Curling three fingers and a thumb back, he laid the longest of the nails against the topmost iron strap and began to file away the bolt heads. It could be done more quickly than this, but not without making warning sounds.
Slowness ensured silence. The bolt heads began dropping off, revealing smooth, shiny spots against the black iron.
He caught each one in his free hand and tossed it back into the sleeping sandpile, where they landed with tiny mushy sounds.
When the last bolts had been sheared, the Master of Sinanju peeled the iron strap from the wood with his fingers. The metal groaned in slow surrender.
After that it was a simple task to insert a fingernail against each shiny exposed bolt and push it outward. The falling bolts squeaked, then made rude clickings on the stone floor. In short order the door was no longer secured on its hinges. The Master of Sinanju simply pushed it outward, the lock tongue coming out of its socket like an old tooth.
Out in the dark corridor, illuminated only by an unshaded twenty-five-watt light bulb, the Master of Sinanju spoke up. "Who here yearns for freedom?"
"I do," a man hissed.
"And I!" said a second.
"We all yearn for freedom," insisted a third.
"Who will fight for his freedom if released?" Chiun demanded.
Silence.
"Fighting is not our way," the second man said dully.
The Master of Sinanju shook his blackened head. "Buddhists," he said under his breath, and padded for the corridor. He would have to find another way.
Chapter 27
There were exactly thirteen PLA cadres, and two of them died with Remo's hard index fingers plunging in and out of the backs of their skulls before any of the other eleven became aware of the white-and-black blur suddenly in their midst.
The sound of faces falling into the dirt went unheard over the screaming of Tibetans who feared Chinese bullets. Remo planned it that way. The more cadres he took out before they knew he was there, the quicker he could get this over with. And the more lives he could save.
But one of the dead soldiers had his finger tight on his rifle trigger. Going down, a reflex caused it to tighten.
The AK-47 burped bullets and percussive sound. Dust and earth kicked up in nervous gouts.
That was enough to bring every head turning in Remo's direction, including that of the PLA commander with the knifeslit eyes.
Ignoring the swinging muzzles, Remo moved in on him. It was sloppy tactics, but he had succumbed to anger. Twenty years of training, and he was being driven by fury like some rank amateur.
The commander snapped up his Tokarev. Remo weaved past his first wild shot. Remo let him have that shot. It wasn't worth dodging, but his body, reacting automatically to the concussive shock of the bullet coming out of the barrel as it rode a wave of exploding gunpowder, swerved wide of its own accord. Even anger couldn't suppress that aspect of his training.
Toes digging in with every step, Remo swept back in line. One fist came up. He popped his first two fingers.
They entered the commander's skull via his wide-with-shock eyeballs, and when Remo snapped his hand back, there were two black grottos under the dead man's suborbital ridge that issued thick black cranial blood.
Rounds began snapping about Remo. Twisting, he started to dance. It looked like a dance-a wild jerky dance the human body makes when hammered by bullets from all directions.
The Tibetan girl cried out in anguish. She thought the bullets were knocking Remo, not dead but mortally wounded, around in a mad circle.
The Chinese thought so, too. They were shooting directly at Remo as he flung his arms and legs about with wild abandon, certain their bullets were breaking off chips of human bone from his unprotected limbs.
Their eyes didn't see that the bullets were passing harmlessly through the web Remo was creating with his blurry limbs. They couldn't read bullets in flight. And not having eyes trained to track a bullet the way Remo's eyes could, they didn't see Remo's fingers and toes as they lashed back.
Stuttering rifles cartwheeled out of clutching hands. Kneecaps exploded under the impact of hard toes that were capable of denting steel I-beams. The flat of a white hand swept toward two soldiers who stood shoulder to shoulder, concentrating their fire, and when it passed through their necks, the soldiers simply stopped firing.
They stood rigid for a moment. Then their arms dropped. Their rifles fell from nerveless fingers, and their knees buckled.
Only as they began tipping over did their perfectly severed heads tumble off the spurting stumps of their necks.
It happened in less than the span of a minute. In that time the frightened Tibetan nomads who had turned their faces from the slaughter of the white man they knew as Gonpo Jigme were drinking in the stupefying spectacle of Gonpo Jigme destroying a dozen of Beijing's most ruthless soldiers.
"The god rides him!" the Tibetan girl shouted in English. "Lha gyalo!" she added in Tibetan.
Remo allowed three PLA soldiers to track him with their rifles, absolutely without fear for himself. He knew that a rifle was only a longer, slightly more modern version of the medieval contraption called a pistol. Rifles held no terrors for him.
The minute the tracking muzzles followed Remo to a place where no one else stood exposed to the line of fire, Remo stopped, reversed and pivoted on one foot.
His other foot, lifting high, relieved the pair of their weapons with such sudden irresistible force that their arms came out of their sockets with meaty sucking sounds mixed with the snapping of tendons.
Remo crushed their skulls the instant they were down on the ground, howling in their pain and confusion.
That left three. They had exhausted their ammo clips and were yanking the empties out.
It was too easy to take them out then. But Remo did it anyway. He stepped up and said, "Let me show you how to play pong. "
Remo's hands were suddenly up and on either side of one soldier's head. They came together as if he were clapping once sharply.
Pong!
The man fell with his head suddenly more vertical than horizontal.
Remo caught a second man the same way.
Pong!
That PLA man's head erupted like a volcano when the pressure separated the fused bone plates at the top of his skull and a blood-and-brains gruel squirted skyward.
Remo broke the last man's heart with the heel of his palm. It struck the protecting rib cage, and the splintering ribs compressed the heart muscle until it burst like a red balloon.
When the last of the dead lay in the dirt, boots jittering, throats gurgling and brains dying, Remo surveyed the scene.
No Tibetans had died. It was a bonus. He had figured on some unavoidable friendly casualties. The erupting of the first PLA cadre's assault rifle had worked in his favor, not against it.
Remo knelt before the slumped form of Bumba Fun. He touched the old man's neck, found the carotid artery. It was flat. The man was dead. There was no bringing him back.
Behind him the familiar voice of the Tibetan girl whose name he still didn't know reached Remo's ringing ears.
"You are truly Gonpo Jigme," she breathed.
Remo turned. "He told them he stole the jeep, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Hands flat on her apron, the girl looked puzzled. "It was his job. He is Bumba Fun."
"I needed to talk to him," Remo said angrily.
"You may speak with the Bumba Fun in Lhasa."
"How do I know he'll be the right one?"
"Bumba Fun is Chushi Gangdruk depung. That mean general. All Chushi Gangdruk generals call themselves Bumba Fun to fool stupid Chinese. They capture Chushi Gangdruk depung, and do tortures. And he always tell them his general is called Bumba Fun. Chinese go kill first Bumba Fun they find, think they have killed Chushi Gangdruk leader. This way Bumba Fun never die. Bumba Fun immortal. Chushi Gangdruk fight on."