Total Recall

That done, Remo listened for the sounds of Chiun's combat. He heard nothing.

"Chiun!"

"Here," Chiun replied. Following the sound of his master's voice, Remo also became aware of the sound of water. Chiun was washing out his eyes, a prospect that greatly appealed to Remo as well.

As Remo approached, Chiun reached out to take his hands and guide them into the water. Remo bathed his face and eyes several times until the burning subsided and his vision returned.

"We underestimated—" he started to say, flushing his eyes again, but Chiun didn't give him a chance to finish.

"I did not underestimate anyone, except perhaps you," the old man said. "I allowed the powder to enter my eyes so that I could set an example for you. That is all."

Remo looked at Chiun, then nodded and said "Of course, Little Father. You were an inspiration to me."

"Of course," came the reply.

They both looked over at the dead men, and Remo saw that Chiun's three had met the same fate as his own.

"Well," he said, shaking the water from his hands, "I guess the next step is to get those people upstairs out of here, and then take care of this place. These lamps ought to serve us nicely."

"Yes," Chiun said, nodding, and then the old Oriental cocked his head as he heard something, "Someone is coming."

"I hear it," Remo said. Listening intently, he could hear noise in the stairwell, and he realized that there were two separate and distinct sets of footsteps.

They both turned to face the door as Lorenzo Moorcock entered the room, holding a terrified woman in front of him and pressing a gun to her right temple.

"Gentleman," Moorcock said, allowing the door to close behind them. "Welcome to my little factory."

"I guess we were pretty noisy, huh?" Remo said. "You came to complain?"

"On the contrary," Moorcock said. "I'm here to compliment you. You've done my work for me." Moorcock looked at the bodies of his dead employees. "Yes," he said, "and very nicely too. You saved me the trouble of killing them myself."

"Planning on pulling out?" Remo asked.

"Oh, yes, I believe the time has come for me to take my profits and move on," the minister said.

"Taking the lady with you?"

"Mrs. Sterling?" Moorcock said, tightening his arm around the woman's waist. "Oh, she insisted on coming down with me. The poor woman couldn't bear the thought of something happening to me."

"Please," the woman said at that point, her eyes pleading, "I don't understand."

"Be quiet," Moorcock said sharply. Looking at Remo and Chiun, Moorcock said, "We have a small emergency device set up down here that alerted me to your presence. I turned my congregation over to a guest speaker— a common practice— and asked Mrs. Sterling to accompany me. As you can see, she insisted on doing so."

Remo was feeling frustrated. He knew he could take Moorcock on without fear of his gun, but the gun wasn't pointing at him, it was pointing at Walter Sterling's mother.

Chiun was standing quietly, calmly staring at the minister. Remo knew that this was what Chiun had been waiting for, the opportunity to kill the man who had been responsible for the deaths of the children, and he knew that the Master of Sinanju must have been feeling some frustration of his own.

"What now, Moorcock?" Remo asked.

"Well, now you and your friend will join my people on the floor. Once I've gotten rid of you, I can return to my flock, wrap up my services, and be on my way."

"Where?"

Moorcock smiled and shook his head. "This is not the movies, sir, where the bad guy tells the good guys his entire plan because their death is imminent. If you're going to die, it would serve no purpose to tell you, save to postpone your deaths."

Still smiling, Moorcock aimed the gun at Remo and fired. When he saw that the bullet had missed, he acted quickly and snapped his arm back so that the gun was pressed against Mrs. Sterling's temple again.

"What trickery is this?" he demanded.

"Bad marksmanship?" Remo suggested.

"I am an excellent marksman," the minister said. "I couldn't have missed."

Remo shrugged and said, "You have to believe your own eyes, don't you?"

"There has to be another explanation," Moorcock said. "I can adapt to any situation." He was talking to himself as much as to Remo and Chiun.

"So I understand," Remo said. "You've adjusted to your failure in politics very nicely."

"You cannot anger me," Moorcock said. He stared at them for a few moments, then said, "I have it."

"Don't breathe this way; I haven't had my shots," Remo said.

"You," Moorcock said to Remo, ignoring the remark, "will kill him," pointing at Chiun, "or I shall kill her."

"That's a good plan," Remo said, "except for one thing."

"What's that?"

"If I try to kill him," Remo said, "I'm afraid that he'll kill me."

"That will serve my purpose just as well."

"Yeah, but if he kills me, who's going to kill him for you?" Remo asked.

"You are trying to confuse me in order to prolong your own life," Moorcock said. "You will kill the old man. That shouldn't be too much of a problem for you."

Remo could feel the scorn that remark brought out in his teacher.

"Please," he said to Moorcock, "don't get him mad."

"I think perhaps you are mad," Moorcock said. "This old man can hardly be a danger to anyone."

"If that's the way you feel," Remo said, "then you kill him."

All Remo or Chiun needed was for Moorcock to take the gun away from the woman's head once more, even for a few seconds. If the minister would fire at Chiun, then one of them would surely reach him before he could turn the gun back on Mrs. Sterling.

Moorcock was pondering the problem when something happened that resolved the situation. The basement door opened violently, striking Moorcock in the back. He staggered under the blow, releasing Mrs. Sterling so that she fell to the floor.

Moorcock himself retained his footing and turned to face the door. To everyone's surprise, Walter Sterling entered the room. When the boy saw the gun, he threw himself in front of his mother. Moorcock aimed the gun at him.

Chiun took full advantage of the situation, and Remo stood back and watched because this was what the Master of Sinanju had been waiting for. Remo had done the legwork. but this part belonged to Chiun.

The old Korean moved across the floor in a blur and kicked the gun from Moorcock's hand. The minister shouted and turned to find himself face-to-face with the old man he'd been ridiculing only moments ago.

"I'll kill you," he said to Chiun.

"You have killed children," Chiun explained to Moorcock, "and for that you must die a violent and painful death."

Moorcock laughed and launched a punch at Chiun. Chiun moved forward, easily avoiding the blow, and landed a blow of his own. Remo was the only other person in the room who heard the ribs on the man's left side crack. Moorcock gasped but had no time to slump to the floor before Chiun landed a second blow, shattering the ribs on the right side. Remo realized that Moorcock was about to suffer the Death of a Thousand Breaks, which was usually reserved for the very worst enemies of the House of Sinanju.

The sound of snapping bones filled the room, and before long Moorcock was lying on the floor, barely alive but still able to feel the pain from the damage that had been inflicted on him by the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun stepped back, surveyed his handiwork, and nodded. Remo knew that there wasn't a whole bone left in Moorcock's body.

"That was horrible," Mrs. Sterling said, sobbing. Her son had helped her to her feet, and she was leaning on him for support.

Chiun turned to the woman and said, "It was meant to be, madam."

Remo moved to Walter Sterling and put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"What did he do to me?" Walter asked. "I woke up in an alley and—"

"Never mind," Remo said. "Walter, it's up to you and your mother to get all those people out of the building, and then you must call the police and tell them to come here."

"Should we wait—"

"After you've done that, take your mother home," Remo said. "We'll make sure that the police find evidence of what was going on here."

"All right," Walter said. He turned to his mother and told her they had to do what Remo said. Then he turned back to Remo and said, "The man who killed my father?"

"I'll take care of him, Walter," Remo said.

Walter Sterling accepted Remo's word and guided his mother up the steps.

Remo looked at Chiun, who was calmly studying the man on the floor. Moorcock was making all kinds of sounds, none of which sounded human.

Chiun looked at Remo then and said, "The lamps."

"Yes."

They waited several minutes for Walter to clean out the parishioners, then Remo took a few of the lamps from the walls and threw them onto the large wooden tables where the cutting had been done. The kerosene ignited the wood very quickly, and soon the acrid odor of burning heroin filled the air. Before long, everything that was wooden in the basement was burning, and Remo knew that it wouldn't be long before the flames found the steps and burned their way up to the main floor. The building was old, and it would go up quickly.

"Let's take him up," Remo said. He bent over and filled Moorcock's pockets with heroin, then threw the body over his shoulder and started up the steps.

When they reached the main level, they found that it was empty except for the smoke which had already begun to fill the place.

They left the church by the main exit. Remo left Moorcock there, where the police would be sure to find him.

There was a good chance that Lorenzo Moorcock would be dead by the time the police got there, but it could go either way.

"Next stop," Remo said, "National Motors."

Chiun looked at Moorcock, then nodded to Remo, and they went.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jack Boffa and the man called Samuel, unaware of what was happening at the church, were busily tending to business at the National Motors plant.

First, Samuel turned the heroin over to Jack Boffa, all nicely cut and packed in plastic bags. Boffa had rounded up some of the kids to help him load the stuff in the fender wells of the cars that were being shipped that very day to New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles. With both Louis Sterling and Allan Martin out of action, he needed the help.

Boffa, supervising the loading operation, was counting dollar signs in his head. He was to meet with Moorcock later that day— although he didn't know that the "big boss" was Moorcock— to collect his payment, unaware of the fact that Moorcock had intended to be gone long before their prearranged meeting. Even Samuel was to be left out in the cold— the cold ground, to be precise.

Both men worked diligently, unaware that they were working for no reason, unaware that they had dues to pay and that two men were on their way to collect.

In a big way.

When Remo and Chiun arrived at the plant, they presented themselves to the same receptionist Remo had dealt with earlier.

"Sweetheart, my father and I are going inside to conduct some business," Remo told her.

"Your… father?" she asked, staring at Chiun.

"Well, actually he's adopted," Remo said.

"He's adopted?"

"Yeah, you know. Send sixty-nine cents to support a child in an underprivileged country. Be a father and all that? Well, I chose to support an underprivileged adult and be a son. He came in the mail yesterday."

"In the mail?"

"Yeah. He would have been here sooner, but they sent him bulk rate."

"Oh—"

"Listen," Remo said, leaning across the desk and touching the girl behind the neck. She leaned into his touch with her eyes closed. "Would you do me a favor?"

"Anything."

"Why don't you take a coffee break. Go out, get yourself a cup of coffee and a doughnut—"

"I'm on a diet."

Damn nobody stuck to a diet like a skinny woman, he thought.

"Have two cups of coffee, then," he said, "Black with no sugar. Drink them slowly, then find a pay phone and call the police. Tell them there's trouble at the plant and to come right away. And then you can take the rest of the day off and go home. Understand?"

"Yes," she said. "Whatever you say, but please…"

"What?"

She opened her eyes and said, "Would you come home with me?"

He smiled, removed his hand, and said, "Maybe later."

She sighed, collected her purse and jacket, waved at him, and left.

"Your father!" Chiun said in disgust.

"I was working on her resistance," Remo argued. "You know, lowering her defenses by making her feel sentimental."

"Wasting time," Chiun said.

"Come on, Chiun," Remo said. "You got your child killer. Lighten up."

"You are a constant source of embarrassment to me."

"You old sweet-talker, you. Come on, this way."

Remo led Chiun through the plant to the assembly line, where he was sure that the drug packing was well under way. As they reached that section, they opened the door a crack and peered in.

Remo saw Jack Boffa, still holding his clipboard, coordinating the operation, and saw that he had imported some of the kids to help out. He hoped Chiun wouldn't start in again, but that hope came too late.

"It continues," Chiun said when he saw what was going on.

"Chiun—"

"We must finish it."

"We will," Remo said. "That's what we're here for."

As they watched, a few cars came off the assembly line and were driven through a large garage-type door. Remo figured that the cars were being loaded onto one of those massive car-carrier trucks, to be transported to the three cities involved.

"Might as well get it done, Chiun," he said. He pushed the door open wide and walked in, with Chiun on his heels.

"Keep it moving there, boys," Jack Boffa was shouting. "We're almost through."

"Wrong, Boffa!" Remo shouted.

"Wha—" Boffa said, turning to face Remo. "Oh, you. Who's this, your houseboy?"

"Your operation is shut down, Boffa."

"What are you talking about?" the foreman demanded, trying to bluff it out. Remo was sure that the man did not have a gun on him, but he was aware that Louis Sterling had been killed with a knife.

"I mean the whole party is over. Your 'big boss' is in the hands of the police, and they're on their way here."

"I don't know what—"

"Hey, Mr. Boffa," a kid shouted. "A bag of shit opened. What should we—"

"Shut up!" Boffa shouted.

"You've got to learn to give up, Boffa," Remo advised him. "This is the end."

"No it ain't, dammit—" Boffa said, and out came the blade from behind the clipboard.

"Nasty," Remo said.

As Boffa slashed at him with the knife, Remo put out his bare hand. The blade collided with his flesh and snapped in two. The little demonstration shocked Boffa into silence.

"Bad steel," Remo said.

Boffa was staring at the broken blade when Remo took his clipboard away from him, which seemed to bother the man even more than having his knife broken.

"Hey, give me back my clipboard."

"You won't be needing it," Remo told him. "You're out of business— permanently."

Remo lashed out with the edge of the clipboard, catching Boffa on the side of the neck, and the man slumped to the floor in a lifeless heap.

"He who lives by the clipboard shall die by the clipboard," Remo said, dropping the clipboard on top of the body. He turned to Chiun and said, "The children are your responsibility, Chiun. Get them out of the way because I'm getting rid of that whole assembly line."

While Chiun herded the kids together like a bunch of lambs, Remo went to the head of the assembly line, where a gas pump stood. The cars were given just enough gas to be driven out to the car-carriers, but he took the hose and began to spray the passenger compartments of the vehicles.

Remo turned to make sure that Chiun had managed to get everybody outside before lighting a match and tossing it into the passenger compartment of the first car. The car ignited not with a bang but with a whoosh, and it occurred to Remo very briefly that perhaps he should have told the pretty young receptionist to call the fire department as well as the police department. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it arose, however. National Motors should have been more careful about who they hired and more observant about how their assembly line was being used— or misused.

Before long the second car ignited, and after a few moments the third, fourth, and fifth, in a domino effect.

Soon the entire assembly line was a mass of flames, and it was only because the gas tanks of the autos had not been filled that there were no explosions. Remo watched for a few minutes, and the air quickly filled with that odor again as the heroin went up in smoke.

Remo picked up the dead body of Jack Boffa, threw it over his shoulder and carried it out the way Chiun had taken the children. He hoped Chiun wouldn't come out of this whole thing with some kind of a Moses syndrome.

"Is that him?" Walter Sterling asked as Remo dropped the body to the ground.

He turned to face Walter, looking mildly surprised at the boy's arrival.

"Persistent, aren't you?"

"Is that the man who killed my father?"

"Yes, Walter, that's him."

Walter Sterling took one step forward and kicked Jack Boffa viciously on the side of the head.

"Kid, he's dead," Remo said, hoping he wasn't telling Walter anything that would upset him greatly. "He didn't feel a thing."

"That's okay," the kid said, "I did."

Remo turned to face a couple of those massive car carriers and said to Chiun, "Ask the kids if those cars are loaded down with drugs."

"They are."

"Well, then, they have to go too," Remo said. "And they're going to go big, Chiun, so take the kids out front to meet the cops. They ought to be here soon. When I come out, I'll be bringing Boffa with me, with his broken knife. The cops'll find traces of blood on it. Oh, and get me a bag of heroin, and then have the kids throw the rest of the stuff into those cars before they go."

"Anything else?" Chiun asked, with a sarcastic bow.

"Let's just get this over with."

Chiun seemed to agree with that and went off to talk to his flock. There were about a dozen kids of fifteen and sixteen. They filed over to the carriers and started dumping the remainder of their supply into the open windows of the cars. Chiun brought Remo a nickel bag and then again herded the kids away from the area. Remo bent over and stuffed the bag into the pocket of the dead foreman. Then he said, "Get lost, Walter. These cars have some gas in the tanks, and they may blow."

"Can't I help?"

"Do you have any matches?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I'll use your matches."

Walter took out a box of stick matches, handed them to Remo, and then went off in the direction that Chiun had taken the others.

Remo searched the area and came up with some rags, which he soaked with gasoline. He undid the gas cap on one car from each carrier, stuffed his makeshift fuses in, and then lit them and backed away a respectable distance.

He was aware of sirens in the distance just as the first car blew. Again, the domino effect came into play as car after car on the first carrier also burst into flames. By the time the police arrived, both carriers were a mass of flames, and now, of course, there was the danger that the full gas tanks of the carriers would explode.

Well, Remo thought, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

"I'm wondering," Detective William Palmer said to Remo and Chiun, "why I always manage to be one step behind you."

"We sent people to call in," Remo said. "Maybe they stopped for coffee on the way."

"Yeah," Palmer said, "maybe."

"Besides, what's the difference?" Remo said. He looked over to where some uniformed police were handcuffing all of the kids under the watchful eye of Chiun. "You've just about got the whole thing wrapped up now."

"So you say," Palmer said. "I've got a fire in a church and a fire here at the plant. Luckily, the fire trucks got here before the gas tanks on those carriers blew, or the whole plant would be gone."

"Omelets and eggs," Remo muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"I've got a dead preacher with his pockets full of smack, and I've got a dead foreman with his pockets full of smack. I wonder who put it there?"

"They did?" Remo sugggested.

"They aren't saying," Palmer said pointedly.

"Well, I wish I could help you, Detective," Remo said, "but every time we showed up, it was just a little bit late. We sent word to you as soon as we could."

"I'd like to believe that, but I'm afraid you and your friend are going to have to come with me and answer some questions. My ass could be in a sling because of this."

"I don't think so."

"Oh, and why don't you think so?"

"Well, you've got the whole story in your hands," Remo said. "All you've got to do is ask those kids."

"Those kids?" Williams asked. "Those kids all have rap sheets as long as your arm, mister."

"All juvenile stuff, right?"

"So?"

"You talk to Walter Sterling," Remo said. "He'll give you the straight story, and then let him talk to those other boys."

"You know, I don't know who you are, and I don't know why I keep sticking my neck out for you…."

"It's the little boy in me," Remo said. "The little boy."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Remo showed up at Folcroft, he was alone.

"Where's Chiun?" Smith asked.

"Oh, he said he had something to attend to," Remo hedged.

"Well, I guess I don't need to hear the whole story from both of you. Is it wrapped up?"

"With a pretty bow," Remo said. "Moorcock cooked up the whole scam after he saw how his minister bit was going over. He was pulling in a lot of money and decided to put it to work for him. His Iranian contacts didn't hurt, either."

"Well, I'm sure the Iranians weren't helping him out of the goodness of their hearts," Smith said. "They must have seen this as a means to undermine the youth of the United States."

That was exactly what Chiun had said before he went off on his private little quest, Remo thought, only Chiun hadn't said "undermine." He had said "destroy."

"Well, anyway," Remo continued, "it all started to fall apart when some of the kids working for him started to get an attack of conscience. If it wasn't the kids, it was the parents, like in the Martin case."

"So people started getting out of line, Moorcock started getting rid of them, and we noticed."

"Right," Remo said. "The beginning of the end."

"Fortunately for us," Smith said.

"All of the kids we turned over to the cops in Detroit started talking right after Walter Sterling did," Remo explained, "so the police pretty much have a picture of what went on. What they don't know, they can pretty well reconstruct."

"And you're out of it?"

"We got lucky with that cop, Palmer," Remo said. "He recognized something good and noble in me."

"You don't say."

"He was also working the case from a different angle, as it turns out," Remo said.

"What angle was that?"

"Moorcock had paid the judge who set the bail for the Martin kid."

"But the judge set the bail exorbitantly high."

"Right, and who would suspect the minister of a half-assed church of putting up the money? That was just a little extra insurance to make sure nothing got back to him."

"He was pretty thorough, wasn't he, this minister?" Smith said.

"Not thorough enough," Remo said.

* * *

In a Mexico City hotel room, Rafael Cintron was waiting with his two colleagues, Antonio Jiminez and Pablo Santoro, for some Iranian diplomats to arrive for a conference.

"It is unfortunate what happened to Señor Moorcock in Detroit," he said to the other two, "but we are fortunate that the Iranians wish to seek another avenue in order to keep our, er, business flourishing. After all, they paid us quite a lot of money to carry their drugs during our trips to the United States and are willing to continue to do so."

"We are with you, Rafael," Jiminez said. "You have no need to convince us."

Cintron looked at the other man, Santoro, who nodded his agreement. "Excellent," he said. He had gotten used to the life-style he had been enjoying on the money the Iranians paid him and was very happy that he would not have to choose between his wife and his mistress but could continue to support both.

When the knock finally sounded at the door, he jumped up from his seat and said, "At last!" The others watched as he walked eagerly to the door and swung it open.

"Welcome, my friend—" Cintron started to say, but as the man in the doorway started to fall forward, Cintron was forced to leap out of the way. "What…" he said, and they all gaped at the fallen man, who was obviously dead.

"Watch out!" Jiminez shouted, and Cintron turned to see that there had been another man right behind the first, and now he was falling forward too. Cintron jumped out of the way in time to avoid the second man, then did a dance step to avoid being hit by a third.

"Dios mio," Cintron said, staring down at the three dead men. From what he could see, there wasn't a mark on any of them, but they were quite dead.

"How—" Santoro asked.

"I don't know."

"I do," a small, elderly Oriental said, stepping into the room through the open door.

All three men looked at him in disbelief.

"Who— who are you?" Cintron asked.

"I am a man who is concerned about the health of the youth of the United States."

"What?"

"These men were trying to destroy it," the Oriental gentleman went on, "and you men were helping them. You see the price they paid, so you can guess the price you must pay."

"You're mad," Cintron said.

"You killed them?" Jiminez asked, knowing that the question was ridiculous.

"Oh, yes," the Oriental said.

"That's preposterous," Cintron said. "How could you have—"

"Easily," the man said. "I am acting on behalf of the children of America and of the world. I am their instrument."

"He is loco," Santoro said.

"We must leave," Cintron said. "Something is very wrong."

"Si, we must leave," Jiminez agreed.

They gathered up their belongings and turned to leave but found the way blocked by the elderly Oriental, who looked frail enough to be knocked over by a stiff breeze— until you looked at his eyes.

His eyes were frightening.

"Let us pass."

"I will let you pass… on," the man said, and started toward them.

Cintron did not exactly see what the old Oriental did, but suddenly Jiminez slumped to the floor, just as dead as the three Iranians, and without a mark on him.

"What happened?" Cintron asked, looking at Santoro, but by that time Santoro had also slumped to the floor, dead. "This is insane," he said.

"Yes," Chiun said, before he killed Rafael Cintron, "that is just what the destruction of children is. Insane."

"So when do you expect Chiun back?" Smith asked.

"He won't be long," Remo said. "He's just making sure that the children of the world are safe. He's a very concerned citizen, you know."