The Master, deeply affronted by the very idea of being touched by such a creature, let alone being almost throttled to death by it, proceeded to break every bone in the beast's body, starting with the toes and working up. And only when this task had been satisfactorily completed did he serve up the killing stroke to the huge shambling thing that, in a former life, was known for putting the best face on a rotten weather forecast.
As Chiun stepped away from the body, he announced, "There are no more creatures here."
"Then it's time for us to find the head man," Remo said as he referred to his map.
As they started back down the corridor, they heard a sustained burst of autofire. It was coming from the other side of the building.
Chapter 36
Fillmore and Farnham didn't hear the stealthy approach of Korb the Transcendent through the reception area, so when his loud snort came between the gap in the office doors, it made them both jump a mile. Neither father nor son had a moment of doubt whom that snort belonged to, or what it was meant to do.
It was meant to sniff them out.
They also knew what was certain to come next. Before he had both hands firmly on the M-16, Fillmore pinned back the weapon's trigger. In his eagerness to protect himself, he also badly torqued the point of aim. Once the unintended slide across the desktop was started, the ravening burst of full-auto gunfire kept it moving.
Bullet holes appeared at chest height in the left-hand door and crawled farther and farther left, over the door frame, the paneled wall and the enormous oil painting of the Family Fing founder-a sprig of marjoram in one hand, a foaming test tube in the other. Great splintery rents cut through the front of the mahogany credenza, and choking clouds of cordite smoke filled the room.
Fillmore never did get the autorifle under control. It stopped firing only when it ran out of ammunition.
And when it did that, when the earsplitting burst of gunshots ceased, only then did the elder Fing become aware of another noise.
"Yahh! Yahh!"
It was Farnham. Farnham hollering at the top of his lungs while he tried to hide his head under the legs of an armchair. Failing miserably at that, he sat on the floor, back to the wall, eyes squashed shut, covered his ears with both hands and resumed his bellowing.
That his oldest, and now only, son didn't have so much as a millimeter of spine to his name came as no surprise to Fillmore Fing. What he was witnessing, the stress reaction of a congenital idiot, he had seen too many times before. Farnham looked and dressed like a winner, and he could talk a blue streak if given half a chance-but underneath, the boy's game was all a bluff. And always had been. Of course, the village-idiot genes had come from Farnham's mother's side.
"Shut up!" Fillmore shouted, dumping the empty clip and taking a full one from his suit jacket. Farnham paid his father no mind. The perpetual infant continued to bawl.
Fillmore cracked in the fresh magazine and jacked a live round into the chamber. "I'm not kidding," he said. "Shut up so I can tell whether I hit the damned thing or not!"
The last statement seemed to have a calming effect on the big-league pharmaceutical salesman. Farnham opened his eyes and bit down hard on his knuckle to keep from crying out.
Fillmore cocked his head in the direction of the door. "I don't hear anything. Do you?"
Farnham shook his head.
"I think I got him," Fillmore said. Then, with more conviction, "I'm sure I must've got him...." At which point, seven hundred pounds of former computer billionaire came crashing through the bullet-ravaged doors.
The surprise of the sudden entry and the sheer, intimidating size of the creature that faced him gave Fillmore pause. The sights of his assault rifle wavered wide of the intended target.
For his part, Korb the Transcendent seemed torn, as well. There were two not-Korbs in the room. Which to pull apart first? His beady eyes shifted from Fillmore to Farnham, and back again.
Decisions, decisions.
Fillmore, meanwhile, had shouldered the M-16 and was drawing a careful bead on the center of the beast's hairy chest. The smell that Korb had brought into the room with him was enough to gag a maggot; it was making Fillmore's eyes tear.
Farnham blubbered softly on the floor, his eyes unblinking and huge as he took in the creature. He was biting his knuckle so hard he was making blood flow down over his wrist.
"Mr. Korb!" Fillmore cried, cheek to butt-stock, his index finger carefully tightening down on the trigger. When he felt resistance to the squeeze, Fillmore held up. "Mr. Korb," he said, "do you know who I am? Can you understand me?"
Fing wasn't playing for time. He was playing for capital. It had occurred to him how grateful the richest man in the world might be if somehow he was saved from this hairy, bad-smelling fate worse than death.
The beast looked at Fillmore with narrowed eyes. He had no idea what the noise coming out of the not-Korb's mouth meant, but it irritated him a great deal.
"We may be able to find a cure," Fillmore told the creature. "If we had suitable funding, I'm sure we could do it. Why don't we work together on this? What do you say?"
Korb the Transcendent smelled the blood on Farnham's finger. Decision made. He darted away from the doorway in a blur.
Fillmore fired a 10-round burst into the reception area, through the space where the beast had been. When he turned to pick up the target again, the thing had hold of Farnham by the arm. Like a cat playing with a mouse, the former billionaire batted the Fing boy against the wall, and when he bounced back, batted him again.
Fillmore took aim, but then changed his mind. He didn't even know if bullets could kill the monster. What if they only made him madder? The prudent thing to do was to take advantage of the golden opportunity that had presented itself.
As the patriarch rounded the front of his desk, it looked like the beast was trying to make a hand puppet out of poor Farnham. Fillmore said nothing. While the creature was thoroughly engrossed, he just lowered his head and hurried out the door.
KORB THE TRANSCENDENT was far too preoccupied with his new toy to notice that the other not-Korb had left the room. There were so many interesting things to make the toy do. After he tired of playing bouncy-ball, the beast gripped Farnham by the wrist and hurled him like a Frisbee across the room.
Whap! Against the far wall.
With a single bound, Korb the Transcendent crossed the room and retrieved his play toy, then it was Frisbee time again.
Whap went Farnham against the opposite wall.
It was a game that soon bored even a world-class drooler like Korb the Transcendent. There were only so many ways Farnham could go whap! And after those ways had been repeated a few dozen times, the beast decided he'd had enough.
With a stiffened claw finger, he poked the unmoving form on the floor. He wanted the toy to get up and run so he could chase it and then bat it down. Maybe even jump up and down on it a few times. Nothing doing.
So the beast picked the toy up by one foot and gave it a hard shake. The Fing boy's pocket change, money clip and keys went skittering over the floor, but he remained limp as a rag.
If Farnham was playing dead, he deserved an Oscar.
Undeterred, Korb the Transcendent felt an urge to take the damned thing apart-not to see what made it tick, but so he could throw the parts around the room. To that end, he put both feet on the toy's chest, grabbed its head under the chin and started to pull.
HEARING THE TREMENDOUS commotion going on inside the private office of Fillmore Fing, Remo and Chiun paused outside the open doors.
The Master pointed through the doorway, then held his nose.
Remo got the picture.
On a silent three-count, they rushed the office entrance.
Inside, they found a monstrous beast beating on the top of a big desk with a man's leg. From the tassle loafer still on the foot, it looked to be a rightie. The rest of the man was scattered around the room, along with a good deal of pocket change.
The beast wa
s having such a great time that he didn't seem to notice he had company. When he saw the newcomers staring at him, however, he stopped what he was doing at once.
"Do you want him or should I take him?" Remo asked, circling purposefully to the left.
The Master shrugged. "It makes no difference to me."
Korb the Transcendent watched both targets, measuring the distance for his leap.
"Okay, then you take him," Remo said.
The beast launched himself at Remo, stretching out full-length in a headfirst dive. Instinctively, Remo spun out of the way, and the beast hurtled on.
Hidden behind the suite's floor-to-ceiling curtain was a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the entire complex and grounds. It was an architectural feature that Korb the Transcendent would not have understood even if he'd known it was there. It came as quite a surprise to the seven-hundred-pound beast when he hit the curtain, then the big pane of glass, which shattered outward, allowing him to fall through the empty frame and out into space.
Howling all the way to the ground, the former computer billionaire dropped ten stories to his death. When Remo and Chiun looked out the window, they saw a small man in a very expensive suit running across the floodlit tarmac below. He was carrying an automatic rifle.
"That looks like the tongue sucker to me," Chiun said.
They watched as Fillmore Fing jumped the heaped bodies of his guards by the gate, climbed into one of the jeeps parked there and turned the key. The engine turned over but didn't catch.
Fing tried again. Same result.
"Come on! Before he gets away!" Remo urged, as he sprinted for the door.
Chapter 37
When Fillmore Fing arrived outside the building's main entrance, he was shocked not to see a jeep waiting there at the security post. For a blinding instant, he thought that all was lost. He could envision the murderous beasts his greed had spawned pursuing him as he raced on foot through the endless rice paddies. Without wheels, he didn't stand a chance.
When he stepped away from the building, he immediately saw the jeeps parked in front of the perimeter fence's main gate. He also saw the men scattered across the ground.
Lots of men.
Had the test subjects already broken loose from the wing? he thought.
Had they wiped out his entire security force? Fillmore didn't trot over to the still forms because he was that curious to know the answer; he trotted over because that's where the jeeps where. Finding out who killed his men was a bonus, of sorts. Unpleasant sorts.
Fillmore didn't have to be a medical examiner to be able to tell how the guards had died. By gunshot. By multiple gunshots at extreme close range. Which pretty much eliminated the test subjects as the murderers. They couldn't tell one end of a gun from another.
As Fillmore moved gingerly through the sprawl of white-putteed corpses, the realization hit him. Just as he had feared, Jimmy Koch-Roche had led the American killers here, to Taiwan. The bodies of his security men were undeniable proof that the assassins were on the grounds, and most likely still alive.
Fing looked over his shoulder, back at the white high-rise monolith of holding tanks, storehouses and office blocks. He had no doubt that whoever had sent the killers here intended the destruction of not only the WHE research program, but of Family Fing Pharmaceuticals itself. And that included its CEO. After all, the assassins had hunted down and killed known users of the drug in the States; they hadn't seized the offending patches and given the users a lecture on substance abuse. Their agenda was annihilation, pure and simple.
Fillmore stepped over the last of the bodies, put the M-16 across the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of the nearest jeep. When he turned the key, the motor growled but didn't start. A cold chill passed down his spine.
This was not the place he was going to die, he assured himself. When he tried the starter again, he got the same, negative result.
The problem was, he wasn't used to driving the damned thing. In desperation, he gave the gas pedal three hard pumps, then flattened it to the floorboards. When he cranked the starter, the engine caught with a roar.
Fillmore gunned the engine, then popped the clutch, jerking and bucking toward the open gate. He got through the gate and into second gear, winding the engine well into the red zone before shifting into third. The road ahead was black and bleak and straight, and his headlights swept across acres of soggy farmland.
He hadn't actually formulated a plan yet. His main concern was in putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Family Fing complex. He was less than a mile from the gate when something bright flashed in his rearview mirror. He looked up to see a pair of headlights.
And they were gaining on him.
For sure, the other driver wasn't Dewayne Korb. Which only left the assassins.
Racking his brain, Fing realized that he couldn't let them catch him on the open road. He wouldn't stand a chance there. Not with a single M-16. His security men had had scads of autoweapons, which hadn't done them any good. He needed cover and a diversion, and there was only one place close at hand to get both.
Fillmore Fing swerved left, taking the company road that dead-ended in the wolverine farm.
CARLOS STERNOVSKY SAT in his dark trailer. He'd been sitting there for hours, unable to turn the lights on, unable to start packing his meager belongings. What he faced was nothing less than professional oblivion. He could never go back and work in the States. Not after what he'd done at Purblind. The slaughter of the lab animals and the theft of his research data would hang like an albatross around his neck forever. No institution, reputable or disreputable, would touch a researcher like him, a man who had proved himself a thief and a vandal of university property. He knew that at that very moment his name, picture and biography were circulating on the World Wide Web home page entitled "America's Most-Wanted Academic Criminals." As far as the scientific community was concerned, Carlos Sternovsky and his wolverine hormone extract were dead meat.
So, if he couldn't resume his life's work-which, despite recent setbacks, he still felt had promise-what could he do? Change his name and get a job at some agribusiness giant? Making food preservatives and flavorings? Stay overseas and find a place for himself in some offshore offshoot of one of the major chemical conglomerates? Designing a new, lemon-scented floor wax for the Third World? And when push came to shove, there was always the last resort: unguentology.
Sternovsky hung his head in his hands.
He was in this position when he heard the wild roar of a jeep approaching at high speed. Knuckling aside the wetness on his cheeks, Sternovsky rose to the trailer window and pulled back a corner of the sun-spotted curtain.
In the floodlights that ringed the little hilltop compound, he could see the jeep bouncing down the road. He was relieved to discover that there was a single occupant in the vehicle. His first thought had been that old Fing had sent some of his white-helmeted goons to turn him out. But no. The driver he recognized as Fing himself.
Fing in a major hurry.
The pharmaceutical tycoon drove the jeep past the trailer and brought it to a screeching stop down the slope, at the start of the rows of wolverine pens. Then he took an automatic rifle from the front of the vehicle, quickly lit up a cigar and hurried down one of the aisles between the cages.
Immediately, the wolverines started snarling, snapping and shaking their enclosures. They weren't used to people walking the grounds this early in the morning. And they weren't used to the smell of Fillmore, who never, ever came out for a visit.
Then Sternovsky saw the lights of the second jeep coming from the direction of the plant.
There were two men in this one. Two men that he had never set eyes on before. The driver pulled over the top of the hill and stopped the jeep behind Fillmore's. The pair of strangers, one quite small and dressed in a long blue robe, quickly got out of the vehicle and moved down the hill, after the elder Fing.
Seeing this, Sternovsky had a sudden premon
ition. If he remained in the trailer, if he remained on Taiwan, he knew that the two men he had just seen would hunt him down and kill him. The research biochemist fumbled in the dark, laying hands on his passport, his small cache of hard currency and three high-capacity data-storage cassettes. With these few possessions, he slipped out the door of the trailer.
In great loping strides, he closed the distance to the rearmost jeep. As he jumped behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key, he checked downslope to see if any of his visitors were coming after him. He saw nothing but rows of cages, and the only movement that registered was inside them.
He gunned the jeep and jammed it in reverse, backing his way up the hill. As he rolled over the crest beside his trailer, he thought he caught a glimpse of something between the aisles below. The glint of electric light on steel mesh.
But that was impossible unless someone was opening a cage door.
Sternovsky shifted into first, cut a hard, wheel-spinning turn and headed for parts unknown.
REMO AND CHIUN MOVED soundlessly down the elevated rows of wolverine cages. The animals on either side of them were restless. Something or someone had already stirred them up. Accordingly, the surrounding air was thick with musk spray. Lucky for Remo and Chiun, the beasts had already spent themselves, musk-wise.
"Smell the tobacco?" Chiun said softly. "He came this way. He will not escape us."
Behind them, the engine of one of the jeeps roared to life. They turned in time to see the vehicle reversing its way up the hill.
"Dammit!" Remo cursed. He started to run for the remaining jeep..
"No," Chiun said, catching him by the arm. "That is not the one we seek. It is not the tongue sucker. He is just ahead."
"You're sure?"
"He waits."
Remo moved out to take the point. In the cages on either side of him, the wolverines suddenly became very agitated. They growled and snapped, throwing themselves at the mesh in an attempt to get at him.
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