Warren Murphy - Air Raid

"No wonder," Remo said. "They fling open the door and throw up their hands every time some mailman in Dusseldorf hammers a new spike in his helmet. Still, stinking like a German beats stinking like a Frenchman any day of the week."

"Shouldn't you two be quiet?" Amanda whispered. She was glancing nervously around the big living room.

There were a few pictures on the walls. Remo could tell by their weird Sage Carlin-inspired uniforms which men worked for the CCS.

"I told you, no one's here," Remo said as he tore his gaze from the pictures.

He had detected another scent in the house. Nose in the air, he tracked it like a bloodhound to the cellar stairs.

"What is it?" Amanda asked when Remo stopped at the top of the staircase.

"I smell ammonia," Remo replied. "Back home I'd think it was just the laundry room, but since this is Europe, where washing day comes only after a good healthy round of black plague..."

Voice trailing off, Remo headed down the stairs.

HERR HAHN WATCHED the three glowing figures descend.

They managed to amaze him yet again. There was no searching of the rest of the house, as Hahn had expected. No trial and error of any kind. They entered the house, steered a beeline for the cellar door and went down.

Their certainty was unnerving. It was as if all the old rules were gone. All of his understanding of human behavior and ability, honed by years of experience, didn't apply to these two.

Yet as troubling as it was, it was also exhilarating. To be the best in his field meant so few challenges. Feeling a melancholy twinge for what he was about to do, Hahn placed his chubby hand on the portable console that sat on the map table in the cabin of his boat.

As he watched the silhouettes of the men and woman creep deeper into the basement, one fat finger lovingly caressed a gleaming silver toggle switch.

"THIS IS WHERE he stored them," Remo said.

Amanda saw nothing but a dirt cellar floor. An empty floor. But even she could now smell the thin odor of ammonia that lingered in the musty air. "Judging by the marks in the earth, there were more than thirty sacks stored here," the Master of Sinanju concluded.

"Burlap sacks," Remo said. "Big ones."

"That would probably be enough to hold all the seeds from the greenhouse plants," Amanda said. She shook her head in disbelief. "But he couldn't have. He wouldn't have."

"I thought we were past that," Remo said. He was looking at something in the corner. "Did he use that?"

Amanda saw that he was nodding to an antique wooden butter churn. Souring milk was slopped on the tarp on which it sat. Remo noted an old oil lamp hanging next to the churn. Both appeared to have been used recently.

"Hubert has a thing about machines," she explained. "I don't think he's really comfortable with technology. He uses all kinds of excuses just to get other people to turn on his lights or answer his phone for him."

"Not too crazy," Remo muttered.

His eyes strayed to the rear of the main cellar room. He saw something lying in the dirt near an open door. Going over, he picked up the tiny blue seed.

"That shouldn't be out of the CCS complex," Amanda said, coming up beside him. "God help us, he has gone insane."

"He churns his own butter, won't turn on a light and has dressed like that for how long and you're just noticing?" Remo asked dryly.

The door opened into a separate room off the side of the basement. A few rectangular windows pulled streaks of daylight down to the dirt floor. When the three of them entered the long, dark corridor, Amanda's nose rebelled at the smell. The dirt floors and stone walls had suppressed it in the outer room.

"That's oil," she complained. A thought suddenly occurred to her. "Oil," she repeated. "Oh, my." They were passing by another open room. An old furnace hummed away in the dark recesses. A much newer device had been attached to the front of the ancient furnace.

"What's wrong?" Remo asked.

"Oh," Amanda said. "Maybe nothing. "It's just that when I first started at the CCS I remember seeing schematics for an underground system of oil tanks in Dr. Carlin's office. I thought it was strange because most of the power around here is hydroelectric. I didn't know why he'd want to store that much oil. The tanks were huge."

"Your point being?" Remo asked.

"The tanks were built into the side of a mountain. This is the side of a mountain. And this used to be Dr. Carlin's house when he was at the CCS." Remo stopped dead.

"Oh," Amanda said when she saw the look on his face. "You think it might be something? I only remember because it was right after that prediction he made during the Gulf War. When he said those oil well fires would burn for months and change the environment of the entire Gulf region for years to come." She grew more worried when she saw Remo's expression grow even darker. "They didn't," she added hopefully.

"We should leave," Chiun said evenly.

Remo was thinking of the pressure waves from the surveillance equipment they'd both sensed coming from Lake Geneva. He suddenly felt like a mouse just before the steel bar snapped shut.

"Right behind you, Little Father," he said. Shepherding a suddenly very worried Amanda Lifton before them, the two Masters of Sinanju began to cautiously retrace their steps back out to the main cellar.

REMARKABLE!

Hahn watched the infrared monitor image through excited, unblinking eyes.

They were heading back up the basement hallway. Could it be? Could it possibly be that they had guessed what was in store?

The three green blobs were back in front of the open door that led to the furnace. They were coming back out.

Maybe they had seen the modified furnace. Hahn had rigged it for Sage Carlin years ago. Activated it just this afternoon. Could they know?

He wished he could have asked them, but of course that was impossible. It was time for them to die. The silver antenna was already up on the remote transmitter. It was aimed across the deck of Hahn's boat at the magnificent chalet nestled among the lower Alps.

A cold wind blew across the lake, swirling through the open cabin door, cutting Herr Hahn to the bone. Eyes on the chalet, Herr Hahn flicked the toggle switch.

The monitor flashed bright, consumed from corner to corner and top to bottom by a wash of brilliant green.

And in the rocks above Lake Geneva, an orange fireball vomiting up from the very bowels of Hell itself erupted from the smoking crater where Hubert St. Clair's house had been.

Chapter 10

The click saved their lives.

They heard it as they passed the open door to the furnace room. It was a soft thing that became inaudible in the ensuing roar.

A brilliant orange flash burst from the black mouth of the dark room. A wall of searing flame and heat whooshed forward, erupting into the hall.

When the click sounded, Remo and Chiun went from a walk to a sprint. They tore down the slender passage a heartbeat ahead of the blast.

Chiun had scooped up Amanda. In his arms the world around her seemed to slow, then freeze.

Not enough time to make it out into the main cellar. Frozen flames, locked in time, rocketing in at impossible speed.

Amanda suddenly airborne. Remo's arms encircling her waist. Chiun, flames licking at the hem of his kimono, launching himself up at one of the dirty basement windows.

The glass shattering. Then flying at Amanda. No way to avoid it. She was a deadly human spear, fired at speeds greater than the explosion or the flames, faster even than conscious thought.

Out! In the cold mountain air, with bony hands grabbing her once more.

Running.

Time tripping back to normal speed.

The house exploded. Windows burst, scattering diamond fragments across the Swiss hillside. The wood splintered apart and spread like burning matchsticks as the ball of orange flame burst from Earth's ruptured molten core.