As for the danger, he had the same answer for anyone from the "outside" who asked: "Listen, I'll start to worry the minute I have to turn that key— but I won't be worrying long." Unruffled was the word for Captain Elvin Gunn.
But when the door to his control area screeched like a twisted pipe and fell forward to allow an Asian of indeterminate origin to enter, Captain Gunn was at first so surprised, he didn't know what to do.
So he dropped his smouldering pipe and copy of The Body as a first reaction. He yelled in pain as a second reaction.
The reason he yelled in pain was he was in pain, excruciating pain. It was unlike any pain he had ever felt before, as if the 90-percent water content of his body had been suddenly heated to a boil, and the little Asian was causing it simply by holding Captain Gunn's wrists together with one impossibly strong hand and exerting the pressure of a single fingernail on his inner left wrist.
"What— hooo— what do-oooh... you... want-t-t?" asked Captain Gunn with difficulty, trying to recall what important nerve lay in his inner left wrist. He couldn't remember any nerve being there.
"This large object you guard," the Asian asked. "How does one destroy it without causing a big boom?"
"Can't— can't be done for... certain. Might go up anyway."
"How does one insure that the object will not explode?"
"The warhead has to be neu— neutralized. By experts." He didn't want to answer any of the Asian's questions with the truth, but the pain was just too great, and he hadn't been trained to resist pain, just psychological stress.
"How?" he was asked.
"They use a special oil mixture... poured into the warhead to neutralize the explosive detonator that triggers the nuclear explosion."
"You feel the pain easing? Good. Where can I find this oil?"
"There's a container of it in an unmarked wall locker on the top work level, next to the warhead."
"Excellent. Now you will let my friends into this place and I will let you rest."
"The red switch. Press it," said Captain Gunn, who wondered if the Asian wasn't a revenge-crazed Vietnamese. No, that couldn't be. The Vietnamese had won. Maybe he was a revenge-crazed Jap. But Captain Gunn, who drove a Japanese car, dismissed that possibility as even more remote. The Japanese had won, too.
"This is fantastic," Amanda Bull said as she picked her way past a number of guards and other personnel Chiun had taken out of action earlier, and led her troops into the control area. "We're actually in a SAC missile complex."
"Thanks to me," Chiun reminded her.
"Yeah... hey, how'd you do all this?" Amanda said in a less agreeable voice. She felt like shooting someone to reassert her control over the operation. After all, she was Preparation Group Leader, not this Chiun character.
"I did it. That is enough," Chiun said as he let go of Captain Gunn's aching wrists.
"What do we do now?" Ethel Sump asked, while the others poked at control buttons and tried to read the instrument panels.
"We neutralize the warhead," Chiun said firmly, and disappeared to do just that before Amanda Bull could open her mouth.
After he had gone, Amanda turned to Captain Gunn and placed the muzzle of her long-barreled target pistol under his right ear and said, "Screw this neutralization shit. Fire that missile, buster. I know you can do it without arming the warhead, right?"
"Yes, but it's aimed at Russia. The Russians won't know it's not armed. We could trigger World War III."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Ethel Sump injected helpfully.
"Hmmm. There's got to be a way," Group Leader Bull ruminated. After a moment, she had it.
"I've got it," she said. "You hit the ignition switch— I know there's got to be one somewhere here because I watched all the NASA shots on TV— and then cut it. The missile will start to go up and then crash back into the silo."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't do that," said Captain Gunn just before Amanda Bull shot him twice under his right ear. When his body slid off the console chair and fell to the floor like an oversized beanbag, Ethel Sump asked, "What did you do that for?"
"Because we didn't need him. I think I see which switches to press."
"Oh. But what about Mr. Chiun?"
"He's getting too smart. We don't need him, either."
"Oh," said Ethel Sump slowly, looking at Captain Gunn's body, which, even dead, looked handsome and reminded her of her older brother who had died in Vietnam.
Amanda kicked the corpse to one side and slid behind the console. She pressed a button. Nothing happened. She then turned some dials, which did nothing. Then she tried the FUNCTION SELECT control. Nothing.
Frustrated, she shot at the console, which caused some lights to go on, but that was all.
"Damn," Amanda said.
"Hey! Looky here. There's another panel just like that one," someone said.
Amanda went over to it, unaware that it was the mate to the first console and not a backup, and that its launch control officer was lying out in the corridor, where Chiun had taken him unawares while he had been returning from coffee break.
Amanda tried those controls, too, but to no avail.
"Bullshit," she said, and kicked the console like someone kicking a recalcitrant vending machine.
It was then that one of the finest pieces of American engineering, a computer unit with incredible tolerances and multiple failsafe backup systems designed not to allow an accidental firing of the waiting Titan missile, hummed busily.
A red panel lit up the words SILO ROOF.
"Oh, goodie. I think we've got it working," Ethel cooed.
Then another red panel illuminated the word ENABLE, and there was a distant rumbling.
The next panel said FIRE and the rumbling became a roar.
* * *
The Master of Sinanju found the container because there was only one locked cabinet on the wall of the top tier, and after snapping the padlock, there was only one container that sloshed in that cabinet, and its heaviness suggested a very dense liquid, so the Master of Sinanju assumed that it contained the oil that would neutralize the warhead.
The next step was to gain access to the warhead, which Chiun did by leaping atop it with the oil container under one arm.
There was a spout attached to the container, but no open hole in the tip of the missile like those in cars, which Chiun had seen taking refined oil in gas stations. Chiun remembered gas stations because they smelled so bad, but Remo always insisted on stopping at them whenever they went on trips. Too bad Remo wasn't here, Chiun thought. He would know what to do. All whites know machines.
Chiun tapped the missile nose with his foot, and the hollowness that came back told him that the nose was a shell covering something within, and he could break the shell without damaging what it held.
Stooping, Chiun popped a hole in the warhead shroud with his fingernails. Then he casually peeled large patches of alloy metal back until he was standing inside the warhead, whose sides hung down like drooping sunflower petals.