Remo glided to the building's edge.
He stared around the corner. Down at the far end, the Krahseevah's glowing blister face emerged from the ridged steel like a forming bubble. The face hesitated, expanding and contracting regularly; then the Krahseevah stepped free of the wall. It cleared an open parking area with jerky strides. Then it crouched
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beside a tan Firebird. It melted into the car, causing the dim interior to glow faintly.
Remo hung back, seeing the thing's featureless face hovering over the dashboard. Ludicrously, its gold-veined boots stuck out below the chassis. The head swiveled slowly. It was obviously being very cautious.
Then the Krahseevah stepped from the car and, hugging walls and concrete loading docks, made its way to the windowless Plant Forty-two building.
Remo decided that he'd better get back to the garbage dumpster, where he would have a clear view of the building, but be least likely to attract notice. He did so.
Long minutes crawled by. Remo's eyes were trained on the building, but he fretted inwardly. Would the Krahseevah come out this way? He wished there was some way to warn Chiun. But he knew the Master of Sinanju was alert. But the problem would be that if the Krahseevah moved too fast, there wouldn't be time to get word to Chiun.
The Krahseevah appeared less than fifteen minutes later. Its glowing head poked out of Plant Forty-two's hangar doors-the same doors out of which the first Stealth bomber had rolled for media cameras. Evidently satisfied, the head withdrew and the hands came out, followed by the chest and the knees. The Krahseevah stood, one arm crooked, in the open. Then, clutching what Remo took to be an armful of RAM tiles, it backtracked its approach, going to the car, pausing, then working its way to the nearby building again.
Remo slipped around the back of the dumpster. The hairs on his arm began to rise again.
When they were at maximum elevation, Remo knew the Krahseevah was practically on top of him. He sneaked a peek around the corner.
The Krahseevah emerged from the other side of the dumpster and walked through a raised concrete walkway. Its legs disappeared below the thigh, which made
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it look as if it were wading through solid concrete. It vanished into a wall.
Remo went up the side of the wall like a spider. He crouched down on the roof, unseen in his black T-shirt and chinos.
The Krahseevah came out of the building on the other side and picked its way from object to object, like an octopus through coral. Whenever it found something to hide in-a wall or a car-it did. Once it scrunched down to conceal itself in a humming air-conditioning unit set in concrete.
Remo followed it with his eyes as far as he could. Then he floated to the ground and trailed it through the maze of barbed wire. The Krahseevah seemed to be heading north, which Remo hoped might mean he'd have a chance to tip off Chiun.
As the industrial park fell behind, Remo spotted the Krahseevah loping through open desert, toward the highway. Remo hung back to see if he could spot the Master of Sinanju.
Their rented car was about a mile down the road, which forked so that the car sat on the low road, in the shadow of a ridge. The high road climbed the ridge.
It was too far for Remo to attract Chiun's attention. Frowning, he returned to trailing the Krahseevah. The creature was moving from telephone pole to telephone pole, repeating its old tricks, Remo saw.
Then it stopped. As Remo watched, its lambent glow faded.
It had turned off the suit.
Remo moved. He knew this would be his one chance. He flashed through the desert, his toes making only tiny wedge-shaped marks in the sand, he was running so fast.
Then the low growl of an ignition sounded. A car! The Krahseevah had a car waiting.
The car was a big one. A black Cadillac. Its tail-
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lights flared; then it backed out of the shadows, stopped, and purred down the highway.
It was heading for the fork in the road.
"Damn!" Remo said, shifting direction. If it took the low road, it would pass Chiun. But if it took the high road, the Master of Sinanju might assume it was only a passing car.
Remo decided to take the ridge. He sprinted harder. Let Chiun be pissed for missing out. There was no way to avoid it.
Remo cut across the highway and hit the bottom of the ridge at full speed. Without pausing, he transferred his running motion into a four-limbed climb. He went up the rocks like a beetle fleeing a grass fire. Momentum took him halfway up before he needed to exert any effort. His hands and feet found plenty of handholds.
Remo levered himself up to the road just in time to spot the Cadillac's taillights whisk by like retreating eyes. The car was accelerating rapidly. Remo took off after it. They hit the downhill slope, so gravity helped carry him along. Not that he needed gravity's help. Remo's toes dug into the heat-softened blacktop like climbing spikes. Dig, pause, and push. Left and right. Right and left. Loosened granules of tar kicked up behind him. And soon he was running as fast as the speeding Cadillac, which had to run with its brake drums touching the wheel rims to negotiate the steep slope. Remo caught up with the car. Then he was running with the Cadillac, as if the car were merely coasting.
Rair Brashnikov was pleased with himself. He had successfully penetrated the high-security Northrop facility once again. It was easier this second time, for he had already explored the best approaches the first time. The RAM tiles were in the same storage area. It
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was a simple matter to shut down the suit, scoop up an armful, and turn the belt rheostat so that his glowing body was once more impervious to bullets and obstacles.
As he had last time, Brashnikov had left a parked car nearby. It was too far to walk to the nearest town, and although there was an added risk in removing his helmet and battery pack after shutting down the vibration suit in order to get behind the wheel and drive off, the risk was more than offset by the convenience.
Now, hurtling through the still California desert night, Rair Brashnikov watched the road ahead as it flat-teried out and became a twisting blacksnake toward freedom. He only hoped that these tiles would be enough to satisfy Major Batenin and that the charge d'affaires would shortly return to Moscow. Brashnikov feared that he had pushed the KGB major too far the last time. The man now had blood in his eyes whenever he saw Brashnikov, although the embassy buzzed with the rumor that Batenin would start at even the slightest sound. Especially ringing telephones.
Rair Brashnikov heard the sound before he realized he was being followed. There were no lights out here in the deserted highway, so the road ahead was a constantly changing splash of headlight glare. Behind him all was blackness and speeding telephone poles.
The sound seemed far away at first. It sounded like the distant wail of a siren. He wondered if it was an alarm being sounded back at Plant Forty-two. But the sound seemed to be drawing closer, as if it were a pursuing police car. But his rearview mirror showed only a wall of night. No pursuing vehicles at all.
Then Brashnikov happened to notice the man running alongside the car. He was all in black, so it was hard to make him out in the dim backglow of his headlights. But it was definitely a man.
Brashnikov looked down at his speedometer. It registered sixty-one miles an hour. That could not be, he
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thought to himself. There was a man keeping pace with his car. If the car was going sixty-one miles an hour, then it stood to reason that the man had to be going sixty-one miles an hour too. Maybe he was on skates.
Brashnikov swerved away from the man and took a look. No, the man was not on skates. He was running.
Then the man drifted-that was what it looked like, despite his speed-up to the driver's window. He knocked. Brashnikov looked up. He could not make out the runner's face. The man's mouth was wide open, yet he didn't seem to pant from exertion, as a man should who was running sixty-one miles an hour. The man's knuckles rapped on the driver's window again.
Brashnikov cracked the window open and the siren sound was suddenly very loud. Holding the wheel steady, he twisted around, but saw no pursuing car. Then Brashnikov realized that the sound was much closer. Almost at his elbow. Almost . . .
With a start he realized that it was coming from the running man. Crazily, insanely, he was making the noise with his mouth, like a child pretending to be a fire truck.
This was proved beyond any doubt when the man said, "Pull over." The siren sound stopped when he gave the order. Then it resumed again, this time louder.
"What is this?" Brashnikov demanded, reaching under the seat cushions carefully, one hand still on the wheel.