"It is underground," he was told.
"American rockets stand upon the ground, no doubt so as to save fuel because that places them closer to the sky," another said.
"Russian and American armies are jealous of our rockets, for they are the greatest in the world," said a third. "They would bomb them if they could find them. So we are forced to place them safely underground."
"Ah," said the Master of Sinanju as they passed steel door upon steel door that had to be rolled back with dual keys turned by two hands standing on opposite sides of the corridor. This, he was informed, was a security measure so no unauthorized person could unlock the doors.
At the end of a concrete corridor lay a great door like the one King Solomon had barring his treasury, according to Master Boo.
"You may enter the rocket."
"I see no rocket."
"The inside of the rocket is behind this door. You have only to enter, the door will be closed and sealed and the ride into destiny will begin."
"Very well. Open the door to destiny."
It was done with three men turning three keys this time, and the thick steel door parted in the middle, the sides separating.
A dark space was revealed. Machine smells came from within, offending the nose of the Master of Sinanju. He hesitated.
"Enter please. We are ready to launch."
Chiun faced them, eyes and voice knife-thin. "Know, soldiers of the Han, that if you fail to bring me back correctly, a great and terrible punishment will be inflicted upon you by my son, who may be white but is true to Sinanju."
The faces of the Han were suddenly still. Their eyes glittered as their lids compressed. If they took offense, it didn't show.
With that, the Master of Sinanju entered the dank chamber, and the great doors resealed with a empty clang.
In the darkness the thin eyes of Chiun gathered the dying shards and fragments of light and assembled them so that he could see.
The chamber was a concrete cylinder and hung with great electrical cables. Water dripped, stagnant and old. Somewhere a rat skittered on the broken floor. The chemical smell was overpowering, so the Master of Sinanju began breathing shallowly.
Looking up, Chiun beheld a great dark maw suspended over his aged head, like a tremendous bell, much like the one employed by the kings of the Silla Kingdom to punish criminals by inserting their heads into the hollow and setting the metal to violent ringing by pounding mallets.
Except there was no room for mallets or men between the bell and the great concrete cistern in which it hung.
But somewhere above, something went click like an electrical relay closing. And great engines began to turn, so slowly that only the ears of a Master of Sinanju could detect their first faint revolutions.
The official Hong Qui—Red Flag—car slithered through the installation checkpoint without Remo being noticed.
As it approached, he had slid off the car roof and was clinging to the side where no one could see him, not the passengers, not the gate guard on the opposite side.
When the vehicle rolled inside, Remo looked around. He saw tall grass and a few funny-looking gingko trees.
As the car slowed in its approach to a bunkerlike building, he noticed the green steel missile silo roof door on its sliding track several hundred yards away, fringed by gingko trees to provide overhead camouflage.
"Uh-oh," he said to himself, "looks like an underground missile site. Better find Chiun fast."
The car doors opened and the passengers emptied out in a rush. One stumbled and was called by the other, "FangTung!"
And suddenly Remo remembered that pungent phrase had been used by the nameless drive-by killers back in Massachusetts.
Coming out of his crouch by the car, Remo slipped up behind the two officers as they approached a blank steel door in the concrete blockhouse.
One inserted a magnetic keycard, the door began rolling open and Remo reached out and took each man by the spine.
They had time to bleat out the first microsecond of what was meant to be a blood-curdling scream. But all electrical and brain activity ceased when their spines exited their backs, pulling out all life. Without lumbar support, they fell into each other and collapsed. Remo stepped over them.
Inside he wasted no time.
"Chiun, where are you?"
That brought three PLA guards in green running.
If their slack-jawed expressions meant anything, the sight of a Westerner stupefied them into inaction. So Remo stepped in and blended their Kalashnikovs into a kind of fuzzy metallic cocoon in which their arms were inextricably tangled.
He moved on, leaving them to their helpless weeping.
There were layers of steel control doors and matching guards along a single corridor with no branching paths. That took away all the guesswork. Remo simply bulled through.
Doors meant to be opened electronically surrendered to the pressure of his steel-hard fingers insinuating themselves into stout frames and forcing them apart.
Guards tried to stop him with a combination of bullets and kung fu. The kung-fu boys got the worst of it because their weapons were part of their bodies, and Remo felt obliged to disarm everybody so he could get out again without problems.
Once bloodied stumps began flying about, no one tried to kung fu Remo Williams again. In fact, resistance pretty much died down. PLA security forces retreated like scientists in a B-grade fifties horror film before the rampaging monster.
"Great," Remo grumbled. "By the time I reach the end, I'm going to have to take out a small army."
When he forced the last door open and found himself in a control room, Remo demanded in a loud voice, "Where is my father!"
Perhaps it was the sight of the mad foreign devil with the powers of the gods. Perhaps it was the sheer mounting terror his crashing intrusion had caused. Or maybe it was just that nobody clearly understood English.
The huddled knot of frightened and trembling officials said nothing.
But from behind a great double steel door, the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju called, "I am here, son in truth!"
And then Remo spotted a hand surreptitiously trying to turn two firing keys at once at a corner console.
"Chiun! Get outa there!" said Remo, racing for the door.
On the other side the Master of Sinanju heard the urgency in his adopted son's voice and dug his long nails into the crack between the two steel door valves. He pushed aside the weaker of the two. Stubborn, it began to screech in complaint.
As the door resisted, he sensed Remo on the other side, pushing the other valve in the opposite direction.
"Hurry, Remo! For I hear machines."
"You're underneath a fucking nuclear missile, and it's about to launch!" Remo yelled.
And the doors, mighty, implacable, surrendered with howls and shrieks of protest as the muscle and bone and will of the two mightiest human beings on the face of the earth pitted their inexhaustible energies against the tempered steel.
The doors parted, the Master of Sinanju slipped out like a silken ghost and, as he stood free once more, behind him grew a dull roar.
"Let's go!" Remo screamed.
They ran.
The others tried to run, too. But they were but mortals, flat and flabby without training or proper breathing.
Only a Master of Sinanju was fleet enough to out-race catastrophic death.
The great Long March missile belched fuel and trembled as the silo roof rolled back on its tracks to allow it to take wing.
Remo and Chiun zipped through the corridors strewn with the dead and out of the blockhouse.
Throwing himself flat, Remo yelled, "Get down!"
Chiun dropped in the lee of the blockhouse. The air was shaking. Songbirds uplifted from the sparse gingko trees, frantic and wild.
With a majestic slowness the lipstick red nose cone of the Long March missile emerged from the earth like a dormant giant and lifted and lifted until it stood poised on a column of white-hot chemical fire.