"Yes, but no radio. I want you on the ground in case she makes an appearance." He hesitated for a moment. "Remo, if you are not up to the challenge, I can send Chiun in alone," Smith suggested.
"If I'm healed enough to clean rain gutters, I'm healed enough to pull one measly cat out of a tree," Remo muttered.
But as he replaced the phone, he felt the unaccustomed tightness of the still healing scars on his shoulder.
Remo hoped his words to Smith were not simply idle boasting.
MASSACHUSETTS STATE TROOPER Dan MacGuire didn't know why he was being pulled away from his stakeout post outside the BostonBio complex. His was one of a number of unmarked vehicles that had been assigned to the area.
The FBI and Boston police had been having a pissing contest over who was in charge of the whole Judith White mess. No one seemed to be able to get the jurisdiction straight. While the agency infighting raged over the past two days, MacGuire had been waiting patiently in an empty lot across the street from the genetics firm.
He had heard several hours before that White had been spotted, seemingly en route to Boston. There were only two places she seemed likely to go. Her apartment which was under around-the-clock surveillance-and BostonBio itself.
Dan was betting on BostonBio.
Laurels awaited the man who finally managed to bag the psycho doctor. Dan was already counting on the promotion that would come from being the one to take down the Beast of BostonBio.
He was understandably upset therefore when, after two days of sitting alone drinking stale coffee, the nasal voice of his shift supervisor informed him over his car radio that he was to go and pick up some Department of Agriculture agent. The man would be bringing along an assistant. Both had high security clearance.
Dan had objected strenuously, to no avail. He had his orders. Muttering something about being a "god-damn taxi service," he abandoned his BostonBio post to collect his charges.
The Department of Agriculture agent wound up being some faggy-looking guy in a maroon T-shirt and tan chinos. Dan was a good half foot taller than him and had at least a hundred pounds of beefy muscle on the wimp.
The Agriculture guy's assistant was worse. The hundred-year-old man looked as frail as a wicker chair at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. On top of that, he was dressed like Fu Manchu's grandmother.
Both men were waiting on the sidewalk in front of the address MacGuire had been given. As he pulled up to the curb, he noted that it was a hardware store.
"You Agent Post?" Trooper MacGuire asked across the front seat, clearly hoping that he had the wrong man.
"Gimme a sec," Remo said seriously. He examined the last name on his own ID. It was hard to keep track of all his aliases. "Guess that's me today." He nodded as he climbed in the front seat beside MacGuire.
"Great. A comedian," MacGuire muttered.
"What is this?"
The squeaky voice was so loud and so close MacGuire almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around.
The trooper was startled to see the old Asian sitting in the back seat. MacGuire hadn't heard the door open or close. The old man was aiming a slender finger at the bullet-proof shield that separated the rear seat from the front. It was a standard safety precaution. MacGuire told him this.
"Remove it," Chiun commanded.
"I can't," MacGuire replied, irked, as he turned back to the wheel. "It's permanently affixed."
"Why not just leave it, Chiun?" the skinny guy said over his shoulder, as if the old geezer could actually do something about the thick sheet of Plexiglas. By the looks of it, he was lucky just to haul himself out of bed in the morning.
"It annoys me," Chiun sniffed.
"So what?" Remo said.
"So, I already have to put up with you. One annoyance is quite enough."
As the two of them prattled on, Trooper MacGuire checked the traffic situation. He was about to pull out into the street when he was shocked by a horrible tearing sound over his right shoulder.
Spinning around, MacGuire was stunned to see that the protective shield-which could stop a .357 round fired point-blank-had been wrenched free from its casing.
The old man's hands were stretched out as wide as they could go. A set of bony fingers curled around each end of the shield.
As the state trooper watched in shock, the Asian brought his hands together. The sheet of thick plastic bent into a bowed U, straining until it could no longer take the pressure. All at once, it snapped with the report of a gunshot. MacGuire ducked behind the seat, hoping to avoid the inevitable spray of plastic shards he was sure would be launched forward.
There were none. Just another louder, quicker snap.
When he picked his head up over the seat, Trooper MacGuire found that the old man had placed the panes together, forming an inch-thick sheet of glass. These he had snapped, too. The four smaller sections he'd stacked atop one another. As MacGuire watched in amazement, he broke these, as well.
"Can we hurry up and go already?" the Department of Agriculture man complained from the seat next to MacGuire. "There aren't any doughnuts back there." He seemed oblivious to the action in the back seat.
Nodding dully, the trooper turned back around. He swallowed hard, forcing his Adam's apple back down his neck. It seemed suddenly to want to escape his throat.
As he pulled out into traffic, MacGuire heard the snap-snap-snap of increasingly-smaller sheets of Plexiglas coming from the rear seat.
TED HOLSTEIN HAD BEEN flown by helicopter to College Hospital in Boston. As the first known survivor of an attack by Dr. Judith White, it was feared by some authorities that the young hunter might begin to manifest some of the same man-eating characteristics as his assailant.
"She's not a freaking werewolf," Ted complained as blood was drawn from his arm for the umpteenth time.
"Yes, sir," replied the nurse. She appeared to not even be listening to him.
They held him for hours, testing and retesting, finally proclaiming that in spite of having the liver of an eighty-year-old-he was perfectly normal. Ted was clearly not a threat to society at large.
The hospital released him. Directly into the grasping claws of the Boston press corps.
He granted dozens of impromptu interviews in the College Hospital emergency room.
"What was it like to be attacked by Judith White?"
"Did she say anything to you during the attack?"
"Are you afraid she might come back for you?" Fortunately for Ted, five o'clock was approaching and most of the reporters had to get back to their respective stations to edit their miles of tape into the three seconds of material that would actually make it on the air.
Some of the stations tried to get him to come on the air live for their 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. news, but he'd firmly refused. Even so, a few cameras still lingered on him as he sat alone in the blue molded-plastic chair near the automatic doors of the emergency room.
Ted tried to ignore the glaring lights. His eyes and head hurt from not drinking. He hadn't had a beer since morning. All he wanted to do was to get away from here. Out of the public eye.
As he checked his watch for the hundredth time in the past half hour, the doors next to him slid open. "Hey, hey, hey! There he is!" yelled a happy voice.
Bob came bounding through the doors, grinning broadly. The powerful stench of stale beer clung to his clothes and breath. Evan Cleaver trailed Bob into the hospital.
"It's about time," Ted said, annoyed. He got to his feet, stretching uncomfortably.