"You take the right side, Remo. And I will take the left," said Chiun.
"And you follow us," Remo told Anna.
Remo moved to one side as the buffer, red and blue like a child's ball, came at him suspended on the end of a strut mechanism.
Remo went for the strut, avoiding the buffer, which, despite its size, looked harmless. But Remo knew those bristles, designed to scour enameled car bodies, would tear off his skin in a twinkling.
They never even got close.
Remo hit the strut at the lug point and sent the buffer flying into a wall. It bounced off, teetered like a rolling tire, and wobbled to the ground.
Remo looked back. The Master of Sinanju was still occupied with the twin of Remo's buffer.
Chiun had set himself off to one side, his feet apart in a fighting stance, as the whirling pom-pom of plastic came at him.
"Stand back," he said.
"What is he doing?" demanded Anna, her voice on edge. "He is just standing there. He will be killed." But the Master of Sinanju was not just standing there. His hazel eyes were fixed on the whirling device. When it was a whisker's length from his face, he stepped back and pushed out both hands, the fingers held loosely, as if he were a magician throwing flash powder onto a brazier.
The heavy bristles encountered Chiun's long, Sinanju-trained fingernails.
It was no contest.
The buffer spun like a buzz saw, but it was a buzz saw that had lost its teeth. Red and blue bristles flew off in all directions like rice at a wedding. Wet, they coated the walls and floor.
Anna screamed.
Chiun laughed at the sight of the Russian woman pawing at her clothes. Snippets of bristle clung to her, making her look like a human ice-cream cone sprinkled with red and blue jimmies.
"I warned you to stand back," Chiun said.
Remo took Anna by one arm and spun her in place, and although his hands moved as if he were slapping her body at high speed, Anna felt nothing more than the fanning breeze of his hands in motion.
When Remo stepped back, there wasn't a speck of plastic on her clothes.
"Thank you," she said formally.
"Stick close," Remo advised.
"The soap is next," Chiun pointed out. "It will come from those nozzles ahead."
Remo nodded. "Let's hit them before they hit us."
"Agreed," said Chiun. Still sticking to opposite sides of the track, Remo and Chiun went for the vertical bars which housed the jet nozzles. No sooner had they begun to dribble than fingers clamped over them with the power of hydraulic vises. The nozzles, crimped by the steel-strong fingers, dripped white liquid that burned holes in the concrete flooring.
"They use strong soap here," Remo said.
"Fool," said Anna Chutesov. "Do you not recognize acid when you see it?"
"What's next?" asked Remo.
"Don't you know?" asked Chiun. "I thought all whites were familiar with machines."
"Not all car-wash machines are alike. And I've never been in this one before."
"The hot-air things," said Chiun.
And then they came, dropping from the ceiling to the height of a car hood, and blowing hot air.
"We can walk around those," Remo said casually. "They won't hurt us."
"You are too confident," warned Chiun.
"Car washes are built to clean, not to kill," Remo said.
The blowers suddenly gushed flame.
"This one does not appear to know that," reminded Chiun, sidestepping a jet of liquid fire.
Remo grabbed Anna.
"What are you doing?" she yelled.
"Trust me," Remo said, pulling her into the mounting flames. They went through the sudden wall of flame. The Master of Sinanju, executing a nimble leap, joined them.
"I could have burned to death," Anna said angrily, shaking free of Remo.
"No chance," Remo said, looking back at the abating flames. "You're covered with water. It protected you." Suddenly the air was alive with death.
"Down! Hit the floor!" Remo called to Anna. He recognized the sound of automatic-weapons fire. A bullet zinged past his face.
Remo heard the stutter of a machine gun to his right, outside the car-wash track. He tore through the latticework, avoiding the bullet spray easily.
The weapon was an M-16 rifle attached to a mounting on the floor. It fired automatically. Remo came up on the side and snapped out the banana clip. The weapon ran empty. Silence returned to the dark confines of the building.
"Chiun, you and Anna stand still. They've got booby traps on this side. I'm going to check them out."
"Have a care, Remo," Chiun warned.
Remo found a complicated spring contraption designed to launch a trio of stun grenades when a photoelectric beam was intercepted. Remo extracted the grenades, crushed them into harmless powder in his hands, and wiped his hands clean.
There were no other traps ahead, so he clambered back onto the track.
"What did you discover?" Anna asked, her automatic shaking in her hand.
"Later. I want to check the other side. Give me a hand, Little Father."
Chiun reached into a tangle of pipe and gear mechanism and, at Remo's signal, they lifted a section of the wall free.
Remo stuck his head around the other side. It was dark, darker than the car track, but Remo's eyes took in even the tiniest light and magnified it until he could see clearly.
"This side looks clean," Remo said, rejoining the others.
"Did you see the letters?"
"Yeah. The letters C.P. Someone painted them on the wall at a funny angle. So what?"
"Look above you," Anna suggested.
Remo and Chiun looked up. Through a maze of piping they saw a huge red letter C. Another C. was beside it.
"Together they read CCCP," Anna said grimly. "In the alphabet of Russia, it stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Exactly the same as the letters on the Gagarin's wing."
"Are you going to start that again?" Remo said. "This is a car wash. It's been here for years. Smith told us that. It isn't your missing shuttle."
"It's just like a stubborn male to refuse the evidence when it is pushed in your face," Anna cried. "You are invincibly dense, like all your sex. How can I make you believe!" She looked overwrought, tense. Something was bothering her, Remo realized. Something more than the present situation.
"Try leveling with us," Remo said, on a hunch. Anna bit her lip. She turned to the Master of Sinanju, who was watching the flames die out at the other end of the track.
"Do you remember the silver ball that hung over the exit from this place?" she asked.
Chiun wrinkled his face in thought.
"Ah, I remember now," he said. "I was looking at it when I lost consciousness. I remember wondering what it was for."
"It matches photographs my government showed me of a communications satellite that was aboard the Yuri Gagarin when it was launched."
Remo looked at Anna Chutesov as if she had two heads.
"Communications satellite?" Remo said. "Hanging in a car wash."
"Yes!" Anna said hotly.
"A communication satellite hanging in a car wash," Remo repeated, giving Anna a skeptical look.
"Why is that so unbelievable, Remo?" Chiun said. "Some people hang furry dice in their motor carriages. Perhaps it is an American custom with which you are not familiar."
Remo looked at Chiun. And again at Anna.
Finally he shook his head. "All right, all right, we'll go look at this thing. But let's skip the rest of the tour, shall we?"
"It is unbelievable," Anna whispered, touching the huge red letters as they brushed past them.
"It's nothing," Remo said. "In the sixties, kids would spray graffiti letters twice that size. Right-side-up, upside-down, and inside-out. They called it pop art, but I think they were all on drugs or something."
"American teenagers would write USA, would they not?"
"Probably members of the Socialist Workers' Party," Remo said. "This is about their speed."