There was movement. The back of one of the transport vehicles fell open and a pair of special-forces soldiers teetered on the tailgate. One had a foot of bloody glass protruding from his hip front and back. He collapsed to the ground, driving the glass back out by a few inches, then he began crawling with the heavy crystal trailing behind him. His companion was still on the tailgate, pincushioned with shorter daggers of glass that he was yanking out angrily. He never should have removed the one in his thigh. Blood started gushing down his leg by the pint. Seconds later, he collapsed from the tailgate and he didn’t get up again.
Sheldon Jahn watched the same show, but his view was better, watching it from the cameras mounted on the outside of the building. He had also seen the perpetrators of the killings. Well,
Who were these two? An old man in an outfit so flamboyant even Sheldon wouldn’t wear it onstage—except maybe at the Hollywood film awards. Anyway, they weren’t going to get past the internal security systems.
“Hi, guys.” Remo waved at the knot of gun-toting men in gas masks. The gas masks waited until Remo and Chiun let the door close behind them, then they dropped their grenades. Even as the metal cylinders toppled to the ground, Chiun and Remo filled their lungs with clean air and stopped breathing. The grenades popped and clouded the room with grayish gas.
Remo allowed the tiniest taste of the gas to enter his nose. Familiar, deadly, but only if he inhaled the stuff. It wasn’t going to eat at his exposed skin. Chiun made the same determination and they stepped through the clouds, removing the gas masks from the surprised guards. There were gasps and cries. Only one of them had the forethought to clamp his own nostrils shut and run for the exit. Chiun slipped in front and raised his flat hand. The runner slammed into the hand, which felt like an iron plate bolted to a concrete slab. His chest was compressed and the air forced from his lungs, which left him gasping involuntarily on the floor, and dying alongside his comrades.
Remo was tapping his chin and looking at a sign on the wall. It was in Chinese, so he made nothing of it. Chiun glared at him and they left the noxious corridor for the cleaner air in the next hallway. When it was safe to breathe again, Remo said, “I think we go this way.”
“It is the only way one may go,” Chiun pointed out, “and the sign merely informed one to not smoke on the premises of the ministry.”
Remo shrugged. “Guess the bunch back there couldn’t read Chinese, either.”
Sheldon Jahn was getting worried for the first time since becoming governor of Hong Kong. There were two unarmed men breaching his security. Who were they? One of them looked American and spoke American English. The other one spoke English, too, but with an Asian accent. A joint Chinese-U.S. special assault team of some kind?
There was a blip of noise and blur of motion when the pair walked directly beneath the security camera, hidden in the wall on the ground floor. Sheldon had a sick feeling in his stomach as he rewound the digital video feed and played the blip again. Then he slowed it. The digital recording wasn’t good, but it was good enough.
At l/64th speed he saw the young American turn to the camera, wave his hand and say, “Nobody’s going to be saving your life tonight, doofus.”
“Why must you taunt? Does it inflate your pride, like the child who bullies all other children in the village square?”
“Just trying to put a little bit of play into my day,” Remo said.
“Play? My comparison to the young bully holds true.”
“Why does killing people have to be serious all the time?” Remo asked. “Why not brighten things up with a little good-natured kidding?”
“This has nothing to do with our discussion on the plane, I hope. If so, you misunderstood magnificently.”
The way to the top floor required passing through the lower-level workspace where twenty desks sat abandoned, and the doors on the far side parted swiftly. A two-man crew spun out a portable, wheeled blast shield and another man standing inside poked his gun through the narrow turret. The barrel was too big for a gun, too small to shoot a grenade.
“Look, it’s the rocket man,” Remo said.
With a flash of flame, a tiny missile shot out and zeroed in on Remo. Watching it travel in the direction of his chest, he could tell what it was. Not heat-seeking. It didn’t waver with the lightning-fast adjustments a computer would make as it sniffed out body warmth. It did waver more slowly. It would be following the aim of the shooter, who had a red laser dot on Remo’s chest.
Remo stepped aside when the rocket was less than a yard from his chest, and he snatched the thing out of the air. It was the size of a spring roll and wiggled in his hand like an electric eel. He showed Chiun the flaring white flame shooting from its backside. “Rocket Man. Get it?”
“No.”
