There was no one in the sunroom.

  There was no one outside.

  They were halfway through the room when they felt - it again. Still stumbling with weakness, Remo felt his knees buckle almost immediately, and he grabbed for a wicker chair back to hold himself up.

  He didn’t have the strength to be as angry as he wanted to be.

  “Shush,” gasped Chiun, giving him a warning look, adding in Korean, “Act natural.”

  “There are more of them coming, Chiun,” Remo insisted.

  “Then this phenomenon will cease and we will deal with whatever weapon materializes,” Chiun said. “Meanwhile, we are being watched.”

  Remo tried hard to stand up straight, as if the reason he had stopped was simply to watch for whatever danger would present itself. What Chiun called a phenomenon had been slightly different with each experience. Now it was as if there were many, many small sources, maybe hundreds, and they came from the very earth outside the sunroom.

  Then it stopped.

  Once again Remo felt the intense relief as the energy began to elevate rapidly into his body, but he wasn’t fooled this time. He wasn’t free of it. Not yet.

  “Must we stand here and await an attack?” Chiun complained in English, obviously wanting their voyeurs to hear.

  “Nice place for it,” Remo said. His recuperation was slower than it had been previously. Would he get his strength back before the attack came? Would he get it back ever?

  If they ran for it now, weakened and exhausted, they wouldn’t get far.

  A tiny shadow passed over the window. A pair of dragonflies darted about one another just outside the glass.

  Another pair.

  Then the dragonflies began billowing out of the bushes, forming a storm cloud of insects that seeped over the glass until they were thick on it, hovering outside, waiting.

  Thousands of them.

  Remo moved closer to the. glass, fascinated. “They’re mechanical. They’re freaking robots.”

  “Yes.”

  ‘Think they’re poisonous or something?”

  “No poison,” said the tiny voice from a small, wall-mounted speaker. “But they nip.”

  Remo looked around the room, finding the small black speaker grille and the shining glass eye of a lens. “They nip? Sounds downright disagreeable, Mr. Whoever-the-fuck-you-are.”

  “Look at it as being pricked with a pin.” He spoke English with a thick German accent.

  “Not even worth a Band-Aid.”

  “Think about being pricked with four or five thousand pins, one after another. A drop of blood here, a drop of blood there”

  “I get it,” Remo said. “It adds up until you run out.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Unless the batteries run out,” Remo said.

  “They won’t.”

  “Sure, they will. I don’t care what you’ve got in there. Duracells. Everreadys. DieHards from Sears. No battery lasts forever.”

  “There are no batteries, Mr. Remo Annoying. Your name is apt, by the way. They have electric power cells that provide any amperage needed for an extended period.”

  “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Stalling for time worked on that idiot Cote but it won’t work on me.”

  “Are you sure, idiot?” Chinn asked.

  “I am sure, Korean. It is I who have been stalling you. As you can see, the swarm is ready to break in.”

  Remo and Chiun cast about until they noticed the swarm cloud grow blacker directly overhead, then the dragonflies dived in a steady stream at the window, their tiny, sharp needle heads hitting the glass and bouncing off. The number was so great it was like the sound of serene rainfall.

  The pace of the onslaught increased. Every tiny bug removed just the tiniest chip of glass and yet it was enough to erode the pane in seconds.

  “If we stay here, they shall eat us alive,” Chiun remarked.

  “Ditto if we go out there.”

  “Remo,” Chiun said somberly, “I will not get far.”

  “Don’t give me the feeble-old-man shit, Chiun. I’m in sad shape myself. But I think running is better than staying.”

  “Run if you like,” said the voice from the speaker. “They’ll chase you all the way to France.”

  “Chiun,” Remo whispered in Korean, “I bet those bugs can’t swim. We can. Maybe.”

  Chiun nodded and said, “Race you to the water.”

  At that moment the pane of stormproof glass had been worn so thin it began to spiderweb under its own weight, and as Remo and Chiun emerged from the rear of the sunroom, the glass fell in and the dragonflies began swarming inside, while thousands more descended on the Masters of Sinanju from above, and Remo felt them began to nip at his flesh. They dived at him, swarmed over him, touched him like raindrops and then fell away.

  He was too weak to outrun them or to harden his flesh against them for long. Another ten minutes, maybe, and he could have simply run away, or let them prod him incessantly without penetrating his flesh. Even as he felt stronger every second, he felt weaker every second, exhausted from his exertions. The blood was dappling his skin, then it became a sheen of red underneath the smokelike swarm of dragonflies. He tried waving them off but it was like trying to shove away the incoming tide.

  He knew he was running because his legs screamed, but it seemed they had made no progress. The air was so thick with the bugs it clouded the vision. How far to the ocean’s edge?

  His skin felt raw, his legs heavy, but amazingly his breathing became invigorated. He was recuperating from his weakness even as that weakness allowed him to succumb to the bugs.

  Then Chiun was gone from his side. Remo stopped, retreated, waving furiously at the swarms and his returning breath gave him the strength to wipe them away long enough to spot the fallen figure of Chiun.

  Remo blundered to him, grabbed the small body and turned back to the ocean.

  “Breathe, Chiun,” Remo said.

  The dragonflies seemed to form a solid wall in front of him. He would never see it when he reached the edge, and now his flesh was screaming. He was being skinned alive. He felt one foot come down on nothing and he drew back.

  “Breathe, Chiun.”

  He felt nothing, not even a breath, from the small figure in his arms.

  “We’re going in,” Remo said. He launched himself and Chiun out into space, and dropped. Sixty feet of emptiness separated the edge of the land and the Mediterranean waters, with a thin beach at the bottom.

  Remo inhaled, knowing his lungs weren’t right. The dragonflies fell away suddenly and for a moment the world was clean and bright Then Remo saw how much blood there was on Chiun, on himself. Every exposed inch of flesh was flayed, and here he was putting them in salt water.

  “This,” he said to himself, “is gonna hurt.”

  He hit the water and realized just how correct he was.

  Chapter 15

  Mark Howard knew he was doing the wrong thing, but he did it anyway, driving across the lawn of the Cote estate just as soon as the clouds of—whatever were they?—drifted away and vanished. He knew they might come back at any second, and if they had effectively forced Remo and Chiun to run for their lives, they would surely kill Mark Howard.

  He had a Beretta handgun, and he could use it, but he knew that cloud of stuff wouldn’t be slowed down by a few 9 mm rounds.

  He jumped out of the rental car and ran to the wooden stairs, glancing down briefly when he felt something crunching under his feet.

  Dragonflies?

  Dead ones were everywhere. Remo and Chiun had been attacked by dragonflies? He stooped and snatched one off the ground as he ran, examined it for a moment, then stuffed it in his pocket.

  Automatons. Aerogel construction with some sort of oscillators for wing movement. Somebody had constructed thousands of them.

  He practically fell down the wooden stairs to the small beach. He was looking at the cliff edge to the right, looking for corpses adrift in the surf, and his attention was so focused he almost didn’t see the man sitting in the sand.

  He had his back to Mark and water was still dripping from his hair, but his clothes were steaming slightly.

  “Remo? It’s me.”

  “I know.”

  Mark Howard felt a curious coldness in his stomach as he walked around Remo and stopped dead.

  “Jesus!”

  Remo’s face and arms wore a sheen of raw blood, making his eyes into a wildman’s white eyes. His T-shirt was tattered and soaked with blood. Caked to him, virtually every square inch, was gritty sand.

  Chiun looked worse. Flat on his back, mouth slightly open, he was a mask of thick blood that oozed and dripped into the sand.

  Mark looked at him. Remo touched the old man’s blood-painted skull and dropped his hand as if lifting it was an effort Mark didn’t even want to speak. “Remo, are you okay?”

  Remo winced. “My face hurts.”

  “It pains all who look upon it.”

  Mark grinned. “Chiun! You’re okay!”

  “Chiun is not okay.” Chiun crawled painfully to his knees, then to his feet. “Chiun is distantly removed from ‘okay’ or any word bearing a resemblance to ‘okay.’ I have been sent running about like a schoolboy on a scavenger hunt subjected to dangerous radiation, then pecked nearly to death by insects, and at the moment of my greatest discomfort from this terrific torture, I have had salt rubbed literally in my wounds.”

  “You’re welcome,” Remo said.

  “And as I was drowning and suffering the most enormous pain from this series of events, as my life is fading into the oblivious, with what am I assaulted? The most vile profanity!”

  “It hurt like hell,” Remo said.

  “You did not hear me cursing.”

  “You were drowning, remember?”

  “The sea life fled en masse. This coast will likely be barren for years.”

  “You calling me an environmental catastrophe?”

  “Environmental is but one of the many types of catastrophe you embody.”

  “Enough!” Mark Howard blurted. “Stop bickering. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

  “He’ll live,” Remo said.

  “His wounds are superficial,” Chiun added. “Several layers of bandages wrapped around his head and face will help, but it is vital that they be tied tightly and left on for a minimum of ten days.”

  “Har-dee-har-har.”

  “And the worst thing is…” Chiun pursed his lips into a white line on his blood-smeared face. “The worst thing, you broke my iBlogger.”

  “How can you break an eye booger?” Remo asked.

  “No,” Chiun said. “This!”

  He removed his hands from his sleeves and thrust a small white electronic box at Remo. There was a multicolored piece of fruit inlaid in the plastic and a miniature keyboard beneath a dark screen.

  “What is it?”

  “Read it!”

  “iBlogger.”

  “See?”

  “Oh, now I understand.”

  Mark Howard’s joy at finding them alive was replaced with almost instant annoyance. He trudged up the stairs without them. Remo started up after him.

  “It is an internet device,” Chiun said. “It is a way for people to share their diaries with others.”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh! What is huh, Remo? What word have I used that escapes your understanding?”

  “I understood all the words, I just couldn’t make sense of the way you put them all together,” Remo said. He called up, “Hey, Junior, what’s an iBlogger?”

  “internet gizmo for teeny-boppers. Why?”

  “Not just for tiny-boobers,” Chiun insisted. “The blog has become a mass medium for the sharing of one’s lives.” He waved his plastic box for emphasis and Mark took it curiously when Chiun materialized at his side with the device.

  “Yep, that’s an iBlogger. See, people all-over the world use the internet to post their personal journals. This thing shows them.”

  “Why?” Remo asked.

  “Well, it started out as a gimmick for teenage girls, you know, like the electronic equivalent of passing notes in class. But Chiun’s right—other people are doing it now.”

  “It allows the average man or woman to tell his or her story to the world,” Chiun explained. “It allows one to share one’s life with the entire world, everything from mundane day-to-day events to great moments of joy and sorrow.”

  As they reached the car, Remo understood. “Like a soap opera.”

  “Yes, but real,” Chiun said as they entered the rental car. “These are genuine human lives, genuine human personalities. Some are unlikable, some are vain, some are petty, some are sad.”

  “All real winners, huh? Aren’t any of them just boring?”

  “Of course, but those blogs I do not visit. I only go to sites written by truly interesting personalities. One of my favorites is a woman in Wyoming, an attorney by the name of Caroline Trough, who takes three new lovers each week.”

  “Wait a second—that’s her real name? This isn’t anonymous?”

  “Some are, some are not. There are some brave souls who make their diaries public and allow the blog to become not just a report of the events of their lives and their feelings, but it becomes a factor in their lives, affecting the events”.

  “That’s brave? I call that advertising,” Remo said. “You’re telling me this babe goes onto the blogger and tells the world how she takes a new sex partner three times a week? There must be guys lining up to get their share.”

  “That is but one example. There are hundreds of others,” Chiun said enthusiastically.

  “All right, so you’ve been picking bloggers,” Remo said. “Guess it can’t be worse than Mexican soap operas.”

  Chapter 16

  “What is this thing?” Jack asked, nodding at a sand-crusted jumble of wires sitting on the table.

  Fastbinder glanced up from the papers spread before him. “Sensor pod of some sort I had Ironhand extract it from an unmanned VTOL that was undergoing repairs at the air base.”

  Jack brushed sand away, then whistled appreciatively. “Gee, Dad, they sure stuffed a lot of junk inside. Have you figured out what it’s for?”

  “Not yet.” Fastbinder replied absently, his attention on his paperwork.

  “A sensor set in a drone VTOL,” Jack said to himself. “This the only control system?”

  He repeated the question when Fastbinder failed to answer.

  “Yes,” Fastbinder answered impatiently. “Whatever the aircraft was for, the answer is in that sensor pack.”

  “Mind if I have a go at it, Pops?”

  “Yes, yes, please,” Fastbinder said, waving Jack away and already concentrating on his reading again.

  They were both, father and son, unsettled by the events in Barcelona. They had been told how fast and unusual the pair of assassins were, but they had never expected what had happened at the Cote mansion.

  The defense system Allessandro Cote had installed was huge and powerful. He had paid millions for it, and Fastbinder had given him a huge variety of the best defensive and offensive automation devices ever created. You could have defended Baghdad with that setup.

  So what went wrong? Why had all those systems failed to stop two men, even extraordinary men? Had the two men been stopped at all? There was no real guarantee that the pair was dead…

  Jack Fast dropped his backpack and flipped on a telescoping light, immediately losing himself in the mystery of the electronic device in front of him. He grabbed a soft-bristled brush designed for sensitive electronics, using it to remove most of the sand. Underneath he found a plastic shell encapsulating most of the electronics. That was good news and bad news. It meant the sensors and chips should still be intact, but they would be extra-difficult to get at without damaging them. The encapsulation meant the thing was designed for harsh environments, which really only made sense if they were flying the Vertical Takeoff and Landing unit at a very low altitude over the southwestern deserts. Once you got out of the reach of the airborne sand, you wouldn’t need this level of environmental protection.

  “Check it out! ORNL!” he exclaimed suddenly as he spritzed the device with canned air and uncovered an engraved logo.

  “Hmm,” Fastbinder responded, not looking up.

  The Oak Ridge National Laboratory was one of the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, and researchers there routinely came up with advanced technologies. Their developments regularly ended up in military hands.

  Jack pondered this as he sorted out the connections. The unit had been extracted forcefully from the drone VTOL unit, wrenching apart the connections. Figuring out all the dangling cables and connectors was a little like a veterinarian trying to figure out the nature of a new species of animal, having only the dragged-off head to evaluate.

  Jack Fast, however, was in his element. There was nothing he loved more than solving a technological mystery, especially when it was new, possibly top-secret technology.

  Painstakingly he removed the insulation from the cables, identified those he could, and spliced them into good cables that linked into a computer terminal. The computer pulsed the unknown connections with the tiniest electrical signals that strengthened incrementally, looking for feedback.

  Jack Fast rubbed his neck and was surprised to find himself alone. His father had gone to bed. He had been working three hours.

  When he looked at the clock again it was after one in the morning, and the computer had identified the nature of the last of the connections. It helped tremendously that the unit’s control system was the current generation of Gee-DAM, giving him a big head start. The computer was now feeding data into the unit and determining a command structure based on the Gee- DAM protocol, gaining control of the sensors. Jack Fast now knew how to control the device—if it were attached to its autonomous helicopter.

  But what did the thing do!

  He began running it through a simulated flight The sensor bank fed readings to the terminal, but the readings were nominal. He waved his hand in front of it. Nothing. He pointed it at the light bulb. Nothing. He bent over the pod and shouted, “Hey!”