Time slipped by slowly in the dark basement. It had been almost three hours, and Remo realized why: the two arsonists would wait for the theaters down the block to close before they struck. It was just too dangerous to try working in a crowd. He decided to nap, but he had slept only another hour when he heard footsteps overhead. They were soft, almost brushing sounds, but unmistakably footprints.
Only one set. Remo waited and listened, but there was only one person inside the store. The other must be the lookout.
It would make more sense for him to go upstairs. That-way, he could get the one in the store, and still have a chance to get outside and get the lookout before he escaped.
He moved silently through the darkness toward the steps leading upstairs.
The boy was laughably small. Remo watched as the youth pulled boxes off shelves and overturned display cases of baseball bats and sports equipment.
"Sloppy," Remo said.
Sparky spun around. He saw Remo in the dim light filtering into the store from outside. Across
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the street, Remo saw a car parked, with a man inside. That must be Solly. It matched his photo. This was Sparky.
"What do you want?" Sparky said.
"Don't you know yet that the fire should be in the basement to cover the stolen merchandise?" Remo said.
"Don't worry," the boy said. The fright was gone from his voice now. "My fire will get downstairs."
"Not tonight, kid. I'm putting the damper on you," Remo said.
He took a step forward, but then stopped. The boy had raised his arms out to his sides, as if he were doing a Dracula impersonation at a backyard carnival.
Then, before Remo's eyes, the boy began to glow. A blue aura surrounded his frail body. As Remo watched, the colors began to change ... to purple, to red, to orange, to a brilliant sunny, fiery yellow, and then as Remo moved across the floor toward him, Sparky pointed his hands at Remo, and splashes of flame flew across the room. Remo slid sideways, but he felt the flame brush his clothing. It was burning. He was burning. He dropped to the floor and rolled, trying to put out the fire. He stopped rolling just short of another dart of fire aimed at him by the boy. The clothing fire was out. Remo moved to his feet. But again, there was fire flashing at him. It hit the wooden floor before his feet, and suddenly the floor was ablaze. Flames spat upwards at Remo. He could feel his trousers begin to ignite. The heat seared his face. And there were more fires—he was surrounded by the darts of flame from the boy. He heard Sparky laugh. Remo was surrounded by a circular wall of flame, and it
if
was burning in toward him. He dove though the wall of fire, hit the floor on a roll, and moved behind a counter, where he beat out the flames on his clothing.
He heard the soft thudding around him as flames shot out by the boy hit the walls and the display cases. Everywhere fires flared. Above his head, boxes began to flame, then fell off the shelves onto Remo. His hair was singed. His shirt again caught
fire.
He rolled along the floor to put the fire out Images flashed into his mind. The boy glowing, shooting out flames. How was he doing it? What kind of power was that?
He stood up behind the counter. Sparky was already at the door. Remo saw that he had paled in color from a fiery white-yellow back to a red. Did it mean that he had no more power to throw flame? Before he could move from the counter, Sparky wheeled toward him. He aimed his arms at the ceiling above Remo's head, and then two twin splashes of fire lined their way through the air to the ceiling. As Remo watched, the boy's flame color vanished. Then Remo looked up, just as large chunks of burning ceiling fell toward him. He rolled away. Chunks of burning wood spattered around him. The store sizzled now with the crackle
of fire.
There was a smell, too. A bittersweet smell of roast pork, and then Remo realized it was the smell of his flesh where he had been burned.
Had it been this way for Ruby Gonzalez? He heard Sparky laughing as he ran out into the street. Had the last thing she heard been the laughter of that insidious little bastard? Remo, with a growl,
jumped over the counter and ran to the open door. Sparky was getting into the car across the street. The man behind the wheel saw Remo coming and quickly threw the car in gear. He drove off down the block. Remo changed his running angle. He knew he could reach the car before it got away.
And then behind him, he heard it.
A scream.
He groaned, stopped, and turned. The flames were pouring through the windows of the Barlin Sports Emporium, licking their way upstairs into the apartments. He knew now what he had been unable to remember in the cellar—something he knew was important. Before Sparky and Solly arrived, he should have cleared the bunding so no one would be injured in the fire.
He ran back toward the building. The entrance-way to the apartments was alongside the store. As he ran up the inside stairs, he could feel his breath coming heavier. He knew that the fire had done damage to his body, but his adrenalin was pumping so hard, he had no chance to find out where. As he ran along the hallways, he kicked open door after door, and shouted "Fire" inside. By the time he reached the top floor, the families were all up. One by one, he made sure that each of them was headed toward the stairway. He checked all the apartments to be sure they had been emptied. Downstairs he heard the klaxon whooping of fire engines. Flames surrounded the building now, burning through the floor from the sporting goods store below.
Remo wanted to answer no questions. He got back down to the second floor, just as firemen were coming in the entranceway. Remo saw them,
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turned, and ran back down the hall to a rear hallway window. With his fading energy, he kicked out the window and then dove through it, out into the yard two floors below.
He bit the soft grass, rolled over, and then lay still. He was not just angry anymore. He was frightened also.
Up above his head, he heard voices. "Hey! There's somebody in the yard."
"Check it out."
Remo got slowly to bis feet and limped off into the darkness.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
Remo stopped outside the door of his room. For a fleeting instant, he had felt that there was someone inside, but now as he listened, there was no sound. He heard no breathing, nor the rustle of garments as someone's chest rose and fell from breathing. He put his hands gently on the door, touching the wood with his fingertips, trying to pick up vibrations from inside. There were none.
Reassured, he opened the door and stepped inside the room. He was a wreck and he knew it. The cab driver had not wanted to pick him up. Usually, Remo could convince cab drivers by breaking their door locks and twisting their ears. He was too weak for that tonight. He had paid two hundred dollars cash for the cabbie to bring him to his hotel.
Instinctively, he knew that he must shower and then stop to think this out. He had seen something tonight that he had not known existed, and if he was going to survive it, he had to understand it.
He pushed the door shut behind him and walked across the soft carpet toward the bathroom. He stopped as he heard a voice behind him.
"A disgrace."
Remo wheeled. Chiun sat in the center of the
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floor, atop a couch cushion, looking at Remo, shaking his head and clucking.
"Look at you," Chiun said. "Looking like dog doo-doo, acting like a rabbit. Is this what all my training has come to?"
Remo hesitated. Had Chiun been sent by Smith? Was this to be the end of poor Remo? He stayed in position, watching, and then he saw that there was in Chiun none of the intensity Remo had so often seen when Chiun was involved in a mission. The old Oriental sat, fingertips touching across his lap, shaking his head in dismay at Remo's appearance.
"I had some trouble tonight," Remo said.