"The demon car washer," Remo said. "I don't buy it."
"How do you explain the machines that attacked us?"
"Malfunction," said Remo.
"And the booby traps?"
"The owner has a thing against trespassers," said Remo, less confidently.
"Fool," said Anna Chutesov. But even her scorn did not faze Remo Williams.
Remo pulled back his hand and hit the glass with an open palm. The glass shivered, hung in place as spiderweb cracks radiated from the point of impact, and then fell in shards so fine it was as if the glass had turned to sugar.
There was a control board on the other side, Remo saw, and the entire booth appeared to be occupied by it. There was no space in which a human being could sit. Indeed, no seat. Just a steel well lined with cables and connective devices.
"You say there was somebody in this booth?" Remo asked.
"I saw his shadowed outline through the glass," Anna insisted.
"Have a look," Remo offered.
Anna stepped carefully. When she saw that the confines of the booth could contain a human being only if he had no lower body, she turned a pale greenish white and stumbled off to a corner, where she sank to the ground, unmindful of the grease stains her clothing soaked up.
Remo yanked handfuls of thick cable until they snapped apart. The sound of the frantic machinery ceased immediately. He turned to Chiun.
"Did you see the outline too, Little Father?"
"Would you think me mad if I said yes?" asked Chiun.
"No."
"I did."
"That's crazy!" Remo blurted.
"Liar!" Chiun said.
"Okay, I'm sorry. It just doesn't add up."
"It's diabolical," said Anna. "Where can it be? What can he be doing with it?"
"I think Anna's starting to lose it, Little Father. Listen to her."
"You listen to her. I am disappointed that I have found no one on whom to avenge my honor." And he kicked at a wall until the bricks tore loose from their mortar. After Chiun had a pile, he stamped the bricks with his sandaled feet until a fine powder resulted.
"Feel better now?" asked Remo.
"No," replied the Master of Sinanju.
"I didn't think so," said Remo, offering Anna Chutesov a hand. "Let's all get out of here. There's nothing more to this shell."
They walked out the back and around to the car. Before they got to it, the windshield fell out in pieces and the hood popped up.
"Uh-oh," said Remo. "We're in trouble."
"Sniper," cried Anna, diving for shelter behind the car.
"That too," said Remo, looking around. "But I was thinking of what Smitty is going to say. That's his car." A tire exploded, and one side of the car sprouted a string of neat black holes like notes on a musical scale. On the ground, Anna clung to handfuls of grass and wondered what was keeping Remo and Chiun from joining her in safety.
In the budding top of an oak tree, Earl Armalide emptied an M16 rifle into the car until he knew it was undrivable.
He dropped the weapon, which swung free from a lanyard attached to his belt, and unshipped his AutoMag pistol from its shoulder holster. He decided to take out the tall skinny one first. His head represented the cleanest shot.
Armalide fired one round. He was so sure of his aim that he didn't pause to look. He assumed his target had gone down, and adjusted his sights to the second target, the little Oriental in the Pee Wee Herman suit. A second shot blasted out.
Earl looked for the girl next. She must have sought shelter behind the car. No problem. An AutoMag round could go through an engine block. He brought the pistol back up to his face, but in doing so noticed that there were no bodies on the ground.
Now, where had those two kills gone? They couldn't have dragged themselves behind anything. A .44 slug had the stopping power to nail a kill to the ground, even if death wasn't instant which it usually was. Yet there were no blood tracks or drag marks in the grass.
Earl Armalide had chosen this particular oak tree because it was solid and had a large crown of branches. There wasn't much leafage to the branches this early in the spring, but there were enough green buds to help his camouflaged body blend in. It was also high enough that he could pick off anyone attempting to climb the tree after him.
The tree, all four feet in circumference of it, shook suddenly.
Earl Armalide was sure it was an earthquake until he looked down.
Looking back up at him from the base of the tree were the upturned faces of his two kills. But they weren't dead. They were alive. In fact, the tall one with the dead-looking eyes smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"Ollie, ollie oxen free," the tall one called playfully.
"Eat this, sucker," Earl spat back. And then he fired into that grinning face.
The bullet split a half-buried rock where the man had been standing. The tree shook again. More violently this time. Earl had to clutch at the tree trunk just to hold on. Sap made his fingers sticky and he cursed. That stuff could jam a fine weapon like the AutoMag in no time. He switched hands.
"Why do you not come down?" asked a high squeaky voice.
Earl looked down at the Oriental and shot at his face. The oak shook again. Although the Oriental had not seemed to move, he was suddenly standing in a different spot. Unharmed.
"He must want us to say the magic word before he'll come down," the tall man told the Oriental in a loud voice.
"I wonder what it is?" said the Oriental in a wondering tone.
"Maybe it's 'timber.' " The tall man called up to him, "Hey, buddy, is it 'timber'?"
Earl did not answer. Instead he pulled the pin from a hand grenade and dropped it.
The hand grenade shot back up. It stopped an inch from the tip of Earl Armalide's quivering nose. It seemed to hang in the air as if weightless. Frantically Earl made a grab for it, but the grenade suddenly fell back.
It returned in another millisecond, hanging impossibly. "I can keep doing this until it goes off in your face," the tall man sang cheerily.
Earl grabbed again. In vain. The grenade fell. The next time it came up, Earl was certain the five-second fuse had been exhausted. But the grenade did not stop long enough to eradicate his sweating face. It kept going.
High up, it went off. The concussion shook the tree. Hot pieces of shrapnel rained down. They clipped branches, set bark to smoldering, but miraculously, did not embed themselves in Earl's huddling flesh. A single red-hot piece landed in his lap and he frantically pushed it off before it burned through to the family jewels.
"Are you coming down now?" the Oriental wanted to know. He slapped at the trunk and it vibrated like a sapling.
Earl clung to the tree, hoping it was all a dream. It had to be. No one could toss a grenade into the air so high that the shrapnel lost its killing velocity falling back to earth.
"I guess it's 'timber,' " said the skinny white man. And the mighty oak shook again, and kept on shaking. They were using axes on the tree, Earl knew. The sharp, meaty thunk sound was unmistakable. So was the crack! just before the oak began to sway.
Earl jumped clear as the oak crashed to earth. He landed in a tangle of breaking branches, and lay still, the air knocked out of him.
The white man and the Oriental extracted him from the woodsy mess. Earl Armalide sat catching his breath as the two stood over him.
Dazed, unable to think of anything better to say, he asked, "Where are your axes?"
"What axes?" asked the white man, blowing a wood shaving out from under a fingernail.
Chapter 13
The first thing Dr. Harold W. Smith said when he arrived at the Yuri Gagarin Free Car Wash was, "What happened to my car?"
"He shot it up," Remo said laconically, indicating a man in soiled jungle fatigues.
Smith stood over Earl Armalide, who was crouching on the grass, his hands clamped at the nape of his neck. "I'm not giving you anything but my name, rank, and serial number," said Earl Armalide. His arms ached.
His legs tingled from constricted blood flow. He would have moved to relieve the agony, but after the white guy had forced him to assume the humiliating POW position, the Oriental had touched him at the back of the neck, and ever since then Earl Armalide had felt as if he had developed a case of muscle lockjaw.
"Your wallet," Smith said grimly.
"I already checked," Remo said, handing Smith the billfold. "There's no I.D."
Smith took the wallet wordlessly. He riffled through it, found no identification cards, and extracted a thick sheaf of bills. He silently counted out an assortment of tens and twenties. He tossed the wallet at the man's feet and said, "This is for the damage to my car. And estimated towing charges."
"I hate to point this out, Smitty," Remo said, "but you've got a more serious problem on your hands than your repair bill. Besides, anyone can see your car has been totaled."
"I know an excellent mechanic," said Smith. "Now, what was so urgent that you insisted I come here personally?"
"This guy is somehow connected with the car wash. He says his name is Tex Trailer."
"He's lying," said Smith. "His name is Earl Armalide."
"How do you know?" Remo demanded.
"I recognize him from TV reports. He's a federal fugitive, wanted on a number of charges, not excluding murder of law-enforcement officers." Smith leaned down and broke the man's dog tags from under his camouflage collar. He glanced at them briefly.
"See?" he said, showing them to Remo.
Remo read the tags. "You're right. It says Earl Armalide, serial number 334-55. What branch are you with, buddy?" Remo wanted to know.
"No comment."
"Turn it over, Remo," said Smith.
Remo read the other side. Stamped on the reverse were the words "Compliments of Survivalist's Monthly."
"They give them out as a subscription promotion," Smith said. He walked over to the car-wash entrance and examined the exterior carefully. With a penknife taken from his vest pocket, he pried loose one of the white tiles covering the outer walls.
"Interesting architecture?" asked Remo when Smith returned.
"No, but the construction materials are unusual."
"You should see the washing mechanism itself. It'll kill you."
"It's unusual to see space-age plastics and top-secret alloys used in the construction of a commercial car wash," said Smith levelly, looking Earl Armalide straight in the eye.
Earl Armalide wanted to look down to avoid Smith's stern gaze, but his neck would not move.
"What are you saying, Smitty?" Remo asked.
"This is no ordinary tile. It is one of the expensive heatproof tiles used to protect shuttle hulls. They are easily identified. They resist extraordinarily high temperatures, but are so brittle that they would shatter under heavy rain." To demonstrate his point, Smith broke the thick tile between two fingers. "I believe Ms. Chutesov was right all along," he added, dropping the pieces at Armalide's feet.
"I am glad someone here can think," said Anna Chutesov. She, too, was giving Earl Armalide a hard stare.
"Where are the crewmen?" asked Smith.
"Search me. I never saw them. I think they're dead."
"Of course they are dead," said Anna dully. "They were brave men. They would never let one man take control of their craft without fighting to the death."
"I had nothing to do with that," said Armalide. "The ship was empty when I climbed aboard."
"At Kennedy?"
"Yeah. I figured it was a Russky invasion trick and if I stormed the shuttle I'd be a hero and get a pardon from the President. "
"Idiot male," spat Anna Chutesov.
"If the ship was empty, pal, who flew it?" Remo demanded. "You don't look like you could fly a paper airplane if you had the rest of your life to practice."
"This is gonna be hard for you folks to swallow."
"Try us," Remo said.
"There wasn't anyone inside."
"It took off automatically?" asked Smith. "No, not exactly."
"What, exactly?" Remo prompted.
"The ship flew itself," Earl Armalide said.
The Master of Sinanju drifted up behind the crouched figure of Earl Armalide. "Did I mention that this was the creature who worked at the evil car wash? No? As such, he is partly responsible for the unspeakable thing that has befallen the House of Sinanju. As reigning Master, I claim the right to deal with the wretch as I see fit after this interrogation is over."
"And I claim the right to kill him in the name of the brave Soviet cosmonauts who lost their lives," returned Anna Chutesov.
"The ship flew itself" said Earl Armalide frantically. "You gotta believe me."
The Master of Sinanju reached for Earl Armalide's left ear and gently rubbed it between thumb and index finger. He continued rubbing it even after Earl Armalide gritted his teeth against the rising heat friction. Smoke drifted past his nostrils. He was sure the old Oriental was cooking his earlobe with a match, but there was no flame visible. And Earl Armalide had spent years training his peripheral vision in simulated combat. He could tell if his sideburns lined up without using a mirror. But he could not see any match.
"What say you now?" said Chiun.
"The ship flew itself," Earl Armalide moaned through watering eyes. "It was alive."
"Okay, the ship flew itself," said Remo, who knew that no one ever lied under the fierce pain the Master of Sinanju could inflict. "Tell us more."
"I climb into the ship, you understand? Only there's no one aboard. I'm in this airlock thing and suddenly the walls start closing in. You know, like in an old movie when the hero is locked in a secret room by the bad guy."
"Impossible," scoffed Anna Chutesov. "The airlock has no such function."
"Don't I wish," said Earl Armalide. "I was this close to becoming a bouillon cube, when-"
"Did you say cube?" asked Smith, suddenly thinking of the objects found on the Kennedy Airport runway. "Yeah, cube. The walls were coming in and so was the roof. I figured if they didn't stop, I'd be cubed. But they did stop. In fact, the ship asked me a question. I look up and there's an eyeball sticking out of a wall. It's looking at me, and it wants to know about this magazine that fell out of my pocket Survivalist's Monthly."
"What did the ... er ... ship want to know?" Smith asked.
"It wanted to know what a survivalist was. It was interested in survival."
The hair on the Master of Sinanju's face suddenly trembled, but there was no breeze to stir it.
"What did it ask?" Chiun wanted to know.
"About survival stuff mostly. It wanted to compare notes. It said it was a machine, a survival machine." Smith, his face ashen, looked at Remo. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he said hollowly.
"Gordons," said Remo. "He's back."
"Who's Gordons?" asked Anna Chutesov.
Chiun nodded grimly. "Gordons. Oh, this is a doubly evil day."
"Who's Gordons?" repeated Anna.
"You saw him?" Smith asked Earl Armalide. "Can you describe him?"
"I told you. I just saw the eye. He claimed that he was the shuttle. Said he assumilated it."
"Assimilated," corrected Smith. His face was haggard.
"Yeah, that."
"Did he give you his name?" Smith asked.
"I didn't know he had one. He said he was a survival machine and if I helped him, he wouldn't cube me. It was a good deal, so I took it. I wasn't interested in being on a first-name basis."
"Explain the car wash," said Smith. "It's the Gagarin, isn't it?"
"Must be. One minute I was inside the ship, flying along calm as you please. The next, we landed and I was knocked cold. When I woke up, I was inside the car wash and the ship was gone. I figured I was home free at first, but when I tried to leave, the place came alive. You can't imagine what it's like, being threatened by a car wash."
"Oh, I don't know," Remo said dryly.
"That's right," Earl Armalide said sheepishly. "You do."
"Why a car was
h?" Smith asked.
"Camouflage. At first, I gave him the idea that if he didn't want anyone chasing him, he had to be unobtrusive."
"The Yuri Gagarin Free Car Wash is not exactly a masterpiece of subtlety," said Remo.
"That part came later. He kept the name because, to be truthful, he didn't seem too bright. Know what I mean? He took things too literal. I tried explaining that the name was a problem, but he said he had to work with the things he assimilated. First he assimilated the shuttle, then he merged that with the car wash. When the military dropped their search, he was ready to move on to something else, when the idea hit him."
"What idea?"
"Well, he was afraid of enemies. I guess that's you guys, because he talked about you a lot."
"Oh, Gordons and I go back years," said Remo.
"Who is Gordons?" Anna asked again. She was ignored.
"He said as long as there were so many people on this planet, he wasn't safe, I kinda understood him then for the first time. I'm a survivalist, you know. We had that in common. The way we figured it, there were too many people on the planet telling others what to do and using up all our resources. There were people after me and other people after him. So we decided to team up to solve the problem."
"By sterilizing the planet," said Anna Chutesov. Remo, Chiun, and Dr. Smith all looked at Anna Chutesov in the same blank way.
"Yeah? How'd you know that?" Armalide said wonderingly.
"Yes, how did you know that, Ms. Chutesov?" Smith asked firmly.
"Let him tell it," said Anna Chutesov. She looked pale. Her Walther hung slack in her hand as if it was suddenly too heavy.
"There was this satellite thing that came with the shuttle, the Sword of Damocles," Earl Armalide said. "The machine had figured out it used microwaves to sterilize people-only he didn't call people, people. He called them meat machines. Isn't that weird? He and I figured out that if we kept killing our enemies, it only made more enemies. But if we sterilized them, all we had to do was wait them out, and in time, we would have the problem licked."
"The Yuri Gagarin Free Car Wash was a sterilizing factory?" Smith said, aghast.
"The free part was my idea," Earl Armalide said proudly. "You get more people faster that way."
"Did it never occur to you that a single car wash, at best, is only going to get a fraction of the population in, say, a fifty-mile radius?"
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