Warren Murphy - Killer Watts

"Calm down," Elizu Roote insisted.

Sighing, Roote glanced up at the corrugated roof of the shed. As the many guns rattled loudly outside, Roote seemed unconcerned. Staring at the ceiling, he continued to tap, bored, against the battery.

Roote's eyes strayed down the tin walls, skipping over to Arthur Ford's intent face. He smiled. "Well, if he's so eager to meet me, by all means, let's invite him into my parlor," Elizu Roote said with an evil grin.

TWENTY SECONDS before the Camp Earthers started shooting at Chiun, Remo was having his own problems.

He had circled around to a point just above Elizu Roote's shack. Arthur Ford had just ducked inside, and Remo was about to proceed down the hill when he felt the gun barrel in his ribs.

"Get up."

Two men. Perimeter guards.

He should have sensed them. At any other time since his earliest Sinanju training, he would have. But his body had yet to counter the residual effects of Roote's attack. In focusing his senses on the building below he had opened himself up to a nearer opponent.

Remo rose dutifully to his feet, arms raised. The shack was forgotten. He drew his senses back in tight, focusing on his immediate environment.

Just the two. No more loitering in the brush. They wore grubby flannel shirts and jeans. Scraggly beards sprouted from their grimy faces. "Is this the Devil's Tower landing strip?" Remo asked innocently. "I've got to catch a bus to Melmac."

It was at that moment that the gunfire erupted in the camp below.

The men twisted, startled. Looking down into the camp, they were just able to see a flash of silver near the fires. A tiny figure seemed to be dancing among their fellow Camp Earthers. Wherever it went, bodies seemed to fall.

As quickly as their interest in the distant battle was piqued, it evaporated.

Both men felt their guns being yanked from their grimy hands. They spun back to the man they had discovered lurking above the hut of their precious alien.

Remo was tossing the M-16s into the shadows. Soaring unseen, they flew over the side of the cliff, plummeting through the empty space to the Rio Grande far below.

"Hey, what'd you do with my gun?" one man complained.

"This," Remo replied.

Grabbing a handful of grubby shirt, Remo repeated the action he'd performed with the rifle. Screaming all the way, the Camp Earther arced out over the side of the mountain and plunged through the night air. The man's cry for help ended in a distant splash.

After witnessing the fate of his companion, the second man decided to take his chances on land. Without a word to Remo, he turned and flung himself over the edge of the hill, crashing down through rock and brush until he struck the plateau below. Once he hit, he did not move again.

"My life would be a heck of a lot easier if they all did that," Remo commented as he looked down at the body.

In the distant camp, guns still blazed. Chiun could take care of himself.

Senses straining alertness, Remo began picking his careful way down the hill to the shack.

CHIUN SWIRLED through the mob of Camp Earthers, an angry silver dervish.

Guns were wrenched from their owners, tearing arms from sockets in the process. Both rifles and appendages were flung aside.

"You dare!" Chiun raged.

Two Camp Earthers leaned against a pathetic tin shed, thinking that by bracing their backs they could get a steadier shot. But although they tried to track the movements of the tiny figure who flounced and spun within their midst, they failed to score a single hit.

Chiun suddenly whirled on the two men. Framed by campfire, he was like some demon cast up from the very bowels of hell itself.

Panicked, the pair unloaded everything in their magazines. It was not enough. As bullets sang out into the dark night, Chiun flew at the two men.

As he was airborne, nary a bullet kissed a single silk kimono thread.

Sandaled feet caught two brittle sternums, crushing them to splinters. The men exploded backward, crumpling the flimsy shed wall. Even as the dust began to collect on the thin film of blood that gurgled up between their dead lips, the roof of the shack was tumbling downward. It formed a makeshift coffin lid.

Chiun twirled from the collapsed corrugated tin.

The steady pop-pop of automatic-weapons fire had dwindled rapidly since its start mere moments before. The Master of Sinanju spun through the last four firing Camp Earthers.

Toes lashed out; hands were flung in seemingly wild gestures. Fingers clasping guns were shattered to jelly. Blood erupted from throats and chests. The gunmen fell to the dirt.

Chiun wheeled, narrowed eyes searching. He found Beta RAM cowering behind a pile of crates that the residents of Camp Earth had been breaking up for firewood.

Whirling over to the wooden boxes, Chiun brought his hands down in furious slashing movements. The wood shattered to kindling beneath his vengeful fists.

With one hand, Chiun lifted Beta into the air. "Where is the one called Roote?" the Master of Sinanju demanded hotly.

Beta extended a single, shaking hand. He was like a palsy victim. "There," he gasped, pointing to the far end of the encampment.

With a look of disgust on his wrinkled parchment features, Chiun flung Beta into the ruins of one of the Camp Earth shacks. Spinning on his heel, he marched from the scene of carnage, toward Roote's shack.

Even as Chiun was storming across the camp, Beta was pulling himself to his feet.

He didn't give Chiun's back a second glance. Heart thudding madly, Beta RAM ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Chapter 28

Chiun's hooded eyes were knots of vellum mistrust as he watched the familiar figure running toward him.

Arthur Ford ran, stumbling, across the camp, away from the sand-covered promontory on which Elizu Roote's tin shack rested. Eyes wild, he flung himself desperately at the Master of Sinanju. Chiun grabbed the ufologist by the shoulders, holding him at an annoyed distance.

"You've got to save us!" Ford begged. "He's crazy!"

"You aided his escape," Chiun said levelly.

"That's because I didn't know what he was," Ford pleaded desperately. "You've got to believe me. He's dangerous. He has to be stopped."

Chiun released the UFO enthusiast. "This creature. It lurks within?" the old Korean asked.

Ford nodded. "He knows you're here, but he's weak. I don't think he has much power left." Eyes directed at the shack, the Master of Sinanju nodded crisply. He sensed both truth and deception coming from Ford. Without another word, he turned and crossed the small space to Roote's hut. Behind him a tiny smile broke out across Ford's face as Chiun ducked through the metal door. There was a moment of frightening silence.

All at once, a massive thumping noise erupted from the tin shed. And as Ford watched with nervous glee, the entire shack was engulfed in a pulse of electric blue.

HE WAS TOO SLOW!

Halfway up the hill, Remo watched in horror as the massive surge of electrical energy coursed around the exterior of the tiny metal hut. The hum that permeated the night air was that of a million insects' fluttering wings in one horrible instant.

Remo had only seen Chiun at the last moment. Too late to even shout a warning as the old Korean ducked inside the shed.

Now, as he watched the arcs of high voltage leap from one side of the frame to the other at the mouth of the shack, the dreadful truth could not be denied.

Roote was far more powerful than he had been during his encounter with Remo. There was no way Chiun could have survived such a massive burst of electricity.

It was Remo's fault.

This did Remo lament as he scurried the rest of the way down the hill, as he raced over to the shack.

His fault.

If he had been able to stop Roote the first time... If he had been able to convince Chiun of the seriousness of Roote's abilities...