"Hurry up and move, you stupid lummox!" the animal-rights activist yelled at the hapless BBQ. "They're coming!"
She tried to kick it in the sides to make it move. Her legs were too long, and the BBQ's were too short. She succeeded only in scuffing dirt.
"I'm trying to save your worthless hide," she snapped.
"Maybe it doesn't want to save yours," Remo suggested.
Mona's head snapped around. Her face hit one of her own knees. The creature was so low to the ground they were up by her ears.
When she saw Remo, her eyes bugged in her ski mask. Wheeling, she shook the reins violently. "Hyah!" she urged.
The BBQ had had enough. Moaning, it settled to its ample belly. When its legs tucked up beneath its oblong body, Mona had no choice but to roll off. She shook a stirrup from one foot as she clambered to her feet.
"Please tell me this was a spontaneous getaway," Remo said from the door. "I'd hate to think it was planned."
Mona spun on him, hands held before her in a menacing posture. "Stay back!" she warned. "I know karate."
She demonstrated by attacking the air before her with her hands. Neither air nor Remo appeared very impressed.
As Mona attempted to bisect oxygen molecules, Remo heard a startled yelp from the adjacent stall. He'd become aware of the man and the second BBQ at the same time he'd found Mona. When the yelp was followed by a furious hiss, Remo suppressed a smile.
A few yards before him, Mona was still slashing away.
"I'm warning you, meat eater," she snarled.
"I always wondered something," Remo said, one eye trained on the wall of the stall. "If animals aren't supposed to be eaten, why are they made out of meat?"
His question had the precise desired effect. Eyes widening in horror, Mona froze in her tracks.
The HETA woman's mouth was in the earliest twitching stages of forming a furious, self-righteous O when there came a thunderous crash from her left. Mona twisted just in time to see the thin, unfinished pine that separated her stall from the next explode into a thousand shards of thorny kindling. And sweeping through the air amid the hail of wood fragments came a familiar shape.
Rocketing through the air, Huey Janner swept his wife off her feet in a way she hadn't allowed him to during their courtship. He slammed roughly into Mona, scooping her up and flinging her against the far wall. They hit with a crash, arms and legs tangling together as they collapsed, inert, to the haystrewn floor.
As the dust was settling on the HETA activists across the stall, a familiar bald head jutted through the jagged hole made by Huey Janner's thrown body.
"Remo!" the Master of Sinanju wailed. "That savage was abusing one of these poor beasts!" When he spied the saddle on Mona's BBQ, Chiun's eyes pinched to slits of fury. Flying through the hole, he bounded to the animal's side. Hands slashed with blinding fury, long nails severing the straps of the saddle. Chiun pulled the piece of molded plastic loose, flinging it across the stall. It landed on Huey's moaning, upturned face. Squatting, the old Korean began stroking the long snout of the BBQ. "There, there," he said soothingly.
The BBQ seemed oblivious to Chiun's presence. The Janners had landed near Remo. With one loafer, he toed the saddle off Huey's head. He frowned as he peered down at the unconscious HETA man.
"I know him." Remo nodded. "He was on TV a couple hours ago." He tugged off Mona's mask. "Her, too."
"Doubtless they were featured on America's Most Hunted," Chiun said. "Do you think they will double the ten-thousand-dollar prize for apprehending two notorious animal abusers?"
"I think you're mixing up shows, Little Father," Remo said. "And these two were on the dais at a HETA press conference. It was on the news."
At his feet, Mona was groaning herself awake. Cradling her head in one hand, she pulled herself up on unsteady legs.
"What happened?" Mona muttered. When she dragged her lids open and saw Remo standing before her, her eyes sparked with sudden memory.
Mona lashed out at Remo. He plucked her hand from the air and patiently placed it back at her side. She tried to kick him. He caught her leg and returned it to the floor. As he did so, she again tried to punch him. Remo snatched her hand once more, pushing it calmly away.
Mona tried to bite him. Remo finally lost his patience and knocked most of her front teeth to the back of her mouth.
This got Mona's attention.
"Chritht! Do you know what thith dental work cotht me?" Mona whistled angrily, sounding like the front man for an Ozarks jug band.
"Not caring," Remo said. "Annoyed. When it becomes 'angry,' I start collecting tongues. Where are the rest of the BBQs?"
It was more than a threat. It was a promise. Mona Janner suddenly became interested in the preservation of only one very specific animal.
"Right here," she enunciated carefully. Her tongue stuck uncomfortably through the hole in her bridgework. She was quick to close her lips over it.
"Stay put," Remo commanded, spinning on his heel.
He found the remaining BBQs in the last stall. All four were curled on a blanket of hay. They snored contentedly.
When he returned to the stall, Huey Janner was dragging himself to his knees. Mona glared at her husband.
"We've got 'em all, Little Father," Remo announced as he stepped back into the stall.
"Thanks to the demons of BostonBio," Mona snarled. She spit a mouthful of bloody saliva at the floor. "When we tried to release them, they wouldn't go. We left the barn wide open for two nights. Those Frankensteins at BostonBio robbed them of their natural urge to flee personkind."
"Did you consider that they might never have had it to begin with?" Remo said, irked.
"BostonBio again," Mona insisted. "They probably fed them, cared for them. Made them feel they had nothing to fear. Then bam! Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce."
Remo only shook his head. "Where's your truck?"
"What truck?" Mona sneered.
"The one you brought them here in," Remo said. "We don't have a truck," Mona spit, a superior grin splitting her jack-o'-lantern mouth. "We only rent them when it's absolutely necessary."
"Mona doesn't believe in internal-combustion vehicles," Huey explained. "We don't believe in them," he amended, shrinking from his wife's dirty look.
"You're Mona?" Remo asked. "Now I know why Curt Tulle was more worried about you than getting mauled by a BBQ."
"Tulle?" she snapped. "You mean that little jerk gave us away? I gave him one of these monsters to take the heat off us. Why didn't I hire a skywriter to point a big, fat, greenhouse-gas-filled arrow straight to the barn?"
"Actually, we traced your husband's credit card." Remo smiled. "Start your engines."
As Mona twisted, face a mask of pure rage, to her cowering husband, Remo turned his attention to the Master of Sinanju and the resting Bos camelus-whitus.
"Any ideas how to get these things back, Little Father?"
Chiun was stroking the long nose of the BBQ. "A vexing problem." The old Asian nodded thoughtfully. "I recommend we give them safe harbor at Castle Sinanju until we work out a solution. There is room in the fish cellar."
"No, there isn't," Remo said. "And if we can get them that far, we can get them to the lab."
"I will remove a tank or two," Chiun continued, as if he hadn't heard. "I have not had pickerel in ages. That one can go."
"I just had pickerel two days ago."
"As I said, I have not had pickerel in ages. We can eliminate that and your silly shark tank, thus opening up space near the furnace. They will enjoy the warmth."
"Okay, let's get on the same page here, shall we? We're not taking out any tanks, we're not bringing home any stray mutants, and we still don't have anything to carry them in even if we wanted to." He frowned as he looked down at the animal. It was well over a hundred pounds. "I can't squeeze six of them and us in that rental car," he complained.
"Please, Mona!"
The pleading voice behind Remo distracted him from his di
lemma. He glanced back.
Huey Janner was lying in a fetal position on the earthen floor. Mona loomed above him, bruised face enraged.
"I...told...you...to...use...cash." Each word was punctuated by a fresh kick to the ribs. "Okay, that's it, Punch and Judy," Remo announced. Stepping over, he coaxed Mona out of the way with one hand, lifting a grateful Huey to his feet with the other. "I need to think without distractions."
Over the objections of both animal-rights activists, he shooed the Janners out of the stall. He propelled them into the main barn.
A sturdy toolshed was set into one wall. He tossed Huey inside, where he landed on a pile of pitchforks and hoes.
"Serves you right," Mona snapped at her husband. But when Remo reached for her as well, she balked. Desperate to avoid confinement, she struck up a seductive pose. "Hey, baby," Mona said, using her best sexy voice. "I'm in HETA." Her tooth gap whistled.
"Take a cold shower," Remo suggested. He tossed her in atop her husband.
Slamming the door shut, Remo piled a few hundred-pound sacks of organic gardening compost in front of it. The sounds of Mona Janner pounding on her husband anew were issuing from the shed as he returned to the stalls.
In his absence, Chiun had led the BBQ from its stall. The creature looked exhausted. It wasn't the effort of walking that made the animal seem bone tired. It was the wearying burden of life itself. Its fat tongue lolled.
"Damn, these things are hideous," Remo commented. He pulled his eyes away from the sullen BBQ. "I'm gonna call Smith. He can figure out how to get these eyesores back."
But as he turned, the Master of Sinanju rose from his post next to the sad animal. "Hold," he commanded.
Remo turned. "What?"
"It is time," China. intoned. His expression was somber.
Remo's face scrunched. "Time for what?"
"Time to prove that you are not Smith's lapdog. You may demonstrate your independence and give the gift you failed to give me on my return." He cast a knowing eye down on the dismal form of the BBQ.
Remo followed Chiun's gaze. The BBQ stared at him with guileless brown eyes. When he looked back up to Chiun, the old man's hazel orbs were filled with sly hopefulness.
"Oh, no," Remo said with quiet dread.
"Prove to me, Remo, that you are better than a Japanese zealot," Chiun encouraged.
"Chiun, you already talked to Smith about this back at the lab, didn't you?" Remo said slowly.
"Smith," Chiun spit. "Do not invoke the name of the American Hirohito. Especially not at this time of your great liberation." He held aloft a fist of bone. "Remember Pearl Harbor!"
"You can't take one, Little Father," Remo stressed.
Chiun's face hardened to stone. "And why not?" His tone was ice.
"For one thing, what would we do with it?"
"We would bring it back to Sinanju, of course. My triumph of discovery would forever eclipse that of Na-Kup the Fraud and his diseased camel." There was passion in his singsong voice.
Remo raised an eyebrow. There was something more to this than just the BBQs.
"What's with you and Na-Kup?" he asked.
The old man's jaw tightened. His thread of beard quivered. "You never met him?" he asked tightly.
"Since he died about three thousand years before I was born, no," Remo replied.
"Consider yourself blessed. He is an arrogant braggart, even in death. He and that anthrax-laden beast of his."
"But you couldn't have met-" Remo stopped dead, the light finally dawning. "The Sinanju Rite of Attainment," he said. "The last rite of passage before full masterhood. You went through that mess when you were visited by the spirits of past Masters, just like me. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you met Na-Kup."
The dark storm cloud that passed over Chiun's silent face spoke volumes.
"History remembers the camel, but it doesn't remember the Master." Remo nodded, understanding at last. "Someone had something up someone's kimono sleeve that someone else didn't expect, huh?"
"Someone is an idiot," Chiun snapped. "And wipe that smug expression off your stupid, fat face. My reasons are my own. Besides, I only want one of these animals. Perhaps two. Five at most."
"I'm sorry, Chiun," Remo said, shaking his head.
"You would not do this simple thing for me?" Chiun demanded hotly.
"You know I'd do anything for you. But there's only a limited number of these. They'd miss one."
"It could have escaped," Chiun suggested.
"Chiun," Remo said, reasonable of tone, "Smith has been to Sinanju before, remember? We don't know that he'll never come back. What's he going to say when he sees that moaning lump of DNA schlepping down Main Street?" He nodded to the BBQ. It burped.
"He would say 'What joy and pride you must have felt, O great Master of Sinanju, that your son did honor you by granting you the single boon you desired during the five hundred years in which he abused you.'"
"First off, Smith doesn't say 'boon.' Second, I doubt he'd take the theft of a phenomenally expensive animal that we're supposed to be returning to its rightful owners so lightly. Third, I don't know where you've been, but you've asked for a lot since I've known you. Fourth, it has not been five hundred years."
"You have a facility for compressing much abuse into a short amount of time," Chiun said coldly. "You will not help me?"
"I can't, Chiun," Remo said helplessly. "I wish you could see that."
"I see nothing but ingratitude," Chiun retorted, delivering his final word on the subject. Spinning, he offered his back to Remo. He squatted down beside his BBQ.
Remo stared for a long moment at the back of Chiun's ornate silk kimono. The old man's mood had soured so rapidly in the past four hours it would be a miracle if he didn't lock himself back in his bedroom for the next fifty years.
It made Remo feel terrible to deny his father in spirit one of the pathetic animals. But he had a job to do. If Chiun didn't understand that, it was his problem.
But as he looked down on the tiny Korean, Remo felt as if the problem were his own. Chiun had that knack. And it made Remo feel miserable.
Turning away from the wizened form of the man who had given him so much in life, Remo quietly left the Janner barn.
Chapter 21
"Smith." The CURE director's voice was anxious.
"We got them all, Smitty," Remo announced.
"At the Janner farm, presumably," Smith said, relieved.
"They are-I'm not," Remo explained. "Those dopes don't believe in phones or lights or motorcars. They're like the Amish without the crack. I'm on a pay phone at a gas station down the street."
He glanced around the grimy black yard of the all-night station. Half-built cars-some with their hoods open-littered the area around the pay phone.
Smith's tone became concerned once more. "Where is Chiun?" he asked.
"Back at the farm," Remo answered, quickly adding, "and don't worry, I know he wants one of them and I told him no dice."
"Good," Smith said, exhaling.
"For you, maybe," Remo griped. "He made me feel like mountain-beast droppings."
"Neither your feelings nor Chiun's desires are important now."
"What else is new?" Remo replied caustically.
"I meant no offense," Smith said quickly. "But there has been another death in Boston."
Remo's back straightened. "Like the others?"
"Yes," Smith said. "An unidentified woman. The stomach cavity was consumed as in the previous attacks."
"Unless they were cross-pollinated with Houdini, it wasn't any of the BBQs," Remo said. "The two at the lab aren't going anywhere, and the six here were too far away."
"That's just the point," Smith said excitedly. "This last body is different than the rest. The woman's fingerprints and features were mutilated to complicate identification."
"So?"
"Remo, the mere act of the killer trying to cover his tracks proves conscious thought. Animals kill to survive. Only huma
n beings worry about fingerprinting and police investigations."
Remo's brow fiurowed. "I see your point," he admitted.
"That is not all," Smith said. "The latest body was found almost in the same location as the first."
"That was near BostonBio, wasn't it?" Remo queried.
"Within walking distance," Smith answered, his lemony tone betraying intrigue.
"So we're right back to square one," Remo said.
"We have narrowed our focus," Smith disagreed. "When I learned of the latest body, I checked with St. Eligius. Judith White has not checked herself out of the hospital. Therefore, we can eliminate her as a suspect. That leaves someone else at the company. Possibly someone on her team."
"Or someone with HETA."
"That remains a possibility, as well," Smith admitted.
"Okay," Remo sighed. "I'll go back to BostonBio and see what's shaking there."
"Stay there until something turns up," Smith instructed.
"Great," Remo said, with not a hint of enthusiasm. "I can pass the time between corpses hearing about how big an ingrate creep I am."
He hung up the phone and trotted back to his parked car.
Chiun was sitting stoically in the passenger's seat. "What are you doing here?" Remo asked.
"Why?" Chiun sniffed. "Was your intention to abandon me, as well? Forgive me, Remo, I did not know. If you but give me one moment, I will lie beneath the wheels of this carriage so that in your departure you might crumple my worthless shell." He stretched a bony hand to the door handle.
"Okay, okay," Remo muttered. "Sorry I asked." He started the car. Angling the vehicle out of the driveway, Remo headed into the brightening dawn. After they'd left, a tiny moan rose from the back of the ill-lit office of the service station.
Chapter 22
Terror Toll Mounting! screamed the headline in the Boston Messenger's early edition. Beside the banner print, a picture of the latest victim stared out from every newspaper box in town. The worst of the mutilated body had been covered by strategically placed black bars. Small type below the headline read, "Killer creatures still stalk Hub."
For years, the Messenger sat alone on the sensationalistic limb. Of late, however, the local television stations had been clambering up the trunk. On the morning following the latest death, every syndicated or network program ordinarily broadcast on Boston's network affiliates was preempted for continuous coverage of the "Killer creatures."
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