Panic. Gun barrels clattered loudly together as the men tripped and swirled around, looking for the owner of the strange voice in their midst. They found two men.
"Are you now the town crier, announcing our arrival to every lurking simpleton?" Chiun asked, brow creased in annoyance. He stood at Remo's elbow.
"I barely opened my mouth," Remo replied, equally annoyed.
"Silence is golden," Chiun retorted. "Especially coming from you."
Three sets of frightened eyes bounced from one intruder to the next. Finally, the jaw of one HETA man dropped open.
"Fire!" he screamed.
Two HETA commandos were accidentally slaughtered in the ensuing panicked shooting match. The roar of automatic-weapons fire was rattling off into the night as the third man checked the bodies at his ankles. Neither Remo nor Chiun was among the dead.
A finger tapped his shoulder. The remaining HETA man looked up dumbly. He found that he was staring into the deadest black eyes he had ever seen. "Missed me," Remo said thinly.
A thick-wristed hand fluttered before the commando's face. The colors that danced across his field of vision in the next instant were more brilliant than anything the man had ever seen. First red, then blinding white, then black. Afterward, he saw nothing at all.
Remo let the body slip from his fingers.
"House or barn?" he asked the Master of Sinanju.
"Where does this kind belong?" Chiun asked dryly.
"Barn it is." Remo nodded.
Turning from the trio of bodies, the two men made their stealthy way toward the menacing dark structure.
HUEY JANNER NEARLY JUMPED out of his skin when he heard the gunfire.
"They're close," he whispered anxiously.
"Get a grip," Mona insisted. She kept her breathing level as they crept through the dark interior of the barn.
Huey had a difficult time following her. Though he tripped frequently, Mona didn't slow her stride. She had exceptional night vision.
With Mona at point, they approached the old dairy stalls where the BBQs slept. Mona pulled two dark bundles from a wooden shelf. She tossed one to Huey.
"They're in for one hell of a surprise," Mona Janner whispered with certainty. Huey smiled weak agreement.
Wishing he shared his wife's confidence, Huey ducked inside a stall. Nearly purring in pleasure, Mona disappeared inside another.
"DINGBAT, twelve o'clock high," Remo commented as they slid up to the big barn door. His eyes were on the hayloft.
Chiun's narrowed eyes were fixed on the crouching figure. "I will deal with this one," the old man said.
Wordlessly, he melted into the shadows beside the barn. Remo continued on alone.
The barn door was open a hair. Remo slipped inside.
The big interior was drafty and dank. The thick smell of wet, molding hay clung to the air. Remo's finely honed senses detected faint life signs coming from the long west wing of the barn. He slid across the packed earthen floor to the rear of the main building.
As he came upon the closed door that led to the old dairy stalls, he heard a new sound. A shout. "Giddap!"
A woman's voice.
"Move, move, move!" a man yelled almost simultaneously.
Pushing open the door, Remo turned the oldfashioned crank light switch. Bulbs clicked on along the angled wood ceiling, flooding the old cow stalls with washed-out light.
"Giddap! Giddap, dammit!" the woman's voice shrieked.
Remo followed the shouting down to the third stall.
He found one of the missing BBQs. And, straddling its sagging back, perched on an animal-friendly faux-leather saddle, was a screaming Mona Janner.
"Hurry up and move, you stupid lummox!" the animal-rights activist yelled at the hapless BBQ. "They're coming!"
She tried to kick it in the sides to make it move. Her legs were too long, and the BBQ's were too short. She succeeded only in scuffing dirt.
"I'm trying to save your worthless hide," she snapped.
"Maybe it doesn't want to save yours," Remo suggested.
Mona's head snapped around. Her face hit one of her own knees. The creature was so low to the ground they were up by her ears.
When she saw Remo, her eyes bugged in her ski mask. Wheeling, she shook the reins violently. "Hyah!" she urged.
The BBQ had had enough. Moaning, it settled to its ample belly. When its legs tucked up beneath its oblong body, Mona had no choice but to roll off. She shook a stirrup from one foot as she clambered to her feet.
"Please tell me this was a spontaneous getaway," Remo said from the door. "I'd hate to think it was planned."
Mona spun on him, hands held before her in a menacing posture. "Stay back!" she warned. "I know karate."
She demonstrated by attacking the air before her with her hands. Neither air nor Remo appeared very impressed.
As Mona attempted to bisect oxygen molecules, Remo heard a startled yelp from the adjacent stall. He'd become aware of the man and the second BBQ at the same time he'd found Mona. When the yelp was followed by a furious hiss, Remo suppressed a smile.
A few yards before him, Mona was still slashing away.
"I'm warning you, meat eater," she snarled.
"I always wondered something," Remo said, one eye trained on the wall of the stall. "If animals aren't supposed to be eaten, why are they made out of meat?"
His question had the precise desired effect. Eyes widening in horror, Mona froze in her tracks.
The HETA woman's mouth was in the earliest twitching stages of forming a furious, self-righteous O when there came a thunderous crash from her left. Mona twisted just in time to see the thin, unfinished pine that separated her stall from the next explode into a thousand shards of thorny kindling. And sweeping through the air amid the hail of wood fragments came a familiar shape.