There were staples running all along the top and sides of the sheet. With a single, mighty tug, he wrenched the plastic free of the wall. As fast as the sound came, he had already slipped in through the opening.
Without hesitation, Roote fired bolts from all ten fingers at the startled figure across the office. The surge of electricity caught the man in the chest. Eyes flew open in shock as he was lifted off the floor. An instant later, his back slammed against the far wall.
The officer collapsed to the floor. Dead.
The satisfaction Roote had expected on entering the room never materialized. The soldier wasn't Chesterfield.
Roote vaguely recognized the dead lieutenant. So it wasn't the officer he'd been looking for. So what? Chesterfield was here. Somewhere. And Elizu Roote would find him if he had to kill every last soldier on Fort Joy in the process.
He was about to duck back through the hole in the wall when the general's desk telephone jangled to life.
A perverse curiosity took hold of Roote. Striding across the room, he dropped into Chesterfield's chair. His gold fingertips clicked on the receiver as he lifted the phone to his ear.
"General Chesterfield's office," he drawled pleasantly. A smile crossed his face as he glanced at the smoking corpse lying on the floor.
"Please inform the general that his jeep is ready at the motor pool," a tart voice commanded. Roote sat up.
"What for?" he questioned.
"General Chesterfield intends to leave the base," the pinched voice said. "It is my understanding that he wishes to conduct a counteroffensive from a remote location. Please let him know-" The voice paused. "Never mind. He has just arrived at the motor pool."
The line went dead.
Roote quickly climbed to his feet, replacing the receiver. Thanks to the caller, he now knew where he would find Chesterfield. And where he would kill him.
Leaving the body of the lieutenant to mind the office, Roote slipped back out through the flap of plastic.
REMO'S JEEP SKIDDED to a stop at the nearest soldier. There were many more massing at the periphery of the first base outbuildings.
"What's going on?" Remo demanded.
"We're getting our lunch handed to us, that's what," the young man complained. "Dead and wounded everywhere. Big offensive starting in a couple of minutes."
Remo glanced quickly at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju's mouth was stretched into a concerned frown.
As he looked back at the soldier, Remo's expression mirrored that of his teacher.
"Where's Roote?" he asked.
The soldier snickered at the name. He was obviously an acquaintance of the private. "He was spotted near HQ a couple of minutes ago."
Remo spun to Arthur Ford. "Get out," he ordered.
"No way," Ford replied firmly. "It's my fault he's in the evil clutches of the military. For humanity's sake, I've got to do what I can to help him." He clutched determinedly at the seat.
"Kill him or ditch him, Little Father?"
"He is tall," Chiun pointed out with thin impatience.
"Gotcha," Remo nodded.
Hoping Arthur's height would attract the first bolt of lightning, he spun back around, jamming hard on the accelerator. The jeep bounced forward, toward Elizu Roote's last known location.
HIS POWER WAS DRAINED.
The circuitry within him was so familiar to Roote and so integrated with his biological systems, it was as if he'd been dealing with depleted capacitors since he was a child. The sensation was similar in nature to hunger or exhaustion.
His violent trek through the base had forced him to tap into his reserve power. His backup capacitors had been partially sapped, as well.
Although his store of energy was low, Elizu Roote knew that he had a sufficient supply to take care of General Chesterfield. He would recharge afterward.
As he slipped through the open bay door of the Fort Joy motor pool, he tapped his digits together in a twisted parody of finger snapping. Tiny blue sparks accompanied a sound like clacking castanets.
The interior of the building was dark. When he flipped the light switch inside the door, he found that the power had been cut.
They'd expected him. They thought to keep him from recharging by severing the line to the motor pool.
"It ain't gonna work, Ironbutt," Roote taunted from the doorway. "I still got enough juice to fry your fat ass."
As he took another step into the building, Roote noticed a set of jumper cables attached to a solid metal pole just beyond the open door. For some reason, someone had pounded the metal rod into the earthen floor.
He disregarded the post, moving beyond the open bay door and into the shadows of the motor pool.
Roote had just stepped past the door when he sensed someone move out from behind it. In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a man rushing toward him, something clasped in his hands.
His targeting scanners didn't match the object with any of the potential threats that had been stored on the small microchip buried in his brain. Automated system or no, the decision to kill was instantaneous.
In the instant the man appeared, Roote started spinning toward him, fingers extending to deal flashing death.
But to his shocked astonishment, he never got the chance.
Something painful latched on to a spot at the back of his neck. Clawing pincers. Soft flesh yielded to jagged metal.
The tearing sensation was short-lived. It was completely overwhelmed by a body-racking jolt of pure pain. And to his shock and horror, he felt the bottom drop out of his capacitors. Roote's entire store of electricity was siphoned off in half a heartbeat.
In agony, he stood rigid during the split-second power surge, helpless to act.
And as quickly as it had begun, it was over. His capacitors were completely drained. As was Elizu Roote. With no electricity to animate him, the private collapsed like a rag doll to the floor.
Sapped of life.
THE SAME BLAST that racked Elizu Roote's body flung Harold W. Smith backward to the dirt floor. Although he knew it would endanger his own life, it had been necessary for Smith to be in close to attach the free end of the jumper cables.
The schematics of Roote's mechanical system had suggested to Smith that the metal contact buried beneath the flesh at the rear of the soldier's neck might be a kind of Achilles' heel to his cybernetic systems.
At that moment, the CURE director didn't know that his supposition had been correct. He lay flat on his back near the open door of the motor pool. As still as death.
A few yards from Smith, Roote kicked feebly at the dirt floor as a few residual sparks hopped from his bleeding neck to the steel rod Smith had pounded into the floor.
Chapter 16
Remo spied the first bodies lying in heaps of tangled limbs near the infirmary.
"Looks like our little glowworm's been glimmer-glimmering," he said coldly as they drove past the grisly scene.
"These are not burned like the others," the Master of Sinanju commented, hazel eyes narrowed.
"He had more power to work with back at the fence," Remo suggested. "When he's using his own store, maybe he has to hold back a little."
"It's terrible," Arthur Ford gasped. He was leaning between the two seats, looking out the windshield as they drove past the many smoldering bodies.
"Glad you're finally coming around," Remo said, assuming the gruesome scene had at last dispelled the UFO-chaser's notions of Elizu Roote as benevolent alien.
"What they forced him to do," Ford lamented, shaking his head sadly. He was practically in tears. "It must have been terrible for him."
"What planet are you from?" Remo demanded, astonished that Ford was still unmoved.
"Earth," Ford replied seriously, as if there truly was another option. He sniffled in solidarity with Elizu Roote as they passed another cluster of electrocuted corpses.