There were layers of steel control doors and matching guards along a single corridor with no branching paths. That took away all the guesswork. Remo simply bulled through.
Doors meant to be opened electronically surrendered to the pressure of his steel-hard fingers insinuating themselves into stout frames and forcing them apart.
Guards tried to stop him with a combination of bullets and kung fu. The kung-fu boys got the worst of it because their weapons were part of their bodies, and Remo felt obliged to disarm everybody so he could get out again without problems.
Once bloodied stumps began flying about, no one tried to kung fu Remo Williams again. In fact, resistance pretty much died down. PLA security forces retreated like scientists in a B-grade fifties horror film before the rampaging monster.
"Great," Remo grumbled. "By the time I reach the end, I'm going to have to take out a small army."
When he forced the last door open and found himself in a control room, Remo demanded in a loud voice, "Where is my father!"
Perhaps it was the sight of the mad foreign devil with the powers of the gods. Perhaps it was the sheer mounting terror his crashing intrusion had caused. Or maybe it was just that nobody clearly understood English.
The huddled knot of frightened and trembling officials said nothing.
But from behind a great double steel door, the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju called, "I am here, son in truth!"
And then Remo spotted a hand surreptitiously trying to turn two firing keys at once at a corner console.
"Chiun! Get outa there!" said Remo, racing for the door.
On the other side the Master of Sinanju heard the urgency in his adopted son's voice and dug his long nails into the crack between the two steel door valves. He pushed aside the weaker of the two. Stubborn, it began to screech in complaint.
As the door resisted, he sensed Remo on the other side, pushing the other valve in the opposite direction.
"Hurry, Remo! For I hear machines."
"You're underneath a fucking nuclear missile, and it's about to launch!" Remo yelled.
And the doors, mighty, implacable, surrendered with howls and shrieks of protest as the muscle and bone and will of the two mightiest human beings on the face of the earth pitted their inexhaustible energies against the tempered steel.
The doors parted, the Master of Sinanju slipped out like a silken ghost and, as he stood free once more, behind him grew a dull roar.
"Let's go!" Remo screamed.
They ran.
The others tried to run, too. But they were but mortals, flat and flabby without training or proper breathing.
Only a Master of Sinanju was fleet enough to out-race catastrophic death.
The great Long March missile belched fuel and trembled as the silo roof rolled back on its tracks to allow it to take wing.
Remo and Chiun zipped through the corridors strewn with the dead and out of the blockhouse.
Throwing himself flat, Remo yelled, "Get down!"
Chiun dropped in the lee of the blockhouse. The air was shaking. Songbirds uplifted from the sparse gingko trees, frantic and wild.
With a majestic slowness the lipstick red nose cone of the Long March missile emerged from the earth like a dormant giant and lifted and lifted until it stood poised on a column of white-hot chemical fire.
The boiling air consumed treetops, branches, even birds on the wing, who were scorched to charred bone and dropped to the ground more like spent coal than dead things that once lived.
Roaring and roaring, the missile vaulted into the sky.
The air shook for a long time after it was gone.
When it was safe, Remo stood up. "It's okay, Little Father."
"Not for those who sought my life," said the Master of Sinanju, for from the blockhouse door crept tendrils of smoke that mixed chemical rocket fuel with the unmistakable sickly sweet smell of roasted human flesh.
"What the hell was that all about?" Remo wanted to know.
Chiun patted his kimono clean of dust. "I was to be the first Korean in the Great Void," he said unhappily.
"You were almost the first human Korean barbecue. By the way, those guys who tried to kill us back home? Chinese. Probably sleeper agents."
"How do you know this?"
"Each time someone swore in Chinese. Any idea what 'Fang Tung' means?"
Chiun nodded. "It is an Han insult, meaning 'turtle's egg.' Come, Remo. Obviously there will be no service to be had from the Han."
"Where to next?"
"Russia."
"Great," Remo said dispiritedly.
"I am glad you approve," the Master of Sinanju said blandly as he allowed Remo to hold the Chinese limousine door open for him.
"I'd prefer Canada. They're not big on violence up there."
"A client who does not fear Sinanju would not appreciate Sinanju," Chiun sniffed. "Even Smith had the good taste to shoot at me when he realized Sinanju was lost to him."
Remo jumped behind the wheel and got the car going. "Smitty did that? Why didn't you tell me?"
The Master of Sinanju rearranged his kimono skirts carefully. "We were leaving America. I did wish you to see him in a good light, ere you cling to your homeland with the stubborn nostalgia of your past."
Chapter Forty-two
No one knew when it would happen, or even if it would happen at all.
But everyone knew how it would happen. The elements had been in place for more than forty years, strung along the most heavily armed and fortified border in human history. The scenario had been analyzed and war-gamed to death.
Every simulation assumed a sudden thrust from the north, overwhelming the entrenched southern forces. Seoul would fall. There was no denying that.