"Looks like they can't get through this dust," Remo pointed out.
"We can."
Chiun took a deep breath. Remo followed suit. Then the two men plunged into the swirling cold air.
They rounded the Magnus Building, whose top had been sheared off. The missing spire lay in a shattered pile on the other side of the building. It had landed in the middle of an intersection. The hoods of demolished cars poked out from under the ruins.
"I hear people inside," Remo said. Already his clothes and hair were colored by fine grit. He moved by touch because even his sensitive eyes could not see through the swirling clouds.
"No words," Chiun admonished. "They waste the breath." Remo nodded even though Chiun could not see him. Remo zeroed in on the sounds of ragged breathing.
He felt the twisted blocks of the building spire in front of him. Vibration told him of movement behind the concrete. Carefully he began to feel along the wall, looking for an opening or weak spot. Sensing one, he attacked it with jackhammerlike blows of his hands.
The wall parted. Remo squeezed in and touched a human form. It felt warm. But even as Remo made contact, it shuddered and something fled from it.
Whoever it was had just died, Remo knew. A cold anger welled up within him.
He pushed into the ruins.
Although he was deprived of sight, Remo's skin served him well as a sensing organ. It was one of the reasons he seldom wore clothes that covered his arms. He didn't know how it worked, but the short hairs of his forearms rose as he came close to a living thing. He felt the hair on both arms rise. The place was filled with people. Some sobbed in pain.
Remo encountered something with his toe. He reached down and grazed a sharp object. He touched it. A sharp scream rewarded him. He felt flesh around the sharp object and realized he was touching the protruding bone of someone's shattered femur.
Repressing a curse, he found the person's neck and squeezed until the person's breathing shifted into patterns of unconsciousness. Then carefully, blindly, he forced the sharp bone back into place and carried the person out to the clear air near the police barricades.
He handed the limp form of what he saw was a teenage girl to a waiting paramedic.
Chiun had an elderly man in his arms. Solemnly he laid him on the ground. A paramedic immediately knelt beside the man.
"I do not think that one will live," Chiun intoned. "Let's get the ones who will."
"Even we cannot rescue everyone alone. We must do something about this infernal dust."
"Any suggestions?"
"Do as I do," Chiun said. He found a ladder truck where three firemen wrestled with a high-pressure hose. They were spraying the air with water. The thick jet didn't have much covering strength. It was designed to concentrate a stream of water in order to knock down stubborn fires.
Chiun took the hose away from the astonished firemen as if it were a garden hose and not a monster gushing water. He grasped the nozzle in one hand and proceeded to cap it with the other. He splayed his fingers. The water turned from a spurt into a spray. Chiun waved the hose in all directions.
"See?" he told Remo.
"Good thinking," Remo said, commandeering another hose.
"I don't believe this," said one of the firemen to the other. "You could knock a strong man twenty feet with the force of one of those things: That old guy's playing with the hose like it's a kid's toy."
"Yeah," said another. "And that skinny guy's doing the same. Look."
"Hey," the first fireman yelled at Remo. "What you're doing is impossible."
Remo shrugged. "Get ready to rush in when the dust settles."
"Sure. But do you mind telling us how you can do that? I've been a fireman seventeen years. What you're doing isn't normal."
"Rice," Remo said. "I eat lots of rice."
The firemen looked at one another blankly.
In a matter of minutes, the gutters ran brown with dust-laden water. The air became breathable once more. Ambulances and rescue equipment advanced into the area of destruction.
Remo and Chiun followed them in.
"Emperor Smith will be displeased. We are being very public."
"Can't be helped. Besides, it's gotta be done."
"Agreed."
The work went on with numbing repetition. Remo and Chiun reentered the shattered spire, whose interior was a jumble of smashed and upended furniture. They brought many bodies out-few of them alive. Where the rescue crews could not penetrate, Remo and Chiun cut through twisted girders and blocked concrete.
Hours later, they were still at it. The few living victims they found dwindled with each new limb they dug from the rubble. The rescue people, asking no questions, simply carried the bodies away.
When night fell, Remo and Chiun entered the Magnus Building, whose twentieth floor was now its top floor. They went up the stairs and forced open a stairwell door. They climbed over the tumbled furniture that blocked the doorway and emerged into open air.
The twentieth floor lay open to the sky. A biting wind came from the east, carrying the bitter tang of the winter ocean. Mixed with the salt air was another scent, also salty. Blood.
Around them, the spires of Manhattan looked almost normal. But the twentieth floor was anything but normal. It was a platform of rubble and half-collapsed partitions. "Let's get to work," Remo muttered.
A hand poked up from under a splintered desk. Remo lifted the desk free and reached for the hand. It felt cold, like a clay model. Digging at the debris, Remo found that the arm had been severed at the shoulder. Though they unearthed the remains of a dozen other people, they never found the rest of the body.
There were no survivors on the upper floor. Dejectedly they descended to the street. They were covered with powdered plaster, like two dusty specters.
"You know what I wish?" Remo said when they were back on the street.
"What is that, my son?" asked Chiun, turning to look at his pupil. Remo's face was a mask of powder. Two channels ran down from his eyes, where the tears of frustration had started.
"I wish the bastards who did this were right here. I'd sure make them pay."
"Will you settle for those?"
Remo looked where Chiun was pointing.
"Yeah, they'll do just fine," Remo said, seeing a pack of street punks slipping through the police lines. They went from body to body, fishing into pockets and pulling out whatever they found. Remo saw a teenage boy in a hooded gray sweatshirt take a dead man's shoes off his feet. Remo took him first.
"Put them back," he said, his voice as gritty as his face.
"Buzz off, chump. He won't need 'em any longer."