"So much for my strike," Remo muttered. He gazed back to the lagoon. "Looks like Elvis is taking a powder." The ship was heading for open water. But down in the lagoon, whose deep blue water was turning slowly milk chocolate, tiny figures floundered. They were swimming away from a spot of water that churned white and pink.
"Sharks," Chiun said. "Those men must return to land."
"We better clean them out before they get organized. They'll be after the junk next."
"Yes." Chiun turned to the milling Moovians. "Never fear," he cried. "We will deal ruthlessly with these interlopers. Inform the High Moo that the Master of Sinanju will not let this atrocity go unpunished."
"I thought you'd gotten over your High Moo worship," Remo said bitterly as they raced down the loosened and tangled western slope.
"We have not taken our leave yet."
There was no white beach there anymore. Just a soaking apron of mud. The moisture was creeping upward. The soil, made heavy by seawater, fell in occasional mudslides.
Dirk Edwards and his men crawled onto this mud, carrying their weapons. They were met by two resolute figures. Remo and Chiun.
Dirk took one look and growled out a low order. "Waste them."
The order was easier given than carried out. Dirk raised his AK-47 and got off a short snarling burst at the white man. He peered past the thinning gunsmoke and the white man was running toward him, dead-on. He pulled the tape-doubled clip out and inserted the other end. He tried single shots, but the white man zig-zagged between the shots somehow. Dirk plucked out a hand grenade, pulled the pin with his teeth, and let fly.
The white guy stopped, looked up at the descending object. Dirk's wolfish grin wreathed his muddy features. It died when the white man casually caught the grenade like a pop fly ball and tossed it back in Dirk's shocked face.
Dirk had no place to run. He burrowed into the mud like a clam. He stuck his fingers in his ears to ward off concussion damage. The explosion was muffled. When it subsided, Dirk stuck his head out. Smearing the mud from his eyes, he looked around.
His men were deploying frantically. They fired every which way; like amateurs. What the hell was wrong with them?
Then he saw. The old guy. The gook. He was systematically taking them out with what looked like kung-fu moves, but were not. The old man vented no heart-freezing cries. His punches and kicks were not swift and flamboyant. They were more graceful. There was an economy of movement that Dirk Edwards have never seen before. It was too pure for kung-fu, he told himself. And the thought surprised him. He had great respect for kung-fu.
The white guy was moving in and out of the tangles of uprooted palms. Dirk had trouble spotting him even though his bare white chest should have been a dead giveaway. He was like a ghost.
One of his men slunk past a clump of bushes and suddenly the white guy was behind him. He came out of nowhere, chopped once at the back of the neck, and Dirk didn't have to hear the ugly crunching noise to know he had lost another man. The weird angle of his neck as he fell told him that.
The white guy moved on.
Dirk scrambled out of the mud. He went from body to body, collecting plastic explosive charges. He still had a detonator strapped to his belt. He felt his pockets. Yeah, a few blasting caps too. He circled away from the fighting-it was more like a massacre than a fight-until he came to open beach. He clambered up the hilly island. There were other mines here too. He found one as close to the damaged western slope as he dared go and crawled in.
In a matter of moments he had planted a charge. He fixed the rest in other strategic places, trailing wire back to the shelter of a coral outcropping. He hooked the wires to the detonator.
"So long, suckers!" he shouted, and twisted the plunger. Gouts of fiery soil jumped into the air. The ground shuddered. Dirk grinned. He waited for the shuddering to subside. Strangely, it kept on going. Like an echo chamber. Puzzled, Dirk peered over the outcropping.
What he saw made his blood run cold. The island was coming down like a sandpile. Not just the part he had blasted. All of it. Water came pouring out of the mines. High above, on the summit, the stone building was sinking as if into quicksand.
A wail rose from the summit. Screams. Terrible screams of terror. But Dirk Edwards didn't hear the screams. His own were too loud.
A wave of loose earth was coming at him and he plunged for the blue water.
Chiun realized it first.
"Moo is falling into the sea."
"Can't be," Remo said hotly. He clutched a mercenary in his hands. He waved his long fingernails before the man's face and suddenly it looked like the pink side of a watermelon rind.
"These nails are good for something, at least," Remo said, dropping the body.
"Lo!" Chiun pointed upward.
"Christ," Remo said anxiously. "What do we do?"
"The junk. Come."
Remo hesitated. The ground under his feet was separating like cornmeal. "We can't abandon everyone," he shouted.
"And we will not. We will bring the junk closer to land. It is their only hope. And ours."
"I'm with you," Remo said quickly.
Together they plunged into the brown water. They struck out for the junk, taking care to swim wide of the feeding frenzy of hammerheads.
Remo spotted another swimmer angling across their bearing. He was also making for the junk.
"He's mine," Remo called, pointing him out.
"I will ready the ship," Chiun said.
Remo slipped under the surface. He found himself once again in a fantasy world of multihued coral. Old Moo. He homed in on Dirk Edwards' kicking feet. Remo darted for them like a dolphin.
Remo came up from below. He pulled Dirk Edwards down by the ankles. Then he grabbed his throat, holding him underwater. Remo gave Dirk just enough time to see the wrath on his face before he shattered his shoulder joints.
Dirk Edward's face registered surprise when he found that his arms would not move. They hung limp. Stupid arms. He needed them to swim with. He kicked, but suddenly there was pain in his hips.
He looked down and saw that he no longer had hips. His pelvis felt mushy, no longer solid. And his legs hung straight down like cooked noodles.
Then he was sinking, down, down into a beautiful world of coral reefs. He looked to see where he would land, and there was a gap in the reef below. He slipping down through it and all became black.
At first Dirk couldn't tell if he was dead or in some kind of dark hollow place. He decided he was dead, and further decided it didn't feel so bad after all. Then his eyes became accustomed to the dim light and he saw that he was surrounded by shelf upon shelf of dead people, all in big jars like bugs in specimen bottles.
The shelves shook, causing the jugs to wobble and topple. They broke, unleashing their contents in a dark red cloud like blood. Dead eyes stared at him accusingly and Dirk suddenly wondered if they were really dead. Some of them seemed to be pointed at him.
Dirk screamed then. His lungs emptied and the breathing reflex that could not be denied demanded that he inhale. He swallowed the water into his mouth and stomach and lungs. Odd, it tasted like wine.
He was dead when he floated down to solid ground, settling on a tiled floor like a discarded marionette.
Remo clambered up the Jonah Ark's hull and over the rail. Chiun had the foresail down. The wind filled it. "Take the tiller," the Master of Sinanju snapped.
Remo leaned into the tiller, and the junk came about slowly. He cursed its slow response time. The bow lined up on the shrinking island of Moo.
It was an incredible sight. Like a sand castle drying in the sun, Moo simply crumbled. The Royal Palace was sinking as the supporting ground disintegrated.