“When we find out, we will also learn what method was used to send the crocodiles into their frenzy to begin with. The snake wiggler is correct in this one thing, Remo—the animals behaved most strangely. Someone has tampered with this swamp.”
“No duh, Chiun.”
The old Korean turned to Remo, seared him with a look, then ignored him for the rest of the closing rituals of the Extreme Outback Crocodile Habitat Marathon. The “Interview with the Champion,” sponsored by Weeder Brand Hydrating Water-Flavored Gel-Packs, was mostly a scripted affair.
“You faced death at every turn. You were suffering from exhaustion, you were poisoned—what kept you going?”
The champion read his answer off the cue cards, then the brave winner of the marathon was ceremonially triaged and wheeled away on a gurney. The camera followed his journey across the waterfront to the official Extreme Outback Crocodile Habitat Marathon Hospital and Morgue, sponsored by Candidas mega-performance footwear.
“If that guy is in cahoots with the network he’s hiding it pretty well,” Remo said as the crowds dispersed.
Chiun was unhappy. “With someone he is in cahoots.”
“Extreme Nuggets cereal company, perhaps?”
“Think before you speak.”
“Fine.”
Chiun made his way to the hospital, ignoring the network security guard at the entrance. Remo followed the Korean Master through the brightly lit, air-conditioned tent’s main corridor. Chiun flung open four sets of door flaps until he found the room where the champion was being treated by several nurses and a pair of doctors.
“Who are you?” one of the physicians demanded. “Be gone, charlatan! Go practice your ridiculous quackery on the cadavers. I will speak to this man in private.”
“Like hell. Security!”
Chiun put his hands in his sleeves.
“Security!” the doctor bellowed again.
Chiun looked over his shoulder and scowled.
“What?” Remo asked.
“Security!”
“You want me to do something about the loudmouth, is that it?”
Chiun rolled his eyes.
“Security!”
“Fine.” Remo pinched the doctor on the upper spine, making him stiffen from head to toe—and stop shouting. Remo caught him when he fell over, paralyzing the second doctor before she could take up the shouting herself. He rolled them both out into the corridor and, with a wave of his hand, offered the nurses the chance to use the exit door under their own power. They scrambled over one another to get out.
“You could at least ask when you want me to do your bidding,” Remo said to Chiun. “You could even say please.”
“Why? Obviously the task was yours. Certainly you would not expect me to put out the trash?”
“I’m here as a favor to you,” Remo pointed out. ‘I don’t even work for your company anymore.”
“So you have said many, many times.” Chiun stood beside the bed, where the champion was watching them through bleary eyes. “Speak, cretin! Who engineered your victory?”
“What?” The word rolled slowly out of his mouth. Chiun snatched off the IV tube and tossed it onto the floor. “Hey, I need that, man! I’m in pain.” The word pain dragged on and on.
“No potion in a bottle can protect you from pain such as I can deliver,” Chiun announced, and proved his point by grasping the base of the champion’s thumb in his own fingers. Chiun gave it a squeeze, and the champion gasped, tried to scream, but seized up like an old car engine with its oil drained out.
The silence endured for fifteen seconds, and by then the champion had flop-sweated what little hydration had been restored to his body. When Chiun released the pressure the champion collapsed on the bed, breathing hard.
“How did you win the race?” Chiun asked haughtily.
“Messages coming on the headset. Somebody was talking to me and telling me what to do. I don’t know who it was.”
“And yet you followed their advice?” Chiun demanded.
“They told me when to fall back, right before we ran into the snakes. They were on the money that time, so I started listening. They told me to stay in the rear, which I did and I missed most of the attacks.”
Chiun’s face was impervious. “And this unknown benefactor instructed you to coat yourself with the spray that repels biting flies?”
The champion gulped.
“We watched you activate it. Don’t even think of denying it,” Remo advised.
“Yes,” the champion admitted. “He told me there would be a fresh-cut X carved in the tree trunk. I was supposed to step on it, then step into the aerosol spray. I didn’t plan to do it! I was set up.”
“Who?” Chiun demanded.
“I don’t know,” the champion replied. “I swear I don’t”
“You got a sponsor?” Remo asked.
The champion looked sheepish. “My dad sponsored me. He owns a bowling alley in Pensacola.”
“Any promotional deals pending, in case you win?”
The champion was too chagrined to answer. “Nobody thought I had any chance of winning,” he admitted.
“Not even Extreme Nuggets?” Remo prodded.
The champion shook his head. “No. But it is my dream to be an Extreme Nuggets champion. I eat them every day. It gives me the extreme nutrition I need—”
“Can it. You must be awfully proud how you came from behind and proved everybody wrong.”
For the first time the champion sat up straighter “Yes, sir, I sure am.”
They prepared to depart, and Remo was instructed to tote five of Chiun’s six trunks to the rental car. Chiun took the black lacquered trunk, the one that hissed, and went for a walk. Remo came back to an empty tent, but Chiun arrived minutes later and placed the trunk on the grass. “You may bring this now.”
Remo dutifully placed the black box on his shoulder The chest was still hissing, but far less than it had all morning. Remo did not allow himself to notice. Chiun’s chests were Chiun’s business.
Quimby Summy was in a beautiful daydream. His life was starting fresh. He had become a wealthy man in just seventy-two hours.
How wealthy? He wasn’t exactly sure yet. He spent somewhere around twenty-eight thousand dollars, Australian, to rent a truckload of tents and army cots. Another couple thousand for wages because he sure as shinola wasn’t gonna put up all them tents himself. But the latrine shacks, them he did put together all by himself. And that was just about the end-all of his expenses, which came out to about thirty grand, Aussie dollars, maybe twenty-five grand in American dollars. Now, you add to that the rents he’d collected. Fifty bronze packages at eight hundred dollars. Fifty silver packages at nine hundred. A whopping 150 gold packages at one thou apiece. Them cheap packages were just for show, and they made the math get all tough to figure.
Take out some for the credit-card fees, them bloodsucking leeches. Add a lot more for the little extras that were in high demand. Ma’s vegemite pitas had sold for five bucks each, and he figured his expenses on them were less than twenty-five cents. And he didn’t have to pay his ma a wage. Drinking water was three dollars a bottle compared to ten cents each it cost him. It made him feel like a real businessman to weigh his costs and his income and come up with profits. Made it easy that there wasn’t no wastage. He sold out every damn thing by the second day. Toilet paper—now that’s where he really cleaned up. He brought in two pallets for a couple hundred bucks and sold them off at two dollars a roll on the first day, five dollars each the second day, and then he auctioned off the eight remaining rolls this morning.