“I really get mad when people insult my mom,” Remo said, and pushed harder—until the heads broke and the corpses collapsed alongside the heavy door into the chamber.
The door consisted of a decorative wood layer atop an inch of tempered steel. Tapered steel bolts were shot into the frame from the top and bottom and both sides of the door. It would take a bazooka blast to break it open.
Remo didn’t have a bazooka, but he had ten Sinanju- trained fingers. He tapped lightly against the wood surface and found that it was an exceptionally well-made door. The imperfections in the subsurface steel were few and difficult to isolate.
Behind him, Chiun was doing his own tapping—on the floor, impatiently, with the toe of his sandal.
“Hold your horses.” Remo found the weak seam he wanted and knocked carefully along it, creating a deep vibration that was at exactly the right frequency. The door spiderwebbed down the middle like a windshield hit by a rock. Remo pushed in, creating an opening that was immediately used as the exit point for blasts from a combat shotgun. Remo waited for the buckshot to go by like a kid waiting for the cars to pass so he could cross the street, then he slid through the gash. In the chamber he observed a trapdoor swinging into place in the floor.
He reached the trapdoor and grabbed the lip just before it was closed, and lifted it open again. The man who had been closing it was standing on a ladder with his hand still extended, and Remo grabbed the hand and lifted the man out of the hole, rattling him until he dropped his smoking shotgun.
“Sir Rilli?”
“No! He’s down there!”
Remo broke the shotgunner and tossed him away like a banana peel.
“Hello?” Remo called down the tunnel. “Saddam, you down there?”
He waited, listening to the hushed voices from deep inside the chamber. He grew a grin. Chiun looked expectant and not quite tolerant.
“We’re takin’ over, you bleeding wankers!” Remo shouted, doing a bad British accent. “It’s me, Nigel Grollman. Me and John Surah, we’re taking over Ayounde for ourselves.”
Chiun rolled his eyes. “Need I ask the meaning of this?”
“They’re on the phone to whoever it is organizing this takeover circus. Now they’re telling them that Nigel Grollman and John Surah are trying to conquer the conquerors.”
“And these names you mention?”
“Two of the guns-for-hire we squashed out front,” Remo explained. Then he shouted again down the hole. “You bleedin’ cowards come out of there now or we’ll bomb you out!”
“You do not sound British,” Chiun said.
“I sound British enough.” Remo walked a slow circle around the chamber, found the place he wanted and stamped his foot. The room vibrated. He moved over a fraction of an inch and stamped again.
The building shook and the floor under their feet experienced a powerful tremor, actually bouncing. Cries of fear came from below, but one more foot-stamp was required from the Reigning Master of Sinanju. This time the concrete cracked and they heard chunks of the bomb-proof ceiling falling down inside the chamber.
Men scrambled from the exit tunnel and had their weapons and cell phones removed before they could commence firing or phoning.
Michele Rilli was the last man out “What in blazes is going on?”
“Cabinet is in session,” Remo announced. “Everybody is ready but you.”
Rilli couldn’t believe what he was seeing—all his personal bodyguards were in desks around the circular presentation floor. They had their hands folded on their desks and they were just sitting there. Then he was lifted and deposited in one of the desks himself, at the end of the line. Something was done to his neck and now his arms and legs became stiff as boards—but unmovable. The rolling eyeballs of his security staff told him that they were also completely paralyzed. Unlike his soldiers, Rilli could still talk.
“You’re not Grollman.” Rilli rolled his eyes at Chiun. “You’re not Surah.”
“I certainly am not.”
“So who are you?”
“Never mind about that. I’m going to be asking the questions now,” Remo said. “Question number one— the hostages are hidden away in the
“You are in violation of British law. This is an act of war.”
“Wrong answer earns you a
The man was now a corpse who toppled halfway out of his seat and hung there, eyes wide, gore seeping from the wound.
Sir Michele Rilli tried to make his body work, but he couldn’t move anything below the jawline.
“Question number one again,” Remo said. “Hostages are in the
“Let me move my arms, please!” Rilli had nightmares about being paralyzed while horrible things happened to him.
“Mmm, sorry. ‘Let me move my arms’ is not an answer at all. Another
“Jesus Christ!” Rilli shrieked hysterically as another man died. This time the corpse leaned forward in its desk and stared right at the great grand prix driver.
