"No, Director. Look at the blood in the water. He's killing the snakes with his feet."
"By stepping on them? Just like that?"
"So it appears."
"Who does he think he is, Saint Patrick?"
"Unknown, sir."
"Well, let him try kicking bull gators around then!"
The alligators crawled and splashed from the grates like khaki logs with stumpy legs. They yawned as they came, disclosing unkempt toothy ripsaw mouths.
By this time, the Master of Sinanju was afloat. His skirts hung low in the water, presenting, he knew, an attractive enticement to the reptiles.
So he dived down into the water to meet them on their own terms. One lacked a left eye. He came first.
There were three. They kicked and slashed about with their muscular tails.
A corded tail came around, and the Master of Sinanju blocked it with a pipe-stem wrist. The reptile, his sluggish brain reacting to the pain of its encounter, curled up in a ball and floated inert, one eye closed and the other a black pit.
The other two circled, legs flippering.
One passed close enough for the Master of Sinanju to seize its tail and arrest its progress. The grinning head snapped around angrily. Chiun tugged. The jaws snapped, and kept snapping. With the second gator in a mood to bite anything it encountered, the Master of Sinanju gave it a gentle nudge in the direction of its third saurian brother.
Soon the two gators were chomping one another to shreds, and the water was turning a rusty red.
When the bodies had floated to the surface, the Master of Sinanju mounted them and stood resolute while the upward-creeping water brought him inexorably closer to the trapdoor and freedom.
"He killed my gators!" the Director raged, pounding the console with one gnarled fist. Plastic buttons cracked and popped up from their settings.
"Calhoun isn't dead, just stunned."
"Screw Calhoun! I want that slacker turned into shoes! I fed him a pitbull a day to develop his appetite, and he couldn't eat one bite-sized Chinaman when I needed it!"
"His nationality hasn't been definitely established, Director."
"I don't care if he's a pygmy. I want him dead. And the other one too!"
"The Bear is about to take him down, Director. You might want to watch."
"Now you're talking, Maus!" The fist came down again, cracking the console top.
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
Remo ducked under a buzzing biplane no bigger than a robin. It was wire-guided. When it struck a light fixture, it chewed it to pieces and bored on into the wallboard like an angry mole.
Another came, and Remo was ready for it.
He grabbed the wire, snapped it free, and began spinning the biplane around his head in snarling circles.
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"
"Shut up," Remo said, sending the biplane in the direction of the incessant singing. It chewed into the speaker.
And to his surprise, the music stopped.
And another biplane dive-bombed him.
Remo snared it, and using the force of its flight, let it spin him around.
On the spin, he saw the hulking form of Mucky Moose step out from behind a replica of Big Ben and aim a pumpaction shotgun in his direction.
Both barrels blew at once. They destroyed the ceiling, bringing cascades of plaster and lath down on his antlered head.
But Mucky Moose no longer cared.
He was already on his back, the biplane's stainlesssteel propellor pureeing his heart muscle in the miocardial sac.
"Scratch one Moose," Remo said, pushing on the exit door bar.
When the water level had brought his bald yellow head to the ceiling trap, the Master of Sinanju, balanced atop two dead alligators, reached for the exposed hinge pins.
He used his right index fingernail to shear one and then the other clean off. They dropped into the water. The trap yawned, to hang down from its splintery lock. Slowly, like a rotting tooth, the weight began to tear the lock housing loose.
The Master of Sinanju couldn't wait. He took hold of the trap and whisked it into the brownish water.
Hands unseen in his sleeves again, he waited for the water to come level with the floor, then stepped off his saurian raft.
Each wall framed a door. He chose one, and passed through it.
The next room canted at a thirty-degree angle, and the one beyond also at a thirty-degree angle but on an opposite pitch.
There were no separating walls. The Master of Sinanju saw before him a long succession of twisted and canted rooms, like some drunken tunnel. Some boasted furniture on the ceiling and light fixtures bolted to the floor.
At the far end, he spied a familiar round-eared shape. It waved at him, then beckoned with a whitegloved finger.
"At last," murmured Chiun, starting along this grotesque path.
The walls were decorated with ornate mirrors, he saw.
Eyes alert, Chiun watched these as he walked at a thirty-degree-cant through the first room. He knew that mirrors sometimes concealed spying eyes-or foes poised to strike.