Except that Remo didn't get it. He ducked under the nibbler a spit second before it should have turned his rib cage to blood pudding. Bricks cracked and flew. One nearly brained Bruno.
Weaving, Remo stayed one step ahead of the deadly blunt fang as Bruno worked the control levers that kept the nibbler angling from side to side like a noisy scorpion.
He could see Remo's face clearly now. It was different. Like the guy had had his face fixed. And he was smiling a cold smile that made Bruno feel a chill settle in his marrow.
The smile said that Remo could dance with the nibbler all day long without fear. Bruno cut the pneumatic power so he could hear himself talk. The jackhammer sound died.
"What do you want from me?" Bruno demanded hotly.
"Your boss."
"He couldn't make it."
"I'll settle for his mailing address."
"I don't squeal for anybody."
"Suit yourself," said Remo, his back to the well-punctured brick wall.
Bruno saw his chance. He sent the nibbler lurching ahead. The blunt point touched the man's shirt front, pinning him to the wall.
Bruno's hand swept for the on switch. It clicked. Bruno grinned with relief. He had him.
And as the electricity flowed to the jackhammer arm, Bruno the Chef felt the nibbler cab vibrate in sympathy. He closed his eyes because he wasn't interested in seeing all the blood and guts that were about to be spattered in all directions.
Because he closed his eyes, he missed the whole thing.
The pneumatic chisel started to hammer. Bruno found himself holding on to the cab for dear life. The nibbler chassis was really vibrating, like it was going to shake itself apart.
Hearing no screams, Bruno opened one eye.
He saw Remo standing there, his arms lifted, his hands actually clamped around the nibbler point, as if trying to ward it off. He looked like he was being shaken apart.
The trouble was, Remo was still grinning that cold confident grin.
Bruno the Chef experienced a moment of unreality. The nibbler began to buck and twist. Suddenly he was pitched out of the cab and onto the concrete.
After he had air in his lungs again, Bruno looked up.
His eyes no longer vibrating, he saw clearly again.
Somehow, impossible as it seemed, Remo was holding the nibbler off the ground by its wildly hammering point. He wasn't fazed by this in the least, Bruno saw. He wasn't even vibrating. It was the nibbler that was shaking like a cocktail shaker. It was shaking because Remo was holding the bit perfectly still in his two seemingly irresistible hands.
"Oh, my God," said Bruno, making the sign of the cross as Remo let the bit go. The nibbler bounced on its four fat tires and continued to chatter and smoke impotently.
Casually Remo sauntered up and dropped to one knee.
"Now, that wasn't nice, Bruno," Remo said. "I thought we were buddies."
"The money was just a story, huh?"
"And you fell for it."
"As I knew he would," added a squeaky voice. The Jap, Bruno saw. He had padded up curiously.
"You two were in it together, huh?" Bruno asked.
"All the time. Now, where can we find Carmine?"
"No offense, but I swore an oath never to rat on my don."
"I understand perfectly," Remo said in a reasonable voice.
"You in the life?"
"You might say that."
"What family you with?"
"The Milli Vanilli Mob. Ever heard of them?"
"Yeah," Bruno said vaguely. "I think so. Somewheres."
"When we talk, people really listen. Now, point us to LCN. "
Bruno the Chef started to protest again, but a long-nailed finger simply reached down and seemed to impale his left earlobe.
The pain was instant, extreme, and unendurable. Bruno's eyeballs exploded like hot flashbulbs. At least, that was how it looked to Bruno's brain. He grabbed up a hunk of concrete and shattered several front teeth while biting hard in a vain attempt to control the excruciating pain.
When the seemingly white-hot fingernail withdrew, Bruno was surprised that his fingers came away from his earlobe entirely free of blood.
"That was just your earlobe," Remo said. "I'll bet you have more sensitive parts."
Tears in his eyes, Bruno the Chef violated omerta, giving up his don, his familiy, and his honor. After he had answered every question put to him, Bruno the Chef looked up sadly.
"I guess you're gonna kill me, huh?"
"That's the biz, sweetheart," said the one called Remo, grabbing him by the hair and literally dragging him in front of the idle nibbler.
Bruno the Chef, feeling no strength in his still-spasming muscles, and no steel in his bones, simply lay there and begged, "Please don't turn that thing on me. Be a pal."
" I can do that," said Remo, reaching up to take the articulated arm. "After all, what are friends for?" He brought the arm down with cold suddenness.
When the blunt nib silently flattened Bruno (The Chef) Boyardi's throat like a garden hose, his arms and legs flew up and crashed down again. Then he lay still.
"Not bad, huh, Little Father?" Remo asked, walking the Master of Sinanju to their car.
"Not good," said Chiun coolly. "Not anything. It was adequate. But you are young and relatively unschooled. You will learn."
"Bruno said Don Carmine's surrounded by motion-sensitive alarms like the one that ambushed me at his old headquarters. This is your chance to show me how it's done."
"No," returned Chiun. "This is my opportunity to show you up. Heh-heh-heh."
Chapter 38
Cadillac Carmine Imbruglia was the most secure kingpin in the history of organized crime.
He sat in a windowless room on the fifth floor of LCN headquarters in Quincy, Massachusetts, a fully loaded Thompson submachine gun at his elbow. There was only one exit, a veneer door with a chilled steel core. Beyond the armored door the many terminals of the LCN network glowed in the darkness, their screens like amber jack-o'-lanterns.
Nothing moved in the LCN computer room. Nothing could move because in each corner of the ceiling, boxy devices resembling security cameras looked down. Instead of lenses, tiny wafers of supersensitive quartz silently scanned the room, ready to trigger an alarm at the slightest breeze or change in air pressure.
And in his armored room, Carmine Imbruglia blinked at his personal terminal and stabbed at the keyboard with two stubby fingers, pausing often to correct mistakes, confident that he was as untouchable as Eliot Ness.
It was while updating his ever-burgeoning sports book that he experienced his first brush with computer trouble.
For some reason, the words and numbers on the screen began to duplicate themselves, repeating endlessly until they filled the screen like a million tiny amber spiders swarming behind the glareproof glass.
When the black screen had turned a solid amber, large black letters appeared against the warm brilliant glow.
"What the fug is happenin' now?" snarled Don Carmine Imbruglia, pounding the suddenly dead keys.
Chapter 39
Remo pulled into the deserted parking lot of the Manet Building and remarked, "Bruno said the don's holed up on the fifth floor with an old tommy gun, no less. There's only one way in or out. So tell me how we're going to sneak up on him? Zip through the motion-sensitive field really fast?"
"That would be too easy," said the Master of Sinanju, arranging the skirts of his sable-and-gold kimono. "For you require a lesson that will stick in your white mind."
"You're too kind," Remo said dryly, looking at the silverblue building facade and thinking that it looked like it had been faced with old mirrored sunglasses. "How?"
"It is simple, Remo. Instead of blundering in, we will take our time."
"Okay," Remo said good-naturedly. "Lead and I will follow. "
They popped a window on the ground floor. It was held in place by a black aluminum frame. No studs or fasteners.