fluid movement.
Six machine guns fired, their deafening reports filling the air as bullets perforated the walls.
Six machine guns missed. Then five, four, as Remo slipped between lines of fire, dismantling gun after gun, driving the barrel of each up through the chin of the man who held it.
Three. Two.
As the last body dropped to the floor, the ensuing silence was quickly broken by the sound of slow clapping echoing off the walls. Remo turned and saw two young women—twins—with shoulder-length raven hair framing perfect porcelain faces looking down from a second floor mezzanine.
“Now these boobs I recognize,” Remo said, taking in the impressive 42D (and 41½ D) orbs that protested being constrained by the buttons of the white cotton blouses the women wore.
“Bravo, Mr. Blomberg,” Jackie Forben applauded.
“Ladies,” he said, with a slight nod of the head.
Jill Forben giggled. “Oh, I think you know us much better than that, Mr. Blomberg,” she said, her mouth drawn up in a coy little grin.
It had been early in Remo’s career with CURE that he had encountered Jackie and Jill Forben. Their father, colloquially known as Doctor Quake, had invented a water laser which could, when properly used, release the pressure in natural fault lines and prevent major earthquakes. It could also create major earthquakes as well, and Forben and his daughters had decided the more profitable use of the invention was to extort payments from the U.S. Government in order not to see California crumble into the Pacific.
Remo had been sent out to California under the guise of a department store owner, Remo Blomberg. By the end of that caper, the girls had already murdered several men. The last time Remo saw the girls, they were falling into a crevasse which closed over them, while Chiun was destroying their father’s diabolical water-laser that was being used to create localized earthquakes. The second-to-last time he saw them, they had been passed out naked in his bed.
“You left us for dead, Mr. Blomberg,” Jackie scolded. “That was very naughty.”
“Believe me, I feel just as badly about that as you do,” said Remo. “I’m usually much better at leaving people for dead. That was really quite embarrassing.”
He had begun to stroll toward the girls. “If you’re coming to force us to tell you where the bombs are, it’s really unnecessary,” Jill said. “We’ll be glad to tell you where they are.”
“Well, that would be helpful,” Remo admitted.
“We’ll tell you because you won’t stop them,” Jackie said. “And we’ll have our revenge at last.”
“Revenge?” Remo asked. “Blowing up the Earth like some cartoon Martian is a bit extreme punishment for me leaving you alive, isn’t it?”
“If we hadn’t been trapped in an air pocket when the fault line sealed over us, we would have died. It was such a tight squeeze!” said Jill.
“Very tight,” Jackie giggled.
“It took us hours to claw our way out. Almost a whole day, in fact.”
“And when we emerged, we had nothing left.” Jackie scowled, her face darkening. “No equipment. Certainly not the money. We were completely on the outs. Homeless.”
“We were just lucky to find Billy,” said Jill.
“Billy?” Remo asked. He raised an eyebrow quizzically. “You mean, you two and the old man…?”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “No. Not that we didn’t offer it, over and over, but Billy insists his heart belongs to Jesus.”
“We tried to tell him that wasn’t the part we were interested in,” added Jill with a titter that sent a distracting jiggle through her breasts. “He blushes so cutely every time we tease him, though, but it’s always rejection.”
“But we managed,” Jackie said. “We get by like we always have.” She reached out a hand and Jill’s fingers entwined with hers.
“Ah,” Remo said.
“You could still kill us, I suppose, but you have a little less than ten minutes before the very big bang,” Jackie cooed.
“Eight minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” Remo said, still ticking down the time. “That would still leave plenty of time after showing you two the other thing I’m really good at.”
“Really?” Jill asked, her eyebrows raised in a display of innocent astonishment. “Eight minutes to kill us, then go a mile and a half northwest, over that ridge, and deal with the remaining guards between here and there?”
Remo frowned, his brow collapsing down over his deep set eyes. He spun toward the door at a sprint.
“Run, Mr. Blomberg,” Jill called out after him. “Run very fast.”
· · ·
“How’s that for fast?” Remo asked, panting. He’d just done the previously unthinkable—he had run the four-minute-mile. “One for the record books.”
Chiun shook his head ruefully. “You run like a turtle,” he said. “Like a brick. Like a turtle carrying bricks.”
“Bullshit,” he said, his breath coming back to him. “I was the freaking wind, in case you weren’t watching. I just broke records!”
A fingertip flicked out, raising a welt on Remo’s forehead.
“Hey!” he cried out. “What did you do that for?”
“What did you tell me before you began this effort?” Chiun asked.
“I don’t know. Something like ‘Watch my dust?’”
Chiun nodded. “And where did you say this?”
“Back there,” Remo said, motioning down the road he had just sprinted in Guinness-impressing time.
The old Korean smiled. “Exactly,” he said. “A mile back, you bragged to me how fast you were going to run. And now here you are, one mile later, telling me how fast you ran.”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it, I guess.” Remo said. He should have known that nothing he did would ever impress Chiun, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
Chiun sat on the ground, his green and black ornate kimono spread out neatly around him. Remo sighed and sat opposite him, assuming the “story time” position.
“In my home of Sinanju,” Chiun began, “there were days of great happiness as I continued my training. Often times, I would run along the beautiful beaches, racing my brother. Despite being just a few years my younger, he was swift of foot, and our races were always very close. Sometimes I would reach the goal first, sometimes he would. Those were beautiful days. What have you learned from this?”
Remo closed his eyes and tried to picture two Korean boys running along the coast of the shithole of a dilapidated town. He tried to hear their laughter, the pounding of their feet in the sand. He could smell the salt water of the bay.
He opened his eyes and looked upon the Master of Sinanju.
“Nothing. I learned nothing,” he said.
Chiun sagged and sighed and questioned the gods why he had to be the Master saddled with the least observant white man in all of the western world. “The lesson,” Chiun said, “is that I am not a twin.”
“Oh,” said Remo. “I see.”
“No, you do not see,” Chiun said. “And you did not see.” He stood. “Now, go back. Faster. Break the wind again. I will speak to you further once you are there.”
Remo growled and took off at a sprint. About a quarter of a mile down the road, it dawned on him just how much of an idiot he could be.
· · ·
A three-minute-mile was little more than a brisk jog for Remo these days. When he was in a hurry, he could almost halve that. And he was in a hurry. Even still, the lack of a paved road, the blowing snow, and the two dozen armed guards who had been radioed to expect him left him just a few seconds over four minutes when he ripped through the metal garage doors of the concrete warehouse storing the bombs.
He was relieved. The whole time he was running, he thought that he was going to have to figure out which one of the bombs was set to go off, but that wasn’t going to be an issue.
They were all counting down—all one hundred and ten of them.
Their timers hit 4:00. Remo closed his eyes and let his senses reach out. There was no way anybody went through and set all these bombs to go off by hand. Humans—ordinary humans—weren’t that precise; some of them would at least be a second off. Which meant the timers were synched somewhere, some sort of central controller.
Remo opened his eyes and looked left under a cabinet along a far wall and saw what he was looking for, one of the tools of civilization that he hated the most: a computer.
3:45. Remo opened the cabinet and saw a keyboard and a monitor. The monitor displayed a countdown that flashed the same neon green digits replicated across the warehouse on each of the bombs. By now, having seen Avital defuse the bomb in Syria, Remo could have had more than half of the bombs rendered inert. But that wasn’t his plan.
The principle Walker was applying, the technique he obviously gleaned from Jackie and Jill Forben, was a simple one. It was a basic tenet of Sinanju, but one that was so simple even American children understood it at a very young age. It was the First Law of Swing Sets. You give a little push, the kid in the swing, no matter how fat, moves forward a little. You give the same push at the height of his backswing, he moves forward a little more. Eventually, the fat kid is swinging out over the playground and pretending he’s an astronaut.
But you don’t stop a swinging fat kid by no longer pushing him. Oh, that would work, but it would take too long. No, you stopped the swinging fat kid the same way you started him—with a push, but at the wrong time.
3:30. There were arrows beside the counter on the screen, one pointing up, the other pointing down. Remo touched the glass of the screen, tapping the downward-pointing arrowhead. Nothing happened. “That always works when Smitty does it,” he groused. He looked down at the keyboard. Among the many keys, it too had arrows, pointing in all four directions. He stabbed the one with the icon of a downward pointing arrow a few times.
The timer quickly dropped from 3:23 to 3:18.
Perfect, Remo thought, as he began to rapidly tap the key, accelerating the countdown. The timer reached 1:49 and he stopped. Just enough time.
He bolted for the door. This time the only guards he knew he would encounter would be dead ones. He hit the open air with 1:42 seconds to spare. Plenty of time to get as far away as possible and shelter in the deepest snowbank he could find.
In the distance, he heard a helicopter lift off and fly away from his location, and told himself that he made the right choice, even if his new calculations told him he’d have had just about 8 seconds to spare to kill the girls.
With twelve seconds on his internal timer, he ran off the road and into the snow. He prepared to dive beneath the snow when he heard the hammer of God stroke the earth behind him, lighting up the night.
“Still ten seconds off,” he chided himself as he let the snow swallow him, this time voluntarily, allowing the heat and debris to pass harmlessly past.
· · ·
Fifteen seconds earlier, in a remote cave in the side of a mountain in northern Afghanistan, Achmed had just attached the power cord to his brand new six-year-old PC to replace the one that had been shorted out by the urinating rat.
“Now,” he said, “it is time to completely demoralize the American youth with my faster processor.”
He flipped up the big red switch at the base of the tower unit, and looked over at the pile of backpack units that were ready to be distributed to his brothers that night for upcoming attacks. He did not register the flash of light as they all detonated at once, disintegrating him and barbecuing the goat copulation going on just outside the entrance to the cave, which did not solely involve goats.