"There's a container of it in an unmarked wall locker on the top work level, next to the warhead."
"Excellent. Now you will let my friends into this place and I will let you rest."
"The red switch. Press it," said Captain Gunn, who wondered if the Asian wasn't a revenge-crazed Vietnamese. No, that couldn't be. The Vietnamese had won. Maybe he was a revenge-crazed Jap. But Captain Gunn, who drove a Japanese car, dismissed that possibility as even more remote. The Japanese had won, too.
"This is fantastic," Amanda Bull said as she picked her way past a number of guards and other personnel Chiun had taken out of action earlier, and led her troops into the control area. "We're actually in a SAC missile complex."
"Thanks to me," Chiun reminded her.
"Yeah... hey, how'd you do all this?" Amanda said in a less agreeable voice. She felt like shooting someone to reassert her control over the operation. After all, she was Preparation Group Leader, not this Chiun character.
"I did it. That is enough," Chiun said as he let go of Captain Gunn's aching wrists.
"What do we do now?" Ethel Sump asked, while the others poked at control buttons and tried to read the instrument panels.
"We neutralize the warhead," Chiun said firmly, and disappeared to do just that before Amanda Bull could open her mouth.
After he had gone, Amanda turned to Captain Gunn and placed the muzzle of her long-barreled target pistol under his right ear and said, "Screw this neutralization shit. Fire that missile, buster. I know you can do it without arming the warhead, right?"
"Yes, but it's aimed at Russia. The Russians won't know it's not armed. We could trigger World War III."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Ethel Sump injected helpfully.
"Hmmm. There's got to be a way," Group Leader Bull ruminated. After a moment, she had it.
"I've got it," she said. "You hit the ignition switch— I know there's got to be one somewhere here because I watched all the NASA shots on TV— and then cut it. The missile will start to go up and then crash back into the silo."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't do that," said Captain Gunn just before Amanda Bull shot him twice under his right ear. When his body slid off the console chair and fell to the floor like an oversized beanbag, Ethel Sump asked, "What did you do that for?"
"Because we didn't need him. I think I see which switches to press."
"Oh. But what about Mr. Chiun?"
"He's getting too smart. We don't need him, either."
"Oh," said Ethel Sump slowly, looking at Captain Gunn's body, which, even dead, looked handsome and reminded her of her older brother who had died in Vietnam.
Amanda kicked the corpse to one side and slid behind the console. She pressed a button. Nothing happened. She then turned some dials, which did nothing. Then she tried the FUNCTION SELECT control. Nothing.
Frustrated, she shot at the console, which caused some lights to go on, but that was all.
"Damn," Amanda said.
"Hey! Looky here. There's another panel just like that one," someone said.
Amanda went over to it, unaware that it was the mate to the first console and not a backup, and that its launch control officer was lying out in the corridor, where Chiun had taken him unawares while he had been returning from coffee break.
Amanda tried those controls, too, but to no avail.
"Bullshit," she said, and kicked the console like someone kicking a recalcitrant vending machine.
It was then that one of the finest pieces of American engineering, a computer unit with incredible tolerances and multiple failsafe backup systems designed not to allow an accidental firing of the waiting Titan missile, hummed busily.
A red panel lit up the words SILO ROOF.
"Oh, goodie. I think we've got it working," Ethel cooed.
Then another red panel illuminated the word ENABLE, and there was a distant rumbling.
The next panel said FIRE and the rumbling became a roar.
* * *
The Master of Sinanju found the container because there was only one locked cabinet on the wall of the top tier, and after snapping the padlock, there was only one container that sloshed in that cabinet, and its heaviness suggested a very dense liquid, so the Master of Sinanju assumed that it contained the oil that would neutralize the warhead.
The next step was to gain access to the warhead, which Chiun did by leaping atop it with the oil container under one arm.
There was a spout attached to the container, but no open hole in the tip of the missile like those in cars, which Chiun had seen taking refined oil in gas stations. Chiun remembered gas stations because they smelled so bad, but Remo always insisted on stopping at them whenever they went on trips. Too bad Remo wasn't here, Chiun thought. He would know what to do. All whites know machines.
Chiun tapped the missile nose with his foot, and the hollowness that came back told him that the nose was a shell covering something within, and he could break the shell without damaging what it held.
Stooping, Chiun popped a hole in the warhead shroud with his fingernails. Then he casually peeled large patches of alloy metal back until he was standing inside the warhead, whose sides hung down like drooping sunflower petals.
Chiun was now standing on the warhead mechanism itself, which was a slim thing like an inverted ice cream cone fixed to a complicated base. As Chiun looked for a place where the container spout could go, the silo roof above him rolled back. He paid it no mind. Once he completed his work, he would lead the others away from this place with no loss of life that could anger the Emperor Smith, who was sometimes fussy about such things, and then he would be brought to the USO— or whatever the obnoxious blonde woman called it. Then, Chiun's destiny would be assured.
But before the Master of Sinanju could locate the proper place on the warhead, the missile began to rumble and shake, and then there was a roar of fire far beneath him, and then he felt the huge missile rise under his feet, and he felt himself rising with it.
?Chapter Nine
The first thing Remo Williams noticed when he woke up was the smell.
"Cheez, Chiun," he said thickly. "Whatever crap you're cooking is burning."
The room was silent. Remo sat up in bed, and the stiffness of his limbs and the slight peeling of the burned portions of his body both told him he had been asleep not for a few hours, but for at least a full day. Then he realized the awful smell was coming from his own body.
Remo wiped a film of some greasy substance off one leg. It looked like yellowed library paste but smelled like a cheese dip whose principal ingredients included year-old fishheads, sulphur, and a smell he could not identify, but which he imagined turtle eggs smelled like after being buried for a thousand years.
Most of his body was covered with the gunk. Remo recognized it as one of Chiun's Korean remedies. God alone knew what it was made from, and Remo preferred that He keep the information to Himself. Remo showered and dressed quickly.
It was only after he had dressed that Remo found Chiun's note, which was next to his bed, rolled up and tied with a green ribbon. Remo undid the ribbon and read the scrolclass="underline"
Remo, my son:
First, I forgive you for not telling me about the USO, whose importance to the House of Sinanju you may or may not have realized. Do not concern yourself that your ignorance almost prevented the Master of Sinanju, who has trained you even though you are only a white and often ungrateful, from solving one of the greatest mysteries of Sinanju and thus taking his rightful place in the archives as Chiun, the Great Explainer. I am on my way to remedy your oversight, so do not be concerned about this. In Sinanju, there can be no mistakes, but only detours along the path to a final goal.
By the time you read these words, Remo, my healing balm will have done its work, and I will have taken the first steps toward fulfilling my destiny. This is an important thing, as you must realize by now, and a dangerous thing, which is why I must face this thing alone. For should anything happen to me, you will become the reigning Master, even though you are white and almost cost me this great opportunity. Do not look for me, Remo. My pilgrimage may be a long one, and I will return if it is willed by my ancestors that I return. And on that day I will explain to you what you, in your ignorance, did not realize, but for which I have, in my magnanimity, forgiven you.