"You want to hose blood off the grille?"
"I am an assassin, not a washer of cars," Chiun sniffed.
"Didn't think so," Remo said. He slowed to a stop.
As soon as the car stopped moving, a guard raced to either door. One grabbed Remo's door handle, wrenching it open.
"Get out," a muffled voice commanded.
Remo obliged. Even as he was stepping from the car, a similar command was being issued to the Master of Sinanju.
There was a grunt as the other commando pulled on the opposite door handle. It wouldn't budge. Inside the car, Chiun's pinkie pressed lightly on the inner handle. The commando cursed and yanked on the unmoving door.
"What do you want?" the man near Remo menaced.
"I want not to be manipulated all the time. I want to not be lonely when he's not around and then irritated when he is. But mostly, I want to know where you keep your car keys in that shrink-wrapped Union suit."
By now, the other man had dropped his gun. Both hands and one foot were heavily involved in his game of tug-of-war with Chiun's door.
"Don't get smart with me," Remo's commando threatened. His gun jabbed at Remo's ribs.
"How about if I get fatal?" Remo suggested. There came a blur of movement impossible for the HETA commando to follow.
He was stunned to find that his target had vanished. So, too, he realized with growing concern, had his gun. Frightened fingers gripped empty air.
A sudden coolness to his head and face. His mask gone, too. Whirling, the commando tried to shout a warning, but something blocked his throat. Something itchy.
And in a moment of horrifying realization, the HETA man didn't know which was worse: the fact that he was being force-fed his own hat, or the fact that the stranger was using the barrel of his own gun to tamp it down his throat.
"Junior eat up all him din-din," Remo enthused, stuffing the metal barrel deep into the man's esophagus.
"Blrff," the HETA commando gasped.
"Yum-yum. Eat 'em up," Remo agreed.
The man's eyes bugged. He couldn't breathe. The hat was wedged in a tight ball inside his throat. Remo pulled the barrel free, tossing the gun into the bushes.
The man immediately shoved his fingers into his mouth, probing for fabric. It was too far in. Clawing at his throat, the red-faced commando toppled over onto the road.
"Bon appetit, " Remo declared, turning his attention back to the Master of Sinanju.
The other BETA man was still yanking on the door, his face red as that of his suffocating colleague.
"Perhaps it is rusted shut," Chiun was suggesting through his open car window.
"Chiun, quit clowning around," Remo complained.
The old Korean exhaled, bored. "Very well. But only because I grow weary of this buffoon."
As the commando gave the door one last mighty wrench, the Master of Sinanju lifted his pinkie, at the same time slapping a flat palm against the interior door panel. The crunch of bone on door was wince-inspiring.
The last Remo saw of the second HETA man, he was five feet off the ground and flying backward into a thick stand of midnight-shaded maples. Remo never heard him land.
Chiun joined his pupil outside the car.
"More up ahead," Remo informed him. The dark shapes of barn and farmhouse loomed up the road. Chiun nodded.
"Together or separate?" he asked.
"Together," Remo replied. "You haven't given us much of a chance to bond lately."
"I long for the day you finally get the hint," Chiun whispered, swirling from his pupil.
Side by side, the only two true living Masters of Sinanju began moving swiftly up the pitch-black road.
HUEY JANNER WAS DEEP in tofu-fueled REM sleep when he felt a firm hand clamp over his mouth. "They're here," a voice whispered from the murky shadows.
Mona.
Huey pulled himself out of bed. In the dark, he fumbled off his pair of sweat pants. His unitard was underneath.
"How far?" he asked, sleep clogging his throat.
"Driveway," she replied tersely.
He could hardly see her. She was dressed in her black, form-fitting leotard.
"Did you get them ready yet?"
"No," Mona insisted. "I came for you first. Why, I'll never know. Move it!"
She hurried from the bedroom, slinking stealthily along the silent upstairs hallway. He heard one of the top steps creak as she crept to the ground floor.
Stumbling in the darkness, Huey chased after his wife.
THE SECOND WAVE of HETA commandos hid in a cluster of sickly elms that slouched up from the middle of the Janners' sprawling front lawn.
Not one of the three men saw even a flicker of movement from the long driveway. Night skulked, dark and menacing.
"Are you sure somebody's here?" one commando whispered nervously as he studied the shadows.
"Sam yelled there was a car coming," the second replied.
"I heard a car," offered the third tense voice.
"Me, too," agreed the first man.