«Yeah,» Jimmy said. He was close behind Remo.
«This is where…» Felton's hand went to the back of his head… «where we keep our Maxwells! Now!»
Remo leaned forward as the slow lazy blow came from the butler. He pulled with it like child's play and crumpled to the ground.
No overconfidence. See what they do. Maybe Maxwell is here.
«Nice hit, Jimmy. I think we got the bastard. We finally got him.»
Remo saw Felton's highly polished black shoes move near his lips. Then he felt a sharp crack on his chin. Felton had kicked him.
He did not move.
«I think you killed him.» Felton said. «What'd you hit him with?»
«My hand, boss. I still didn't get a good shot at him.»
«He's the one,» Felton said, with resignation. «He got Scottichio and Moesher.»
«I wish he'd a lived to go in the machine.» Felton shrugged. «I feel tired, Jimmy. I don't care anymore. Get him ready.»
Remo felt Jimmy's large bony hands reach around his rib cage and hoist. He was dragged, his feet scraping, around to the ramp end of the concrete blockhouse. Through half-opened eyes he saw Felton walk to the other end of the building.
The junk car's doors were off and Jimmy rested Remo on his bony knee for a moment, then threw him headfirst onto the floor mat where the front seat had been. Remo heard engines, not car engines, groan. Jimmy removed a block from in front of the car's front right wheel. Walking toward the back of the car, he leaned in to throw one last punch. Remo Williams had waited long enough.
With his left hand he grabbed the large bony wrist and snapped it, silently, swiftly. Jimmy would have screamed if Remo's right hand had not buried itself knuckle-deep into his solar plexis, only a split-second earlier, knocking the air and the sound from him. Remo smashed the nose bone with his left hand and Jimmy went out.
Remo slid out from under Jimmy's limp frame, then pushed Jimmy into the car, in the place intended for Remo. Remo trotted silently to the back of the car and removed another block from behind the rear wheel.
The engines that Remo had heard groaned louder, and at the bottom of the concrete ramp, a steel door rose on hydraulic pistons. It opened a steel compartment that in the dim light Remo could see was big enough for several cars at once.
Remo released the emergency brake in the car, gave it a push, then sat on Jimmy's head and gently eased the car down the hill into the giant box.
As the car bumped to a halt against the end wall, Remo dashed for freedom. He almost stumbled as he heard the giant steel door slowly lowering with a hideous hiss.
Remo heard sounds from the other end of the giant concrete pillbox. He moved silently on the balls of his feet, like a phantom gliding over a padded graveyard.
Peering around the wall, he saw Felton, stripped to his white shirt, his coat and jacket lying on the ground, sweating over an instrument panel.
Felton yelled: «Everything all right, Jimmy? You got him set?»
Remo stepped around the building. «I'm all set, Felton. All set.»
Felton went for the gun. With one swift motion, Remo snapped the revolver from his hand. He moved behind Felton, and spun him wildly around in a circle, moving him like a rolling barrel along the concrete sidewalk beside the concrete and steel crusher.
It was like dribbling a basketball. Felton's blows were wild and thrashing. He was too old for this business, too old.
By the time Remo got Felton to the other end, the steel door had closed. Felton spun around and swung. Remo caught the blow on his left arm and crumbled Felton with a soft chop to the temple.
Felton collapsed to the concrete. And Remo saw something sticking out beneath the steel door. It was a leg. Jimmy had tried to slide out. He hadn't made it. The steel door had sliced it like a hot wire going through cheese. The tip of the shoe seemed to be jerking, not from impulses which were severed, but like an organism, primeval without intellect.
Remo gave Felton another tap on the temple, then went back to the control panel. It was a simple panel but Remo didn't understand it.
There was a right lever with gradations, a forward lever, a top lever, an entrance lever, and an automatic control.
Remo grabbed the entrance lever. Then it hit him like a jolt of electricity. He began to laugh. He was still laughing as he heard the heavy steel door begin to hiss open.
He picked up Felton's pistol, then walked to the ramp at the other end of the concrete blockhouse. «Maxwell,» he kept repeating. «Maxwell.» Felton was where he had left him, his arms spread grotesquely wide over the concrete driveway.
Jimmy had rolled back down the incline after the door had severed his leg. But the hiss of the opening door drove him on. With his one leg and a stump and two hands, Jimmy was hopping and crawling like a horrible, crippled, crab up the incline, trying to escape. In the faint moonlight, Remo could see the terror etched deeply into his face.
Remo cocked Felton's pistol and fired a bullet calmly into Jimmy's one good leg. The bullet spun Jimmy around and Remo took a step into the driveway and kicked the big Texan back into the box over the leg that was no longer his.
Then Remo lifted Felton and heaved him down the concrete incline. Remo ran around to the controls and pushed back the entrance lever. The heavy steel door hissed shut again and a light went on inside the blockhouse. Through some sort of heavy plastic peephole, Remo could see inside. Felton was not moving. Nor was Jimmy.
Felton would come to soon enough. Remo reached into his shirt pocket and lit a cigarette. He glanced once more at the control panel, mumbled «Maxwell» again with a smile, and settled down to smoking his cigarette. So that was it.
On the fourth puff, he heard a scratching on the plastic shield. He took a deliberately long time turning around. When he did, there was Felton's face, pressed against the plastic window.
The old man's hair was wild. He was yelling something. Remo could not make it out.
Carefully, Remo formed the word with his lips: «Maxwell.»
Felton's head shook.
«I know you don't know,» Remo yelled.
Felton looked desperately puzzled.
«Here's another one,» Remo yelled. «MacCleary?»
Felton shook his head.
«Don't know him either, huh?» Remo called. «I didn't think you would. He was just a guy with a hook. Think of him when you're being crushed to death. Think of him when you're a hood ornament on somebody's car. Think of him because he was my friend.»
Remo turned from Felton who scratched frantically on the plastic window and examined the idiot panel. He shrugged his shoulders. He heard a muffled plea for mercy. But there had been no mercy for MacCleary or the other CURE agents or for America.
He had been created the destroyer and this was what he was meant to do. He pushed the lever marked automatic and the machine moaned into operations, its giant hydraulic presses forcing hundreds of thousands of pounds of pressure into a moving wall. And Remo knew he was not just working at a job, he was living his role in life, fulfilling what he was born for.
It took no more than five minutes. First the front wall pressed in to crush the contents of the blockhouse, then a side wall moved in to crush from another direction, then the roof slowly lowered and it was over. When all the hydraulic walls had returned to their normal positions, Remo peered through the plastic window. All he saw was a cube of metal, four feet square. An automobile and two humans, now only a cube of scrap iron.
Remo looked around for an implement. He saw a rusted crowbar resting against one of the blockhouse's exterior walls.