She released a gleeful squeal of delight. It was the network van. Sky recognized the network fisheye symbol.
"Hop in," said Don Cooder, rolling back the side sliding door.
He took the container. Sky climbed in. And the van roared off.
"We did it! We did it!" she said excitedly. "This is so far out its absolutely the most."
"This is just the groovy beginning," said Don Cooder proudly. He preened himself in a mirror in preparation for doing a quick two-shot on the successful liberation of unsecured nuclear material.
The comb got stuck in his oversprayed hair. It refused to budge. He pulled harder. He grunted like a woman in labor.
"Oh, my God," Sky cried in horror. "Won't it come loose?"
"Not to worry," Cooder said manfully. "Occupational hazard. I know exactly what to do."
And using a pair of wire cutters, he snipped the comb to pieces, leaving only a small square section of caught teeth.
"Are you going to just leave it there?" Sky asked as Cooder patted down the affected area.
"It's in the back of the head," Cooder explained. "No one ever sees the back of an anchor's head. I'll have it professionally removed later. The network has special technicians on staff for just this kind of thing."
He lifted the microphone as the video cameraman maneuvered around to shoot Cooder over Sky's shoulder.
"Ready?" he asked.
Sky Bluel swallowed. She thought she was ready, ready for anything. But this was getting truly weird. She hated weird. Weird wasn't where it was at.
Chapter 14
The flight from San Francisco to the California resort town of Palm Springs was relatively short. Barely an hour. But to Remo Williams it was as interminable as a death.
First, it was the silence. Technically, they were not on the job, so Chiun felt it acceptable to lapse into one of his moody silences again, and nothing Remo said could bring him out of it.
The cabin temperature seemed chillier than normal to Remo, who had changed into a fresh T-shirt en route to the airport.
"Does this have anything to do with the Mongols?" Remo ventured. "I did kinda show you up during our little treasure hunt in China."
Chiun looked out upon the night lights passing below with opaque regard.
"I'll take that as a no," Remo said. "Whatever I did, I must have done it after that."
Chiun twitched slightly.
Remo made a mental note that he was getting warmer.
"I know I was on my best behavior at the village," he added, "so that can't be it."
The twitch came again, more pronounced.
Hot, Remo thought. I'm definitely hot.
His mind went back to the weeks they had spent in the village of Sinanju. On the whole it had been a much less tumultuous stay than any in the past. They had arrived with hundreds of Mongols bearing the treasure of Genghis Khan. This was divided between the House of Sinanju and the Golden Horde with great ceremony. Remo thought to himself that Chiun had clipped the Mongols out of the best artifacts, but had said nothing. Treasure didn't excite him. The treasure trove had been borne away at the end of the first week. Half the Mongols had stayed to continue the celebration. Most were too drunk from quaffing fermented goat's milk and wine to ride anyway. Day by day they had drifted away until only a core group had remained. Chiun had not begun ignoring him until after they finally departed, Remo recalled.
But he could remember nothing he had said or done since that time that might have offended the Master of Sinanju. Then he recalled Chiun's remark made back in Rye that it was something he had not done. Remo frowned. What had he not done? The infinite possibilities staggered him.
Remo decided to take another tack.
"Tell me a story, Little Father."
"I am not speaking with you presently," Chiun said coldly.
"I'm not looking for conversation," Remo said with forced good nature. "I meant a legend. You know, a good old-fashioned Sinanju legend, like you used to tell me in the old days. You've been telling me fewer and fewer legends these days."
"Legends are for the educable," Chiun snapped.
"Aw, come on. Just one. A short one. Maybe something that covers the mission."
"I do not know of any such legend. In the history of Sinanju we have never dealt with neutral booms or mud people or bathers in urine."
"Please?" Remo said. "I hate to admit this, but I kinda miss those old legends of yours."
Chiun's set features softened like wax hovering at its melting point.
"You might find the lesson of Master Vimu particularly instructive," he allowed in a quieter tone.
"So, tell it," Remo prompted.
"Look it up," Chiun said, compressing his mouth in a manner that suggested aeons of silence to come.
Remo folded his arms. He hit the seat-recline button and settled back. "Count on it," he growled.
The moment they were on the ground, Chiun began speaking again.
"It is almost eleven o'clock," he said.
"Yeah, it's late. I hope we can get a rental this late."
"I mean it is nearly time for the eleven-o'clock news."
Remo snapped his fingers. "Your press conference!" he said suddenly. "Too bad, Little Father. Out here they don't have eleven-o'clock news. The late news comes on at ten."
"You mean I have wasted my breath on those lunatic press persons for nothing!" he fumed.
"Join the legion of past victims," Remo said, entering the airport lounge.
An airline representative told him that the only rental agent was a convenient quarter-mile down the road.
"Convenience," Remo told her glumly, "means in the airport. Not near it."
"I just work for the airline," she told him.
They took a cab to the rental agency. Remo paid off the cab and pushed into the counter area, almost tripping over the body.
The body lay in the middle of the floor. Remo knelt beside the man, quickly ascertaining that he had died of multiple spike wounds. He knew it was a spike because one stuck up from his head like a rusty pumpkin stem.
"Either Palm Springs has a serious vampire problem or Dirt First has been here," Remo told the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun stared at the body with flinty eyes. "Why has this man been crucified, Remo?"
"Who knows?" Remo said, looking around the empty office. "Maybe in the dark they mistook him for a sequoia."
"This is clear proof of their perfidy."
"They'll pay for it," Remo promised, lifting a key off the counter rack. The round metal tag matched the license plate of a white sedan they commandeered from the parking lot.
Remo sent it out into the desert, his face angry.
"Master Vimu, huh?" Remo said as they rode under a California desert moon. "Care to hum a few bars just to get me started?"
"You could not carry the tune," Chiun told him, falling silent once more.
Connors Swindell loved toys. Big ones. At the height of his career in development, he got to play with real wrecking balls, bulldozers, and concrete-eating pneumatic nibblers.
The last toy he was going to relinquish, he vowed to himself, was his personal helicopter.
Once he had had a small fleet of them stationed at strategic nerve centers, the better to visit the many construction sites he had had, in his glory days, sprinkled all over the country.
Now Swindell was down to one active site, a handful of overpriced condos, and one helicopter. And he would be damned if he would lose this handy little eggbeater to his creditors.
It was a scarlet-and-cream Sikorsky, and it ferried him from his private Palm Springs roof pad into the desert.
"We ought to be coming up on it any minute now," the pilot was saying.
"About damn time," Swindell told him.
"She may need an overhaul," the pilot added.
"What makes you say that?"
"The balance is off. She's flying a little rotorheavy."
"Seems all right to me. A nice smooth little ride, as always."