Another Japanese came out of the tank. This one lugged a video camera on his shoulder. He knelt down beside the tank and sighted through the lens.
"Why the heck are they filming us?" Sheryl wondered. "And with a camcorder to boot."
"Road crosed. Go back!" the Japanese with the AK-47 shouted again.
Sheryl muttered, "He probably doesn't speak English. Wait. Maybe the tank driver can help us out." Sheryl alighted from the jeep and, leaving the driver's door open, started for the Japanese. Her cowboy boots covered exactly seven steps; then the Japanese gave a hiss like a cat and let go with a short burst. Sheryl jumped nearly a foot. The noise was suddenly all around her. A burst of pops in front and a rattling drumroll behind her. The drumroll worried her the most. Blanks didn't make sounds striking targets, she knew. The paper wadding burned away in flight.
She looked back at her open door. It was riddled with vicious black holes. The glass had shattered.
"Are you insane!" Sheryl screamed at him. Her pretty face worked angrily, but she didn't budge from where she stood. She couldn't because, as impossible as it seemed with a camera taping her, the extra had been firing real bullets.
"Is this a take?" Sheryl stuttered nervously.
The Japanese laughed raucously. "Hai!" he said. "We take city."
"No, no, I mean, is this going to be in the film?"
"Hai." He started to line up on her stomach. Sheryl hesitated. Her heart was pounding high in her throat. Her brain fought two conflicting emotions. Disbelief and a palpable fear of that deadly weapon pointing at her.
"Do you mind lowering that thing?" Sheryl said in a voice that sounded stretched too tight.
The Japanese tightened down on the trigger.
He stopped at the sound of a pungent word delivered in a squeaky voice.
Sheryl looked back over her shoulder. "No! Don't shoot him!" she cried.
For the little Korean named Chiun was out of the jeep and striding for the Japanese, his fists clenched like ivory bone, his sweet face now a mask of cold fury. The AK-47 burped smoke and noise.
The Korean danced to one side. It was an elegant little two-step. He kept coming on the Japanese. Sheryl blinked. Had the gun been loaded with blanks after all? She looked back at her car door. Still riddled. And off to the side of the road, a cluster of puffs marked the impact points of the rounds Chiun had avoided.
The Japanese hunkered down and braced the rifle stock against his hip. Barely ten feet separated him from his intended target.
Sheryl couldn't bear to look. She covered her face and twisted around. A horrible high-pitched scream assaulted her ears and she transferred her hands to them to keep out the sound of the poor Korean gentleman's death screams. They were unearthly. It sounded like he was being torn limb from limb-although no more shots rattled out.
Slowly, Sheryl found the courage to turn around. She was on her knees in the middle of the road. The Japanese with the AK-47 was flat on his back. The one with the video camera was the one who was screaming.
He was attempting to clamber onto the open tank. Chiun had caught him by one ankle. Even though the Japanese was much younger than the Korean and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, he was howling as if an alligator had snapped at his foot.
It was unbelievable. And then it became absurd. Chiun pulled the cameraman to the ground. One sandal lashed out. Sheryl could almost feel the gravely crunching sound of the cameraman's skull fragmenting. Then Chiun was atop the tank.
A helmeted head lifted up from the other tank's turret. Chiun pushed it back in and slapped the hatch shut. He hammered on it rapidly and stepped to the forward hull. He stamped on the driver's hatch, then leapt to the second tank. He performed some violent manipulation on that tank's hatches.
Sheryl knew they were violent because metal squealed like mice under the old Oriental's nimble fingers. Chiun alighted and padded back to her. He stopped, his hands sliding into his voluminous sleeves.
"You may go around these Japanese deceivers without fear for your safety," he intoned.
Sheryl followed Chiun to the jeep and got into the driver's seat, pulling the shattered door closed. The bullet-chewed handle came off in her hand.
Before she could start the engine, reaction set in. She hugged herself and started to worry her lower lip with her teeth.
"My God! What's happening here?" she asked weakly.
"They are taking Yuma," Chiun said. "And they will be punished. First we must see to Remo's fate." Getting a grip on herself, Sheryl got the jeep going. She drove it over the sand and around the tanks and back onto the road on the other side. As they passed the tanks, she could hear frantic yelling coming from inside the vehicles. It was in Japanese. The tone was universal, however. The tank crews were trapped. But they were not helpless, as Sheryl realized when she caught a flicker of movement in her rearview mirror. The turret cannon was elevating. It coughed a blast of dirty smoke and flame.
A geyser of sand erupted beside the road. Sheryl pressed the accelerator to the floor. She no longer questioned what was happening. It was happening and she wanted only to get away from it.
There were Red Chinese tanks blocking the main gate to Luke Air Force Range. But that was not the strange thing. On the flagpole near the guard box, a white flag was flying. It was not the white flag of surrender. In its center was a blood-red ball.
"Call me superstitious," Sheryl said, turning off the engine suddenly. She let the jeep coast to the side of the road. "But I don't think we should go in there."
"A wise decision," Chiun said. "You will stay here." He got out of the jeep.
"Where the heck do you think you're going?" she called after him.
"I seek my son. I will return."
"You and MacArthur," Sheryl muttered. She clutched the steering wheel anxiously. Her arms trembled. And up in the impossibly blue sky, the first of three C-130 Hercules transport planes were coming in on approach.
The Master of Sinanju drifted to the air-base perimeter fence. It was a wire-link fence. Chiun's fingernails slipped into the holes like so many darning needles. They clicked busily. Links snapped and parted. A tear opened up in the fence like a rip in a screen door.
Chiun slipped through quietly. He moved from low building to shrubbery. He passed many Japanese attired in their ridiculous Chinese military uniforms. Whom did they think they were trying to fool? Chiun wondered. It was so transparent.
He found his way to the flight line, where several tanks were moving in the shelter of a row of hangars. Chiun saw a Japanese in a captain's uniform lunging about, directing his men into positions.
The first transport rolled to a halt. The second touched the tarmac with a barking of landing wheels. The third was fast behind it.
The pilots took a long time to shut down the engines after the C-130's rolled to a stop, wing tip to wing tip. Before they could emerge, the drop gate of the third plane eased down and Bill Roam, known as Sunny Joe, walked out on wobbly knees.
Oblivious of the men moving on him, he sank to the grass and put his head in his hands, and began making long arduous retching noises.
Two Japanese tried to haul him to his feet.
That was a mistake. Bill Roam got to his feet like a water buffalo breaking the surface. He decked one Japanese with his first punch. The other took three punches. Two to the stomach and one which turned the man completely around before sprawling him on the grass.
"You bastards!" he screamed. "You cheap motherloving bastards!" He shouted it to the sky. When his head came down, his eyes saw the helmeted Japanese marching toward him. They were fixing bayonets.
All except the one with the video camera. He scrambled along beside the others, trying to keep them all within camera range. He dropped to one knee as the Japanese, led by First A. D. Moto Honda, advanced on Sunny Joe Roam.
"They're all dead!" Roam said in a grinding voice. "Do you hear me, Honda? Every one of those boys ate sand for his last meal."
Honda's answer was in Japanese. Bill Roam didn't understand it, but the Master of Sinanju did. It was an order to stab Roam to death.
Bill Roam realized this only after the little Oriental appeared in front of him. The Oriental stood resolute in the face of the advancing Japanese. He paused, only to turn his head slightly and whisper a question.
"Those who died. Was Remo among their number?"