Someone had a bullhorn, and he began exhorting the cameraman to turn back. Inside the tower, the trapped grew panic-stricken. They tried waving him away. A man picked up a clothes rack in a famous clothing store and rammed it toward the glass, in an attempt to frighten the cameraman into changing his mind.
He didn't know his own strength. The heavy rack went through the glass, shattering it.
The expensive bronze solar panel didn't shatter in a normal fashion. It cracked apart. But there was no crystalline sound of breaking glass. There was no sound at all.
And because there was no noise, the cameraman, his dull eyes fixed on the looming entrance, completely failed to notice what happened to the glass.
Cheeta Ching noticed. With instinctive speed, she swung the videocam lens over toward the action. The camera recorded the glass falling and striking the ground.
The big triangles and trapezoids of solar panel might have been raindrops, or glass spun of candy cane touching a moist surface. The glass immediately melted into the broad sidewalk.
Cheeta blinked and brought the camera off her shoulder, a stupefied look on her heavily pancaked features.
"Am I seeing this?"
Under the circumstances, it was an intelligent question. Cheeta thought briefly of commanding her hapless cameraman to walk over to the mysterious spot and investigate, but decided that getting one of the hostages to speak on camera was more important. The chump could do that later.
The cameraman was almost to the door now. Inside the lobby, a security guard and several others were trying to hold the doors shut.
The cameraman's body blocked Cheeta's view, so she didn't really catch what happened next.
It appeared that the cameraman had reached for the door handle of polished brass. His hand jumped back, as if it had received a shock.
His voice was shocked, too.
"I can't touch the door!" he screamed.
"Try kicking it," Cheeta shouted.
"You don't understand! I can't touch it!"
"Yum-yum, baby!" Cheeta called.
If the cameraman hadn't already been frightened out of his wits, he never would have attempted what he next attempted to do.
He stepped back and, lifting his right foot, drove it toward the unyielding door.
He went through the glass door like light through a screen. Literally. The glass remain intact. He kept going.
Inside, trapped shoppers recoiled.
And the cameraman fell into the floor and kept falling. He twisted, as if in quicksand. His mouth was making horrible shapes. Oddly, no screams reached Cheeta Ching's pointed ears. Or worse, her directional mike.
Keeping the camera balanced, Cheeta tried to get his attention with a waving hand.
It worked. The horrified cameraman looked imploringly toward her. His eyes were wounded. It was as stomach-churning a sight as any ever captured on halfinch tape.
Cheeta shouted encouragement.
"Scream louder! I'm not getting a sound level!"
Chapter 5
Because of the nationwide cutback of military bases, Remo Williams was forced to catch a commercial flight out of Buffalo for New York City.
That was bad enough. Since nearly two-thirds of the nation's airlines had slipped into bankruptcy, there were no direct flights to Manhattan, and Remo was forced to change planes in Boston.
At the Boston gate, unmistakable signs that it was Halloween were apparent. The lounging stewardesses wore paint masks. A passing pilot lent a ghoulish air with his plastic skull face.
Remo noticed the passenger in flowing black especially.
It was hard not to notice her. She was tall and willowy, with jet-black hair parted down the middle of her pale scalp, lashes that resembled hair on a tarantula's legs, and a lipsticked mouth that might have been caked with blood.
Her gown made her look like she had been dragged through a mixture of coal dust and old cobwebs. All she needed was a conical black hat and broomstick to complete her ensemble.
The moment Remo entered the passenger waiting area, her eyes went to his lean body. Remo had shucked off his coat, shirt, and tie, leaving only a white T-shirt above the waist and exposing his wiry, understated musculature and unusually thick wrists.
The woman in black was looking at his wrists in particular. Women sometimes did that. It was not the wrists themselves that attracted them, but an indefinable something that made Remo what he was. A combination of perfect balance and coordination that was as alluring to the opposite sex as animal musk.
Remo found the attention as boring as playing gin rummy with blank pasteboards.
He found sex even more boring. The techniques of Sinanju extended to sexual ones. Just as Remo had learned the myriad arts of the silent assassin, he had mastered perfect sexual technique. Unfortunately, for Remo, perfect sexual technique was as mechanical as changing a flat.
Remo pretended not to notice the weirdly pale woman. It wasn't easy. Everyone else was staring at her, which only made Remo's feigned indifference all the more obvious.
A little boy in a Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapin trick-or-treat outfit walked up to the woman and asked, "Where's your broom?"
Instead of answering directly, the woman made a pass with one hand and said, "I cast a spell on you, impertinent boy!"
The boy started sneezing uncontrollably and ran away crying, "Mommy! A witch hurt me!"
Everyone in the terminal laughed at the overimaginative boy except Remo, whose sharp eyes caught the sprinkling of black powder and the scent of fresh pepper in the air.
All eyes were on the mysteriously smiling woman. She moved in Remo's direction. Remo moved off. She followed. Remo ducked into the men's room and washed his hands slowly.
He was relieved when his flight was called. When first-class boarding was announced, Remo started for the gate.
The cobwebby apparition slinked in front of him, throwing a sickly smile over her black shoulder.
Hi.
"You look it," said Remo sourly, hoping to quash further conversation.
The hope died when he found that she had the seat next to him. First Class rapidly filled up, killing any hope of his sliding into another seat.
The seatbelt sign came on, and the plane moved quickly to the taxiing position and thundered into the sky.