"What's that you're mumbling, smartass?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing, sir" the sergeant corrected.
"Don't stand on formality, Sarge," Remo said.
The sergeant glared at Remo with eyes as cold as
the teats of a 50-year-old WAC. "Something tells
me you ain't going to work out, mister," he said
threateningly. Then his face broke into a malevolent
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grin. "But I'm a fair man. Tell you what I'm going to do. If you make this bunk right, we'll start off with a clean slate. But if a quarter don't bounce one foot off the bed, you and the old Jap are going to the hotbox." He laughed. He had witnessed too many barracks bets not to know that a quarter would not bounce more than five inches.
"Jap?" Chiun gasped. "Now, this is too much. Calling you a dogface is one thing, but referring to the Master of Sinanju as a Japanese—"
"Shhh. Just go along."
"Go along, he says. Always go along. No matter that the glory of Sinanju has been tarnished. No matter that my weary being has been encircled with shame."
"Here's the quarter," the sergeant said, smiling cruelly. "And if it don't bounce twelve inches off this bunk, you get the hotbox. Got it?"
"Yup," Remo said. He took the quarter and tossed it on the bed, where the coin made a small dent before flying upward with a whoosh and embedding itself in the ceiling.
The eyes of every man in the barracks were fixed on the metal disk. "How'd you do that?" the sergeant asked.
"Just lucky, I guess. Looks like the hotbox'11 have to wait."
The sergeant's face reddened. "Like hell, you cheatin' Yankee," he said. He reached out to grab Remo's arm.
"Just go along," Chiun said sagely. But Remo's reflexes were trained to respond automatically to assault, and to Remo's nervous system, the sergeant's sweaty grip constituted assault. Before the stubby
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fingers completed their circle around Remo's wrist, they were numb, and the sergeant was gripping his forearm where Remo's thumb had bruised it.
Then one of the recruits clapped Remo on the shoulder and said, "Attaboy, bro. Time somebody hit that sucker," and Remo knew he had made a mistake.
"Which way to the hotbox?" he asked the sergeant, who was writhing in pain beside Remo's bunk. "I'm going to turn myself in."
"Huh?" the recruit asked. "What you doing that for? You just showed that mother who's running things around here."
"America is running things around here," Remo said. "And when you join the army, you do things the army way. I was wrong, and I'm going to pay the penalty. C'mon, Chiun."
"Chickenshit," the recruit called to Remo's back. Remo flicked out his hand toward the recruit's nose, grabbed it, and squeezed. The recruit quickly changed his mind. "Over there," he began to sing, twanging nasally and tapping his foot.
"That*s better." Remo led Chiun in silence to the small corrugated metal building on the edge of the camp. He told the guard that he had been told to report to the hotbox. The guard shrugged and waved him inside.
Chiun wrinkled his nose at the scent of the sweating inmates who lined the walls. "Why, may I ask, did you volunteer us for incarceration in this pit?" he asked.
"We were setting a bad example, Chiun. Nobody likes being at boot camp, but if every recruit just wasted whoever was in charge of making a soldier
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out of him, we wouldn't have an army. We'd have what happened back at Fort Wheeler."
"I see. And by imprisoning ourselves, we will make better soldiers out of the others."
"Something like that." He turned to address one of the soldiers in the hotbox. "Say,-do you know anything about some religious group coming around here?"
"Whaddya want, jerk?" the soldier snarled. "I don't know nothing about no religious crap, so how's about shutting your face. Unless you got some smoke."
"Then again, we could break out of this stinkhole whenever we wanted," Remo said to Chiun.
"That is reassuring," Chiun said, and sent the soldier crashing through the wall, over the fence, and deep into the woods beyond. Chiun hurried the other prisoners along the same route until he and Remo were alone in the cell. "This room was badly in need of proper ventilation," Chiun said, positioning himself lotus-style near the hole, which extended the length and breadth of the entire far wall. "Tell me when you are prepared to leave."
Remo leaned against the metal wall of the chamber. "Say, Chiun," he said, "did you notice anything odd about this place?"
"Nothing. It is filled with obnoxious white men who live down to their heritage with appalling accuracy. A perfectly ordinary community of your people."
Remo stood in silence for a moment, his brow furrowed. Finally he said, "He hasn't come here yet."
"Who? Be articulate, Remo, at least in your own
language."
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"The traveling preacher. Randy Nooner mentioned him, and there was blood in the place where his tent was. The guy you just threw out of here didn't know anything about any religious fanatics, and nobody at this base looks like a zombie. This is a normal army camp. It hasn't been touched by the craziness we saw at Wheeler."
"Preachers? Tents? Zombies?"
"We're in the wrong place, Chiun. The preacher's who we want. It's the preacher. We've got to find him."
"I am reasonably certain he is not in this jail," Chiun said. "If you feel you have adequately incarcerated us both to serve your country, perhaps we should seek after him elsewhere."
Just then, the door opened, and four officers entered with a crisp stamping of feet. They formed two lines to allow a man wearing a three-piece gray suit and an expression of lemony rectitude to enter. "That's the man," Harold W. Smith said, indicating Remo.
"O mighty emperor," Chiun said, according Smith a small bow. "You have heard of our plight and are come to rescue us." He leaned close to Remo and whispered, "Do not tell Emperor Smith that we could have escaped. It would lessen the kindness of his gesture."
"How'd you know we were here?" Remo asked.