"Lay off," Remo said. His senses had suddenly tripped alert. "We've got company."
Chiun had felt it, too. The displaced air of advancing troops. Except unlike regular men, there were no accompanying footfalls or straining muscles.
When the first cautious face peered out from under the belly of the Hind, Remo grabbed a fistful of hood and steered the Russian's head into the helicopter's side. Flesh met metal with a crunching clang.
Several more men scurried into view, all dressed in the familiar uniforms of Anna Chutesov's Institute soldiers.
"Their breathing is pitiful," Chiun remarked. To underscore that point, eight sharp talons pierced a chest between ribs. They reappeared dragging dangling lungs in their wake like inside-out pockets.
"I'm thinking they're not even as good as ninjas," Remo said as he took out two more. "See? Simple thrusts at half-speed. Chuck Norris on a bad-wig day would've dodged that."
Chiun sent a heel into a brittle sternum. "Yes," he agreed. "They lack the finesse of even the lowly Japanese. If the Dutchman is responsible for them, he is a better adversary than he is a teacher."
Ten of the Institute men had been left to guard the airport. They flashed through the last few in no time. Remo twisted the head of the final Russian. With a blinding snap, it completed two full circles on a rubbery neck column.
"And that's the end of that chapter," he said, clapping imaginary dust from his hands.
More shouts in Russian. Remo wasn't sure if he should be relieved they weren't directed at either him or Chiun.
"What now?" he complained.
When he and the Master of Sinanju raced back to the main runway, they found the soldiers who had flown in with Vladimir Zhirinsky from Russia had taken an interest in Anna's helicopter. Some were moving to surround it.
Inside the Hind, Anna had climbed down into the gunner's cockpit.
"What's she think she's doing?" Remo asked. His question was answered in the next instant. Like a blaze of hellfire, a Swatter missile erupted from the outboard pylon of Anna's Hind. Hopping the launch rail, the laser-guided missile screamed across the runway, impacting with the side of another helicopter.
The Hind exploded in a cloud of brilliant yellow. No sooner had she fired the first missile than she let a second fly. Another idling Hind was engulfed in flame. The airport shook as smoking debris rained all around.
Anna's missiles had sent the Russian army scattering. Many raced for cover in a nearby hangar. Those who remained outside ran smack-dab into Remo and Chiun.
The first soldier in line tried to shoot Remo. Remo prevented him from doing so. He did this by separating from the rest of his body that part of the soldier's anatomy that was responsible for telling said rest of his body to do such nasty things as shoot people or swear or think unkind thoughts.
When they saw Remo lop off the soldier's head, the rest of the army froze. When he held the head aloft for them to examine, they gulped.
"Okay, here's the deal," Remo announced, waggling the head. "No surrendski mean no headski, capisce?"
Although the language was foreign, some things were universal. Forty rifles clattered to the ground, and eighty hands shot into the air.
"While we've got their attention, ask them where the nuke is," Remo said to the Master of Sinanju. There were a lot of shrugs from the crowd. A few men replied in Russian, waving vaguely in the same direction.
"They think it is in the center of town," Chiun said. "But they do not know where exactly."
"Big help," Remo sighed. "Now we need a POW camp."
At the coaxing of the two Masters of Sinanju, the soldiers were quickly herded into the hangar where the rest had sought cover. Remo was dragging the door shut when he heard the sound of a helicopter lifting off. When he wheeled around, he saw that it was one of the first that had been in line when he and Chiun came onto the airport.
"Damn-tit, Chiun, that was yours," he griped.
He made a move to intercept the still-hovering Hind but the Master of Sinanju took him by the wrist, holding fast.
"Ye of little faith," the old man said calmly.
The instant he spoke, Remo's hypersensitive ears heard a gentle ping within the roar of the gunship's engine. Sharp eyes followed the sound. Only then did Remo see the faint marks where Chiun's hardened fingernails had scored the tail-rotor bolt.
As he watched, the metal pulled apart like taffy. It grew brittle all at once, snapping in two.
The three-bladed tail rotor shrieked as it skipped off the swept fin, striking the ground in a spray of sparks. Chewing up frozen asphalt, it bounced across the runway, burying itself deep in the side of a stationary helicopter.
Without its stabilizing rotor, the tail of the Hind began to spin. It completed a half circle before the tip struck pavement, drawing the spinning rotors of the listing helicopter inexorably toward. the ground.
As the guiding edges of the blades were kissing the pavement, Remo and Chiun were ducking around the side of the hangar to avoid the chunks of flying shrapnel.
They found the soldiers they'd locked inside the hangar trying to sneak out a side door. When Remo took off another head, the remaining men hightailed it back inside.
"Don't make me come in there," he warned, slapping the door shut. As he banged it closed, an explosion sounded out on the runway.
When Remo and Chiun emerged into the open, the flames from the crashed Hind fed a thick black cloud that rose into the frosty white sky. And through the smoke flew three more Hinds.
Remo immediately spied Anna in the trailing helicopter. For a moment he thought she was going to fire on the other two. But as he watched, the nose of her Hind spun away. With a scream of engines, the helicopter tore off in the opposite direction. Away from the other two Hinds, away from Fairbanks. Away from Remo.
His face darkened as he watched her make good her escape. "So much for the old team effort," he grunted.
Before them, one of the gunships had swirled to face the hangar. The four-barrel guns in the remotecontrol turret under the nose screamed to life, chewing the ground at Remo and Chiun's feet. Frightened shouts issued from within the hangar as bullets pierced the flimsy walls.
With an angry scowl Remo stooped, snapping up a chunk of smoking rotor blade. His body automatically compensated for the heat of the metal by producing a protective sheen of sweat on his palm. Hefting the metal fragment over one shoulder, Remo dropped his arm. With an audible snap the metal left his fingers.
Whistling all the way, the blade segment zoomed through the air, impacting with the nose of the firing Hind. The metal tore up through the cockpit at an angle, striking the gunner square in the face. Continuing up in a deadly spiral, it made it as far as the main cockpit before coming to a final, fatal stop in the chin of the pilot.
With a lurch the helicopter plopped back to the runway.
By this time the second airborne Hind had gotten its bearings. Nose tilted, its weapons were aimed squarely at Remo and Chiun.
Remo grabbed another chunk of broken rotor blade. The Master of Sinanju quickly tugged it from his hands.
"You already had your turn," the old man clucked. Remo eyed the helicopter warily. It had not yet fired its guns, yet the gunner could still be seen through the frontal dome fussing around his instruments.
"No fooling, Chiun," Remo warned. "I think he's going for the rockets this time."
The Master of Sinanju held his ground. "Wait," he commanded.
Narrowed eyes grew tighter until they became slits of wrinkled parchment as the old man studied the movements of the gunner. When the Russian finally lunged for the panel, Chiun made his move.
The broken rotor section was up and around in a slivered heartbeat. Kimono sleeves snapping, the metal left his bony hand like a jet-propelled spear.