Well, they were still in his mine shaft. Wools was the king of the Pit, and nobody left the Pit without Wools’s say-so, especially if they threatened the future of this facility. Everybody down here agreed with him on the need to protect the facility, as scared as they might be of whatever was making people vanish. After all, they were all going to be millionaires when this thing became fully operational.
“They’re heading for the elevators,” reported one of his staff on the walkie-talkie.
“Get security there in force. Do not let them board the elevator. Repeat, do not let them board.”
Wools ran for the elevators himself.
“Oh good, it’s here already. I hate waiting for the elevator.” Remo nodded to the point man of the ranks who had taken up a position between the Masters of Sinanju and the elevator. “Nice of you all to see us off.”
“We can’t let you board the elevator, sir.”
“Sure, you can.”
“I ordered them not to,” Wools panted as he arrived, winded from jogging.
“Hiya, Hal. I’d come with us if I were you. You’re not safe down here. The same folks that killed the guards and took the other MIAs are coming back soon.”
“What are you talking about?” Hal didn’t sound as if he really wanted to know.
“Listen, Hal, and all of Hal’s friends within the sound of my voice. The truth is that there is an access way through Shaft C. Some very bad people are lurking around down there, killing some of you, taking others.” Remo had decided against revealing that the killers actually lived inside the earth.
“Liar!” Wools growled.
“In the last day we saw no less than two teams of attackers on their way to the Pit. The first team was just six guys, but the second team was almost thirty. We disabled both the teams, but there could be more right behind them.”
“Preposterous!” Wools tried to laugh as if Remo were telling a grand joke. “You’re spreading lies!”
“I’m giving these people the chance to save themselves,” Remo responded. “I’m taking that elevator to the surface right now—I’d advise the rest of you to follow me.”
Wools’s face darkened. “I can’t let you go.” He turned to his forces. “Arrest them.”
The security forces moved in on Remo and Chiun, only to find Remo and Chiun everywhere else but where they had been. The pair moved through the ranks like slippery shadows, grabbing guns. In seconds the armed guards were no longer armed.
“We’ll just take these with us,” Remo said, dropping the pile of automatic rifles on the floor of the elevator. “Wouldn’t want you shooting at us when we’re on our way up.”
“Stop them!” Wools shouted, and his men descended on the elevator as the gate shut. Two of them blocked the gate bodily. Remo spun them like tops, their arms flying out uncontrollably and slapping the other armed men before they collapsed, dazed. The gate on the elevator slammed shut.
“Bye, now.”
“Get them,” Wools shouted.
Probing fingers reached through the gate and attempted to reach the emergency stop button, but Chiun snicked at them with his razor-sharp Nails of Eternity. The fingers plopped to the floor of the elevator and their former owners retreated, trying to hold their blood in.
“We’ll send back the guns and the fingers when we get off,” Remo said. “You’ll need them both when the cavemen get here.”
“Please. Come back. We can talk.” Wools could still be heard pleading with them when they reached the elevator’s upper platform and switched to the next lift.
“What a drag it is just getting in and out of here,” Remo complained on the fourth elevator. “Little Father, you don’t have any desire to live in a cave, do you?”
“Of course not. I desire to live in a splendid vintage caravan.”
“Oh. Still on that kick, huh?”
“It is not a ‘kick.’”
“’Course not.”
Chiun pulled his iBlogger out of his sleeve.
“Holy crap, you’ve been carrying that thing all this time? It can’t get a signal down here, can it?”
“Alas, it does not,” Chiun admitted, fiddling with the thing briefly. “I had hoped, however.”
Chiun tried the device repeatedly as they came closer to the surface, but he didn’t get reception until they were aboveground and inside the metal building. He gave a cry of delight and let Remo handle the security staff that was waiting for them. Wools had phoned ahead.
Remo thought it was just as well that Chiun was preoccupied. These guys were just hired muscle and didn’t necessarily deserve death because they worked for the wrong company and got in the way of the wrong elderly Korean. Remo simply snatched the rifles from the three men, bent the barrels into horseshoes and handed the weapons back to their owners.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
A pair of state troopers loitered around their rental Hyundai in the parking lot. “Is there an Embassy Suites in the area?” Remo asked.
“You’re not going anywhere, son, until you have a talk with our friend Mr. Wools,” the veteran trooper said, withdrawing his handgun from its holster. “Assume the position.”
“Jeez, Dad, that’s a tempting offer, but no thanks.” He stepped up close and put the barrel of the gun into the trooper’s mouth, then forced the man’s finger onto the trigger.
“Back off, scumbag!” shouted the second trooper, a rookie who was fumbling for his own weapon. Chiun, never taking his eyes off his iBlogger, elbowed the rookie, who was destined to spend the next fifteen minutes writhing on the gravel, hacking up breakfast and holding on to his bruised abdomen.
“You shareholders in Mr. Wools’s little projects?” Remo asked the trooper who gagged on his own handgun. The trooper nodded, teeth clacking against the barrel.
“Now, I asked you another question…” He extracted the gun.
“No Embassy Suites for a hundred miles,” the trooper blurted.
“Hmm. Courtyards? Hiltons? Sheratons? Hyatts? You got a Holiday Inn around here, even?”
“There’s a Motel 6, nine miles up the road.”
Remo tossed the handgun over his shoulder. The trooper watched, dismayed, as his weapon became a tiny black speck that plunged out of sight on the far side of the metal mine building.
“When we have the caravan, finding a hotel will no longer be a problem,” Chiun lectured as they drove off in the Hyundai.
‘We’ll have to find campgrounds instead.”
‘We’ll need only a Wal-Mart, the store that allows campers to park overnight on their lots free of charge.”
“That’ll be convenient if you run low on kimonos.”
“Remo, thank goodness. Where have you been for the past twenty-six hours?” Smith’s voice was extra lemony this afternoon.
“Don’t even start, Smitty. We were spelunking with albino cannibals. Chiun will back me up on that. Won’t you, Little Father?”
Chiun waved over his shoulder dismissively. He was sitting on the floor in front of the television— which was dark. The Korean master was intently poring over the latest entries on his iBlogger.
Mark Howard was also on the line and it was he who provided the obligatory echo. “Albino cannibals?”
“Yes.”
“Any sign of Fastbinder?” Smith asked.
“No. You were right about him.”
“I was wrong. Fastbinder almost certainly has something to do with the attacks at the waste site.”
“What? He survived?”
“Fastbinder or one of his comrades.” Smith briefed Remo on the activities of the earth drill at the White Sands test range.
“I guess the odds of somebody totally unrelated to Fastbinder showing up with an earth drill a few weeks later is pretty slim,” Remo said. “You sure it was a new earth drill?”