"Looks like you can breathe a sigh of relief, Little Father," he commented. "These guys were shot. Since we don't use guns, no Sinanju ghost army to worry about."
The tension on the old man's face never faded. "And if you would use your ears half as much as you use your mouth, you would have heard me say that the one who is to be of Sinanju but not, will summon the armies of death. The prophecy does not say that they themselves will be of Sinanju, nor of what form they will even take."
"Oh," Remo frowned. As he spoke, he noted a group of men clustered near the side of a small house. "Looks like the fun's over there."
He and the Master of Sinanju headed for the crowd. A middle-aged man with an FBI tag spotted them as they approached. "Hold it," he ordered. "You can't be here."
Remo flashed his CIA ID at the FBI agent.
"Any idea what happened?" Remo asked as the agent studied first Remo's identification, then the clothing the two new arrivals wore.
"Not really," the FBI man said. "Nothing beyond what you probably already know. The only witness is an Army Colonel. He was kind of out of it when they found him. Kept saying something about a Russian ghost army. I don't think we can put much stock in that. Aren't you guys cold?"
Remo didn't hear him.
There was an outdoor oil tank behind the nearest house. A body lay beside it. Leaving Chiun, Remo crossed over to the dead man. He crouched next to the body.
The man's head had been removed. It had rolled through the snow until it was facing the tin wall of the hovel.
"Uh-oh," Remo said quietly as he peered at the neck stump.
"Yeah," the FBI man said, walking up beside Remo. "A real mess. There's a couple like that. Weird thing is, there's no one from the other side dead. All this mess you'd think some of our guys would have taken out at least a couple of theirs. I'm thinking that whoever did this might carry off their dead and wounded with them."
"Or maybe their dead are already dead," Remo said grimly. He ignored the puzzled look the FBI agent gave him. "Chiun," he called.
The Master of Sinanju had been studying the ground around where the greatest concentration of men were working. He padded quickly over to Remo.
"What do you make of this?" Remo asked worriedly, gesturing to the decapitated corpse.
Chiun cast a wary eye at the body. "This was accomplished with a single stroke," he pronounced.
"No tools, right?" Remo said. "It looks to me like it was done by hand. And I don't know many people who can lop off a head with a single palm stroke, present company excepted."
Chiun nodded thoughtful agreement. "Here," he beckoned ominously.
Leaving the baffled FBI agent, Remo crossed with Chiun to the spot where the old man had been studying the snow. A long fingernail extended, aimed toward two separate sets of tracks that hadn't been stomped on by authorities.
Remo saw that one pair was deep and clumsy. A normal man's tread. It was the second set that made his stomach sink.
They were light. Virtually invisible to the untrained eye.
The faint footprints seemed to have danced and moved around the victim, hiding in every blind spot that would have been offered by a moving opponent. With footwork like that, the dead soldier whose boots had made the deeper impressions would never have even seen his killer.
More tracks touched the snow near the first: Many more kissed the periphery of the killing field.
There were only two men on Earth capable of such subtle movements. At the moment, they both were staring into the tracks of a killer who, though unknown, remained disturbingly familiar. With a sinking feeling, both men now knew without doubt that they were facing an enemy in control of an army trained in a deadly art forged in blood on the rocky frozen ground of a tiny fishing village on the West Korean Bay.
Chapter 15
Remo looked up from the tracks. His eyes as he stared at the Master of Sinanju were dull. "I don't know about you, but right now I'm feeling real nostalgic for the day our house got incinerated," he exhaled. "Guess this clinches it. We're dealing with a bunch of guys trained in Sinanju."
Chiun nodded seriously. The earflaps of his winter hat bobbed in the chill air. Alert hazel eyes scanned the area.
The desolate town of Kakwik was a slaughterhouse at the top of the world. And somewhere out there lurked an enemy with knowledge of the most deadly killing art to ever brush Earth's frail mantle.
"Hey, what about the Dutchman?" Remo asked suddenly.
The Dutchman, whose real name was Jeremiah Purcell, was one of the most dangerous adversaries Remo and Chiun had ever faced. Skilled in the ancient art of Sinanju, he had spent the past decade in a coma, confined to Folcroft Sanitarium's security wing.
"I checked on him before we left," Chiun replied. "He is still asleep in Smith's dungeon."
"So this is somebody new. Swell," Remo grumbled. "The tracks lead that way," he added as he dragged his ski cap out of his pocket, pulling it down over his ears.
The footprints headed away from the investigators, threading between two tin houses. Others had fallen in line with the path of the leader. Though not as lightfooted as their leader, they were far more graceful than ordinary men.
"We better get a move on," Remo announced glumly. "Another few hours and we'll lose them completely."
Even to their trained eyes, the tracks weren't easy to follow. Wind pushed the powdery snow.
The FBI agent in charge watched the two men wander off alone, their eyes downturned as if following some invisible trail. Shaking his head, he returned to his work.
The two Masters of Sinanju passed between the last hovels at the edge of the tiny village and continued into the snow-blanketed field beyond. In the deceptively close distance, blue snow-capped mountains held up the sky. Nearer, snow-brushed hills rolled up from the vast plain.
They lost the tracks at the midpoint to the low hills. Punishing wind had erased all traces of the men they were following. Rather than turn back, they forged onward.
Four miles out of Kakwik, the faint trail became visible once more at the mouth of a narrow gorge. By now there were only ten of them. At some point on the plain, the others had to have veered off in another direction.
Up ahead, a small range of frozen hills rose from the canyon floor. Beyond them, a thin thread of smoke touched the sky. Exchanging tight glances, Remo and Chiun scampered up a hill, assuming a cautious crouch near the top.
In a shallow canyon below, white shapes scurried around a small fire.
The Master of Sinanju's face grew worried. "They are spirits," he hissed.
With narrowed eyes, Remo studied the figures below. At first glance they did look ghostly. The ten men wore off-white jumpsuits. Masks of cream white covered their faces.
Training his ears on the valley below, Remo quickly found the supernatural give way to the painfully ordinary.
"Unless somebody's changed what makes ghosts tick, those are just guys, Little Father. At least the last ghost I met didn't have a heartbeat."
The Master of Sinanju tipped his head, listening to the sounds of the valley. Ten distinct heartbeats carried to his sensitive eardrums.
"They live," Chiun said in soft surprise.
"Live, breathe and stink like Russians," Remo said, his face fouling at the scent that had just carried to him on the breeze.
Chiun had caught the distinct odor, as well. Abandoning all pretense of stealth, he rose to his full height. His lips puckered in displeasure.