"Sinanju does not blend in with others," said Chiun. "others blend in with Sinanju."
"Uh-oh, trouble," Ilsa Gans said, looking out the window of Konrad Blutsturz' office.
"What is it, Ilsa?" Konrad Blutsturz said absently. He pored over the blueprints that lay in profusion on his desk. With one eye, he watched Ilsa's rear end as she bent over to look more closely at whatever interested her. It was a nice rear end, very round.
"Remember those two men? The ones who chased us in Baltimore?"
"Government agents. Bunglers, no doubt."
"Well, they're here."
Konrad Blutsturz looked up. He hit the operating switch and his chair spun out from behind the desk and joined Ilsa at the window.
Below, a tall man in chinos and a T-shirt walked to one of the barracks, carrying a White Aryan League regulation uniform across one arm. A smaller man in white walked beside him, looking around curiously.
"Have them killed. I am busy. The doctor will be here shortly, and I must attend to many details."
"Oh, goody."
"Remember to use our expendable people."
"They're not as good as your lieutenants. They always screw up."
"Then use more of them. Soon we will have no need for any of them anymore. For soon I will walk like other men. And do the other things erect men do."
"I like the way you said that-erect."
Remo had given up trying to fit into his brown uniform when someone knocked at the door of the barracks room he and Chiun had been assigned.
"What?" asked Remo, realizing for the first time that Chiun had thrown out the unifonn meant for him and that he had wasted twenty minutes trying to fit into a child's size.
"First duty," a voice said. "Report to the shooting range."
"I am not touching a firearm," Chiun said firmly. "Nor will you."
"Maybe we can fake it." said Remo.
They found the front door of the firing range locked and deserted.
"Maybe there's a side door," said Remo.
There was a small one. The words "Firing Range" were scrawled on a sheet of blue-lined paper torn from a loose-leaf notebook and taped to the door.
"I guess this is it," Remo said.
The door clicked shut behind them and there was no light.
"This doesn't smell right," Remo said.
"Gunpowder," said Chiun, wrinkling his nose. "It never does."
"I mean this setup. I think it's exactly that."
They felt their way along a wall in the darkness. Remo sensed a great open space to his right, and beyond that there was some movement and the faint smell of human beings, but it was muted, as if intercepted by a barrier.
When the lights suddenly snapped on in the building, Remo saw the black silhouette targets of the firing range. They were not in front of them. They were on the wall directly behind them.
At the far end of the building, men in brown uniforms stood behind the glass ports of firing stations. They hefted rifles to their shoulders and pointed them, "Is this a form of initiation?" asked Chiun.
"No, it's a form of slaughter. And we're the objects." The rifles started cracking, sharp spiteful cracks. Behind Remo and Chiun white holes were punched into the black targets, and the air around them vibrated with the sounds of high-velocity slugs.
"Weaver Pattern, Little Father," Remo said.
"Agreed," said Chiun.
Remo moved toward the soldiers of the White Aryan League in a straight line. The Master of Sinanju took a parallel course. Abruptly Chiun cut across the path of Remo's trajectory, and Remo slipped behind him in a similar, but opposite diagonal movement.
To the soldiers working their rifles, it looked as if Remo and Chiun were panicking in all directions. That was the idea of the Sinanju Weaver Pattern. Each man ran a broken line, but it was an intersecting broken line, weaving across one another's paths. It had been originally devised as a form of attack against archers at the time of Darius of Persia.
As Chiun had explained it to Remo years ago, a man running toward an assailant presented a static target that grew larger the closer he came to the attacker. A man running side to side presented a confusing target. But two men running a Weaver Pattern were confusion upon confusion, because an archer always picked the largest target. He would always fire when the two running men crossed paths to form a converging double mark. But by the time he loosed his arrow, the two men were running in diverging paths.
It had worked against arrows. It worked against bullets, which were faster than arrows, but also smaller, and easier to avoid because they required more precise aiming.
There were five riflemen. By the time they realized they could not pick their targets individually, Remo and Chiun had cleared half the space toward them.
The marksmen switched tactics and started a murderous crossfire. But Remo and Chiun were already too close to them for that and they had to revert to individual targeting.
It was too late for individual action as well.
One rifleman sighted on Remo, waiting until his chest tilled his field of vision. He squeezed the trigger. Slowly, because that gave the cleanest shot.
He felt his weapon kick against his shoulder. He didn't feel it discharge. Nor did he feel the butt of the rifle, pushed by Remo's open palm, tear his shoulder muscles loose. The nerves had been severed and no pain signals were transmitted. The rifle clattered to the floor, and the gunman clutched his limp arm stupidly.
Remo took him out with a short chop to the neck and turned on another soldier, who was swinging his rifle around.
Remo stopped, folded his arms across his chest, and said, "Tell you what, pal. I'll give you one freebie shot."
The soldier fired. The bullet went where it was supposed to go, but strangely, his target did not fall or even grab at his solar plexus. The soldier brought his weapon up to his shoulder again, but by then it was too late.
Remo scolded, "I said one shot. You're out." He jellied the man's face.
Remo stepped over the falling body to reach Chiun, but the Master of Sinanju needed no help. He stood over the twisting form of a soldier whose legs no longer worked. Two others had Chiun between them. They kept trying to bring their rifle muzzles to bear on the Master of Sinanju, but each time they lifted their weapons, Chiun swatted them down like a child fighting off broom handles.
"I'd give it up if I were you," Remo told them. "You're only going to prolong the agony."
"Silence. Remo," said the Master of Sinanju, suddenly making the barrels fly up instead of down. "Wheee!"