Remo blew out the burning paper and dropped blackened scraps into the wastebasket.
Blaise blinked. "How'd you do that?"
"Home magic course," Remo said. "And I haven't all night."
Blaise Perrin leaned back in his swivel chair and took a deep drag. He threw his head back and let out a long stream of bluish tobacco smoke.
"You're an idiot, you know that?" Blaise said with a smile.
There was something in the confident tone of the man's voice that made Remo look up. He saw the tobacco smoke billowing toward a white device bolted to the ceiling. It was identical to the ones that were mounted in the cells.
When it started to beep, he knew it was a smoke detector.
"I don't smoke," Blaise sneered.
All over the building other smoke detectors started beeping, sounding like arguing computers.
"The guards will be here any second now," Blaise said smugly. "Why don't you put up your hands now, and maybe they won't shoot you?"
Remo took the cigarette from Blaise Perrin's loose lips and returned it, lit end first.
While Blaise was dealing with a mouthful of hot ash and a burnt tongue, Remo went to the door.
"I'm in here," he called.
Running footsteps converged on the office.
Remo went to meet the first arrival. The man came around the corner with his rifle held at hip level. Remo took the muzzle and used it as a lever, slamming the man against a wall and stunning him.
"That's one," Remo said.
The commandant came from the opposite direction.
Remo flattened against the wall at the point at the corner. The man came in fast. Too fast to see Remo's foot trip him. He turned a somersault, and Remo caught him in mid-flip and used his head to make a hole in the wall.
The commandant ended up on his knees, his entire body loose, his neck joined to the wall.
"Two," Remo said.
The two remaining guards happened along then. They skidded to a stop, took one look at Remo, saw their commandant on his knees as if about to be guillotined by a wall, and changed their minds. They doubled back.
Remo decided there was time to interrogate Blaise Perrin before they got reinforcements. He went back to the office.
He heard the sharp breaking of glass, and remembered the fire alarm. A lot of good that's going to do, he thought.
Remo entered the room just as Blaise grabbed the lever.
"Don't waste your time," Remo said.
To Remo's right, the head of the commandant poking through the wall screamed, "Don't! Blaise! Don't!"
Remo started forward. Blaise pulled the lever.
Then a wave of concussive force blew out every wall in the office, and there was a hot yellow sheet of fire directly in front of Remo's astonished eyes.
Through the darkness that came next, he could hear echoing detonations. He counted seven. One for each of the buildings in the reeducation camp.
Chapter 24
There was nothing to hang on to. And even if there had been, the shock wave would have been too strong to resist.
Remo let it carry him. His body, reacting to free-fall, went limp. He could feel the heat on his bare arms, smelled the hair singeing off, and prayed he wouldn't be scarred for life.
Most of all, he thought of how stupid he had been. He had taken the fire alarm at face value. It had been wired to a detonator. The entire complex had been rigged to self-destruct when that lever was pulled.
A tree branch slashed at Remo's face. Blindly, he grabbed out, snared another. It groaned, snapped, and Remo slammed into a nest of branches that lacerated his face and arms.
After that, he dropped straight down. He rolled upon impact and kept rolling, in case he was on fire.
Remo only stopped rolling when his back slammed into a boulder and blew the air out of his lungs.
He lay there a moment, taking inventory. His eyes came open, and he found his feet. The hair had been burned off his exposed skin and he'd lost a little off his head, but there were no broken bones, no internal injuries. He looked around.
The fires were everywhere. They crackled and snarled like trapped animals. The heart of the conflagration was like looking into a fallen sun.
"Cheeta," Remo croaked, climbing to his feet. "Chiun will kill me if she buys it."
Remo moved toward the flames. A man came running out, his mouth open in a silent scream, his flaming arms beating like mad phoenix wings.
He ran and ran and then just flopped on the ground and kept burning. He stopped flapping his burning arms, though.
The heat made it impossible to enter the flames. Remo circled the blaze, which was so hot the perimeter fence had begun to wilt.
There were screams coming from the different burning structures. They sounded like they were being ripped out of the throats of their authors. They didn't last long at all.
Remo was forced to retreat.
He found Blaise Perrin draped across a boulder, his spine broken in three places. Remo grabbed up a fistful of hair and pulled his head back.
Perrin groaned. "You . . . can't . . . prove a . . . thing."
"What was that place?" Remo asked harshly.
"Reeducation . . . ."
"For political enemies?"