Sparks flew. TV technicians shouted. Chiun ignored them and started across the platform just as Alexi Vassilev hoisted the 600-pound barbell to his chest.
Vassilev felt a rush of relief as he took a deep breath, exploded it outward, and hoisted the weight
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overhead. He locked his elbows and held the weight.
How foolish he had been to be nervous. Who but the great Vassilev could ever lift such a weight and hold it with such ease?
The audience exploded with cheers, and Vassilev gave them a rare small smile, but he waited for the judges to signal that he had held the weight long enough for the lift to count. Then he saw the audience's eyes move off him. He looked toward his right, toward where all the people were looking, and saw a blue-robed Oriental running across the platform.
Staggering under the weight, still awaiting the judges' signal, Vassilev stumbled two steps forward in the Oriental's path. How dare this little man detract from Alexi's great moment?
He was standing right in the Oriental's way.
"How dare you?" he bellowed in Russian.
He could not believe what happened and the next day in the hospital he would not be able to explain.
He heard the Oriental say in perfect Russian, "Out of my way, gross meat-eater," and then he was being lifted up-he and the great 600 pounds he held-they were being effortlessly lifted by this frail old Oriental, who tossed them both through the air toward the rear of the platform, and then continued to run off the stage, as the audience sat in shocked silence.
Remo watched in amusement as Chiun hoisted the thousand pounds of Vassilev and steel and threw them out of his way as if they weighed no more than a child's slipper.
The weight slipped from Vassilev's hands as he sailed through the air, so the two did not land together. Remo was hard put to figure out which of the two bounced higher, but Vassilev remained stationary and the weight hit and rolled.
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Remo ran down the left side of the hall and met Chiun at the rear door.
When Jack Mullin had run outside, he had found his men waiting for him. Only three, not four, and the fools as usual had misunderstood his instructions. He had told them to meet him in the back of the hall. They had interpreted that to mean they should meet him in back of the hall. He would skin them for that one day.
They ran toward him as he came out into the bright sun. They were all armed with handguns.
"The Oriental will be coming through that door in a moment," he explained. "Cut him down when he does. All the explosives are planted?"
"Yes, Lieutenant."
The four men aimed their automatics at the door. Mullin felt his palms sweaty and slick. Perspiration was also flowing down his forehead and dripping from his eyebrows.
C'mon, Mullin mumbled toward the closed door. Get out here and get it over with.
"They are probably outside waiting," Chiun told Remo.
"So what?" Remo asked.
"If they fire, the bullets might hit somebody in here. Smith would not like that," Chiun said.
Remo thought of that for a moment, then nodded.
"All right. Then up we go."
He grabbed hold of a rope that led to a second-floor window and raced up it, like a trained monkey, climbing with just Ms hands, feeling behind him the speed of Chiun following him.
"Where is he, Lieutenant?" one of Mullin's men asked.
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"He's coming through that door," Mullin said. "There's no other way."
"No?" said Remo from behind Mullin and as the Briton turned, Remo said, "Surprise. Surprise."
When Mullin saw Chiun standing next to Remo, his control snapped.
"Kill them. Kill them," he screamed.
The four men leveled their automatics at Remo and Chiun, but before they could squeeze triggers, Remo and Chiun were among them and bullets could not be fired without risking hitting one of their own men. The four terrorists pulled their knives from their belts.
Or three of them did. One had the knife in his hand and his hand on the way up, when his wrist collided with the side of Chiun's hand, flailing downward in the classical hand-ax position. The knife went clattering one way; the hand bounced off in another direction; and the terrorist, looking down at the bleeding stump of his wrist, fell backwards into a sitting position on the hard pavement.
"How much did you win by?" Chiun called over his shoulder.
"What?" Remo asked. He had moved inside one of the terrorist's knives, continued past him, then slammed back with his right elbow into the man's right kidney. Before the man could fall, Remo had the body under the armpits.
Chiun said, "You heard my question. How much did you win by?"
Remo lifted the body and swung it out at a third terrorist who slid back out of range.
"Actually, Chiun, I didn't win," Remo said, moving forward on the third terrorist.
Chiun was moving in on Jack Mullin. He stopped and turned to Remo, hands on his hips, his hazel eyes narrowed until they were mere slits in his parchment-yellow face.
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"Explain yourself," he demanded.
"Chiun, I'm a little busy," Remo said, as he threw the dead terrorist in his arms at the third terrorist. The weight crashed the man to the ground.
"Nonsense, busy," Chiun said. "You stop fooling around with those creatures and talk to me."
Remo turned toward Chiun. The third African, carried to the ground by the weight of his dead partner, extricated himself, rolled to his belly and aimed his automatic at Remo's stomach.
"You lost," Chiun accused.
"Let me explain," Remo said.
"You lost deliberately."
"For a good reason, Chiun."
"There is no good reason for a Master of Sinanju, even such a worthless one as you, to lose. That is without honor."
Just as the third terrorist squeezed the trigger, Remo, without turning, kicked out with his left foot and buried his shoe into the man's skull, in the thin spot between the eyes. The brain no longer ordered the finger to squeeze the trigger and both man and gun clattered onto the ground.
That left Jack Mullin.
"Losing today was a matter of honor, Chiun," Remo said. He was glancing at Mullin, who was backing away from the two men, trying to get far enough from them, so he could be sure to take them both out with bullets from his .45.
"All that training wasted by an ingrate, a white ingrate, a dead-white-like-a-dead-fish-pale-piece-of-pig's-ear-ingrate."
"Dammit, Chiun," said Remo.
"C'mon," Mullin yelled. He was fifteen feet from them now. His eyes were rolling wildly in his head. He pointed the automatic at first Chiun, then Remo. "C'mon," he yelled. "I'll get you. I'll take you both."
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"You be quiet," Chiun said. "I'm not ready to deal with you yet. First this ingrate."
"I know that gold medal meant a lot to you, Chiun. You've got to believe I didn't just lose it on a whim."
Chiun was disgusted. He threw his hands in the air in exasperation, turned, and walked away from Remo and Mullin. The Englishman carefully aimed his automatic at Chiun's thin back.
This time, he would not miss. This time, that old man was his. Let's see how inscrutable he'll be when he's dead, Mullin thought.
He forgot Remo and as his finger tightened on the trigger, he felt the gun slapped from his hands and saw it bounce away along the thin blacktop pavement.
"Aaaaaaarghhhhhh," screamed Mullin, his voice quivering in anguish.
"Where'd you plant the bombs?" Remo asked.
"Find them yourself," Mullin said. Remo buried Ms hand in Muffin's left side and the Englishman screamed in pain.
"The bombs," said Remo.
"Around the American barracks," Mullin said.
"So long, Major Blimp," said Remo, and he slowly removed his hand from Muffin's left side and Mullin felt a flash of cool air there and realized that his side had been opened and his vital organs exposed, but before he could wonder how Remo had done that without a knife, he fell dead to the ground.