He came up on a great box elder. Chiun stood guard over it.
Chiun laid a finger to his lips as a signal for Remo to be silent.
Remo nodded. He pointed to the tree. Chiun nodded firmly.
They waited. After ten minutes, Remo began to have doubts. His idea was to surround the tree so they were ready when the thing made its next move. He looked around. He picked a fortunate time to look around. About thirty yards distant, a faint glow appeared on the trunk of a great elm. It was like a luminous fungus.
"Over there," Remo said, waving Chiun along.
The luminous spot quickly withdrew.
When they got to the tree, they surrounded it.
"What did you see?" Chiun demanded hotly.
"It stuck its face out of the bark," Remo whispered. "Right . . . about . . . here." He tapped the spot.
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Chiun peered intently. "You are certain?"
"One way to find out."
It was a relatively old tree, so Remo simply attacked it with the hard edge of his hand. He hammered away, each blow splitting off chunks of bark and pale wood.
The trunk keeled over with splintering finality. Remo was set to react instantly to what was revealed. To his surprise, there was only emptiness where the elm had stood.
"Damn!" Remo said. "He must have slipped out the back."
Chiun's eyes raked the surroundings. "That one," he announced. He flounced to a nearby oak. He approached it angrily. With a single fingernail he split the trunk down the center. It separated, falling in two equal halves.
But the Krahseevah was not inside that tree either.
"Now what do we do?" Remo asked, looking around at the ranks of trees. "We can't chop them all down."
"Why not?" Chiun demanded, attacking another oak. It fell with a thunderclap of sound.
"Because that farmer we met probably owns this grove. Probably makes his living off them. Farmers have it tough enough these days. Hey! Over there," Remo suddenly spat out.
They saw the Krahseevah slip between two distant trees like a will-o'-the-wisp. It melted into an oak.
They attacked the oak with furious energy. It was dying, the roots and limbs rotten. Their blows shook it, but the wood was soft-so soft that the oak simply shed chips instead of toppling. It took them nearly five minutes of hand-and-foot chipping to reduce the dying tree to a ragged broken stump.
Still no Krahseevah.
"This could go on all night," Remo groaned.
"Better that we split up," Chiun suggested. "We will have a greater chance of finding it."
They went their separate ways. Above their heads,
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Robin's helicopter circled and circled. Then the rotor sound began to miss and sputter.
"Uh-oh," Remo said. He went up an elm and watched as the helicopter settled to earth. Robin flew out of it. She fell to kicking the helicopter's snout in frustration.
"Everyone's in a bad mood tonight," he said, coming down from the branches.
When Robin Green got tired of abusing the helicopter, she approached the trees. Remo glided up behind her.
"Boo!" he said gently.
She turned on him, her face angry. "Don't do that!"
"Sorry. Run out of gas?"
Robin nodded. "I radioed for a jeep. We're not licked yet."
"Let's hope. We spotted it a bunch of times. But it's slippery."
"They're bringing chain saws too."
"Don't you think you're taking this to extremes? Somebody went to a lot of trouble to plant these trees a long time before we were born."
"A tree is just a tree. But national security is forever. Besides, this is just a shelterbelt. It's here to keep snowdrifts off the silo-access roads."
"Just so I'm not the one being sued. Let's go find Chiun."
They found Chiun stalking the shelterbelt like an angry tiger. He was not happy, and looked it.
"I think the Russian is gone," Chiun said sourly.
"What makes you say that, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"I have kept a sharp watch. I have seen no glowing lights. I think he has left this place."
"If he has, then we've really lost him," Robin said morosely.
"Might as well wait for the jeep," Remo ventured. "We're not going anyplace without it."
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When the jeep pulled up, driven by an SP wearing fatigues and a blue beret, Robin Green ran to meet it. She rooted around in the back and then glared in the driver's freckled face.
"What's this?" she shouted, pointing back. "One miserable chain saw?"