When they pulled into the parking lot a minute later, the police had just arrived. Remo waved his FBI ID under as many noses as was necessary to gain them admittance.
Inside, the two Masters of Sinanju noted the fresh black burn marks on the floor. There were two of them. Side by side, they traced the approximate oval shape of a pair of shoe soles.
Remo and Chiun exchanged a quick glance. They had seen similar marks before.
It was Remo who shook his head dismissively. "Can't be," he insisted. "He's dead. Besides, look at this." He indicated the severed limbs lying on the floor near the bar. The rest of the drug dealer's corpse lay in a bloody heap nearby. "This is something different."
Chiun nodded sharply.
There was greater police activity in a room behind the bar. When Remo and Chiun stepped through the door, they found an even grislier scene. One man's head looked as if it had been sliced off by a portable guillotine.
As Remo examined the corpse, he glanced at the Master of Sinanju. "If I didn't know better, I'd think this was your handiwork, Little Father," he commented.
Chiun shook his head. "This butchery was done with an implement," he said, his face registering disgust.
Remo nodded. "Not a single blade, either," he said. He noted the slight irregularity on either side of the neck. "Looks almost like a big pair of scissors."
As he stepped around the body, he felt something under the heel of his loafer. Turning, he scuffed his foot across the floor. Chiun's gaze tracked the movement of his pupil.
On the floor were tiny black flecks, so small they would have been invisible to the average naked eye. Crouching, Remo gathered a bit of the residue on one finger, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. His fingertips barely registered the presence of the frictionless material.
"More spider poop," he pronounced, dusting the thin black powder from his hands. "And just what the hell kind of spider sheds metal anyway?"
Tipping his head low, he found a few larger fragments scattered beneath a desk and chairs that sat back against the wall. Judging by the many bullet holes in the wall, they had apparently been blown off the creature.
Remo rose, fragments in hand and a dark cloud on his face. "Dammit, we should have followed that van. You get a look at the driver?"
"Of course," Chiun sniffed.
"And?" Remo asked after a brief moment of silence during which the old man said nothing. Chiun shrugged. "He had a big nose, big hands and big feet. I would say he was a typical white."
Remo's lips thinned. "He wasn't driving with his feet, Chiun," he said.
"I merely extrapolated from that which I could see," the wizened Korean replied. Eyes growing conspiratorial, he pitched his voice low. "Although I have toiled in this land lo these many years, Remo, it remains a mystery to me to this day how you people are able to tell each other apart."
"Yeah, our lives are just one wacky Patty Duke Show episode after another," Remo said. "Guess we're screwed."
He found a plain white envelope on the desk and dumped the black fragments into it, stuffing the envelope deep in his pocket. Hands clenching, he turned back to survey the macabre scene.
He was thinking about how hard it would be to track an eight-legged opponent. Did eight legs mean it could run four times faster than a man?
"Of course," Chiun observed all at once, "there are always those numbers to differentiate one of you from the next."
"What numbers?" Remo asked, turning slowly. "The identifying numbers on the back of the vehicle that drove directly at us," Chiun replied. "You know, Remo, the numbers that you failed to note since you were preoccupied with the task of not even glancing at the driver."
"You got the license-plate number?" Remo asked.
"Of course," Chiun said. A knowing sadness touched his weathered face. "And need I point out yet again that my eyes will not always be here to see for you?"
The dark lines of Remo's face grew firm. "Nope," he said, shaking his head. "You're not sucking me in with that now, Little Father, so you can just save the morbid stuff for another day. I've had enough lemonade making lately. For the moment my life's gonna be about the here and now-not some far-off time when everything's supposed to come crashing down around my big white ears. And right now I've got a bug to squash."
Face resolute, he went off in search of a phone. Behind him Chiun considered his pupil's words. Remo hadn't spoken in anger, merely with determination. And in his heart of hearts, the Master of Sinanju knew that his son's resolve was correct. The future would come in its time and would be whatever it would be.
Nodding silent agreement, the old man padded off after his pupil.
THE MIDMORNING SUN BURNED fiery hot over Cape Canaveral. The sunlight dragged across the halfopened venetian blinds, slicing perfect yellow lines across the hard-edged face of Administrator Zipp Codwin.
Zipp sat behind his sparkling white desk, his sharply angled chin braced on one bare-knuckled fist. His free hand drummed the desk's surface.
This kind of waiting was more than tedious to an old flyboy like himself. It was made all the worse by the A #1 screw-up of them all, that PR flak, Clark Beemer.
Not that everything had been going swimmingly.
In truth at first the NASA administrator and Pete Graham had made little progress on their plan to defeat Mr. Gordons's enemies. The thing that made it most difficult was the fact that Gordons himself seemed so unstoppable. If he couldn't kill the two guys he feared, how could Zipp hope to?
At least, that had been his thinking at the outset. Of course, he had abandoned such thoughts early on. He was Zipp Codwin, after all. He was a larger-than-life hero from another age who had truly gone where no man had gone before.
As the night hours had crept toward dawn, a plan had begun to take shape. It wasn't perfect, and it might not work. But it was an old-fashioned NASA-style plan.
Of course, Gordons might not approve. Zipp was bracing himself to bear the terrible wrath of the android when something far worse than being throttled by a pissed-off robot happened. That idiot Clark Beemer had returned to Canaveral. Alone.
Something had gone wrong with the latest robbery, and the public-relations asshole had beat a hasty retreat, abandoning Gordons at the scene. Zipp didn't even have time to wring the little coward's neck, so desperate was he to get to a TV.
The news coverage about the latest spider sighting was bland and uninformative. No mention of Gordons being captured and, most important of all, no mention of NASA.
Zipp breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
The agency was safe. At least for now. But the most valuable asset he'd had in his corner since assuming the top spot at America's space organization was MIA.
Without Gordons he was dead in the water. He couldn't go forward with his plans to refinance NASA, and he couldn't help eliminate the android's enemies.
His problems were held in stasis for a few hours, postdawn. They had worsened a few short minutes before.
He had just been informed that a pair of FBI agents was on the base. Fearing the worst, Zipp refused to allow anyone else to speak with them. He ordered the men brought to his office.
He was sitting in the smothering sunlight at his desk when a sharp rap sounded at his office door. "Come!" Zipp called.
His secretary peeked her head inside the room. "Those men you wanted to see are here, Colonel," she said.
"Yes, yes," Zipp waved impatiently. "Let 'em in."
When the two men entered his office, Colonel Codwin was sure someone somewhere had gotten their wires crossed. There was no way these two could be FBI.
The first one was a skinny young guy in a T-shirt. The other was a wrinkled Asian in a kimono who looked older than the man in the moon. When they got to the desk, the young one flashed his laminated FBI identification at Codwin.
As Zipp carefully inspected it, the contents of the NASA administrator's desk caught the eye of the Master of Sinanju.