As they started back down the corridor, they heard a sustained burst of autofire. It was coming from the other side of the building.
Chapter 36
Fillmore and Farnham didn't hear the stealthy approach of Korb the Transcendent through the reception area, so when his loud snort came between the gap in the office doors, it made them both jump a mile. Neither father nor son had a moment of doubt whom that snort belonged to, or what it was meant to do.
It was meant to sniff them out.
They also knew what was certain to come next. Before he had both hands firmly on the M-16, Fillmore pinned back the weapon's trigger. In his eagerness to protect himself, he also badly torqued the point of aim. Once the unintended slide across the desktop was started, the ravening burst of full-auto gunfire kept it moving.
Bullet holes appeared at chest height in the left-hand door and crawled farther and farther left, over the door frame, the paneled wall and the enormous oil painting of the Family Fing founder-a sprig of marjoram in one hand, a foaming test tube in the other. Great splintery rents cut through the front of the mahogany credenza, and choking clouds of cordite smoke filled the room.
Fillmore never did get the autorifle under control. It stopped firing only when it ran out of ammunition.
And when it did that, when the earsplitting burst of gunshots ceased, only then did the elder Fing become aware of another noise.
"Yahh! Yahh!"
It was Farnham. Farnham hollering at the top of his lungs while he tried to hide his head under the legs of an armchair. Failing miserably at that, he sat on the floor, back to the wall, eyes squashed shut, covered his ears with both hands and resumed his bellowing.
That his oldest, and now only, son didn't have so much as a millimeter of spine to his name came as no surprise to Fillmore Fing. What he was witnessing, the stress reaction of a congenital idiot, he had seen too many times before. Farnham looked and dressed like a winner, and he could talk a blue streak if given half a chance-but underneath, the boy's game was all a bluff. And always had been. Of course, the village-idiot genes had come from Farnham's mother's side.
"Shut up!" Fillmore shouted, dumping the empty clip and taking a full one from his suit jacket. Farnham paid his father no mind. The perpetual infant continued to bawl.
Fillmore cracked in the fresh magazine and jacked a live round into the chamber. "I'm not kidding," he said. "Shut up so I can tell whether I hit the damned thing or not!"
The last statement seemed to have a calming effect on the big-league pharmaceutical salesman. Farnham opened his eyes and bit down hard on his knuckle to keep from crying out.
Fillmore cocked his head in the direction of the door. "I don't hear anything. Do you?"
Farnham shook his head.
"I think I got him," Fillmore said. Then, with more conviction, "I'm sure I must've got him...." At which point, seven hundred pounds of former computer billionaire came crashing through the bullet-ravaged doors.
The surprise of the sudden entry and the sheer, intimidating size of the creature that faced him gave Fillmore pause. The sights of his assault rifle wavered wide of the intended target.
For his part, Korb the Transcendent seemed torn, as well. There were two not-Korbs in the room. Which to pull apart first? His beady eyes shifted from Fillmore to Farnham, and back again.
Decisions, decisions.
Fillmore, meanwhile, had shouldered the M-16 and was drawing a careful bead on the center of the beast's hairy chest. The smell that Korb had brought into the room with him was enough to gag a maggot; it was making Fillmore's eyes tear.
Farnham blubbered softly on the floor, his eyes unblinking and huge as he took in the creature. He was biting his knuckle so hard he was making blood flow down over his wrist.
"Mr. Korb!" Fillmore cried, cheek to butt-stock, his index finger carefully tightening down on the trigger. When he felt resistance to the squeeze, Fillmore held up. "Mr. Korb," he said, "do you know who I am? Can you understand me?"
Fing wasn't playing for time. He was playing for capital. It had occurred to him how grateful the richest man in the world might be if somehow he was saved from this hairy, bad-smelling fate worse than death.
The beast looked at Fillmore with narrowed eyes. He had no idea what the noise coming out of the not-Korb's mouth meant, but it irritated him a great deal.
"We may be able to find a cure," Fillmore told the creature. "If we had suitable funding, I'm sure we could do it. Why don't we work together on this? What do you say?"
Korb the Transcendent smelled the blood on Farnham's finger. Decision made. He darted away from the doorway in a blur.
Fillmore fired a 10-round burst into the reception area, through the space where the beast had been. When he turned to pick up the target again, the thing had hold of Farnham by the arm. Like a cat playing with a mouse, the former billionaire batted the Fing boy against the wall, and when he bounced back, batted him again.
Fillmore took aim, but then changed his mind. He didn't even know if bullets could kill the monster. What if they only made him madder? The prudent thing to do was to take advantage of the golden opportunity that had presented itself.
As the patriarch rounded the front of his desk, it looked like the beast was trying to make a hand puppet out of poor Farnham. Fillmore said nothing. While the creature was thoroughly engrossed, he just lowered his head and hurried out the door.
KORB THE TRANSCENDENT was far too preoccupied with his new toy to notice that the other not-Korb had left the room. There were so many interesting things to make the toy do. After he tired of playing bouncy-ball, the beast gripped Farnham by the wrist and hurled him like a Frisbee across the room.
Whap! Against the far wall.
With a single bound, Korb the Transcendent crossed the room and retrieved his play toy, then it was Frisbee time again.
Whap went Farnham against the opposite wall.
It was a game that soon bored even a world-class drooler like Korb the Transcendent. There were only so many ways Farnham could go whap! And after those ways had been repeated a few dozen times, the beast decided he'd had enough.
With a stiffened claw finger, he poked the unmoving form on the floor. He wanted the toy to get up and run so he could chase it and then bat it down. Maybe even jump up and down on it a few times. Nothing doing.
So the beast picked the toy up by one foot and gave it a hard shake. The Fing boy's pocket change, money clip and keys went skittering over the floor, but he remained limp as a rag.
If Farnham was playing dead, he deserved an Oscar.
Undeterred, Korb the Transcendent felt an urge to take the damned thing apart-not to see what made it tick, but so he could throw the parts around the room. To that end, he put both feet on the toy's chest, grabbed its head under the chin and started to pull.
HEARING THE TREMENDOUS commotion going on inside the private office of Fillmore Fing, Remo and Chiun paused outside the open doors.
The Master pointed through the doorway, then held his nose.
Remo got the picture.
On a silent three-count, they rushed the office entrance.
Inside, they found a monstrous beast beating on the top of a big desk with a man's leg. From the tassle loafer still on the foot, it looked to be a rightie. The rest of the man was scattered around the room, along with a good deal of pocket change.
The beast was having such a great time that he didn't seem to notice he had company. When he saw the newcomers staring at him, however, he stopped what he was doing at once.
"Do you want him or should I take him?" Remo asked, circling purposefully to the left.
The Master shrugged. "It makes no difference to me."
Korb the Transcendent watched both targets, measuring the distance for his leap.