Smith blinked the dancing spots from his eyes as he sought out the source.
He found it with chilling ease.
The dark shape of a man strolled out from behind the white-painted clapboard base chapel. The instant he did so, an uneven stream of energy pulsed seemingly from out of the thin air before him.
On the far side of the courtyard, a jutting rifle barrel caught the charge. The soldier holding the weapon shrieked in pain and was flung backward by the powerful jolt of electricity.
There were shouts from outside. More troops raced forward, darting for cover behind buildings and parked vehicles. Methodically, without any sign of hurry, Elizu Roote took out each of the men in turn.
Smith watched the scene with growing horror. It seemed as if every soldier who drew a bead on Roote with a weapon became an automatic target for a bolt of electricity. Smith knew that this was a feature of the defensive hardware wired into Roote's central nervous system.
The soldiers were having no effect whatsoever on General Chesterfield's Shock Troops prototype. It didn't take long for them to realize they were fighting a lost cause.
The cry for retreat was called. The wounded were gathered up and carted away amid sporadic bursts of feeble weapons fire.
The Fort Joy courtyard had been relinquished to Elizu Roote. With a contemptuous arrogance, the private sauntered out from behind the chapel. Thumbs tucked into his waistband, he wandered off in the direction of Chesterfield's headquarters. Smith watched as the rogue private went.
There was no sign of Remo or Chiun in the courtyard. Either they had tried to stop him and failed, or Roote had slipped past them.
Smith could not chance waiting. If his two operatives were dead and he failed to act now, Roote might escape. He couldn't allow that to happen.
Tucking his briefcase into the well under a desk, Harold Smith slipped from the office. As he ducked into the shadows of the laboratory hallway, he wondered how he could hope to succeed when both Masters of Sinanju, as well as the United States Army, had failed.
THE TANKS WERE LIKE creatures from some bygone age- dinosaurs left to erode to bone and dust in the desert heat.
There were no men in sight as Remo, Chiun and ufologist Arthur Ford tore back through the desert gates of Fort Joy.
Remo slammed on the brakes, sliding to a stop inside the rear gate. Slipping from behind the wheel, he hit the sand at a run, racing over to the spot where Elizu Roote had gripped the electrified fence.
He found the footprints that had misled them earlier. A single print half-hidden beneath a cluster of sage indicated Roote's true direction.
The new path led onto the rocky ledge that spread for several yards on the other side of the fence. At the spot where the rock stopped, the tracks began anew. Remo traced them all the way over to the gate and directly to the line of silent, crippled tanks.
Remo ran back to the jeep, hopping in behind the wheel.
"He got through," he announced, grimly.
"He's here?" Ford asked excitedly. Leaning forward, he grabbed on to the tops of both front seats. "Are we going to liberate him from the evil clutches of the military?"
"Only long enough to liberate his psycho head from his shoulders," Remo said somberly, throwing the jeep in gear.
They took off with such speed, Ford was thrown back into the rear seat. The jeep steered a certain course for the heart of the base.
ELIZU ROOTE HAD a great tradition of killing without compassion. He'd started young.
His mama-for Elizu Roote there was no daddy-hadn't much liked it when he took out his youthful frustrations on the various neighborhood pets. The neighbors liked it even less. But it was only after he'd taken a pair of vise grips to the toy poodle belonging to the preacher's daughter that the authorities first took notice.
A deputy with a thing for the hysterical young girl and a shovel in his hand uncovered the animal graveyard in the back of the Rootes' tenement in Charleston, West Virginia.
Mama Roote had been all too eager to let the state take charge of her troubled son. When she hadn't been dominating him, she'd treated him as an inconvenience. For her, the mound of rotting animal corpses spelled freedom.
At thirteen Elizu started the cycle of counselling and foster homes that would continue until his eighteenth birthday. Of course, the killing never stopped. But he was more careful than he'd been as a kid.
He would adopt dogs from animal shelters in nearby communities and take them for a final trip deep into the woods. Their pitiful yelping cries helped to slake his thirst for blood during those long, awkward teenage years.
To celebrate his high-school graduation, Elizu joined the Army and killed his first prostitute all in the same day. After that, the next few years were a blur.
There were more women, of course. He'd never stopped the killing. He had no other hobbies, no other interests to fill the void of his life.
Roote knew he fit the famous FBI profile of a serial killer. Other men might not like to be shoehorned into a narrow category like that. But Elizu Roote didn't have any friends, either from the Army or from his youth. He shied away from group activity, he was not exactly a joiner. For him, to be a serial killer was to be part of something. A member of a select group of like-minded individuals.
In a life that was gutted of everything meaningful, Elizu Roote needed to define his existence. He was a serial killer. For if he wasn't that, he was nothing.
At least that was what he always thought. But now, thanks to the United States Army, he was much more.
AS ELIZU ROOTE STROLLED with impunity through yet another empty Fort Joy street, a soldier appeared from the shadows beside an officer's house.
Before Roote even realized there was a threat, he'd targeted the soldier and his hand flew up. The thump of a solitary burst of electricity exploded across the night air.
His gun barrel snatched the surge of energy like a lightning rod and the soldier dropped.
Roote walked past the twitching body. He recognized the dead man. But although the face he looked upon was familiar, no emotion accompanied the recognition.
Just a body. Another corpse to throw on the growing pile. Elizu Roote was a god stepping on ants.
He had had the same reaction upon seeing the faces of the other men he had killed this night. Not one of his fellow Fort Joy soldiers had even noticed when he'd disappeared months before. While the surgeons and scientists were conducting their sick alterations on him, no one thought to look for him. Not one of them came to help while he was being held captive in his rubberized tomb.
He had been nothing to them. They were nothing to him.
The chorus of voices in Roote's head sang with glee as he fired three rapid shots at a trio of skulking soldiers. Only the last of them managed to squeeze off a few rounds before the intricate tracking system connected to Roote's finger pads blew him away.
Bullets ripped through the air around him. But none kissed the flesh of the godlike Elizu Roote. He walked through the hail of lead unharmed, stepping beyond the latest smoking bodies. Moving toward his ultimate target the headquarters of General Delbert Chesterfield.
SMITH'S RAPID ANALYSIS of Roote's internal systems had proved correct so far. Shadowing Roote across the grounds of Fort Joy, Smith had no doubt that he had survived thus far only because he hadn't attempted to shoot the private. Therein lay the CURE director's dilemma.
He had ventured out after Roote in order to stop the deranged killing machine. However, the moment he attempted to do so using conventional means, Roote's systems would target him as a threat and destroy him.
Helpless to act, Smith could only watch as more soldiers died at the hands of this frightening horrid manufactured aberration.