"Don't tell me Bindle and Marmelstein actually bought your script?" Remo asked warily.
Chiun came back out of the kitchenette, a steaming cup of green tea in his wrinkled hands.
"Not yet," the old Korean admitted. "They have turned it over to a trusted subordinate known as a reader of scripts." He sank to the floor in front of the TV.
"Yeah, I remember," Remo said. "Neither one of those boobs knows how to read."
"Reading is overrated," Chiun sniffed. "They need only recognize great writing when it is read to them." He sipped pensively as he watched the Eblan tanks drive along Sunset Boulevard. "Change the channel."
"No. Look, even if they want to make it, don't be too sure there's gonna be enough dough left when it comes time."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"The two of them were spending money like water last time I saw them," Remo said.
"Taurus is the mightiest studio in this province," Chiun intoned. "Its coffers are deep."
"Just a word to the wise," Remo sighed.
"As offered from the brainless," Chiun retorted. They sat in silence for a few long minutes. The tanks had disappeared from the screen, replaced by the serious faces and empty insights of network reporters and anchormen.
Remo didn't know exactly how much time had passed when he first heard the noise.
It started far away. A loud, protracted rumbling. For a moment Remo thought it might be thunder. But as he listened he realized the sound he was hearing was artificial not natural. The relentless, echoing rumble was joined by a chorus of mechanical grinding and squeaking sounds-almost obscured by the great volume of the louder noise.
"Tanks," Remo said, jumping to his feet.
He ran to the window. Drawing back the long, ceiling-to-floor drapes, he peered down at the street. The first of the Ebla Arab Army tanks had rounded the corner. The ground shook beneath their great treads as they rumbled up the street, figures of strength and menace.
Assola al Khobar perched like a conquering tyrant in the front of the lead tank. The tank's turret swiveled back and forth, threatening in turn the buildings on either side of the street.
Chiun joined Remo at the window. His fingers grasped opposing wrists inside the voluminous sleeves of his kimono.
"When this is all over, I'm going to enjoy stuffing his flea-infested head down that cannon barrel," Remo commented flatly, nodding down to the terrorist.
"Bindle and Marmelstein do not like him," Chiun replied in a bland tone.
Remo raised an eyebrow. "That mean I have your blessing?"
The Master of Sinanju shrugged. "In its five-thousand-year history Sinanju has not seen a single day's work from Ebla. The loss of one lapdog to the latest skinflint to roost upon the Khalamite throne will not be noticed by anyone that matters. As long-" Chiun raised a cautionary talon "-as it does not affect my movie."
"I'm gonna hold you to that, Little Father." Remo looked back down on the column of tanks. There were almost fifty of the heavy military vehicles. It took nearly forty-five minutes for them to grumble their deliberate way up the wide road in front of the hotel.
Al Khobar had long since vanished by the time the last straggling tank pulled into view.
The sight of the column of old-fashioned foreign military vehicles driving unmolested through an American street filled Remo with loathing. He had seen the worst parts of his nation for so many years that he didn't think he would ever feel as strongly about America as he had in his youth. But with each tank that passed beneath his window, the level of bile in his throat rose until he thought he'd burst in angry frustration.
And, he soon discovered, he wasn't alone.
As Remo and Chiun watched the last of the tanks pass by, a lone figure stepped from beneath the awning of the building across the street. Remo plainly saw the revolver in his hand.
There were only two tanks left. One farther up the street, the other just beneath Remo's window.
The man with the gun stepped in front of the rear tank. He raised his gun in a marksman's pose, propping his gun arm up with his free hand. Hand thus steadied, he promptly began firing at the oncoming face of the final tank.
The gunshots had no effect. The bullets pinged uselessly off the heavy armor plating.
Up ahead the second-last tank slowed to a stop. It hesitated for a moment, as if surveying the scene. And, while Remo and Chiun watched, the turret began to turn slowly around. Back in the direction of the lone shooter.
"We'd better get down there," Remo said sharply.
"Why?" Chiun asked. "We will be able to see better from up here."
But Remo was no longer beside him. Chiun frowned, turning.
The door to their suite swung open wide.
The Master of Sinanju sighed. It was as he'd feared. Remo was already turning into a Hollywood youth. Desperate to call attention to himself, if only to step out from beneath the shadow of his celebrity father. It would only get worse when Chiun's movie came out. Remo would have to be put on suicide watch when the Academy Awards rolled around.
Offering silent commiseration to Marlon Brando for the travails he'd suffered with his children, the Master of Sinanju flounced out the door after his own wayward son.
Chapter 19
Anyone who claimed to never want to be a hero was a bald-faced liar. Lieutenant Frank Hanion, LAPD, retired, knew this for a fact. Everybody wanted to be a hero. But there were very few people who were actually capable of heroism.
Hanlon was one of them.
A twenty-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, Frank had been a hero from his first day in blue to his last day as a detective. Even though he had never fired his gun once while on duty and had spent most of his time on the force touring grammar schools as part of the department's antidrug campaign, Frank knew down into every last red blood cell in his uniform-blue bone marrow that he was a hero. He had just never had an opportunity to demonstrate that fact to anyone.
Until the Occupation.
There was nothing America could do. It faced a simultaneous threat, both at home and abroad. The President and other government officials were paralyzed. American citizens in the occupied areas were cautioned to stay in their homes.
Appeals for calm during this difficult time only brought to a head Frank's long-smoldering call to heroism.
This crisis didn't demand calmness. Quite the opposite. It screamed out for men of action. Heroes. Of which Lieutenant Frank H. Hanlon was one.
Frank had stayed in his apartment for the first day of the crisis preparing for his great moment. Most of this prep time involved drinking whiskey and swearing at the television. When he had at last had his fill of both Arabs and Seagrams, Frank took to the streets.
He lived in the Valley, just over the hill from the Hollywood sign, within the lines set up by the U.S. Army. Frank piled whatever provisions he thought he might need in the back of his Dodge. As he cruised the streets in search of trouble, spare ammunition, blankets, life preservers from his old rowboat-one never knew-and a few bottles of liquid courage sat on the rear seat of his mobile assault unit.
It was when he pulled over to the side of the road for a pit stop that he heard the rumble of tanks in the distance. Zipping up, he spun away from the potted plant that had doubled as his litter box. Frank waited anxiously in the alcove of a posh Beverly Hills hotel.
An eternity later the lead tank rolled into view down the wide street.
The man perched atop it was familiar. Before leaving his apartment, Frank had seen that face on the news as the convoy thundered down the freeway. There was no mistaking that scraggly beard and those rotten teeth.