Warren Murphy: Encounter Group

"Aiiieeeee!"

Chiun. That scream was Chiun's.

Remo ran forward three steps, putting him on an outside line, and let it carry him through the sheet metal wall. The wall screeched like the amplified sound of a nail pulled from wood as Remo's hands pierced it and bent it outward.

He was in the next corridor, really a continuation of the single spiral. Remo got back on the outside line, and tore through the next wall. He stumbled right into a trap. A hand grenade dropped from a ceiling trap by a string, which pulled the pin out.

Remo grabbed the grenade and threw it down the corridor and threw himself in the opposite direction. The explosion hurt his eardrums even though he'd remembered to open his mouth wide to equalize the pressure that might otherwise have damaged them.

Picking himself up, Remo went through the last wall as if it were a sheet of foil and found himself in the central chamber.

The first thing he saw was Chiun, looking horrified, standing with his back against one wall and looking down at two bodies lying on the floor. Chiun saw Remo.

"I think it is dead," Chiun squeaked. "I may have killed it, but I am not certain. Oh, Remo, isn't it horrible?"

Remo looked at the still form of the World Master, whose encephalitic head lay at too sharp an angle to his body for his neck not to be broken. A single fisheye stared up sightlessly, and the many arms, both human and not, which splayed from the creature's body made it look like some deformed spider.

Remo knelt beside the body, while Chiun all but jumped onto the console chair like a caricature of a woman who has seen a mouse.

"Is it dead, Remo?" Chiun asked.

Remo touched the pinkish head and felt the slickness of plastic. He pulled the head loose to reveal a human head whose strong features and black hair resembled those of Pavel Zarnitsa's— even in death.

"Relax, Chiun. It's only a disguise."

"Are you certain?" Chiun asked doubtfully. "But when he saw the truth, he shook himself and stepped forward confidently. "Why, of course it is a disguise, Remo. How could it not be?"

Remo ignored that and asked, "What happened here?"

"This Russian freed himself and followed me, but I tricked him," Chiun said, pointing to Pavel Zarnitsa, who was either dead or very close to it. "I let him pass before me. He surprised this— this insect— and they quarrelled. The insect shot him, and I felled the insect with a single blow to its neck. Then I saw its face..."

Remo went to Pavel Zarnitsa. The Russian was bleeding to death. He would not live long, but for the moment he did live.

Pavel opened his eyes. "He... is dead?"

Remo nodded.

"Is... my brother," Pavel said. "Chuzhoi... Zarnitsa. Younger brother... with GRU. You know GRU? He— he should have been KGB. Now... is dead. I am... dead, too. No? He called me fool. He is... fool. He would kill... own brother for stupid GRU plan... Listen. You must— must find warhead before—"

"I know where it is," Remo told him, coming to his feet. "I'm going to have to leave you."

Pavel closed his eyes. "I will be dead when you return."

"I know," Remo said. And he and Chiun left through the underground tunnel.

"The warhead's in Tulsa, Chiun," Remo said as they piled into the car. "We've got maybe two hours before it goes."

"You learned the snail maze?"

Remo nodded. "The trick is not to follow the path."

"Good. You have learned something for a change."

* * *

Finding the truck was the easy part. It stood on a side street in downtown Tulsa near the university. Remo recognized it from Amanda Bull's description. A plain truck except for the paint splotches, which hid the black and yellow nuclear emblems on its sides.

Remo broke the latch and threw open the cargo door. The warhead was inside. It looked small and unimpressive for the damage it could wreak.

"There it is," Remo said. "I'd better call Smith."

"There is no time," Chiun said levelly. "I must act quickly."

"You? Chiun, this calls for an expert. If you make a mistake, you'll blow us up."

Chiun ignored him. "There is no time to acquire the correct oil, so I must find another way," he said to himself as he felt the cone projection, which was the most distinguishing feature of the warhead.

"Maybe we should drive it out of the city, where it'll do less damage when it blows," Remo suggested.

"It will not explode," Chiun said.

"Since when do you know anything about nuclear weapons?"

Chiun stopped what he was doing and looked at Remo. "Do you remember the puzzle, Remo?"

"The Rubik's Cube? Sure. But what does that have to do—"

"You could not understand how I was able to solve the cube, even with my eyes closed. But I did. This was possible because everything man makes is given a basic form, a unity of self. When this puzzle was built, its unity of form had all of the little colored squares properly arranged. When the squares are disarranged, the internal unity is disturbed. This has nothing to do with the colored squares, Remo, but with the way the puzzle parts fitted together when it was in unity with itself. To solve this cube, I did not even look at the colored squares, I simply manipulated its parts until I felt those parts achieve unity. The colors took care of themselves."

"You did it by feel, then?"

"Yes. And one day you, too, will be able to accomplish the same thing. It is the same with this device. At the point of its creation, it was not armed. It is armed now and is therefore in disunity. I will undo that disunity now."

"Okay, Little Father. It's your show. I just hope you're right."

Chiun went back to the warhead. It was a complicated mechanism— certainly more complicated than a Rubik's Cube, even if the combinations were fewer. The consequences of even a single error were all the greater, however...

Remo stood guard outside the truck. It was late morning now, and young college students passed by the truck frequently. They had no idea that they were only a few feet away from a nuclear weapon that could end their studies and their lives in a single white-hot flash of fire. It was an eerie sensation for Remo Williams. He wanted to warn them away, but he knew that no matter how far they ran or drove, they would not escape the nuclear blast. So what was the use? Let them enjoy themselves— while they could.

Almost an hour dragged past, and Remo stuck his head inside the truck. "How's it coming?" he asked anxiously.

But the Master of Sinanju, intent upon his work, did not answer him.

Remo returned to his thoughts. What would Smith do if they all went up? Would he—

"Run, Remo!" Chiun shouted suddenly, and came out of the truck like a shot.

"Huh?" Remo said, startled.

"Run!"

Remo took off, Chiun at his side. Together, they rounded a corner just as a great explosion echoed behind them. Remo prepared for the flash that would obliterate them both...

* * *

"It is all right now," Chiun said, coming to a stop.

"It exploded. The warhead exploded. Why aren't we dead?"

"We are not dead thanks to the skill of the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said as he led Remo back to the smoking ruin that was the truck.

Remo looked at the truck. "I don't get it. Was it a dud?"

"No," Chiun told him. "It was almost our deaths. The fools who built that device built it so that once armed, its unity could not be reestablished."

"Probably something to do with the failsafe," Remo suggested.

"Whatever. When I discovered this, Remo, I examined the mechanism to see what made it work. Thus I discovered that in order for the atomic part to work, it must be made to work by an ordinary explosion."

"That's right," Remo said, ignoring the people who had rushed to the scene. "They trigger the nuclear explosion with a regular one. I read that somewhere once."