Somewhere distant, an intercom speaker clicked on. A tinny voice called out to him.
"What are you doing?"
It was thin and metallic. As he swung back and forth, Remo could not help but think he'd heard that voice before.
"Given our past relationship I had an understandable desire to witness your demise," the faceless speaker continued, "but you have impaired my ability to see you. Perhaps you are already dead. Given the nature of the very creative trap in which I have ensnared you, there is a high probability that this is the case."
Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.
Yet given the circumstances it offered the best, if not the least troubling, explanation.
"I will assume for now that you are not dead," suggested the voice. "I will continue to permit this passage to close in on itself, thereby insuring your demise."
With that the speaker clicked off.
As far as Remo was concerned, nothing more needed to be said. He had already heard enough. With a final wrench he flipped himself ceilingward, releasing his grip on the two-by-four.
His body was propelled up from the passage and into the tight space between two parallel floor beams. His speed was such that the entire length of his body became a punishing force against the brittle wood. The pine cracked obediently.
As dry kindling rained down inside the passage, Remo was already slipping up inside the dark crawl space. He burrowed through insulation and broke through underflooring, emerging-battered and dusty-in a third-story bedroom.
When he glanced back down through the hole he'd made in the oak floor, he saw nothing but blackness. The walls had closed in, sealing the corridor.
Another few seconds and he would have been dead. His thoughts flew to Chiun. The old man didn't know what they were truly facing. And with their opponent, a few short seconds was the difference between life and death.
Hoping that his teacher had fully embraced the lesson of Master Shiko, Remo raced from the bedroom.
THE CROCODILE HAD FIRED forward much faster than it should have. Chiun felt the rush of compressing air as the jaw snapped shut around his bony ankle.
In the instant before it bit through flesh and bone, he jumped. His pipe-stem legs cut sharp angles in the musty cellar air. He landed in a flurry of robes, twirling to face the mechanical crocodiles.
Bodies low to the ground, the animals were scurrying across the dirt floor after him.
Understanding who his true foe was now, he kept his entire being alert as the animals advanced.
"Your adopted son is dead," the lead crocodile said.
Chiun paid no heed to the words or the mouth from which they emanated. He had no reason yet to believe them.
As the lead crocodile and its companions crawled toward Chiun, the animal continued to speak.
"He has temporarily impeded my ability to see his body, yet I have calculated a near one hundred percent probability that my stratagem to kill him has succeeded. I tell you this now, for I find that in times of emotional loss humans are more likely to make mistakes. An error by you now would give me the advantage, thus assuring your demise, as well."
Chiun knew that the voice alone didn't necessarily mean that his enemy was here. While he could be hidden in one of the crocodiles, he was just as likely controlling them from some remote location.
The crocodile lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut.
Hopping over the savage champing mouth, Chiun's heel touched the back of the crocodile's head.
It seemed like the gentlest of nudges, yet the animal's face rocketed down into the hard-packed dirt. There was a twist and groan of metal. When it rose back up, the crocodile's snout was bent straight up in the air at an impossible angle, obscuring its eyes.
"I am curious to know if you are like other humans," the crocodile said around its twisted mouth. "Has the death of Remo, for whom you have an emotional attachment, made you more likely to make a fatal mistake?"
The disconcerting smile stretched up the long mouth of the crocodile. As it did, the jaw creaked slowly back down, re-forming into its original shape. With a satisfied thrashing of its fat tail, the croc shot forward again.
It nearly found its mark. Not because of its speed but because Chiun had become distracted by something else. Something at the far end of its whipping tail.
At the last moment the aged Korean bounded from between the clamping jaws. He landed square on the beast's back.
The crocodile twisted around after him. Even as it did so, the other two animals thrust their heads forward, all flashing jaws and razor teeth.
Chiun ignored them all. Hopping through two more sets of clamping jaws, he negotiated a path straight down the lead animal's spine. At the far end of its whipping tail he found what he was looking for.
A thick black cable ran out from the tail's nub. Snaking away across the floor, it vanished into the darkness of the pit from which the animals had come. Two more wires extended up into the room, connecting to the other crocs.
As the lead crocodile contorted its body to snap at its unwanted passenger, the old Asian leaned down. With one long fingernail he snicked the cable in two.
The animal immediately froze in place, its jaws open wide.
The other two crocodiles were scampering toward him. Flipping around behind them, Chiun used flashing nails to sever their cables, too. The crocs stopped in midlunge, collapsing to the floor in twin coughs of soft dust.
As soon as their umbilical connection was severed, the three cables that extended up out of the alcove began to thrash around the floor like fat black snakes. With desperate slaps they lashed the dirt in search of their severed ends.
Before the cords had a chance to reconnect, Chiun kicked two of the huge animals to the far side of the room, out of reach of the grasping cables.
He bent for the last crocodile. Swinging it by the tail, he brought it against the nearby wall.
Crashing metal pulverized brick and mortar. The wall to the sealed-off room collapsed out into the main cellar.
Tossing the broken shell of the big robot animal aside, the Master of Sinanju sprang through the hole. Thinking only of Remo's safety, he flew for the stairs.
Chapter 24
Stewart McQueen watched the action taking place inside his mansion from the safety of the tidy furnished loft apartment above his carriage house. As he studied the remote image on his TV screen, his lip was curled in nervous concentration, revealing sharp rodent's teeth.
Mr. Gordons had suggested that the writer remain hidden in the remodeled carriage house while he dealt with his enemies in the main house. Something about his enemies being able to detect human life signs.
At first McQueen wasn't sure he should believe the claims Gordons had made about the men who were after him, especially when he got a look at the pair who showed up at his front gates. But after watching them smash through his home, Stewart McQueen was starting to think he might not be safe even in this separate outbuilding.
Gordons had hooked the security system into the TV, allowing McQueen to see everything. He watched the men enter, climb the stairs and break into the booby-trapped secret passage. When the old one was dumped down into the crocodile pit and the walls began to close in on the young one, McQueen was certain they were both as good as dead.
But then things started to go wrong.
First the young one managed to break the camera that was trained on him. No small feat, considering he did it with a wood chip the size of a pencil thrown down a corridor thirty feet long and two feet wide.
The old one wouldn't be so lucky. He had survived a two-story fall, but there was no way he could last in the basement crocodile pit.