"In that case," the President of the United States sighed, "I guess we have no choice but to keep watching the skies."
Chapter 25
The chattering stream of bullets came at Remo Williams-like a smoking, slow-motion squirt of water, but in reality the rounds were moving at supersonic speed. Remo's highly trained eyes read them in slow motion.
The first gleaming bullet floated toward his face. Smoking, its tip looked as smooth as a tiny lead skull.
Dropping under the stream, Remo allowed the rounds to flatten against the pivoting panel at his back. Under the hammering lead, it spun madly right, then left, then right again as the cursing receptionist swung her stuttering weapon from side to side.
There were many Sinanju techniques for dealing with hot lead. Chiun had taught Remo the basics, which had not changed since the days of the old Chinese muzzle-loaders. In response to the proliferation of automatic weapons, Remo had come up with a few innovations of his own.
The AK-47 carried thirty rounds in a clip, with another thirty in the backup clip duct-taped to the one in the receiver.
Remo counted the shots, and when the last one smacked into the jerking panel, the AK ran silent. The receptionist yanked out the old clip. She never got to flip it around and jam its mate in.
Remo was unexpectedly towering over her as he brought his palms together over the smoking muzzle.
The clap made the Russian girl blink. In that blink, Remo sidestepped so swiftly he seemed to vanish from sight.
She would have sought him out except that the AK was for some reason jittering in her hands as if attached to a working vibrator. She shook with it. Then, before her shaking eyes, the muzzle disintegrated.
She swore in venomous Russian.
Remo put her out of action with a tap to her forehead that made her brain bounce around the inside of her skull so hard it stopped functioning, a bruised, bloody sponge.
Reinforcements showed up in the form of a trio of Russians wearing dark suits enlivened by bright red ties.
"Cron!" one shouted.
Over the years, Remo had been attacked by enough Soviet agents that the Russian word for "stop" was as familiar to him as the English. He pretended to raise his hands in surrender.
"Anybody here speak English?" he asked.
No one volunteered that he did. Instead, they stepped forward with their Makarov and Tokarev pistols trained on his stomach. Remo decided the hell with it and jumped them.
His knees bent so imperceptibly there was no warning until his feet left the floor as if on springs.
Remo cleared the twenty feet between the reception desk and the trio of Russian agents before they could process the sensory information that they were under attack.
He might have teleported himself, except instead of materializing in their midst, he dropped down on them from above.
Landing in the splayed-spider position, Remo took out all three with short-armed punches and slap-kicks. Their guns clanked to the floor, unfired, dragging their dead owners down with them.
Dancing away, Remo turned to the patiently waiting Master of Sinanju and asked, "Aren't you going to help?"
"I found this place. I have earned a respite from this hectic assignment."
"There's nothing hectic about this assignment."
"You are making a great deal of noise for one whose task is yet to be completed."
As if to demonstrate Chiun's comment, another panel rolled aside to disgorge a pair of thick-skulled Russians wearing black uniforms stripped of any insignia.
"Point taken," said Remo. "I come in peace for all mankind," he told the pair, who clutched foldingstock Kalashnikov rifles.
They seemed to understand English because they hesitated.
One asked a harsh question: "What do you do here, Amerikanski? This is simple tailor shop."
"My mistake. I thought it was Shchit headquarters."
The pair exchanged glances, their eyes got sick and they mumbled unhappy excuses in a mix of English and Russian before taking their muzzles into their mouths and yanking back on the triggers.
Like watermelons under a chopping machine, their heads disintegrated and they fell dead.
"Check this out, Chiun," said Remo. "Guess I was right, after all. They liquidated themselves because their cover was blown."
Chiun floated to the panel and kicked it in, disclosing a long stainless-steel corridor marked by a ceiling-mounted security camera.
"They're going to see us coming," Remo warned.
Chiun nodded firmly. "This is good. It will encourage fear in their craven hearts."
"I wasn't thinking of that. Smitty'll have puppies if our faces are broadcast all over Moscow."
The Master of Sinanju considered.
"I will show you a trick you do not know, Remo," Chiun said thinly. He shook his head from side to side and kept shaking it until his pupil caught on.
Together, they crossed into the bowels of the organization that had ordered their destruction.
Chapter 26
Colonel Radomir Rushenko was wolfing down a good proletarian lunch of red caviar on black bread chased down by a glass of warm kvass when the red light on his desk started to go bap-bap-bap-bap.
The light happened to be buried under a sheaf of telexes from his operatives scattered about Russia and abroad, so the blinking light went unnoticed. The bapping was muffled, and at first Rushenko didn't hear it through the meaty sounds he made while consuming the overflowing sandwich.
A telex from Kazakhstan, where a Shield operative watched over the Baikonur Cosmodrome, had his attention.
Unable to develop reliable information at this time on recent Mir activities. Station not believed to be testing weapon.
Another telex from his mole in Glavkosmos was more substantive:
Widely believed here that recent Buran launch, reported to be test of new Mir docking coupler, was subsidized by commercial fee. Kremlin disinformation suspected. Unknown what was launched, by whom or for what purpose.
Rushenko frowned heavily. This suggested a foreign contractor.
The insistent bap-bap-bap of the desk alarm penetrated his thinking processes, and he swept the telexes away, scowling.
It was the intruder alarm. It meant only one thing: a penetration.
And penetration here in the most secret stronghold in holy Russia could mean only one of two things: the traitorods Russian police. Or worse, local mafiya biznesmeny intent upon extracting ransom from what was outwardly a legitimate business. It was absurd how these hooligans operated in the new, licentious Russia. Twice in the past, it was necessary to liquidate mafiya interlopers selling "protection." Yet still they came. Such things were inconceivable in the good old days of Red rule.
Engaging his intercom, Rushenko got his chief of security.
"I have an alarm. What is happening?"
"Two men have penetrated the outermost circle, comrade Colonel."
"Only two?"
"We have six casualties. Reinforcements are on the way."
"I am on my way," Rushenko said, rising from his chair so hastily his sandwich toppled to the floor. His shoes crushed a glop of red caviar into the red rug, and he tracked it down the corridor, whose scarlet ceiling lights proclaimed a highest-urgency penetration, and stormed into the security room.
It was a nest of TV monitors and radio equipment in a very confined space. Even for Shield, Moscow floor space was at a premium.
A Ukrainian in the uniform of the old Red Army but without insignia of rank was punching up views of the reception area, the second line of defense. This was the first penetration of the tailor-shop cover.
Rushenko winced to see crack former Spetsnaz commandos lying in their own blood alongside the latest heroine of Mother Russia. There was no sign of their assailants.
"Where are they?" he demanded, his hands turning to fists.