And the gunman whipped his muzzle back to Cheeta's belly.
"You!" he shouted, yanking Cheeta into the helicopter. "Keep them away or the slope gets a .45 caliber abortion right here!"
That decided it. Remo pivoted and began tripping legs. He caught videocams as they slipped from clutching fingers and smashed them under his feet. He made sure to pop cassette ports where he could and pulverize the cassettes, so that his face could not be broadcast.
The helicopter began to wind up.
"Nobody go near that bird," Remo warned, crushing a cassette to powder in a cameraman's face.
And no one did.
Blowing air and city grit, the Superpuma lifted off and racketed out to sea.
Remo watched it go. "Damn," he muttered. "Chiun is going to kill me."
A reporter shoved a microphone into his face and asked Remo a breathless question.
"Can you tell us what's going through your mind right now?"
Remo answered the question by using the mike to perform a radical tonsillectomy on the questioner.
The others withdrew.
"Pretend we're not here," one suggested.
"Pretend you're not here," Remo growled.
The KNNN news gatherers who could still walk under their own power hastily helped the others down the roof hatch.
Remo ignored them. His features grim, he watched the helicopter become a dwindling speck of light in the night sky.
When the sound of its rotors no longer reached his sensitive ears, Remo slipped jumped down the hatch and found an empty office, where he called Harold Smith.
"Smitty. Bad news."
"What is it, Remo?"
"I got here too late. Burner and Haiphong Hannah just took off with some guy in a kilt. They got Cheeta. She's a prisoner."
"What was Cheeta Ching doing there?"
"Who cares? Listen, if Chiun finds out I've blown this mission, there's no telling what he'll do."
"How can we stop it?"
"Search me. But I'll find a way."
And he did.
Twenty seconds later, the building filled with the tormented wrenching of metal under extreme stress. The awful sounds could be heard coming from the roof. When a two-man security team ventured up there, they came down, weapons mysteriously missing.
"I think we should evacuate the building," said one.
"Evacuate?" the station manager blurted out. "Why?"
"The guy on the roof told us we should."
"What kind of a reason is that?"
Then one of the satellite dishes sailed past the long eastern window, on its way to the sidewalk many floors below.
Staff surged to the window. Another dish cartwheeled past.
The station manager cleared his throat and rumbled, "I move we evacuate right now."
The evacuation was swift, orderly, and successful. Everyone exited the west side of the building, because the dishes seemed to be falling on the east face.
Eyes straining upward, the entire staff of KNNN waited for the third and last satellite dish to fall.
Remo Williams finished dislocating the last satellite dish from its roof base. He did this with the naked edge of his palm. The base consisted of steel struts painted white. They were built for support, not resisting hands that could by touch alone seek out weak spots and snap them with lightning blows that separated the metal along molecular lines, leaving superclean edges, as if giant bolt cutters had been brought to bear.
Remo left the last dish when it fell. KNNN was no longer transmitting. He went downstairs to report to Dr. Smith.
The building seemed deserted. Remo's acute hearing detected no sounds of life. Air conditioners hummed. Water moved through plumbing. A mouse chewed at a partition.
But no human heartbeats came to his ears.
He picked up a phone at random, holding the one button down.
"Smitty, good news. I solved the problem."
"How?" asked Harold Smith.
"I knocked KNNN off the air."
Pause.
"Remo," Smith said tightly, "I hope you have done the correct thing."
"Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. But I bought us some time."
"No, I mean in reference to the blackout matter."
"I'm worried about Chiun. Screw the rest. Besides, isn't KNNN the source of the jamming?"
"That is my information, but we have yet to prove it.