"Is my hair okay?" asked Don Cooder.
"Am I sweating?" asked Reverend Jackman. "I don't want my people to remember me all sweaty."
Then together they asked the escort if they had a final request.
"Yes," they were told.
Reverend Jackman requested a good makeup man. The best.
Don Cooder asked if he could go first.
Reverend Jackman decided going first took precedence over a good makeup man. "Let my people see me sweat. Sweatin's no sin."
They argued about who would have top billing at their mutual execution all the way to the crossed scimitars of Arab Renaissance Square.
Remo Williams, dressed like a scarlet-and-purple genie out of The Arabian Nights, stepped from the overheated armored car. His hair was wet, and the sweat crawled down his exposed and sunburned chest between the loose wings of his purple vest.
Kimberly Baynes led him past the crowd that surged on either side of the broad throroughfare that ran through Arab Renaissance Square like a sea of mustaches. He passed under the shadow of the upraised scimitars. It felt like the cold shadow of death falling over him.
Kimberly stopped at a wooden platform like a reviewing stand positioned in the middle of the thoroughfare, directly under the apex of the crossed sabers.
"Ascend," she commanded.
Remo mounted the stairs, his legs wood, but his Sinanju-trained feet as silent as a whisper.
The reviewing stand was awash with Renaissance Guards, AK-47's at the ready. They stood between the Revolting Command Council, who wore condemned expressions, and a knot of people at the front of the stand.
Still blinking the light from his eyes, Remo raked that group, looking for Maddas Hinsein.
He discerned a tall Arab woman in an abayuh surrounded by several persons who might have been Maddas Hinsein: one wearing an all-white suit that made him look like the Bad Humor Man, another in a khaki uniform, and a third in a green burnoose. Remo squinted, trying to identify which was Maddas.
He gave up. It was like trying to distinguish among dates.
The man swathed in a green burnoose abruptly stepped forward and, lifting his hands in the familiar palms-up benediction, faced the crowd. The crowd roared their response.
In the shadowy folds of his headdress, the familiar brushy mustache of Maddas Hinsein quirked in a cold smile. He spoke into the microphone. The crowd roared and the brown hands emerged from his robes to gesture toward Remo. The crowd went wild.
"The Iraiti people are very proud of you," whispered Kimberly Baynes, hovering behind Remo and translating. "They think you are the only righteous American in the world."
"Where'd you learn Arabic?" Remo thought to ask.
"Your future bride taught me." And she laughed.
Remo said nothing. A short impatient snapping sound came to his ears. He glanced around and he saw Kimberly's abayuh rustle. Of course. Her other hands. They were worrying a hidden rumal, the ceremonial strangling scarf of the Thuggee.
"I'm not strangling anyone," Remo said tightly.
"You will do as you are bidden," Kimberly returned. Then, "You will use the Sinanju blow known as the floater stroke."
Remo flinched inwardly. It was the most dangerous blow in Sinanju. The unforgiving blow. Once unleashed, the pentup power of it rebounded on the attacker with fatal results if the blow did not land. And as the scent of Kali choked his nostrils, Remo knew that he would deliver it upon command.
He also understood he had the option of missing-and thus executing himself. Kimberly's muted laughter told him she appreciated his dilemma too.
The crowd was settling down now, assisted by Iraiti crowd-control police wielding kidney-punishing truncheons.
And then, from a grumbling APC that braked before the reviewing stand, came Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder. They were arguing.
"I go first," Reverend Jackman insisted.
"No, me. Me. Me. Me."
They were brought up to the reviewing stand, where the burnoose-clad figure of Maddas Hinsein turned to greet them. He smiled widely. His dark eyes sparkled.
The cameras strategically positioned around Arab Renaissance Square zoomed in for the moment of high drama to come.
The victims were made to halt before the burnoosed figure. Muttered words came from under the shadowy kaffiyeh. Brown hands lifted as if to bless the dead.
"With all due respect, President Hinsein." Don Cooder pleaded, "as the highest paid network anchor in the world, I respectfully, humbly, and sincerely request the right to die first."
"As a fellow third-world brother," Reverend Jackman piped up, his eyes protruding like turtle eggs emerging from a mudbank, "I claim that right."
"I don't think he understands English," Cooder whispered.
"I'm with that," Reverend Jackman said. He lifted his orator's voice. "Any of you folks speak English?"
The Revolting Command Council maintained their stiff, full-of-dread expressions. They, too, were picturing themselves swinging on the ends of U.S. ropes. The big woman in the abayuh standing directly behind the man they took to be Maddas Hinsein faded backward, her feet clumping like a soldier's.
Then, under the prodding of the guards, Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder were made to turn around until they faced the phantasmagoric figure of Remo Williams.
"Address your victims," Kimberly Baynes whispered to Remo.
Remo stepped forward. The crowd went still. Even the birds in the sky seemed to go quiet.
Remo stood nose-to-nose with Reverend Juniper Jackman.
"This isn't personal," Remo said stiffly.
"Amen."
Remo stepped sideways until he was looking into Don Cooder's worried face.
"But you," he growled. "You, I'm going to enjoy."
"What'd I do!" Don Cooder demanded, suddenly scared.
"Remember the neutron bomb you had built?"
Cooder's mouth fell open. "How'd you know about that?"
"That's why."
And then Kimberly spoke up. She hovered very near.
"Execute!"
Remo stood frozen for a full minute.
Deep within him, he fought to resist the order. Sweat broke out on his brow and trickled coldly down the gully of his spine. He lifted one hand, forming a spearhead with fingers and thumb.
He drew back. The power of the sun source that was Sinanju began to build within the column of bone and sinew that was his arm. His eyes flicked from Don Cooder's trembling face to the shadowy visage of Maddas Hinsein towering by a full head behind him.
"Now!"
Remo released the blow with a vicious snap of his forearm.
The energies, coiled like a viper, rippled down his arm as Remo drove hard fingertips toward the unprotected throat of his intended victim. There was no stopping it. One of them would die.
Remo's mind froze. If there was ever a time I needed you, Little Father, he thought wildly, I need you now.
What happened next happened too fast for human eyes to ever comprehend, and although it was recorded on video and broadcast throughout the world, no one saw it clearly.
A millisecond from striking the blow, long-nailed hands reached out to snatch Don Cooder from the path of Remo's strike.
The speed was blinding. Elegant. Hauntingly familiar.
Chiun! Remo thought, even as Cooder faded from his sight and the force of his blow continued traveling in a straight line-through the empty space where Don Cooder had trembled and directly for the exposed breast of Maddas Hinsein, tyrant of Irait.
The burnoosed figure took the blow like a scarecrow shot with an elephant gun.
Arms jerking crazily, he was jolted backward, his burnoose flying like green wings. He fell backward over the railing to land with a mushy thump on the pavement below.
Grinning, Remo turned, joy in his heart.
"Little Father . . ." he began.
His grin washed away like a sand castle before a dam-burst.
For standing there was not th
e Master of Sinanju, but the abayuh-clad figure of Kimberly Baynes, holding Don Cooder with two long-nailed hands as two more pairs emerged from the ebon garment, snapping a yellow scarf between them.
"But I thought . . . ." Remo began. And he remembered. The Master of Sinanju was dead.
With a careless fling of yellow-nailed fingers, Don Cooder was thrown aside, and the silken scarf snapped around Remo's exposed neck. Kimberly wrenched. The force was quick and brutal.
Remo heard the brittle snap of breaking vertebrae. He staggered on his feet, his head lolling to one side brokenly.
As the reviewing stand shrank back in horror from the momentary impression of the human spider in an abayuh, the scarf was whipped away, revealing a blue bruise around Remo's neck. Remo's eyes snapped open. They were like burning coals.
Gathering his precarious balance, he faced Kimberly Baynes, who jerked off her garments, revealing blood-red eyes that were like twin suns in her face. Her neck tilted left. Remo's tilted right.
And from Remo's mouth issued a thunderous voice.
"I am created Shiva the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds! Who is this dog meat who stands before me?"
"I am Kali the Terrible; the devourer of life!" a voice that was no longer Kimberly's shrieked. "And I claim this dance!"
Their feet began to stamp the reviewing-stand flooring.
And in that moment, the world fell into the Red Abyss.
Epilogue
As if a small comet had struck a lake, Arab Renaissance Square exploded outward in circular waves of fleeing humanity as the reviewing stand was reduced to wood chips and splintering boards.
The great overhanging crossed scimitars trembled as if in an earthquake, while in the settling maelstrom of wood that had been the reviewing stand, two figures drummed their feet in violent discord, their heads thrown back, their voices roaring to shake the very sun from the sky.
It was from that hellish roaring that the assembled citizenry of Irait fled-unaware that they were but insignificant specks of bone and gristle and plasma in the Caldron of Blood that had begun churning.
One insignificant speck of bone, gristle, and plasma who plunged through the retreating multitudes wore a flowing black abayuh over shiny black paratroop boots. With his thick arms, he beat and elbowed helpless Iraitis out of his path, cursing in fluent Arabic.
He paused in his flight to glance back. Under the trembling scimitars-held aloft by massive replicas of his own mighty arms-Maddas Hinsein beheld an awesome sight.
The naked four-armed figure of Kimberly Baynes faced the American called Remo. She howled. Remo howled back. Their feet stamped the planks and joists under their drumming feet with such fury that the wood gave up tendrils of friction smoke. Their hands were about each other's throats.
If this was a dance, Maddas thought, he would hate to see them at war. For they looked as if they were intent upon strangling each other.
As they surged to and fro, their earth-shaking feet inched toward a prostrate form in a green burnoose, who lay before the wreckage, where he had fallen.
One foot Remo's-stamped the kaffiyeh once. The green cloth turned red to the accompaniment of a horrible melonpop of a sound.
And Maddas Hinsein knew that no one would ever identify the fallen man as Selim Fanek, his official spokesman. The world would think the Scimitar of the Arabs dead. He grinned with dark humor. Not even the Americans would think to hang a dead man.
But then he remembered his defense minister, Razzik Azziz, and the deadfall commands that would soon go into effect. His grin became a scowl. He faced a hard choice. Perhaps the most difficult of his presidency.
Gathering his all-concealing abayuh about him, he plunged into the fleeing crowd, taking care to inflict as much damage as he could on those who dared impede his flight.
"Call me Kebir Gamoose!" he muttered darkly. "If I allow the American bombs to obliterate you all, it will serve you right!"
TO BE CONCLUDED IN DESTROYER #86 Arabian Nightmare
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Blood Lust td-85 Page 25