Dutifully Ford stopped the jeep. He hurried around to the other side, helping Roote out.
In spite of the desert heat, Roote's skin was clammy to the touch. All except his metal finger pads. These were warm as they clutched at the back of Ford's neck.
Embracing Roote around the waist, Ford helped him climb up the steep side of the scrub-covered bluff.
The first thing Ford saw when they crested the hill was not the fence, but the line of tanks and soldiers beyond.
"Look out!" Ford screamed, pushing Roote to the rocky ground.
He had thought to save his precious alien with his gallant act. But in truth, until Arthur Ford yelled, the soldiers hadn't even been looking their way. The men were farther along the fence, positioned closely to the desolate desert base entrance.
The nearest soldiers instantly turned toward the intruders. A shout carried down the line, bringing the attention of the rest.
Gunfire erupted instantly.
The ground around them was pelted with a flurry of bullets. Some pinged off the chain-link fence, the sparks of ricochets flying crazily through the desert twilight.
Arthur staggered and fell, accidentally dropping to safety behind a pile of black rock. A hail of bullets rattled against the hard rock, flinging flinty shards over the cowering UFO enthusiast's head. Bullets pelted sand, throwing puffs of powder into red-tinged sky.
The sound was deafening. Ford screamed. His voice was buried in the thunderous roar of automatic-weapons fire.
Covering his ears, flopping on his belly in the dust, he scrambled around on long legs, searching desperately for Roote.
His starman was gone. Fear gripped Ford's chest.
Roote had been beamed up. And not a bogus beaming, like with that G-man earlier in the day. This time, it had really happened. Elizu Roote had gone back to his mothership, abandoning Ford to the mercy of the U.S. military. Men who consistently-if the movies he saw were accurate-showed no mercy.
Screaming turned to sobbing. Arthur Ford was weeping fat tears of terror into the bone-dry dust beneath his fearful face when he spotted a flicker of movement near the fence.
He blinked back his burning tears.
Feet kicking. Someone belly-crawling through the dust.
Hope swelled instantly within Ford. It was the alien!
He was protected by the far edge of the outcropping of rock. The men didn't appear to notice him. Not one bullet flew his way. The soldiers all seemed to be directing their fire at Ford.
As it was dawning on Ford that his actions might actually have saved Elizu Roote after all, his alien was reaching a weak, shaking hand for the fence.
He must not have seen the high-voltage signs posted along the electrified hurricane fence.
Ford started to scream a warning ...too late! As he watched in helpless horror, Roote clamped down firmly on a cluster of chain links near the desert floor.
And then things got strange.
Over the waning gunfire, Arthur Ford distinctly heard the hum. Felt it. It filled the air all around him. It was the sound of a large factory whose many machines inexplicably powered down at the same time.
The hair on Ford's arms and neck tingled.
The soldiers stopped firing. They must have heard and felt it, too. Confused shouts issued from beyond the fence.
Even as the men were trying to figure out what was happening, Roote was rising swiftly from the scrub brush.
He held on firmly to the fence with one hand, jutting the fingers of his other through the chain link. The hum turned into a whining crescendo, and before another bullet sang from the other side of the fence, Roote fired.
The raw power surge was staggering.
It hit the nearest tank. The armor plating crackled as a million crisscrossing blue sparks raced along the vehicle's length. The blue glow was a brilliant contrast to the bloodred sky.
The electrical surge hopped from one tank to the next, to the next, enveloping the entire row in a matter of seconds. In between, it leapt to gun barrels, bouncing crazily down the line of men like some insane arcade game come to life.
Every metal surface grabbed hold of the charge, sizzling, blasting the electricity down into the ground.
Men were thrown back, arms fried. They screamed in agony as they fell. Still Roote fired. Shells within tanks detonated, blasting out huge jagged chunks of hot shrapnel. In a matter of seconds, the entire defensive line was turned into a glowing, moaning killing field. More than three hundred men lay dead or critically wounded. Victory mattered not to Elizu Roote. Energy channeled from the fence continued to pour through him out over the field long after any danger had passed. The electricity flowed from the hand that gripped the chain link over to the other even as his cybernetic microchips were siphoning precious power into his capacitors, restoring them to full operating levels.
Farther down the hill, behind Roote, Arthur Ford watched all of this with sick horror.
Roote was like a man possessed. He killed blindly. Horribly.
The thrill of meeting an alien vanished in a flash. In that moment, Ford's fear got the better of him. He threw himself backward, tumbling end over end down to the access road at the base of the rocky incline. He landed, bloodied and bruised, on the hard-packed sand.
His jeep was forgotten. Flight was all that mattered.
Staggering, limping, Ford flung himself out into the desert. As he ran, the horrible crackle of electricity was carried to him by the warm breeze. And intermingled with the crackles was Elizu Roote's crazed laugh of triumph.
Chapter 12
Ten minutes after Remo had scrounged a jeep from the Fort Joy motor pool, he and the Master of Sinanju were following the dusty path that skirted the artillery range.
Smith had caught Remo on his way out of the barracks area, telling him that Chesterfield had reported two Apache helicopters had been downed in the desert south of their position half an hour before. According to reports the CURE director had overheard, a major battle had also just taken place at the southern gate.
Remo's face was stern as they drove into the growing darkness. He wasn't right. He knew it. In Sinanju, breathing was all. Remo had had this drilled into him forever, to the point where it was beyond second nature. But now there seemed to be something more.
Roote's attack had sent his system spiraling away from the perfection of mind and body that was the most ancient of all martial arts. It wasn't his breathing that was off; it was his heart. The muscle had taken a pounding and now seemed unable to correct itself. And a single imperfection in a Sinanju-trained body was like a ripple on a pond, it eventually reached all shores.
For anyone else on earth, a recovery like Remo's would be a miracle worth celebrating. But for Remo it was intensely frustrating. And in his line of work, anything short of perfection wouldn't cut it.
Since regaining consciousness in the Fort Joy infirmary, Remo had been thinking about the story of Master Cung. He was a Sinanju master who fell victim to a sickness of breathing. Rather than fight his illness, Cung surrendered to it. It took the death of his pupil and a Japanese invasion of the village of Sinanju for Cung to realize that the weakness was a thing to be overcome, not revel in. His lesson-proper breathing is all, but proper attitude is everything.
If the story was true, Cung had banished his physical problem in an instant. But for Remo, that didn't seem possible. And his inability to master so simple a thing in his own body frightened him.
As they drove along the slithering rutted road, Chiun glanced furtively several times at his pupil. Eventually, Remo could take it no more.
"I'm fine," he insisted, feeling the pressure of his teacher's gaze for the tenth time in as many minutes. Frustration mingled with annoyance.
"I was watching the sunset," Chiun replied nonchalantly.