Warren Murphy - Mob Psychology

For Remo it was excruciatingly, agonizingly, painstakingly boring. It was so boring, his back started to itch.

But it worked. He found himself inside the room in a little less than ninety minutes. He took no steps. His feet simply crept along the carpet, a micro-inch at a time, neither lifting nor stepping, but achieving a kind of flat-footed sliding locomotion that the ceiling-mounted quartz motion detectors could not detect because although Remo and Chiun were displacing the still air in the computer room, they were not disturbing it.

Remo was glad Chiun had made him remove his silk suit and shirt at the construction yard. The fine hairs along his bare arms acted as sensory receptors, enabling him to pace himself so he didn't trigger warning eddies of air.

Since it was taking them literally hours to cross the room, Remo had plenty of time to take in the computer screens arrayed in work stations on either side of the corridor leading to the blank door behind which Don Carmine labored under a false sense of security.

He noticed that one by one the screens began to fill up with symbols that crowded and overlapped themselves like wire-frame jigsaw puzzles. Like amber cataracts forming on cyclopean eyes, the screens turned a uniform blind amber.

Then big black cut-out like letters appeared.

Remo wondered what a "hard dynamic abort" was.

He had a lot of time to think about it. They had entered the Manet Building just after one o'clock in the afternoon. It was approaching six-thirty now and there remained a good twenty feet between them and the blank door. It was dark. The sun had set.

It was like walking underwater, except without the water. So as to keep his metabolism cycled down, Remo had to keep breathing in a shallow way that was almost suffocating. He wanted to scream, to unleash the frustrated pent-up energy that was coursing through his body.

But Remo knew the Master of Sinanju was testing his patience as well as demonstrating his own superior skills. Remo would not allow himself to fall short. Even if he did strongly suspect Chiun of moving even more slowly than neccessary to prolong Remo's ordeal.

As they made their slow way through the computer room, Remo spent most of his time staring at the translucent skin of the back of Chiun's bald head. He thought about all the difficult times that lay behind them. The long months of separation. The terrible battle Remo had fought in the Middle East without the Master of Sinanju by his side. And how badly he had botched his mission, without Chiun there to guide him. And he remembered why he had been so concerned about his mentor. Chiun was a century old. And he looked it, even if he did not act it.

Remo expressed a thought.

I love you, Little Father.

And in the dimness of his mind, he seemed to hear a reply.

You should.

Remo would have grinned, but the mere act of smiling was apt to trigger air currents. He held the warm feeling inside him for the remainder of the passage it seemed as endless as Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe-across the room.

The door was inching closer. A mere dozen feet away, or less than an hour at their current pace.

Don Carmine Imbruglia would never know what hit him.

They would have made it except that the blank panel abruptly acquired a dozen black eyes created by .45-caliber slugs punching out through the veneer and steel.

Alarm bells began to ring.

Remo lunged forward to pluck Chiun out of the myriad bullet tracks.

He was hopelessly late. The Master of Sinanju dropped in place, as if a trapdoor had opened under his feet. The bullets snarled over his aged head. Coming at Remo.

Remo slipped off to one side, just in time to evade the outer edge of the spreading spray of slugs.

All over the room, computer screens shattered and gave up smoke and hissing blue-white sparks. Then the long room went completely dark as, in unison, the rows of amber screens winked out.

As his eyes adjusted to the utter lack of light, Remo detected the shadowy form of the Master of Sinanju coming to his feet and sweeping purposefully toward the bullet-riddled door.

He barely paused at the door. His fingers went into convenient bullet holes. Then the Master of Sinanju turned. The door was suddenly wrenched off its hinges and hurled backward, where it flattened a dead terminal to a mass of plastic and mangled circuit boards.

Chiun stepped into the room.

Remo moved in, hard and fast.

And stopped dead at the threshold. Inside, Don Carmine Imbruglia had reared up from his chair, the smoking tommy gun dangling in the crook of one muscular arm. His tiny eyes glared at the ruin of a terminal on the Formica card table before him.

It had been the target of Don Carmine's violent outburst, Remo realized.

"I was robbed!" he was howling. "The fuggin' computer's completely busted."

"Nice shot," Remo said in the darkness.

"Who's that? Who's there?"

"Call me Remo."

"I call you dead, cogsugger," said Don Carmine, yanking back on the charging bolt of his weapon.

"And what do you call me, Roman?" came the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju.

In the act of bringing his tommy gun up to bear, Don Carmine turned toward the unexpected sound.

"I know that voice. You're the fuggin' Jap thief "

"Don't call him-" Remo started to say.

Don Carmine Imbruglia never completed his turn. A sandaled foot grazed his kneecaps, turning them to powder. A long-nailed hand took hold of the muzzle of his weapon.

When Don Carmine collapsed, his hands were empty.

The Master of Sinanju made short work of the tommy. The barrel came loose like a pipe being separated from an elbow joint. The drum broke open, raining bullets. Various pieces of the breech and stock were reduced to wood shavings and metal filings under the friction of Chiun's high-speed manipulations.

"What the fug happened?" came the dull voice of Don Carmine, looking at his stung, empty hands.

"You called him a Jap," Remo pointed out.

"Well, he is, ain't he?"

"Oops! You did it again."

Don Carmine felt something like steel darning needles take up his wrist. They squeezed inexorably. Don Carmine screamed. The pain was frightening, like being injected with dozens of acid-filled hypodermics.

"You can't do this to me!" howled Don Carmine through his agony. "I know my rights. You got nothing on me without my computers, and they just took a dive. So there. Go peddle your papers elsewhere. I'm the fuggin' Kingpin of Boston. "

"And here's your fuggin' crown," said Remo, picking up the bullet-riddled IDC terminal and jamming it over Don Carmine's head like an astronaut's helmet.

A muffled cursing came from within the terminal.

The Master of Sinanju took hold of the terminal to steady it, Don Carmine's head with it. He separated his hands, then brought them together.

Runkk!

Don Carmine's futuristic head was suddenly two feet narrower and half afoot higher. It hovered in the darkness, balanced on the mafioso's thick neck for long moments.

With a last guttering spark and hiss, it fell across the table legs. Don Carmine's limbs twitched a little, as if feeding off the electricity in the terminal. Then he lay still.

In the darkness, Remo looked up at Chiun.

"We were supposed to find out if anyone else knew how to run the LANSCII program," Remo pointed out.

Chiun shrugged shadowy shoulders. "He called me an unforgivable name." His smile came dimly. "Also, he was the last to labor under that misconception. I could not allow him to slander the Master of Sinanju further. What would my ancestors think?"

Remo searched his mind for an appropriate comeback. He never found it. Instead, he said quietly, "They would be proud of you, Little Father. As I am."

And in the darkness, the two Masters of Sinanju bowed to one another in mutual respect.