Rema then went over to assist Tom Roberts.
It appeared as if most of the actor's injuries were superficial. Still, he'd need to see a doctor. Remo propped him up by one arm and helped walk him to the door.
Susan Saranrap took Roberts by the other arm. "Why couldn't you do anything?" she demanded. "I had to wait for this guy to save me." She jutted her pointed witch's chin at Remo. "And he's not even in the Industry."
"My fault. Multiculturalism was the answer," Tom burbled through a mouth of blood. "I lacked understanding because of my accursed dead white European male perspective. Damn me!"
"Oh, brother," Remo griped.
Roberts turned his swollen eyes to Remo. "I wasn't talking to you, you ...homophobe!" he accused.
Remo looked puzzled. "Are you gay?" he asked.
"No," Roberts admitted. "But it seemed like the right thing to say."
"So does this," Remo said. "Good night."
He squeezed a spot at the back of Roberts's neck. The actor's head lolled forward.
They carted him the rest of the way back to the Taurus Studios jeep in blessed silence.
FIVE MINUTES LATER Remo was on one of the zoo pay phones with Smith. The jeep was parked and idling nearby. Bindle and Marmelstein were tending to Tom Roberts in the back seat while Susan Saranrap sat in the front, pointedly ignoring the activity going on behind her.
"Remo, where have you been?" Smith demanded urgently. "You have missed your check-in time by hours."
"No sweat," Remo said. "I've still got time to spare."
"No, you don't," Smith explained hastily. "Chiun landed in Tel Aviv more than an hour and half ago. According to what I have been able to find out, he may already be at the Eblan side of the conflict."
"What conflict?" Remo asked.
Smith told him of the incursion by Ebla Arab Army forces into the Golan Heights region. Apparently the news had not been big enough to merit mentioning on the West Coast.
"I hate Hollywood," Remo muttered when the CURE director was through.
"The United States Army is preparing to invade the occupied territory in California," Smith said. "If Omay has anything planned with al Khobar, it has not yet occurred."
"I think I know why, Smitty," Remo said. "Assola was kidnapped by a thug who worked for one of the studios out here, but he got away."
"That makes sense," Smith mused. "If Omay thought al Khobar had been killed he would have gone ahead and sprung his end of the trap. But we still do not know what they have in store for Hollywood."
"Oh, yes, we do," Remo said.
"What?" Smith asked.
"No time to explain," Remo said. "Before the Army rolls in here, get me every member of the L.A. bomb squad and every demolition expert the Army and National Guard have stationed near here. Put them in Arab clothes, stick them on trucks and have them meet me on the corner of Hollywood and Vine as fast as possible."
"The Eblan forces on the ground might object to their presence," Smith cautioned.
"The only way these dips would notice is if they rode in on animatronic camels. Hurry, Smitty." The CURE director did not ask about the enigmatic remark. Nor did he need to be prodded again. He quickly hung up the phone.
Remo raced back to the jeep.
Tom Roberts had just regained consciousness. "We can cover up the bruises with makeup," Hank Bindle was assuring the actor.
"I'm dumping all you dingdongs off someplace safe," Remo told them as he climbed back behind the wheel. He floored the jeep, and they zoomed away from the phone bank.
"Can't I go with you?" Susan Saranrap asked, supremely disappointed. Wind whipped her long, dyed hair around her age-ravaged face.
"What about your boyfriend?" Remo asked, nodding back to Tom Roberts.
She raised a disdainful eyebrow. It was drawn in with a pencil. "After today I don't want to have anything to do with him ever again."
In the back seat Hank Bindle's eyes sprung as wide as saucers. "What about our movie?" he pleaded.
"Especially that," Susan sniffed.
"Uhng. My heart," Bruce Marmelstein choked. He clutched at his chest.
Bindle abandoned Roberts to attend to his longtime partner.
"You're killing him, you know that?" he accused Susan Saranrap harshly.
In the front seat Remo Williams smiled. "That's showbiz, sweetheart."
The jeep bounced back through the main gate and flew across Griffith Park, away from the zoo.
Chapter 33
Sultan Omay's vision had not become so poor that he did not see the blue six-pointed star painted on the side of the jeep. It was the Magen David, the Shield of David. The star was at the center of a field of white. Two narrow blue bands ran parallel to one another at the top and bottom borders of the painted flag.
The jeep bounced through the Israeli lines unmolested.
It was the first to break through.
The Ebla Arab Army forces still alive in that area of the battlefield concentrated their fire on the rogue jeep. A violent hail of bullets rattled endlessly against the vehicle. Noise from ricochets and the thunking sound of metal penetrating metal filtered through the other heavy battle noise. But through it all, the jeep kept coming.
"We must retreat, Sultan," the soldier holding his binoculars insisted. There was fear in his young voice.
It was an effort now for the sultan to raise his head. He did so nonetheless. He regarded the frightened soldier as he might have an insect.
"We stay," Omay wheezed.
The jeep rounded a turn in the rocky terrain, disappearing behind a stab of pocked white rock. When it reappeared on the ancient road, it was much closer. Omay saw the driver.
He didn't appear to be a member of the Israel Defense Forces. Indeed at first glance he did not appear human.
Through the shattered glass of the windshield Omay could see a pair of hands gripping the steering wheel. They had to reach up to do so. A pale dome-like a fossilized dinosaur egg-poked up somewhere behind the hands. Every once in a while, when the jeep hit a rocky bump in the path, a pair of angry, narrow eyes popped up above the dashboard.
The Eblan forces were depleted near Omay's command post. The jeep had a straight, unmolested path to the sultan of Ebla. As the men around him drew their weapons, the Israeli jeep roared into the base camp, a cloud of dust rising behind it. It screeched to a stop.
The thing that Omay suspected for a time to be inhuman as the jeep raced across the field, proved itself to be nearly so. As the few scattered men around him moved to surround the jeep, the driver's door exploded open.
The two soldiers nearest the door were first to fall. Propelled from its hinges by a force greater than any in the arsenal of the nation of Ebla, the door rocketed into the alert forms of the soldiers. Every bone between their necks and ankles was crushed instantly. Their skin became a pulpy mass holding in their pulverized remains.
Omay had barely taken in the slaughter of the first two soldiers when a tiny shape emerged from the vehicle.
There were a dozen more men in the camp. At the moment the first men were falling, the rest opened fire.
Bullets savaged the air around the strange intruder. But as Omay watched, not one round of ammunition seemed to penetrate the air around the whirling purple dervish.
"You dare, Ebla offal?" the intruder shrieked. Enraged, he fell among the men.
Hands flew faster than the eye could see. The results, however, were plainly evident.
Necks surrendered heads like melons plucked from vines. Blood erupted from wounds in chests, stomachs and throats. Limbs fell and were crushed beneath swirling, stomping feet.
When the ancient figure finished a few seconds later, not one Eblan soldier remained upright. Only then did the hell-sent devil slowly turn his vengeful eyes on Sultan Omay sin-Khalam.
Fearful of the wraith, Omay tried to stand. He could not. He fell back to his stool as the demon in purple swept through the bloody arena and over to his command tent.
"You are sultan of Ebla?" the demon demanded.
"Yes, I am, 0 spirit," Omay stammered. His grayish skin had become flushed. He felt his head reeling.
"I am no spirit," the old one spit. "I am flesh and blood as you. Although my flesh is the proper hue and my blood is not flooded with the sickness that has befallen you in your weakness." He crossed his arms over his chest imperiously. "I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju," he intoned.
"Sinanju?" Omay asked, his voice weak. He was panting. "You are myth."
"So thought your ancestors. And it is because of this pigheaded disregard of fact that no work has ever come to Sinanju from the sin-Khalam sultanate."
Omay's sickly eyes grew suddenly crafty. "Then let me correct the errors of my ancestors," he said quickly. "I offer you employment, O great Master of Sinanju."
Chiun grabbed the sultan, dragging him to his feet.
"I have employment, Eblan filth." He raised a single curved index fingernail. "And hark you now. The death I will inflict upon you this day will be as nothing compared to the torment I will subject you to in the Void if my movie deal falls through."
With angry shoves Chiun propelled the sultan of Ebla toward his waiting Israeli jeep.
Chapter 34
Remo had to hand it to Smith. He worked fast. After dumping Tom Roberts, Susan Saranrap and the pair of Taurus executives at a doctor's office, Remo had sped to Hollywood and Vine. There he found a caravan of nine trucks already lined up along the curb. The insignia on their doors and license plates had been spray-painted over.
Remo jumped out of his studio jeep and ran up to the lead truck.
"Where's the LAPD guys?" he asked urgently.
"Right here," the driver of the first truck said. "Sergeant Jack Connell, bomb squad." He pulled back the veil that was draped over his nose, revealing a face far too pale to belong to an Eblan terrorist.
"Split your men up with the National Guard and Army forces," Remo instructed. "Make sure there's someone who knows the area well in every truck."
"Yes, sir," Sergeant Connell replied. He hopped down from the cab.
Running to the rear of his vehicle, the police officer began shouting orders to the men inside. Two dozen men in robes climbed down and began spreading out to the other trucks. Soldiers in similar costume ran back, making up the difference in the lead truck.
"Where'd you get the outfits?" Remo asked the officer during the manpower exchange.
Sergeant Connell grinned.
"Let's just say the California National Guard is looking at one mother of a linen bill," he said.
CHIUN WAS ONLY HALFWAY BACK to Akkadad when his gas finally ran out.
He had been well into his nineties the first time he sat behind the wheel of a car and as a result was still new to the vicissitudes of Western conveyances. Sometimes when a vehicle broke down on them in America, Remo would raise the hood and poke around beneath it. More often than not, after his pupil was through tinkering with the engine, the car would end up more broken than it had been. Chiun lacked even the meager automotive repair skills that Remo possessed. He didn't know why the jeep stopped, only that it had.
The Master of Sinanju climbed down from behind the steering wheel.
Omay sin-Khalam remained in the passenger's seat. He had been lapsing in and out of consciousness since their trip from the battle scene. For the moment his eyes remained closed. His chest rose and fell sporadically. The sultan lived, but not for long.
Standing beside the jeep, Chiun squinted at the horizon. They had moved down out of the mountainous region and were in a more level expanse of desert. A few thin blue mountains rimmed the periphery of the vast wasteland.
Chiun could see small specks of black circling lazily in the sky far ahead. Vultures. Beneath the large birds of prey were a few scattered tents.
A trail had been pounded from this site through the desert and up into the mountains. The newformed road was still visible, despite the shifting desert winds.
This was the spot from which the assault against Israel had originated. Chiun recognized some of the more distant landmarks that had been in the background of the second televised murder perpetrated by Ebla's monarch.
The Master of Sinanju hurried around to the passenger's side of the jeep.
Omay was sweating profusely. His eyes rolled open, turned sightlessly on Chiun, and then closed once again. It would be impossible for him to walk the distance back.
Angry, Chiun wrenched the door open. Hefting the unconscious body of Sultan Omay sin-Khalam onto his narrow shoulders, Chiun began trekking across the desert toward the ring of lazily circling vultures.
REMO STOOD in the vast second soundstage on the lot of the old MBM Studios complex in Hollywood. The Arabs had deserted the place. Indeed they seemed to be in a hurry to leave all of Hollywood. Even the Eblan tanks and men they'd passed in the street on their way to MBM had paid no heed to Remo's bogus group of Arabs. The true Eblans appeared to be migrating up to Burbank. Remo suspected he knew why.
The confusion of wires between buildings outside ran into the soundstage through the main door. Once inside, the wires separated. They then ran like thick spiderwebs across floors and up walls. Some were slung from the ceiling.
Spaced in perfectly measured intervals along the lengths of wire were large tin boxes. These had been secured to the walls or ceilings with screws. For good measure, plastique had been pressed like caulking in the narrow spaces around every metal case, fingermarks still visible in the malleable surface.
To Remo, who was by no means an explosives expert, it seemed like there was an awful lot to defuse.
The truckful of men with whom he'd driven onto the lot had already dispersed among the many buildings. Still dressed in their Arab garb, they worked diligently to separate wires from explosive charges. Remo watched several of them spread out throughout the vast garagelike area of soundstage 2.
Sergeant Connell was supervising the dismantling even while he worked on some of the floor devices. Behind him Remo glanced at the bombs slung along the ceiling. These had yet to be touched by bombsquad members.
"What do you think?" Remo asked the cop.
Connell shrugged. He snipped through a copper wire with a pair of sturdy cutters.
"We're talking an awful lot of raw explosives here," he said, frowning. It did not appear to disturb him very deeply that he was standing in the center of one gigantic bomb.
"How bad?" Remo asked seriously.
"When this goes off?" He waved a hand. "Bye-bye MBM. Along with everything in a two-block radius of the lot."
"When or if?" Remo asked.
Connell grinned tightly. "We'll do our best."
"Great," Remo murmured. "Good luck." He turned to go.
Connell called after him. "If it's any help, these things don't appear to be on any kind of timer or anything."
"What does that mean?" Remo asked, pausing at the door.
"It could mean that all these wires in each individual studio run together to a central spot on each lot. All of those separate sites would be radio controlled."
"Radio?" Remo asked.
"Yeah," Connell explained. "One signal would send them up all at once. If this is like you say it is, then all of Hollywood, Burbank, Culver City and probably a good-size chunk of the rest of L.A. County would go up in a single blast."
Remo glanced out the door. He saw some of Connell's men racing from building to building. "You haven't found a central spot on this lot," Remo said doubtfully.
Connell shrugged. "There's so much junk here it'll take a while to find it. But I've got people working on it. I already radioed my suspicion to the other teams at the other studios. Once one of us finds it, they'll call back to the other teams. The location is probably the same in each studio. We can just sever the wires at the radio control center. It should cancel out all of this-" he waved his wire cutters to the ceiling "-and we can dismantle the rest at our leisure."
Leisure. Remo thought it was an o
dd choice of words from a man sitting smack dab in the center of Assola al Khobar's ticking time bomb.
Before leaving, he wanted to say something inspiring or encouraging to the men working inside the soundstage. In the end he settled for two words of good advice.
"Work fast," Remo cautioned.
Spinning, he ran out into the hot California sun.
THE MASTER OF SINANJU DUMPED the unconscious form of Sultan Omay to the hot desert sand.
There were only a few men left in the base camp. Many of them didn't even have guns, since most of the weapons of the Ebla Arab Army had been sent to the front.
Those who were armed ran over to the wizened intruder as soon as he appeared at the periphery of the small camp. They seemed uncertain how to react, since the strange man who swept into their encampment had been bearing their sultan on his frail shoulders. When Chiun dropped Omay, however, their aggressive instincts took over.
AK-47s rose in instant menace. Men shouted in the Eblan Arab dialect.
Chiun barely paid them any heed. He was looking beyond the men at the field beside the small tent city. Vultures stepped between the staked-out bodies of the American diplomatic team.
The Master of Sinanju's eyes squinted to invisibility behind a death mask of pure rage. His mouth creased in fury.
"Barbarians," he hissed. His voice was low.
As the men stepped closer, weapons trained menacingly, Chiun's voice grew louder.
"Barbarians!" he shrieked.
Like a sudden, violent desert storm the Master of Sinanju exploded from a standing position, launching in full, fiery rage across the short space between himself and the hapless Eblan soldiers.
One foot tucked beneath the billowing robes of his kimono as the other lashed out. His heel swept across the jaws of the first three men. Three rapid cracks were followed by three crumpling bodies.
Chiun swirled across the remaining line of men. Chopping hands struck a half-dozen gun barrels in rapid succession. Six guns flipped downward with blinding speed, impacting solidly with groins. Hip bones crunched at the powerful force of the collision. A few bullets rattled harmlessly into the sand as dead fingers contracted on triggers.
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