“Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
Chiun considered that. “Who devised this plan?”
“I did.”
“I see.”
“You will see. Here we go.”
More taunts were shouted at them from a pair of machine-gun-toting toughs who were definitely not Africans. “Come and get a piece of this, you mothersucking Yank!”
Remo dodged their fusillade and snatched them by the chin, lifting and pressing them high up against the wall.
“I really get mad when people insult my mom,” Remo said, and pushed harder—until the heads broke and the corpses collapsed alongside the heavy door into the chamber.
The door consisted of a decorative wood layer atop an inch of tempered steel. Tapered steel bolts were shot into the frame from the top and bottom and both sides of the door. It would take a bazooka blast to break it open.
Remo didn’t have a bazooka, but he had ten Sinanju- trained fingers. He tapped lightly against the wood surface and found that it was an exceptionally well-made door. The imperfections in the subsurface steel were few and difficult to isolate.
Behind him, Chiun was doing his own tapping—on the floor, impatiently, with the toe of his sandal.
“Hold your horses.” Remo found the weak seam he wanted and knocked carefully along it, creating a deep vibration that was at exactly the right frequency. The door spiderwebbed down the middle like a windshield hit by a rock. Remo pushed in, creating an opening that was immediately used as the exit point for blasts from a combat shotgun. Remo waited for the buckshot to go by like a kid waiting for the cars to pass so he could cross the street, then he slid through the gash. In the chamber he observed a trapdoor swinging into place in the floor.
He reached the trapdoor and grabbed the lip just before it was closed, and lifted it open again. The man who had been closing it was standing on a ladder with his hand still extended, and Remo grabbed the hand and lifted the man out of the hole, rattling him until he dropped his smoking shotgun.
“Sir Rilli?”
“No! He’s down there!”
Remo broke the shotgunner and tossed him away like a banana peel.
“Hello?” Remo called down the tunnel. “Saddam, you down there?”
He waited, listening to the hushed voices from deep inside the chamber. He grew a grin. Chiun looked expectant and not quite tolerant.
“We’re takin’ over, you bleeding wankers!” Remo shouted, doing a bad British accent. “It’s me, Nigel Grollman. Me and John Surah, we’re taking over Ayounde for ourselves.”
Chiun rolled his eyes. “Need I ask the meaning of this?”
“They’re on the phone to whoever it is organizing this takeover circus. Now they’re telling them that Nigel Grollman and John Surah are trying to conquer the conquerors.”
“And these names you mention?”
“Two of the guns-for-hire we squashed out front,” Remo explained. Then he shouted again down the hole. “You bleedin’ cowards come out of there now or we’ll bomb you out!”
“You do not sound British,” Chiun said.
“I sound British enough.” Remo walked a slow circle around the chamber, found the place he wanted and stamped his foot. The room vibrated. He moved over a fraction of an inch and stamped again.
The building shook and the floor under their feet experienced a powerful tremor, actually bouncing. Cries of fear came from below, but one more foot-stamp was required from the Reigning Master of Sinanju. This time the concrete cracked and they heard chunks of the bomb-proof ceiling falling down inside the chamber.
Men scrambled from the exit tunnel and had their weapons and cell phones removed before they could commence firing or phoning.
Michele Rilli was the last man out “What in blazes is going on?”
“Cabinet is in session,” Remo announced. “Everybody is ready but you.”
Rilli couldn’t believe what he was seeing—all his personal bodyguards were in desks around the circular presentation floor. They had their hands folded on their desks and they were just sitting there. Then he was lifted and deposited in one of the desks himself, at the end of the line. Something was done to his neck and now his arms and legs became stiff as boards—but unmovable. The rolling eyeballs of his security staff told him that they were also completely paralyzed. Unlike his soldiers, Rilli could still talk.
“You’re not Grollman.” Rilli rolled his eyes at Chiun. “You’re not Surah.”
“I certainly am not.”
“So who are you?”
“Never mind about that. I’m going to be asking the questions now,” Remo said. “Question number one— the hostages are hidden away in the blank.”
“You are in violation of British law. This is an act of war.”
“Wrong answer earns you a zoink,” Remo announced, and he poked a finger into the head of the first man in the circle. “Zoink!”
The man was now a corpse who toppled halfway out of his seat and hung there, eyes wide, gore seeping from the wound.
Sir Michele Rilli tried to make his body work, but he couldn’t move anything below the jawline.
“Question number one again,” Remo said. “Hostages are in the blank.”
“Let me move my arms, please!” Rilli had nightmares about being paralyzed while horrible things happened to him.
“Mmm, sorry. ‘Let me move my arms’ is not an answer at all. Another zoink for you.” He poked the next man in line. “Zoink!”
“Jesus Christ!” Rilli shrieked hysterically as another man died. This time the corpse leaned forward in its desk and stared right at the great grand prix driver.
“I think you see where this is heading.” Remo swept his hand in lovely Vanna White fashion to indicate the circle of desks, with two corpses at the end. “Now, I have a lot of questions for you, young man, and the zoinks are getting closer and closer. I’d try hard to avoid the nasty old zoink if I were you.”
Rilli tried to move. He screamed and screamed until the little old Chinaman adjusted something on his neck and made the panic go away but not the fear. He was still horribly afraid.
“Please no zoink!” Sir Rilli pleaded.
“Now, now, the zoink is something you control. Just you, you foolish little race-car driver. I think you know how to not get a zoink, don’t you? I thought you did. Let’s try it again, okay, and we’ll see if you really understand about the zoink. Pay attention.” Remo. leaned in close, inches away from the red, streaming eyes of the Honorable Sir Michele Rilli. All of a sudden, the goofball American transformed into some sort of a Satan in human form. “Where are the fucking hostages?”
Michele Rilli had been afraid before, but now, now, now. What was it in the eyes of that man? What was he?
There was something shining red and livid and alive and it could suck his soul right out of his body.
“Basement. High-security wing for state prisoners. I reset the biometrics so only my voiceprint opens it up.”
“Let’s hear it for him. He has earned no zoink! Question number two.”
“How many questions are there?” Rilli cried.
“I dunno. Eight or ten.”
“Oh God no!” There were only five living men left to be zoinked. Michele Rilli couldn’t care less about any of them—but he was in line to get zoinked, too.
“I’ll answer them all truthfully, I swear!”
“Great! Question two is, who did this? The whole stupid knights-of-the-round-table thing—who organized it? Who put you up to it?”