"I taut dese guys din't use guns," Emilio Gabinetto hissed even as he pulled his own weapon from his holster.
Fabio and Jennio already had guns in hand. "Shut up," Fabio whispered. He was staring at the door. He'd lost sight of the lead commandos seconds before.
When the shooting began an instant later, the suddenness startled the three crouching men.
Bullets chewed the wood around the doorknob. Even as the hot lead screamed into the office, a booted foot kicked the door open. A masked commando rolled into the room, rifle up and searching for targets.
Fabio laid him out with a single shot to the forehead. The dead man was falling to his knees as the next wave of soldiers leaped through the open door. The heavily armed men dove behind desks and chairs, all the while shooting at the Gabinettos. Returning fire, Fabio and his brothers took cover behind a row of filing cabinets.
More shooting echoed from the rear storeroom. Fabio heard the sound of another door being kicked in.
"Dere's more coming in the back!" he yelled. As he fired at the shadowy figures, Fabio suddenly thought they might be coming to collect the guy he and his brothers had knocked out. One thing was sure; if Fabio Gabinetto was going down, he'd make this was a hollow victory.
He swung his gun toward the back of the office, ready to plant a few rounds into the unconscious man.
His eyes went wide.
The guy was gone. The open storeroom door was only a few feet from where they'd dumped him. "Dammit!" Fabio growled. He smacked Jennio in the side of the head with his gun butt. "I told you we shoulda whacked that guy," he snarled. As Jennio rubbed his head with his free hand, Fabio turned his attention back to their attackers. With an angry scowl, he resumed firing at the mysterious masked men.
MARK HOWARD HAD COME around more than an hour earlier. Feigning unconsciousness, he'd watched the activity in the office through slivered eyes.
There didn't appear to be any way of escape. Though his bonds were loose, he couldn't very well wriggle out of them in full view of his captors. He'd lain quietly on the floor, his body cold from his own sweat, with no hope of survival.
His shocking salvation came when the door to the office was kicked open amid a barrage of bullets. The new arrivals quickly got into a gunfight with the men who'd grabbed him while he was skulking around the rear door of the Miami Raffair office. Mark seized his chance. Hands still tied behind his back, he had crawled desperately on toes and knees into the back room.
In seconds, Mark slithered out of his bonds and was upright, running for the rear exit. He had almost reached it when fresh gunfire erupted through it. As bullets pierced the steel door, Mark dove through an open doorway to his left. He landed roughly on the floor of a small office.
Mark was scampering to his feet just as the first gun muzzle appeared around the door frame. It moved in tentatively, like the sniffing nose of a curious animal.
He was cornered. The only door was the one he'd just come through. There were no windows. As his eyes darted around the room, Mark saw a familiar shape lying on a chair.
His heart knotted at the sight of his gun. He pounced on the weapon, tearing at the holster's Velcro straps.
His stalker in the hallway heard the sound. The man twisted around the corner just as Mark lifted his gun. With a look a fierce triumph, Mark squeezed the trigger.
It didn't budge.
He suddenly remembered he'd left on the safety. Problem was, it was so long since he'd bought the damn thing, he didn't remember where the safety switch was.
And as he twisted and shook the weapon in helpless frustration, the masked man who had just entered the small room raised his own gun, ready to fire.
Mark's eyes grew wide. He felt his breath catch as the rifle was aimed at his chest. The world slowed to a crawl, then stopped completely. Distorted sounds came in amplified waves to his suddenly acute ears.
Shouting from out front. Fresh shock above the roar of gunfire. Nearer, the rustle of fabric as the gunman raised his elbow. Hand shifting in slow motion, finger tensing on the rifle's trigger. To the right, a deafening explosion as the wail to the small office suddenly burst in.
For Mark, the world tripped back to normal time. In a hail of plaster dust, the upended body of Emilio Gabinetto soared through the wall. Before the gunman could fire, the flying Gabinetto had slammed into him with the force of a speeding freight train.
Scooping up the masked man bodily, Emilio continued on. The two men were crushed into a pile of indistinguishable arms and legs against the cinderblock wall of the building. With a sigh of collapsed lungs, the big bundle of knotted flesh dropped to the floor.
Mark stared at them in shock.
Through the hole in the wall, he could hear the sounds of confused shouting. Men yelled in English and Spanish.
A persistent noise like that of snapping kindling rose to his ears. Somehow, Mark instinctively knew he was listening to the sound of snapping bones.
In spite of the fear he felt, Mark peeked through the jagged opening Emiiio Gabinetto had formed. He saw a flash of something small and red flying toward a cowering Jennio Gabinetto. Before the gangster could shoot, the red dervish was upon him. The instant the blur resolved into the shape of a tiny, kimono-clad man, Jennio became airborne. Mark's eyes hadn't yet understood what they'd just seen when the warning burst like a solar flare in his brain.
He threw himself to his belly an instant before Jennio Gabinetto soared through the hole his brother had formed.
The body pounded against the wall and bounced off, collapsing lifeless on the prone form of Mark Howard.
Mark felt the air rush out of him as the mound of dead flesh settled on his back. He struggled to pull air back in his lungs. He was trying to wiggle out from under the huge body when he heard an angry hiss of Spanish nearby.
Twisting his head, Mark saw that another commando had entered the room from the back door. Even as the firefight was dying in the front office, the man strode toward the CIA analyst.
Mark had dropped his gun in the fall. He made a frantic grab for it even as he squirmed under the body.
His fingertips had barely brushed the gun butt when the hard crush of a boot heel stomped on his wrist. He felt the sharp sting of snapping bone.
The commando swung his rifle barrel at Mark's exposed head. And in that instant before finger brushed trigger, Mark heard a shocked gasp.
"Remo, cover your eyes!" cried a squeaky voice. From his ankle-view of the world, Mark saw a pair of plain black sandals materialize before his eyes. There was a loud crack of shattering bone, and the body of the commando collapsed in a heap inches from Mark's nose.
"What's wrong?" asked a new voice. A pair of leather loafers appeared next to the sandals. "Who's that?"
"Do not look!" implored the first. "Whatever it is, it is writhing like a Pyongyang harlot beneath that behemoth."
"Top guy's dead, Little Father."
"Worse still. Stop that this instant," the first man clapped disapprovingly. "My young son does not need to see such depravity."
"By the looks of it, this guy wasn't very well liked by anyone around here."
A pair of hands dropped beside the loafers. A face at once both cruel and curious peered at Mark Howard.
"Hiya," Remo Williams said.
Mark felt a sudden blessed lightness as the body of Jennio Gabinetto was lifted off of him.
"Okay, what's your story?" Remo asked as he tossed the three-hundred-pound corpse lightly over his shoulder. His eyes strayed to the fresh rope burns on Mark's wrists.
The CIA analyst climbed to his feet, cradling his injured arm. "CIA," he explained, panting.
"Oh," Remo nodded, the light of understanding dawning. "The Keystone Kops of the spy world. Word of advice for the future, Nick Danger? Really bad form to get smothered under a big fat guy while you're doing that dippy spy stuff you people do." And with that, he turned from Mark. "This way," he said to Chiun, pointing out into the large back room.
&
nbsp; Chiun was standing beyond Remo. His wrinkled face offered Mark a look of disapproval. When Remo headed for the door of the small office, the Master of Sinanju spun after him, kimono hems swirling around his bony ankles.
Mark knew without a doubt that these were Smith's men. And loud in his ears, the feeling was screaming that this was both a moment of great import and dire consequence.
By the sound of it, the two men had cleared a path to the front door. He could duck through the hole in the wall and escape into the night, without further risk to his own life. But his heightened instinct told him that there was something more to be learned here.
Scooping up his gun in his good hand, he hustled out into the big room after them.
Remo and Chiun were walking over to the far corner. The way they moved, it was as if theirs were a single mind, connected by a string of unspoken thought.
As they strode past the door leading into the front office, a huge figure suddenly lunged in at them like a wounded bison. Mark fell back into the wall, startled.
Fabio Gabinetto had been shot in one shoulder, yet he still lumbered forward. His arms were stretched out wide, ready to ensnare Remo in a crushing bear hug.
Remo didn't even seem to notice. At the moment when Fabio's arms should have encircled his chest, he simply ducked out of the way. Fabio's forward momentum couldn't be slowed. As he thundered impotently past, Remo snagged him by the scruff of the neck. His legs continued pumping as he dangled in midair from Remo's outstretched arm.
"There," Remo pronounced.
The rest rooms stood side by side in the corner of the room. Remo aimed a finger at the closed ladies' room door.
A few yards back, Mark was amazed to see that there was no sign of strain on Remo's face as he held the still cantering Fabio a foot off the floor. "Put that down," Chiun clucked.
"Huh?" Remo asked. He looked over at Fabio as if just realizing he was there. "Oh."
Whipping the gangster around, he planted his head neck deep in the nearby wall. The body went slack, toes barely brushing the dirty floor.
Chiun was already at the restroom door. He opened it with a simple hand slap.
A man was hiding inside the small room. When he saw the two men framed in the doorway, his eyes grew wide inside his ski mask. Something flashed in his hands.
Behind Remo and Chiun, Mark Howard caught the glimpse of movement. "Gun!" he yelled in warning.
As soon as he shouted, he threw himself at the floor, aiming his own weapon between the two men. Fresh pain from his broken wrist shot up his arm.
In the instant Mark winced, Chiun's hand snapped down. The CIA agent's eyes opened just in time to see the old man's fiercely sharp fingernails sail through the commando's gun barrel. Mark watched in astonishment as a section of rifle clanked on the tile floor. It was joined by two others. Sitting on the toilet in the single-stall room, the masked man suddenly found his hands grasping air.
"Thanks for the warning," Remo said dryly to Mark. "And if you wanna make a bang noise when you point that thing at people, you might want to take the safety off."
Turning back to the commando, he pulled off the man's black mask. The terrified face of General Rolando Rodriguez cringed from his darting hands.
"Okay, I've had it up to here with you nimrods trying to kill me six ways to Sunday," Remo said with a scowl. "I want to know why you're after me and I wanna know now. Otherwise, you're going headfirst into that bowl, and I won't stop flushing until there's nothing left but a pair of really smelly Che Guevara boots."
Rodriguez wanted to lie. But he had seen the result of this man's work at MIR headquarters back in San Juan. Fresh fear of the thin young man and his terrifying Asian companion supplanted all other concerns.
"She made me come after ju," Rodriguez blurted. His soles were on the toilet seat and he hugged his knees, shrinking from Remo and Chiun. "After what ju did to MIR in Puerto Rico, ju became a threat to her ambition."
"These attacks had nothing to do with Raffair?" Remo asked, surprised he'd been wrong all along. Rodriguez shook his head.
"No," he insisted. "She just told us where ju would be. In Boston, we knew you would be coming soon, but at the places like this we were told to wait. She did not know when you would arrive, only that you would come."
"Okay," Remo said. "Here's the twenty-thousand-dollar question-who's 'she'? The only one who knows about us is our boss, us and..." His voice trailed off. It struck him like a bolt out of the blue. "Oh," he said quietly.
He turned to the Master of Sinanju. There was a hint of a knowing look on the old man's otherwise inscrutable face.
"She's your-" Rodriguez began.
They were the only words he managed to get out before the hardened finger pierced his occipital lobe. All speech, thought and life ended at the same time for the revolutionary leader. When Remo pulled his finger free, General Rolando Rodriguez toppled sideways into the wall of the toilet stall.
Remo spun. His face was a dark thundercloud. "Let's go," he said to the Master of Sinanju. Behind them, Mark Howard had climbed back to his feet. He'd been listening to the commando's words with growing fascination, but when Remo and Chiun swept toward him, the CIA man backed nervously against the wall.
Chiun breezed past him without even acknowledging his existence. Remo stopped before the young man.
For a moment, Mark held his breath, unsure what his fate might be. When Remo raised a hand, he flinched.
Remo extended a cautionary finger. "Forget everything," he warned. "It beats me having to kill you."
That was it. The hand lowered and he was gone. Out into the main office. A minute later, Mark heard the sound of an engine turning over. The car faded into the night.
Only when the sound had died completely did he exhale. As he leaned against the wall, his shoulders sagged. He hugged his broken wrist as he tried to catch his breath.
He'd done it. He had faced down the fear of his own destiny and had survived.
Smith and his agents were irrelevant to his future-at least for now. Surprisingly, fate had brought him here to learn something else entirely. Something that went to the character of the man who had found him toiling in anonymity at the CIA.
MIR. The Puerto Rican separatist group. A huge controversy over a year ago. And here were the terrorists now, apparently sent after one of Smith's agents.
Mark knew the truth. And he also knew that no matter what he was asked to do by the President of the United States between now and Inauguration Day, he would not allow himself to be corrupted. Ever.
Still bracing his arm, he pushed away from the wall. His breathing was close to normal.
The authorities would be here soon. He'd better get his holster and get out before they arrived. Leaving the bodies of Fabio Gabinetto and Rolando Rodriguez, Mark C. Howard headed for the back of the tomb-silent Raffair office.
Chapter 32
Remo called Smith from the plane.
"You were right, Smitty," he announced. "Those Puerto Rican terrorists are the ones who've been trying to kill me all along."
"I know," the CURE director replied. "The man you brought back here regained consciousness a few hours ago. I tried to call you during your flight from New Orleans to Miami, but the plane's system was down."
"The navigator probably shorted it out when he accidentally spilled his rum and Coke," Remo said dryly. "So did he tell you who's behind it?"
"Yes," Smith replied, thin distaste in his voice.
"Oh." Remo sounded disappointed. He had wanted to be the one to tell the older man. "We're giving a pass to the other Raffair offices," he said. "Chiun and I are flying back to New York. We'll hit her first and then put this whole goose chase to bed."
Smith's reply surprised him. "No," he said. "No matter what the motivation was to involve us, Raffair is still a danger. I have had no luck tracing Anselmo Scubisci's benefactor. Once you are finished here, I want you to go to the federal penitentiary in Missouri and find out from him who is behind t
his."
Remo sighed. "Okay."
"And, Remo," Smith warned. "Do not kill her." He wanted to make his orders clear, so he did not substitute a euphemism for the distasteful word.
"Kind of figured that," Remo replied. "But I'm looking forward to this inauguration like I've never looked forward to one before, and if I miss it because of jet lag, I'm gonna insist that Chiun start listening to country music again. And since we're house guests of yours for the foreseeable future, you'll have half the staff of that nuthouse up on the roof banging down loose shingles."
Chapter 33
The heavy blue quilt was pulled up to her neck. Lying alone in her big comfortable bed in New York's Westchester County, she was trying desperately to banish the vexing thoughts that had plagued her this past week.
Though dawn was still a few hours away, the soft Spanish voice still droned incessantly in the background. Just as it had for the past twelve months. Even at night she'd been allowing the soft words to penetrate her brain. But though the faceless man had recited ceaselessly-day after day, week after week-she just wasn't getting it.
"iEsta Susana en casa? Si, esta con una amiga. Donde esta en la sala. No, en la cocina. "
The metallic man's voice stopped short. There was a soft whir and a click, followed by silence. From her bed, she snaked out a hand. Fumbling around the nightstand, she popped the front on the portable tape player. She pulled out the ninety-minute cassette. Printed on its side was the phrase: "Learn Spanish just like the diplomats do! It's easy, fun and fast!"
She flipped the tape and dropped it back in the machine. When she pressed the Play button, the man continued to recite the same dialogues she'd been listening to for months.
For some reason, the words just weren't sticking. There was no reason why she shouldn't be picking it up easier. After all, she was the most brilliant woman ever to set shoe to soil. Time, Newsweek, Eleanor Clift and all the major networks had told her so for the past eight years.
But in spite of her penetrating intellect, so far the only words she'd learned were hola and si. And though no one in the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria dared tell her, she still mispronounced both of those.
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