"Over the telephone?" Chiun said skeptically.
Remo looked ceilingward. "It's another expression."
"I do not want to hear expressions or excuses," Chiun snapped loudly. " I demand the truth."
"Okay, okay," Remo relented. "Congratulations. You've figured it out. It is a coup. Smith is deposing the Postmaster General. All those free stamps just for the taking have pushed Smith to the brink."
"How does eliminating the President figure into this?" Chiun went on in a mollified tone as they sought the Mexicana Airlines counter.
"It's really, really complicated," Remo said distractedly.
"Ah," said Chiun, and lapsed into silence. Then: "You may explain it to me on our flight. I assume we are going to fly again?"
"Yeah, we're going to the crash site."
"Yes, of course. To cover up the evidence of Smith's plotting. A wise move, and politically expedient."
Harold W. Smith made the appropriate phone calls to the State Department, which contacted the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, which in turn put in a call to Comandante Oscar Odio's office in Tampico.
So when Remo Williams presented himself at the headquarters of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad in Tampico, no one asked to see his identification as he entered the white Spanish-colonial building.
A blue-uniformed guard at the main desk, however, looked at Chiun quizzically as he listened to Remo identify himself and then escorted them to the comandante's office.
Tampico Zone Comandante Oscar Odio didn't ask Remo for his identification either. He smiled broadly under a mustache so thick it looked as if it had been grown in a refrigerator. The first words out of his mouth were a silken, "Bienaenidos, senores."
"Hi," Remo said sourly.
Comandante Odio looked at Remo's casual attire, and his attitude cooled.
"You are the attache from the American embassy," he said, his black jewellike eyes gleaming. "Dressed like that?"
"I was on vacation," Remo told him with a straight face. "In Cancun. Didn't have time to change."
"And this man?" Comandante Odio indicated the Master of Sinanju.
"This is Chiun," Remo said without skipping a beat. "My interpreter."
Odio frowned. "He is not Spanish."
"Neither are you, Mexican," the Master of Sinanju snapped in perfect Spanish.
Comandante Oscar Odio winced. "I see. Still, you will have no need for this man, I assure you. For I speak impeccable English, as you can plainly hear, Senor Yones."
"Jones."
"Yes. That is what I have said. Yones."
"He comes anyway," Remo said flatly. "Or none of us goes."
Comandante Odio stiffened. "As you say," he said, the smoothness leaving his voice again. "A helicopter awaits us. As soon as the representative from the Federal Judicial Police arrives, we will be on our way. "
"The who?" Remo said suddenly.
"I represent the Federal Security Directorate. The Federales have insisted on having an observer also."
"Look," Remo said testily, "this is an emergency. Do we have to stand on ceremony?"
"This is our country, Senor Yones. Not yours. Please be good enough to enjoy our hospitality while we wait. Would you care for a drink?" Odio reached into a desk drawer and extracted a large bottle. "Tequila?"
"No," Remo said flatly.
Odio turned to the Master of Sinanju, saying, "You, senor?''
"It has a worm in it," Chiun sniffed.
A peculiar smile settled over Odio's handsome features as he returned the bottle to its place unopened.
Remo looked out the window, where an olive helicopter with side-mounted machine guns sat under a tall ahuehuete tree. Worry rode his hard features. The President dead. Terrorists involved. He wondered where the Vice-President was now and if they were still keeping the news from him.
Deep within the Sierra Madres, Walid cocked an ear to the roof over his head and listened to the clatter. It was thin, and growing thinner.
"The helikobters are not so loud now," he ventured.
"The roof," Jalid observed, "it is covered with sand. Perfect camouflage against the Americans."
Abu Al-Kalbin shoved another wooden spoonful of steamed rice into his mouth. He wolfed it down greedily.
"Are you sure this will help?" he demanded of Walid and Jalid, white grains clinging from his half-open mouth.
"The rice, it absorbs water in the bowels," Walid said sincerely.
"Soon you will have firm solid stools," Jalid added, smiling.
"At this moment, I want that more than anything," Abu Al-Kalbin said fervently. "Even more than the Qaddafi Peace Prize."
He upended the bowl to let the clumpy rice tumble into his yawning mouth like dead white ants.
They spoke in Arabic, so that the President of the hated United States could not understand them. The President sat in a rude wood chair in the tar-paper-and-tin safe house nestled in the Sierra Madres, which had been arranged for them by their Colombian employer. Fki.rom the smell, they guessed it was a marijuana stash house.
The President sat, his head tipped forward and resting on his chin. A colorful embroidered blindfold shielded his eyes; his hands were bound to the two crosspieces of the chair back with twine. His feet were looped to the front chair legs with his own belt. It was a very fine belt. Abu Al-Kalbin hoped to keep it as a souvenir once they had sold the man into servitude.
Over in one dim corner, Walid was playing with a video camera. He pointed it at the President, and Jalid quickly jumped into the frame, throwing his arms around the President's thin shoulders, striking a pose and showing strong white teeth.
Pausing in his greedy rice devouring, Abu AlKalbin noticed Jalid's raked teeth and hissed a warning.
"You fool! Put on your kaffiyeh! If these films fall into bad hands, your foolish face will be on every wall and police bulletin board from here to Cairo."
Stung, Jalid reached behind him and pulled the tail of his fringed kaffiyeh around to his mouth. He restruck his cocky pose.
"How will we get him out of the country?" Jalid asked as Walid filmed him.
"I have not figured out that part," Abu Al-Kalbin mumbled through a mouthful of rice. "I am too busy setting my disgestive tract to rights. Curse these Mexican dishes. They go down like fire and come out of you the same way."
Walid and Jalid burst into laughter. Their raucous merriment died when a low groan escaped the President's compressed lips.
All heads turned to the President.
At that exact moment, there came a knock at the door.
All heads swiveled to the door.
"Who?" Abu Al-Kalbin blurted, rice grains dropping onto his lap.
"The Colombian?" Jalid suggested. "El Padrino?"
"He would not come here," Abu Al-Kalbin hissed. "Not while the U.S. helikobters comb the skies." He indicated the door with a sharp inclination of his head.
Walid grabbed up his AK-47 and went to answer the door. Jalid followed him with the whirring videoeam, while a second groan escaped the lips of the President of the United States.
Walid snapped off the safety of his automatic rifle. He held it low on his hip with his right hand, set himself in a widelegged combat stance, and reached out to throw open the door with his left.
At a nod from Abu Al-Kalbin, he yanked open the door.
He never fired.
For framed within the door was a tall blue-eyed, vacuously smiling man of young middle age.
Walid's jaw dropped. He recognized the face of the man in the doorway. His astonishment caused him to hold his fire.
And while his stupefied brain was registering the seemingly impossible sight of Robert Redford at the door, the American actor calmly reached over his shoulder and extracted a nine iron from his golf bag. He lifted it to his shoulder like a baseball player.
The club came around with such easy grace that Walid never saw the aluminum pole that dashed his brains out of his skull, sending hot yellowish brain matter splatterin
g like grease.
A splash of it struck Abu Al-Kalbin in the face, momentarily blinding him. Curds of it dropped into his rice bowl, which fell from his hands and cracked on the floor.
Abu Al-Kalbin shot to his feet, pawing at the organic matter in his furiously batting eyes as the attacker stepped into the tar-paper shack, hurling his mangled nine iron away and selecting a driver.
The driver caught Abu Al-Kalbin in the jaw, knocking it off with a bone-meal crunch. The driver went back to the wielder's shoulder. This time it drove in for the exposed neck. It connected with such inhuman force that it tore Abu AI-Kalbin's head off his shoulders.
The head struck and bounced off the wall.
Jalid watched all of this through the range finder of his video camera. The range finder made the rapid series of violent actions seem as if they were very, very far away. Jalid retreated to a far wall, still recording the sight as if the camera offered him not only distance and perspective but also protection. Many war correspondents caught in free-fire zones had made that mistake. A few survived it.
Jalid did not survive his.
A putter lifted in very bad form like an ax about to chop down. It struck Jalid or the exact top of the head, separating skull plates that had been fused since Jalid was only six months old.
The golf-club wielder released the putter. It went down with the corpse, sticking up from the broken bleeding head like a fifth appendage. It quivered. So did Jalid's other appendages. The ones whose nerves were receiving electrically disrupted signals from its disrupted brain.
Ignoring the corpse, the man walked over to the bound form of the President of the United States, whose head groggily lifted off his chest. He craned his long Ichabod Crane neck as if trying to see past his blindfold.
"Hello?" he croaked, his voice anxious. " I can't see. Where am I? Can anyone hear me? I hear you moving around. Hello? Answer me!"
The President of the United States felt strong fingers touch his forehead, plucking away the blindfold with an easy rip that broke the fabric as clean as a knife. He lifted his face. The early-morning sunlight coming through the single window was not strong, but it hurt his eyes nevertheless. He looked up at the figure that towered over him, his vision gradually clearing.
The figure spoke. It said, "Hello is all right."
"Dan?" the President of the United States croaked in disbelief.
Chapter 7
The woman in the fawn-colored uniform had the saddest face Remo Williams had ever seen on a woman.
She ignored Chiun and himself as she stepped into the office of Zone Comandante Oscar Odio, executed a crisp salute, and announced herself.
"Federal Yudicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl reporting, Comandante."
Comandante Odio returned the salute with only a slightly annoyed expression on his face.
"We have been awaiting you, senorita,'' he murmured.
"Officer," Guadalupe Mazatl corrected. She was a short woman, perhaps only five-foot-four, with a sturdy body that made up in rounded strength what it lacked in grace. She had coffee-colored skin, strong high cheekbones, and extremely black eyes. They might have come from the same military store as her shiny black boots and gunbelt. Her dark hair was short and severe.
"And these are the gringos?" she said, indicating Remo and Chiun with a toss of her black hair.
"You must excuse Officer Mazatl," Comandante Odio said, throwing the woman a hard glance while bestowing a smooth smile upon Remo and Chiun. "She has evidently left her manners behind."
"My manners are fine," Mazatl snapped. "It is the gringos who have swooped down upon us, despoiling our sovereignity. just as they did in Panama."
"Look," Remo said tensely. "Can we just go?"
"Naturally," Comandante Odio returned with a quick bowing of his head. He took his service cap off his desk and put it on. A white silk scarf went around the neck of his blue uniform. "Follow me, por favor," he said, adding mirrored aviator sunglasses to the ensemble.
Officer Mazatl fell in behind them without a word.
As they walked to the waiting helicopter, Comandante Odio whispered to Remo, "My apologies, senor. The Federales are notoriously lacking in pleasantness. The few women especially so. And corrupt."
"I'll keep that in mind," Remo promised, inwardly wanting only to get on with it.
The helicopter lifted off with a clattery whir and angled toward the foreboding Sierra Madres. Comandante Odio himself piloted the ship. Remo sat up front beside him, looking down as the brown ridges floated under the ship's skids. His Sinanju-trained eyes raked the barren peaks, looking for signs of life-or death. He saw neither. There were roads and railroad tracks crossing the range, but the peaks and mountainsides looked as if the First Wind had scoured them clean and no foot had known them since.
In the back, Guadalupe Mazatl put a question to the Master of Sinanju. "Are you Yapanese?"
"No. What are you?"
"I am an azteca," she said with a trace of pride. "Ciento por ciento. One hundred percent Aztec."
"You are proud of this?" Chiun asked doubtfully.
" I am."
"Then why do you look so sad?"
"I am not sad. I am Mexican," said Guadalupe Mazatl, as if that explained everything. "What are you?"
The Master of Sinanju pretended not to hear her over the rotor clatter. It was exactly what the rude woman who dressed like a man deserved after calling him a Japanese. No wonder his ancestors had not seen fit to exploit the Aztec market.
Presently the crash site came into view. Comandante Odio talked to the orbiting Air Force helicopters, was cleared to land, and set the chopper down well away from the knots of investigative teams.
Remo stepped out onto the crusty sand. The caterwaul of argumentative shouting lifted over the dying rotor whine.
An Air Force officer in a blue uniform was shouting down a man in mufti. The man in mufti was getting red in the face. He looked like he was about to explode. When the Air Force officer paused in his tirade to catch a breath, he did.
"You listen to me, Corporal!" he began.
"Colonel. "
"To me, it's all the same," the other shot back. "The President of the United States is technically missing. Not dead. Missing. That makes it a Secret Service matter."
"Last I heard, the Secret Service didn't have helicopter search capabilities. You want to hitch a ride in our birds, mister, that's fine. Otherwise, you remain on the ground. Read me?"
"We'll see about this!" And the Secret Service man marched off in a huff to another civilian, who handed him a cellular telephone.
Remo walked up to the colonel.
"You in charge?" he demanded.
"Who the hell are you?" "Remo Jones. U.S. embassy."
The colonel subsided. His voice was still testy as he asked, "And who are these people?" He pointed to the Master of Sinanju and the Mexican representatives.
"Chiun's my interpreter. The others can introduce themselves. I want a look inside the plane."
The colonel shook his head. "Sorry. The damn NTSB has it roped off. Won't let anyone inside. The FBI is having fits. They say it's a terrorist bombing. And there's the NTSB. They say it's an air disaster, and therefore falls under their purview."
Over by the broken tail, two civilians stood shouting at one another. One wore a blue jacket and baseball cap labeled: NTSB.
" I take it that's the flip side of this mess?" Remo said.
"It's a bureaucratic nightmare!" the colonel snapped. "No one's ever had a situation like this. It's an air disaster, a possible kidnapping, and an international incident all rolled into one, with terroristic overtones. No ones knows where the jurisdictional lines should be drawn."
"It's also a national catastrophe," Remo said. "Come on, Chiun. "
Officer Mazatl started to follow, but was stopped by the colonel. That led to a sudden argument over Mexican territoriality, with Comandante Odio trying in vain to placate both sides.
The Master of Sinan
ju drew up beside Remo, and Remo marched toward the argument, his fists tight.
"That woman spoke words of wisdom to me," Chiun said.
"What are those?"
"She says that the Mexican DFS is notoriously corrupt and not to trust the comandante."
"Funny. That's what the comandante said about her," Remo muttered. "Nobody seems to care about what happened out here. Just how it affects their freaking turf."
"Do not take it so hard, my son. You have seen many Presidents come and go in your young life. How is this different?"
"One," Remo said tightly, "we don't know that he's dead yet. Two, it happened on our watch."
"While we were doing our duty elsewhere," Chiun pointed out. "This is all Smith's fault. Had he possessed good information, this embarrassment could have been avoided."
"You too?" Remo snapped. "The President is missing, and all everybody is concerned about is their backsides. Wonderful."
"Remo!" Chiun said, blowing out his cheeks in anger. But when his pupil did not stop to engage in an argument, the Master of Sinanju hurried to join him. He said nothing. He had never seen his pupil this way. Perhaps Remo had voted for the man. They approached the two shouting whites.
"Look, Lunkhead, or Lunkin," Bill Holland was screaming, "I'll say it once more. The FBI can observe. It cannot-repeat, cannot-participate in processing the site!"
Remo waded into the argument between Bill Holland of the National Transportation Safety Board and Agent Lunkin of the FBI like a referee breaking up two hockey players. He took them by the backs of their necks and shook them until their teeth rattled.
"Shut up! Both of you! Now!"
"Who are you?" Bill Holland demanded, unable to break Remo's steel-strong finger grip on his neck.
The FBI agent said nothing. He had inadvertently bitten his own tongue in the shaking and was busy stemming the flow of blood by holding it with his fingers.
"Remo Jones. Cultural attache, U. S. embassy. I'm here as an observer, and what I see stinks. I want a report."
"I don't report to you," Holland said sullenly.
Remo's fingers dug into Holland's spine and suddenly he was reporting freely.
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