“But not because they are your words—because Smitty can’t sit there and do nothing.”
“So he sends us out on busywork.”
“It’s something,” Remo said. “And Smitty doesn’t believe there’s a connection anyway.”
“He believes nothing, and you are little better. You only know or do not know. You only trust what some logistician or intellectual claims is truth. When you don’t have that truth, you force your problem into one of the boxes of science and chop off the unneeded details until it fits some explanation. But know this, Remo Williams—science explains nothing accurately.”
“Where would Smitty be without his computers, Little Father?”
“My fear is where you will be because of them. The Dream Thing stirs, and soon even Mad Harold’s idiot electronics shall decide that the blame for all this lies in that entity. He will send you there.”
“So?”
“There is nothing worse that could be done.”
Remo pondered this in silence. The helicopter was beginning its descent when he said, “Little Father, what would you ask of me?”
“To believe in that which is unproved.”
“To have faith.”
“Faith, yes,” Chiun agreed. Then he added hurriedly, “This is not about the carpenter from Galilee who now appears in blood-and-guts films.”
“Of course not. I know what it’s about.”
“We shall see,” Chiun said, only partially satisfied.
The satellite phone on the wall buzzed, and Chiun composed himself more perfectly. The SEAL team leader handed the receiver to Remo.
“General Rozinante for you, sir.”
“Thanks.”
The SEAL commander gave a hand signal to his team, and they quickly donned headgear and switched on a music feed. It was the oldies station out of London that considered itself to be ensconced in the culturally superior 1980s, and at this moment was playing a Spandau Ballet song to prove it.
“General Rosey-somebody?” Remo asked.
“Are they isolated?” Smith demanded, his sour voice tinged with a heaviness that made Remo worried.
“Yeah. They can’t hear us. But they couldn’t have anyway—you know we’re in a helicopter?”
“I know. This is bad, Remo. Very bad.”
Very bad. Smith was as emotionless as they came, but he was clearly concerned.
“How bad?”
“Worse than I had thought. Worse than my worst-case scenarios.”
Remo looked over the bulky phone at Chiun.
Smith was almost rambling. Smith never rambled. He pulled himself together in a hurry. “Here’s what we’ve got. Military research, under the castle at Loch Tweed. It’s a joint U.S.-British research effort. Whoever is responsible made damn sure it was a secret, even from the President.”
“Why?”
“The Folcroft Four sniffed it out,” Mark Howard said, coming on the line. “The security didn’t fit the cover story. It’s supposed to be nothing more than a U.S.-U.K. terrorist-response strategy-planning facility.”
“So if it’s not that, what is it?”
Together, Mark Howard and Harold Smith told them what it was. It took a minute for Remo to catch on.
“I got it.” He felt like biting the phone in half.
“The place has been hit aggressively. Contact is lost. The nature of the cover makes it low on the list for a military response.”
“Are there not conflicts occurring throughout Scotland?” Chiun wondered aloud. Remo relayed the question.
“The castle is inside Scotland and owned by an English family,” Mark admitted. “This could be just one more of those small-time conflicts.”
“Anybody believe that?” Remo snapped. “Smitty? Junior?”
“I’m hopeful—” Smith started.
“What does your gut tell you, Smitty?” Remo demanded.
“Without more facts—”
“Forget it.”
Remo hung up feeling angrier than he had felt in weeks.
Chapter 13
“It’s a war zone,” said the SEAL after talking to the pilots. “You sure you want to debark here?”
“Yes, thanks.” Remo shook his head at the proffered backpack. “No thanks to that.”
“You have to jump. You’re not getting a touchdown. We don’t know what’s going on around here.” The SEAL was adamant. “You jump and we’ll take your friend to the base.”
“We’ll jump together,” Remo said. “No parachutes for either of us.”
The SEAL leader and the pilots argued for a full five minutes as they scanned the terrain for a jump-off point. They closed in on a hilltop in what looked like a peaceful countryside sheep pasture.
“Here’s the deal,” the SEAL team leader said. “We’re 3.3 miles from the place you want to be and he’ll take you down to the hilltop. Skids no closer than five feet to the ground. That’s the pilot talking, not me. You’ll be totally exposed.”
“That’ll do just fine.”
“If this helicopter doesn’t get blasted out of the air while we’re dropping you off,” the SEAL added, “you’ll probably get shot dead when we leave.”
“We’ll manage. He’s scrappy.” Remo nodded at Chiun, who showed his disdain. “Or was it Grumpy?”
“Your funeral,” the SEAL said with a shrug.
There was no one within sight when they stepped out of the helicopter onto the treetop. The SEAL saluted them grimly. Remo gave him the Vulcan V-sign. As the Sea Hawk was vanishing on the horizon, they were in a world as peaceful as a travel brochure. There wasn’t a soul in sight as they glided swiftly over the fields to Loch Tweed Castle.
The castle grounds were well-kept, but the castle’s glory was faded. The loch was narrow and looked cold, the color of gunmetal. The red blood spills were hard to miss.
There were just a few corpses outside. Remo and Chiun could hear the clamor of battle waging inside—deep inside.
There were more bodies inside. In the large dining hall was an armored, motorized false wall that was still trying to close, even with a few bodies in the way. The motor must have been a good one, because it had managed to soften up the corpses considerably.
“Another hour and it’ll fulfill its function,” Remo observed, then shouldered the armored wall gently. The movement drove it off its tracks and the motor screeched in protest before locking up. They followed the long subterranean corridor and found the battle aftermath.
The Cottingsharm villagers had finished with their deadly foe, whoever they were, and were now taking out their aggressions on a stainless-steel cube. There were several such cubes, ranging from the size of a British roadster to a Ford SUV. They were thick-walled. The Cottingsharm attackers were only making pockmarks in the surface.
“Who are you?” shouted one of them, charging at the new arrivals with a blunted pickax. “You British? You Tweeds?”
“Neither,” Remo said. “What are you, a florist or something?”
“What?”
“Your occupation. Your calling.”
“I’m a Scot. Sheep farmer.”
“You ever paint or write poems?”
The man blushed and toed the stainless-steel floor. “I do make up some pretty rhymes.”
“I’m a singer,” volunteered the brute who was using a sledgehammer on the steel cube. “Listen to this.” He sang in falsetto about suicidal young lovers as he raised the hammer and brought it down.
“I asked you to stop,” Remo said, now holding the hammer. The singer looked at his empty hands and his voice died with a perplexed sound. “See, Chiun, just a bunch of those ‘sensitive’ types you were talking about.”
“I never doubted this. What is the point?” Chiun asked.
“The point is, we don’t need to go wiping them out just because they’ve got Sa Mangsang in their heads.”
“Shush!” Chiun barked. “Have I asked you to refrain from speaking the name?”