"Kill him or ditch him, Little Father?"
"He is tall," Chiun pointed out with thin impatience.
"Gotcha," Remo nodded.
Hoping Arthur's height would attract the first bolt of lightning, he spun back around, jamming hard on the accelerator. The jeep bounced forward, toward Elizu Roote's last known location.
HIS POWER WAS DRAINED.
The circuitry within him was so familiar to Roote and so integrated with his biological systems, it was as if he'd been dealing with depleted capacitors since he was a child. The sensation was similar in nature to hunger or exhaustion.
His violent trek through the base had forced him to tap into his reserve power. His backup capacitors had been partially sapped, as well.
Although his store of energy was low, Elizu Roote knew that he had a sufficient supply to take care of General Chesterfield. He would recharge afterward.
As he slipped through the open bay door of the Fort Joy motor pool, he tapped his digits together in a twisted parody of finger snapping. Tiny blue sparks accompanied a sound like clacking castanets.
The interior of the building was dark. When he flipped the light switch inside the door, he found that the power had been cut.
They'd expected him. They thought to keep him from recharging by severing the line to the motor pool.
"It ain't gonna work, Ironbutt," Roote taunted from the doorway. "I still got enough juice to fry your fat ass."
As he took another step into the building, Roote noticed a set of jumper cables attached to a solid metal pole just beyond the open door. For some reason, someone had pounded the metal rod into the earthen floor.
He disregarded the post, moving beyond the open bay door and into the shadows of the motor pool.
Roote had just stepped past the door when he sensed someone move out from behind it. In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of a man rushing toward him, something clasped in his hands.
His targeting scanners didn't match the object with any of the potential threats that had been stored on the small microchip buried in his brain. Automated system or no, the decision to kill was instantaneous.
In the instant the man appeared, Roote started spinning toward him, fingers extending to deal flashing death.
But to his shocked astonishment, he never got the chance.
Something painful latched on to a spot at the back of his neck. Clawing pincers. Soft flesh yielded to jagged metal.
The tearing sensation was short-lived. It was completely overwhelmed by a body-racking jolt of pure pain. And to his shock and horror, he felt the bottom drop out of his capacitors. Roote's entire store of electricity was siphoned off in half a heartbeat.
In agony, he stood rigid during the split-second power surge, helpless to act.
And as quickly as it had begun, it was over. His capacitors were completely drained. As was Elizu Roote. With no electricity to animate him, the private collapsed like a rag doll to the floor.
Sapped of life.
THE SAME BLAST that racked Elizu Roote's body flung Harold W. Smith backward to the dirt floor. Although he knew it would endanger his own life, it had been necessary for Smith to be in close to attach the free end of the jumper cables.
The schematics of Roote's mechanical system had suggested to Smith that the metal contact buried beneath the flesh at the rear of the soldier's neck might be a kind of Achilles' heel to his cybernetic systems.
At that moment, the CURE director didn't know that his supposition had been correct. He lay flat on his back near the open door of the motor pool. As still as death.
A few yards from Smith, Roote kicked feebly at the dirt floor as a few residual sparks hopped from his bleeding neck to the steel rod Smith had pounded into the floor.
Chapter 16
Remo spied the first bodies lying in heaps of tangled limbs near the infirmary.
"Looks like our little glowworm's been glimmer-glimmering," he said coldly as they drove past the grisly scene.
"These are not burned like the others," the Master of Sinanju commented, hazel eyes narrowed.
"He had more power to work with back at the fence," Remo suggested. "When he's using his own store, maybe he has to hold back a little."
"It's terrible," Arthur Ford gasped. He was leaning between the two seats, looking out the windshield as they drove past the many smoldering bodies.
"Glad you're finally coming around," Remo said, assuming the gruesome scene had at last dispelled the UFO-chaser's notions of Elizu Roote as benevolent alien.
"What they forced him to do," Ford lamented, shaking his head sadly. He was practically in tears. "It must have been terrible for him."
"What planet are you from?" Remo demanded, astonished that Ford was still unmoved.
"Earth," Ford replied seriously, as if there truly was another option. He sniffled in solidarity with Elizu Roote as they passed another cluster of electrocuted corpses.
The bodies were scattered along a direct path to the base headquarters, like a macabre trail of breadcrumbs.
Remo slowed to a stop near the building where they had gotten their jeep.
Remo and Chiun climbed out. When Arthur Ford attempted to follow, Remo pushed him back in his seat.
"As annoying as you are, I'd still recommend you don't wander away," Remo said reluctantly. Ford considered for a moment, glancing at one of Roote's nearest victims. Finally he fell back into his seat. "Just promise me you'll let him return to his ship if he agrees to go," he said, crossing his arms morosely.
"I'll put him in orbit myself," Remo promised. Ford didn't like the way he said it.
Remo and Chiun left him in the jeep. Side by side, they moved swiftly across the courtyard. The two men hugged the shadows, becoming one with the patches of darkness. Their moves were identical and instinctive as they hurried forward As they rounded one of the many flat one story buildings on the base, the rear of the HQ building suddenly loomed before them.
"Think he's after Chesterfield?" Remo asked as they passed another body.
"That bellowing pork belly commands these legions," Chiun said reasonably. "The bodies lead to his burrow."
Remo nodded agreement. "Be careful, Little Father," he warned.
"And you, as well, my son," Chiun replied softly.
The weight of shared apprehension heavy on their shoulders, neither man spoke again as they slipped around the side of Chesterfield's headquarters.
ARTHUR FORD SAT nervously for several long seconds after Remo and Chiun had gone.