"Great. A comedian," MacGuire muttered.
"What is this?"
The squeaky voice was so loud and so close MacGuire almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around.
The trooper was startled to see the old Asian sitting in the back seat. MacGuire hadn't heard the door open or close. The old man was aiming a slender finger at the bullet-proof shield that separated the rear seat from the front. It was a standard safety precaution. MacGuire told him this.
"Remove it," Chiun commanded.
"I can't," MacGuire replied, irked, as he turned back to the wheel. "It's permanently affixed."
"Why not just leave it, Chiun?" the skinny guy said over his shoulder, as if the old geezer could actually do something about the thick sheet of Plexiglas. By the looks of it, he was lucky just to haul himself out of bed in the morning.
"It annoys me," Chiun sniffed.
"So what?" Remo said.
"So, I already have to put up with you. One annoyance is quite enough."
As the two of them prattled on, Trooper MacGuire checked the traffic situation. He was about to pull out into the street when he was shocked by a horrible tearing sound over his right shoulder.
Spinning around, MacGuire was stunned to see that the protective shield-which could stop a .357 round fired point-blank-had been wrenched free from its casing.
The old man's hands were stretched out as wide as they could go. A set of bony fingers curled around each end of the shield.
As the state trooper watched in shock, the Asian brought his hands together. The sheet of thick plastic bent into a bowed U, straining until it could no longer take the pressure. All at once, it snapped with the report of a gunshot. MacGuire ducked behind the seat, hoping to avoid the inevitable spray of plastic shards he was sure would be launched forward.
There were none. Just another louder, quicker snap.
When he picked his head up over the seat, Trooper MacGuire found that the old man had placed the panes together, forming an inch-thick sheet of glass. These he had snapped, too. The four smaller sections he'd stacked atop one another. As MacGuire watched in amazement, he broke these, as well.
"Can we hurry up and go already?" the Department of Agriculture man complained from the seat next to MacGuire. "There aren't any doughnuts back there." He seemed oblivious to the action in the back seat.
Nodding dully, the trooper turned back around. He swallowed hard, forcing his Adam's apple back down his neck. It seemed suddenly to want to escape his throat.
As he pulled out into traffic, MacGuire heard the snap-snap-snap of increasingly-smaller sheets of Plexiglas coming from the rear seat.
TED HOLSTEIN HAD BEEN flown by helicopter to College Hospital in Boston. As the first known survivor of an attack by Dr. Judith White, it was feared by some authorities that the young hunter might begin to manifest some of the same man-eating characteristics as his assailant.
"She's not a freaking werewolf," Ted complained as blood was drawn from his arm for the umpteenth time.
"Yes, sir," replied the nurse. She appeared to not even be listening to him.
They held him for hours, testing and retesting, finally proclaiming that in spite of having the liver of an eighty-year-old-he was perfectly normal. Ted was clearly not a threat to society at large.
The hospital released him. Directly into the grasping claws of the Boston press corps.
He granted dozens of impromptu interviews in the College Hospital emergency room.
"What was it like to be attacked by Judith White?"
"Did she say anything to you during the attack?"
"Are you afraid she might come back for you?" Fortunately for Ted, five o'clock was approaching and most of the reporters had to get back to their respective stations to edit their miles of tape into the three seconds of material that would actually make it on the air.
Some of the stations tried to get him to come on the air live for their 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. news, but he'd firmly refused. Even so, a few cameras still lingered on him as he sat alone in the blue molded-plastic chair near the automatic doors of the emergency room.
Ted tried to ignore the glaring lights. His eyes and head hurt from not drinking. He hadn't had a beer since morning. All he wanted to do was to get away from here. Out of the public eye.
As he checked his watch for the hundredth time in the past half hour, the doors next to him slid open. "Hey, hey, hey! There he is!" yelled a happy voice.
Bob came bounding through the doors, grinning broadly. The powerful stench of stale beer clung to his clothes and breath. Evan Cleaver trailed Bob into the hospital.
"It's about time," Ted said, annoyed. He got to his feet, stretching uncomfortably.
"Hey, the Feds were asking us all kinds of questions," Bob said defensively. "You ain't the only celebrity here."
"At least they weren't jabbing you with needles," Ted replied. He rubbed his pin-cushioned arm.
"Needles schmeedles," Bob dismissed. "You ready to go, or what? Guns are in the truck." This he said loudly, jerking a too casual thumb over his shoulder. He smiled at the remaining cameras. The few reporters in the emergency room began to circle around the trio.
"Are you going after Judith White again?" a reporter asked, shoving a microphone in Ted's face.
"Damn straight," announced Bob, belching loudly as he spoke. "Hi, Mom." He waved at the camera.
"No," Ted stated firmly.
"We've got to, man," Bob insisted.
"They've tracked her as far as Malden, last I heard," Evan said excitedly. "She's looping around this way."
"Maybe she wants you." Bob leered, elbowing Ted.
"Aren't you afraid of what might happen?" a reporter questioned Ted.
The answer was written on his face. Even the question seemed to terrify Ted.
Bob answered for him. "No way," Bob insisted.
"He's not afraid of anything," Evan agreed.
"Well..." Ted began timidly.
But Bob and Evan were already bullying him to the emergency-room doors. The glass panes slid silently open.
"What makes you think you can survive another round with the Beast of BostonBio?" the reporter asked, employing his profession's tired and tested technique of turning something serious into a frivolous sports metaphor.
"Hey, we've got the most famous hunter in New England on our side," Bob boasted loudly. "How can we lose?"
"Actually..." Ted started.
"Shut up," Bob and Evan instructed.
And as the hospital doors slid efficiently shut, fear rang like a desperate clanging gong in the ears of New England's most famous hunter.
"WHAT ARE WE DOING?" the Master of Sinanju asked.
He was perched in the back seat of Trooper MacGuire's unmarked car. A pile of inch-wide, twofoot-long strips of plastic sat on the seat beside him. "Don't you start again," Remo cautioned.
"I was asking the constable, O Nosy One," Chiun sniffed.
"We're waiting for that lady scientist," the state trooper offered.
Chiun leaned over into the front seat until his head was between the two men. He looked out the windshield at the high-tech glass exterior of the BostonBio building.
The Master of Sinanju frowned. "Is she inside?"
"No," Trooper MacGuire admitted.
Chiun paused, allowing the trooper's answer to hang in the air. He turned to Remo.
"What are we doing?" he repeated.
"She might come back," the trooper replied. "When she does, we'll be waiting for her."
Chiun sank back into his seat. "She has gotten all that she requires from this place. The creature will not return."
A horn suddenly honked loudly down the block. For what seemed like the millionth time that day, a truck loaded with rowdy hunters drove past the parked cruiser. It disappeared around the next corner.
"Looks like you're alone in that opinion," Trooper MacGuire mumbled.