He tapped Chiun on the shoulder. “Follow him,” he said softly. “See what he does and where he goes. I’ll meet you up there in the parking lot.”

  Chiun stepped away from the car, a tiny little man in a black robe. He took two steps away from the car, then vanished in the blackness of the night.

  Chiun was Ninja, of the Oriental magical men who could follow a bird in flight, who could appear and disappear at will; the invisible men of the Orient. Remo knew, intellectually, that there was no magic; that it was all tricks and training. But beyond intellect, he knew too that with Chiun it was more than tricks and training. It had started that way. But it had become a magic of its own.

  Wyatt whistled tunelessly to himself as he stepped heavily along the broken earth that marked the location of the San Andreas fault. Do no good to fall in, he told himself. No good at all.

  And only three feet from him, but unseen, unheard, undreamed of, followed Chiun, his steps timed with Wyatt’s, moving softly, sideways, not even breathing. He could have followed at a distance. A matador could have worked three feet from the bull’s horns. But if he was a good one, he didn’t have to. Chiun was a good one.

  Remo waited and then started the motor again. As quietly as he could, he drove ahead, past Wyatt’s parked car, across the wooden bridge and up into the institute’s empty parking lot where he backed the car into a corner, out of sight of the roadway.

  It had been the girls. And the dead men? The water-laser had been used to crush them. That was why their bodies were wet around the waist: the force of water had been used to drive their intestines from their bodies. Probably after sex, when they were too weak to resist strongly, he thought, remembering the open flies on the trousers of the men in the ditch.

  Remo sat in the car, silent now, and remembered a lot of things, things he should have noticed at the start if he had been any kind of detective at all. How the girls dodged questions yesterday about the two Mafia men they had gone off with. The giggle when one said something about picking the men up “along the road.”

  He remembered something else too. Leaving his own house this afternoon and seeing the bright blue water-laser in the back of the girls’ Volkswagen. They had come to use it on him. After they had drained and exhausted him.

  He smiled to himself. Score one for Remo, As a matter of fact, score two.

  He did not hear the car door open. He knew Chiun was there only when he felt the pressure of someone sitting next to him on the seat.

  “Where did he go?” Remo asked.

  “There is a trailer there. He carried, the suitcase in and put it in the refrigerator. I took it out. Here it is.”

  Down below, Remo heard Wyatt’s car start up and a moment later, he saw the oval tail lights speeding down the road.

  Chiun had the money on his lap. What would happen if they didn’t put it back in the girls’ trailer?

  Let’s just see, Remo said to himself.

  He started the motor and drove out of the parking lot. Smith’d be happy to get his money back. And Remo would be happy to get the girls.

  But when he got back to his house, the girls had gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  “HE WAS THE BRAVEST MAN I ever met.

  “He was the smartest, finest, one hundred percent American I ever met.

  “He was the nemesis of all law-breakers, no matter how big or powerful they might be.”

  “He” was Sheriff Wade Wyatt and he was dead. He lay naked in the master bedroom of his ranch-style house, under the seven-foot square blow-up of the raising of the flag at Mount Suribachi with the photographer’s name blacked out in the corner.

  The bed around his midsection was soaked with water, and his entrails fought their way out of his mouth. His eyes were opened wide in deadly horror.

  Looking down on the sheriffs body, working out the phrases of his eulogy, sucking on a Mary Jane, was his deputy, Brace Cole. It had not occurred to him yet that the sheriff had met a terrible death.

  Cole was ready now, in case he should be asked for a statement by anyone.

  So he looked around the room. He saw no clues. He looked at Sheriff Wade Wyatt’s body. Just like the two guineas that they found dead in the ditch. Just like Feinstein and that geology fellow from Washington.

  The men in the ditch. What was it Wyatt had said? “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something to do with this.” That’s what Wyatt had said and he meant that Remo Blomberg, that wise-ass running that store.

  Well, Sheriff Wade Wyatt, befitting his grandeur as a human being, had been the kind of man who would tolerate a great deal before cracking down. But not Brace Cole, who was now the acting sheriff of San Aquino County, pending an election within sixty days for Wade Wyatt’s unexpired term. Brace Cole was not about to let that Blomberg get away with it.

  Wade Wyatt’s holster hung from the bedpost and Brace Cole went over to it, then removed the .44 caliber revolver. He spun the cylinder to make sure the gun was loaded, then fingered the notches on the gun butt.

  “Sheriff,” he said to Wyatt’s intestine-packed face, “We’re going to put another notch on your gun.”

  Then he went out into the midnight of San Aquino County. He had not noticed the printed note on the floor near the bed, which read: “Double-crossing American pigs. Now you pay.”

  Across the town, Remo sat on the blue suede sofa in his living room, talking to Smith. Chiun, still wearing his black robe, sat on the dining room floor, staring through the glass windows toward the dimly-lit pool area.

  “The Mafia’s out of the game,” Remo said. “I don’t think they’ll be back. But now I’ve got to get the girls. Quake’s assistants.”

  “Why did they do it, do you think?”

  “Who knows? They talk like radicals. More country-haters? Or maybe they just like money. Oh, speaking of money. We got yours back.”

  “Thank God for small favors,” Smith said. “You had better get the girls before they do something dangerous.”

  “I will,” Remo said. “We’re going now.”

  He hung up and said, “C’mon, Chiun, let’s go.”

  The old man rose to his feet and followed Remo out the front door. They drove from their circular driveway only four minutes before acting Sheriff Brace Cole arrived.

  When he saw his prey had vanished, he broadcast a bulletin over his police radio:

  “Notice to all departments in the San Aquino area. Watch for a red hardtop, rental plates, being driven by one Remo Blomberg. He may be accompanied by a little Chink. Both are wanted for suspicion of murder. They are dangerous; should be considered armed and approached with caution.”

  Remo parked his car up in the parking area of the Richter Institute, in a corner away from casual sight. It had been a quick trip. He had been racing at full speed when a state squad car got behind him and gave him the siren, but Remo lost the trooper by dousing his lights and skidding into the turnoff to the institute. He glanced back down toward the road. There was no one following him.

  He and Chiun walked down a rickety flight of wooden stairs that led to the twins’ trailer. The Volkswagen bus was not there. Remo and Chiun went into the trailer, to wait in the dark for the girls.

  If they were going to make a quake, a big one, they’d make it someplace near here, he told himself, hoping he was right, hoping they had not just fled. This was the spot where the fault was locked, where the greatest pressure was and where their water-laser would have to be set to rip off California.

  Rip off California? How many? Thirty million people? And how many would die? A million? Five million? How many would lose their homes and their roots? Their businesses?

  A million corpses. Lay them out and they’d reach halfway across the country.

  Remo heard a motor, the tinny sound of a four-cylinder engine, then doors closing, then voices. He slumped down in his chair.

  “The lying, thieving government. They must have had somebody follow Wyatt and steal the money.” That would be Jill. “Well, now they’ll pay for it.”

  “I don’t think so.” That was Jacki. “I think the big pig tried to keep the money for himself.”

  There was a giggle, then Jacki said, “Did you see the look on his face when we let him have the water-laser? Poor bastard. He didn’t even get a chance to dip his wick.” She giggled again.

  They were standing now outside the trailer. “But I’d feel better if we had gotten a chance to use it on Remo. What did he do to us anyway?” Jill asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jacki answered. “That never happened before. But I think that stupid deputy will take care of Remo. Particularly since we called him and told him that we saw Blomberg leaving Wyatt’s house. When he finds Wyatt dead, he’ll take care of Remo.”

  “Maybe,” Jill said. “C’mon. We’re going to set this equipment and then get out of here before the state blows. Pig government.”

  Remo heard footsteps walking away from the trailer, crunching twigs and leaves underfoot. He rose and peered through a window. Under the bright light of the California moon, he saw the two girls, each carrying a water-laser, walking away from the trailer, up along the edge of the fault, toward the spot where Remo knew the two drill shafts stuck up from the ground.

  “Let’s go, Chiun,” he whispered.

  “I will wait” Chiun said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I think it will be beneficial to wait. You go.”

  Remo shrugged and stepped lightly down from the trailer. What was on Chiun’s inscrutable mind now? There was something.

  Then Remo, still clad in black, slid silently through the night, following the twins,

  They were twenty feet ahead of him. When they came to a large clearing, they stopped. They got to work immediately, beginning to hook the water-lasers together, to double their power. Then they lugged them over to the shaft that jutted up from the ground, and began to fasten the coupling to the shaft.

  Remo stepped out into the clearing.

  “Hi, girls,” he said cheerily.

  They froze in position, squatting over the equipment.

  “Remo,” they hissed in unison.

  “Yup. It was so good today, I thought I’d come back for more.”

  One of the girls stood up. In profile, he could tell it was Jill.

  She walked slowly toward Remo, her arms extended as if in greeting. “We’ve thought of nothing else,” she said. She licked her lips and in the moonlight, they glistened black and white. Now she was at Remo; she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts up close into him.

  “You know what I think?” Remo said softly.

  “What?” her tongue asked his ear.

  “You would have made a great bull dyke.”

  He pushed her back and she fell to the ground. Jacki was still bent over the water-lasers and Remo headed for her. Then the ground shuddered and an explosion ripped the air. Remo was knocked off his feet. He felt a searing pain burn into his shoulder.

  A voice roared over a portable bullhorn.

  “Remo Blomberg! I know you’re down there. This is acting Sheriff Brace Cole. You’re under arrest for the murder of Sheriff Wade Wyatt. Now come on up from there or the next grenade’ll land right in your lap.”

  Remo was stunned. The grenade had barely missed him, and he could feel a trickle of blood running down his left arm from a fragment in his shoulder.

  He shook his head to clear it, then saw Jacki stand up and away from the water-lasers. The familiar thumping had started.

  “Too late, pig,” she said. “This whole state is going.”

  The water-lasers were thumping now, churning. Remo could almost feel the energy building up inside them.

  “Come on, Jacki,” Jill said from behind Remo. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sheriff,” she called. “We’re coming out. Don’t shoot. He’s been holding us prisoner. Don’t shoot.”

  “Come ahead,” boomed the voice of Brace Cole. “I’ll cover… ” And then his voice stopped, in mid-sentence.

  Remo got to his feet. Another voice came over the loudspeaker, speaking English in a precise sing-song. “The sheriff has decided to take a nap.” It was Chiun.

  “Sorry, girls,” Remo said.

  They attacked him. Nails, fingers, feet and breasts clawed and hammered at him. They all missed. Then Remo had the girls from behind, an arm around each, holding them by the boobs and he dragged them past the water-lasers, to the gash in the earth that was the San Andreas fault.

  He tossed them in. They hit with a thud, eight feet below him, and lay there, stunned. Remo turned back to the two water-lasers. They were screaming now, building up pressure, ready in moments to start pouring their gallons of water down into the shaft, a concentrated spurt of force that could tear a state apart.

  Remo looked for switches. The machines still thumped. He couldn’t find out how to turn them off.

  He put his hands on the coupling which joined the machines to the shaft and wrenched. The coupling snapped loose and just at that instant, the water started to pour out of the end of the tubes.

  The jarring force of the pressure paralyzed Remo’s arms. He spun. The water poured out in a powerful cohesive stream. With all his strength, Remo aimed it down toward the ground, into the fault.

  The water was barreling now into the crack in the earth. Then the earth groaned, and as Remo watched in fascination, the earth began to close up. The girls screamed, then the sound stopped as the earth closed over them, then the lasers ran dry.

  Remo looked down at where the gouge in the earth had been.

  “That’s the biz, sweethearts,” he said. Two lives against maybe a million. Still, they had had great tits.

  The ground shook again and Remo was knocked off his feet. He fell heavily on his bleeding shoulder. Another grenade, he thought.

  But it was no grenade. The ground rocked and vibrated.

  A quake, Remo realized in horror. But how? The water-lasers had been disconnected.

  He labored his way to his feet, unsteady on the ground. He took a step in one direction. No, the force was coming from the other direction.

  Had they set another device, timed to go off? Why then had they been working on this one?

  Remo took off, over the shaking ground, racing along the rocky ledge, trying to find the source of the power. He ran heavily and he realized he was losing blood from the shrapnel wound. Then a tiny figure in black flashed by him, passing Remo as if he were standing still, out-distancing him, racing far ahead. It was Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, running across the shifting, sliding earth as if it were a cinder track.

  Remo ran full sprint but Chiun pulled ahead. While Remo’s legs pumped, pushing him forward against the shifting thrusting ground, Chiun seemed to glide motionless, moving through an inner momentum, the legs just keeping pace. Chiun pulled farther ahead into darkness.

  Birds called, shrill caws of danger from their aerial safety. Remo saw a fear-crazed collie run at him and stumble into a somersault, its hind legs pumping furiously as though running uphill. The earth churned and the air was thin.

  Into the brush Remo ran, cutting himself on brambles that came lurching at his face. Then he was in a clearing, and there, rising on long aluminum stilts like the shell of an unfinished steeple, was a giant water laser, twenty times larger than the ones Remo had seen before. And in this clearing, a half-football field wide, was stillness, a stillness surrounded by earth amok. It was as though a still hand suspended from an aloof moon held it placid in a sea of chaos. The earth smelled of ozone, the calls of the birds were muffled as though the vibrations of their sounds sucked from the air.

  Beneath the stilts knelt Dr. Quake. But he was not in prayer. He was in pain, and this Remo knew because the black robed figure of Chiun stood over Dr. Quake, one hand on the neck as if squeezing a collared pigeon.

  Remo almost fell because of the sudden quiet of the earth. His reflexes were attuned to the previous vibrations and still reacting to them. This upset was only momentary; he moved to the pair quickly.

  Remo heard Dr. Quake groan:

  “It can’t be stopped. No one can stop it. It feeds on its own progression. It generates itself.”

  “That which is started can be stopped.” Chiun’s voice was even and as distant as the moon.

  “They wouldn’t listen to me. If they had listened I wouldn’t have done this,” said Dr. Quake.

  Chiun released the hold on the neck.

  “He has told all he knows,” Chiun said.

  “Where are Jacki and Jill, my daughters?” sobbed Dr. Quake looking at Remo. “They were supposed to meet me here.”

  “They’re where they belong,” said Remo. “How do you stop this machine?”

  “It can’t be stopped,” sobbed Dr. Quake.

  “He tells the truth,” said Chiun. “He surrendered to the pain and has told all he knows.” Chiun looked up the aluminum stilts of the water laser. “Is this the machine with no vibrations?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Quake.

  “It’s going to blast water into the lock at tremendous pressure,” Remo said to Chiun. “The state is going to snap along the fault.” He had to yell just so his voice sounded normal.

  “Is this space here free of vibrations because the machine has harnessed them?” asked Chiun.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Quake.

  “You are wrong,” said Chiun, “Everything that moves has vibrations. Life is vibrations.”

  “That’s your philosophy, not science,” said Dr. Quake. Then he cried for his daughters and called them his poor innocent babies.

  Chiun looked at Remo.

  “If this is your science and this is what it has brought you, then I say your science is false. Life is vibration, movement is vibration, being is vibration. The universe is a vibration. Your science has created a machine that appears to have forgotten vibrations. I will have to remind it.”

  “Chiun?” said Remo. He wanted to warn but knew not how.