"Are you out of your freaking mind!?" Remo demanded, hopping to his feet.
"Do not fight it, Remo," Chiun said, his soothing voice sounding for all the world like a Sunnie cult member. "Be happy that pyon ha-da has come in our lifetimes. No longer will I be forced to come up with creative ways to explain your paleness in the histories of Sinanju."
"I'm not pale, Chiun-I'm white," Remo snapped. "And I'm going to stay that way no matter what kind of bullshit that lunatic Sun feeds you."
"Do as you wish," Chiun said, shrugging gently. "It will come to pass whether you desire it or not."
"Well, if it does it's going to have to come looking for me, because I'm not staying one more second in this loony bin."
With that, he spun on his heel and stomped loudly across the room. The door slammed shut with a viciousness that rattled the big mansion to its very foundation.
After Remo had gone, Chiun breathed deeply, exhaling a thoughtful puff of air.
Remo was quick to anger. He had always been that way. It came from a sense of inferiority. Luckily for both of them, that would all soon change.
Smiling contentedly, the Master of Sinanju turned his attention back to the sprawling lawns below his balcony.
Chapter 18
Ensign Howell McKimsom could hardly remember the intensive brainwashing sessions. What he could remember he would hardly have termed "brainwashing." If he had been permitted to talk about it, he would have more accurately called it "divine enlightenment." But he had been instructed not to talk about it with anyone.
Not with his friends.
Not with his family.
Not even with his shipmates aboard the USS Courage.
It was a shame, for Ensign McKimsom really wanted to share his conversion with his fellow sailors. It was part of the Sunnie indoctrination that made the faithful want to go out and preach to the world the greatness of the Reverend Man Hyung Sun. But Ensign McKimsom had also been instructed in the matter of obedience. He had been told not to talk; therefore, he would not talk. Ensign McKimsom was nothing if not faithful.
He was sitting calmly in the weapons room of his U.S. Navy destroyer as it cruised the waters of the Yellow Sea off Inchon on the western coast of South Korea.
As he went methodically through the prelaunch routine, he thought it was a shame he could not talk to any of his shipmates about the Sunnie faith.
At first he had been skeptical. When members of the pink-robed cult had thrown a bag over his head while he was on shore leave and dragged him into their waiting car several weeks ago, Ensign McKimsom had actually been resistant.
He had grown since then.
There were others of the faith on board. They had been brought into the fold much as he had. But there were only a few. Just enough to carry out the special mission. They had been clearly instructed not to attempt to convert the rest, lest their true mission be revealed.
Ensign Howell McKimsom sighed as he thought of all the potential faithful that would not be reached because of his inability to speak the truth.
Oh, well. It was all Sun's will.
All at once, the preprogrammed flight plan of the missile system he was reviewing changed drastically. In a heartbeat, the intended target moved 131 miles south.
Sitting up, McKimsom double-checked the green text on his monitor. There would be no room for error.
Everything checked out. The inertial guidance system would keep the missile true during its brief trip over water.
Smiling, he began initiating the system.
"Mr. McKimsom, what are you doing?"
The voice was sharp. Directly behind him.
McKimsom turned. He found himself looking up into the angry face of his commanding officer.
Howell McKimsom had been instructed what to do at every phase of the operation and in every possible eventuality. He had been given a specific order on how to deal with this precise situation.
Using his body to conceal his hand, Ensign McKimsom reached into one of the big pockets of his Navy-issue trousers. Removing the automatic he had stuffed inside his pants at the beginning of his watch, McKimsom turned calmly to the CO. Face serene, he quickly placed the warm gun barrel against the man's beefy chin and-before the commander even knew what was happening-he calmly pulled the trigger.
The sudden explosion within the confines of the weapons room was overwhelmed by the roar up on deck.
Even as the CO fell-his brains a gray frappe splattered against the gunmetal gray walls-McKimsom had initiated the launch.
Above, men ran screaming as the fiery burst of flame behind the rising 3200-pound Tomahawk missile scattered like the erupting fires of Hell across the deck.
In the confusion, Ensign Howell McKimsom had fought his way on deck. He was in time to see the tail fins of the slender missile level off above the Yellow Sea. He watched with pride as it soared across the choppy waves.
Screaming, the missile roared inland.
McKimsom did not live to see the ultimate explosion. By then he had turned his handgun on himself, accepting a slug of hot lead in his brain for the Reverend Man Hyung Sun.
WHEN IT SOARED OVERLAND, the Terrain Contour Matching system of the Tomahawk kicked in. The TERCOM guidance system faithfully followed the digitized topographical map input into its computerized brain.
Instead of heading up into North Korea, the missile remained south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel. In a horror scenario that the United States Navy never even thought to imagine, the entire flight of the missile into friendly territory took less than one minute.
There was no time to call a warning.
No time to evacuate.
No time for the victims to even scream.
When the missile fired from the USS Courage exploded on the grounds of Seoul National University forty-two seconds later, the shock waves were felt halfway around the world.
Chapter 19
The bombing in Seoul was only minutes old, and Harold W. Smith was trying to make some kind of sense out of the reports he was receiving.
It was clear what had happened initially. A United States destroyer had fired a Tomahawk cruise missile against the capital of South Korea.
An entire building on the campus of Seoul National University had been utterly destroyed. Fortunately, it was early in the academic day, and the building was not yet filled to capacity. But that was hardly a comfort. There had been fatalities. And the U.S. was responsible.
Preliminary reports put the death toll at nearly two hundred, but Smith knew that there was no real way of gauging the number of students and faculty killed so soon. He was not optimistic. Doubtless, the actual number would rise as rescuers began to dig through the rubble.
As Smith typed away at his keyboard, the muted sound of CURE's White House line buzzed inside his desk. Continuing to type with one hand, he reached down, pulling the cherry-red phone from his desk drawer.
"Yes, Mr. President," Smith said crisply.
"Smith, what the hell is going on?" the familiar hoarse voice of the President of the United States rasped.
"You are calling, no doubt, in reference to the situation in South Korea."
"It's the damnedest thing, isn't it, Smith," the President said. "Who'd have thought the two Koreas would be such a problem spot?"
"Your nine immediate predecessors might have had some inkling," Smith said dryly.
Smith had a personal dislike for this President that he tried hard to subdue. After all, it was not his duty to second-guess the wisdom of the American people. But the CURE director could not help but long for a return of any one of the seven other presidents he had served.
"They did?" the President asked. "It doesn't surprise me. Those old farts were always worried about everything that didn't matter. So what's the deal?"