Rifle safeties latched off.
"You will please dismount instantly."
"Ride's over, Little Father," said Remo, stepping off the truck.
The Master of Sinanju stepped away from the vehicle as well.
They were surrounded at riflepoint.
"Last guys who did that to us ended up with their trigger fingers in splints," Remo offered in the way of friendly information.
"Place your hands atop your heads, please."
"Since you're all so polite I guess we can't say no, can we Little Father?"
"We will allow them to keep their fingers," Chiun said thinly. "For now."
They placed their hands atop their heads. Remo took a moment to scrutinize the faces surrounding them. The men all had a fresh, well-scrubbed look, like Boy Scouts coming into early manhood. The weapons at their shoulders were American-made Colt AR-15s. Purchasable at many sporting-goods stores. There was no hint of ethnicity in any of the faces. In fact, they looked corn-fed, most of them.
Remo frowned. More and more this was looking like a U.S. military operation. But who the hell was running it, and why?
Remo decided there was only one way to find out.
"Take us to your leader," he said, straight-faced.
The circle broke, and half the soldiers formed up behind them. The others formed an honor guard of sorts.
"March, please," the leader requested.
They marched.
"Why are they so polite?" Chiun wanted to know.
Remo shrugged as best he could. "Search me."
"No talking in the ranks, please."
"We are not of your ranks," Chiun sniffed.
"No talking, please. Thank you."
Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.
They were walked through a labyrinth of spotless tunnels. White-coveralled soldiers swabbed the pastel walls with ammonia-scented rags. Others dusted the exposed ductwork with white-enameled foxtail brooms.
Remo started whistling "Whistle While You Work" to break the silence, and the captain's head suddenly jerked around. For the first time, an expression crossed his set features.
"What's the problem, pal?" Remo asked. "You don't like my taste in music?"
The man said a tight-lipped nothing, but he picked up his pace. Consequently they all picked up their pace.
"These guys are too perfect to be U.S. military," Remo said, after some thought.
This time, the captain hissed for silence.
"Struck a nerve," Remo said.
The captain whirled, his corn-fed face white and tight. It almost matched his coverall uniform.
"I have instructions to shoot one of you to ensure the cooperation of the other."
Remo smiled tightly, "You forgot to say 'please.' "
"Separate them!" the captain snapped.
The Master of Sinanju shook his black silk sleeves off his pipe-stem forearms. He folded them resolutely, saying, "I will not be moved."
Remo folded his arms as well. "That goes double for me. I'm tired of all this pussyfooting."
"Shoot the old man."
Remo got between the captain and the Master of Sinanju and said in a low tone. "You forgot to say 'May I?'"
"Fi-yeeh!"
The captain's order had been interrupted by a sensation like a tightening vise in the specific area of his testicles. He looked down to see that the skinny man had grabbed his crotch with one hand. The old one now took him by the throat.
While he was still screaming, the captain went ballistic.
Had he not been wearing his helmet, his head would have been split open against the overhead conduit pipe. It was as large as a sewer main, and as heavy.
The helmet protected the top of his skull from being caved in. It punctured the pipe and hung there, forming a solid cup that collected the compressed remnants of his pulped head.
The other soldiers looked up at the dangling white boots, to the skinny guy with the thick wrists, and remembered the captain's unfinished final order.
They trained their weapons on the old Asian. Fingers squeezed triggers.
Remo moved among the soldiers. He came in low, bent at the waist, and slammed the AR-15 muzzles ceilingward, like a handball player deflecting a rebounding ball.
Bullets erupted straight up, riddling the pipe and making the limp body of their captain jerk and jitter and string blood from points along his torso.
The overhead pipe suddenly cracked apart with a roar and a section crashed down, spewing assorted paper trash, soft-drink cans, used camera-film boxes, and colorful napkins. All propelled by a hurricane of air.
Remo and Chiun retreated as the soldiers were swiftly inundated.
"What the hell is going on?" Remo shouted over the din.
"I do not know."
"What the heck is that thing?" Remo said, retreating from the spreading sea of refuse.
From the relative safety of several yards down the corridor, Remo and Chiun watched as the soldiers, weapons forgotten, tried to wade from the snowstorm of debris. They were not fast enough. The stuff covered them faster than they could wade. They slogged waist-deep, then shoulder-deep, and then, like men drowning in some frothy white water, their helmeted heads were soon covered.
Somewhere someone must have thrown a switch, because with a silence that made their ears ring, the whooshing roar ceased and all was quiet.
A final paper cup tumbled out of the fractured ceramic pipe, and all was still.
Remo and Chiun walked around the mound of trash, their faces bemused.
"They must have a whole division under arms, from the look of all these food containers," Remo pointed out.
The Master of Sinanju noticed a corner of the mound shift. The gleam of a white helmet appeared.
With the heel of his hand, he gave it a tap. The emerging helmet rang like an old bell, and fell silent.
Then the Klaxons started.
Remo looked up and down the gleaming corridor worriedly. "Uh-oh. Now we did it."
"Perhaps this might be the correct time to escape, my son," Chiun pointed out, his bearded chin indicating the severed pipe.
"Just a sec."
Remo went to a wall-mounted video surveillance camera and with an extended forefinger shattered the lens, blinding it.
"No sense leaving a trail," he said over the Klaxon howl.
Remo got under the ruptured pipe and took hold of its cracked maw. He pulled himself up. The Master of Sinanju, being somewhat shorter, leaped high, fading into the maw like a spider slipping into a web hole.
Crouched low, they moved along the pipe. It was dark and surprisingly clean, in spite of being a conduit for trash and food refuse. The inner walls were teflonslick.
The way was dark, but their visual purple compensated for the lack of illumination.
At a bend in the tunnel they came to a clump of trash.
Remo cleared it with distaste on his hard features.
They continued on.
They found the body of Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla wedged in a catch basin, where the pipe angled up into a sheer vertical well.
"Guess he was too heavy to make the turn," Remo said, checking the body's carotid artery and finding no pulse.
The body of Zorilla had landed in a kind of tangled ball of outflung limbs. They dragged him free and laid him out. There were no obvious marks or wounds. The man's eyes were wide, and already turning to dull glass. Remo noticed that his mouth was open and there was something in it.
He pried the jaws apart and saw the pink wad crushed against his wisdom teeth.
"Gum," he said, dismissing it without a second thought.
Remo went through the man's pockets and found a pack of gum in the blouse pocket. He barely glanced at it before tossing it aside. There was an INS green card, and a plastic syringe filled with liquid. The needle was stoppered. That was all.
"Must have been a drug addict," Remo said, dropping the needle.
"Or a gum fiend," sniffed the Master of Sinanju, retrieving it. He tossed the instrument aside after examining it curiously.