The hydraulics struggled to retract the shafts, and the result was a metal-on-metal death scream. Remo jogged out of the hole and joined Chiun on the ledge to watch the mechanical mole die.
“But what purpose did the hammer heads serve?” Chiun asked.
“Used to compact the soil excavated by the drills on the front of the mole,” Remo said. ‘This thing excavates and reinforces its own tunnel, so it doesn’t collapse. But the thing only has one big engine and it drives the drill and the pounder and everything in unison. So if one part freezes up, it all freezes up.”
A plume of smoke drifted to the surface, smelling of superheated metal.
“How do you know all this?” Chiun demanded.
“Read it in a book. When I was a kid. At the orphanage. You know, some science-adventure novel from years and years ago.”
In the stillness that followed the death of the mechanical mole they heard bolts turning and, through the haze, saw a small hatch swing open from the rear of the mechanical mole.
“I zurrender,” Jacob Fastbinder said through a fit of coughing, his accent more pronounced in his fear and lack of oxygen.
“We know,” Remo said.
“Zere is a rope up zere somewhere.”
“So what?”
Fastbinder stopped hacking and stared up at the entrance to the tunnel, mouth open to make breathing possible, but it was so dark and smoky he couldn’t see a thing.
Remo, standing on the lip of the hole, crushed his expensive Italian shoes into the earth and sent down a shower of sand.
Fastbinder spit it out “You vouldn’t!”
“Vee vould,” Remo replied. “Vouldn’t vee?”
“Vee most assuredly vould,” Chiun agreed with a sniff.
Fastbinder dived through the hatch in the mole and was still tightening the hatch bolts when Remo and Chiun stomped their feet in exactly the right spots. They stomped several more times, just to be sure, and by then they had stopped breathing because the air was thick with billowing dust. The tunnel was collapsing, again and again from the bottom up, until the place where it had been was only a sinkhole in the floor of the old warehouse.
They breathed again when they were outside, strolling leisurely to the Fastbinder’s Museum of Mechanical Marvels.
“Howdy!” Remo said.
“Hello.” Margo didn’t seem to care for him much.
‘Two, please. One regular person, one senior citizen. Show Margo your AARP card. Little Father. Is this the only Fastbinder museum, by the way?”
“Of course.”
“So we get to see all his collection, right? I mean, everything that’s not kept up at the house?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“Just checking. You guys recycle? You know, tin cans, scrap metal, stuff like that?”
“No. Why?”
“Just checking.”
Margo handed them their tickets. Remo and Chiun entered the museum, where Herr Fastbinder’s collection of mechanical oddities and novelties waited in over-air-conditioned splendor. These were oddities and antiques from around the world, procured at great expense by Fastbinder’s network of dealers. There were gleaming robots that seemed to have little or no useful function. There were all kinds of smaller devices in motion, clanking, humming, beeping and generally accomplishing nothing.
Remo examined a rocking chair linked with a lever to a butter chum. The sign explained: Automatic butter chumers were said to have been used in Appalachian homes as far back as 1892. This is a genuine working model that was used as a prop on the Yee Haw! TV program. Go ahead—give it a try!
“Think any of this could possibly be, you know, dangerous?” Remo asked.
“No.”
“Better safe than sorry, though.”
“I agree,” Chiun said.
It took the Masters of Sinanju less than a minute to reduce it all to scraps and rubble.
Epilogue
After his long trip home, Jack Fast was shocked by what he found there. There was crime scene tape around the museum. The interior of the museum proper was in shambles—although the gift shop looked untouched! There was crime scene tape across the entrance to the Fastbinder house, as well, and inside were ruins.
The depression in the floor, and the one major piece of unaccounted-for equipment, told Jack Fast exactly what had happened to his father. The assassins came and Fastbinder tried to escape using the most dangerous possible method.
“Aw, Pops, ya dope. I told you it was a death trap.”
Jack’s girlfriend appeared around eleven that night and ran into his arms. Nancy was overjoyed to find him alive.
“The police came and couldn’t find any clue about what happened, Jack, and they couldn’t find you or your dad. Where were you? You could have called!” Eventually she overcame her anger. They slept in the cool, peaceful ruins inside the old warehouse. Jack Fast was one tired kid.
But he woke up when he heard the clink of metal on metal, and sat bolt upright. Then he couldn’t hear the sound anymore.
When he laid back down, he heard it. Faint, coming from beneath.
Jack Fast grinned, his mind already working at lightning speed, planning his next amazing feat of engineering.
“I’m coming for you, Pops!”
About the Authors
Warren Murphy’s books and stories have sold fifty million copies worldwide and won a dozen national awards. He has created a number of book series, including the Trace series and the long-running satiric adventure, The Destroyer.
Richard Ben Sapir worked as an editor and in public relations before creating the Destroyer series with Warren Murphy. Before his untimely death in 1987, Sapir penned a number of thriller and historical mainstream novels.
