"Wait anyway."
"You got it."
Remo found himself standing on hard rock dappled by spongy moss and lichen. Muskeg pools, some no bigger than his fist, speckled the terrain.
"Ready, Little Father?"
"I am prepared for anything," said the Master of Sinanju.
It was a good half mile to the flat-topped mountain which loomed up from the rock-and-muskeg waste. The statue of Saint Clare stood watch like a lonely bride atop an ugly wedding cake.
They started off at a dead run, picked up speed and soon were moving as fast as a speeding car. "Remember," Remo warned, "we don't kill anyone unless we're sure."
Then, as they crossed the difficult terrain, the head of Saint Clare came apart in a noisy black puff of smoke.
A shriek went up to the heavens and the Master of Sinanju pulled ahead of Remo like a spastic-limbed bat.
"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "I am coming, my child!"
And as they pulled closer, the smoke began to thin, revealing the red top of a transmission tower poking up from the statue's broken stump of a neck.
Then the skin of the statue began to crack apart, coming away to expose the spidery alternating white and red supports . . .
Don Cooder's face and smile looked ready to crack. He had flopsweat, severe eye-dart and cottonmouth all at once.
"You're just in time," he shouted to the arriving Mounties.
They stormed in with their revolvers trained on him.
"What happened here?" demanded the major.
"I was too late."
"You just said we were just in time."
"You were. I wasn't." He rattled his chains in the direction of the bodies. "Mark it. The culprit, Captain Audion, dead at his console with his accomplices scattered around him like so many checked pawns. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." His grin stretched to the tearing point. "That's going to be my lead."
The Mounties were having none of it. Don Cooder was made to sit on the floor amid the blood, but he didn't care.
"I saw most of it," he was saying as the Mounties examined the bodies. "Feldmeyer shot them both."
"Why?"
"Thieves fall out is going to be my tag. It's up to you nice folks to flesh out the details. On TV, we have to reduce a story to its gut. And man, this one. has a lot of guts to it. Back in my field days we called this a 'Fuzz and Wuzz' story. You folks are the fuzz. No offense."
The RCMP major was frowning as he looked at the TV screen faces of the two dead people seated at the control console. He noticed the dead hand of one clutching a handle marked DESTRUCT and tied it with the faint rattling of rock that was coming from the mountaintop, far above this warren of stone tunnels.
"Let's get this contraption off them," he said.
Cooder asked, "What about the cameras?"
"Cameras?"
"Look, this is the climax. You gotta get this on tape. This will make great television. I could win an Emmy for this."
"Any tape will become state's evidence."
"You boys don't get it, do you?" He pointed ceilingward. "This is the hidden transmitter."
"A statue of a nun?"
"Saint Clare of Assisi. The patron saint of TV. That's how I figured it out. I've thrown a few thankyous her way in my time. This isn't some misplaced religious shrine. Dollars to doughnuts the antenna mast is jammed up the sister's skirts." Cooder lifted sheepish eyes to the rock ceiling. "Excuse my French, Saint Clare."
A videocam was trained on the two figures and when the light was blazing, the major removed the first helmet.
"I'll be danged!" Don Cooder said. "If it isn't Jed Burner. Captain Audacious himself!"
The second helmet revealed a head like a Pekinese that had been used to wipe up an abattoir floor.
"Haiphong Hannah Fondue," Cooder said. "She came to fame broadcasting for the North Vietnamese. Now she meets her maker trying to undermine capitalism's greatest, loudest voice---free TV."
"She has no face," said the major. "How do you know that is her?"
"I'm a trained network anchor. I know hair. That's Haiphong Hannah. Probably a wig."
The major pushed at the hair. It slipped loose. A wig.
"So who is this individual?" he asked, pointing to the sprawled figure in the anchor-emblazoned blue bodystocking.
Don Cooder put on a mournful face. "That, I deeply regret to say, is a colleague of mine. Frank Feldmeyer. He is-was-our science editor. And probably the brains of this insidious operation."
The major looked doubtful. "So which of them is this Captain Audion?"
"You call it and I'll broadcast it that way," Cooder said, winking.
A sudden shriek pierced every ear-long, ripping and bloodcurdling.
"What on earth was that?" said Don Cooder in a suddenly shocked-dead voice.
The Mounties seized him by his chains and pulled him along as they went in search of the horrible sound's source.
Remo Williams followed the Master of Sinanju into the cave mouth, where three RCMP cars sat, engines still radiating heat, amid piles of discarded car batteries.
His head straining forward, turtle-fashion, Chiun zipped up a set of spiral stairs like a careening black pinball.
"Cheeta, I am coming!"