"You stay here with him, Chiun," Remo said, indicating the Russian.
"Yes," Chiun agreed. "I will protect this vehicle. With his taste, this one may attempt to eat the seats."
Remo went up the steps to the office. Before he opened the door, his sensitive nostrils detected an odor familiar to him. A human odor that was a distinctive blend of soap and shampoo mingled with perspiration, which itself was distinctive because it was the product of an individual's unique physiological makeup and dietary habits.
The blonde. Amanda Bull.
Remo eased the door open. The room beyond was empty. With a supple grace, he worked his way through the crack in the door and closed it soundlessly. The door leading to the inner office was ajar. Remo made for it. He might have been a wisp of cigarette smoke floating through the room for all the sound he made.
Amanda Bull was waiting for him.
"Oh," she said. "You surprised me." Her voice sounded odd. Remo couldn't tell why at first, then it came to him. She wasn't using her I'm-the-boss-here-and-you-better-know-it voice. She was acting.
"Yeah, I do that a lot," Remo told her, looking for weapons. Her hands were empty, but she stood with her right hand against her hip and slightly back. It was not calm, nor did it exhibit any of the expected nervous habits people showed with their hands. It hovered. There was a weapon at the small of her back.
"Well, I guess you got me," Amanda said.
"Guess so." Remo got to within a few paces of her.
"Uh... I suppose you want to know where it is?" Amanda said.
"That's right," Remo said quietly.
"It's here— in Oklahoma City, that is. Hidden where no one can find it."
"Except you?" Remo suggested.
"Yes, except me. I guess I'll have to take you to it."
"Good idea," Remo said. "Why don't you lead the way?"
Amanda began to lead Remo to the door, but Remo caught her elbow and, using his own body as a pivot, swept her half around and pushed her back against the desk. She hit the edge of the desk with the small of her back and said, "Oof," when the impact forced the air from her lungs.
Remo was against her body before she could react, his left arm catching her right, and his right hand found the gun holstered at the small of her back. He felt it, threw the safety to the "on" position but left it there.
"What... what are you doing?" Amanda demanded hotly.
Remo didn't answer. His deep eyes gazed into her gray ones, and Amanda felt a shiver course through her body that was less one of fear than it was a sexual reflex. She had never felt anything like the electricity that seemed to jump from Remo's finger to her body. Involuntarily, her breathing increased.
Remo's lips found hers before she could protest— if in fact she intended to protest. His tongue darted out and, closing her eyes, Amanda's mouth yielded, tasted, and replied in kind.
Amanda felt the hard fingers brush her swaying body through the material of her black jumpsuit. The fingers were hard like the blunt noses of bullets, yet they touched and kneaded her with just the right combination of strength and gentleness.
Not thinking of anything but those fingers, Amanda let herself sink back into the desk top, where Remo's fingers worked her wrists until she felt her pulse quicken. Then Remo's manipulations became a long, delicious blur in Amanda Bull's mind until she felt the front zipper of her jumpsuit ease down. And then Remo was inside her, exciting her, pleasing her, questioning her.
"The warhead," Remo asked through the white noise of her pleasure. "Where is it really?"
"Aahhh... later," Amanda moaned.
"Now, or I'll stop."
"Uhh— no, don't stop! Please don't stop. Feels... good."
"Only good?" Remo asked.
"Meant great— feels great!"
"There's a lot more to come," Remo said, "but only if you answer the question." Remo paused for a fraction of a second, which caused Amanda to grab him violently and begin grinding her body against his frantically.
"No! I'll tell!" Amanda cried. "It's at Broken Arrow. In an oil field."
"Where exactly?" Remo asked, resuming his rhythms.
"Off highway— uhh— Broken Arrow Expressway—"
"The rest of them there?"
"Oohh— oow, yes! Yes, yes! Yessss." But Amanda was no longer answering the question. She was shuddering in the first real climax of her life and was oblivious to everything but the response of her body to that climax.
She was still breathing heavily when she finally opened her eyes and saw Remo Williams standing there with a bored expression on his face, his clothes already replaced.
Amanda zipped up hastily before she got back on her feet.
"It— it was never like that before," she said foolishly.
Remo nodded.
"I told you everything, didn't I?"
Remo nodded again. The disinterest on his dead features was plain. He had used her, Amanda realized. He had given her pleasure such as she had never before experienced— sexual bliss that left her still trembling— but it meant nothing to him.
Amanda screamed. "You bastard!" And she pulled her pistol from the small of her back, aimed once, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
"Check the safety," Remo said coolly, a spark of humor in the shadows that were his eyes.
The safety was on, Amanda saw. She tried to thumb it off, but it wouldn't budge. She tried again, this time breaking her thumbnail.
"I jammed it," Remo told her. "You'll never get it loose."
"You bastard!" Amanda screeched again, and threw the weapon.
Remo weaved on his feet, and the useless pistol looked as if it had gone out of its way to avoid hitting him, rather than vice versa.
Amanda Bull tore out of the office, sobbing. Remo counted the number of photographs of flying saucers on the walls, and didn't leave until he got to 67.
"You let the woman escape?" Chiun asked when Remo rejoined him in the waiting car.
"Yeah," Remo replied. "She told me where the warhead really is, but I figured if I let her go, she'd try to warn the others and lead us to it quicker than if I tried to follow her directions."
Remo coasted down the street slowly.
"She went left," Chiun directed.
Remo steered the car to the left. There was no sign of Amanda Bull, but then a brown van pulled onto the street ahead, and Remo recognized its custom body. It was the official FOES van, which Amanda had retrieved from where it had been ditched earlier.
"We have them, no?" Pavel asked.
"Let's hope," Remo said.
"Where is she going?" Pavel wanted to know.
"Place is called Broken Arrow," Remo told him.
"Broken Arrow? See? I was right. I have helped you, but you wouldn't listen," Zarnitsa said.
"I'm not listening now," Remo said.
?Chapter Seventeen
When the Homestead Act opened up Oklahoma in the last century, the area called Broken Arrow had boasted of only two natural features: osage and Indians. Then the homesteaders came and started their cattle ranches and farms. Neither the osage nor the Indians vanished. They just sort of blended into the background. Broken Arrow had been a good place to raise beef. There was plenty of wide-open space and it was a short trek to nearby Tulsa, where cattle could be sold or shipped by rail to the hungry East.
By all rights, Broken Arrow should still be that way, and it would be if the cattlemen hadn't found the land bad for farming. It was bad all around. In time, the cattlemen sold off their land and tried again in Arizona or Wyoming. Others, not as young or perhaps more stubborn, stayed on and were still there when the first oil was struck. But not many of them. So few, in fact, that even the Indians got to share in the oil boom. And so what was once cattle-grazing territory vibrated to the chug and creak of the oil derrick.