"I'm thinking I don't know what the hell to do. That is what I'm thinking," said Remo.
"Excellent. You know you don't know. That's the first step in knowing. The reason you feel bad and depressed is that you are under some absurd impression that, without the facts, you should know right now."
"You're on the other side," said Remo.
"Of what?" asked Anna.
"Whoever is fighting each other nowadays. Won't matter a thousand years from now."
"You think brilliantly. What's your name?"
"My name's Remo. And no one ever said to me I was smart before. And I never claimed to be. I just try to do what's right. That's all. Case closed."
"You're right. That is stupid, if you think you can close a case just by saying it. I have got the same interests as you. Let me take a guess. Are you part of that group that stopped Matesev and that ridiculous attempt at the sniper assassination?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," said Remo.
"Yes, that's why I'm asking. Why do you think I'm asking? You really are a man. A man's man," said Anna, shaking her head. "I thought you had some intelligence."
"I did Matesev. Chiun probably did the sniper. He's working for Rabinowitz now. So is Smith."
"And so is your whole organization. Never before have we seen supplies move so smoothly in your military."
"They have everything, then."
"Not quite. They don't have you, and they don't have me. But we have got to make sure they don't."
"I can't kill without closing in."
"We can think first. We can go down there and see just what's going on, and understanding that we don't know now means that we do know we have to figure out something else."
"But I don't know what it is."
"Neither do I. But the difference is, Remo, all my life I didn't know what things were until I figured them out. We'll be all right," said Anna.
"You're kinda cute," said Remo.
"No. I'm gorgeous. You're cute," said Anna. And Remo remembered what the Great Wang had told him about finding a mind that could think things through. Was this an accident? Or was this Wang in some disguise? It didn't look like a disguise. Remo touched the back of her hand, seeking out the nerves that could arouse a woman. Slowly he began, and slowly he saw her eyes light with sexual fire. It wasn't Wang.
"Is that it?" asked Anna.
"I was just finding out who you are."
"Are you going to leave me like this?"
"Do you want to make love?" asked Remo.
"Not necessarily," said Anna. "I just want an orgasm. Finish what you start, or don't start."
When Remo was done, Anna gave him a big smile. "That was wonderful," she said.
"I'm pretty good," said Remo. "You should see what I can do working the rest of the body besides the wrist."
"I was talking about having an orgasm without having to take off my clothes or get intimate with a man," she said.
"Oh," said Remo. He sort of liked taking off his clothes. It did help the mood. He also liked taking off a woman's clothes at the appropriate time.
"I suppose," he said, "we're going to have a sexually active, noninvolved relationship."
"Only if you keep your hands on my wrist," she said. "Where did you ever figure out that the wrist had an erogenous zone?"
"The whole body is an erogenous zone if you know how to use it," said Remo.
"Could you teach me that trick on the wrist?"
"You have to know balance and things."
"Do you ever need women?"
"I don't need women. I like women. Say, what are we going to look for down in Sornica? Once you lock eyes with this guy you're done. And I'm sure Smith knew that, too."
"Good point. Then we know now Vassily can seize your mind even if you are not looking at him. We'll have to plan on working on his hypnotism. The point is that we may figure out how to succumb while still being able to operate. That may be a solution," said Anna.
By the time the plane landed they were the only ones on the press plane who were not sure what they were going to find.
Chapter 13
The defenses around one small area were incredible. The Sornicans had dug themselves a network of concrete trenching and underground tunnels. Vast, flat, open fields-deadly target ranges for the defenders-surrounded these hills.
The most modern weapons in the Eastern-bloc arsenal sprouted from more hidden bunkers per foot than any site outside Russia.
Every patrol ran into this, and Rabinowitz had shrewdly bypassed it in the opening days, in order to get at the main Sornican force. Besides, all interceptions of communications from those hills revealed Russians talking.
He wanted to save them for last. But now was last. The Sornican army, supplied by Russia, trained by Russia, filled with recruits from the land drafted under protest, now had returned to its villages in peace. Only its highranking officers with their American goods wanted to continue the fight. They had never lived so well before this supposed people's revolution, and in their Gucci loafers and eyeglasses they were telling their favorite columnists about American oppression, aggression, racism, and poisonous minds.
No one could deny America had sent three columns of troops into the heartland of Sornica.
"Why does America hate us? We feed the poor. We lift the shackles of oppression. So they must destroy us. America is the enemy of all mankind," said the chairman of the Revolutionary Council, Umberto Omerta.
An aide ran into his mountain villa with the grim news about the revolutionary struggle.
The People's Democratic Revolutionary Council of Sornica was down to its last case of Dom Perignon. The beluga caviar was still in good supply, but all of Comrade Omerta's designer eyeglasses, fifteen thousand dollars' worth kept securely in his five estates, were gone. His suicidal revolutionary commandos had not been able to save them because they were defending their compact-disc players and Zenith stereos. They had lost no men, but they were executing those Sornican peasants who were refusing to die for the revolution-or to guide Western reporters to sites of American atrocities.
Any body would do. The more mangled the better. The nice thing about these modern reporters was that most of them were interpretive journalists.
Some few would ask how this body or that body got to the side of the road, and where the proof was of who killed it. Then the revolutionary suicide commandos would accuse the reporter of being an American agent, a fascist, or a Jew. The latter was especially useful in front of Arab groups, but generally anti-Semitism, after a half-century of disuse by the left, was now considered not only acceptable, but a sign of being progressive. Once this was the province of only the radical right, but it now suited the revolution perfectly, especially since the monster-maniac-fascist-Zionist heading the American invasion was named Rabinowitz.
President Omerta used the name extensively. He knew it would be instantly identifiable. He knew the columnists he was talking to would also use it extensively.
"Only a Rabinowitz would seek to suck the blood of poor peasants trying to be free," said President Omerta. "They're all no good. Bloodsuckers. Why would anyone want to attack a peaceful, freedom-loving people, other than to suck the blood through their evil fangs sharpened on Passover wine."
In previous years, statements like these would have been considered racist, but now the columnists couldn't wait to get down the words "courageous opinions, strong convictions."
Omerta signaled that the last bottles of Dom Perignon were to be opened. This was an emergency. This was a fight to the death.
And then someone yelled.
"The Americans have got the hill fortress surrounded."
"Excuse me," said Omerta. "I must attend to the struggle immediately."
He ran to the man who had just screamed out the bad news. He cornered him in a closet. He wrung his neck so hard, his own designer glasses almost fell off, and this during wartime, when President Omerta had no idea when he would be able to get back to America
or Europe to do more shopping.
"Listen, stupid. The next time you mention the hill fortress in front of Americans I will have you shot. Have they taken it yet?"
"No. But they have it surrounded."
"What are the Russians doing?"
"Fighting to the death, sir."
"Good. Now Russia must reinforce. They can never let the hill fortress be taken. We're saved. We may have a world war."
"What if we lose it?"
"If it goes on long enough, we can't lose. We have friends in America. Go in there and feed them the party line. And don't get it wrong. Remember, this stuff is going to be taught in the classrooms in America."
President Omerta dashed out of his mountain villa, screaming for a command car.
"You want to get to the Russian ambassador?" asked the driver. He knew about the hill fortress being surrounded.
"No. I want to get away from the Russian ambassador. We were supposed to defend that with our lives."
"And we didn't?"
"If you had a choice of Louis Vuitton luggage or five hundred smelly Russians with equipment, which would you take?" said General Omerta.
Rabinowitz looked at the map. Chiun stood behind him. Everyone was covered by the hot dust of Sornica, caked onto their faces by the sweat of battle.
Everyone except Chiun. Somehow he managed to bathe twice a day, keep his steamer trunks with him, and maintain a happy appearance.
Several times Rabinowitz had heard him say:
"This is too much like a war. We must stop wars, with all these amateurs doing the killing."
"They're not amateurs. It's a great army. When the Americans get down to fighting, no one can beat them. No one."
"Still an army. After all, how good could hundreds of thousands of people be, Great Wang? Let us face it. These are soldiers."
"Right. I'm doing something with them. Leave me alone."
Now the situation on the map looked grim. The massive amounts of weapons, the way they were used showing virtually limitless ammunition, made the cost of taking the hill too great.
"We could keep it surrounded, and starve them out," said one colonel who felt he was talking to an old instructor from West Point. He had always thought this man he had learned to love with more respect than any other, had been denied battlefield command. But he was glad to see he was a general now.
"The problem is," said his old instructor, "that may be just what they prepared for."
"I don't follow, sir," said the colonel.
"Look. If they are firing their ammunition with abandon, and they're not raw troops as we know they're not, then they have an almost limitless supply of ammunition. Therefore, we've got to assume they have the same in food and water, at least for a half-year. But that's not what worries me." Rabinowitz felt the men crowd around him.
He was in this thing now. Thousands of people depended on him for their lives; any move he made affected them. And therefore any problems they had were his problems. For a moment he realized that in his quest to be left alone, he now had eighty thousand people who could not leave him alone because their lives depended on him. And they were the ones on his side. Then there was the enemy. Which understandably wanted to kill him. And of course the Oriental who kept him alive.
And Harold W. Smith of America's secret organization, who could get him supplies while no one in America could stop him. Of course, Smith in his brilliant calculating mind had figured out that in the question of supply transfers, it was only marginally more helpful to have the American bureaucracy on your side than against you.
"Something special is hidden in that hill. There has been nothing else defended like it in the entire country," said Rabinowitz. He could not worry about being left alone. He was in a war. But why was he in this war?
He didn't have time to answer that. He had a military problem. Something was up there that could possibly be incredibly dangerous. How would they attack it without suffering enormous losses, losses so staggering they could make the whole campaign a failure?
He could address the attacking troops, work on their minds, making them believe they could not be hit by bullets. The few survivors might take the hill. So he could get them to do it if he wanted. That was not the problem.
He turned to his officers. Every suggestion that came back had to do with waiting for long-range bombers that would take at least a day to employ if Smith could get them employed. He had been having trouble with the air force because they had special command frequencies not available to the rest of the military. This was to prevent an accidental nuclear war, he said.
He turned to Smith.
"I know of only two men who could get through that crossfire alive. And one of them is working for us now," said Smith.
"One man. There's a division in those bunkers. I know it. One man can't do it all. I don't care how wonderful he is," said Rabinowitz.
"For every weakness, O Great Wang, there is a strength. For every strength there is a weakness," said the peculiar Oriental with the incredibly fast hands.
The firing continued from the hill at an ear-numbing rate.
And then Rabinowitz understood what the weakness had to be.
"The ammunition. Of course. It's the ammunition. If they can fire like that, they must have an incredible storage facility for ammunition. We get one in there with a delayed explosive timer, and set off the whole thing. Attack just at the moment of explosion. The timing has to be great, but it can work."
"Who can get through that field of fire alone?" asked a colonel.
And then Chiun got a strange order from the Great Wang.
"Look, schlep yourself over to those bunkers in the hills, and lay this delayed explosive. Use your tricks and stuff. Don't worry about me. I'll be safe."
"I would never worry about you, Great Wang. You are Sinanju. To worry about you would be to insult you. But to sneak explosives into place is not the work of Sinanju. Who do we wish to kill? What great man is there?"
"What who? Just do it. C'mon. The whole attack is delayed. Something's in there and we have to get it," said Rabinowitz.
"An explosive. An explosive will kill just anyone. A soldier would use an explosive. He would use it like a gun. He doesn't care who he kills. He does not have the aesthetic sense of an assassin. Would you ask me to be a common soldier, Great Wang?"
"Not only am I asking, but I'll tell you something else. You'll love it. It is a new taste sensation to blow up people instead of taking off their heads with your bare hands. God forbid you should offend your aesthetics. Okay? Do it."
And so Chiun, who had never defiled the teachings of Sinanju, was shown explosives to kill whoever happened to be near them when they went off. And sadder still was the fact that he believed now that he was enjoying this.
He did not need darkness to move unseen upon those in the fortified hills. He needed only their fear and the tiredness of their eyes, and the deflection of the heat rays. For in the midday, the human eye contracted and in so doing lost an almost imperceptible portion of its field of vision. And in these portions did Chiun move that day with the explosives in his hands.
"I can't believe they're not firing at him," said one colonel.
"They can't see him," said Harold W. Smith, peering at the open field with binoculars. He was getting computer terminals rigged for the front because that was where Rabinowitz usually was, Miss Ashford's best friend and the salvation of America.
"He's visible to us," said the colonel.
"Right, because we're looking at him from this angle. But in the hills they have the wrong angle."
"Man would make a tremendous ranger," said the colonel.
"He'd never do that sort of work," said Smith.
"Well, what does he call that?"
"A new taste sensation, I think. Don't know," said Smith. "Got to get back to the terminals. Your people could use more reserve ammunition down here."
Like even the ancient forts, there was an entrance to the fortress, and this
entrance was the most heavily defended.
And just like Sinanju had always gotten into ancient forts Chiun avoided the door but worked his way into the earth. Dissolving the fresh concrete and iron-rod reinforcements with one hand, he carried the explosive device in the other hand. Entering the tunnel, he saw a surprised Russian soldier, and even though he was no one important, Chiun sent him instantly to the fastest possible death.
First the soldier had seen the wall of the bunker dissolve. Then an Oriental in a black kimono came through it. Then the soldier was out of pain forever.
In classical Russian, Chiun asked the whereabouts of the ammunition stores, and at first those he met did not wish to reveal this information, especially to a non-Russian with a time bomb. But after just a moment's reasoning, when the pain became tolerable, they were able to express themselves better.
Chiun set the timer, placed the device well into a rack of artillery shells, worked his way through the first outside wall he came to, and left the hills safely because at this angle some of the defenders could see him.
Why, he wondered, did the Great Wang want him to do a soldierly duty, and why, more important, didn't he mind more? These were serious questions, and even the massive explosion of the hill behind him did not distract him from them. Was something wrong? Why had he enjoyed that dastardly deed, of killing people he did not even know or respect? And what about Mad Smith? Why did he think he was now wise? The man was white from the day he was born.
Chiun did not care about the excitement of the attack. Amateurs attacking amateurs. Not a decent, clean stroke among them. American troops poured into the Russian defenses, and a lead column stopped and called for the general himself. Rabinowitz.
They had found what the Russians had defended so thoroughly. They had found why the Russians had not let the Sornicans man these positions.
In deep, reinforced silos, so well secured even the explosions did not damage them, were intermediate-range nuclear missiles, so deadly accurate they could zero in on the desk in the Oval Office at the White House.
Russia had violated the latest arms treaty by sneaking missiles right into these Sornican hills. They could have launched a first strike from a direction in which America had not prepared to defend.
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