They looked at him with sick, confused eyes.
Koldstad dropped the antenna and, as the gunmen in black came surging around from both directions, he lifted his hands above his head.
"We surrender!"
His men, helpless, followed suit. Except for those who were trying to hide under the chassis of their vehicles.
A thick-set man in a shapeless white hood came around with a shotgun.
"Freeze!" he yelled, finger white on the trigger. "DEA!"
"IRS!" Koldstad screamed back. "We're the goddamn IRS!"
There was a moment of stunned silence. Jaws dropped slowly, and faces turned gray and then drained bone white.
A DEA man vomited violently. Others began retching. His own face fish white, Jack Koldstad climbed to his feet. But only after the white finger on the shotgun trigger relaxed and turned pink again.
"You in charge here?" Koldstad demanded.
The thick man stripped off his white hood to reveal a shaggy red beard and no-nonsense eyes. "Tardo. Drug Enforcement Administration."
"Koldstad. IRS. You just shot the shit out of three official cars, not to mention my trainee."
"You drew down on us first," Tardo pointed out, his voice surly.
"You barbarians were storming ashore like this was the beach at Normandy," Koldstad said hotly. "Of course we drew down on you first. We thought you were drug runners."
"Like hell."
"We're seizing this hospital for failure to report income in excess of ten thousand dollars and for violating Title 21, Section 881 of the United States Code."
Tardo's blunt face darkened. "This is a suspected turkey-drug factory. It's ours."
"What do you base that on?"
"A telephone tipoff that large wire transfers go through the Folcroft bank account regularly."
Koldstad blinked. "That's what red-flagged us, too. But we have jurisdiction."
"No way. This is our bust."
The two men stepped up to each other until their noses almost met. They glared. Around them their men fingered their weapons uneasily.
"I've got three wounded," Tardo said. "That makes this mine."
"And I have one wounded and one dead agent. Trump that ace."
Tardo showed his teeth as he ground them in anger.
"We gotta cover each other's butt on this," he said, low voiced.
"I'm prepared to let the chips fall exactly where they will," Koldstad said. "Exactly."
"Tell you what. You get the medical equipment and any loose cash. We take the bank account, vehicles and, of course, any drugs we find. And DEA goes in first. Fair enough?"
"We already have a lien on the bank account," Koldstad said. "And a DEA bullet in a dead IRS agent. IRS goes in first."
Tardo scratched his beard thoughtfully. "That building looks to be worth a cool ten mil. It's yours uncontested if we can keep the mutual embarrassment to a minimum. What say?"
"Done."
Tardo offered his hand. "Shake on it?"
"Greenwood does all my hand shaking for me."
"Which one is he?"
"The one with his brains fertilizing the damn grass," Koldstad said tightly.
Chapter 4
The Master of Sinanju usually awoke with the sun.
But there was no sun where he slept. All was dark. There were no windows in this place of gray walls and bad, musty air where the sun never shone.
He was old-so old that in almost the entire history of the human race a man was counted fortunate if he lived half of the current life span of the Master of Sinanju, who had already seen one hundred winters-even if he now slept on a simple reed mat in the lower-most dungeon of the brick fortress of his emperor, which was called Folcroft.
But it was necessary, and so Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, endured it.
And he did not need the rising sun to inform his senses that a new day had arrived. His perfect body told him that. His clear brain accepted the knowledge, and so he awoke each morning at the correct hour.
On this morning his body still slept when his perfect ears were assaulted by rudeness.
Without hesitating, his upper body snapped upward, his mind and eyes coming open simultaneously, as if a spring had uncoiled.
The walls of the Folcroft dungeon-called by Westerners a basement-were thick and made of the ugly sand-and-mud concoction called concrete. Still, sounds could penetrate it if they were loud enough.
These sounds were.
The sharp reports of pistols punctuated by the rattle of the noisier weapons carried by Westerners so incompetent they could not even kill with a single correctly delivered bullet reverberated dully. Men yelled in the coarse manner of the West, their voices high and hoarse.
"Boom sticks!" Chiun squeaked. "My emperor needs me!"
And he flung off his simple linen sleeping kimono, taking up the night black silk one that lay neatly folded at his bedside. It cracked open like a parachute before settling over him like a shroud. His tiny feet slid into simple black sandals.
Face determined, the Master of Sinanju cried aloud.