The bullets met head-on in a sealed tunnel of bored steel. And the results were catastrophic. Blow-back gases shattered the breeches and sent cold steel ripping into soft tissues.
The two trigger-happy soldiers made a drab rag pile on the floor.
With a look of fierce concentration on his face, the last standing soldier was busy trying to fix Remo in his gun sights.
Every time the trigger started back, Remo slithered out of the way with practiced ease. Each maneuver brought Remo closer to his target. The target, thinking his weapon gave him the clear advantage over an unarmed man, never realized that. Not even when it was too late.
Stepping left, then right one last time, Remo froze in place. The trigger finger whitened. The hammer drew back. And fell.
The soldier lost the top of his head when his own bullet came out of the muzzle that was suddenly tucked under his hard jaw. He dropped, still clutching the weapon with which he had committed inadvertent suicide.
Remo spun and went to the cell, smacking the lock with the heel of his hand. The old mechanism shattered, and the barred door came open.
The cell was empty. Just a hard cot and cracked porcelain toilet. But the air held a scent he had come to know. His father's leathery odor.
From the street he heard a familiar engine roar. The Humvee. His Humvee.
Jumping into the street, Remo was just in time to catch a glimpse of someone very tall driving his Humvee, dragging a funnel of arid dust behind.
Through the dust he thought he recognized a thick head of lustrous black hair.
"Sunny Joe?" he said blankly.
Then Remo was in motion. The Humvee was accelerating, but so was Remo. His feet dug into the dirt of the road, propelling him forward with graceful pumping steps.
A soldier jumped out into the street, took aim at Sunny Joe and Remo made a detour that brought him within head-harvesting reach of the oblivious marksman.
The side of Remo's hand went through the man's neck, and when the head jumped off the newly created stump, the rest of the soldier lost all interest in working his rifle.
Remo raced on. If there were any more soldiers intent on trying their luck, they developed other plans as Remo caught up with the Humvee.
"Hey, wait up," Remo called.
At the wheel Sunny Joe said, "What're you doing here?"
"I came to bail you out."
"Bailed myself out, damn it."
"You stopping?"
"If you can run this fast, just circle around. Door's open."
"Damn." Remo hung back, came around the other side and pulled even with the front passenger's seat. "It'll be a whole lot easier if you stop."
"Those are live rounds they're slinging."
"They stopped shooting."
"And they'll start right up again once they get a stationary target. Now, hop on!"
Remo skipped, bounced off one foot and plopped into the passenger's seat. The cushions met his back, and there was a brief sensation of about 2 Gs as his decelerating inertia and the Humvee's accelerating momentum met, strained, then fell into perfect synchronization.
"Head for the border," Remo said.
"What the hell do you think I'm doing?"
"What's got into you?"
"I was doing fine until you busted in," Sunny Joe commented.
"Hey, I just wasted a bunch of people to save your skin."
"And I saved my own skin without any killing. I saw what you did to that poor soldado back there. His neck's probably still pumping blood."
"He would have shot you," Remo argued.
"The bullet was never cast that could bring down a Sunny Joe. No arrow, either."
"There's always a first time," Remo said defensively. "And why'd you take off without telling me?"
"Since when do I have to check in with you or anybody before I light out?"
Remo started to speak but found he had no answer to that.
They drove in a strained silence until they cleared the border.
Then Sunny Joe let out a sigh of relief. His voice turned brittle. "Ko Jong Oh used to say a warrior's worth is not measured in scalps or trophies or booty, but in his ability to be like the wind. Everyone feels the wind on his skin, but no man can see it. The wind can sculpt sandstone into any shape it sees fit to. But nothing can stop the wind. Not even the spirit of the mountain, whom we call Sanshin. A strong wind will flow over a tall peak or cut a small one down to size. Be like the wind, Ko Jong Oh told his sons, and the sons of the sons of Ko Jong Oh have ever since emulated the winds."
Remo said nothing.
"How many men you kill back there, Remo?"
"I wasn't counting."
"Comes that easy to you, does it?"
Remo opened his mouth, then shut it so hard his teeth clicked.
"Was that you making all the commotion out in the outer jail rooms?"
"Yeah," Remo answered.
"I had two window bars loose. Figured if nothing broke by nightfall, I'd just slip out. When I heard all your racket, I knew I'd better make my break now or it might be never."
"The bars were still in the window."
"Sure. I turned them around in their mortar till they were good and loose. When I got out, I stuck 'em back in. With luck they might not have missed me till tomorrow morning."
"For all I knew, you were dead."
"You don't have much faith in your old man, now do you, son?"
"Am I supposed to say I'm sorry?"
"Are you?"
"No."
"You did what you do, is that right?"
"I did what I do," Remo agreed.
"What you were trained to do?"
"That's right."
"Then you got your answer."
"To what?" Remo asked.
"Your future. Your ways are the ways of violence and death. The ways of the Sun On Jo are the ways of peace. We don't kill except as a last resort. And we don't die except in our hogans in our old age."
"You saying I should go back to my old life?"
"I'm saying you should take a good hard look at where you won't fit in."
"You kicking me off the reservation?"
Sunny Joe's voice softened. "You're welcome to visit any time. If you live long enough to retire, this is a good place to rest your weary bones, take it from one who knows. I aim to lay my Sun On Jo bones in this here red desert."
"I can't believe you're tossing me out of your life."
"I'm not, Remo. You think this through. I'm encouraging you back into the only life that fits you."
"I don't want to kill anymore."
"You didn't have that attitude at the start of this conversation. I don't think deep down it's who you really are."
"I don't know who I am anymore," Remo said in a bitter voice.
That night Remo visited his mother's grave. Laughing Brook was running high. It had been a baked-dry desert riverbed when Remo first came to the Sun On Jo Reservation. Three happy months ago. It seemed like an eternity. It had all gone by so fast.
He was alone for a long time, waiting. And somewhere in that waiting, Sunny Joe materialized beside him. There was no warning.
"What do you think she'd say?" Remo asked after a while.
"About what?"
"About me."
"Well, I reckon she'd be proud of her only son who grew up to be a fine-looking man who served his country."
"I'm an assassin."
"I was a soldier myself," Sunny Joe said.
"A soldier is different. I'm an assassin. Killing is like breathing to me."
"Then breathe."
Remo's mouth thinned. "Lately I've been calling myself a counterassassin because I thought it fit me better. I was wrong. I am what I am." Remo sucked in a hot breath. "And I don't belong here. I'm leaving in the morning."
Sunny Joe nodded in approval. "I appreciate what you tried to do."
"You didn't act it."
"Being a father is new to me. It's just that I like to do thi
ngs for myself. Always have. You stepped into the private circle of an old warrior's pride."
Remo's eyes were fixed on his mother's headstone. "I wonder if I'll see her again."
"Doubt it. Her work is done. She laid her bones in the red sand long, long ago. But there was unfinished business, and she found the will and the way to finish it. Next time you meet, it'll be in the great beyond somewheres."
Remo set his teeth to keep his chin from trembling.
He felt Sunny Joe's big paw fall on his shoulder. "The way I see it, if she disapproved of your path in life, she wouldn't have found her way to your hogan."
"I've changed my mind," Remo said thickly. "I'm not waiting until morning. I'm going now."
"If it suits you."
"It suits me."
"Then let's saddle up together one last time, you and I."
They rode out in the clear, cool desert night, neither man speaking. The sky was full of bitter blue stars, and Remo looked at them, feeling a connection growing. It was that oneness Sinanju gave. He swelled with every intake of breath.
"Ever feel part of the universe?" he asked Sunny Joe.
"Sometimes. Mostly I feel like a grain of sand in the desert. And it suits me. I've had my fame. I prefer single-footing, like now."
"Sinanju connects you with everything," Remo said quietly.
"The spirit of Ko Jong Oh kinda does that, too."
They looked at the stars in silence. "It's none of my business," Remo said after a while, "but I meant to ask why you took off for Mexico."
"Nothing special. I just took a notion." Sunny Joe hung his head. "No, that's not it. Guess I was just feeling crowded, is all. Having you and the old chief here so long kinda got on my braves' nerves and they got on mine. Had to get away. Nothing personal."
"Thought you might have had a girlfriend down there."
Sunny Joe grunted. "I wish."
When they reached Remo's rented Jeep, they dismounted.
Sunny Joe took the reins of Remo's horse from him.
"I guess this is goodbye," said Remo.
"You came here with an empty heart and now you leave with a full one."
"My heart doesn't feel full," Remo admitted.
"Maybe because you're standing apart from the one who filled your heart in my absence."
Remo looked toward Red Ghost Butte, the moon shadows turning the hollows of his eyes into unfathomable caverns. His lips thinned.
"The little chief is probably pining away for you right now," Sunny Joe remarked.
"You don't know Chiun."
"You know, all my adult life I played different parts. Black hats. White hats. Hoods and pirates. I played just about every kind of role you could imagine." A wry smile crossed his seamed face. "Except one."
Remo looked back. "What's that?"
"They never did let me play a damn redskin. Said I didn't look the type."
A smile cracked Remo's stiff face. Sunny Joe clapped him on the back as his booming laughter filled the still air.
"Walk confidently upon your trail, son."
"I will."
They shook hands, their alike eyes read one another and that was that. Remo climbed into the Jeep and headed across the Sonoran Desert for Yuma.
He didn't look back. Not once.
And so missed the wind-eroded face of Sunny Joe Roam crumple into commingled lines of pain and pride.
Chapter Twelve
At the Yuma International Airport, the police tried to arrest Remo when he turned in his rental Jeep.
"This is a stolen vehicle," a deputy sheriff said in a voice abraded by the sand-bearing winds.
"No, it's not," Remo told him. "I rented it back in July. Now I'm returning it."
"We have an APB from the highest levels to apprehend and hold for questioning the driver of that Mazda Navajo, sir."
"That's gotta be my boss. Look, this is just a misunderstanding."
"Which we can straighten out down at the sheriff's office better than here."
"Can't it wait? I'm in a rush. Let me make a phone call," Remo pleaded.
"You're allowed one call. At the sheriff's office."
"If I make it here, we'll both save a wasted trip and I can still catch my flight."
The deputy laid one hand on the butt of his holstered side arm. "At the sheriff's office."
"You're arresting me?"
"That's a fact."
Sighing, Remo extended his thick wrists. With a jingling the deputy sheriff's handcuffs came out and snapped shut. Over his own stunned wrists.
"What the hell?" he yelped.
Remo held his Remo Durock, FBI, card in front of the deputy sheriff's hot eyes and said, "You're under arrest."
"You can't arrest me."
"Just did. I'm an FBI agent and you're only local law. I outrank you."
"On what charge?" the deputy asked, incredulous.
"Obstructing justice."
"Prove it."
"Tell it to a federal magistrate," Remo said soberly. "Now, come on. We're going to do this my way."
At a pay phone Remo leaned his thumb on the 1 button until the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith came on the line.
"Remo?"
"You put out an all-points on me?" Remo asked.
"I did. Where are you?"
"That's classified until that APB is rescinded."
"My computers indicate you are in Yuma, Arizona, Remo."
"You want me here or there?"
"I will rescind the APB. Return to Folcroft. We have a problem."
"What do you mean 'we,' paleface?"
Smith cleared his throat. "Master Chiun has informed me of his intention to seek a new client."
"I think I can change his mind."
"You will have to hurry if we are to maintain global stability."
"What are you talking about?"
"Yesterday Chiun stood before the United Nations General Assembly and offered his services to the highest bidder."
"Uh-oh," said Remo.
"By implication he has revealed that the United States no longer employs the House of Sinanju."
"I can see what's coming___"
"Already the Mexican government has moved troops to our southern border," Smith explained.
"Tell me about it."
"And that is the least of it, if what I fear is in the wind."
"Save it for the debriefing. Pull your strings. I gotta get to Chiun."
"He's in Massachusetts. For how much longer, I do not know."
"Just get me out from under here, Smitty."
The word took exactly thirteen minutes to reach the Yuma County Sheriff's Office, which dispatched a sheriff to the airport. The sheriff took possession of the deputy, cuffs and all, and personally escorted Remo to his gate.
The airline agent said, "The flight doesn't leave for another ninety minutes."
The sheriff solemnly offered to refrain from arresting the agent, his manager and the president of the airline if an exception was made and the flight took off immediately with the very important FBI agent from Washington, D.C.
This seemed eminently reasonable to every airline representative who fielded the request, and Remo found himself comfortably seated in a nineteen-passenger Beech 1900 climbing over the Sonoran Desert and into the rising red sun.
He was the only passenger.
At Phoenix the airline had a 727 fueled and ready. Remo was spared the inconvenience of disembarking at the terminal. They rolled the 727 up to the Beech-craft, laid a plank between the two main hatches and Remo walked across.
He was back in the air less than ninety seconds after touching down. The copilot came back to apologize for the transfer delay.
"Don't mention it," said Remo.
"We could have done a rolling transfer, but it would have been tricky. You understand."
"Perfectly," said Remo.
"Is there anything I can get you?"
"Chilled mineral water. Steamed native corn and pressed duck in
orange sauce."
"And vegetables on the side?" asked the copilot, writing the order on his pale palm.
Remo clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back. "Corn on the cob if you have it. Extra steamed corn if you don't."
"Coming up in a jiffy," said the copilot.
"Not if you cook it properly."
"Of course, sir," said the copilot, rushing to the galley.
When a statuesque stewardess with fiery copper hair came striding out, Remo's first reaction was to hide. Stewardesses typically found him hormonally irresistible. Remo saw the opposite sex as a craving he usually regretted. It was a legacy of his Sinanju training, which reduced the sex act to a series of mechanical, unsatisfying steps guaranteed to turn women to jelly and put Remo to sleep. Minus the afterglow.
But as the stewardess fixed her shiny blue eyes on Remo, he suddenly recalled he hadn't seen a woman younger than sixty since the summer.
When the stewardess smiled and purred, "Hi, I'm Corinne. But you can call me Corky," Remo said, "I'm Remo but you can call me Remo."
The stewardess laughed with all her body. Even her shimmering copper hair seemed to join in. It made Remo feel good to look at her.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Remo?"
"Just sit here and smile that same smile. Can you do that?"
"Absolutely."
The food was excellent, and the attentive stewardess radiated heat like a furnace with teeth and cleavage. And all in all it was a pleasant flight. Remo had forgotten how easy life could be with the entire resources of the U.S. government at his disposal.
Once he stepped off at Boston's Logan Airport, tension took root in the pit of Remo's stomach and he started to wonder what he was going to say to the Master of Sinanju.
He was still wondering as the taxicab dropped him off in the private parking lot of their condominium castle.
At the double-leaf door, Remo saw two signs that hadn't been there before.
One was a black-and-red No Trespassing sign. The other, also black and red, warned Beware Of Dog.
"Christ," Remo muttered, opening the door with his key and slipping inside. He didn't hear any dog. He didn't smell any dog. But that didn't mean there wasn't a dog.
Creeping up the carpeted steps, he made his way toward the one clear biological sound that reached his ears. The strong, dynamic heartbeat of the Master of Sinanju.
At the closed door to the tower meditation room, Remo hesitated. He didn't sense a dog on the other side of the door, either. Carefully he took hold of the doorknob, turned it and eased the panel in. Knowing Chiun, he had probably found some exotic crossbreed, like pit bull and lion. Remo liked animals and didn't want to hurt one just because it thought it was defending Chiun.
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