"YOU THERE!"
The sharp words sliced into Lester Craig's marrow. He pretended he didn't hear the voice. Averting his eyes, he continued walking briskly alongside the massive building that was Soundstage 1.
"Hold!" the singsong voice commanded. Lester wouldn't have listened under ordinary circumstances. Never would have listened under these particular conditions. But at the moment, the fury in that voice was more frightening to him than the jury-rigged truck bomb he was fleeing.
Lester stopped dead. William Scott Cain stumbled into him.
"What do we do?" William demanded.
"Remember the extra who tried to run from him yesterday?" Lester said from the corner of his mouth. "Traction for six months, minimum." Flies in amber, the two men remained stock-still as the Master of Sinanju bounded up behind them. "Are you two layabouts not employed as overcasts on my magnificent film?" the tiny Asian demanded as he slipped in before Lester and William. Narrowed eyes squeezed glaring fury.
They knew better than to lie. The two men nodded dumbly.
The Master of Sinanju's tongue made an angry clicking sound, "That man's laziness is a disease," he hissed to himself.
"Actually-" Lester ventured.
The word was barely out before long-nailed hands appeared from the voluminous sleeves of Chiun's kimono.
"Silence!" he commanded. Angry swats peppered the faces and heads of both extras. "Return to work immediately or you will never breathe in this town again."
They didn't need to be told a second time. Turning from the furious, slapping dervish, the two men ran off in the direction of the dummy New York exterior. In spite of the knowledge that, in less than two hours, a massive, earthshaking explosion would reduce the entire set and the studio on which it sat to smoking black rubble.
Chapter 12
The charter jet skimmed over the border between Oregon and California with steady, confident speed. In the cabin, Remo watched the skimpy white film of clouds dissipate beneath the sleek, gently shuddering wings. Glinting sunlight illuminated tense lines on his hard face.
Quintly Tortilli had gone to the cockpit while they were still over Washington. To Remo's relief, he didn't return for a large chunk of the flight. Only when they were flying over California's Salmon Mountains did the young director wander back down the aisle.
Tortilli plopped into the seat next to Remo. "I'm back," he announced.
Remo continued to stare out at the wing.
"I'm thinking of doing a disaster movie on a plane," the director said enthusiastically.
"It's been done," Remo grunted.
"Not with curse words," Tortilli replied happily. "I plan on using a lot of them. Every other word will be an F word." He held up his hands defensively. "I apologize in advance. I know you don't like that kind of language."
"What?" Remo frowned, finally turning from the wing.
"You don't like swear words." Tortilli nodded. "You made that clear when you were strangling me. But when I use swear words in my movies, it's like poetry. All the critics say so."
Remo couldn't even remember what he had said to the director at their first meeting. He decided he didn't really care. He turned back to the window.
The ensuing moment of silence between them was filled by the constant hum of the engines. Soft murmurs of conversation rose from around the cabin. Somewhere close behind, a flight attendant banged items on a serving cart.
"Anyway," Tortilli continued after a short time, "the airplane movie is just one idea I'm working on. Do you realize I've got seventeen sequels in production for my werewolf movie From Noon till Night?"
"I'm sure whoever invented Roman numerals is committing suicide right now," Remo muttered.
Tortilli didn't hear him. "Course the first five sequels tanked, but we're bound to hit with one of them," he mused. "Say, do you remember that invasion trouble in Hollywood last year? All those tanks and troops from that Arab country? I forget the name."
In spite of himself, Remo found that he was being drawn in. It was probably good to get his mind off Chiun.
"Ebla," he supplied. "Yeah, I remember."
Tortilli grinned. "That's it. Well, something you might not have heard about was the bombs. There's a rumor that the terrorists wired all of Hollywood to explode. Boom! Everything gone, just like that." He snapped his fingers.
"No kidding," said Remo Williams, the man who had stopped those self-same bombs from going off.
"Oh, sure. It was kept quiet afterward. I think the government was embarrassed about letting all those tanks and troops and explosives into the country. They gave them all a pass because they thought it was part of a movie."
Remo was rapidly losing interest. "Is this like one of your movies, or do you have a point?" he asked.
Tortilli nodded conspiratorially. "The first movie of the summer season is a make-or-break actioner from Taurus based on those events. Die Down IV. Don't or Die."
Remo's face clouded. "They turned all that into a movie?" he said, appalled.
"It's a fictionalized account," Tortilli replied. "A lone cop is dropped into the middle of the occupation and has to fight his way out. It's gonna be a blockbuster. Opens two weeks before Memorial Day."
"Did it ever occur to whoever's responsible that it's in incredibly bad taste to capitalize on an invasion of America?" Remo asked.
Tortilli frowned at the unfamiliar term. "Bad what?"
Remo shook his head. "Does Hollywood at least get blown up?" he asked hopefully.
"Among other things." Tortilli nodded.
Remo crossed his arms. "Good," he murmured. "The point is, in the movie, the terrorists smuggle the explosives onto the studio lots. Ring any bells?"
Remo frowned. He'd been so concerned with the Master of Sinanju that he hadn't thought about how all this might relate to his current assignment. Worse, it took Quintly Tortilli to explain it to him.
"They're copying the movie," Remo said dully. "I guess Cabbagehead wasn't mainstream enough. They've branched out from indies to the summer blockbusters."
Remo considered the implications of what Tortilli was saying. Summer movies were notoriously big on mindless destruction. If the same people responsible for duplicating the plot points from the small Seattle film company had moved on to big-budget Hollywood films, the real-world terror could have just shifted from the equivalent of a firecracker to a nuclear bomb. Literally.
Beside Remo, Quintly Tortilli seemed unfazed by his own deadly deduction.
"Die Down IV. Now, that's got some action that'll knock your socks off," the director confided. "The cop is the same one from the first three movies. He has to run through Hollywood, as well as other parts of the country, fighting terrorists and defusing bombs. It's wall-to-wall action."
"Can't you people make a single summer movie without blowing something up?" Remo asked, annoyed.
Tortilli shook his head. "You need explosions," he argued. "Each big action sequence adds at least ten million to the domestic gross. And they eat the stuff up overseas. My theory is, the more bombs you have going off in a movie, the less dialogue. If no one's talking, foreigners can forget they're watching Americans."
Again, Tortilli was making sense. It was unnerving.
"Die Down IV is so loaded with explosives Lance Wallace-he's the star-barely has to open his mouth," Quintly said, pitching his voice low. "Which is a good thing if you've ever seen him act. But don't tell him I said that. I directed him in Penny Dreadful. The guy's a loose cannon. If he heard what I really thought of him, he'd probably shoot me, then claim he thought I was one of the IRA terrorists."
"What IRA terrorists?" Remo asked.
"They're the villains in Die Down."