The helicopter was too low now. Tail section spinning out of control, it flew back into the wall of orange flame. It emerged on fire. When the explosion came, it was already scraping the surface of the glacier. It crashed in the narrowest band of ice near the jungle-covered mountains.

  As the smoke kissed the sky, St Clair was stumbling to his feet, cradling his burned hands under his armpits. A wall of fire still separated him from Amanda Lifton’s bodyguards. He needed a haven. He needed his happy place.

  Turning from the spouts of flame, Hubert St. Clair ran for all he was worth for his precious forest.

  A terrible miscalculation. Of a kind he had never made before in his well-ordered life.

  But how could he have known? There had been Benson Dilkes’s warning, but why—why would Herr Hahn have listened?

  Sinanju. What were they? Legends. Mere men who killed with their hands. They were no match for the modem age, for a clever technical mind whose skills were far greater than mere kicks and punches.

  And yet they had succeeded. And were about to succeed again.

  Hahn’s flaccid face was lifeless as he watched his monitor. The young Sinanju Master had just downed Hubert St. Clair’s helicopter. The CCS head was crawling pathetically up the hill to the forest as Remo returned to the glacier to harvest two more mines.

  Hahn didn’t even try to detonate them. He’d tried it the first time, with the mine the American had used on the helicopter. The Sinanju Master had been too fast.

  A mistake. Herr Hahn didn’t make mistakes. He planned for every contingency. Even now.

  He switched off his monitor. Hahn didn’t need it anymore. It was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before they got through.

  In the storage room of the Congress of Concerned Scientists’ bunker, Herr Hahn walked woodenly over to a supply shelf. He pulled it from the wall. It rolled away easily, revealing a long, dark tunnel beyond.

  He always planned for every little thing. Except for the one thing that would be coming for him. He understood that now. Now that it was too late.

  Herr Olivier Hahn stepped into the tunnel, drawing the door shut behind him.

  Remo came to a sliding stop at the mountain’s edge, an unexploded mine in each hand. His thumbs held down the triggering mechanisms.

  Amanda and Smith were picking their careful way around the crashed helicopter. It had landed near the edge of the ice field at the base of a mountain. Jungle stretched up to the mountaintop.

  “This can’t be all the seeds,” Amanda announced worriedly as she examined the spilled contents of the hopper.

  “The rest of them must be up there,” Remo said.

  Through the wall of shimmering flames, they could see St. Clair clambering up the side of the hill.

  “Chiun, take care of them,” Remo instructed. “This is gonna be one big boom.”

  The Master of Sinanju had Amanda and Smith lie flat on the ground behind the smoking helicopter. Over their prone bodies he placed the upended rowboat, which they’d used once more to get over to the helicopter. Once they were covered, the old Korean flounced over to Remo’s side.

  “Do you have any idea what you are doing?” Chiun asked.

  “Course I do,” Remo said as he brought one mine up to his chest. “I’m praying. And in a minute I’ll be running like hell.”

  With a snap of his wrist, he let the mine fly. The second mine followed a millisecond later, whistling over the ice and out across the sandy plain. They were drawn like magnets to a pair of distant flaming spouts.

  As the mines soared into the inferno, Remo and Chiun were already racing around the back of the helicopter. When the explosion came, they were planted in the ground behind the upended rowboat.

  The explosion was huge. The ground buckled and twisted beneath them. Sheets of glacial ice as big as buses crashed to the jungle foliage in the mountains around the valley. When it was over and the shock waves had receded, a blackened crater gaped wide across the sandy plain. It was so large it had collapsed part of the C. dioxa plateau.

  When they helped Amanda to her feet, she was shaken but unharmed.

  Inspecting the plain. Smith nodded in satisfaction. The fires were all out. Remo had disrupted the flow of natural gas. Shading his eyes, he looked lip the hill.

  “I don’t see St. Clair,” the CURE director said.

  Remo’s face was cold. “He’s hiding with the rest of the weeds.”

  With a look of doom on his cruel face, he raced for the hill.

  Chapter 31

  Hubert St. Clair stumbled and fell, sprawling at the top of the hill.

  Hands grabbed for him, pulling him to his feet.

  “Dr. St. Clair, are you all right? What happened?”

  It was one of the CCS board members. The last CCS member in the valley. The ground was still shaking from the gas explosion. The man seemed terrified. St. Clair shoved him out of his way. He lurched forward, falling into one of the temporary structures at the edge of the forest.

  There were oxygen tanks inside.

  The fear of technology was gone, replaced by a more urgent fear for survival itself.

  He shrugged on the tanks. His hands were almost worthless as he tried to buckle the belt.

  Limping and in pain, St. Clair headed for the primordial safety of file dense blue forest.

  Remo and Chiun crested the hill a moment later.

  The frightened CCS board member was startled by their sudden appearance.

  “St Clair,” Remo snapped. “Where is he?”

  “Um,” the man said, glancing at the C. dioxa forest.

  Amanda had just come over the hill. She helped Smith up, pulling him by one arm.

  “He went into the woods,” Remo told her. “I thought no one could breathe in there.”

  Amanda spied the rows of oxygen tanks through the open door of the shed.

  “The tanks,” she said, running to grab a set. “You’ll need them to follow him.”

  “No, thanks,” Remo insisted. He saw a set of goggles hanging with one of the tank sets. “These’ll be enough. Chiun, watch the store. I’ll be right back.” Pulling on the goggles, he ran into the forest.

  The ammonia burned his open sores.

  St. Clair stumbled blindly for a time. Every tree looked alike. Every space between them looked like the path. He was lost for what seemed like an eternity.

  Panic gripped his lungs. The rubber mouthpiece hissed in time with his erratic breathing.

  St. Clair found what he thought was the path.

  Yes! Yes, it was. Stumbling once more, he tripped up it. A moment later he was staggering into the original science campsite in the center of the forest.

  He was almost there. He could lock himself safely away in his technology-free womb.

  St. Clair staggered and fell. His burned palms slid across the ground. He wanted to cry out in pain.

  He stumbled back to his feet. His goggles were fogging over. Tripping over his own feet, he made it through the abandoned camp.

  Up ahead the arch of his underground hideaway rose from the forest floor.

  He’d made it. He lurched for the air lock. He was reaching for the door when something strange happened.

  The door vanished.

  Not just the door, but the entire telephone-booth-sized unit. He caught a brief glimpse of it sailing through the air. It was a dark blur as it crashed through the domed ceiling of the place where Hubert St. Clair was supposed to sit and watch Earth’s dying days.

  St. Clair wheeled around.

  Amanda Lifton’s younger bodyguard stood beside him, a hard look on his cruel face.

  St Clair tried to turn, tried to run, but a thick-wristed hand was already reaching out, grabbing hold of the rubberized oxygen line that fed from the back of his tanks.

  Remo mouthed a single word.

  When St. Clair realized what he was saying, he felt his blood run cold.

  “Timber,” Remo said.

  And he pulled the hissing line from the back of Hubert St. Clair’s tanks.

  Chapter 32

  Remo heard the helicopter rattling to life even before he’d made it back out of the C. dioxa forest. He assumed someone else was trying to escape, but when he broke into the open he found Chiun standing guard next to the helicopter.

  The CCS man they’d found at the top of the hill was now sitting in the pilot’s seat. Whirling rotor blades attacked the humid air.

  Smith was in the process of snapping his cell phone shut and placing it in his briefcase. He and Amanda hurried over to Remo.

  “Did you find St. Clair?” the CURE director asked as Remo ran up to them.

  “He’s taking a breather,” Remo said tightly.

  Smith nodded, understanding Remo’s meaning. “That is at least some small satisfaction,” he said grimly. “Although I fear we’ll be joining him soon. I just got off the phone. There is a B-l bomber en route. The President has ordered a strike on the area.”

  “What, is he nuts?” Remo snapped. “Get him to call it off.”

  Smith shook his head. “It is the only way to insure containment. I had Chiun commandeer that helicopter before I knew how little time was left to us. You are welcome to try escaping. Without my added weight, perhaps you will make it out of the blast zone in time.” His tone didn’t reflect the optimism of his words.

  “We took care of everything, Smitty,” Remo said. “The rest of the seeds are stashed here somewhere.”

  “No, Remo,” Amanda insisted. “I checked the sheds. There were only about half as many seeds on Hubert’s helicopter as there should have been. That’s why we didn’t catch his boat. He unloaded them somewhere on his way here.”

  “What about him?” Remo asked. He jerked a thumb to the CCS man in the helicopter. “Let’s ask him where they are.”

  “He doesn’t know, Remo,” Smith said. “Chiun already helped me question him. The rest of the seeds are in the region, but since we don’t know specifically where, we are left with only one alternative.”

  “There’s some kind of underground hideout in the woods,” Remo offered. “Maybe they’re there.”

  Amanda shook her head. “He said he saw all the seeds Hubert brought here,” she said. “There weren’t any more than the ones we saw. They aren’t here, Remo.”

  She seemed so calm. Her back was rigid, her face composed. As if she’d already accepted her fate. Remo’s eyes darted around in frustration.

  He couldn’t believe it. To come this far only to fail.

  St. Clair was dead. He’d be no help locating the missing seeds. The worst thing of all was that his last vision in life before the end came would be of Hubert St. Clair’s artificial ice field.

  Remo’s eyes alighted on the crashed CCS helicopter. The twisted wreckage lay near the edge of the glacier. Something was picking its careful way down from the jungle walls to the still-smoking helicopter.

  A monkey. Another came out after it, then another. They began picking the ground around the crash site.

  And then it hit Remo. He wheeled on Smith.

  “Cancel the bombing, Smitty,” he snapped.

  The older man had been watching the sky, awaiting the bomber’s arrival.

  “But the seeds,” the CURE director said.

  “Are right where St. Clair left them,” Remo said excitedly as he ran for the helicopter. “And I know just the monkey he’s got guarding them.”

  Chapter 33

  When they started passing out the blame for all this—and, oh, don’t think they wouldn’t—there was no way they were going to drop any of it at the feet of the man whose name had once been Albert Snowden.

  Prick was pacing back and forth past the barrier beside the stage at the Pan Brazil Eco-Fest. The former English teacher was absolutely, utterly and completely pissed.

  The concert had been a disaster.

  The Loco-Cola people had tried to make it work. They’d literally beat the bushes, rounding up locals - and sticking them in officially licensed Loco-Cola, Proud Sponsors Of The Pan Brazil Eco-Fest, Presents Prick T-shirts. The result was pathetic. Scrubby native headhunters spitting poison darts at one another during the warm-up act, all wearing one hundred percent cotton Ts with Prick’s face emblazoned across the fronts.

  Prick had refused to go on, twenty natives had been poisoned and dragged into the bushes, and Chuck Parkasian, the promotions man from Loco, had locked himself in a Sani-John and was refusing to come out. A complete and utter disaster.

  “It’s not my bloody fault,” Prick muttered. “I packed them in in Buenos Aires last year.”

  As he paced behind the stage, he felt eyes tracking him. When he glanced up, he saw his two natives standing quietly off to one side. Watching him.

  It was their knife-and-fork look. He was used to it by now. He’d been catching them giving him that same look ever since their album had been consigned to the Columbia House $1.99 bargain bin.

  “You wanna eat someone?” Prick snapped at them. “Go and bloody eat the guy hiding in the plastic toilet. You have my blessing. Bon appetit.”

  As the two natives raced away on bare feet, Prick glanced at his watch.

  “Where is he?” he demanded, looking up into the open pilot’s door of the helicopter.

  The scientist inside shook his head. “I can’t raise the other helicopter at all.”

  Planting his hands on his hips. Prick glanced angrily around. There were now monkey-proof barricades around the helipad. Beyond the chain-link fences capped with razor wire, dozens of the animals chattered furiously.

  Something inside Prick snapped.

  He’d had enough of the Amazon rain forest. Leave it all to strip miners and Agent Orange for all he cared. He just wanted to get out of this jungle with its smelly monkeys and go back home to his Sussex estate.

  He looked back through the open helicopter door at the silver tureen. It was filled with seeds. Some sort of environmental terrorism for the CCS. He wasn’t certain what they were for exactly. And right now he really didn’t care.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Prick snarled. He climbed in next to the pilot. “Let’s get on with it.”

  As the monkeys hopped and screeched, the helicopter began lifting slowly off the ground.

  “Are you certain of this, Remo?” Smith shouted over the roar of the rotor blades.

  They were sweeping low over the jungle canopy. Up ahead, the silver shell of the outdoor concert hall rose up out of the trees.

  “Just hold them off a couple more minutes, Smitty,” Remo insisted. “If I’m wrong, they can blow up all of South America.”

  The helicopter screamed down before the dome of the concert hall. Cutting sharply over rows of empty seats, it swept up toward the stage, throwing up a cloud of angry dust The Master of Sinanju was pressed in the back with Amanda and Remo.

  “There!” the old Korean announced. A slender finger unfurled, pointing dead ahead.

  Looking forward, Amanda and Smith saw the rotor blades of another helicopter rising beyond the barrier at the side of the stage.

  “It’s a CCS helicopter,” Smith said tightly when the markings appeared.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Remo and Chiun.

  They were no longer there. Amanda Lifton looked around, surprised to find she was now alone.

  Dust whirled in through the open rear doors.

  When they jumped down to the aisle from the helicopter, they hit the ground running.

  Their legs and arms pumped in perfect harmony as the two Masters of Sinanju swept through the cloud of churned-up dust to the empty stage.

  No communication was necessary. They vaulted to the stage. Clearing it in a few great strides, they flew at the side barricade. Up and over, they landed out back.

  Squirrel monkeys parted before their flying feet, chattering angrily as the two men raced for the tall hurricane fence.

  The helicopter was rising beyond it. It had cleared the fence and was rising higher. The nose dipped and it began to fly off.

  One chance before it was out of reach.

  Dust flew in their faces as they raced to the fence. Leg muscles coiling, they sprang to the top of the chain link. The razor wire was pulled taut. Avoiding the barbs, they used the wire as a spring. They launched like loosed arrows for the fleeing helicopter.

  The helicopter was sweeping toward the jungle when Remo and Chiun reached the skids. Each grabbed one, clambering quickly up.

  Inside the helicopter, the pilot felt a sudden increase in weight. Assuming it was a downdraft from the concert dome, he compensated. The chopper righted itself and soared out across the jungle behind the stage.

  Hot wind whipped Remo’s hair. On the other skid, the Master of Sinanju’s wisps of hair blew crazily around his parchment face.

  Even as they were reaching for opposite door handles, Remo heard a noise from the belly of the helicopter.

  Two long silver arms extended from either side of the helicopter, identical to the ones on the helicopter that had crashed in the CCS valley.

  Over the roar of wind and the scream of the rotors, Remo heard something rattling down the long, hollow pipes. Before he and Chiun had even opened the doors, tiny blue seeds began falling from holes in the metal arms.

  Remo’s reaction was immediate. Hooking his legs around the landing gear, he swung under the helicopter. From the other side, Chiun did the same.

  They each grabbed a fat metal pipe, crushing them solid. The seeds clogged in the collapsed tubes.

  Swinging back out, Remo and Chiun reached for the doors once more.

  By now the CCS pilot knew something was wrong. He was flying crazily, tipping from side to side and flying in close to the trees in an attempt to knock off the unwanted passengers.

  The silver dome of the Pan Brazil Eco-Fest stadium raced toward them. The pilot was bouncing off the treetops when the door beside Prick popped open.

  “You fly like he sings,” Remo said coldly. “Bad.”

  Chiun popped the door next to the pilot. Prick had been grabbing for something on the floor. He was pulling up a silver handle as the doors sprang open.