Chapter 14

“What took you, Little Father?” Remo asked impatiently. “Sounded like shop class down there.”

Remo’s store of bizarre and meaningless comments was endless, and Chiun dismissively waved a hand. “One of the cells was breached. I destroyed the contents.”

“How?”

“It matters not.”

“It matters a lot. How’d you kill them?”

Chiun pursed his lips. Remo was an excellent pupil in some ways. Decorum was not one of them. He had never learned to understand when it was best for all involved to leave some things unspoken. Chiun felt justified by what he had done, but Remo would give him no peace. Still, it would be best to admit it now.

“I used a hammer,” Chiun said hastily.

“What?” Remo asked. “A tool?”

“Yes. A tool. When one fights unnatural foes, one must adopt unnatural methods. What other way was I to incinerate the tiny devices?” Chiun haughtily explained his method of destroying the mechanisms in the flowing substance. “Tell me what better way to dispose of these abominations?”

Remo shrugged sloppily. “Hey, if it works, why not? I’m sure I couldn’t have come up with anything better.”

They passed in silence among the cubes, which made slithering sounds that were muted by the thick stainless-steel walls. The Cottingsharm army was lined up along one wall. Some were breathing; some were not.

The quiet was strange and foul. Chiun’s skin felt like it was tingling. He was too alert, too aware. He kept thinking he felt the prickling of those tiny little eyes on him.

“This place makes my flesh crawl,” Remo declared.

“I hope you are joking. I have long ago instructed you in the mastery of crawling flesh,” Chiun said.

“It’s this place. It’s this stuff. These things. I don’t even know how to talk about them. I just know they’re wrong. And did you notice the brand name?” Remo jabbed a finger at the etching in the stainless steel: Property Of The United States Of America. “Makes me feel ill.”

“I assume this is another feeble joke.” Chiun observed Remo halt at an emergency containment booth. Behind the glass was a bodysuit of shiny material and an airtight helmet like those donned by the space shuttlers.

The sign read In Case Of Emergency, Break Glass. The neatly piled hose inside was of a different makeup than the water hoses Chiun was used to seeing.

“Look. A spark igniter. That’s a welding torch. The hose has welder’s gas. Probably high-temperature stuff to patch up a box in an emergency breech. Still, not enough gas to blow this place up.”

Chiun regarded his pupil reproachfully. “My method of creating heat with a hammer would be faster than that tiny flame. Let the Emperor care for disposal of the nanomachinoids.”

“Trust Smitty to do the right thing? I don’t think so. But you knew that, didn’t you? You want me to shoulder all the responsibility.”

“You are Reigning Master and contract negotiator. Not I,” Chiun sniffed.

“Whatever. You can blame it all on me. Maybe we could feed a garden hose from the gas main in the house.”

More ridiculous words pouring from the mouth of Remo, the Obviously White Master of Sinanju.

Chiun started to respond, but instead he suddenly ran. He ran in fire.

Remo heard the clicks of a hundred tiny valves, flush-mounted in the stainless steel all around them and opening all at once. The sound of a hissing snake strike filled the vast chamber—it was the release of gas at an immensely high pressure. Remo was already running. Chiun was at his side. The vast chamber seemed longer than when they came through the first time.

Floor slots opened to suck the old air out and make room for the flammable mixture. More tiny flickers in a dozen places produced sparks. In under a second the room was filled with hydrogen and billowing with flame.

Remo and Chiun were out of the chamber, but the gas clouds were in pursuit, reaching out for them and the hallway had its own incendiary system that was now sparking to life. Flames embraced the Masters of Sinanju.

Only their speed saved them from the flames. They literally outran the conflagration and emerged into the space behind the hidden panel in Loch Tweed Castle. They slipped out of the dining hall and through the finely decorated old chambers, then emerged onto the front steps.

“Hallo? Who’re you?” demanded an SAS colonel, leader of the counterassault.

“Fire inspector?” Remo could feel the pressure waves thundering through the house behind him, and he stepped off the old flagstone porch just as the front door exploded open behind him. The double doors flipped through the air like a thrown magazine, and the SAS commandos craned their necks to watch them land in a decorative pond and crush the last existing mating pair of Tweed-Beige swans.

The SAS colonel couldn’t believe he was alive. He’d been physically removed from the front of the building. He swore he saw the bloody doors flying at him for a fraction of a second.

“Where’d he go?” the commando demanded. “Where’s the old man, too?”

The SAS agents were tearing their eyes away from the horror in the brick pond. None of them had witnessed the escape of the two men on the porch, but they were gone.

“Didn’t any of you see anything?”

“Oh, God!” One of the commandos had discarded his weapon and was half running to the pond, where a crippled, gasping swan came staggering from the water and collapsed. The colonel had always suspected Butch Butler was a closet sentimentalist. “Butler, retrieve your weapon!”

“Brighton” Butch cuddled the swan and sobbed as it went limp in his arms.

“Damn it all to hell!” the colonel exploded as more of his elite squadron broke down in tears. “Buck up, you pansies! Come on!”

Heckler & Koch submachine guns rattled on the flagstone steps as the weeping commandos huddled around the dead bird. The noncriers were trying to keep from chuckling.

“What is so goddamn funny?” he demanded, then the flames caught his attention again. Loch Tweed Castle was a bonfire. “Has anybody called the fire department?”