Eyes turned away from the unmade bed, opening in shock at the sight of the ex-chief executive. Something else cut into view. Fast. Hard.
The closet door slammed full force into the intruder's face. Forehead cracked and bleeding, the man fell backward into the hallway. His gun dropped, useless, to his chest. The President jumped forward and grabbed the man by the ankles, struggling to drag him back into the room. If he could just get his gun...
Other shouts. Running footsteps. A shadow falling over him. Crouching, the President froze. He glanced up.
Two terrorists towered above him. Like the first, bandannas obscured their features. Still more intruders ran up the hallway, jumping over the bodies of his Secret Service detachment.
"We got him, man!" a nearby voice exulted beneath a flowery bandanna. Sweat had broken out across the visible portion of his face. His pupils were pinpricks.
Still squatting, the President reached a rapid decision. If he was going to die then, dammit, he'd die like a man.
He lunged for the nearest man.
In his younger days, he'd been strong and spry. But he was old now. Slow. Too slow.
In a panic, the gunman sidestepped the old man's awkward attack, stumbling hard against the door frame. As he dropped back, another intruder jumped forward, swinging the butt of his rifle down against the side of the President's head.
The old man saw a brilliant explosion of light ...followed by a shroud of pure enveloping darkness.
The fog was thick and impenetrable. The President's last thought before he toppled onto the cold hallway floor was of his wife. He hoped she could forgive their daughter. The final light of reality flickered and was gone.
THE OLD MAN at their feet was a lifeless mannequin. The masked men swarmed around the weather-beaten body.
"You hit him!" one accused.
"Is he dead?" another asked.
"Get the tranq," commanded a third.
A syringe was brought forward. The needle was jabbed into the ex-President's arm.
"Should we get his clothes?" the man who had administered the injection asked, his bandanna sopped with sweat. He tossed away the syringe.
"Yes! But hurry!"
As one man dashed into the room, the others grabbed the former President under the armpits. He was deadweight. Grunting, they began to drag the old man rapidly down the hall past the bloodied bodies of the Secret Service agents.
"He's gonna be in for one hell of a surprise when he wakes up," one of them enthused, the outline of his mouth quivering wetly beneath his multicolored bandanna.
"If he wakes up," cautioned another. "We were just supposed to use the tranquilizers on him."
The man who had bashed the elderly ex-President in the head shrugged. "It's a kind of tranquilizer," he snarled. "Besides, he doesn't deserve any better."
They dumped the ex-President into a laundry cart near a nurses' station. Behind the desk, two RNs were sprawled on the floor, glassy eyes staring blindly at fluorescent lights. Crimson stains seeped from their bellies onto crisp white uniforms.
Two men helped up the groggy terrorist the President had coldcocked. Running now, the group wheeled the cart away from the desk and onto a rear service elevator.
A moment later, the silver doors slid across the bloody scene of carnage with barely a whisper.
Chapter 8
Chiun didn't kill anyone on the long cross-country plane trip from Boston to Los Angeles. Remo considered this not only a blessing, but a surprise.
At first, Remo was worried that the Master of Sinanju wouldn't even want to accompany him to California. The old Korean's troubles with Hollywood were far too fresh. But Chiun had agreed readily.
The flight had been surprisingly peaceful. On their way through the crowded LAX terminal, there were no sudden and mysterious bloody noses or severed ears on anyone they passed. In fact, as they headed off in search of a cab, Chiun even managed a sympathetic smile for a harried young woman hauling two crying children.
His teacher's uncharacteristically placid behavior made Remo intensely uneasy.
Chiun was building to something. The Master of Sinanju was planning to use his time on the West Coast to wreak some sort of terrible vengeance against those who he thought had perpetrated injustices against him. But to Remo's knowledge, there wasn't anybody left for the old Korean to kill.
"Quintly Tortilli is dead, Little Father," Remo reminded Chiun in the cab on the way from LAX to the hospital.
"And rightly so," Chiun replied calmly. "He was a foul-mouthed liar who endangered Emperor Smith's charge, the corpulent marionette. However, that is all water under the bridge."
"We're not stopping by Taurus," Remo warned.
"That studio no longer exists," Chiun answered.
"Neither do Bindle and Marmelstein," Remo suggested, naming the studio chiefs who had betrayed Chiun during the making of his film.
"This is true," Chiun mused. He tipped his head to one side, considering. "Perhaps I will visit their graves to pay my respects."
"You're not going to dig them up and try to kill them again, are you?" Remo asked worriedly. Chiun raised a thin eyebrow.
"Now, Remo, you are being silly."
"Can you blame me?" Remo asked. "Last night, you were ready to tear all of Hollywood a new A-hole. Now you're acting sweeter than a Prozac pixie stick. It's scary as all hell."
"Meet the new me," Chiun announced airily, waving a long-nailed hand. "I am like a duck."
"Short and greasy?"
Chiun frowned at his pupil. "Everything runs off my back," he explained.
"Yeah?" Remo said doubtfully. "We'll see." When they arrived at Weizmann-Teacher's Hospital, they found a gaggle of reporters standing in an unhappy knot in front of the main parking area. Dozens of news vans emblazoned with station call letters blocked the ambulance entrance. Satellite dishes from the network and local news vehicles pointed skyward.
Cables snaked from trucks to videocameras and lights.
Hoping to avoid the newspeople, Remo instructed the cabdriver to drop them off down the street. As the taxi drove away, he and Chiun walked up the sidewalk to the hospital.
Only a few reporters stood before cameras to offer taped digests for hourly news updates. The rest lounged around the area, bored expressions on their plastic-surgery-tightened and makeup enhanced faces.
There were several card games in progress. Smith had been worried that Chiun might call attention to them, but Remo saw as they approached that only a few faces looked in their direction. These quickly turned away in disinterest. A kimono in L.A. just wasn't news.
As Remo and Chiun slipped behind one cameraman, a female reporter was summing up her taped spot.