Remo intended to survive. He shut his eyes, the better to attune his breathing to the universe. He locked out all sound and sensation and looked within himself.
And somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, a cold fire began to burn. Remo willed himself into that point. He willed every essence of his being to compress into a pinpoint of icy fire. The wind roaring in his ears cut off as if they had been shuttered. He felt his fingertips go numb. And his toes lose feeling.
The feeling drained from his limbs and rushed, like blood, to his stomach-according to Sinanju teaching, the seat of the human soul.
Remo felt lighter, as light as a snowflake. But even a snowflake fell. Remo dared not strike the desert with the force of a falling snowflake, for in this state, his bones were too fragile to survive. All his mass was concentrated in one point. He weighed no more than a snowflake. His bones were as hollow as a snowball. But, like a snowball, he was bound by the irresistible pull of gravity.
Remo willed his essence tighter. He would never understand the physics of what he was attempting to do, any more than he comprehended the natural laws he bent every time he sent a forefinger through plate steel or saw as clearly as a cat in absolute darkness.
When he felt his mass to be nearly negligible, he allowed his shuttered ears to open. The wind was no longer a roar. Remo smiled. He was no longer dropping like a stone. But he was still dropping. He reached out to feel the wind, his fingers touching the palpable updrafts of heat rising from the desert floor. He was at one with those updrafts. They were his friends. He would ride them to a gentle landing on the ground far below. Remo opened his eyes.
He saw the sand. It was inches from his face. His smile broke into an open-mouthed shout. He never got any sound out because his mouth was suddenly full of sand, and his neck snapped back with a dry crack.
And in the black heart of the universe, angry red eyes snapped awake and a cruel mouth opened in howling rage.
Retired Master Sergeant Jim Concannon had been too young for World War II. By the time Vietnam came around, he had a paunch, although during his long Army career he had served in Pleiku and Da Nang.
But for the Korean conflict, Jim Concannon was just right. It was in Korea that then-Private Jim Concannon learned to fight, to survive, and to witness horror without being psychologically incapacitated by it.
But here, in peacetime, out in the Yuma Desert, as Bronzini's technical adviser watched more than five hundred young airmen fall to their death, he stood, his mouth agape, for once in his life paralyzed into inaction.
When the final body, which took an agonizingly long time to land, finally did strike, retired Master Sergeant Jim Concannon pulled the binoculars from his staring eyes and turned to Fourth A. D. Nintendo Toshiba.
Toshiba was smiling. It was a sick, twisted smile. Concannon jumped the Japanese.
Toshiba went down under his pummeling fists. Concannon took him by the throat and tried to squeeze his eyes out of his head. Then one of the crewmen in desert utilities came up from behind and knocked him flat with the butt of his AK-47.
Concannon was dimly aware of his being lugged into a waiting APC and unceremoniously dumped in back. His ribs hurt. As the APC started off, he understood why. He had been thrown onto a stack of boxes.
Concannon played dead while he slowly walked his fingers to the side of a crate. It smelled faintly of lettuce. A lettuce crate. He wormed one hand into the spaces between the rough slats and touched something smooth and nonmetallic. He pulled the object out and opened his eyes a crack.
Jim Concannon saw that he had his hands on a Chinese stick grenade. A Type 67. He suppressed a pleased smile. In Korea, he used to carry a box of grenades during patrols. He was laughed at for lugging all that weight. Until one day, outside of Inchon, when his unit was ambushed by a Red Chinese patrol. As his buddies were mowed down, Jim Concannon wrenched open the box and began pulling pins and tossing grenades in every direction. There was no science to what he did. He just let fly.
When the forest had fallen silent, Jim Concannon got up off his stomach. On all sides, there were Red Chinese corpses-corpses dressed much like the two lines of soldiers sitting in the back of the rolling APC nearly forty years later and half a world away.
Jim Concannon had saved his patrol that day back in 1953. He knew he could not save those who died on this day, but he could avenge them.
One by one he slipped stick grenades from the crate. When he had five, he unscrewed the blade caps at the ends, exposing the pull cords. He yanked the caps, igniting the time-delay fuses. Then he made his move. He rolled suddenly, and hurled the grenades.
There is no place to run in a sealed APC. Not that the Japanese soldiers didn't try. They saw the bouncing sticks and leapt to their feet, bumping helmets and tripping over one another's feet and suddenly-forgotten rifles in a desperate effort to escape.
But there was no escape. One by one, the grenades detonated, and although only three exploded-which was par for the Type 67 stick grenade-they rendered the human cargo of the APC unrecognizable.
Chapter 15
They came for Arnold Ziffel as he was having his morning coffee.
Arnold Ziffel always knew they would come. Sometimes they were Russian and sometimes they were Cuban. Other times they were black or Asian or even Mexican. The face of the enemy that coveted the Land of the Free continually changed in Arnold Ziffel's mind.
But Arnold Ziffel's resolve would never change, he vowed. That was why he had laid away a three-month food supply in his garage. That was why he kept his AR-15 assault rifle fully loaded at all times. He was not going down without a fight. The bumper sticker attached to the back of his pickup truck summed up Arnold Ziffel's philosophy perfectly: "My wife, yes. My dog, maybe. My gun, never!"
When they came, they didn't want Mrs. Arnold Ziffel. They kicked his dog, Rusty, out the front door and locked him out. They also locked out Arnold Ziffel's AR-15. It was in the back of his pickup.
"What do you want?" Arnold sputtered, rising from his breakfast nook as three soldiers prodded his wife into the room at the point of fixed bayonets.
"Christmas tree!" one of them screeched. "Where is?"
"My tree?" Arnold blurted. "You want my Christmas tree?"
"Where tree?"
"For God's sake, Arnold," Mrs. Ziffel said shrilly. "Tell them!"
Arnold Ziffel decided that he could live with handing' up his Christmas tree.
"In the next room," he said.
"You show!" the leader demanded. He was Asian. As he pulled Arnold into the den, he recognized their People's Liberation Army uniforms. He was a regular reader of Soldier of Fortune magazine. The funny thing was, these folks didn't look Chinese at all.
"Here it is," Arnold said, waving to a stunted Scotch pine growing in a tree box. It was tastefully decorated with alternating red and silver ornaments.
"Stand by tree!" the Chinese soldier said.
"Come on, Helen," Arnold said, taking his wife by the arm.
"What can they want?" Helen Ziffel whispered.
"Shhh." Arnold put his arm around his wife's thin shoulders. He felt her tremble. Suddenly, despite her faded pink housecoat and rat's-nest hair, she seemed more precious to him than his beloved AR-15. He was about to tell her so when the leader shouted something in a foreign tongue and into the den came other soldiers, lugging camera equipment and lights. They set up the lights in opposite corners of the den and turned them on. They hurt Arnold's eyes. Then the camera was put into position, and Mrs. Ziffel said something that sent a wave of relief through Arnold's wobbly legs. "Arnold. These must be the movie people."
"Is that true?" Arnold stammered. "Are you with the movie they're shooting?"
"Yes, yes," the leader said distractedly. He conferred with a cameraman. They were holding up a pocket device and trying to read the meter. It looked exactly like the light meter that came with Arnold's thirty-five-millimeter Nishitsu Autofocus.
"Arnold, do you suppose we're go
ing to be in the movie?" Helen Ziffel wondered.
"I'll ask. Hey, friend, are you going to shoot us?" The leader turned, his eyes cold black opals.
"Yes, we shoot you soon. Wait, prease."
"Did you hear that?" Arnold told his wife excitedly. "We're going to be in a Bronzini movie." Arnold Ziffel had seen all the Grundy's twice, once for the story and then a second time to count the technical mistakes.
Then the cameraman got behind his camera and the leader called out to the Ziffels.
"Adorn tree, prease," he said.
"Beg pardon?" Arnold said, blinking.
"Tree. You make rike you adorn with ranterns, okay?"
"I think he wants us to pretend we're putting the bulbs on, Arnold. That's what he meant by lanterns."
"But the dang things already decorated," Arnold hissed through a set-toothed smile. He didn't want to have a fight with his wife in front of thirty million moviegoers.
"Then let's pretend," Helen Ziffel said tightly. "This is a major movie, for goodness' sake. Try to go along, for once in your life."
Arnold and Helen got on either side of their Christmas tree and each removed a bulb. Helen took a silver one and Arnold took a red one.
"How's this?" Arnold asked, and he fumbled the tiny hook back onto the tree.
The leader barked something unintelligible and the ornament exploded in Arnold's surprised face. His wife screamed. The tree shivered manically, ornaments popping like flashbulbs, limbs snapping like brush.
Arnold Ziffel saw the raw ruin that had been his upraised hand and felt the sledgehammer blows of automatic-weapons fire punctuate his trembling body. He joined his wife on the floor. The new light fixture he had bought for the den shattered within its Santa Claus wrapping under the impact of his 195-pound weight. His surviving hand fell onto his wife's cheek, and even though he couldn't feel it, Arnold knew she was dead. The gunfire stopped.
Arnold Ziffel lifted his face shakily and tried to see into the blinding lights. Just before he died, he wondered why, if this were just a movie, the bullets had been real. And why, if, as he had suddenly suspected, they had finally come for him, were they filming it?
Mayor Basil Cloves wanted to know if this was in the script when the uniformed Japanese barged into his office and dragged him out of his executive chair.
He was still asking it five minutes later when they forced his head into the V of the curb in front of city hall and rolled a tank up onto the sidewalk. The left front track stopped just inches from his head.
Third A. D. Harachi Seiko demanded, "One rast time, I ask for your surrender. Do you agree?"
Cloves hesitated. "Is this in the script?" he asked again. Seiko barked an order in Japanese. The tank inched closer. Cloves felt the coldness of the curb against his face. A kneeling Japanese kept his face pressed to the gritty street. Another one squatted harpy-like on his legs. A third pinioned his arms behind his back.
"Tell me what you want me to do!" Cloves said in an agitated voice. "If the script calls for it, I'll surrender."
"Choice is yours," Seiko said flatly. "You surrender and terr citizens to ray down arms. Or you die."
Basil Cloves cringed from the spittle spraying from the Japanese's screaming mouth. Through the triangular frame of the arm of the soldier who had his head, he could see a video camera aimed at his own face. Maybe he should play the brave public servant.
Behind the video camera a man was walking down the street, looking dazed and crying in a voice choked with disbelief, "But this is America. This is America!"
He was quickly surrounded and bayoneted in the stomach.
It occurred to Mayor Basil Cloves that perhaps this wasn't a movie after all. That the explosions he kept hearing were not special effects. That the sporadic gunfire was not harmless.
Basil Cloves in that moment realized what he had done. And he made his decision.
"I'll never surrender," he said quietly.
The next sound he heard was a guttural order, then the clanking of the tank. The man holding his head down turned his face to the dirt-caked track, which gleamed at its wear points. The track inched forward.
"You change mind?" Third A. D. Seiko demanded.
"Never!" Mayor Cloves spat. He knew they could not run him down. Not with four men holding him down. They'd be run over too.
Yet the track continued gnashing toward him.
The man at his head suddenly released his hair. He stepped back. Cloves lifted his head. But that was all he could lift. The others kept his arms and legs down.
Then the track bit into the mayor of Yuma's nose. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the shattering of his teeth and the pulverizing of his facial bones.
Mayor Basil Cloves never heard the pulpy crack that caused yellowish brain curd to erupt from the fissures of his broken skull.
Third A. D. Harachi Seiko ordered the tank to back up so the cameraman could come in for a close-up of the mayor's head. Then the tank rolled forward again. It went back and forth until the mayor's head was nothing more than a meaty stain.
Linda Best was only dimly aware that there was a film being shot in Yuma. It was the day before Christmas vacation and that meant there was a lot of homework to collect and tests to give to her third-grade class in the Ronald Reagan Elementary School.
So when the Asian soldier entered the class as she was passing out a grammar test, the last thing that Linda Best thought of was a movie.
She saw the AK-47 in the Asian soldier's hands and all she could think of was the incident in California, where a maniac in fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon had killed or maimed nearly thirty children.
She cried "No!" and flung the papers in his face. The man flinched. Linda Best leapt at the man in the desert camouflage fatigues before he could recover. Her hands clawed for the gun. She never felt the sharp edge of the bayonet as it sliced one grasping hand. The other got the barrel. Linda pulled. The Asian man fought back. He was small. Linda was not. They struggled as the children began ducking under the desks.
"Give me that thing!" she sobbed rackingly.
The man grunted inarticulately. Somewhere, through a rushing in her ears, Linda heard commotion elsewhere in the corridors of the school. A popping like firecrackers. She was barely aware of it. All her thoughts, all her strength, were focused on the sweating face that grimaced only inches in front of her.
Linda Best knew she couldn't hope to overpower him by sheer strength. Surprise had carried her this far. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw some of the children crawl out the open door. Good children, she thought. Run, run. Get help.
Then she felt the strength begin to leave one arm. No, not now, not yet. She moaned silently. Lord give me strength. And she saw why. The blood had practically painted her bare forearm. She had been unwittingly clutching a bayonet.
Linda released the rifle. The Japanese scrambled to bring the weapon to bear. In that instant, Linda Best kicked him in the crotch. The Japanese doubled over. His weapon fell into Linda's waiting arms.
Linda Best had never held a rifle in her life. She had never fired a shot. She had never struck a blow in anger. She never wanted to.
But on that day in December, with the children scrambling between her legs to safety, she found the strength to place the muzzle of the unfamiliar weapon to the face of the man who had had the temerity to enter her classroom with murderous intent, and gave him the contents of its clip in one pull of the trigger.
"Everyone, hurry," Linda called, looking away from the result of her courage. "Follow me!"
The children came, some of them. Others huddled and cried. Swiftly, gently, Linda Best went among them, prying fingers from desk legs. She pushed them to the safety of the door, admonishing them not to look at the man who lay with agitated limbs across the doorway.
She carried the last two in her arms. They were crying for their mothers.
It was too much to hope that in their panic the children would all reach the fire exits. L
inda stumbled out into the corridor hoping for best, fearing the worst. She did not expect the sight that awaited her.
The corridor swarmed with students. And among them were armed soldiers, men with hard foreign faces and merciless weapons. A fellow teacher bumped into Linda. It was Miss Head, who had the fifth grade.
"What is it? What's happening?" Linda asked breathlessly.
"We don't know," Miss Head hissed. "They want us to assemble outside."
"But why? Who are they?"
"The assistant principal thinks they're with the movie. But look at how they're behaving. I think it's real."
"I know it is," Linda said, holding up her hand. It was stiffening. Miss Head saw the already-browning blood and put her hand in front of her mouth.
Then they were both prodded toward the front doors by insistent bayonets. There, the children were being forced to sit on the grass, their hands clasped behind their heads like POW's in a war movie. It would have been cute had it not been so grotesque.
Rough hands segregated Linda and her colleague from the milling children. They were made to stand with a growing knot of teachers.
Linda found herself shoved next to the principal, Mr. Mulroy. "Can this be for real?" she asked.
"They're serious. Rothman and Skindarian are dead."
"Oh, no!"
"No talking!" a voice barked.
When the last of the children were forced onto the ground, the soldiers turned to the teachers. One wearing captain's bars directed the others. The faculty was forced to stand in a line as a camera was set up.
"Look, they're filming this," Miss Head whispered. "Maybe it is a movie, after all."
That happy thought lived only as long as it took for several soldiers to drag the blood-spattered corpses of three fallen teachers out into the sunlight.
No one believed it was only a movie after that.
The Japanese captain waited tensely for the cameraman to signal him. He nodded back. Then the captain called, "Rorring. Fire!"
The camera hummed. And AK-47's slapped to uniformed shoulders. The gunfire came in single shots, execution-style.
The entire teaching staff of the Ronald Reagan Elementary School were executed without benefit of blindfolds or final words. The captain went among the dead and delivered a vicious kick to each body. Those who groaned had a bayonet plunged into their throats.
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