Smith heard the gun against his head cock. There was more than just one of them. He could still get Buell, but this one would get him and the end of the world might just proceed on schedule. He had to wait. Try to get them both.
He lowered the Barsgod and tossed it away, toward Buell.
"You have all sorts of talents, Marcia," Buell said, as the woman released her hold on Smith's neck. "Hey, I said the cavegirl costume."
Smith turned and saw a woman in slacks and a white blouse. She said to Buell, "We can stow all that sex-kitten crap now, Buell."
Smith backed away from the woman. Buell looked surprised, then shrugged and walked over to pick up the Barsgod. The Russian-made Tokarev.38 in the woman's hand fired and took a crease out of the surface of the rock near Smith's weapon.
"Leave it alone, Abner," she said. She aimed the Tokarev squarely at Buell's chest. "I want the code that activates the missiles," she said. Smith thought her eyes were as dark and deadly as a shark's.
"What is this?" Buell said in bewilderment. "Are you with him?"
The woman named Marcia smiled. "I am with the Committee for State Security of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," she said proudly.
"You're a Russian? KGB?" Buell said.
"Why else would I have spent so much time with the likes of you?" she spat. "May I remind you, Abner, that time is of the essence? And I do have this gun. The code numbers, please."
"But the missiles are set to blow up Moscow too," Buell said.
"Not anymore. The American missiles have been redirected. Each of their missiles will strike an American city."
"Then think about yourself," Buell said desperately. "If they all go off in this country, you'll go too. You'll be incinerated."
"And Russia will rule the world," she said. "It is a small price to pay, to die for so glorious a cause."
"Then pay it now," came another voice. Smith wheeled as another figure hopped up onto the small plateau. It was a blond-haired woman with a British accent, and she moved quickly into a marksman's position and fired without hesitation at the Russian woman.
Even before Pamela Thrushwell's gun sounded, Marcia had fired. Both women careened backward as if two giant hands had slapped them off their feet. Pamela's abdomen was torn open in a red burst of blood and entrails; the Russian woman's once-spectacular face was an unrecognizable blob. Her legs twitched weakly, reflexively, once; then she lay still.
Smith started toward Buell, but the thin young man was holding the Barsgod.
"These women need help," Smith said.
"They'll get help in heaven," Buell said. "We all will, and we'll all be there soon."
"You're crazy," Smith said.
"Just bored," Buell said. A smile crossed his unlined face. "You know, I don't think I'll kill you after all. I think I'll just have you wait here with me for the big fireball in the sky. Would you like that?"
"You don't have a chance," Smith said.
"Why not?"
Smith started walking slowly toward Marcia. Her gun lay alongside her dead body.
"Because you can't stop me from doing what I want to do," Smith said. "That gun isn't loaded."
"We'll see about that," Buell said. He pointed the gun at the ground. Smith stopped and watched. Buell squeezed the trigger. The gun fired, the bullet hit the rocky plateau, and Smith dove behind Marcia's body. The plateau exploded with a rush of sound and the shell shattered, sending jagged pieces of metal scattering everywhere, twinkling in the reflecting sunshine like a shower of stars. The body shielding Smith thunked as shell fragments tore into it.
One of the pieces kicked back and embedded in Abner Buell's brain. He dropped the Barsgod and sank slowly to his knees. His body twitched, and then there was another muffled explosion, as the fragment itself exploded again, this time inside Buell's brain. He pitched forward, his face hitting the rock. He did not move.
Smith raised himself slowly from the ground, stunned that he himself was unharmed, that all the shrapnel had missed him. Buell's head looked like a macabre Halloween mask. The eyes had been exploded from their sockets. His teeth lay like charred kernels of corn on the ground beside him. His slicked hair was now matted red and flecked with bits of soft gray tissue, spilled over from his brain through the gaping hole in the top of his skull.
Shaking violently, Smith stood up to full height. Don't lose it now, he told himself. He had been prepared for death, but death had passed him by. Now he had to force his thoughts to other things. Like dismantling Buell's computer. Like ending the sequence that would result in Russia and America both firing their missiles into America's heartland. That had to be done first.
He owed it. To a lot of people. To Remo and to Chiun.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked over the cliff's edge down toward the field. The two bodies appeared to have vanished.
Who could have taken them?
He scanned the horizon, feeling a rising tide of anxiety well up inside him. For some reason, losing their bodies seemed as tragic as losing the men themselves. Remo and Chiun had been sacrificed for the most worthy of causes; even in Smith's last day in hell, he would be able to say that much in defense of himself. But to lose their bodies--
He was filled with shame and he could do nothing else but sink to the ground, surrounded by the three grotesquely mutilated corpses, and cry like a lost child.
He sobbed for Remo, the innocent he had betrayed so easily; for Chiun, whom he had forced, in his old age, to kill his own son; and he wept for himself, a tired, bitter old man, who no longer dreamed dreams but only lived nightmares.
He never heard the footsteps approaching. But then, no one ever heard them.
"Ever wish you had a camera?" It was Remo's voice.
Smith looked up as Chiun clucked disdainfully. They both stood in front of Smith.
"You're alive," he said.
"Most perceptive, Emperor," said Chiun fawningly, bowing low.
"I mean--" He stopped and stood up and swiped quickly at his eyes with his sleeve. "I had something in my eye. I couldn't get it out." Without waiting for an answer, he pointed to the blood on Chiun's hands. "I saw it," he said. "The fight."
Chiun gasped when he saw the blood and quickly tucked his hands into the sleeves of his kimono. "Forgive me, Most Observant One," he said. "In my haste, I forgot to remove the chicken-liver juice." He turned his back to Smith, spat on his hands and rubbed them energetically together.
Smith looked to Remo, but Remo had gone.
Stifling a small cry, Remo had run across the face of the rock to where Pamela lay and knelt alongside her body. Smith saw him feel for a pulse and then Chiun came beside him and tore off part of his robe. He made a pad to soak up the young British woman's blood, but within seconds the pad itself was sopped wet. Chiun shook his head to Remo.
"Why'd you come, you pain in the ass?" Remo said chokingly to Pamela.
Her face strained. With an effort, she forced her eyes open.
"Don't talk," Remo said.
"Must," she said. Blood bubbled from a corner of her mouth. "Did we get him?" she asked.
"We got him," Remo said. "You didn't have to come for me," he said.