Power Play

Chapter six

The first solar heating equipment arrived early that evening at Furlong County Airport, a paved area that looked like a Grand Union parking lot, three miles from the country club.

Because he had decided to go ahead with the solar program at the urging of Rachmed Baya Bam, Pruiss had insisted the Indian accompany them to the airport to inspect the arrival.

Pruiss rode in the back of an ambulance commandeered from the Furlong County General Hospital for the occasion, and Rachmed Baya Bam helped roll him down the ramps in his wheel chair.

Four ten-foot-high piles of solar panels had arrived aboard a transport plane and now sat on lifts near the far edge of the runway. The hangar floodlights had been turned on to illuminate the black Plexiglass collectors.

"Looks like junk to me," Pruiss said to Theodosia. "How do they work?"

"The sun beats on the black Plexiglass. It absorbs heat and passes it on to pipes below that hold water. Then the water's circulated through the radiators or whatever and heat the house." She waved at the piles of panels. "And this is just the first, Wesley."

She was walking alongside Pruiss while Baya Bam was wheeling him along. Remo saw her step was light and bouncy. Chiun was next to Remo, his eyes searching the darkness around the hangar.

Baya Bam stopped Pruiss's wheelchair five feet from the piles and stepped to the side to look around.

"Even science pays glorious homage to the sun," he said.

He looked spellbound. All Remo saw was piles of plastic.

Theodosia took the Indian's place behind Pruiss's wheelchair and began to roll it away from the piles.

"Rachmed," she said sharply to the Indian who stood near the piles. "Be careful. They may fall over on you."

He smiled at her, as if inviting her to bask in the salad oil of his warmth. "It is all right, Missss," the said. "I am very agile and will..."

"I said stand clear," Theodosia said sharply, "before you get hurt." She kept wheeling Pruiss away. He was twenty feet now from the piles of collectors. Baya Bam shrugged and followed her.

Remo turned to speak to Chiun, but paused for a moment. Something registered on his hearing. There were always sounds in a place but the trained ear could focus on them and out of a hubbub pick the hub and the bub. There was something now fighting for recognition in Remo's ears.

Chiun had heard it too. His head was cocked like that of a deer in the forest, tilted at a slight angle, all the intensity of his tiny body tuning in on his hearing.

Remo began to speak when suddenly Chiun moved forward. To Theodosia, he seemed to drift, but somehow he was moving with an unbelievable speed. At that moment, Remo recognized the sound he had heard too. It was a hissing, sputtering, metallic burning.

He followed after Chiun who tossed himself across Wesley Pruiss's wheelchair and pushed it back toward the hangar farther away from the piles of collector plates. Remo wrapped Theodosia in one arm and scooped up Rachmed in the other and the force of his forward motion carried them back toward the hangar where Chiun was still shielding Pruiss with his body.

There was a split second in time in which the sputtering ended, the hissing stopped, and then there was a roar as an explosion blew away under one of the piles of collectors. There was the cracking sound of plexiglass snapping and behind him as he veered around the corner of the hangar wall, Remo felt heat and pressure, but then they were all behind the wall as all the piles of panels blew up, spraying glass shards and bits of metal into the air. It rocked the corner of the hangar building behind which they stood, Chiun again looking as placid as if he had just returned from meditating in his garden.

Glass and metal pieces dropped, with pinging sounds, on the corrugated metal roof of the building, then slid down and landed about their feet. Theodosia looked stunned; Rachmed Baya Bam cringed in the corner of the building behind her.

Pruiss had his usual angry look on his face.

"What the Christ is?.."

"A boom," said Chiun.

"Bomb," said Remo.

"Those fucking oil companies," spat Theodosia.

She stepped out now from behind the hangar and looked at the runway, covered with fragments of plexiglass, glinting sharply black in the reflection of the runway lights.

Airport workers were running from the hangar and Pruiss said, "Let's get out of here."

"Is it safe yet?" asked Baya Bam, still cowering in the corner.

"Yes, it's safe," Theodosia said. She grabbed Pruiss's wheelchair and began pushing it rapidly back toward the ambulance. Rachmed raced ahead and ran into the ambulance, hiding in a far corner.

Remo and Chiun looked at the wreckage.

"Close call," Remo said.

Chiun nodded.

"So much for knives with horses on them," Remo said. "No assassin works with a knife, then with a bomb."

Chiun continued to look at the pile of rubble.

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps."