No Contest

Then he pulled himself over the rim and the black glass before his eyes became transparent, and he was seeing a fog bank that should not have been there. Also there were two people, sitting on woven mats on the ice, who should not have been there. One was old and one was young, and neither of them looked as if he were equipped for climbing on ice.

Cedar stood himself up on the summit.

Remo Williams pulled a tiny chip out of his pocket and rolled it in his fingers.

Chinn looked at it curiously, Remo nodded at the rim of the summit, where an arm appeared, then a man’s head rose into view with a pair of face-hugging goggles that were completely black. Remo flicked the chip at the man’s head.

It spun at a fantastic speed, sawing through the plastic transmitter on the head strap like a circular saw going through a foam cushion. The back half of the transmitter, including the two-inch antenna, popped off and was gone. The climber never even felt it.

“Where’s the fire?” the winner asked.

“No fire. Just steam.” Remo nodded at chalky-dry rock sitting in a basin of melting snow. Remo had rubbed it against another rock until the heat built up, then he dumped it in the ice where it raised billows of steam.

“We would like to ask you how you managed to win this climb,” Remo said.

Cedar Dunnaway’s spine was ramrod straight as he answered, “Determination.”

Chapter 34

Something was going on. This was not right at all. Sherm MacGregor tried to watch all his video feeds at once and flipped to other feeds, but still he got nothing useful. He was just as confused as everybody else when Copter Cam closed in on the winner’s summit to airlift out Cedar Dunnaway. Cedar was standing there, looking fine as could be. Also standing there were two men, one in a T-shirt, one in a—what?—a kimono, for God’s sake.

The ESN correspondent who was inside the helicopter was supposed to do an on-the-spot interview with the champion, but that didn’t happen. First the two men hopped on the helicopter, and then the cameras stopped working. The two men were gone when the helicopter landed at the base of the wall.

Nobody knew what it meant, so they did their best to ignore it. Cedar Dunnaway was proclaimed champion. The other climbers were airlifted from the summit or picked off the wall. It would all be edited together into a seamless, fast-paced extreme extravaganza by tomorrow’s airtime in the United States.

But Sherm still wanted to know what was going on. He called ESN and had himself patched through to the location producer, Aaron Presci. He was their biggest single advertiser and he could do things like that.

“We don’t know who,” Presci said. “Maybe just some pranksters who wanted to get on TV.”

“Pranksters? Come on.”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” Presci hung up on him. Presci had to be in pretty dire straits if he was hanging up on his bread and butter, Sherm MacGregor.

Sherm could have had the man fired, but he refrained. Presci was a good, take-no-shit guy. He would find out what was going on if anybody could.

There was a message light blinking on their telephone. Remo didn’t like the look of it. He was frustrated enough already. Days spent down under with nothing to show for it except a lower opinion of the human race, and now this. Whatever it was. But he knew what it was.

Chiun said nothing, just waited, face expressionless.

Remo listened to his message, and his face darkened. He phoned the front desk and asked to be connected to a number in the United States. Arizona.

The phone rang.

“It’s me,” Remo said.

“Son,” said Sunny Joe Roam.

“Give me Freya.”

A moment later, he heard Freya say, “Hi, Daddy.”

She sounded just a little bit frightened.

Remo spoke with her in a calm voice. It would be okay, he assured her. It would be fine. Not to worry.

When he hung up the phone, he was staring wide-eyed at the floor.

“Little Father, my daughter is afraid.”

“I heard.”

“I’m just enough of a big dumb jerk guy to want to go knock the block off of whoever makes my daughter afraid.”

Chiun nodded. “This I understand.”

Remo stood. “Going home now. You coming?”

Chapter 35

Harold W. Smith watched Remo Williams with growing trepidation. Remo used his credit cards to charter a flight out of Invercargill to Auckland, then paid an exorbitant sum to charter a private aircraft to the United States, and on to Yuma. Chiun, Smith had to assume, was with him. Smith radioed the aircraft, but the pilot said his passengers refused to speak with him. Smith attempted to contact Chiun via his iBlogger, but there was no response.

Remo had set other actions in motion. A large credit-card fee was made to a specialty-vehicle moving company. A pair of drivers was dispatched to get Chiun’s new travel trailer from L.A. to Arizona in time to meet up with Remo.

Smith dreaded what would happen when Remo reached Yuma, but he wasn’t going to interfere.

That might get Remo even angrier, and turn a disaster into a cataclysm.