Warren Murphy: The Wrong Stuff

"I don't think it's him," Remo whispered.

On the other side of the cart, Chiun carefully explored a side panel with the toe of one sandal.

"It is not," he stated firmly.

Remo put his hands on his hips. "Looks like they've got us standing under the box," he said, glancing around the wide stretch of vacant tarmac. The wind blew his short brown hair. "Isn't it time to yank the string?"

As if in response, a high-pitched electronic whine sounded above the breeze. When Remo and Chiun honed in on the source, they saw something long and black swooping down toward them from out the sky. "What the hell?" Remo asked, squinting.

If the thing was supposed to be an airplane, whoever had designed it had obviously gotten it wrong. The main body was far too small to fit a man inside. It would have looked like a toy model if the wings hadn't been so long.

The massive wings stretched to comical lengths from the menacing black fuselage. As the thing soared toward them out of the heavens, both Remo and Chiun remained fixed to the asphalt. They watched the small plane fly in.

"Gordons?" Remo questioned Chiun.

"He has never attacked us from the air before," the Master of Sinanju replied.

Remo nodded. "Anyway, I doubt it's him. Too creative. Besides, that thing doesn't have too much heft. He'd have to shuck too much of that probe he swallowed to turn into that."

The whining aircraft was nearly upon them, zooming along roughly five feet off the ground.

Not perceiving a threat, the two men split apart and waited for it to buzz up to them. When it did, they would simply snap off both wings and let the detached fuselage slide to a stop on the long empty lot.

A thrust of displaced air from the fore of the craft reached Remo seconds before the plane was upon them. He was reaching out with one hand when he caught a glint of too sharp sunlight off the leading edge of the right wing.

His breath caught in his chest.

"Watch the wings, Chiun!" Remo yelled. The instant he shouted, he dropped to his belly on the hot tar.

The Master of Sinanju's hand had been streaking out to snap off the left wing. At the last second he sensed what his pupil had seen. The entire length of the wing from fuselage to wing tip was honed to a deadly sharp edge. The wings were nothing more than massive knife blades.

The instant before his palm touched steel, Chiun snapped his hand away, flattening himself on the ground.

The small plane flew over both their prone forms, soaring back up into the pale blue Florida sky. It banked hard to one side and with a growing whine from its small engine swooped back around. It screamed down between the big hangars. With fatal purpose the plane flew in for another pass.

FROM THE SAFETY of the orbiter processing facility, Colonel Zipp Codwin watched on security cameras as the aircraft flew down toward Remo and Chiun. The plane was supposed to be a simple data-gathering drone for military reconnaissance. Codwin had had it converted to his own private use.

At first he assumed this was overkill. Gordons had to have overthought the abilities of the two men who were after him. After all, they didn't look like anything special.

But when they'd both ducked out of the path of the decapitating wings with impossible speed, Zipp realized there might be something more to them than could be seen with the naked eye. Still, they weren't astronauts or androids. They were mere men. And mere men could be killed.

Besides, even if the wing blades of his drone didn't get them, there was another little surprise on board. A knowing smile split wide across his granite jaw. Steely eyes trained on the monitor, Colonel Codwin watched as the drone swept down for another run.

REMO AND CHIUN SCURRIED to their feet. They spun to face the incoming drone.

Remo's face was hard. "I've got this one," he growled.

The Master of Sinanju nodded sharply before bounding out of the path of the small plane.

This time when it reached him, Remo was ready. The plane was eight yards away and coming fast. Two yards, a foot. At an inch away the aircraft obliterated the sun. Remo dropped below the menacing shadow, this time at a crouch. When it passed overhead, he shot his hand up, cracking the right wing hard from underneath.

The ten-foot-long appendage sheered away from the main fuselage and skipped away across the ground.

Still airborne, the fatally injured plane plowed ahead.

With a shriek from its engines, the drone whipped around in a wide, wobbling circle. It bounced across the roof of Remo's parked car and came to a final, fatal stop against the side of the nearest hangar. There was no crash. Instead, the sharpened edge of the remaining wing bit deep into the wall of the building and the drone stopped dead. Its engine spluttered and fell silent.

The aircraft was wobbling to a stop as Chiun came back up to Remo. The old man was sniffing the air. Remo, too, had detected something faint on the wind.

Like twin bloodhounds, their heads swiveled slowly, tracing the scent back to the stalled drone. All at once their heads snapped back toward each other. Each man wore a look of alarm.

And at the precise moment that Remo and Chiun recognized the scent, the explosives that were packed on board the drone detonated with a deafening blast.

THE EXPLOSION WAS a burst of orange fire. It ripped a massive hole in the side of the hangar. The abandoned golf cart was flung up in the air by the force of the blast. It flipped end over end across the asphalt.

As he watched the explosion on his monitor, Zipp Codwin flashed a row of sharp white teeth.

Remo and Chiun were gone. Vanished in a burst of flame and a choking cloud of dust.

Zipp glanced over his shoulder. Standing behind him was Pete Graham. As he watched the action, the scientist was chewing nervously on the end of his thumb.

"Now that's how NASA used to work," Codwin enthused. "None of this namby-pamby pantywaist bullshit about weather delays and putting off launches 'cause a goddamn bird's built a nest in your launch tower. This is how we did it in the old days. See a problem, deal with the problem. In fact, we should include that in a press release." He glanced around the room. "Hey, where's that idiot Beemer? I want him to write that one down."

Graham shook his head. "He was here a minute ago," the young man volunteered. When he looked back, he found that the only men in the room were the space cadets Codwin had kept to protect them from Mr. Gordons's enemies.

"Worthless PR hack," Codwin muttered. "Probably in the can. I should have filleted him when he let Gordons get away in the first place. Speaking of which, we'd better tell that bucket of bolts we solved his little problem for him."

He slapped his hands to his knees. He was just pushing himself to his feet when he spied something moving on his monitor. When he saw what it was, Codwin's face blanched.

The dust cloud from the explosion was settling back to the hot ground. From the very edge of the collapsing cloud, two figures had just emerged.

When he saw Remo and Chiun walking, unharmed, across the tarmac, Zipp dropped back to his seat, shocked.

"Dang," the colonel breathed.

They were walking away from the buildings. The Banana River separated the main portion of Merritt Island, on which the space center was built, from the twin launching pads used for the space shuttles. Remo and Chiun were heading toward the shore. Pads A and B rose across the water.

For Zipp Codwin, the minor momentary relief at the fact that they were at least heading in the opposite direction was eclipsed by fresh concern. Something else was moving on the monitor.

It was a person. Whoever it was was in the process of dragging a boat across the rough shore toward the river.

"Who's that?" Pete Graham asked worriedly. Zipp squinted at the monitor. When he recognized the face of the distant figure, his sharp eyes grew wide.