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 premonition. 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.
"Boy, am I glad they're all in there and we're out here," he said.
"They're not," Chiun countered. With a long nailed finger, he pointed at the line of cages ahead. Hundreds of them, with their doors open.
Empty.
Down every aisle, it was the same story, as far as the eye could see. Nobody was home.
Something low and fast zipped behind Remo's back, disappearing under the cages to his right. And as it passed by, he felt a tug at the heel of his shoe. When he lifted his foot to check, he groaned. "Jesus, that little bastard took a chunk out of my loafer."
"Shh," Chiun hissed. "Listen."
Remo shut up. What he noticed first was the silence. The beasties were no longer raising Cain. If it hadn't been for a rustle of wind, it would have been almost too damned quiet.
It took a second or two for him to realize the rustle he heard wasn't wind, after all.
Instead, it was the sound of thousands of recently freed wolverines closing in for the kill.
FILLMORE FING FOUND it difficult not to laugh out loud as he released the last wolverine. With a growl, the creature launched itself out the cage door and shot off down the aisle.