Выбрать главу

They plunged into the spring corn, which was low but thick.

It proved to be a bad idea, because the field was where Dirt First!! had found shelter.

"Not you again!" Remo barked, holding his nose.

"We were here first, man." It was the group's leader, Remo saw with distaste. With his tattered curtain of hair hanging open, he looked like a sheepdog that had survived a head-on collision with a Mack truck.

"You've just been evicted," Remo snapped.

"No fair. Look what they did to that house. You see what we're talking about? The pig ecoriders don't know how to coexist with the environment."

Remo looked back at the house. It was now fully engulfed in flames. It seemed to be melting as much as it was burning.

"This DS-2 stuff is so toxic they have to store it in concrete bunkers," the Dirt First!! protester was saying. "Can you dig it, man? The stuff they use to clean nerve gas off their tanks is as hazardous as the gas itself. Un-fucking real."

"I hate to say it," Remo admitted, "but you have a point."

"Right on. I got a membership blank somewheres on me. Interested?"

"You also reek," Remo added. "Now, vamoose."

"Yes," Chiun put in sternly, "do what my son says, malodorous ones. Papoose."

The Dirt Firster put his hands on his hips. "Make me," he said defiantly.

Remo stepped away to give the Master of Sinanju room to work. Chiun regarded the Dirt First!! spokesman with steely eyes. One long-nailed hand drifted up to the man's tangled locks.

Chiun described a short sideways motion, and something plopped to the ground at the Dirt Firster's grimy feet.

He looked down. And saw three years of hirsute growth piled on his dirty boots like a stepped-on tarantula.

"My hair!" he howled in anguish.

"Your life next," Chiun warned.

"I'm gone."

Complaining bitterly, Dirt First made a disorderly retreat through the spring corn. The corn rows turned black as ruffle-feathered crows in their wake.

"Amazing," Chiun muttered, watching them go. "No matter how much dirt rubs off them, they remain as sooty as chimney sweeps."

"There's nothing amazing about dirt," Remo scoffed, looking around. The media had gotten as close to the conflagration as possible and were filming madly. The Army and the National Guard were huddled behind the Army trucks. They were joined by Sky Bluel and a few unidentified people, including, Remo noticed, assorted lawyers and the flashy condo salesman-or whatever he was.

"Did you ever see such a mess, Little Father?" Remo asked.

"No. And why do you not do something about it?"

Remo grunted derisively. "Like what? Step up to the flames and blow them out like Clark Kent?"

"The fire will spread to other houses and soon the entire town will be destroyed," Chiun warned.

"Will anybody care? Let's face it, the townspeople are all dead."

"That man cares," said Chiun, drawing Remo's attention away from the disintegrating house with one long-nailed finger.

It was the supposed condo salesman. He was practically having a fit, and taking out his frustration on Captain Holden.

Remo tuned out the surrounding noise and focused on what the man was shouting.

"That's a ninety-thousand-dollar starter home going up in flames, you moron!" he was screaming. "Why don't you do something before that charming split-level ranch house next to it turns to ash?"

"Sounds like a realtor to me," Remo said.

"He is false, not real," Chiun sniffed.

"Forget it," Captain Holden shot back. "That's a chemical fire. Nothing we can do about it. It's gotta burn itself out."

"Hear that?" Remo told Chiun. "Nothing can be done."

"There is always something," Chiun said, hiking his kimono skirts up. "And we will discover it together. Come."

Reluctantly Remo followed the Master of Sinanju. He stalked close to the fire, skirting the media, which were slowly being pushed back by the heat and dense acrid smoke. Remo wondered what they were going to do with all that footage. They already had enough for a four-hour documentary, and most news reports lasted less than ninety seconds, at least half of which was closeups of the reporters.

"We can't put that out," Remo said.

"There is always a way." Chiun's voice was firm.

"We'd need Red Adair for this one," Remo said flatly, "and I don't have his number."

Chiun turned. "I am unfamiliar with this Adair the Red."

"He's the guy who snuffs out those big oil-well fires with high explosives," Remo explained. He instantly regretted his words.

"Then we will use explosives," Chiun announced triumphantly.

"Now, where are we gonna get . . . ?" Remo's voice trailed off. "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking."

"I do not know what you think I am thinking, Remo, but I am looking in the same direction as you are."

His eyes on the dismantled neutron bomb and its extracted plastique charges, Remo sighed in helpless resignation. "Okay, might as well give it a shot."

They retreated to the pickup truck, picked up two plastique cones by the handles, and started back for the burning house.

Sky Bluel caught sight of this and came running after them, shouting, "What are you doing? Where are you going with my neutron bomb?"

At the sound of the words "neutron bomb," media heads turned as if all on a single pivot. Their eyes grew wide in their smoke-stained faces.

"I'm going to put it to good use," Remo growled. "Now, get back."

"Do you know how powerful those are?" Sky screeched.

"Are they powerful enough to blow that house apart?" Remo asked coolly.

"Definitely," Sky told him.

"Then that's what we're going to do. Now, get back."

Sky, her voice beseeching, turned to the media. "Help me, all of you! They're going to nuke that house!"

That was enough for the media, who had been so petrified by Sky's last statement that they forgot to turn their cameras in the same direction as their frightened eyes.

They broke for the shelter of the Army trucks. Sky, caught between her indignation and her fear of what the plastique charges could do, followed.

"You'll be sorry!" she called.

"We're already sorry," Remo informed her. Remo and Chiun came to within fifty yards of the burning house. The wind had fortunately changed direction by this time. The worst of the chemical-laden smoke was going west, away from them.

"Okay," Remo said, "I'll throw the first charge. And if we need more bang, you go next."

Chiun frowned. "No. I must have the honor of throwing the first boom. I will not be cheated of this."

"Look, it's probably going to need two hits anyway. How about I go first, we'll see what it does, and you can have the honor of throwing the one that actually suppresses the last of the fire? Sound fair?"

Chiun's hazel eyes squeezed into sly slits.

"That is satisfactory," he said solemnly. "Proceed."

Holding the plastique cone by its convenient handle, Remo hauled back and let fly. He seemed to exert no more force than a man throwing a horseshoe, but the heavy charge lifted, arced, and dropped straight down on the house. It punched a neat hole in the shingled roof.

Nothing happened for a moment.

"Maybe we will need your charge after all," Remo started to say. He looked to Chiun's hands. They were empty. And the Master of Sinanju wore a Cheshire grin that was not mirrored in his pupil's openmouthed face.

"You didn't . . ." Remo started to say.

Then the entire sky turned blinding white, and the world around them shook apart.

Chapter 6

The house simply ceased to exist.

One moment it was generating more smoke than a coal-burning factory; the next, the sky was raining chimney bricks and flaming shards and the air was full of concussive force.

Remo was blown backward in spite of himself.