He vowed that he would not leave Joey Webb alone or out of his sight, until everything was cleared up.
Remo was wakened by Chiun standing over him.
"What's wrong?" Remo asked; instantly awake.
"The forest is afire," Chiun said.
Remo jumped to his feet. "Those damn Mountain Highs," he snarled as he ran to the front door.
"Perhaps," Chiun said.
The two men went outside. To the north, the hillside was an undulating wall of flame. To the west and east and south, it was the same. The woods were filled with smoke and mist as the fire ate its way down the hillsides toward the valley in which Alpha camp and the grove of copa-ibas sat.
"We're surrounded," Remo said.
"Exactly," Chiun said.
"What about Joey?" Remo said. There was no need for him to explain to Chiun that they could escape, but fighting their way through the fire could mean the young woman scientist's life.
Even as they spoke, the area around the log cabin began to turn into a maelstrom of sparks. Nearby, they could hear the thud of falling limbs from trees and the explosion of vehicles and bulldozers and tree-yanking machines that were parked all through the forest.
Joey met them at the door, rubbing her eyes.
"Oh, Christ," she said. "How the hell do we get out of here?"
"If we want to save the copa-ibas, we don't," Remo said. He looked at Chiun, almost helplessly. "Everything is burning."
"Not everything," Chiun said.
Remo stopped and looked. Around them, the fire was moving down the mountainsides like syrup down the side of a bowl. Trees were burning. Outbuildings. Logging equipment. What was not burning?
The snow.
The snow was not burning.
He nodded to Chiun, and together he and the old man began to pile up snow. They built a mound in the center of the biggest clearing in front of the camp buildings. When they had dug out a big hollow, Remo told Joey, "Get in."
"What?" she exclaimed.
"Just get inside that snow wall."
The girl, frightened now by the growing insidious crackle of the flames, gulped, nodded, and obeyed. Quickly, Remo and Chiun built a sloping roof of snow over the structure. The girl was sealed off from the flames. Hopefully, the igloo would last long enough for them to do their work. She was safe. Now save the copa-ibas. Then save themselves.
"What now, Chiun?" Remo said.
"Just follow," the Oriental said.
The old man's plan of attack was simple. "Every tree," he said, "wants to fall over on its side as much as it wants to stand up straight. We will help them."
They moved up the north side of the sloping mountain, until they were only fifty yards ahead of the wall of fire, which was swooping down the mountainside, leapfrogging from burning tree to burning tree. As Remo watched, Chiun felt the side of a tree trunk, searching with his hands for the point of critical balance. Then, with a push that was almost childlike, Chiun pressed against the tree, and with a ripping, cracking sound, the big timber toppled to the ground.
Remo understood. He and Chiun flashed along the line of trees, pushing them over. Big trees took down smaller trees. Slowly, they were creating a clearing, in which toppled trees were piled one on top of another. As the flames coming down the hillside met that wall, there would be no more standing trees for the flames to jump to. The fire would burn itself down toward the ground and ignite the fallen trees, but it would be a slow process, and the fire would not have enough energy to jump across the firebreak.
Without resting, without waiting, Chiun kept working his way around the rim of the bowl of the mountain. Remo raced ahead, leveling a broad swath of timber, then would feel Chiun run past him to do the same thing ahead. They leapfrogged their way around the entire mountain, cutting a wide path through the standing pines.
Finally, after two hours, they moved back down the hill toward Alpha Camp.
As they looked up, around them, 360 degrees, they could see that already the fire was slowing, running into the wall of felled trees, unable to jump that wall, and now turning its energy away from expansion, and in upon itself, consuming itself, slowly burning itself out.
They decided to leave Joey in the igloo. She would be safe there until they came back.
Roger Stacy was leaning back in his swivel chair, playing with the gold-plated steel lumberjack's hook that had been presented to him by Tulsa Torrent at a testimonial dinner honoring his contributions to American forestry.
It was probably time, now, he decided, to call for help from surrounding fire departments. The fire through the forest should be out of control, too late for anybody to do anything about.
Joey Webb should be dead and the copa-ibas destroyed, and he on his way to being a very wealthy, very retired man.
It had all started that night when that bitch Webenhaus had made fun of his lovemaking. She had laughed at him. He had killed her husband and was going to kill her, but those goddamn Indians interrupted. He had been lucky to escape with his own life. And the baby Joey had survived, somehow, too.
There had been all those years of work with the copa-ibas, work that seemed that it would never be successful, and there had been all the money from the Association — which wanted to make sure that the copa-ibas never grew in the United States.
It was a shame, he thought, that he had to share any glory with anyone else from the Association. Stacy looked at the golden hook in his hands. It was a solid-steel bar, almost two feet long, bent into a square handle at one end, curved and razor-sharpened into a hook at the other end. And even though it was plated thickly with gold, it was still a deadly weapon.
He laughed inwardly. Perhaps he would present it to the other member of the Association as a gift. Right in the neck. The Association appreciated ruthlessness in its people, and such an act might put him on the right track with them. Who knew — he was still only 45 — there might be a second, more exciting career awaiting him in life.
"Stacy," a voice said. "It's all over."
He looked up to see Remo O'Sylvan and the old Oriental. He smiled at them, but his mind boiled. Why were they alive? How?
"I didn't hear you come in," he said.
"You didn't expect us either, did you?" Remo said.
"What are you talking about?" he said.
"The fire you set," said Remo.
"Fire? What fire? Our trees?" He jumped up and ran to the window. He had hoped to see the forest still full of flame, but instead, the rim of the valley showed only a thin line of flame around it, the fire having been unable to jump the thick firebreak Remo and Chiun had built.
"The copa-ibas?" Stacy said, his mind moving fast, looking for answers.
"Can it," Remo said. "Who paid you to stop the project? To kill Joey?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Stacy said. He walked back and sat in his chair. "And if you're going to talk crazy, you can get out. I've got to get the fire departments here." He was sweating now, and the churning of his body was pumping off the smell of his after-shave lotion, a heavy musky smell.
He reached for the telephone. Remo slapped his hand away and gently pushed the chair Stacy was in. It began to whirl around. Remo pushed again. Stacy whirled faster. He thought he was going to throw up. He began to lose his peripheral vision. His sight took on a red tinge. All he could see was Remo's face. Faster and faster he whirled.
Stacy raised the hook and swung at Remo. Somehow he missed. His chair was slowing down. He was facing the old Oriental. He moved the hook back again and swung at the old man.
The last thing Roger Stacy ever saw was Chiun fluttering his hands delicately, slowly, at him, and the golden hook traveling in a long powerful arc, past the old man and back toward himself.