"You gotta point there. Okay, keep working."
The cans came back from the truck, and just as quickly, they returned to it. Fabrique, grinning wolfishly and exposing green-stained teeth, chortled with pleasure. He hadn't had this much fun since they burned down the sawmill in Oregon, throwing over two thousand lumberjacks out of work but saving the last habitat of the freckled mudwhacking goldfish, the only pond creature known to masturbate while free-swimming, and therefore of inestimable value to an ecosystem increasingly threatened by undeserving humankind.
"I think this is the last one," whispered the man ahead of him in line after he passed along a can that Fabrique could barely heft because his arms had grown unbelievably tired.
"I think this is the last one," he told the man in charge of replacing the DS-2 with pond water.
"Good," he said. "Give me a second while I dump it out."
"Hey, I just had a thought."
"Treat it kindly, it's in a strange place," the voice offered.
"What's that, man?"
"Here's the can back," the voice said, suddenly chipper.
Groaning, Fabrique Foirade took the can and passed it back.
"Okay, done," he said, panting. "What are you putting the bad stuff in?"
"Back in the truck, where it belongs, of course," the voice said reasonably.
This time the voice struck Fabrique as very strange. For one thing, he hardly coughed at all. No one who belonged to Dirt First!! did not cough. It was impossible. Like being clean.
Fabrique reached up to his curtained-off face and pulled the fall of tangled hair apart. It sounded like cheesecloth ripping. Finally, he uncovered his eyes.
The man standing behind him definitely did not belong to Dirt First!! he saw. For one thing, you could see the natural color of his skin. His face was well-scrubbed. His bare arms were lean, but muscular. His eyes, however, looked weird. Amused, they had a kind of deathly look in them. Like a grinning skull. The guy was sure grinning. He looked like he brushed his teeth at least once a week. Maybe more.
"You, you're the reactionary who-"
The grin squeezed down to a mean, menacing grimace.
"The only reason I don't break every bone in your body," the grinning reactionary warned, "is that to do so I'd have to touch you."
"You afraid of a little honest dirt?" Fabrique sneered.
"No, I'm afraid my hands would stick to your skin forever. It's a terrifying thought."
"Look, man. We're doing the world a favor here."
"You wanna do the world a real favor? Take a bath."
"You don't understand."
"And I don't want to. Pull your troglodytes out of here. How'd you sneak back, anyway?"
"There's more than one road into La Plomo, dude."
"Then you have your choice of exits. Scram."
"You'll be sorry."
"Maybe. But I'll be clean and sorry."
The clean dude stood back, folding his arms. Fabrique Foirade huddled with his followers. After the last of them had received the bad news with a sulky "Bummer!" he led them away from the cluster of Army trucks.
"We should've spiked him, man," a voice complained.
Remo Williams watched them go. He licked his index finger and lifted it into the wind. When the dry side gave him an accurate downwind fix, Remo hurried upwind.
His course took him beyond the Army trucks and into the area where microwave TV vans and press cars were parked haphazardly. Remo stopped, noticed no sign of the media anywhere, and drifted around to the opposite side of the cars.
There the media were hunkered down, trembling and wide-eyed.
"You can come out now," Remo sang.
"What's happening?" someone asked. It was the CNN newswoman. Remo detected a strong smell of urine coming from her general vicinity.
"Nothing," he told her nonchalantly. "The bomb was a dud."
Evidently this possibility had not occurred to any of them, because they took turns saying, "Oh!" in surprised voices.
The press got themselves together. Combs came out. Lipstick and mascara were freshened. The air became sweetly sick with the scent of dozens of brands of ozone-depleting hair sprays. The CNN newswoman disappeared into a microwave van to change underwear.
One network anchor-famous for doing stand-up reports on the war in Afghanistan from the safety of the Pakistani side of the border-was heard to complain that he shouldn't have to spray his own hair.
"How can I be expected to watchdog the environment if I have to fix my hair every five minutes?" he complained bitterly.
The percussive machine-gun sound of the compressors firing up made the air around them shake. The anchor dropped to his stomach, crying, "Incoming!" The others scrambled to follow suit.
"What was that? What was that?" they cried, wild-eyed.
"You're reporters," Remo said, heading back to the Army trucks. "You figure it out."
Under the direction of Captain Holden, the Army was hooking up spray devices to the compressors. Wearing mouth filters, Army privates poured DS-2 into glass-bottle reservoirs. Then, dragging them through an opening they had clipped in the barbed wire over the high-pitched objections of the National Guard commander, they began the decontamination procedure.
With the compressors stuttering like jackhammers, they surrounded the house, a neat white clapboard dwelling with an attached garage.
Captain Holden lifted his hands. "Ready," he shouted.
The spray guns snapped up on six khaki shoulders.
"Aim!"
The spray guns' nozzles dropped into line.
"Fire!"
"Why do they say 'Fire' when they are cleaning that house?" Chiun wanted to know. Remo hadn't heard the Master of Sinanju steal up behind him. Chiun was the only human being on earth stealthy enough to accomplish that feat.
"Search me," Remo muttered. "Where's Moonbeam, the Mad Bomber?"
"I do not understand why you call her that."
"And I don't understand why you think she's so wonderful," Remo snapped back.
"She cares about the children. No doubt she is kind to her parents as well," Chiun added darkly. "Unlike some."
"Are you saying I-"
Their incipient argument was lost in the gush of DS-2 as it hissed and splashed against the side of the house. The solution was dark blue, not much different from liquid household detergent. In fact, after splashing off the house, it left a sudsy residue on the ground.
The house quickly turned light blue. Then dark blue. Then, it seemed to Remo, it began to brown.
"Must be powerful stuff," Remo muttered.
The smell forced them back, so they were never quite sure what happened after that.
Someone yelled, "Fire!" It sounded like Captain Holden's voice. And it was agitated.
"We are firing, Captain," a soldier protested.
Remo blinked. The white house-it was now as brown as German chocolate cake-was actually smoldering. It took a second for Remo's eyes to discern that. The hissing foam splashed everywhere, making it hard to see the wisps of smoke. Then he noticed that the once-white paint was bubbling and darkening like burning milk.
The air soon filled with acrid fumes.
"Retreat! Retreat! We used too much!" Captain Holden screamed.
Abandoning their sprayers, the Army unit surged back from the now-burning house, holding their air filters to their mouths.
"We'd better get back too, Little Father," Remo warned.
The Master of Sinanju faded back from the stinging cloud. A swelling yellowish genie, it billowed madly in all directions.
They passed the press on their way to safety. The press was charging the smoldering ruins, their eyes shiny like drug addicts'.
"A story! This is great! This is wonderful!" they cried.
"This is madness," Chiun said acidly.
"If they want a ringside seat, let them have it," Remo growled. He pointed to the sheltering cornfield, adding, "Let's try there."