"You mean to tell me we're on a rocket ride to Armageddon because some billionaire bumwad wanted to corner the market on space trinkets?" he demanded.
They were all still standing out on the sidewalk in front of the boardinghouse. A weak smear of pink and orange stained the farthest edge of the bleary California sky. To the north, the great statue of Huitzilopochtli turned from midnight black to shadowy gray. Somewhere beneath, hidden by trees, was the city hall.
Gary cringed at Remo's accusatory tone. "You need money to save the ozone and protect the rain forest," he argued weakly. "And presidential legal-defense funds don't pay for themselves, you know. But none of that matters now. Our general's gone all Jack D. Ripper on us. He isn't following the rules anymore. You've got to do something."
"What I ought to do is get on the first stage out of Dodge and let you mopes figure out how to convince the incoming wave of Russian nukes not to blow you sky high," Remo said sourly. "Here's a thought. Get a ladder and try doodling peace symbols on all the nose cones."
"We cannot leave," Anna said firmly.
Remo shot her a withering look. "Said the chick who left without a trace for ten years," he said sarcastically.
"I agree with the old woman," the Master of Sinanju said, nodding to Anna. "Smith would not want us to leave."
"If this is some fresh way of angling for a new house..." Remo warned, raising an accusing finger. But the look on his teacher's face told him otherwise. Remo dropped his hand. "Fine. We'll stay. But if we both wind up getting incinerated, don't come bitching to me."
"I don't think the Russians will attack us," Gary said.
Remo's eyes were flat. "Don't you people ever get tired of saying that?" he asked, annoyed. "Back in the sixties, when the Russians weren't invading someone they were waving their big Commie willies at everybody under the sun. They did it all on your watch, and all any of you did was slap on blinders and mulch your dorm-room pot plants while whistling 'Eve of Destruction.'"
"You don't understand," Gary said, shaking his head urgently. "Feyodov stopped shooting the gun yesterday. Right after the two of you broke into city hall." He nodded from Remo to Chiun. "I'm not sure, but I think if the Russians were gonna attack because of what happened to their space station, they would have done it by now."
Remo allowed the words to sink in. He hated to admit it, but Gary was making sense. He glanced at Anna.
"He is right," she said simply. "My president sees himself as a man of action. If his impulse was to attack, he would not wait twelve hours to do so."
"Maybe the machine broke down," Brandy Brand suggested.
Gary shook his head firmly. "No," he said. "He charged it up one last time, but he's been sitting on it ever since. It's like he's waiting for something."
Remo and Chiun exchanged tight glances. It was Remo who gave voice to their shared unspoken thought.
"Us?" he asked.
The old Korean nodded. "He knew of Sinanju," Chiun agreed with a puzzled frown.
"And he saw what happened to us when he fired that thing," Remo said with a scowl. "Who the hell is this guy, and what's his beef with us? We can't get within a country mile of him, and he knows it."
Gary Jenfeld looked anxiously at the rest of the Barkley city council. Fear filled their grubby faces. "You have to figure out something," Gary said desperately to Remo. "I mean, Feyodov's gone psycho. It's like he's got a death wish or something."
"He has," Anna Chutesov said. "But he is too cowardly to do the deed himself. He has seized this opportunity in order to get someone else to do it for him."
"That's one problem I'll gladly help him with," Remo said. "But first Chiun and I have to figure out a way to snip the wires on that thing without frying our circuitry."
He turned to Gary. "Where exactly is it hidden?" For an instant Gary's troubled eyes flicked over his shoulder.
An ominous black figure loomed far in the distance.
In the greasy gray sky of predawn, Remo saw the top of the far-off Huitzilopochtli statue in Barkley's town square peeking over the tops of the nearby trees and houses.
Remo wheeled back on the Barkley council. "You hid it inside Mr. Slate?" he complained.
"It worked, didn't it?" Gary said anxiously. Remo frowned. The truth was, it had. As a community Barkley had been so famously screwed up for so many years, he'd automatically dismissed a huge, four-story statue as just another part of the lunatic landscape.
Remo turned to Chiun. "How do we play this?" he asked.
"It is difficult," the old man said, thoughtfully stroking his thread of beard. He was studying the frozen face of Huitzilopochtli. The statue's black eyes stared coldly at the breaking dawn. "Does the power emanate from the stone god's eyes?" the old man asked Gary Jenfeld.
"You mean the particle stream?" the ice cream man asked. "The statue's hollow, and the top of the head is wide open. The mirrors that focus the stream are just below eye level."
"We could use explosives to destroy it," Anna offered.
Chiun's face fouled at the suggestion.
Gary shook his head. "It might look like a statue on the outside, but the thing's built like a missile silo. You couldn't drive a tank through the side of it. I don't think a bomb would make much of a difference."
"What if we got a helicopter?" Brandy suggested to Remo and Anna. "If the head's open like he says, we could fly over and drop a bomb inside."
Remo shot the FBI agent a skeptical look. "They're shooting down satellites that are a million miles away and you want to try hovering over ground zero?"
"Oh," Brandy said, dejected. "Hadn't thought of that."
"But the hollow-head thing could work for us," Remo said thoughtfully. "Chiun and I can't get close, but we can sure as hell lob something inside from a distance."
Brandy cast a dubious eye at the statue. "You must have one hell of a pitching arm," she said.
Remo ignored the FBI agent. "Anyone here know how to make a bomb?" he asked.
The entire Barkley city council with the exclusion of Gary Jenfeld raised their hands.
"Why did I even ask?" Remo grumbled. "Okay, put what's left of your brain cells together and come up with something that'll go boom. Preferably not in your hands."
"That'll be hard to do," Gary whined. "We banned explosives in town a few years back, along with all guns. And now the Russians are the only ones who have any weapons at all." He put on a pouty face. "They were supposed to protect us and now they've made us prisoners."
"And that's never happened before," Remo said dryly.
"We can come up with something," Brandy promised. "We'll have to swing by the hardware store. Let's go."
When the crowd turned to the curb, Remo took note of the ratty old van the city council had arrived in.
"Someone probably should go on the magic bus with the Doodletown Pipers," he said.
"Do not look at me," Chiun sniffed.
"I will go with them," Anna said.
Brandy took the wheel of Anna's rental car. Chiun and Remo slid into the seat beside her. Three members of the Barkley city council got into the back. Anna climbed into the van with the remaining council members. As the other car drew away from the curb, Gary Jenfeld was pulling his ample belly in behind the van's steering wheel.
The ice cream man was turning the key in the ignition when he felt something hard press against his neck. When he turned to see what it was, his face locked in paralyzed fear.
Anna Chutesov was sitting in the seat beside him.
To Gary's shock the Russian agent had drawn her automatic. The open mouth of the barrel tickled the graying whiskers that sprouted just below his ear.
Neither hand nor eyes wavered as she pressed the gun barrel harder into flesh.
"Now, idiot, take me to Boris Feyodov," she commanded.