Beila didn’t have time to think about how impossible that was. The brave old soul was going to be killed before his eyes. Two grand prix racers roared down on the old man with their flamethrowers spewing fire.
The old man was trapped. He seemed to see his doom and he raised his arms to either side, as if in a gesture of penitence to whatever god he worshiped. The twin tongues of flame swept over his tiny body.
Or did they? The old man seemed to shimmer out of existence for a moment, as if he had soared up and over the tongues of flame at the moment they would have engulfed him—but not before his hands slid over the front end of the racers.
Beila was amazed when the front tires flattened where the old man had stroked them with his fingers, and the two racers veered violently into each other, slowing and bathing each other in flaming liquid.
And the old man was still standing there, as if he had never moved. His brilliant Oriental-looking robes were not even singed.
A blast drew Beila’s attention back to his honor guard, just as a knot of them were engulfed in a billow of white-hot flame. The internal security minister screeched and fell to the ground with a tiny hole smoking from his arm. Inside was a tiny burning speck, like an impossibly hot burrowing worm. The internal security minister went quickly into mute shock.
Beila had never felt so helpless. All around him were horrific dramas. He didn’t know what might happen next. He saw a young white man now, gliding like a ghost toward the pavilion, unarmed, but behind him was a spinning grand prix racer that was trying to outrun a fountain of flame coming from its own flamethrower. Beila instinctively knew that the young man had somehow accomplished this; it was no stranger than what the old Asian man had accomplished a few seconds ago. The grand prix racer might actually have survived if he had not been so frugal with the use of his flamethrower. He was still ten seconds away from exhausting its tank of incendiary liquid when he turned the wheel a little too tightly and skidded the tires just slightly. It slowed the grand prix racer just enough to allow the fountain to drench the vehicle. The tires melted to mush and the car wobbled to a stop, covering itself with fire.
Beila was so engrossed in the scene he failed to notice the helicopter.
Remo heard it coming but he wasn’t prepared for it. The helicopter that soared from beyond the rooftops and soared over National Square was a long, gangly-looking bird with a pair of huge and powerful rotors. This wasn’t any sort of military chopper. It was a piece of construction equipment. He’d seen them carrying air conditioners to the tops of skyscrapers—that kind of thing.
He hadn’t expected to see it here, at the scene of a coup d’etat. There had to be a reason. It was dangling a set of three steel claws at least six feet long and held in an open position as if about to grab something.
But what?
Couldn’t be good, whatever it was. He ran for the pavilion, and the helicopter sped up to beat him there. The helicopter won, pulling up hard as it came over the pavilion and its dangling hooks clanged against the pavilion roof. Remo hadn’t been paying attention before, but now he observed that the pavilion was constructed of wrought iron and polished brass.
The ministers fell flat when the claws slammed into the structure. As a few men scrambled down the steps on hands and knees, they were met with a murderous wall of flame. One of them rolled down the steps, a writhing fireball, but the other man pulled back slapping at his burning suit jacket sleeve.
The helicopter whined and strained, and it yanked the pavilion off the ground. It was nothing but a welded iron cage that shed its roof shingles and wooden floor as it became airborne Remo forced himself to run faster, to get to it in time, and yet he knew he would never make it. He looked around for Chiun, hoping the old Master had somehow managed to be close enough to do some good.
Chiun was not. He appeared at Remo’s side as they came to the place where the pavilion had once been. Now it was a hundred feet overhead, swinging wildly from the helicopter claw. As they watched, something in the structure of the cage snapped and the iron bars collapsed in upon themselves. More wooden floor pieces fluttered across National Square, along with a spattering of blood, before the helicopter disappeared over the rooftops.
The surviving grand prix racers were in retreat.
Remo made an ugly sound, and he went after them, not caring if Chiun joined him or not.
Raw video feeds are broadcast via satellite around the world, from production teams in the field to news organizations that turn the raw video into news segments.
“That’s an encrypted feed, mate! You can’t send that for any poor sap with a dish to be picking up!” the field producer couldn’t argue anymore. He was throwing up again.
“Guess what will happen if you don’t send it?” Remo asked.
