Warren Murphy: American Obsession

As he straightened up, behind him he heard a rush of heavy feet and a shrill cry of surprise, suddenly cut off. When he whirled, he saw yet another monster, but this one had caught Chiun from behind by the neck. The Master's face turned the color of a ripe pomegranate as the beast tried to tear off his venerable head.

Remo leaped forward, intending to come to Chitin's aid. But before he could enter the fray, the tide of battle changed.

The hairy arm that gripped the scrawny neck of the Master of Sinanju became the target for a flurry of too-fast-to-follow blows of fists and feet. Shattered in dozens of places, the arm instantly lost its strength and rigidity, and the hand released its grip on Chiun's neck.

The Master, deeply affronted by the very idea of being touched by such a creature, let alone being almost throttled to death by it, proceeded to break every bone in the beast's body, starting with the toes and working up. And only when this task had been satisfactorily completed did he serve up the killing stroke to the huge shambling thing that, in a former life, was known for putting the best face on a rotten weather forecast.

As Chiun stepped away from the body, he announced, "There are no more creatures here."

"Then it's time for us to find the head man," Remo said as he referred to his map.

As they started back down the corridor, they heard a sustained burst of autofire. It was coming from the other side of the building.

Chapter 36

Fillmore and Farnham didn't hear the stealthy approach of Korb the Transcendent through the reception area, so when his loud snort came between the gap in the office doors, it made them both jump a mile. Neither father nor son had a moment of doubt whom that snort belonged to, or what it was meant to do.

It was meant to sniff them out.

They also knew what was certain to come next. Before he had both hands firmly on the M-16, Fillmore pinned back the weapon's trigger. In his eagerness to protect himself, he also badly torqued the point of aim. Once the unintended slide across the desktop was started, the ravening burst of full-auto gunfire kept it moving.

Bullet holes appeared at chest height in the left-hand door and crawled farther and farther left, over the door frame, the paneled wall and the enormous oil painting of the Family Fing founder-a sprig of marjoram in one hand, a foaming test tube in the other. Great splintery rents cut through the front of the mahogany credenza, and choking clouds of cordite smoke filled the room.

Fillmore never did get the autorifle under control. It stopped firing only when it ran out of ammunition.

And when it did that, when the earsplitting burst of gunshots ceased, only then did the elder Fing become aware of another noise.

"Yahh! Yahh!"

It was Farnham. Farnham hollering at the top of his lungs while he tried to hide his head under the legs of an armchair. Failing miserably at that, he sat on the floor, back to the wall, eyes squashed shut, covered his ears with both hands and resumed his bellowing.

That his oldest, and now only, son didn't have so much as a millimeter of spine to his name came as no surprise to Fillmore Fing. What he was witnessing, the stress reaction of a congenital idiot, he had seen too many times before. Farnham looked and dressed like a winner, and he could talk a blue streak if given half a chance-but underneath, the boy's game was all a bluff. And always had been. Of course, the village-idiot genes had come from Farnham's mother's side.

"Shut up!" Fillmore shouted, dumping the empty clip and taking a full one from his suit jacket. Farnham paid his father no mind. The perpetual infant continued to bawl.

Fillmore cracked in the fresh magazine and jacked a live round into the chamber. "I'm not kidding," he said. "Shut up so I can tell whether I hit the damned thing or not!"

The last statement seemed to have a calming effect on the big-league pharmaceutical salesman. Farnham opened his eyes and bit down hard on his knuckle to keep from crying out.

Fillmore cocked his head in the direction of the door. "I don't hear anything. Do you?"

Farnham shook his head.

"I think I got him," Fillmore said. Then, with more conviction, "I'm sure I must've got him...." At which point, seven hundred pounds of former computer billionaire came crashing through the bullet-ravaged doors.

The surprise of the sudden entry and the sheer, intimidating size of the creature that faced him gave Fillmore pause. The sights of his assault rifle wavered wide of the intended target.

For his part, Korb the Transcendent seemed torn, as well. There were two not-Korbs in the room. Which to pull apart first? His beady eyes shifted from Fillmore to Farnham, and back again.

Decisions, decisions.

Fillmore, meanwhile, had shouldered the M-16 and was drawing a careful bead on the center of the beast's hairy chest. The smell that Korb had brought into the room with him was enough to gag a maggot; it was making Fillmore's eyes tear.

Farnham blubbered softly on the floor, his eyes unblinking and huge as he took in the creature. He was biting his knuckle so hard he was making blood flow down over his wrist.

"Mr. Korb!" Fillmore cried, cheek to butt-stock, his index finger carefully tightening down on the trigger. When he felt resistance to the squeeze, Fillmore held up. "Mr. Korb," he said, "do you know who I am? Can you understand me?"

Fing wasn't playing for time. He was playing for capital. It had occurred to him how grateful the richest man in the world might be if somehow he was saved from this hairy, bad-smelling fate worse than death.

The beast looked at Fillmore with narrowed eyes. He had no idea what the noise coming out of the not-Korb's mouth meant, but it irritated him a great deal.

"We may be able to find a cure," Fillmore told the creature. "If we had suitable funding, I'm sure we could do it. Why don't we work together on this? What do you say?"

Korb the Transcendent smelled the blood on Farnham's finger. Decision made. He darted away from the doorway in a blur.

Fillmore fired a 10-round burst into the reception area, through the space where the beast had been. When he turned to pick up the target again, the thing had hold of Farnham by the arm. Like a cat playing with a mouse, the former billionaire batted the Fing boy against the wall, and when he bounced back, batted him again.

Fillmore took aim, but then changed his mind. He didn't even know if bullets could kill the monster. What if they only made him madder? The prudent thing to do was to take advantage of the golden opportunity that had presented itself.

As the patriarch rounded the front of his desk, it looked like the beast was trying to make a hand puppet out of poor Farnham. Fillmore said nothing. While the creature was thoroughly engrossed, he just lowered his head and hurried out the door.

KORB THE TRANSCENDENT was far too preoccupied with his new toy to notice that the other not-Korb had left the room. There were so many interesting things to make the toy do. After he tired of playing bouncy-ball, the beast gripped Farnham by the wrist and hurled him like a Frisbee across the room.

Whap! Against the far wall.

With a single bound, Korb the Transcendent crossed the room and retrieved his play toy, then it was Frisbee time again.

Whap went Farnham against the opposite wall.

It was a game that soon bored even a world-class drooler like Korb the Transcendent. There were only so many ways Farnham could go whap! And after those ways had been repeated a few dozen times, the beast decided he'd had enough.

With a stiffened claw finger, he poked the unmoving form on the floor. He wanted the toy to get up and run so he could chase it and then bat it down. Maybe even jump up and down on it a few times. Nothing doing.