Their own vehicle was relatively undamaged. Most of Chiun's side had been raked and blackened from the blast, but it was still driveable.
When Remo drove around the building no one seemed interested in the muffled explosion that had just issued from the far side.
"We're lucky this is Florida," he said. "They must've thought someone's still blew up."
He decided to risk mailing the piece of metal they'd found at the liquor store. Parking quickly, he raced inside the office-supply store. Buying three envelopes, he stuck the shard of strange black metal in one. He quickly dashed off a note to Mark Howard on another before filling it with the newspaper clippings. He stuffed everything inside the third, larger envelope, addressed the whole mess to Smith and left it all in the reliable hands of Federal Express.
"No cop cars yet?" Remo asked when he hopped back behind the wheel of their battered rental. Above the strip mall the curl of black smoke from the burning van thinned as the fire died out.
"No," Chiun replied. "Given the confusion this town has with your Western holidays, perhaps the local constabulary is occupied at their televisions waiting for that man with the lifted-up face and dyed eyebrows to drop a ball on that dirty city to the north."
"I don't think we should push our luck," Remo said.
Leaving the lot, he drove a few miles down the road. Once they were out of Yuletide, he found a lonely diner. At the pay phone out front, he stabbed out the multiple 1 code that would reroute the call to Smith's desk. The CURE director answered on the first ring.
"Remo?" Smith asked sharply.
"In the singed flesh," Remo replied. "Something weird just happened down here."
"I know," Smith replied. "I take it you have seen the news reports."
Chiun stood beside Remo. Hands locked on to opposing wrists, his arms formed a single knot of bone. Remo glanced worriedly at the Master of Sinanju. "I know I'm gonna regret this," he said cautiously to Smith, "but what news reports?"
"I assumed that was why you called," Smith said. "There has been a major traffic accident involving more than three dozen cars near Orlando."
Remo frowned in confusion. "Just because I took this nothing assignment doesn't mean I'm gonna start playing meter maid now, Smitty," he warned.
"Unless it is on the advice of the handsome Prince Regent," Chiun interjected loudly. He dropped his voice. "Is Smith's heir on the phone, as well?" he hissed.
"No, Chiun," Remo sighed. "It's just Smith. You wanna say hi?" He held out the phone.
Chiun leaned back from the receiver, his face fouling. "Why would I want to talk to that creaky old pinchpenny?" he asked, just low enough that Smith could not hear. "Him I already work for."
He turned his face to the sky and began examining the clouds.
"The accident does not matter," Smith pressed, steering back to the topic at hand. "It's the cause. A passenger in a car driving in the opposite direction was videotaping the northbound lane seconds before the pileup. He taped the vehicle that spun out of control into the oncoming lane of traffic."
"Sell it to Fox," Remo said. "What's it got to do with me?"
"You don't understand," Smith insisted. "On the footage he taped was a-" he hesitated, at a momentary loss for words "-a thing," he concluded, unhappy with the term.
"What sort of thing?" Remo asked. He found himself growing troubled by Smith's anxious tone.
"For lack of a better explanation, the thing taped resembles an enormous arachnid." The CURE director seemed embarrassed to even utter something so ludicrous.
"Arachnid?" Remo asked, his tone flat. "As in spider?"
"It is only visible for a short time," Smith persisted. "Just before the crash it can be seen crawling along the side of an armored car. Presumably, it jumped over from the vehicle that caused the pileup. The footage lasts until it tears its way into the back of the car. At this point the camera operator shifts focus to the crash."
"How did it tear into an armored car?" Remo asked doubtfully.
"I don't know," Smith admitted tightly. "It appeared as if with nothing more than its legs it somehow managed to rip open bulletproof metal."
The strain was evident in his voice. Harold Smith had seen many things that challenged his rigid perceptions of reality during his time as head of CURE. And in spite of being witness to so much, each new occasion remained hampered by his sturdy pragmatism.
"It's gotta be a fake, Smitty," Remo insisted.
"It came in too quickly to have been doctored."
"Fast doesn't matter these days. Every pizza-faced high-school drip can whip up Star Wars special effects in two seconds on their home computers."
"No," Smith disagreed. "Not this fast. And according to experts who have examined it, the footage has not been digitally altered. Therefore until it is disproved we must assume that it is genuine."
At first, the Master of Sinanju had been pretending to ignore the phone conversation. Smith's words, however, had apparently sparked interest in the old man. Though still looking at the sky, he edged closer to the phone, one shell-like ear cocked in Remo's direction.
"Where's the armored car?" Remo asked.
"It vanished," Smith replied. "There was a crew of three onboard. All dead."
"Now the thing drives?" Remo demanded skeptically.
"While I have made several logical leaps thus far, that is not one of them," Smith said crisply. "It is possible that a human accomplice somehow seized the cab of the vehicle while the creature turned its attention on the rear."
Remo shook his head. This was just too incredible. "How is this possible, Smitty?" he asked. "Something as crazy as that just doesn't crawl out of the woodwork and go 'boo.' If that thing was running around in the woods out there somewhere, it would have been found already."
"Not necessarily," Smith said. "Although not quite so farfetched, there have been cases similar to this recently. For many years it was thought that all of the large species of animals had been discovered. Many experts assumed that even the most remote locales were now accessible thanks to transportation and technology. Yet there have been several new species discovered in the past few years."
"I've seen junk like this on PBS, Smitty," Remo dismissed. "It's all microbes and see-through fish."
"That is not the case," Smith explained. "There have been large mammals, as well. Species of goats and gorillas thought extinct were found within the past decade alone. Also a heretofore unknown relative of the horse was recently discovered in Asia. Not to mention our own experience with the Apatosaur in Africa."
"I guess," Remo said slowly. "But if this thing's been living in the Everglades all these years, I doubt it's crawled out now just to hijack a Brinks truck."
"I agree," Smith said. "Since it steals, it is safe to conclude that it has been trained to do so."
"It just gets better and better," Remo droned.
"While I admit that it is improbable, the videotape I have seen forces me to explore possibilities that I would dismiss under other circumstances."
"I'd still like to," Remo sighed. "You think Siegfried and Roy have an alibi?"
Smith ignored him. "I suggest that you and Chiun find someplace to view the footage. Most news outlets are playing it virtually nonstop. If you encounter this creature, I want the two of you to have all the information that is available on it."
"Speaking of info," Remo said, "I might have something in that department."
Remo quickly told Smith about the frictionless metal fragment Chiun had found at the liquor store. He concluded by mentioning Major Healy and the other costumed gunmen.