Chiun appeared to agree. "Move, amateur," he commanded. Muscling past Remo, he grabbed a gun in each hand.
The frantic firing of a moment before had begun to slow, but as soon as Chiun's bald head peeked over the roof's edge, the shooting began in earnest once more. Bullets whizzed around the flaps of the old man's hat. Frowning, Chiun ducked back, the guns still clutched in his hands.
"Am I given extra points for distractions?"
Remo shook his head firmly. "Part of the challenge."
Chiun nodded. "I accept your rules," he said. As he tilted forward, fingers like sticks of bone hurled the guns down.
The soldiers in the alley barely had time to register the blurry black apparition high above before two more rifles howled into their midst. Two upraised faces snagged the guns in nudgoggle. The barrels exploded out the backs of skulls, burying deep in asphalt. Like insects in a science project, the men were pinned to the alley floor.
The shooting intensified, even more frantic than before.
Chiun dodged the bullets, clapping his hands delightedly.
"Bull's-eyes!" he sang happily as he slipped back to the safety of the roof.
Bullets continued to zing through vacant air.
"Not bad," Remo said. "But I wouldn't make room in the trophy case yet. We've still got sixty-nine more to go."
Reaching over, he grabbed another makeshift dart.
THEY LOST CONTACT with the Khrushchev Brigade at 10:30 p.m. When they called the Molotov Brigade, the Institute commando in charge failed to answer his radio.
When the first sounds of gunfire pierced the night, Vladimir Zhirinsky jumped. Afterward the silence seemed all the more deafening, all the more menacing. The voices that did come over the radio were panicked and undisciplined.
It was the Institute training. The men were former athletes and dancers. They weren't soldiers. They had encountered something unexpected and were reacting to it like a bunch of frightened gymnasts and ballerinas.
"This is not happening," Zhirinsky said, his voice a barely audible rumble.
The walls of his office were very close. The world had closed in. Tighter than the room, smaller even than the space in which Vladimir Zhirinsky existed. He felt the crush of his collapsing universe behind his bleary eyes.
Around his ankles was a pile of crumpled paper. His great speech to Mother Russia. Worthless now. After the American voice had taunted him, he had decided to take his aide's advice and move up his address to the Russian people. Not only did he learn that the satellite on which the signal was to be broadcast belonged to Mickey Mouse, but he also found out that he had been dumped off the feed. The people would not hear his carefully crafted call to arms.
He snapped. In a moment of rage he decided to set off his precious nuclear bomb and ride the mushroom cloud into oblivion along with his unknown American tormentors. But when the men he sent to detonate the device attempted to do so, it flared to life, launching off the flatbed trailer before coming to a spluttering stop in the drive-through arch of a downtown bank. It failed to explode.
When he vowed to visit vengeance upon the incompetent head of the man to whom he had entrusted both the satellite and the missile, he learned Ivan Kerbabaev had disappeared.
And so Vladimir Zhirinsky sat. Dark lids failed to blink over bloodshot eyes.
More weak gunfire popped somewhere across town. Zhirinsky climbed to his feet, clutching his stomach. Sick eyes looked out the window.
Beyond the frosty pane the Soviet flag waved mockingly at him. Zhirinsky pressed a palm against the glass, his sagging face filled with longing.
When his part-time aide hurried into the room, Zhirinsky didn't even acknowledge his presence. "Comrade, we must leave," the young man announced.
Zhirinsky continued to stare out the window.
The dream was gone. The Americans had sent in some sort of commando force. Greater even than the men from the Institute. The Soviet Union was gone. Vanished into the mists of time like all great empires. It would never return.
"Comrade," the voice behind him pressed. Zhirinsky turned from the window.
His aide's face was pleading. "If we are to escape with our lives, we must go now," he begged.
The distant gunfire intensified, then ceased. Zhirinsky considered his words. He tried to think, tried to force some small, rational part of his mind to understand the wisdom of the words.
"We have failed," Zhirinsky admitted softly. "Listen. The gunfire has stopped. The men do not report that they are victorious, therefore they have failed."
"Which makes it all the more urgent that we go now."
"Go how?" Zhirinsky asked. "You have told me that our helicopters have been destroyed. We cannot take another plane from the airport, for our pilots are dead and I put into exile any Americans who could fly. I am trapped."
The aide shook his head urgently. "The vehicles that brought the commandos here are still parked at the edge of town. Comrade Skachkov told me where they are. We can escape into the wilderness. There are provisions for a hundred men hidden at the camps the men were using. When they stop looking for you, we can flee back to Russia."
Zhirinsky absorbed the man's words.
"Skachkov," he said quietly. "You have spoken to him?"
"He called a few minutes ago. His radio malfunctioned, so he did not know that the others were sent to the chamber of commerce building. He is on his way there now."
A spark lit in Zhirinsky's coal-black eyes. "The tables have just turned," he intoned.
He was thinking of that day he had met Lavrenty Skachkov in Gorky Park all those months ago. Zhirinsky had never seen his like-not even among the other Institute men. Whoever these Americans were, they could not be equal to Skachkov.
"The dogs think they have beaten us back this day," Zhirinsky said ominously. "But we will be victorious. In case Skachkov is late arriving, I will fall back for now. Once he is successful in wiping out these capitalist spies, we will hasten back to Russia while the mood of the people is still with me. This revolution will be fought like the first. From house to house and in the streets."
The words were spoken with proud certainty. Grinning like a conqueror, Vladimir Zhirinsky pushed past his aide and marched quickly from the small office.
FLASHES POPPED like minifireworks from the alley floor. As Russian commandos laid down cover fire, nearly two dozen more mounted the fire escape.
Remo and Chiun had exhausted their supply of makeshift darts, eliminating six more Institute soldiers. As bullets whizzed through air, they hunkered down behind the brick upper ledge of the Fairbanks chamber of commerce building.
A bony hand slithered out, clasping on to the uppermost metal rail of the fire escape. Chiun tuned himself to the vibrations of the men climbing the stairs. When the first commando was nearly in striking distance, the Master of Sinanju nodded sharply.
"Now," he hissed.
Remo took the cue. Like a shot he flipped up and over. Shoulders didn't have time to brush the ledge before he was out in open air. He dropped like a stone, his legs curled tightly up to his trunk. Three stories down, his legs unbuckled, absorbing the fall like coiled springs.
He fell so fast the men in the alley hadn't seen him. Goggles aimed skyward, they continued to shoot blindly into the air even as Remo spun to the fire escape.
Remo slapped the metal twice. Flying hands cracked the heavy brackets that fastened the crisscrossing ladder to the rear wall. Three stories up, the Master of Sinanju shattered the upper bolts. Vibrations raced up and down the zigzagging structure, meeting with explosive force dead center.
A sound like that of church bells striking a sour note rang out in the cold night.