Shutting the briefcase, Remo restored it to the nightstand exactly as it had been. He had no sooner let go of the handle than, down on the first floor, there came the heart-stopping sound of automatic-weapons fire.
The governor shot bolt upright in bed and, with Remo frozen not five inches away from his face, went for the bedside lamp.
Chapter 16
Antonio Serrano and his Eastie Goombahs had gotten off at the trolley stop nearest the governor's house and walked the streets until they found it. Even though neither Antonio nor any of his Goombahs had ever been in this suburb, the governor's house was easy to locate. It had been shown on television often during the campaign as proof that the governor had not lost his common touch, because he was still living in the modest brick home he purchased when he was first married.
"Hey, look," Antonio said. "This is a break."
"What is it?" asked Johnny Fortunato.
They were in the side yard, where they extracted their weapons from nylon gym bags.
"The fool left the kitchen door open. We can just walk right in."
"Then let's go." They went in.
"Shit!" cursed Antonio, tripping over a wooden chair. He almost overturned a round kitchen table in the process.
"Shhhh," someone said. "You wanna wake him up?"
"Anybody bring a flashlight?" gasped Antonio, clutching his injured knee.
No one had. "Okay, be more careful now," said Antonio, limping into the next room.
"You're the one who tripped," Johnny complained.
"Shhh! "
Antonio bumped into more furniture. This time it was some kind of soft chair. He was glad for that because his knee wouldn't take another hit. He wished he had brought a flashlight.
A faint breath of air swept past him, like the backwash of a thrown baseball. The hair on his forearms lifted in warning.
"Hey, did you guys feel that?"
"Feel what? What about you, Johnny? Johnny?"
"Oh, shit, I think Johnny booked."
In the darkness, Antonio turned back. A shadow stood before him. A very short shadow. That had to be Johnny, the shortest one in the group.
"No, he's right beside me," said Antonio. "I see him." But then the one they thought was Johnny raised his hands and there was something wrong about them. Even in the darkness Antonio saw that they were abnormally long, like claws. Vampire claws.
"Johnny?" whispered Antonio.
The claws swept down, and another shadow-a larger one-fell to the floor. The thump was soft, but the vibration in the floor was very, very solid.
"Shit, you're not Johnny," Antonio hissed, and raised his Uzi. "But you're dead, sucker!"
The governor's bedroom light snapped on.
And snapped off again. Remo smashed it against a wall. There was no time for subtlety. He had to get out of the house with the letter before the governor recognized him.
"What is it? What is it, dear?" a woman's thin voice called.
"Call the police," said Governor Princippi, jumping out of bed. "There's someone in the room."
Remo shot out of the door and, after closing it behind him, mangled a door hinge with his fingers. That would slow him down, Remo thought.
Chiun wasn't on the landing, but Remo hadn't expected him to be. The sound of gunfire below meant that someone else had broken in. No one could have entered the first floor without the Master of Sinanju's keen hearing picking it up.
Remo skipped the stairs. He jumped from the second-floor landing to the parlor in a floating leap.
"Chiun, you okay?"
Above, he could hear the governor repeatedly smashing a shoulder into the jammed bedroom door.
Remo spotted the Master of Sinanju in the middle of a clot of armed individuals. He did not respond to Remo's call. He was slipping between the gunmen, teasing them into wasting their bullets. Remo saw him tap one on the back, and when the man whirled, legs apart and hands up in a two-handed pistol grip, the Master of Sinanju ducked between his legs and came up behind him, where he tapped again. The man, frantic, was firing blindly.
"Chiun, cut out the horseplay!" Remo hissed. "We've got to get out of here. I got the letter. Let's go."
"Hush!" Chiun hissed back. "The wind does not speak its name."
"Then let me help you," said Remo, moving in on one of the gunmen.
Then the upstairs bedroom door slammed open. The governor came pounding down the stairs, flashing a jerky ray of light in all directions.
"Oh, great," groaned Remo.
"Who's there?" the governor demanded, snapping on a light at the bottom of the stairs.
There was nothing Remo could do but make the best of a bad situation. As light flooded the parlor, Remo stuffed the letter under his T-shirt. Maybe he could get away with that much, if nothing else.
The light hit Antonio Serrano's eyes like needles. He blinked stupidly, sweeping the room with his Uzi. Through spots of light he made out the figure of the governor, in an old flannel bathrobe, pointing a flashlight at a faggy-looking guy at the bottom of the stairs. Antonio had a clean shot at both men. He decided the faggy-looking guy would be an easy kill. So he aimed for the governor and squeezed the trigger.
The Uzi burped a short burst, no more than three rounds. They buried themselves in the rug at Antonio's feet. One of them mangled his little toe.
Antonio, still trying to blink the spots out of his eyes, couldn't understand it. He had dropped the gun. He had only begun to pull the trigger and-dumb shit that he was-dropped the gun. That had never happened to him before. Ripping out a curse under his breath, he reached down to pick up his Uzi.
But a strange thing happened. He could not pick up the gun. It was as if his fingers had lost all feeling. And the spots in his eyes wouldn't go away. In fact, the room was going dimmer all the time.
Then Antonio saw why he was unable to pick up his weapon. He was grasping it. He saw very clearly, just before everything got truly weird, that his hand was wrapped around the butt of the Uzi. But when he straightened up, the gun stayed on the floor, still tightly clasped. Antonio saw that his lifted wrist ended very suddenly, very cleanly. The hand might have been taken off by a bone saw, it was so neatly done. The blood fountained in spurts, and as Antonio felt his heart beating faster, the blood spurted faster. Funny how that worked.
When Antonio turned to show the other Goombahs how his wrist was spurting, he saw a man shrouded in black staring at him, a long sword raised parallel to his shoulders. He did not see the stroke. He saw the room tumbling around him and in his last moment of conscious thought he saw himself standing, a raw cross section of meat where his neck ended. Funny how he was still standing up even though he had no head....
Remo turned from the governor. The kid with the Uzi was about to fire. Remo moved in on him. Suddenly a figure swathed in black jumped out from behind a dividing screen. The swordsman swept down with his blade, severing the kid's gun hand. The sword swung back upward, then took off the kid's head. Swick swack, just like that. The headless body of the kid stood like a ruined statue for several heartbeats, then crumpled into a bag of dead flesh. The head landed in the crook of one dead arm, so that it looked as if the kid had died carrying his head under one arm. The sight would have been comical had it not been so ghoulish.