Ground Zero

That had been in 1990. The year Connors Swindell got his first inkling he was in for a rough decade.

But he was a fighter. And a schemer. He wasn't about to go down the tubes with the others. He would find a way to come back.

And he was doing just that. Sure, the road was rocky. But he was starting a comeback. Step one was to go back to basics. Real houses. Prices were already falling. They'd fall some more. Like stocks. He'd just have to buy cheap and hang on until real estate bounced back.

Meanwhile, Connors Swindell looked around for the cheapest land he could find. He found it practically in his own backyard. The California desert.

He traded an entire condo park for a hundred square miles of Indian-reservation desert less than five miles from his Palm Springs office. Arid, endless, and commercially worthless. The Indians who had consummated the deal must have thought they were getting payback for the Manhattan deal.

What they didn't know was that Swindell's condos had been built from substandard materials over a toxic-waste landfill.

One day Connors Swindell took a young loan officer out to his desert in a rented jeep. The Little San Bernardino Mountains reared up over the desert-penetrating Colorado River Aqueduct.

"Nobody builds in the desert," the loan officer was saying. He was a green, wet-behind-the-ears kid. Probably a trainee. That was how little the banks thought of Swindell Properties in 1990.

"I remember a young realtor once saying that no one would pay good money for an apartment," Swindell pointed out. "Want a drink?" he added, offering a thermos capped by a clear plastic cup.

"What is it?" the loan officer asked suspiciously.

"Gatorade. It'll replace the minerals you're sweating away."

The loan officer accepted the thermos, and uncapping it, poured green liquid into the clear cup. He drank it down greedily.

"Don't lose the cap. It's important," Swindell said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Trust me."

The Gatorade was nearly gone when they reached the spot.

"Here it is," Swindell said proudly.

"How can you tell?" asked the loan officer, looking around unhappily. "There's nothing but sand in all directions."

"My patch has scorpions. Watch your feet."

Connors Swindell led the young loan officer in his banker's gray to a gently undulating expanse of sand. Swindell carried the thermos with the plastic lid.

"You are standing on the exact site of the world's first Condome," he announced suddenly, stamping the ground.

"Did you say condom?" the loan officer said, vaguely offended.

"Dome. Condome," Swindell repeated, experiencing a momentary flash of deja vu. "Get it right. Condome. I'm gonna sink the first one right where we're standing."

The loan officer dug a cordovan toe into the sand. He frowned as the loose grains gave way like gritty water.

"You can't build on sand," he protested. "It won't take the weight of a high-rise."

"You gotta adjust your thinking if you're gonna do business with me, my friend," Swindell said unctuously. "We're not talking high-rise here. We're talking low-rise."

"Huh?"

"Get down on God's beige earth with me, son, and I'll reveal to you the future of real-estate development."

Connors Swindell sank his knees into the sand.

"See this here thermos jug?" he asked.

The banker followed suit, first giving his trouser legs a hitch so the knees wouldn't bag. "Yes."

"Imagine it's a high-rise tower, like the Capitol Records Building back in L.A. But with a penthouse on top. Under a glass shield kinda shaped like a dome. That's this here cap. Are you with me so far, boy? Are you imagining along?"

"I believe I can visualize what you're suggesting," the loan officer said without enthusiasm.

"Now, you watch."

Pawing away a shallow depression in the sand, Connors Swindell thrust the thermos into it. He pushed it down with both hands, rotating it back and forth. The sand hissed in gritty protest. Slowly the thermos sank into the sand until only the clear plastic cup-lid showed.

With careful fingers Connors Swindell smoothed the sand around the upside-down lip of the cup until only the clear plastic showed.

Swindell flashed him an Ipana grin. "Got the picture now?"

The young loan officer blinked. "I really can't quite grasp what you're trying to convey, Mr. Swindell. "

"Almost forgot," said Swindell. He reached into a coat pocket and yanked out two HO-scale human figures. He lifted the cup-lid and placed them inside. Then he reclosed the lid.

The loan officer stared at this for a long time.

"You gettin' it now?" Swindell prompted.

"Condome?" His voice was a parched croak.

"The dome is the penthouse part," Swindell said excitedly. "The guy who lives in the dome pays a premium for all the good healthy sunshine he's gonna have the benefit of. The other ones live down below, where it's nice and cool."

"And dark."

"They got new kinda lights now that simulate daylight. I hear they're good for the old biorhythms. People who work nights use 'em to stay happy." Swindell climbed to his feet to toe sand over a scuttling scorpion, burying it. "For windows, we'll give 'em sand paintings."

The loan officer found his feet, saying, "There is no water in the desert, or electricity."

"We truck in generators. Self-sufficient. And yuppies don't drink common everyday tap water. Everybody knows that."

"But it's out in the middle of nowhere."

"So was Palm Springs. And Las Vegas. They started as dusty villages. But they grew. You know what one of my low-rise Condome towers would be worth planted back in Palm Springs? On dirt-cheap sand?"

The loan officer understood then. But he had one final reservation.

"Mr. Swindell, I think your scheme-I mean, idea-has a certain merit, but you're already in arrears to our bank for over seven million dollars. And that does not include principal."

"Which I ain't never gonna get current on if the condo end of my business goes belly-up," Swindell pointed out firmly.

"I know that. But to lend a man so deeply in debt even more money-"

"So he can climb out of debt and pay you back," Swindell prompted.

"I don't know. The board of directors will be hesitant to extend you additional assistance."

"Then you remind them of a little proverb I heard recently."

"And that is?"

"When a man owes a bank a little money, he's in hot water. But if a man owes the same bank a pile of money-"

"You don't have to finish it, sir."

Swindell did anyway. "The bank's in hot water. Wouldn't you rather be in sand?"

"I'll take it up with the board of directors in the morning," the young loan officer said glumly.

Swindell started back to the jeep. "You do that. But I already know what the answer's gonna be. I'm too fucking big to go down."

And he was. Swindell Properties got an immediate line of credit, and construction began that week. The prefab tower went down in one section. It didn't go down as easily as the thermos, but then, it was over two hundred feet long.

It looked to be a sure thing. Then they started losing construction workers to sunstroke and the scorpions. Insurance premiums went through the roof. The Indians sued him not only over the substandard condos but also to recover the now-valuable Condome land, protesting that its true worth had been concealed.

Then the worst blow came.

An engineer brought the bad news to Connors Swindell as he was trying to sink a putt into a tipped wineglass.

"We have a problem, sir," the engineer said gravely.

"Throw a lawyer at it," Swindell had growled. "I'm busy."

"A lawyer won't solve this problem, Mr. Swindell. "

Swindell swung. The glass shattered. "What is it?"

"You better come with me."

Swindell followed the man out of his penthouse office, cozily nestled in a great Plexiglas dome in the desert. Instead of leading him through the climate-controlled airlock and out into the desert heat, the chief engineer escorted him to the main Condome elevator.

As they rode the lift down, Swindell noticed for the first time that the engineer's boots were damp. He was about to ask how they got that way when the engineer suddenly hit the kill switch.

The elevator lurched to a stop, nearly upsetting both men.

"What's wrong?" Swindell demanded. "Generator go again?"

"This is as far as we can go."

"What do you mean? This ain't but the twenty-second floor. There's six more to go." He reached for the switch.

"I wouldn't if I were you," the engineer warned.

Swindell hesitated. That was when he heard the water. He looked down. His cowboy boots were swimming in brackish water. It was pouring in through the floor seams.

"Where's this water comin' from!" Swindell howled.

"We think it's an underground stream. Maybe the water table creeping up."

"Water!" Swindell burst out. "In the fucking desert?"

"It happens. Runoff from the mountains has to go somewhere. What doesn't evaporate seeps down into the sand. Sand's porous, you know. Looks like it accumulated down there. Now it's seeping into the Condome shell."

"Take us up! Take us up!" Swindell said, his eyes sick.

As the elevator toiled back to the surface, Connors Swindell felt as if he had left his stomach back in the bowels of the greatest advance in housing since the condominium.

Not to mention his entire future.

They tried everything. Pumping. Sealing up and abandoning the lower six floors. But still the water seeped in.

Swindell ordered a construction slowdown while he scrambled to find a way out of the literal sandtrap he had dug himself into.

"It can't get any worse," Swindell told his secretary after his return from La Plomo, Missouri.

"What is it, Con honey?" asked Constance Payne, whose willingness to get down on the rug and screw her boss remained her chief qualification for the job, even after ten years with Swindell Properties. She wore her hair too red and her sweater too tight.

Swindell looked out from his Palm Springs condo window. A field of stars spilled across the desert night sky.

"You should have seen that town, baby. As sweet a collection of garrisons and colonials as you ever saw in one spot. Just basking in the sun. Untenanted, fully applianced, with all the sewer, water, and electrical lines a growin' community could ask for. And no one wantin' any part of it because of a little spilt nerve gas."

"Nobody would sell?"

"Naw, I got a few nibbles. But it's soon soon for the grievin' families. I figure I can wait 'em out until they realize they gotta sell to me. But that ain't what I'm talking about. The fool Army came along and tried to decontaminate the whole shebang."

"Is that bad?"

"It is when the decontaminant makes carbolic acid look like Kool-Aid. They started hosing a place down-a sweet little fixer-upper-and the paint just bubbled up and started smoking. Next thing you know, it up and caught fire. Then it exploded. Three million dollars' worth of housing went up in a flash. I lit out right then, it turned my stomach so bad."

Constance Payne pulled her boss down onto her generous lap. "Oh, poor baby," she cooed, playing with his hair.

"Not only that, but I lost Horace."

Her red mouth made a surprised circle. "What happened to Horace?"

"Ingrate up and quit on me."

"That Horace! But you can get another chauffeur."

"Not like Horace. I could trust him. I tell you, baby if things don't turn around soon, the nineties are gonna be a misery."

"Oh, I was hoping you'd be in a good mood when you got back."

"Well, I'm not. So there."

" 'Cause we got another problem."

Swindell brightened. "More paternity suits?" he asked eagerly.

"No, those have kinda settled down."

Swindell's bright smile darkened. "What the hell you been doing all the livelong day, your nails? If we ever gonna get back on our feet, Connie, you gotta do your part."

"I have been. Will you settle down and listen? The Condome is being overrun, or something. The site crew just called it in."

"By who? The bankers?"

"They call themselves Dirt First!!"

"Them mangy curs!" Swindell exploded. "I saw a pack of them back in Missouri. You could smell 'em coming for miles around. What do they want with my Condome?"

"They say you're desecrating the natural habitat of the desert scorpion."

Swindell jumped up so fast his pockets disgorged business cards Velcroed to condom packets.

"Scorpions!" he shouted. "Don't they know scorpions are venomous varmints?"

"I don't think they do. They're painting graffiti on the dome and everything. Should I call your pilot?"

Swindell nodded angrily. "Damn. This is fixin' to be a terrible decade for real estate. I can feel it in my bones."

Chapter 13

Woody Robbins was in charge of security at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, an experimental research facility connected with the University of California, and located east of San Francisco.

Even after the cold war had been declared officially over, America's nuclear deterrent force required constant maintenance. East-West tensions may have been reduced to a lulling hum, but the world remained full of nuclear weapons, and where nuclear technology was concerned, Woody Robbins never let down his guard.

Unfortunately, he had just the night shift. The day shift security staff seemed to think that the rare isotopes and spent uranium fuel pellets were kept in secure lead storage containers for controlled access, not for theft protection.

Nuclear material-everything from hair-fine wiring to klystron triggers-was oozing from the brick pores of Lawrence Livermore like sweat from a rotisserie pig.

Tonight Woody Robbins sat at his desk flipping through duty reports and occasionally glancing at a wall-mounted bank of closed-circuit screens that were wired to strategically placed security cameras. But mostly to the portable set on his desk tuned to a Lakers game. Woody was a stickler for security, but the Lakers were important too. Besides, it was a slow night.

Had Woody Robbins happened to tune into the local news instead of a basketball game, he would not have made the mistake of admitting Sky Bluel-who was known to him as a trustworthy UCLA physics major-to the facility. Woody liked Sky, even if she did dress as if the calendar had froze at the Summer of Love.

The ten-o'clock news was showing a clip of Sky Bluel togged out in antique hippie clothes, showing off a tactical neutron bomb whose parts had, with the exception of the breadboard mount-which was an Ace Hardware Washington's Birthday special-come out of Lawrence Livermore, a piece here and a piece there.

But Woody was oblivious of that. The Lakers were down 13 to the Knicks' 61, and it coming on half-time. Woody was worried.

His worries shifted into high gear and an entirely different venue when a microwave-relay van slid up to the gate and the driver accosted the hapless gate guard.

A beeping light under monitor number one brought this unwelcome intrusion to Woody Bobbins' attention. He peered past his propped-up feet to the monitor. One look, and all thought of the Lakers fled his mind.

The gate guard was saying something about cameras not being allowed on the grounds except by prior application.

A cameraman responded by shoving a videocam into his face. Its harsh light forced him to turn away.

And a voice that Woody recognized but could not immediately place demanded to see the head of security.

"Tell him Twenty-four Hours is here to inspect his security," intoned the half-familiar baritone voice.

"Oh, Christ," Woody Robbins moaned. "Don Cooder."

He hurried out of his cubicle office without checking the latest score.

Moments later Woody Robbins stood face-to-face with Don Cooder. They stood outside the gate.

"Take your ambush journalism and shove it," Woody said huffily. "I don't answer to you or your network."

"Is that a refusal?" Cooder asked in a threatening tone.

"No," Woody said, showing his teeth in an icily polite smile, "it's an official request for you to go through proper channels."

"Are you aware, Mr .... What is your name?"

"Woody," he admitted. "Woody-"

"Are you aware, Mr. Woody, that nuclear materials have been leaking from this facility for months now?"

"I've heard it alleged."

"And what is the source of your knowledge of these events?"

"The guy who's been clobbering you in the ratings, Peter Jennings," Woody returned coolly.

"We'll edit that out later," Cooder mumbled to his cameraman. "Now, about these deadly thefts," he pressed. "That's an allegation my staff is looking into," Woody said. "I won't advertise an ongoing investigation and risk drying up valuable sources of information."

"You mean cover up for the criminal culprits," snapped Cooder, whose on-air style of speaking was akin to a talking books tabloid.

"There is no cover-up," Woody said testily.

Don Cooder turned to the camera, lifting the microphone to his rugged face.

"When confronted with the startling allegation of Lawrence Livermore materials being used to build a neutron bomb," he intoned seriously, "plant security official Woody hotly denied these charges and proclaimed his innocence."

"Wait a minute! I did not proclaim my innocence!"

Cooder whirled on cue. The mike leapt for Woody Robbins' open mouth like a striking cobra.

"Is that an admission of guilt?" Cooder said eagerly.

"It damn well is not!"

"If you're innocent, you'll let us inspect the premises on behalf of the American taxpapers, now fearful of being nuked by their own tax dollars at work."

"Shove that tax-scare crap," Woody lashed out. "I know your game, Mr. Dead-Last-in-the-Ratings."

Woody waited for the retort that never came. But Don Cooder was for once speechless. His mouth hung as slack as a carp on a hook.

Sky Bluel selected that moment to approach the gate.

Woody was so surprised to see her that he too was struck speechless. But only for a moment.

"Good evening, Miss Bluel," he said in a forced-polite voice.

"I need to do some after-hours work," Sky Bluel said tightly, eyeing Don Cooder uncertainly. "Is it okay?"

Woody smiled. "Always."

Sky Bluel was passed with a longer-than-usual glance at her plant security card, but she was passed.

"Where were we?" Don Cooder asked, suddenly mollified.

Woody noted the appreciative gleam in his eye. The jerk, he thought, he's old enough to be her damn father.

Sky Bluel was passed at the main desk, as well. She hurried to the lab where she did her work with neutron-bombardment applications. But she lingered there only a moment.

Beyond the lab was a nuclear storage area. Donning a radiation-proof coverall suit, she entered through the double doors, which responded to her magnetic passcard.

It was the work of a few minutes to acquire a spherical beryllium-oxide tamper and a corresponding amount of tritium isotope and gingerly place them into a lead-lined carrying container.

Sky grinned. Jane Fonda would be so proud, if she only knew. Maybe they would end up on Letterman together.

Woody Robbins thought he was finally getting through to Don Cooder.

"You say you really have no idea," Cooder was saying. "Let me be sure I have this straight, now. Really no idea what, if anything, in the way of nuclear materials, has been stolen-I mean allegedly stolen-from Lawrence Livermore?"

"That's right," Woody said, relaxing slightly, becoming aware of the tap-tap of a woman's booted feet coming up behind him. "It's a very involved inventory process complicated by the fact that nuclear materials as they are processed are used up. They diminish. Separating use loss from shrinkage is involved. Excuse me," he added, turning toward the footsteps.

Don Cooder's darkly handsome black Irish face fell into a glower.

"Shrinkage!" he exploded, drowning out all other sounds. "Dangerous fusion material!"

"Fission, not fusion," Woody corrected tightly. "We don't do fusion at Lawrence Livermore."

"-dangerous fissionable materials are possibly in the hands of rabid terrorists and you have the gall to call it shrinkage?" Cooder finished hotly. "Nukes are not mere white goods and this isn't a department store, Mr. Woody!"

"Listen, you have no right making these irresponsible allegations!" Woody retorted. "Now, for the last time, either get out, get clearance to enter lawfully, or I'll have to take steps. We can't leave this gate open like this."

"Afraid something will slip through under your very nose?" asked Don Cooder as the videocam whirred on, and a dark figure lugged a heavy satchel way down the road.

"No!" Woody said, storming off, fists bunched in white-knuckled anger.

The video camera lingered on him as he secured the gate.

Woody endured the annoying video light until it finally winked out. The news crew boarded the van. Then the van backed away with all the agile grace of a retreating rhinoceros.

As Woody stormed back to his cubicle office, needing a change of shirt, a memory tickled the back of his mind.

What was it now? he wondered. Something he was about to do.

The Lakers game was still under way when he got back. The score was now 89 to 26, Lakers trailing. He settled in behind his battle-scarred desk.

The memory came back. Who was the woman who had slipped by the gate when he was arguing with that damned Cooder?

Then he remembered Sky Bluel. "Had to be her," he muttered, relaxing. "Nice kid." The future was brighter with gals like her coming out of UCLA. Too bad she was stuck in the past like that.

Sky Bluel walked and walked as she had been instructed, the heavy lead carrying container dragging her right arm practically out of its socket. She glanced over her shoulder several times, feeling exhilarated. It was just like the sixties, which she thought she could dimly remember, having been born in November 1969.

All her life, Sky Bluel had listened to her parents' tales of the sixties. It made her feel inadequate, as if she were born a generation too late. Her consciousness level was high, but wasted. There was so little to protest against. And almost no one to do it with.

But when her graduate work brought her to Lawrence Livermore, Sky was horrified to discover how lax the facility was. At last she had found a cause. Disarmament. It was an old cause, true, but with a fresh new twist.

People had grown apathetic. Her own generation was hopelessly yuppified. But Sky would show them that disarmament was more important than ever. Especially with all the crazy terrorists troubling the world.

And so she had built her own neutron bomb. She had selected the La Plomo incident as the grand backdrop against which she would expose the horrible truth that would galvanize her generation into the new antinuclear movement: unnuking.

Yes, it had gone awry, but Don Cooder had showed her a better way to attack the problem.

And she had done it. She now carried the necessary tritium isotope. She knew she would succeed. Had she not worn her mother's very own love beads, actually bought at Woodstock? And were these not the very same blue jeans her father had worn when he tried to levitate the Pentagon in 1973 to protest the unjust Vietnam war?

Who could fail with such a heritage?

The approaching headlights brought her worried face back again.

She released a gleeful squeal of delight. It was the network van. Sky recognized the network fisheye symbol.

"Hop in," said Don Cooder, rolling back the side sliding door.

He took the container. Sky climbed in. And the van roared off.

"We did it! We did it!" she said excitedly. "This is so far out its absolutely the most."

"This is just the groovy beginning," said Don Cooder proudly. He preened himself in a mirror in preparation for doing a quick two-shot on the successful liberation of unsecured nuclear material.

The comb got stuck in his oversprayed hair. It refused to budge. He pulled harder. He grunted like a woman in labor.

"Oh, my God," Sky cried in horror. "Won't it come loose?"

"Not to worry," Cooder said manfully. "Occupational hazard. I know exactly what to do."

And using a pair of wire cutters, he snipped the comb to pieces, leaving only a small square section of caught teeth.

"Are you going to just leave it there?" Sky asked as Cooder patted down the affected area.

"It's in the back of the head," Cooder explained. "No one ever sees the back of an anchor's head. I'll have it professionally removed later. The network has special technicians on staff for just this kind of thing."

He lifted the microphone as the video cameraman maneuvered around to shoot Cooder over Sky's shoulder.

"Ready?" he asked.

Sky Bluel swallowed. She thought she was ready, ready for anything. But this was getting truly weird. She hated weird. Weird wasn't where it was at.

Chapter 14

The flight from San Francisco to the California resort town of Palm Springs was relatively short. Barely an hour. But to Remo Williams it was as interminable as a death.

First, it was the silence. Technically, they were not on the job, so Chiun felt it acceptable to lapse into one of his moody silences again, and nothing Remo said could bring him out of it.

The cabin temperature seemed chillier than normal to Remo, who had changed into a fresh T-shirt en route to the airport.

"Does this have anything to do with the Mongols?" Remo ventured. "I did kinda show you up during our little treasure hunt in China."

Chiun looked out upon the night lights passing below with opaque regard.

"I'll take that as a no," Remo said. "Whatever I did, I must have done it after that."

Chiun twitched slightly.

Remo made a mental note that he was getting warmer.

"I know I was on my best behavior at the village," he added, "so that can't be it."

The twitch came again, more pronounced.

Hot, Remo thought. I'm definitely hot.

His mind went back to the weeks they had spent in the village of Sinanju. On the whole it had been a much less tumultuous stay than any in the past. They had arrived with hundreds of Mongols bearing the treasure of Genghis Khan. This was divided between the House of Sinanju and the Golden Horde with great ceremony. Remo thought to himself that Chiun had clipped the Mongols out of the best artifacts, but had said nothing. Treasure didn't excite him. The treasure trove had been borne away at the end of the first week. Half the Mongols had stayed to continue the celebration. Most were too drunk from quaffing fermented goat's milk and wine to ride anyway. Day by day they had drifted away until only a core group had remained. Chiun had not begun ignoring him until after they finally departed, Remo recalled.

But he could remember nothing he had said or done since that time that might have offended the Master of Sinanju. Then he recalled Chiun's remark made back in Rye that it was something he had not done. Remo frowned. What had he not done? The infinite possibilities staggered him.

Remo decided to take another tack.

"Tell me a story, Little Father."

"I am not speaking with you presently," Chiun said coldly.

"I'm not looking for conversation," Remo said with forced good nature. "I meant a legend. You know, a good old-fashioned Sinanju legend, like you used to tell me in the old days. You've been telling me fewer and fewer legends these days."

"Legends are for the educable," Chiun snapped.

"Aw, come on. Just one. A short one. Maybe something that covers the mission."

"I do not know of any such legend. In the history of Sinanju we have never dealt with neutral booms or mud people or bathers in urine."

"Please?" Remo said. "I hate to admit this, but I kinda miss those old legends of yours."

Chiun's set features softened like wax hovering at its melting point.

"You might find the lesson of Master Vimu particularly instructive," he allowed in a quieter tone.

"So, tell it," Remo prompted.

"Look it up," Chiun said, compressing his mouth in a manner that suggested aeons of silence to come.

Remo folded his arms. He hit the seat-recline button and settled back. "Count on it," he growled.

The moment they were on the ground, Chiun began speaking again.

"It is almost eleven o'clock," he said.

"Yeah, it's late. I hope we can get a rental this late."

"I mean it is nearly time for the eleven-o'clock news."

Remo snapped his fingers. "Your press conference!" he said suddenly. "Too bad, Little Father. Out here they don't have eleven-o'clock news. The late news comes on at ten."

"You mean I have wasted my breath on those lunatic press persons for nothing!" he fumed.

"Join the legion of past victims," Remo said, entering the airport lounge.

An airline representative told him that the only rental agent was a convenient quarter-mile down the road.

"Convenience," Remo told her glumly, "means in the airport. Not near it."

"I just work for the airline," she told him.

They took a cab to the rental agency. Remo paid off the cab and pushed into the counter area, almost tripping over the body.

The body lay in the middle of the floor. Remo knelt beside the man, quickly ascertaining that he had died of multiple spike wounds. He knew it was a spike because one stuck up from his head like a rusty pumpkin stem.

"Either Palm Springs has a serious vampire problem or Dirt First has been here," Remo told the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun stared at the body with flinty eyes. "Why has this man been crucified, Remo?"

"Who knows?" Remo said, looking around the empty office. "Maybe in the dark they mistook him for a sequoia."

"This is clear proof of their perfidy."

"They'll pay for it," Remo promised, lifting a key off the counter rack. The round metal tag matched the license plate of a white sedan they commandeered from the parking lot.

Remo sent it out into the desert, his face angry.

"Master Vimu, huh?" Remo said as they rode under a California desert moon. "Care to hum a few bars just to get me started?"

"You could not carry the tune," Chiun told him, falling silent once more.

Connors Swindell loved toys. Big ones. At the height of his career in development, he got to play with real wrecking balls, bulldozers, and concrete-eating pneumatic nibblers.

The last toy he was going to relinquish, he vowed to himself, was his personal helicopter.

Once he had had a small fleet of them stationed at strategic nerve centers, the better to visit the many construction sites he had had, in his glory days, sprinkled all over the country.

Now Swindell was down to one active site, a handful of overpriced condos, and one helicopter. And he would be damned if he would lose this handy little eggbeater to his creditors.

It was a scarlet-and-cream Sikorsky, and it ferried him from his private Palm Springs roof pad into the desert.

"We ought to be coming up on it any minute now," the pilot was saying.

"About damn time," Swindell told him.

"She may need an overhaul," the pilot added.

"What makes you say that?"

"The balance is off. She's flying a little rotorheavy."

"Seems all right to me. A nice smooth little ride, as always."

"Oh, there's no danger. It's just that you get sensitive to the feel of these birds, and this one's gone tail-heavy."

"Let me worry about maintenance," Swindell snapped. "You just earn your flight pay."

"Yes, sir," the pilot said unhappily.

Twenty minutes later, the pilot's voice came in the earphones with more than a suggestion of edginess.

"Umm, Mr. Swindell . . ." he began.

"What?"

"We've overshot the site. I don't know how it happened, but we should have overflown it ten minutes ago."

"You on course?" Swindell asked, more perplexed than angry.

"Absolutely. By the compass."

Swindell looked out the bubble. "I didn't see any floodlights," he said uneasily. The rotor chopping made his teeth vibrate.

"Same here. Do you suppose they're out?"

"Out?" Swindell asked. "We have our own generators. And backups. How could both go out?" He looked down through the chin port.

Swindell's mouth dropped like a steam shovel's jaw. It hung there, agape. Then he answered his own question. "Those damn Dirt Firsters!" he snarled.

There was only one road snaking through the Little San Bernardino Mountains into the desert. So Remo knew he stood little chance of becoming lost. He knew that the Condome site, like most construction sites, would be ablaze with floodlights to minimize pilferage of the open-air material stockpiles.

Remo saw no floodlights.

But he did smell something unpleasantly familiar-the combined body odor of a dozen unwashed human beings.

"We're close. Real close," Remo told Chiun.

"I see nothing," Chiun said petulantly.

"Take a whiff. The Dirt Firsters are in this area. If they're close, so is the Condome project."

"I do not know this word 'Condome.' "

"Welcome to America in the nineties," Remo sighed. "I'm still trying to transcend Madonna."

"Your religion is your concern," Chiun sniffed.

If there was any doubt Dirt First!! was in the vicinity, the sight of Day-Glo yellow blotches on passing palm boles dispelled that. They marked fresh spikes. The occasional broken-armed cactus stood as mute testimony to Dirt First's attempt to adapt their environmental consciences to the desert.

"We'd better hurry before the cholla cactus ends up on the endangered-succulent list," Remo muttered.

Remo discovered the presence of a Dirt Firster blocking the road in an unmistakable way: he almost ran one down.

His headlights picked up a woman's wounded-deer eyes in a near-invisible face. Remo had mistaken her for a road kill because she lay across the road like a human log coated with sand.

"Hang on!" Remo called, wrenching the wheel to the left. The car sailed off the road and into a dune. It bounced along before coming to a stop, oil pan scraping sand.

Remo killed the ignition and plunged out of the car. He wasn't sure if he had struck the woman or not.

When she sat up and shook a sandy fist in his direction, he received his answer.

"You idiot!" she complained. "You almost ran me over!"

"You're lying across a dark road practically in camouflage and you're calling me an idiot?" Remo snapped back. "You're damn lucky a tire didn't burst that melon you think is your head."

"I happen to be monkey-wrenching," she said tartly, examining her beaded Indian skirt for damage.

"Committing suicide is a better term for it," Remo said, roughly pulling the woman to her feet.

"We call it monkey-wrenching. Impeding undesirable progress in the cause of Mother Nature."

"And I call this getting to the heart of the matter," Remo said, suddenly twisting the woman's plump wrist in a painful direction.

"Ow! Ow! This isn't fair."

"Losing a nuke always brings out the worst in me," Remo snapped. "Right, Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju floated up to examine the woman's squirming figure. She noticed him and in the dark made a misidentification.

"Hey, Desert Chief. How about telling your pale face friend to let a blood sister go? I ain't done nothing."

Chiun looked his question.

"She thinks you're an Indian," Remo supplied.

Chiun grimaced. "The woman is blind," he said. "But I will open her eyes." One yellow claw of a hand drifted out to her earlobe, took a pinch, and slowly increased the pressure.

The Dirt Firster's reaction was not that of a person with a pinched earlobe, but one who had somehow gotten her tongue caught in a light socket. Flinging out her arms, she howled as if to raise the dead.

"First question," Remo said. "Where are the rest of them?"

"Over . . . there," she gasped. "At the . . . ow . . . Condome. Monkey-wrenching it. Please! That's my triple-pierced ear!"

"Second question. Pay attention. This is important. Who has the neutron bomb?"

"Umm, Russia?"

"Wrong."

"China? The U.S.? I'm not big on current events. "

"You can do better than that," Remo warned.

"How should I know?" she asked, squeezing her eyes.

"You're with Dirt First," Remo explained. "We know they lifted the bomb. Is it here?"

"Nobody told me about any bomb. Honest Injun."

Remo frowned. He turned to the Master of Sinanju. "She sounds like she's telling the truth," he said reluctantly.

"I am telling the truth, you conterprogressive!"

"Third and last question," Remo said. "Did your people gas La Plomo?"

"No!" Tears streamed down her face, making flesh-colored vein patterns on her dirty cheeks.

Remo watched as Chiun applied increasing pressure. When the woman simply repeated "No!" several times in quick succession, Chiun shifted his tormenting hand to the base of her spine. He gave a tap. The woman flopped to the road like a bouncy sack of suet. She did not get up again.

"What did you do that for?" Remo demanded. "We didn't get any answers."

"Yes, we did," Chiun said tightly. "We learned the truth."

"Yeah? Well, maybe she wasn't in on it. They recruit new people all the time." Remo looked away. "Okay, let's shake up the rest of them."

They went in search of the Condome site.

Fabrique Foirade was immensely proud of himself.

After another ignominious retreat, he had regrouped his forces and shifted tactics with what he believed was the oppression-honed brilliance of a Ho Chi Minh.

"Okay," he had said. "Now they know we're serious. They're cowering in that ugly dome of a thing. So we fall back on some good old-fashioned monkey-wrenching."

"Like what?" he was asked.

"First, we fill the gas tanks of every vehicle with sand."

"But we didn't bring any sand!"

"We're standing on tons," Fabrique pointed out.

Everyone noticed this for a fact.

"Gee, if we use real desert sand, won't that wreck the local ecosystem?" Fabrique was asked.

This point was hotly debated for several moments. Fabrique Foirade won the argument by the simple expedient of braining the most vocal dissenter with the blunt end of a handy spike.

"Any other objections?" he inquired stonily.

He received none. Fabrique took this as a textbook example of the perfect application of socialist dialogue.

"Okay," he urged, "sand in the tanks. Cut every wire and break every tool. And somebody dump Joyce across the road as an obstruction. She'll know what to do when she wakes up."

This proved to be easy enough to accomplish. The surplus of sand was a tremendous boon. Soon the outside gas generators were sputtering into silence. The lights died out.

"Maybe we should have saved the light for last," a man who was so coated with sand that he resembled walking sandpaper suggested timidly, after the overwhelming darkness put a stop to further ecotage. Dirt First!! kept bumping into one another.

Someone found a battery-powered flashlight. Foirade took possession of this and started rooting around. The others merrily broke everything the light illuminated.

"Hold it!" Fabrique cried, fishing the light around a wooden shack. "I found a bunch of paint."

The others joined in. Behind them the construction workers were pounding on the electronic airlock door. Without power, it refused to open. They were trapped.

And so they watched, helpless and profane, as the minions of Dirt First!! formed a fire-bucket brigade and ferried dozens of paint cans to the clear dome itself.

Brushes were brought up. Paint-can lids opened. The Dirt Firsters gathered around the dome and began painting three-foot-high slogans in praise of natural beauty-all of which were lost on the trapped construction workers, inasmuch as, from their vantage points, the letters were backward.

Some of them, witnessing the desecration of months of painstaking work undertaken in the worst construction climate of their lives, wept bitterly as the flawless Plexiglas collected oversize streaks of clumsily applied paint.

Others turned away. Still others pounded at the inner Plexiglas walls, as if they could shatter the impenetrable stuff and knock out the grinning teeth of the desert raiders only inches away, in clear view but beyond retribution.

Then something strange happened.

A grinning Dirt Firster shoved his face against the Plexiglas. They had been doing that all along to taunt the construction crew. But this one actually struck the transparent material with enough force to make it reverberate like a bell.

When the face withdrew, it left a smear of red that was not paint. He had been using green paint. Slipping down the rilling red liquid were two white Chicklet-like teeth.

The Dirt Firster hit the ground, his legs bouncing high before they struck the sand for the final time.

"What happened to him?" Ed Coyne muttered in surprise.

Before anyone could venture a guess, another Dirt First!! protester suddenly leapt very high into the air. He landed in the exact center of the Condome dome. Facedown. He didn't move after he struck. He just lay splayed there like a weary scarecrow. His nose formed a silver-dollar-size pancake in his face. It hadn't been that shape a moment before.

A cheer went up among the construction workers.

For out in the night, two fleet shapes went among the Dirt Firsters, wreaking havoc.

One was a lean man in a white T-shirt. Moonlight showed that much, no more.

The other was a wispily tiny figure in phantom gray.

The construction crew raced back and forth inside the dome, trying to follow the action. The pair seemed always to be one step ahead.

"Over here!" a man would shout. But by the time the crew surged to the spot, all that remained was a twitching body.

Once they caught a glimpse of a thick-wristed hand reaching out from the darkness to take a Dirt Firster by the back of the neck and use his long hair to clean off a particularly obscene scrawl. The Dirt Firster's face moved faster than it seemed possible for a face to move. And the crew realized it was simply because the motivating hand was moving with lightning speed.

In a twinkling, the wet scrawl was gone. So was the guy in the white T-shirt.

The Dirt Firster's face, now wet and Day-Glo orange, collapsed to the sand like a cast-off rag.

"Who are these guys?" Ed Coyne asked in awe.

"Who cares! Let's see what they do next."

What they did next was to make short work of the remaining members of Dirt First!!

Bodies flew in all directions. One man attempted to use a spike to defend himself from the wispy one in gray.

The attacker came on, spike held high. A single finger, somehow too long to be human, snaked up to intercept the descending instrument. The spike spat a spark and lost its point.

The Dirt Firster next tried to nail the one in gray with the ragged stump.

The ragged stump somehow changed direction in mid-stroke, taking a grasping hand along with it. It knocked out a savagely grinning row of teeth.

The man stumbled off, trying not to swallow the spike whole.

Then the excitement subsided. The victorious pair faded back from the dome as if unwilling to take a bow, despite the cheers and whistles and thunderous applause that shook the dome.

At that point a searchlight raked the dome. The crew looked up to see a familiar scarlet Sikorsky helicopter descend from the clear desert sky.

They sobered instantly, wondering if they would still be employed in the morning. A few thought the spectacle they had witnessed was worth the loss of pay.

Chapter 15

Remo Williams thought he had gotten most of them.

As another Dirt Firster bit the sand, a loose bag of broken bones, he looked around for Chiun. There was no sign of the Master of Sinanju on this side of the dome.

Then he caught a fleeting glimpse of gray silk through the transparent edge of the dome.

Circling, Remo came upon Chiun about to dispatch a scrawny Dirt Firster like a farmer harvesting a chicken.

Holding the man by the neck, but using only the awesome pressure of his impossibly long nails, the Master of Sinanju prepared to give a wrenching twist.

"Hold up, Chiun."

Chiun turned, pulling his intended victim along. "Why?" he demanded. "I am about to mete out justice to this foul murderer of rental agents."

"Not to mention farmers," Remo said grimly.

"He is not responsible for that," Chiun said flatly.

"We'll see. First, he tells us where the bomb is."

"Bomb?" asked Fabrique Foirade, his heart pounding high in his throat. He squirmed in the old Oriental's grip, but it was like his neck was impaled by a circle of supersharp darning needles. One wrong move might rip his own windpipe or sever his jugular.

"The neutron bomb," said the skinny guy. "Where is it?" Fabrique recognized him from La Plomo. The reactionary. It was amazing how well he could discern people now that he no longer wore his hair over his face like an unkempt Pekingese.

"Search me," he muttered, trembling.

"We know you and your walking mud pies stole the neutron bomb," Remo retorted. "Your filthy handprints were all over the pickup truck it was last seen on."

"Get real, man." Fabrique sneered. "It was abandoned. We just tried to salvage it, you know, for the ride home. I don't know about any neutron bomb-except they aren't kind to flowers and other living things."

"I suppose you don't know about the dead guy we found by the pickup, either?" Remo asked.

"Just that he was a really, really cool dude. Cool to the touch, that is. He was already dead when we got there."

Remo took a chance. "Can the crap. We have proof he was a Dirt Firster."

"Fat chance. He was so clean it was obscene. Mud is our blood! Our blood is mud!" he chanted.

Remo and Chiun exchanged bemused looks.

"My method is better," Chiun suggested.

"Little Father," Remo said, stepping back, "be my guest."

"It will be a pleasure to wring the truth from such a one as this specimen," said the Master of Sinanju gravely. "But he does not know the answers we seek."

Then, like a spiked dog collar turned inside out, the terrible needles began to close on Fabrique Foirade's scrawny neck.

The Dirt Firster had only begun to empty his lungs in a fearful scream when the scarlet helicopter descended, kicking up dust in whirling, stinging billows.

"Now what?" Remo said, throwing his forearm over his mouth and nose. He squeezed his eyes shut. The light from the helicopter turned the inside of his eyelids reddish-pink.

"Remo," Chiun called over the noise, "catch the dirty one! He is coming toward you!"

"Catch him? I thought you had him."

"I did-until this manmade dust storm was called down upon my poor head," Chiun pointed out in a squeaky voice.

"Wonderful," Remo muttered. Eyes closed, he lashed out, trying to gather up the air around him. But between the sound and the sand, he succeeded only in getting his forearms thoroughly sandblasted.

The rotor whine died. When the sand stopped peppering his squinched-up face, Remo finally opened his eyes. They glared with dark anger. He looked around.

The helicopter had settled. The Master of Sinanju was lowering his full kimono sleeves. Unconcernedly he brushed the loose sand that had collected in the folds of his robe.

There was no sign of the escaped Dirt Firster.

"Great, you lost him," Remo said, looking around in vain.

"Blame that one," Chiun said, pointing to the thick-bodied man stepping from the scarlet helicopter.

"Thank you, I will," Remo said, starting for the helicopter. He recognized the man's toothy grin and pinkie-ring diamond.

"What's going on here?" Connors Swindell demanded hotly.

"I just broke up the west-coast chapter of Dirt First!!" Remo told him flatly.

"Nice breaking," Swindell said appreciatively, stepping over a moaning body. Then, catching a good glimpse of Remo's lean face in the helicopter floodlight, he squinted. "Don't I know you?"

"You handed me a condom back at La Plomo."

Swindell brightened. "You use it yet?"

"No."

"Have another. Nothing short of an airbag beats 'em for accident prevention, and between you and me, I ain't airbag size myself."

Folding his arms angrily, Remo ignored the offered packet. The Master of Sinanju drifted up behind Swindell. His dark kimono was all but invisible in the backglow, giving him the appearance of a disembodied head floating in the night.

"Mind explaining what you're doing out here?" Remo asked tightly.

"Doin'?" Swindell said huffily. "I come to protect my baby from harm." Swindell's beefy bediamonded hand swept out to encompass the moon-burnished Condome and its trapped construction crew, huddling like shadowy specimens in some futuristic zoo.

"This!" Remo asked in surprise. "This is yours?"

"You ain't heard that?" Swindell returned, equally shocked. "Where you been lately-Outer Mongolia?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah," Remo returned.

His words were drowned out by the rising whine of the helicopter turbine.

"What the hell?" Swindell barked, turning. "Shut that down! You shut that down, hear?"

Instead of replying, the white-faced helicopter pilot sent the Sikorsky lifting clear of the sand. Through narrowed eyes Remo could see why. The escaped Dirt Firster crouched behind him, pressing a railroad spike into his gulping Adam's apple.

"Don't look now," Remo said glumly, "but Dirt First just hijacked your helicopter."

"What!" Swindell's voice was a scream. It tore through Remo's ear. "Not my baby. He can't! I ain't got another!"

He turned to Remo, frantic, grabbing his shirt front. "You gotta stop it!" he pleaded. "You just gotta!"

"How?" Remo asked, gazing skyward at the rising chopper. "Lasso it with a handy jungle vine?"

The pilot was evidently too nervous to manage the delicate controls correctly. Hanging low in the night, the chopper wobbled, as if about to fall.

"I'll pay!" Swindell shrieked. "Anything! To anyone! It's my last chopper!"

The Master of Sinanju piped up loudly, "What is your offer?"

Swindell swing on Chiun, face twisting. In an imploring voice he shouted, "You got a free condo! How's that grab you?"

"Sold!" said the Master of Sinanju, bending down to pick up a flat sheet of scrap metal. Straightening, he hefted it, as if testing its weight. Then, one arm snapping back, he let fly.

Like a square Frisbee, the metal scrap scaled up for the rear rotor. It bounced off the spinning disk with a snarling clang, dropping back mangled. Shards of rotor came down with it.

Without the stabilizing effect of the tail rotor pushing against the main rotor's torque, the helicopter began spinning counterclockwise, like a top on a string.

"Get back!" Remo shouted. "It's going to crash!"

Everyone on the ground jumped clear.

The helicopter pilot instantly realized what the problem was. Reaching up, he cut the main rotor. Disengaged, the auto-rotating blades acted like a parachute, allowing the ship to settle with only a jar.

Unfortunately, it landed on a dune at an angle. Rotors still turning, it teetered, then fell over. The rotor dashed itself out of shape against the sand, throwing up stinging grit.

A section of rotor broke off and shattered the Plexiglas bubble, which instantly turned red, inside and out.

Then there was only silence.

Remo was the first to reach the stricken helicopter. He plunged in through the open door.

The cockpit was a mess of tangled instrumentation and human remains. The Dirt Firster had gotten the worst of it. The rotor shard had bisected his torso from neck to hip at an oblique angle. He lay in two main pieces. A few fingers were scattered here and there, and one whole hand, clutching a spike, lay wedged under one of the directional control pedals.

"Looks like he tried to fend it off," Remo muttered, noting that the violence of the rotor strike had blown dirt and sand dust off the Dirt Firster. Even his blood was dirty.

Chiun, standing outside, nodded in satisfaction. "He is as dead as Mic Vorrow."

"Who?"

"The famous dead helicopter actor," said Chiun.

"Oh, that Mic Vorrow," Remo said, checking the pilot.

"How bad is it?" Connors Swindell called from a distance.

"You're gonna need another helicopter pilot," Remo called back, noting the pilot's glassy stare.

"Damn! That's two employees I lost just today. This is sure gonna be one miserable decade."

Remo stepped from the wreckage. "How's that?" he asked, trotting back to Connors Swindell.

"Lost my chauffeur. Been with me years." Swindell gave the mangled aircraft a frightened squint. "Won't the helicopter blow up?"

"I doubt it," Remo said, looking back. Chiun remained with the helicopter, examining it intently. After a brief glance at the dead, he concentrated on the shattered exterior, sniffing like a curious kitten.

"What's your friend doing?" Swindell asked curiously.

"Probably screwing things up worse than they already are," Remo grumbled. "Look, I have some questions for you." Remo handed him a card that said he was Remo Goolsby of the CIA.

"CIA agents carry cards?" Swindell asked, returning the card.

"This one does," Remo told him. "I'm investigating the La Plomo disaster."

"Crying shame," Swindell said piously. "All them fine homeowners. Snuffed out in their sleep like that."

"So what were you doing there?"

"Checking out property. Anytime you gotta disaster like that, lots of property changes hands. I'm in real estate. Did you get one of my cards?" He flashed one of his condom-packet business cards.

"Keep it," Remo said. "We think Dirt First!! was responsible for the poison-gas attack at La Plomo."

"You know," Swindell said slowly, "I was thinking the same thing myself." He smiled broadly. "So if two right smart individuals like you and me come to that independent conclusion, well, now, it must be so, don't it?"

"We also think they hijacked the neutron bomb that girl brought to La Plomo. Since they're here, it stands to reason the neutron bomb is somewhere here too."

Swindell started. "Damn! Should we evacuate?"

"That's a good first step. Can you get me inside that thing?"

Swindell winced. "Thing? That, my friend, is a Condome. And you and your little Chinese friend are the proud owners of one of our top residential units. Since you done me a good turn, and all."

Remo frowned. "But the helicopter was destroyed."

"I give a man credit for trying, I surely do." Swindell laid a heavy arm across Remo's shoulders. He nudged Remo away from the helicopter. "Tell you what, to show there's no hard feelings, I'm gonna give you your choice of ground-floor units."

Remo regarded the Condome blankly. "Does that mean the top or the bottom?"

"Bottom. I keep forgettin' to adjust the terminology." Swindell's eyes shifted back to Chiun's searching figure. "Why don't I let you and your friend do a thorough search of the Condome? And if you don't find that little lost neutron bomb of yours inside, we can do an open house. Maybe you can tell your friends about this fine opportunity to live like folks will in the twenty-first century."

Remo turned to Chiun, "Hey, Little Father. Come on. If the bomb is anywhere, it's probably in the dome."

The Master of Sinanju was sniffing at a hatch in the helicopter's thick boom.

"Chiun, you hear me?" he shouted in exasperation.

"I have found it," Chiun called distantly.

Swindell grabbed Remo's arm. "Come on, let's not waste any more time. That bad old bomb could go off any second now."

"Found what?" Remo said, his arm slipping from Swindell's hands as if intangible.

"The neutral boom," Chiun replied brittlely.

"What!" Remo flashed to the Master of Sinanju's side, leaving Swindell's outstretched arm hanging on empty air. Swindell pounded after him, huffing and puffing as if going into cardiac arrest. The night air was cool but his toothy face broke out in little dewlike droplets of sweat. Even his teeth seemed to sweat.

As Remo drew near, the Master of Sinanju slipped his nails into the slightly ajar crack in the helicopter's tail boom. A hatch popped down.

And out of the black space tumbled the missing neutron bomb. It plopped into the sand with a mushy thump, like a silver trophy on an overdone base.

"Oh, Lordy." Connors Swindell gave a twisted moan. "Get away from it! It might go up!"

"It's okay," Remo assured him, touching the electronics. "Just relax."

Swindell paced back and forth like his shoes hurt. "This is awful! This is terrible! I don't wanna be nuked."

"Will you relax?" Remo told him. "It's not armed. I know how these things work. Not all the plastique charges are in place. It can't go nuclear without them all."

"I say we take no chances," the Master of Sinanju said.

"I second that," Remo said grimly. And stepping up to the silvery sphere, he began extracting plastique charges by their convenient handles.

Swindell howled in anguish. "What are you doing? Are you crazy? Let experts handle this! We gotta hightail it!"

"Get a grip, will you?" Remo shot back. "There's no danger."

When he had reduced the device to a skeleton of welded rings, Remo started in on the framework. Metal broke with snapping barks. Soon it lay stripped to the beryllium-oxide tamper. That, Remo left alone. He didn't know what would happen if he breached it.

"Well," Remo said, stepping back and slapping his hands clean, "that's the end of that. The mystery's solved. Dirt First!! stole the bomb and now it's neutralized."

Connors Swindell suddenly lost his anguished look. His fleshy face loosened, then relaxed. He stopped his mad pacing.

"That's the best damn news I've heard all decade," he said in joyous relief.

Remo turned to Chiun. "Nice detecting. How'd you guess it was in the helicopter? I would have sworn he didn't have enough time to grab the bomb and take it with him."

"I did not guess," Chiun said, eyeing Connors Swindell narrowly, "I detected the telltale scent of the explosives."

"You must have a great nose."

"I have excellent judgment."

"Ready to admit Dirt First!! was behind this all along?" Remo suggested happily.

"No," said the Master of Sinanju, turning his back on Remo and Connors Swindell. "Show me my well-deserved reward. It may be I will occupy it very soon."

And casting a narrow glance to Remo, he floated toward the Condome.

"We're having a little tiff," Remo explained for Swindell's benefit. "Don't take him too seriously."

"I take every potential buyer seriously," he said, taking out a white silk handkerchief and mopping his brow until it was wet enough to wring. "Especially when he can bring down an entire helicopter with a hunk of tin flashing."

Chapter 16

When Remo Williams liberated the construction crew from the frozen Condome airlock, they poured out, waving hammers and other heavy tools.

"Monkey wrenching!" cried a man who carried an actual ten-pound monkey wrench like a broadsword. "I'll show them monkey wrenching."

There weren't enough living Dirt Firsters to pound on, so the crew vented their wrath on the scorpion population.

"I need to use your phone," Remo told Connors Swindell, who couldn't figure out which fascinated him more-the ferocity of his crew or the strange way the skinny CIA agent had opened the airlock door. Since the power was out, it had been frozen in place. The skinny guy had used the side on his hand to chop out a section of Plexiglas, exposing the locking mechanism. Then, simply reaching in, he manipulated the lock.

The great door had opened as easily as a refrigerator, and they all made room for the furious outpouring of frustrated men.

"How'd you do that?" Swindell wondered, escorting them through the massive bank-vault-like airlock.

"I used to be lock picker for the CIA," Remo said blandly.

"But you used your hands."

"Had to. Left my picks back in Mongolia. Now how about that phone?"

"If we can find a cellular, you're all set."

They found a cellular phone in the penthouse complex. Swindell proudly led Remo and Chiun into his lavish penthouse office. His face fell as Remo went to the phone without commenting on the tasteful interior decoration and gracious living spaces.

Undaunted, he turned the charm on Chiun instead. "Yessir, I think any man would be right proud to live in digs like these. Don't you?"

"Possibly," Chiun undertoned. His eyes were slits.

Swindell didn't like the way the little Asian was eyeing him. It was creepy. Like he could see right through him. And Connors Swindell prided himself on being as transparent as chilled steel.

"You'll change your tune once you see one of the nice units I got picked out just for you," he said. "Yessir, Con Swindell don't forget a favor. You and you CIA friend saved my Condome from being nuked by those crazy anarchists. And I ain't never gonna forget it."

"Let us repair to another room."

"Why's that?"

"My son has a secret call to make."

"Oh, I get it. CIA stuff. Come on, I'll show you the kitchen. It's got every modern convenience known to man."

"Does it have a spittoon? I have noticed during my years in this land that spittoons are a rare luxury. "

"No, but it's got a mean microwave."

"Rice cannot be microwaved."

Swindell blinked. "What's that got to do with the price of real estate?" he wondered, leading the old man away.

Once alone, Remo dialed Harold W. Smith.

"Mission accomplished, Smitty."

"You located the neutron device?" Smith asked eagerly.

"Located and dislocated," Remo said proudly. "It's in pieces. Should I bring them back?"

"Yes, do that. I do not want nuclear materials lying around. Where are you, Remo?"

"In the California desert. Ever hear of a Condome?"

"Yes. It's a new design in condominiums. A prototype is now under construction. I doubt they will catch on."

"Well, they caught Dirt First's attention. They were trying to nuke it for some reason, but we stopped them. We piled up a lot of bodies, Smitty."

"I will cover your tracks," Smith said in a tone of voice that said bodies were no more a problem than empty soda cans. "Have you found any proof that Dirt First!! was behind the La Plomo incident?"

"Nope. But I'd say we got them dead to rights." Remo's eyes went around the den. The knotty pine walls were lined with photos of Connors Swindell-usually breaking ground and wearing a hardhat that fit his beefy head like a thimble. Remo recognized several senators and other celebrities. One shot in particular drew his attention. The man standing arm in arm with Swindell looked familiar, but Remo couldn't place him. Probably a service buddy, he decided. He wore some kind of uniform.

"That is hardly proof," Smith pointed out.

"The FBI has determined that the Lewisite was Army surplus."

"That fits in with Chiun's theory that the body we found in Missouri was military. I still think he was a Dirt Firster."

"We should know soon. The FBI is processing the body. He is an annoying loose end. I would feel better if all the loose ends were tied together."

"What do you want-signed confessions? I'm an assassin, not Dale Cooper."

Smith sighed. "Very well. Return to Folcroft."

"As soon as we get the grand tour."

"Grand tour?"

"The developer is giving us a condo in return for services rendered."

"Do not accept it," Smith said sharply.

"Why not? I'll bet it's bug-free," Remo said pointedly.

Smith had no reply to that, so Remo disconnected, saying, "Chew on that a while, Smitty."

Remo found the Master of Sinanju in the bathroom examining the fixtures as Connors Swindell pointed out their attributes.

"You see this little doohickey here?" Swindell was saying, pointing to a gleaming stainless steel shower head.

"Yes. It is obviously a doohicky," Chiun said seriously.

"You just dial it and get any kind of water massage you want. Pulsing, throbbing, needle spray-you name it. Every home should have one."

"How about a quick tour before we go?" Remo asked.

"Your friend here is a hard sell," Swindell said, leading them out to the elevator. "Good thing I already offered him a unit. I'd start to think I was losing my golden touch."

"The things you touch do not turn to gold," Chiun said coldly.

"Don't you just love this guy?" Swindell asks Remo. "He talks like an upscale fortune cookie!"

The elevator took them down into the Condome tower.

As they descended, the air became cooler, then clammier, and then finally dank with the smell of standing water.

"The air conditioner must have kicked back on," Remo remarked. "You could get Legionnaire's disease breathing this stuff."

"If you want the twenty-first-century luxury of living in the desert, you gotta make a few adjustments," Swindell said firmly.

"What do you think, Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju did not answer at first. Remo wondered if he was being ignored again. Then he noticed Chiun's face. It was uneasy, the eyes a little strange.

The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. Swindell stepped off. His feet sloshed with each step.

Remo looked out into the corridor warily. Connors Swindell, wearing a sheepish smile, was standing in a half inch of clammy water.

"Someone spill something?" Remo asked as Chiun sniffed the air unhappily.

"Those damn Dirt First!! saboteurs!" Swindell said indignantly. "Don't you fret. It's only a little water. This stuff will all be pumped out before you're ready to occupy."

Getting up on tiptoe, Remo stepped into the corridor.

He turned. "Coming, Little Father?"

The sheet-like look on the Master of Sinanju's face froze Remo's blood.

"Chiun! What's wrong?"

"Remo, we must leave this place of horror," Chiun said, his voice squeaking like rusty nails being pulled from dry wood.

"Horror?" Remo and Swindell said in unison. "What are you talking about?" Remo added, eyes concerned.

"Yeah," Swindell asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"This is a place of death," Chiun intoned. "Death and darkness. I refuse to enter it."

"But you got a unit just down the hall," Swindell protested. "Don't worry about a little water sloshing around the floor. It won't hurt you none."

"Remo," Chiun repeated, holding fast. "We must leave. Now."

It wasn't the edge in the Master of Sinanju's voice that decided Remo-although it grew more metallic and terrible in a way Chiun's voice had never before sounded-it was the soul-shocked light in his hazel eyes.

Remo wasted no time. He yanked Swindell back into the elevator with him and punched the up button.

"If you don't want it, at least tell your friends about it," Swindell said disspiritedly. "Fair enough?"

The elevator ride seemed to take twice as long going up as down. Once at the top, the Master of Sinanju fled the cage for the desert with a hurried padding of his sandals.

Chiun, Remo realized in surprise, was actually running from the Condome as if he feared it would somehow swallow him.

"What's eating your friend?" Swindell muttered. "Reverse acrophobia?"

"No idea," Remo said worriedly. He caught up with the Master of Sinanju. "Tell me what's wrong, Little Father?" he asked.

The Master of Sinanju slowed. He did not stop. He marched straight to the rental car. His hands found one another, clasping opposite wrists in the hidden folds of his kimono sleeves. Remo noticed that they trembled almost imperceptibly.

Chiun spoke in a hollow voice. "I smelled death, Remo. Terrible death. A long, black, clammy eternity of death. More grim than the Void from which we come and to which we return."

"I never heard you speak of death that way," Remo said. "Like you feared it."

"I do not fear a clean death," Chiun insisted. "A true and correct death is sometimes to be welcomed. The death that waits for me down in that buried place of horror is not such a death."

Remo lifted a eyebrow. "For you?"

"Come," Chiun said. "Take me away if you value the gifts I have bestowed upon you."

"Sure, Little Father," Remo said gently. "Just let me grab the neutron bomb pieces."

Chiun's head snapped around. His wrinkled face twisted in horror. "Do what you must. But do not delay."

Remo hurried back to the wounded helicopter. He left the mangled casing rings and tucked the beryllium oxide tamper under one arm.

He ran back across the sand in such haste that he actually left footprints.

For once, the Master of Sinanju declined to scold him on his carelessness.

They drove off in strained silence.

Chapter 17

Remo was transcending with the sun.

It was an old Sinanju ritual. A Master of Sinanju would sit cross-legged on a reed mat, eyes closed, feeling the new sun beating on his face. As the sun rose, he would meditate on the events of the previous day and attempt to peer into those of the day to come.

In over twenty years of transcending with the sun, Remo had never seen a shred of the day to come. Today was no different.

He opened his eyes. The sun struck them like a double-bladed dagger. Straightening his crossed legs like an unfolding scissors jack, he came to his feet.

He turned, intending to see how Chiun was.

"Little Father!" he said, surprised. "I didn't know you were up."

For standing before him, his face a wrinkled blank, was the Master of Sinanju. He wore a pale peach-colored robe.

Chiun lifted a quelling hand.

"I have words to speak to you, Remo Williams," Chiun intoned.

"Well, pull up a mat," Remo said brightly.

Gravely the Master of Sinanju toed a tatami mat into place. He settled onto it. Remo slipped back onto his. His hands settled on his lifted knees.

"I'm all ears," he said.

Remo half-expected a cutting rebuke. None came. Instead, Chiun began speaking in brittle tones. His eyes seemed unfocused as he talked, as if he were looking at something other than Remo. Remo shivered. Chiun's gaze bored through him and beyond, making Remo feel like a pane of glass. He had never felt that way. The glass was like a barrier, cutting him off from all contact with the man who had raised him up from common humanity.

"I had not expected to speak these words to you, my son," Chiun said hollowly. "But time is growing short."

Remo's brows knit together. "Short?"

"I am very old."

Uh-oh, thought Remo. Here we go again. Another I'm-in-my-last-days spiel. What's the old reprobate angling for this time?

"Tell me something new," Remo joked. The hazel eyes of the Master of Sinanju focused suddenly and Remo lost the transparent-as-glass feeling. Chiun's frank regard was devoid of warmth.

"I have seen many summers," Chiun began.

"I know," Remo said in a subdued voice. "You're what now? Eighty-something?"

"I was eighty when I first laid eyes upon you, white man with death in his heart."'

"That's right. That makes you, what-over ninety?" Remo blinked at the realization. "Christ, where does the time go?"

"In all the years we have known one another, never have you acknowledged my birthday, never have you honored me for each year successfully completed. So it was last year. And the year before. So it would have been this very summer."

So that's it, Remo thought. Well, I got him there. "Wait a darn minute here!" Remo said. "I never celebrated your birthday because you never let on when it was. In fact, I distinctly recall once asking, and being told to mind my own business."

"A truly worthy seeker of truth is not so easily dissuaded as that," Chiun said, his voice flint.

"Your exact words," Remo persisted, "'Mind your own business, pale piece of pig's ear.' That was me in those days, a miserable pale piece of pig's ear."

"You have gained some color since those long-ago days," Chiun said without emotion. Remo tried to read the remark for humor. But Chiun had resumed speaking.

"In the land of my birth, Korea, men by custom cease to celebrate the days of their natural span with their sixtieth birthday. Their age is not acknowledged after that. To the end of their days, they remain eternally sixty."

"Kinda like a Korean thirty-nine," Remo remarked.

"But a Master of Sinanju is different," Chiun went on solemnly. "He celebrates his sixtieth year and his sixty-first and so on until he reaches the illustrious age of eighty."

"When is your birthday, anyway?" Remo asked suddenly. "I know you're a Leo. That's in what? June? July? A couple of months from now, at least."

"Beyond eighty," Chiun continued coldly, "a Master of Sinanju does not acknowledge the passing years until he reaches a certain milestone. This he acknowledges, and yet remains forever eighty. For it is an important event in a Master's life."

"Yeah?" Remo said, wondering where this was going.

"You wonder why I have shunned you of late?" "It had crossed my mind," Remo said sourly. "Once or twice. Yeah."

"It had been my hope that you would come to this knowledge of your own accord."

"Sue me."

Chiun's button nose wrinkled in disdain.

Let him work for it, Remo thought. Two can play this game.

"Once," Chiun began, launching into the low, wavering tone he used to offer the legends of Sinanju, "the Master Songjong, who was young, being only sixty-"

"Is this a real sixty or a Korean thirty-nine?"

"Sixty by anyone's reckoning," Chiun said tartly. "Now, the Master who trained him, who was Vimu, was approaching the great milestone fortunate Masters reach. A summons came out of Egypt. It was a minor thing. Something about a princeling who lacked the patience to become a natural pharaoh. So he sought to slay the one who was ahead of him in the natural order."

"An old story," Remo noted.

"With the usual ending. And when word came to Vimu, he summoned Songjong and said to him, 'A summons has come out of Egypt. Since in these days Sinanju enjoys the luxury of two Masters to earn its gold, one of us must go to Egypt and the other remain to guard the gold earned in times past. Which do you prefer, my son?'

"And Master Songjong, who had been a good Master until now, meditated upon this. Instead of considering Vimu's age, he thought of a Korean maiden called Nari, with whom he was smitten. Being fifty, he had decided to take a wife. And he hoped to make this come to pass soon, for his loins burned with a lust for Nari."

"Late bloomer, huh?"

"And so did Songjong say unto the Master Vimu, 'O Master, you are old and approach the venerated age. The task in Egypt is modest, but the responsibility of guarding our village is great and must fall upon my shoulders in coming times. I should remain here now to perfect my skills of guardianship.'

"Vimu nodded gravely, although this was not the answer he had expected. The task would take him far from his ancestral village, and he would not return until after his coming birthday. Vimu was disappointed, since Songjong had knowledge of this fact, but he surrendered to the decision. For Vimu had placed the matter before Songjong as a test of his competence. And while Songjong had failed, it still remained for Vimu to go to Egypt."

Chiun's voice fell into a mournful singsong cadence.

"With much heartache, Master Vimu ventured into the sands of Egypt. The princeling was dispatched as easily as most princelings are. But saddened and advanced in age, Master Vimu did not survive the long journey back through the dark desert. He died, parched of tongue, and his skin hardened to iron."

Chiun raised an ivory-nailed finger.

"One day short of his hundredth birthday."

"Tough," said Remo carelessly. Then it sank in. "Wait a minute! Did you say hundred? That's the venerated age?"

Chiun nodded gravely.

Remo pointed to Chiun's sunken breast.

"You! You're a hundred!"

Chiun shook his aged head. "I beheld my ninety-ninth summer last year. This summer, if I live to see it, I will attain the venerated age all Masters strive for, for it means that they have completed their mission in life. For ever since the days of Songjong and Vimu, it has been decreed that upon attaining the exalted age, a Master of Sinanju may retire if he so desires."

"Are you telling me you're planning to retire?"

"No, ignorant one," said Chiun. "I am telling you this for two reasons. The first is that you are obviously too blind to discover the truth for yourself, as I had hoped. And there are great ceremonies which are your responsibility to initiate."

"What's the second?"

Chiun rose. His face was like beige stone weathered by a thousand years of wind and rain. His eyes were bleak and animal sad.

"The second reason is that I do not believe I will attain the venerated age."

And with those words the Master of Sinanju whirled and returned to his room. The door closed quietly. Remo stared at it a long time. But he wasn't looking at the wood. Remo Williams was seeing the afterimage of Chiun's stooped figure in his mind's eye. It was as if he beheld the Master of Sinanju's true frailty for the first time.

"A hundred years old," Remo whispered. "He's a hundred freaking years old."

He felt a cold wind blow through the room, even though it was a warm spring day.

A shiver rippled along the bare skin of his forearms.

Chapter 18

Connors Swindell's decade was taking a turn for the worse.

It was the next morning. His secretary, seeing the ashen look on his usually flush-with-prospects face as he entered his Palm Springs condo, accidentally pricked herself with the needle she was busily wielding.

"Ouch!" she said, sucking on her thumb. She threw down the needle and tossed the now-bloodstained condom into the wastebasket, saying. "That one's no good now."

"That's what I want," Connors said savagely. "You fetch it back, hear?"

Reluctantly Connie Payne fished the rolled-up condom from the basket, and wetting a Kleenex with her tongue, wiped the blood off. Then, after holding it up to the light to make sure the pinhole went clean through the lambskin, she slipped it into the slot of a small device on her desk that resembled a high-tech stamping machine. As she tapped the lever, the device hissed and spat out the condom, now sealed in foil stamped with the name Connors Swindell on one side. The other side held a strip of Velcro. She affixed the packet to a similarly Velcroed business card and flipped it onto a growing pile.

As she unwrapped another condom from its fresh-from-the-factory packet, Connie looked up at her employer.

"You know, I could be doing this for years," she complained.

"I pay you," Swindell said, stripping off his jacket and hanging it on a peg. "And you might as well be doing something as sitting on your pretty little butt. We ain't moving units like the old days, you know."

"I heard about those Dirt First people on the radio. Are they all dead?"

"What ain't road kill is. They messed up my Condome but good. Insurance don't cover this. We may have to cash out."

"What about all that Missouri property you were going to buy? Can't we stall the creditors until they come on the market, Con honey?"

"How many times I gotta tell you? Don't 'Con honey' me. It ain't professional. In bed you can 'Con honey' me all you like. No place else."

"Sorry Mr. Swindell," Connie said frostily, piercing the condom and feeding it through the stamper. Another packet clicked into the pile.

"That's better, but don't skimp on the warmth."

"This is a long way to go to start another baby boom." She pouted. "I'll be a saggy old lady by then."

"You always got a stall in my stable, you know that," Swindell said absently, looking through the stack of letters on his secretary's desk. "Anything special in here?" he asked.

"The one on top's another paternity suit."

Swindell dropped the envelope into the waste basket. "Nobody wants to pay the piper no more," he muttered.

"The electric and phone bills are both overdue."

"So? Draw two checks."

"Against what? We're tapped."

"Do it anyway. Just make sure you stick the phone check in the electric envelope and vice versa. That oughta tangle up their shorts for another three weeks.

"Oh, Con. You're such a genius," Connie said admiringly.

"If I'm so smart, how come I'm in so much debt?"

"Maybe you should pay more attention to your horoscope, like I told you to."

Swindell grunted. He dropped the remaining mail into the wastebasket. "Taggert call yet?"

"Not yet."

"If anybody wanting to buy calls," Connors Swindell said wearily, "I'll be in my office. I'm out to salesmen, lawyers, and creditors."

The door slammed sullenly, and Constance Payne went back to putting pinholes in condoms. It was boring work, but every time she passed a newborn in a stroller, it gave her a tiny swell of pride. Who knew how many newborns owed their lives to the most brilliant real-estate-promotion scheme in human history?

In the sunshine-filled sanctity of his Palm Springs den, Connors Swindell didn't feel at all brilliant. He felt instead like he was drowning in warm air.

This latest setback to the Condome development looked to be a mortal blow. The banks would be all over him when they got the news that Dirt First!! had trashed the site. He had spent the entire night trying to clean it up, but it was useless.

"Damn those ecobusybodies!" he burst out. "Imagine them messing with my plans twice."

The phone rang. Swindell scooped it up.

"Mr. Taggert on line one," Connie chimed.

"Put 'im through." A moment later: "Hello, Taggert? About time you got back to me."

"I don't appreciate your tone," said a voice that sounded like Humphrey Bogart in a dry well.

"Sorry. I'm having a bad decade. Listen, the reason I called yesterday is, I got another special job for you."

"Yeah?"

"The La Plomo thing is fixing to work out fine," Swindell said. "I aim to scoop up all them fine houses-the ones still standing, that is-real cheap, just like I planned."

"Don't forget I get first choice."

"Glad you mentioned that," Swindell said breathily, leaning into the phone. "I saw the cutest French Colonial you ever did see. You like it, it's yours."

"Don't forget my Condome unit too. When do I get the tour?"

"Soon, soon," Swindell said vaguely. "I got a great bottom-floor unit with your name on the door. You can see it as soon as we pump-"

"Pump?"

"I mean finish it off. Now, listen. Taggert, you can find anything, right?"

"I found you all that poison gas."

"That you did. Listen. I had me a kinda setback. I lost something mighty valuable to me."

"Describe the item."

"Spoken like a true private detective, which you are," said Swindell heartily. "But the item I have in mind got damaged. It's no good to me anymore. I need another."

"So what is this item?"

Swindell swiveled in his chair. Beyond the window, stands of twisted Joshua trees rippled magically. They repeated in a nearby wall-length mirror, a nice touch, he thought.

"A neutron bomb," Connors Swindell said softly.

"Are you crazy? What do you want with a neutron bomb?"

"Same thing I wanted with all that damn gas. To shake some dinks loose of their prime real estate. You know, there's lots of folks holding on to property these days instead of trading up and fueling the real-estate sector of the economy. It's downright un-American."

"I was lucky to find the gas. A neutron bomb may be out of my league."

"Probably. But a tall hank of a hippie girl ain't."

"Come again?"

"There's this girl name of Sky Bluel. Must come from a long line of hippies or something with a name like that. She built a bomb. I ended up with it, but the CIA took it away from me."

"CIA!" Taggert exploded. "Christ, Swindell, what if this line is bugged? We'll both be doing federal time in Atlanta."

"No chance. The CIA blamed those Dirt Firsters. They happened to be in two inconvenient places in one day, like they was following me. Not that they were. The thing of it is, I got hold of their neutron bomb and they got the blame."

"That's convenient."

"But then one of them jerks stole my helicopter, which had the bomb in it. Crashed it good. I lost the bomb and the helicopter both."

"You're lucky to be alive."

Connors Swindell examined his pinkie diamond ring. He blew on it.

"Naw. Bomb didn't have a core."

"What good was it, then?"

"Reason I called you in the first place was, I wanted you to scrounge me up a core."

"Somehow, I don't think 'scrounge' is quite the word for it," Taggert said dryly.

"Never mind that. Look, you find this Sky Bluel. Kidnap her and I'll have her build me a new neutron bomb. It'll be better than poison gas."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I was kinda thinking of clearing those filthy-rich snowbirds outta Orlando and snapping up what the heirs don't get, just like I'm trying to do in La Plomo. "

"If you nuke Orlando, Florida, I guarantee you the heirs will sell out to you for ten cents on the dollar."

"I figure a nickel. Times are tough. I can't afford ten. Then I'm gonna rename the place Swindellburg. Catchy, huh?"

"That's your business," Taggert said flatly. "What's in it for me?"

"I got this here industrial park just sitting out in New Jersey, on the banks of the Hudson, without any tenants," Swindell said, thinking of a property he had acquired in boom times, unaware the ground was contaminated with PCB's. "I'll sign title over to you. And you do with it what you want-rent, sublease, subdivide, name your poison."

"Sounds fair. You know, this is better than taking cash."

"It's called trading up, and it's how I made my empire."

"So where do I find Sky Bluel?"

"She made the news the other night. That's your lead."

"Got it. One last thing."

Swindell smiled into the phone. With his free hand he eased a silver Waterman pen from his inner jacket pocket.

"You're about to ask me about poor, departed Horace Feely," he suggested smoothly.

"Departed?"

"He helped me with the bomb, just like he did my dirty work buyin' all that poison gas. Which is more than I can say for some."

"You hired me to find, not acquire. That's why I only charged a finder's fee."

Swindell fingered the cap off the pen. Instead of a nib, a slim hollow-nosed needle gleamed in its place. And in the clear reservoir tube, a vile yellow liquid sloshed.

"So anyway," he said absently, "seein' as how he was makin' blackmail noises, I gave him a little squirt of gas. Got me a pen tricked out to deliver it. I just shoved that sucker up the other sucker's nostril and gave him what-for. Answer your question?"

"It does."

The line went dead.

Connors Swindell hung up the phone. He exhaled a hot breath. This was getting deeper. First murder, then dealing in nukes, now kidnapping, but if he was going to survive the real-estate slump of the nineties, he had to take steps.

And hell, it wasn't that much worse than some of the things he had pulled in his used-car days, rolling back odometers and selling cars with defective brakes. A few more folks died, was all.

He capped his custom Waterman and returned it to his inside jacket pocket. He was down to his last squirt of Lewisite. No telling when he might have to fall back on it.

Chapter 19

Don Cooder entered the network studio in lower Manhattan wearing the same unflinching expression that stared down ninety million American TV viewers each weeknight at seven o'clock--six-thirty central time.

The program director met him, waving a sheaf of papers and shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Don! Where on earth have you been? The brass want to know what's going on with tonight's Twenty-four Hours installment, and I don't know what to tell them."

"Tell them," Don Cooder said forcefully, "we're working on the most explosive edition ever."

"But the promos!" the program director moaned, hurrying after him. "We don't have any promos to air!"

"That's what I came down for," Cooder bit out.

"What about the script?"

"No script. It's all live, all spontaneous, in the Don Cooder tradition."

That comment stopped the program director in his tracks. Although the highest-paid anchor in the business, Don Cooder was not renowned for his smooth extemporaneous delivery. In fact, without a script his demeanor was closer to that of a pregnant bride walking down the aisle.

Visions of sixty minutes of impending prime-time disaster flashed through his mind as he followed Cooder to the familiar Evening News with Don Cooder set. Cooder signaled a cameraman and the set became active. Lights blazed. Cameras dollied in.

Cooder marched over to a stool and perched on it. He was into stools this year, his previous attempt to be different-standing before a global map like a wrapped-too-tight geography teacher-had flopped worse than the much-ridiculed sweater-vest gimmick.

Taking a deep breath, the program director threw him a cue. The red light went on. Don Cooder gave the camera lens a challenging look.

"Tonight on Twenty-four Hours," he intoned, "you will see, live for the first time on network television, an armed neutron bomb capable of obliterating New York City. And, too, you will meet the high-school girl who built it. Are our high-school students building deadly nuclear devices under our very noses? The answers tonight, on Twenty-four Hours. Be there. Or be square."

The program director wore shock on his face like baby powder.

"Don," he gasped. "Say it's a joke. Please, Don. I know you don't have a sense of humor, but lie if you have to."

"Don Cooder never jokes," Don Cooder growled.

Without another word, he left the studio and the building, confident that by the next rating book he would be the top network anchor in the universe.

The Twenty-four Hours promotion was aired four times that day. Twice during the local evening news, once during the Evening News with Don Cooder, and again in the dead half-hour before local programming gave way to eight o'clock and the start of prime time.

All across the nation, millions of people saw that promo.

Calvin Taggert, in a New York bar, where he had followed an intricate trail to Sky Bluel's current whereabouts, was the first. Unable to locate Bluel, Taggert had bugged her parents' telephone. From the cryptic twice-daily calls the girl had made, he figured out she was somewhere in Manhattan. So he had caught the red-eye and hit the bricks.

Sky Bluel had let slip something about a very important national TV news appearance. Taggert swiftly cased the various network headquarters buildings without result. So he had repaired to a bar for a quick J ocks before resuming the search.

There Don Cooder's hard-bitten voice jumped out of the bar TV like a western gunfighter calling on an owlhoot to draw.

"There is a God," Taggert breathed, finishing his drink in a gulp. Slapping down a generous tip, he rushed outside to hail a cab.

Barry Kranish, sipping a jagua-juice cocktail after his second visit to his urologist, also caught the promo.

He lay in bed, propped up with five pillows-sore from the flexible scope the urologist had burrowed into his tender urethra in a futile search for bloodsucking catfish-and watched local news recaps of the decimation of Dirt First!!

The urologist, who had assured Kranish there were no candiru lurking in his gallbladder, had prescribed two Valium and a month's rest.

"I am not overworked," Kranish had protested.

"Once these candiru get into the gallbladder, there's almost no way to dislodge them. I don't want to end up as a catfish's last meal. The rain forest needs me."

"I can understand your concern," the doctor said soothingly. "Your fine organization decimated, naturally you'd be depressed, overwrought. Take the Valium. "

"I only use natural antidepressants," Kranish spat, storming out. He bought a five-gallon can of double-chocolate ice cream on the way home.

As he watched TV, licking chocolate off a natural wood spoon, he wondered why his mood hadn't improved. Chocolate had never failed him before. Maybe it was artificial.

Kranish perked up at the stentorian blare of the Twenty-four Hours promo. He had always liked Don Cooder, especially after he had saved the humpback whale. Too bad the guy came across as such a stiff, always trying to sound hip when he wasn't.

Kranish absorbed the promo in stony silence. When it was over, he looked like a poster boy for the genetically stunned.

His mouth opened. "Neutron bomb?" he croaked.

His mind went back to the events of the last five days. The attack by those crazed would-be infiltrators. He knew now they were government plants. Even if the Asian one didn't exactly affect the button-down look. But the skinny guy had had pig written all over him.

That experience was shocking enough, but when the FBI later showed up at his door, spattered with pigeon guano, demanding to know about the Dirt First!! protest at Connors Swindell's Condome construction site, Kranish angrily got into the agents' collective faces.

"I happen to be Dirt First's legal counsel," he had told them indignantly. "And I deny any specific knowledge of any organized Dirt First!! protests. And even if I did, I claim client confidentiality. So just tell me where I go to bail them out."

"The morgue," he was told. The oinker FBI agent seemed almost pleased to relay the terrible news.

Woodenly Barry Kranish had gone to the morgue. He emerged shaking with the realization that he was a general without soldiers. And all-at least if the FBI could be believed-because the noble ecowarriors of Dirt First!! had attempted to save the oppressed desert scorpion and its precious abode.

After bailing himself out, Barry Kranish had returned to Dirt First!! headquarters and his private digs to avenge their deaths.

He had had no idea how to pursue vengeance. He was, after all, kind of a mellow guy. Managing finances was more in his line.

But as he watched the Twenty-four Hours promo, it all came together. Whatever had gone awry, it all started with that upstart girl Sky Bluel and her environmentally reckless neutron bomb. Kranish knew all about the horrors of the neutron bomb. He had voted for Jimmy Carter. Twice.

A plan began to form in his mind. One that would avenge his fallen comrade, protect the scorpion, and reclaim the desert from selfish, sand-disturbing, encroaching humanity.

Leaping out of bed, Barry Kranish hopped into his jeans. He left the tub of double chocolate melting on the bedclothes.

Let the bull cockroaches have it, he thought. They deserved some happiness too. Bless their endangered little feelers. Someday, after they had inherited the planet from doomed humankind, they would remember him.

Dr. Harold W. Smith had the soul of an accountant.

He believed in a place for every paper clip, and every paper clip in its place. He swore by the bottom line. "Two plus two equals four" was an article of faith with him. These were just the least of the reasons a young President had, many years ago, selected him to head CURE.

Frowning before his Folcroft computer, Smith realized things were not adding up.

It had been five days since Remo and Chiun had returned from California with the harmless beryllium-oxide tamper. The FBI investigation of Dirt First!! had continued to progress slowly.

Backtracking to La Plomo, they had taken possession of the half-naked corpse found beside Sky Bluel's pickup truck, with its puzzling headband imprint.

The official autopsy report had come in. According to an FBI forensics team, the still-unidentified man had been killed by a tiny but lethal exposure to Lewisite-the same deadly gas that had killed the inhabitants of La Plomo, Missouri. Oddly, only one lung was affected. But it had been enough.

Yet the time of death had been several weeks after the La Plomo incident. The very day Remo had found the body, in fact.

It was a troubling anomaly, Smith decided. It meant the architects of the La Plomo massacre had not exhausted their poison-gas supply, as Smith had assumed. And hoped.

Why, then, had Dirt First!! gone to such lengths to acquire a neutron bomb? And why had they taken it, of all places, to the Condome construction site?

Smith had done a background check of the Condome project. He uncovered very little he had not already read in the papers. The papers were full of the project, which had been greeted with general derision as the crackpot scheme of a desperate developer.

Connors Swindell was very close to bankruptcy, Smith learned after infiltrating the bank computer records of his primary lender. Sixty days away from default at the very most. And Connors Swindell had been personally besieged by countless lawsuits. Their exact nature was unclear. Probably environmental-impact nuisance suits, he decided.

This much did add up. A stop-work decree was imminent. The Condome project was doomed.

So why had Dirt First targeted Swindell? Smith wondered once more. The question nagged him.

It was still nagging him when the call came in from Reno.

"Smitty, I think we have trouble."

"What's this?" Smith asked.

"I have the TV on right now. Listen to this."

Over the phone Harold Smith heard the tinny voice of Don Cooder babbling about a live neutron bomb. That was all he needed to hear.

"Remo, come back," Smith said urgently. "Explain this."

"Remember Sky Bluel?" Remo asked.

"Of course. I have had the FBI looking for her all week."

"They should watch more TV. She's going to be on Twenty-four Hours tonight, showing off her latest toy. She built another one, Smitty. "

"Disturbing, but not critical. The last one had no core."

"According to Cooder, this one is live and he's gonna broadcast it live. Everyone knows the guy's desperate for ratings. He might just detonate it, too. "

"Preposterous, Remo. But for the good of the country, Sky Bluel must not go on the air tonight."

"I'll get on it," Remo said. "I thought this assignment was all over with. I just hope Swindell doesn't show up again."

"Connors Swindell?" Smith inquired. "Why would he?"

"Well, he was at La Plomo and again at the Condome site."

Smith's voice became sharp and tangy. "Remo. You never told me you met Connors Swindell in Missouri."

"Sure, I did. He was the condom salesman who talked like a realtor. I mentioned him."

"Not by name."

"Pardon me for losing my scorecard," Remo said acidly. "This hasn't exactly been an uncomplicated assignment."

"What was Swindell doing at La Plomo?"

"I think he saw it as a chance to make a big killing, real-estate-wise."

"How odd," Smith said slowly.

"I don't think so. He goes to Missouri to grab some bargains. Dirt First!! was there, too. They get upstaged by Sky Bluel and her traveling nuclear device, and since Swindell was throwing his business cards in everyone's face, they get the idea to give him some grief. Kinda like a consolation prize. It fits."

"Possibly," Smith said distantly. "Remo, take charge of Sky Bluel and the device. I will work on other scenarios."

"What other scenarios? I solved the mystery. End of story."

"Later," Smith said, hanging up. He returned to his computer.

A new anomaly had been introduced into the equation. Whether it would cause the equation to balance or force Smith to rewrite the entire formula depended on what else his computers unearthed on Connors Swindell.

In his Rye, New York, home, Remo Williams hung up the telephone.

He padded over to the big-screen TV before which the Master of Sinanju sat, eating cold rice from a wooden bowl and watching a taped British soap opera. He wore a royal purple kimono.

"Smith wants me to collect Sky Bluel and her latest bomb before New York is turned into a ghost town," Remo said solicitously. Then he made one of the most costly mistakes of his life. "Why don't you just sit this one out? Until you're feeling better?"

The Master of Sinanju tapped the remote control. The picture froze, flickering in distortion.

His trembling head swiveled toward Remo. "Do you think that because I am approaching the venerated age, I have grown too infirm to accompany you on Emperor Smith's business?"

"It's not that," Remo protested. "It's just that you've been moping around the house ever since we got back from California. I don't think you're in the best frame of mind to-"

"Do not lie to me, Remo Williams. I know only too well how whites treat their aged. They hide them in terrible homes, as if ashamed of those who gave them life. I will not be so treated. No tiresome home will be my fate."

"Retirement," Remo corrected. "Retirement home."

"No retirement home will be my fate," Chiun repeated, coming to his feet like uncoiling colored smoke. "I will accompany you."

"Age before beauty," Remo said jokingly, bowing so Chiun could precede him out the front door.

The Master of Sinanju slammed the door after him so hard Remo couldn't get it open again and, cursing himself, had to exit the house through a window.

Chapter 20

Sky Bluel couldn't make up her mind.

Should she wear the fringed buckskin jacket over torn blue jeans or go for the peasant-blouse look?

The limousine was due any minute. Her latest neutron bomb sat in the bathroom, every shaped plastique charge in place and locked so no one could mess with it. She wore the only key around her neck. Without it, the bomb could not be neutralized. But her thoughts weren't on the bomb, which was almost twice the size of the previous device. Instead, Sky tried to decide what kind of statement she wanted to make. Fringed buckskin evoked the sixties of draft-card-burning. The peasant blouse was more Age of Aquarius sixties. Not nearly radical enough.

She modeled the buckskin in front of the full-length bathroom-door mirror, humming the theme from Hair and looking forward to leaving the hotel. Even if it was for a stuffy TV studio.

Finally she decided to go with the buckskin. That important choice made, the only remaining question was whether to go with body paint or a copper peace symbol mounted on a rawhide headband. Body paint seemed tacky, but maybe it would take the edge off the buckskin.

Barry Kranish had it narrowed down to the white limousine idling in front of the network building or the black limousine parked around back.

He knew Sky Bluel was not in the building itself. Kranish had found this out in a most direct manner. He had walked up to the main-entrance guard, flashed his business card, and announced he had a subpoena for Sky Bluel.

"And unless your network wants to be slapped with a lawsuit for obstruction of justice," he had said darkly, "somebody had better produce her." For effect, he waved his rental-car agreement under the guard's nose. There was no subpoena.

The desk guard summoned the head of security, who in turn called down a network vice-president.

"The person you are seeking is not in the building," the vice-president informed him stiffly. "At present."

"Where is she, then?" Kranish had demanded.

"I can't reveal that without jeopardizing the First Amendment rights of the press and possibly toppling the republic."

"This is not over," Kranish warned, storming from the building. On his way out, he bumped into a casually dressed man loitering by the door.

"Excuse me," the man said in a tone that carried no apology.

"Shove it," Kranish said, brushing past the man. He had security written all over him. Or maybe private heat. The coplike eyes and thick-soled brogans were dead giveaways.

The fact that the man abruptly stubbed out his cigarette and left the building a few paces behind him clinched it.

Barry Kranish had not gotten the answer he'd hoped for, but he had gotten the one he expected.

Sky Bluel was not in the building. That only meant that she soon would be.

As he waited in his rental car on the busy Manhattan street, Kranish decided on the white limousine. The liveried chauffeur at the wheel looked impatient. He was probably waiting to be told where to pick up the girl. So he settled down to wait. He noticed the private security guard now loitering by the studio entrance, smoking casually and eyeing both the idling limo and Barry Kranish with shifty half-intelligent eyes.

Kranish decided to keep his eye on him too. No telling where he might fit in when things started happening. Not that he was worried about a private dick. He had hired enough of them to get dirt on his political enemies to understand the breed.

Calvin Taggert sucked down a hot cloud of smoke and blew it out one nostril, paused, and then emptied his lungs through the other. It was a trick he had learned watching forties movies.

It was a good break, he decided, that he had overheard that lawyer pump the front guard about Sky Bluel. After repeated attempts to buy off assorted security and maintenance people, he had come up with nothing. Time was wasting. Once the girl got on TV, she would become the focus of every reporter from here to Alaska, and a thousand times harder to snatch.

He figured the white limousine idling by the door was there to pick her up.

So he settled down to wait, noticing that the lawyer was up to the same thing. But Calvin Taggert wasn't worried about the lawyer. Still, he would keep an eye on him too. His eyes looked a little feverish, like he was on drugs or something.

When it came, the break he had hoped for practically stepped up and shook Calvin Taggert's hand.

It was twenty minutes to eight, twenty minutes to air time for Twenty-four Hours. He was starting to wonder if he should check the back when Don Cooder himself emerged from the studio building and stepped up to the chauffeur, who sat patiently behind the wheel.

"Okay," he said, leaning down to speak in the chauffeur's ear, "it's the Penta. Go get her."

Cooder gave the roof an urgent slap, and the limousine pulled away from the curb. Calvin Taggert raced to his rental car and threw himself behind the wheel. He cut off a Federal Express truck and sideswiped a taxi getting the car into the flow of traffic. Despite this, he managed to position himself only three car lengths behind the limousine. He spotted the lawyer's car jockeying behind the limo. That didn't worry him. What was a lawyer going to do? Threaten him with the sharp edge of a subpoena?

Sky Bluel had just finished daubing a passion-purple peace symbol on her right cheek when the hotel-room phone rang.

It was the front desk. "Your driver is here, miss."

"Fab, send him up," Sky said, closing her paintbox. The daisy she intended to adorn the tip of her nose would have to await a better time.

The man who buzzed was not a chauffeur, Sky saw as she opened the door. Instead of a chauffeur's uniform, or even a suit, he wore green work pants and a jersey.

"You're my driver?" she said doubtfully.

"Not me," the man rumbled. "I'm a studio stagehand. The driver's downstairs." His gorillalike arms dangled loose at his sides. He looked like a dockworker, not a TV person, Sky thought.

"I guess you get to carry my pride and joy," Sky said, stepping aside. "It's in the tub."

"Thanks." The big guy lumbered into the bathroom, where he found the neutron device balanced across the porcelain rim. Wrapping huge paws around either end of the electronics-studded breadboard mounting, he lifted it straight up.

Carrying it like an oversize serving dish, he duck-walked out into the corridor.

"What the hell is this thing?" he complained as Sky closed the door behind them.

"It's a neutron bomb, okay? So don't drop it."

"You have my solemn word on that," he said in a thin voice.

As the elevator descended, Sky Bluel had stars in her eyes. She had stars on her face too, but she absently scratched her chin and obliterated both of them.

After tonight, she thought, a whole generation would march behind her, in lockstep, into the future.

"You remember the sixties?" she asked excitedly.

"Not me. I lived through them."

"Well, the sixties are coming back, and I'm going to be the next Jane Fonda. Isn't that absolutely boss?"

The studio worker stifled a laugh. Sky frowned. Maybe "boss" was more fifties slang. She would have to ask her father when she got home.

There were no parking spaces.

"Damn!" Calvin Taggert said bitterly, circling the block with reckless disregard for pedestrians. The white limo was still outside the Penta Hotel, still idling, still empty. But time was running out. He would have to start making moves soon or he could kiss that nice Missouri retirement home good-bye.

He passed the lawyer's car. The lawyer was a real amateur. He was staring out the windshield, craning his head to keep the hotel entrance in sight. For some strange reason, he had smeared his face with brown jungle camouflage paint or something. He was so obvious, he might as well have worn a neon cowbell.

Taggert flipped him the finger in passing.

Barry Kranish clutched the steering wheel in a brown-knuckled death grip. His knuckles were brown because that was the color of the river mud he had plunged them into before slapping his face into a ball of unrecognizable gunk. In his heart he swelled with newfound respect for his fallen Dirt First!! comrades. For one thing, the smell would make a maggot puke.

Guerrilla ectotage was scarier than he'd thought. He wondered what would happen to him if he were captured. Who would bail him out? Maybe he would be forced to defend himself. He shivered.

While he was turning the dire possibilities over in his mind, the hotel's massive revolving door started to turn.

Kranish reached for the car-door lever. Then the girl stepped out, looking like a walking LSD flashback, followed by the liveried chauffeur.

"The bomb!" Kranish moaned, pounding the steering wheel. "Where's the damn bomb?"

Calvin Taggert turned the corner and his heart leapt up into his throat, forcing a curse out ahead of it.

"Shit! There she is."

He looked frantically for a parking slot. Since the hotel faced Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station, parking was almost impossible. He sent the car around for a final pass. The girl was walking to the limo now. Once she got inside, it would be infinitely harder to nail her.

Then the side door opened and a beefy man carrying an oversize electronic device backed out. Clumsily he turned around and almost lost his balance. His face went white.

"Be careful!" Sky Bluel shouted. "Don't break it! You'll ruin everything!"

The chauffeur came to the rescue. He leapt to the other man's side and lent a supporting hand.

"Okay, I got it," the beefy man said, gingerly lugging the device to the open trunk of the waiting limousine.

"Looks like it's now or never," Taggert muttered, pulling a rayon stocking over his head.

When the neutron bomb almost slipped from the beefy guy's hands, Barry Kranish made his move. Dripping mud, he plunged from the car carrying a railroad spike by its pointed end. He lifted it high.

Then a car suddenly screeched out of traffic and lunged up on the wide sidewalk, heading right for the chauffeur.

"Stop!" the chauffeur bleated.

The car didn't stop.

Before he knew what had hit him, the car grille picked up the chauffeur and carried him right into the unyielding hotel facade. He bounced off and his upper body landed on the hood, broken legs pinned between the bumper and the building.

Sky Bluel screamed. She called to the beefy stagehand from the studio.

"Don't just stand there, do something!"

No answer. She tore her eyes away from the body and looked back.

The beefy guy lay sprawled on the sidewalk, his head spurting red fluid like a spasmodic squirt gun.

"God, this is worse than Kent State!" she moaned.

Another man had the neutron bomb, Sky saw to her mounting horror. Holding one end up by both hands, he was dragging the board along the sidewalk. There was mud everywhere.

"Stop! That's my bomb. What are you doing with my bomb?"

"Get a generation," the man called back, spitting brown droplets.

Desperate, Sky Bluel looked around for help. A man in a rumpled suit stepped from the car that had pinned the chauffeur. He looked like some kind of plainclothes cop, so Sky swallowed her pride and said, "See that man? That's my property he's stealing."

"Too bad," the man said in a cold voice. He was balling a handkerchief up in one hand. The other held a clear bottle, which he unscrewed with the flick of a strong thumb.

Looking fierce, the man capped the bottle with the cloth and upended it. It reminded Sky of old movies where the bad guy would chloroform an intended victim. They were pre-sixties movies and the women always acted helpless and screamed. It was too regressive for words, so Sky had always changed the channel at those parts. Consequently, she had no idea how to react now.

She decided to run. Too late.

The man caught her by the braided rawhide thong around her neck. The handkerchief jammed into her mouth and nose and the smell was like a really bad trip. Although the colors were interesting.

Sky Bluel fought the mounting odor that filled her lungs. She clutched at the strong hand. It might as well have been stone. Struggling, she snapped the rawhide thong, but by then it was too late. Far too late.

Sky was unconscious before the man gathered her up in his arms and threw her into the passenger seat of his car. He slid behind the wheel. The car backed up, hurling the dead chauffeur to the sidewalk, where he sustained several posthumous contusions, and vanished in traffic.

It went north. The car being driven by Barry Kranish went west. When the police arrived several minutes later, the overlapping descriptions of the fleeing cars they got from passersby tied them up a solid hour while they sorted it all out.

By the time they realized they were dealing with two separate assailants driving two different cars, the trail had gotten too cold to pick up.

When Don Cooder received the news from the pair of stone-faced police officers that not only had he no neutron bomb to stun the nation on tonight's Twenty-four Hours, but also his featured guest, Sky Bluel, had been abducted, he did not flinch.

He told the two police officers who had come to question him, "Could you excuse me for a moment, please?" and went into his office.

Twenty minutes later, the impatient police barged in.

They found Don Cooder hiding under his desk, a shell-shocked expression on his face, repeating something unintelligible over and over in a thick voice. He was unintelligible because he had his thumb in his mouth.

"What's that he's saying?" one cop asked the other.

"Sounds like 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' "

"Sounds like we came to the wrong place," Remo whispered to Chiun as he absorbed the police account of the double abduction.

"There are more wrong places than this," Chiun said coldly.

They had been at the studio more than an hour. After slipping into the building and ascertaining that Sky Bluel was not there, they had decided to wait in the concealment of a darkened morningshow set.

The arrival of the police and the commotion that followed-particularly the anguished cries of a program director when he realized he had neither star, nor guest, nor material for the evening broadcast of Twenty-four Hours-made them realize something had gone wrong.

"What is the meaning of 'What is the frequency, Kenneth?' " Chiun asked as they exited the studio unseen.

"One of the two early-warning signs of an impending nervous breakdown," Remo explained.

"And what is the other?"

"Finding yourself dead last in the ratings."

They went immediately to the Penta entrance, which was only then being cordoned off with yellow police-barrier tape.

There they mingled with the crowd, picking up snatches of overheard exchanges between newly arrived detectives and witnesses. A detective was dropping a rawhide cord into a clear evidence bag.

"Sounds like they got Sky and the bomb," Remo muttered.

"Who are 'they'?" Chiun asked darkly.

"Damned if I know," Remo spat. "Maybe Cooder set this up. Anything is possible with that guy."

"This is obviously the handiwork of the same perpetrators as before," Chiun said, regarding the sprawled bodies. Both were draped by sheets, except that the head of one had been uncovered by a medical examiner for the benefit of a morgue photographer.

"How?" Remo said. "The Dirt Firsters all bit the dirt-so to speak. Except that screwball lawyer, Kranish. And this isn't his style. It must have been someone else. Terrorists who saw the news promo, or the Dirt Firsters' military connection."

"Behold that dead man, Remo," Chiun intoned, indicating the body with the exposed face. "Does he not remind you of someone?"

Remo looked. "No"

"Look closer. At his forehead."

Remo did. He saw a faint line circling the man's brow.

"Hey! Just like the dead guy we found in Missouri. See, Chiun? That proves it. He was a Dirt Firster. He musta lost his headband when he got run over."

"Then whose cap is that?" Chiun asked pointedly.

Remo followed Chiun's pointing finger. He saw the plain brown cap lying crushed on the sidewalk.

"Is that a military cap?" he asked.

"I do not think so. There is no insignia."

"I gotta check this out," Remo said, stepping over the police-barrier tape.

None of the detectives noticed him as he picked up the cap and stepped up to the corpse. The morgue photographer had gone over to the other body.

"Excuse me, pal," Remo told the corpse politely, whipping the sheet away. His eyes blinked at the sight of a chauffeur's brown livery. "Chauffeur?" he muttered blankly. To be sure, he lifted the man's inert head and tried out the cap. It was a perfect fit.

"Damn," Remo muttered, standing up. "A freaking chauffeur."

That got him noticed by the police.

"Hey! Who the hell are you?" the plainclothes detective with the evidence bag demanded.

"FBI," Remo said, offering a card from his wallet.

"This card says you're an EPA investigator," the detective said belligerently, "and I say you're under arrest."

"You got me," Remo said, offering his thick wrists.

The detective reached into his coat for his handcuffs. Somehow he got tangled up and found himself on the sidewalk, his left wrist cuffed to his right ankle.

He called for help, but the crime-scene team were all busy chasing his thick-wristed attacker into the crowd.

Later, when they returned empty-handed, wearing hangdog expressions, they were in no mood to add the incident to their official reports.

Once the detective had been freed of his own handcuffs, they put it to a vote. The decision was unanimous.

They never saw any thick-wristed man. Ever.

Chapter 21

Sky Bluel heard the voices talking as if through a dreamy purple haze.

There were two voices. One-the tough one-was saying, "She's coming around now. You can tell by the quick intake of air."

"Looks kinda like a rodeo performer, don't she?" the other voice said. It was unctuous and familiar, although Sky couldn't quite place it.

Sky opened her eyes. At first she thought her vision was out of focus. The men were hovering directly over her, but their faces were twin pinkish blurs.

Then she realized both wore rayon stockings over their heads, which distorted their features into unrecognizability.

"Where am I?" Sky asked anxiously, pushing herself up from the cot, catching her falling granny glasses in one hand. "Is this a happening?"

"Little lady, don't you fret. You're in a safe place." The unctuous one had said that. He was shorter and wider than the other, and wore white buck shoes. It was definitely not a happening.

"If this is a safe place, why are you two dressed like Brinks bandits?" Sky demanded.

"Don't sweat it. Once you build me a neutron bomb or two, we'll set you free to do whatever you wanna. "

"Another bomb!" Sky shouted. "I just built one for Don Cooder!"

"What's she babbling about?" the unctuous voice asked the hard voice.

"That musta been what the other guy took."

"What other guy?"

"When I snatched the girl, someone else snatched this big silver thing," the hard-voiced man explained.

"Silver thing? Like a big golf ball wired up to a board?"

"It was more the size of a medicine ball."

The shorter man smacked a fist into a meaty palm, saying, "Damn! Why didn't you heist it too?"

"You said you wanted the girl."

"To build me a bomb, gumshoe! You heard her. She already had another bomb. Hell, you could've snatched the bomb and whacked her, for all I care."

"How was I to know?" the other man said in surly tones. "I never saw a neutron bomb before in my entire life."

"Can I go now?" Sky ventured.

"No!" both voices said in unison.

"What's this other guy look like?" Unctuous asked Hard Voice.

"He was filthy. Like he stepped out from a swamp." "A Dirt Firster!"

"He might have been a street person. We were just across the street from Penn Station."

"Never mind that. We gotta get that bomb. It'll save me a whole pile of time."

"I don't like where this conversation is going," Sky Bluel said uneasily. "I'm getting this really freaked out feeling."

Dr. Harold W. Smith had exhausted the resources of the CURE computers. So he had fallen back on the telephone. Under the guise of being a bank-loan investigator, he had learned a great deal about Connors Swindell.

The chief source of information was Constance Payne, Swindell's secretary.

"He's a genius," she was saying. "Ouch!"

"What is the matter?" Smith asked.

"I stabbed by thumb again. They must be making these condom things thinner or something."

Smith cleared his throat, wondering if he had called at a bad time. "If we could get back to Mr. Swindell's references."

"Well, you know all about the Condome. The Western Arid Bank has the note on that. Let's see . . ."

"Does Mr. Swindell have another long-term employee I could speak to?"

"Well, there was Horace."

"Was?"

"Horace Feely. He was Con's-I mean Mr. Swindell's-chauffeur, but he quit suddenly, while they were in Missouri."

"Did you say chauffeur?" Smith asked suddenly.

"Yeah. He and Con go back years, which was why I thought it was so strange for him to quit like that."

"Do you know his current whereabouts?"

"If you mean Con, he just left for San Francisco."

"I meant Horace," said Smith.

"Search me, honey. He hasn't called for his check."

"Thank you."

Smith hung up and initiated a global computer search for Horace Feely. He was rewarded with a digitized photo and a rap sheet that showed Horace Feely had been a habitual criminal up until 1977, when was released from Folsum State Prison on a breaking-and-entering charge to enter the employ of a sponsor, one Connors Swindell.

It was not the record that interested Harold Smith. It was the photo. It showed a younger version of the dead body Remo had found in Missouri. The same man pictured in FBI wanted posters for having acquired the Lewisite gas that later wiped out the population of La Plomo, Missouri.

And suddenly the numbers began to tally up.

Smith picked up the phone and, calling himself Colonel Smith, got a patch-through to a military-airlift-command line.

"Remo. Smith here."

"So who's right? Chiun or me?" Remo asked. In the background, Smith heard the thundering drone of aircraft engines. After they had reported to him their failure in Manhattan, he had ordered them into the air while he confirmed his growing suspicions.

"It may be more complicated than that," Smith told him. "The Missouri body was a chauffeur, after all. He was Connors Swindell's personal chauffeur. He was not military, not Dirt First!!"

"Does that mean Dirt First!! had no part in any of this?"

"Not exactly. From eyewitness descriptions I've gleaned, it is obvious that a Dirt First!! operative took possession of the Bluel girl's latest device."

"I'm not sure I'm following this," Remo muttered.

"I did say it was complicated," Smith said.

"Uncomplicate it for me."

"Remo," Smith said urgently, "I think we have been wrong in many of our deductions. I have been looking deeper into Connors Swindell's recent activities. There are many puzzling factors. For one thing, he is being bombarded with paternity suits."

"That wouldn't surprise me if he uses his own givaways," Remo muttered, recalling the pierced condom he had examined in La Plomo.

"These suits are all instigated by men," Smith said.

"You get what you pay for," Remo said dryly. "What else?"

"Swindell has been approaching the surviving relatives about buying up distressed La Plomo property."

"So? He's a real-estate speculator. That's his business."

"But he has already signed purchase agreements on twenty-six lots and is in active negotiation over dozens more. Remo, he is on his way to buying up the entire town, lock, stock, and barrel. And he is getting excellent bargains."

Remo frowned. "You don't mean Swindell was behind La Plomo?"

"I'm not prepared to conclude that. But it's the only scenario in which Swindell's dead chauffeur fits."

"So do we go to Palm Springs and grab Swindell," Remo asked, "or San Francisco and grab the neutron bomb from what's left of Dirt First?"

Smith was silent. The picture was still very confused. He would have to make an imperfect decision, and they were always dangerous.

"According to his secretary, Swindell left for San Francisco just hours ago," Smith said at last. "It's possible he's in cahoots with Dirt First!!-bizarre as that may sound. Go there."

"It sounds ridiculous," Remo growled, "but it's all we have."

In the rear of the C-130 transport, Remo hung up the phone.

"We're going to San Francisco," he told the Master of Sinanju, watching for a reaction.

Chiun nodded. The tightly etched wrinkles of his face faded with relief. His ivory countenance had been the bloodless hue of bone. Now it suffused with color again. "Great is my joy upon hearing your words," said the Master of Sinanju. "I will so inform the pilot."

"Be my guest," Remo said, staring at Chiun's retreating figure. The Master of Sinanju had actually been terrified of returning to Palm Springs. Well, Remo thought, that won't happen now. And whatever happened, Remo would be there to protect his teacher.

Barry Kranish was packing when the downstairs buzzer intruded. He let it buzz. If it was trouble, why let it in? If it wasn't, there was no one Barry Kranish cared to see on his last night in San Francisco. He threw his last bottle of jagua juice into the suitcase and closed it tight.

The buzzing stopped. Kranish lugged two overstuffed suitcases downstairs to the lobby, where an addled woodsy owl hung upside down in its cage and Venezuelan bull roaches ranged freely. Just as it should be.

The two men with the stockings over their heads were not. One held a revolver in his fist. It was pointed at Barry.

"Let's go for a ride," the gunman said in a smoky Humphrey Bogart voice.

"Where?"

"To wherever you put that neutron bomb." This came from the other one. He sounded like Joe Isuzu on meds.

"I'll never tell!" Kranish spat, letting the suitcases fall. "You can do anything you want. Even wild candiru couldn't suck it out of me!"

"I can fix that attitude," the gunman said. "I do it all the-"

Noticing a cockroach scuttling by his feet, he carelessly lifted a brogan to crush out its tiny life.

"No!" Barry Kranish said, dropping to his knees. "That's a bull cockroach. Please don't harm it. I'll tell you anything!"

If it were possible for a man wearing a stocking mask to register an incredulous expression, this one did. But he recovered from his surprise fast enough to spit out, "Then talk quick or the bug gets it."

"Yeah," the other added. "Then we'll do the owl. "

"Not the owl!" Kranish cried. His pain woke the threatened bird. Its wings thrashed in panic. "Palm Springs! It's down in Palm Springs!"

"Why there?" The owl-endangerer put that question forward.

"It's a blot on the perfect sanctity of the delicate desert."

"Palm Springs? A blot?"

"It should be stamped out forever so the sands can blow freely," Barry Kranish said passionately. "So the cactus can spread its needles without fear. So the scorpion may dance in the dust devils, as it did before the white man came despoiling."

"Okay, here's the old sixty-four-thousand-dollar question," asked the man with the Joe Isuzu voice. "Where is the bomb?"

"I hid it in a hotel room."

"Why there?"

"So no one would bother it until it detonates. Actually, I really wanted to nuke that Condome, but I couldn't get a rental car. The agency was closed because of an unexpected death."

"Christ! You armed it?" This from the gunman.

"It's the only way to get the message of Dirt First!! to the world. Over the next five days, media outlets all over America will begin receiving Dirt First!! faxes. If Palm Springs is not razed and restored in its natural barren splendor, then the device will detonate and only the ecologically insensitive will perish."

"The nuke won't go up for five days?" asked the man with the oily salesman's voice.

"That's right."

"Okay, that gives us plenty of time to get to it." The gunman waggled his revolver in the direction of the open front door. "Let's take a little trip."

Obligingly the owl-threatener led the way. Kranish followed. The masked gunman fell in behind him.

On the way out, Kranish heard a tiny crunch. He winced, hoping the insensitive gunman hadn't harmed one of nature's most perfect creatures. It would be one less insect brain to preserve the memory of selfless Barry Kranish in the coming posthuman epoch.

Remo and Chiun arrived less than an hour later to find the front door to Dirt First!! headquarters ajar.

"Oh-oh," Remo said, motioning for the Master of Sinanju to hang back. "Looks like the barn door's open. Better let me go first."

"Over my dead body," spat the Master of Sinanju, pushing past Remo. He strode into the reception room, shaking his tiny fists and shouting at the top of his mighty lungs.

"Enemies of America, come show your villainous faces!" he cried. "The Master of Sinanju, wise in years, but still sound of limb despite his advancing years, challenges you!"

Remo rolled his eyes. "Little Father, you have nothing to prove to-"

Chiun lifted a hand for silence. He cocked one ear, then the other. "I detect no sounds. This domicile is vacant. Can your ears tell you the same story, O callow youth?"

"I'll take your word for it." Remo noticed two suitcases balanced on the winding staircase. He opened them, finding a bottle of familiar yellowbrown juice. "Looks like Kranish was about to split," he said, "and something interrupted him. Maybe the good guys, maybe the bad. Either way, it's a dead end. Come on, let's look for the bomb. Not that we'll find it."

They didn't find the bomb. But in a wastebasket next to an antique Remington typewriter, Remo dug out a crumpled ball of papers. Written on Dirt First!! stationery, they were discarded drafts of a communique warning of the imminent destruction of Palm Springs, California.

The Master of Sinanju drifted in while Remo was reading these drafts.

"You have found something?" he asked.

"No," Remo said hastily, dropping the papers into the basket. "Just old mash notes from the Sierra Club. Looks like he abandoned ship for sure."

"Perhaps Emperor Smith may guide us," Chiun suggested.

"Good idea," Remo said quickly. "Let's find a phone."

There was one in the next room. Remo had to blow dust off the receiver before he dared pick it up. He got Smith on the first ring.

"Smitty?" he said, turning around to see if Chiun was in earshot. To his surprise, the Master of Sinanju had drifted to another room. Great, Remo thought. "Listen up, Smitty," Remo said, sotto voce. "Kranish is gone. There's no sign of Swindell. But the neutron bomb's been planted in a Palm Springs hotel. The Thousand Palms. It's set to blow in five days. "

"Remo, are you sure of this?" Smith demanded.

"I just read the rough drafts. The idiot even gave the room number in the first draft. He must be pretty confident that no one can dismantle the device."

"No one except Sky Bluel, wherever she is. Remo, go to Palm Springs immediately."

"Chiun isn't going to like this," Remo warned.

"Then leave him behind. The fact that the device is in Palm Springs points back to Connors Swindell. "

"I'll be in touch," Remo said, hanging up.

Remo found the Master of Sinanju down in the reception area, feeding live cockroaches to the fish.

"I talked to Smith," Remo began. "He says we should split up. You stay here and wait for Kranish or somebody to show. I'll grab Swindell and wring the truth out of him."

Chiun dropped a frightened cockroach into a tank and watched the fish converge on it. He kept his back to Remo.

"Do not lie to me, Remo Williams," he said severely. "I know you too well after all these years."

"Okay, you got me," Remo admitted. "The bomb is in Palm Springs. It's armed, but we have five days to disarm it. Plenty of time. Since you have a phobia about going back there, why don't I handle it?"

Chiun turned, hazel eyes narrowing. "No," he said.

"Look, what's the big deal? It's Vimu and Songjong all over again, isn't it? Okay, I'm Songjong. I'm telling you, Vimu, to stay here and guard the gold while I go into the Egyptian desert to handle the wicked pretender."

"He was a princeling, not a pretender."

"Whatever. The legend fits. Admit it. I should go and you should stay. It's a piece-of-cake gig for both of us."

Chiun's eyes squeezed down to sightless slits.

"You believe because I am old, I have grown afraid," he intoned.

"It's not that. Heck, I didn't know you were pushing a hundred until you told me. It's just that you have this thing about Palm Springs. Dealing with a nuke is tricky enough. I don't want to have to watch you too."

"I am no child who needs watching!" Chiun exploded. "I am the Reigning Master of Sinanju and I am not afraid to go into the desert, no matter what perils await."

Remo threw up his hands in surrender.

"Okay, okay! You win. Let's go. But if we miss a solid lead because of you, you get to break the bad news to Smith."

"I do not think it will be me breaking bad news to Emperor Smith," Chiun said as they walked from the rundown San Francisco Victorian. "But I go without fear, for I am unafraid. As always."

Chapter 22

Because they had military-airlift-command helicopters at their disposal, Remo and Chiun reached the Palm Springs Municipal Airport within an hour. A cab took them to the Thousand Palms Hotel, a palatial Spanish-Moorish monstrosity of stucco and red-tile roofs sprawling on the edge of the desert.

From the lobby they called Room 334 on a house phone.

"It's just ringing," Remo told the Master of Sinanju. "I don't think anyone's up there."

Chiun nodded. He looked about the lobby, as if preoccupied.

They took the elevator and followed a long curved corridor to Room 334. The lock was the key type. Remo simply put his fist to the keyhole, drew back, and punched hard once.

The door jumped inward on its hinges, the tongue of the lock having gouged out a notch in the inner doorjamb.

Before Remo could stop him, the Master of Sinanju leapt into the room. He whirled twice, in different directions, as if to deal with unseen attackers.

Then, lowering his crooked nails in disappointment, he faced Remo.

"This den of evil appears to be empty," he admitted.

"No kidding," Remo said dryly, closing the door behind him. He went around the room, checking in the bathroom and under the bed. Chiun poked about the dresser drawers, dropping the Gideon Bible into the wastebasket.

"Found it!" Remo said, flinging open a long clothes closet.

The Master of Sinanju drew up alongside him.

The neutron device gleamed like a model radome equipped with convenient carrying handles.

"I do not hear ticking," Chiun noted.

"These things don't tick," Remo said, dropping to his knees. He tested the stainless-steel handles on the shaped charges. They were locked up tight. He dismissed pulling them out by force. No telling what might result.

His eyes went to a digital counter welded to the breadboard electronics.

The digital numbers were bright red: 01:21:44.

"Looks like the countdown is definitely under way," Remo said.

"Did you not say there remained five days until this contraption explodes?" Chiun asked.

"That's what Kranish's dippy drafts said. Five days."

"If I read this correctly, this neutral device is but an hour from booming."

Remo blinked. He peered closer. "You must be mistaken, Little Father. It's five days. See the last digits, 44? That probably means 4.4 days or something like that."

But even as Remo spoke, the last two digits became 43. Then 42. Then 41.

"What do you say now?" Chiun asked.

"I think we could use a third opinion," Remo said worriedly.

As she was shoved into the back of the car, Sky Bluel collided with the man sitting in back. His eyes were too round.

"Who's he?" she asked as the two stocking-masked men got in front. The car started off. She didn't know where she was. The familiar California date palms offered no comfort. She bit her lower lip.

"That," the driver with the smoky Humphrey Bogart voice said, "is the jerk who heisted your neutron bomb."

"No way!" Sky said. "That guy needed a bath."

"Take my word for it, girlie."

"Girlie! When were you born, back in the fifties?"

"As a matter of fact-"

The other man cut in. "I hope you know how to disarm that bomb, little lady."

"Sure, I got the key right here around . . ." Sky's mouth froze in a perfect O.

"What's that?"

"Nothing," Sky Bluel said in a weak voice, feeling the absence of a key around her throat.

"I thought you said something about a key."

"Oh, right. I don't suppose you guys found my luggage key? I had it around my neck."

"Don't sweat it. Your luggage is safe in New York."

Sky Bluel swallowed. "So's the key. Probably."

They parked in a corner of the Thousand Palms Hotel lot, and Sky Bluel was pulled out of the back, along with the other captive, who hadn't spoken a solitary word during the short ride.

"Just walk ahead of us and don't turn back." A revolver nudging her ribs prodded Sky along.

They slipped in the kitchen entrance and up a flight of steps to the third floor and Room 334. While the man with the revolver held them at bay, the other man reached for the doorknob with one hand and into his coat pocket with the other.

He pulled out a hotel key and said, "This key is the only one that counts." His broad grin shone through the sheer rayon like a polished bone.

Then the doorknob was abruptly yanked inward, taking him and his smile with it. The look on his thick flattened face as he disappeared was comical.

Remo Williams released the swinging door and grabbed Connors Swindell by the back of the neck. His nails zipped up the back of Swindell's head, causing the stocking mask to peel off and drop to the floor.

"We meet again," Remo said.

With a deft twist of his wrist, he sent Swindell bouncing on the bed. The Master of Sinanju's hand slapped him once into submission.

"Watch him, Chiun," Remo said. "I'll get the others."

There were three of them, Remo discovered. Sky Bluel, Barry Kranish, and a third guy he didn't recognize, and not due to his stocking mask. His body shape was unfamiliar. This man was holding a revolver on the other two. He shifted the weapon toward Remo.

As if a revolver were no more menacing than a rolled-up newspaper, Remo pointed to the revolver with one finger.

"You don't know it, pal, but you're outgunned."

Before the gunman could complete his defiant sneer, Remo's right arm snapped forward, jamming the rigid forefinger into the gun barrel. He crooked his finger. The gun barrel broke off.

Grinning, Remo lifted the barrel, still wrapped around his finger, under the gunman's nose. The latter's eyes crossed trying to keep it in focus.

"It's fast-answer time," Remo suggested brightly.

"I . . . I'm just an employee," the gunman blurted out. "I work for Mr. Swindell. That's all! I got nothing to do with the big picture."

"Are you sure?" Remo asked politely.

"Positive. I'm a private dick. Just a cog in the machine."

"The machine," Remo said, returning the gun barrel through the surprisingly fragile bone of Calvin Taggert's forehead, "just broke down."

"Won't you step into my office?" Remo asked the others as the gunman got down on the rug and shook the life out of his body.

Sky Bluel all but jumped into the hotel room. Barry Kranish needed a push, which suited Remo just fine. He used his foot.

"Okay, people," Remo sang out, closing the door behind him. "It's show-and-tell time." He pushed the closet door open, revealing the silent neutron bomb with its screaming red digital display. "There, that's the show. Now, let's hear the tell." Remo's deadly finger waved back and forth among the three captives. "Starting with . . . " The finger stopped, pointing at Connors Swindell, sprawled on the bed, mopping his forehead. "You!"

"I'm innocent," Swindell said hastily.

"Are you sure?" Remo asked.

"Swear to God I am."

Connors Swindell sat up. He grinned the grin that had moved a million units during the last two decades. It always made people feel good.

And while his accusers were basking in his feel-good smile, Connors Swindell slipped his sopping handkerchief to his mouth and nose and went for his Waterman.

He got it out lickety-split. Thumbing the cap off, he pointed it at the skinny guy and the old Oriental. He pressed the ink trigger.

Nothing happened.

"Where's the gas?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Coming out you at both ends," Remo Williams said, snatching up the pen. He showed the yellow fluid in the ink reservoir to Chiun. "What do you think, Chiun?"

The Master of Sinanju looked from the Waterman to Swindell's profusely sweating face. "I think my judgment is vindicated. I knew he was an impostor from the first. Let this be a lesson to you, Remo."

"I don't get it," Swindell muttered thickly.

Remo showed him the hollow end of the pen. Swindell tried to draw back, but Remo took him by the hair and put his nose to the pen tip.

"It was simple," he said. "You uncapped the pen. Then you pressed the trigger."

"I know that. I was there."

"In between, I squeezed the needle flat. No bad stuff can come out now."

"That's flat impossible!" Swindell complained. "No one's that quick."

"Sue me," Remo said, shoving him flat on his back.

The Master of Sinanju interrupted. "Should we not dispose of this neutral device before we attend to these criminals?" he asked Remo.

"What's the rush?" Remo said. "We have five days before it goes off."

Sky Bluel jumped. "Five days?"

"Yeah, it's set for five days," Remo said. "Right, Kranish?"

Looking hollow-eyed, Barry Kranish spoke for the first time. "I have nothing to say until someone reads me my rights," he said thickly.

"Five days," Sky Bluel repeated. "The timer doesn't have a five-day setting." "What?" Kranish said. "I pressed five."

"How long ago?" Sky Bluel asked, her voice climbing in horror.

"I don't know. Hours ago." Kranish's voice was distracted.

"Let me see," Sky said, rushing to the device. She had to examine it only a second or two.

"Evacuate!" she shrieked. "We have to evacuate! It's going off in twenty minutes!"

"What!" Kranish said. He rushed for the door. Remo tripped him, holding him down on the rug with a foot to the back of the lawyer's neck. Kranish struggled like a pinned scorpion.

"Can you disarm it?" Remo asked Sky Bluel.

"Not the mechanism," Sky said in a miserable voice. "The only chance is to remove the plastique charges. "

"Is there enough time?"

"There is if I had the key," Sky moaned. "Which I don't."

"Why the hell not?" Remo shouted.

"Yeah, why the hell not?" Kranish echoed. Remo shut him up with a sudden pressure to his spinal column.

"I think it got lost when the other guy tried to kidnap me."

"Any other way of disarming it?"

"I could try, but there may not be enough time. And if it goes off, everybody for miles around will be killed."

Remo and Chiun exchanged glances. Remo's was anxious. The Master of Sinanju's face registered a cold acceptance of fate.

"What if we drive it out into the desert?" Remo asked Sky.

"That might save the town, but not us."

"I vote we leave it and head for the hills," Swindell piped up. Chiun silenced him with a smack from the flat of his hand.

Remo turned to Sky. "Are you game to defuse it with me?"

Sky Bluel swallowed. "It's my responsibility," she said simply.

"Chiun. We don't need you on this one."

Chiun lifted his bearded chin stubbornly. "I am coming."

"Look, I've got no time to argue with you," Remo said tensely. "We're going back out there. You stay with Swindell."

"Good idea," Connors Swindell said with relief.

Chiun reached out and lifted Connors Swindell off the bed. "No," he intoned. "Those who made this mess must be prepared to clean it up or suffer the consequences."

"All right, let's go," Remo said savagely. "There isn't time to argue." He gathered up the bomb, carrying it down in the elevator and to the waiting car.

Remo drove.

"Is there any other road into the desert that doesn't take us by the Condome?" Remo asked Swindell.

"No, that's the only one. You can drop me off if you want."

"No chance," Remo growled, flooring the gas.

He put Palm Springs behind him. In the back seat, Sky Bluel, Barry Kranish, and Connors Swindell sat, the neutron bomb distributed among their laps. Remo thought that would give them extra motivation.

"Maybe if I unscrew the electronics," Sky was saying. "Anyone have a screwdriver?"

No one did. "How about a dime?" Swindell asked, plumbing his pockets for change.

Sky used the dime. She got one screw loose. "That's one." She did not sound encouraged.

"What's the timer say?" Remo asked.

"It says sixteen minutes and three seconds," Sky said. "I'm not sure I'm going to get this done in time. "

"Let's all bail out here," Swindell suggested. "Dump the thing in the sand and skedaddle back to town. What say?"

"Can we make it?" Remo asked Sky.

"We might, but Palm Springs is still in the kill zone. Oh, why did I build this thing?"

"Because you're stupid," Remo said, pushing the gas pedal into the floorboards.

"Remo," Chiun said solemnly.

"What?"

"I see only one chance for any of us."

"I'm listening."

"One of us must carry the device into the desert, alone. While the other drives in the opposite direction to safety."

"Ridiculous," Sky snapped. "You'd have to run faster than a car to do that!"

"I'll do it," Remo offered.

"No," Chiun said in a resigned tone. "You are the future of Sinanju, Remo. I am only its past. The line must continue. So I must do this."

Remo braked. "Cut the martyr act, Chiun. It's old. You're good, sure, but you're not as fast as me. I'm younger, stronger, and I can get further faster. So stuff your silly Korean pride and face reality. I'm the only one for this job, and we both know it."

Stung, the Master of Sinanju said nothing for several long moments.

"So, that is how you feel about me," he said softly.

"Facts are facts," Remo said impatiently, jumping from the car. Opening the passenger door, he reached in for the neutron device.

He wasn't caught entirely unawares. Remo did sense the minuscule pressure of Chiun's hand pushing air ahead of it as it struck the base of his skull and turned his world black.

The Master of Sinanju pushed Remo into the back with one hand. The other pulled Sky Bluel from the same seat.

"You will drive," he told her. "And drive swiftly. For my son must live."

"This is crazy," Sky said. "There must be another way."

"There was. But it died when you built this device. Go."

Chin trembling, Sky Bluel got behind the wheel. "Good luck," she said weakly.

The car made a skittering circle in the road and headed back to town, leaving the Master of Sinanju holding the neutron bomb in his spindly arms.

Chiun looked down at the foreign instrument. His hazel eyes glanced at the digital timer. It now read 00:05:57. Then 00:05:56.

Lifting his eyes, he sought the place where the desert Condome had been. He drew in an energizing breath.

In that direction, Chiun began running. His sandals whetted the road. He picked up speed, and his purple kimono began to stream behind him with the gathering force of his momentum.

As he ran, Chiun beseeched his ancestors to prepare a seat of honor for the last pure-blooded Master of Sinanju.

Remo woke up suddenly. He bolted up in the seat, realized where he was, and looked around the careening car.

"Where's Chiun?" he demanded savagely.

Sky bit her lip. "Back there."

Remo looked back.

"How long?" he croaked.

"Any minute now," Sky Bluel whispered, tears rolling down her face.

Remo flung open the car door, mentally calculating the speed of the car versus the counterforce he would have to apply if he was to alight in one piece.

One foot went out. It scraped the road like sandpaper.

Then Remo's eyes widened into dark explosions of fear.

The noise was not loud. Its muffled quality made it all the more heart-stopping. It was like something deep and important erupting in the bowels of the earth.

Remo looked back. They all looked back, except Sky, who was sobbing uncontrollably as her eyes shifted between the road ahead and the sight in the rearview mirror.

It was not a mushroom cloud. Not in the classic sense. It was more of a violent upflinging of sand and smoke. A boiling fist spewed up amid the climbing sand like ball lightning and then spent itself like a flash paper dragon.

"Are we far enough from it?" Remo demanded, sick-eyed.

"I think so," Sky said chokingly.

The shock wave was short and violent and hot. It sent the car skidding sideways into the sand. It stopped, rear wheels spinning uselessly. Remo got out. He looked back at the smoky cloud, his eyes stricken.

Sky clung to his side. The others emerged too. But only to crawl under the car, where they thought it was safe.

"I don't see him," Remo said thickly. "Do you?"

Sky shook her head so hard hot tears splashed on Remo's arms. "No way he could have escaped that," she sobbed. "No way."

Remo turned on Sky Bluel. "I don't believe you!" He grabbed her by the arms, shaking her. "Tell me the truth!"

"Look. I don't know how he was able to run with that thing in the first place, but for him to escape the neutron bombardment, he'd have had to be outside the kill zone. On this side. And I don't see him. Anywhere."

Remo's eyes scoured the surrounding terrain. There was no sign of Chiun on the undulant dunes.

"I'm going in," Remo said.

In desperation Sky grabbed his shirt. "You'll be killed. We should be getting further away. The neutrons are coming this way. You can't see them or feel them, but they'll slam into your cells like microscopic bullets. Slow, agonizing death."

Remo tore free. "You go if you want to," he spat. He started off into the desert.

Remo ran at a steady clip, sticking to the road until it changed direction away from the smoky cloud on the horizon.

"Come on, Chiun," he whispered. "Show your face. I know you're out there. Come on."

Remo covered a good quarter-mile without spotting any life. Then he began to feel something in the air.

It was like a little pinprick on his bare right arm. Just a pinprick, but it stung like a red-hot needle. Remo pressed on. Another pinprick struck his chest. And another.

He had felt a similar sensation before. Once, while standing too close to a leaky microwave oven.

Remo knew then he was running into the leading edge of neutron bombardment, which his finely tuned body met and absorbed. It was like running into an acid spray. He knew the spray would swell to a deadly storm at any moment.

"Chiun!" Remo cried, shifting direction. He tried running in a widening circle, keeping just outside and ahead of the spreading radiation field.

No answer came from the kill zone.

Then, because he knew to go on was to die, Remo Williams abruptly reversed direction.

He fought to hold down the hot choking lump that struggled to climb out of his throat.

Remo caught up with the car as it approached the Palm Springs city limits. Running alongside, he signaled Sky to pull over.

Not quite believing her eyes, Sky did.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Remo said nothing. He went to the rear door and pulled it off its hinges. That got the attention of the passengers in back.

Connors Swindell fought to get away from the hand that reached in for his throat.

"This is all your fault, isn't it?" Remo raged, yanking him to his feet.

Swindell pointed at Barry Kranish, cowering in the car, saying, "No, it's his fault. You, tell him."

Remo reached in for Barry Kranish. He pulled him out by his microwaved hair.

"If he'd left the poor scorpions alone," Kranish snapped, "none of this would have happened."

"No more lies!" Remo shouted. "No more bullshit! What was this all about?"

Connors Swindell and Barry Kranish looked into the deadly dark eyes of Remo Williams and decided to tell the truth. Unfortunately, they tried to tell it simultaneously.

Remo shook them in his strong hands.

"In one word, what was this all about?" he repeated.

"Property," said Connors Swindell.

"The environment," said Barry Kranish.

Remo looked at them coldly for a long time.

"The most important person in my life just died because of you. Tell me he died for something more than a real-estate scam and saving the weasels."

"Look," Swindell said, grinning sickly, "I can see that you're hurtin'. But you gotta put this into perspective. He was old, an empty nester. If they don't go when they get ripe, property would never change hands. And then where would the world be?"

Remo Williams looked at Connors Swindell's sweating face as if not believing the evidence of his ears.

"You know what you are?" he asked evenly.

"Under arrest?" Swindell ventured weakly.

"No, landfill," Remo replied, giving Connors Swindell's neck a sudden squeeze. His head shot up twenty feet in the air. It landed at the base of a palm like a ripe coconut. Remo threw the body on top with a savagely careless fling.

Then he turned his attention to Barry Kranish.

"You love trees?" he asked in a too-even tone.

"I love life even more," Kranish said, sick-voiced.

"Fine, let's feed a few trees."

"I didn't bring any tree food."

"You are the tree food," Remo explained.

Remo escorted Barry Kranish behind a stately date palm and carefully converted him into mulch. When he returned a moment later, he was washing the blood off his hands with sand.

Sky Bluel didn't stick around to find out what had happened to the late Barry Kranish. She jumped behind the wheel and drove into town without a backward glance.

Remo let her go. She wasn't important anymore.

He turned to face the desert. The smoke cloud now hung low against the horizon. A hot wind tore at it like fingers plucking at an old rag.

Remo sat down on the edge of the road and with sunken eyes watched the too-hot wind tear the clouds to shreds and carry the faint fragments away.

He refused to move until the sun came up to turn its accusing red eye on him.

Chapter 23

Three months later, the high corn was tasseling outside of La Plomo, Missouri.

Heirs had been arriving all summer in a steady stream to reclaim the homes of their dead relatives. Farms were taken over. Plans were made to plow under the Lewisite-tainted crops. It was a sad event. But next year there would be another, better crop.

La Plomo was coming back to life.

By this time the sun had entered Leo, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had declared a blasted area of desert four miles outside of Palm Springs, California, to be radiation-free. FEMA also promised to release a two-million-dollar study by Christmas explaining how a nuclear accident had occurred in an area where nuclear tests were not authorized.

The official report would be a tissue of vague lies cloaked under the umbrella of national security, but only a handful of people knew that, including one Sky Bluel, who had dyed her hair green and flown off to finish her education in Paris.

On the day after the desert had been declared free of radiation, wearing a black T-shirt and matching chinos, Remo Williams walked out into the shifting sands.

His face was set and devoid of readable emotion as he reached the flat blob of fused glass that marked the core blast area. It was less than a dozen feet in diameter. Black in the center, shading to bubble-pocked brown, the ragged outer edges were clear and streaked with tadpolelike air pockets. The tadpoles seemed frozen in the act of fleeing the blast.

Remo stepped onto the fused sand. He had left no footprints arriving, and the glass barely gave under his weight.

He walked to the exact center, an upthrust crater of obsidian shards, where critical mass had fused the fine sand. The ground was littered with discarded Styrofoam coffee cups and cigarette butts left by FEMA crisis managers. Remo's eyes tuned out these artifacts. He was scanning for a single color. Royal purple-the color of the kimono Chiun had last worn. All he wanted was a tiny bit of purple silk. Something-anything-to take back to Sinanju for burial.

He had accepted the Master of Sinanju's death weeks ago. What he couldn't accept was the absence of a body. He understood that Chiun must have been holding the neutron bomb when it went critical. He understood how the blast could have obliterated an ordinary human being.

But not Chiun. Not the Master of Sinanju. Something would have survived. Something had to have survived.

But nothing had. Nothing tangible.

Remo walked east. The Plexiglas dome of Connors Swindell's last grandiose scheme, the Condome, had been dismantled. All that remained was a huge plug of concrete poured to seal off the buried tower for all time. The sand had already drifted over the ugly gray cap. In a few generations it would be something for archaeologists to ponder. Now it was only a monument to one greedy man's folly.

Remo walked the desert half the night. The moon rose and its clear silver light provided enough illumination for his Sinanju-trained eyes to see by.

He found no evidence to prove that here in this desert-so remote that the scrolls of Sinanju did not record its name--on the threshold of the venerated age, the greatest Master of Sinanju, Chiun the Great, had sacrificed himself so that the line could continue in the body of an unworthy white man.

Standing alone in the desert, Remo felt an emotion sweep over him. It was one he had not experienced in a very long time. He felt inadequate.

Remo lifted his voice to the morning star, which had just appeared low in the east.

"Oh, Little Father," he said sorrowfully, "where are you now? I feel lost without you. I'm not ready for this."

He felt a presence suddenly. Behind him. Remo whirled.

"Chiun!"

Standing there, hands tucked into the folds of a simple kimono, stood the Master of Sinanju, his head bowed. He was a dim figure, his kimono two shades darker than purple, his face pale like a birchwood bust decorated with cotton streamers for hair and beard.

Chiun's half-shadowed mouth moved as if in prayer, but no sounds were reaching Remo's ears.

"Little Father, is that really you?" Remo asked. But his ears told him it was not. Not really. He detected no biological sounds. He sensed the presence before him as a cold force, but it was not living. Not anymore.

Chiun lifted his eyes. They were a deeper gray than hazel, and infinitely sad.

One claw of a hand came out of its sleeve. It pointed toward Remo, slanting downward.

Remo looked down at his feet. He frowned.

"What about my shoes?"

The hand recoiled and pointed again, like an accusing specter.

"I don't understand," Remo said, his voice anxious. "What are you trying to tell me?"

The claw of a hand shifted. The Master of Sinanju pointed to the ground at his own feet. His eyes were imploring.

A gleam came into Remo's dark eyes. Remo nodded. "I get it. I'm head of the House of Sinanju now. From this day on, I walk in your sandals."

Remo bowed from the waist, saying, "I understand. I will honor you by carrying on the work. Farewell, Little Father."

When Remo straightened, he beheld the Master of Sinanju lift his face and hands to the stars in a gesture of despair. His mouth made a silent, anguished shape.

Then, like a star dying, he faded from sight.

And Remo Williams, feeling the immense burden of five thousand years of responsibility, sank to his knees in the sand and wept without shame.