Then the fight began. Something flashed past Remo's shoulder. He ducked under the blur and Chiun moved in, kicking high.
A man dropped faster than seemed humanly possible under Chiun's leaping crimson figure. There came another flash of steel, like a sword blade in motion. A cry.
And something shot past Lupe's head with the velocity of a rocket-propelled grenade. She turned around. Embedded in the bathroom door was the laminated maple head of a driver.
Lupe whirled back, and beheld the stunning sight of the Vice-President of the United States lifting a headless golf club to defend himself as Remo and Chiun closed in from opposite sides.
"Watch it, Chiun," Remo warned. "He's faster than you'd think with that thing."
"It is only because we are slowed by this infernal bad air."
"Just watch it."
The Vice-President looked at his maimed club. Without a flicker of his fixed expression, he tossed it aside and extracted a sand wedge. He faced them boldly, his grin like a photograph.
"If you think you can hurt us with a sand wedge, you're crazy," Remo said. "Now, put that down and we'll talk. It's not too late to straighten this out."
"Isn't it?" the voice of the Vice-President said as he took the steel sand-wedge head in one hand. He exerted momentary pressure. The metal went grunk! loudly, and when he let go, the head had a sudden sharp edge.
Remo blinked. "Where'd you learn to do that?" he demanded, dumbfounded.
The edge sliced for Remo's face. He faded back, lifting his right hand to parry the next blow, while Chiun slipped around behind their assailant.
"No good, pal," Remo said. "But go ahead. Take your Mulligan."
The club came back for another blow. Good, Remo thought. He's falling for it.
Then the crinkled blue eyes shifted right.
The figure of the Vice-President shifted like a spun top. Remo couldn't believe his speed. Or was it that his own senses and reflexes were so slowed by pollution inhalation? he wondered.
The gleaming edge snapped around. It went whisk! whack! furiously, narrowly missing Chiun on both swings.
"Be careful, Little Father," Remo hissed. "He's really, really fast." "No one is faster than a Master of Sinanju," Chiun cried, and his nails began weaving a defensive pattern before him until their reflection became a silvershard pattern of light.
The club descended. It bounced off the whirling barrier. The Vice-President lifted it again, this time with both hands.
That gave Remo his opportunity. He plunged in, his hands reaching for the Vice-President's smoothly tonsured neck.
The sand wedge broke off on the second blow. Remo's fingertips brushed the Vice-President's neck hairs for a brief instant.
And then, so quickly that he couldn't believe it, he was holding empty air, and his momentum was carrying him directly into the path of Chiun's deadly flashing nails!
Chapter 19
DFS Comandante Oscar Odio waited impatiently in the Hotel Nikko lobby for his blue-uniformed agents to arrive. Their sirens filled the air, but they had not yet arrived. He had contacted them as soon as he reached Mexico City airspace, obtaining instant use of a contingent of agents-no questions asked from the Distrito Federal comandante, with whom Odio had a working relationship. It was that simple.
The unit burst into the lobby from all doors like busy blue locusts.
Comandante Odio gave quick orders, stationing men at every exit.
"The remainder of you will follow me!" he cried, brandishing his pistol. "Vamos!"
They surged up the stairs because it seemed like the most macho thing to do, even though it was a sixteen-floor climb.
By the time they reached their floor, they were perspiring and out of breath. Even men accustomed to the city's rarefied air suffered its effects.
Officer Guadalupe Mazatl stood blinking at the impossibility of it all.
She saw three gringos, Remo and Chiun and apparently the American Vice-President, fighting like demons with fire in their veins and steel in their bones. Their hands moved like quicksilver.
It was not a battle of men, but of gods, much like the old gods of old Mexico to whom Officer Lupe Mazatl had prayed to as a child in the Catholic church whose altar displayed the Virgin of Guadalupe, after whom she was named, but behind which were hidden the true gods of Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Coatlicue.
They were swifter than the hummingbird, more ferocious than the ocelot. Even the Vice-President, with his ridiculous weapons. Lupe could hear the air crack as his club tore through it. He was beating in all directions at once, like some out-of-control machine.
As she watched, the conflict moved swiftly from attack to joined battle to resolution.
No sooner had the deadly sand wedge broken off against a spiderweb of light woven by the one called Chiun than Remo moved in to take the Vice-President by the back of the neck.
Lupe blinked. It seemed as if Remo had the man for certain. And in that blink, the Vice-President was suddenly gone, as if he had turned invisible.
And Remo, unable to check his lunge, was falling into that deadly web of light.
So many things happened in that next breathless instant that Lupe was never sure in what order they transpired.
The shouting at the door behind her first drew her attention. But the crash of shattering glass pulled her head back around again. She blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what was happening.
"What is going on here?" a familiar voice shouted arrogantly.
Lupe was yanked to her feet and shoved aside by a in-rushing tide of men.
"You!" the voice blurted.
"And you," Lupe said, recognizing Comandante Odio.
"What is going on here!" Odio demanded. "It's the Vice-President," Remo shouted, his voice twisting like metal in a forge. "He committed suicide!"
"What!" Odio said, racing past Lupe. His IFS forces followed him. Two hung back, seizing Lupe.
"Look!" Remo said, pointing out the big picture window, whose frame was festooned with dangling glass teeth.
Odio rushed to the pane. He looked down.
"Madre!" he shouted hoarsely. "It is true!"
Far below, sprawled on the circular driveway facing the Paseo de la Reforma, lay a tiny human figure, a golf bag across his back, spilling various woods and irons.
Odio turned to Remo. "It is the Vice-President?" he demanded.
"He jumped," Reno repeated, sick of voice. "What made him jump?"
"What I would like to know is, what made him so strong?" Chiun put in. He leaned out the window. His nose wrinkled at the sting of foul air in his delicate nostrils. Just as quickly, he withdrew.
"You are all under arrest!" Comandante Odio said swiftly.
"On what charge?" Remo wanted to know.
"The murder of your own Vice-President, asasino!"
"It was self-defense," the Master of Sinanju said haughtily. " I challenge you to prove differently."
"I will not have to," Odio retorted. "Here in my country, a man is judged guilty until proved innocent. As you will be if I take you into custody."
Remo pulled himself away from the window.
" If?" he asked shortly.
"It is possible an arrangement could be reached," Odio said smoothly.
Officer Lupe Mazatl spoke up. "What did I tell you about this hombre? The DFS all drink from the same little jug."
"Silencio, woman!" Odio spat. He turned to Remo. " I would trade you your freedom for a certain thing I require. "
"How much?" Remo asked in contempt. He reached into his pocket.
"Oh, it is not a matter of money, but intelligence."
"He thinks you are the Wizard of Ooze Remo," Chiun sniffed. "Do not give him your brain, under any circumstance."
"No, no," Odio said. " I desire information. That is all. "
Remo pulled his hand from his pocket. "Yeah?"
"The whereabouts of your presidente."
"What makes you think I know that?" Remo aske
d suspiciously.
"I know that he is in Mexico," Odio said with ill-disguised pride.
"So you were listening in," Remo said.
"Si.'
"On my conversation with Smith?" Remo prodded.
"Si. with Smith. Your CIA agent contact, no doubt. The DFS has a working relationship with the CIA. Smith is a muy popular name at the CIA. I myself have met many CIA Smiths."
"Good guess," Remo said, his eyes narrowing. His glance flicked to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun nodded imperceptibly.
Remo smiled easily. "Okay. I don't want to be thrown into a Mexican jail. I hear conditions are pretty terrible-unless you're a drug dealer and can afford a bridal suite."
"You are an intelligent gringo," Odio said, his tense expression relaxing. "Now I give you my word. Provide me with the information and I will set you free. But you must leave the country immediately.
"Sure thing," Remo said casually. "He's right behind you. In the closet."
Comandante Oscar Odio's eyes went wide with surprise. Eagerly he turned to give the order to search the closet to his borrowed DFS unit.
His mouth opened. His arm raised. The arm froze and his mouth locked, as a stiffened finger stabbed at the nape of his neck, shattering vertebrae like ice cubes. The disintegrating bone severed his spinal cord so swiftly that Comandante Oscar Odio had only time to exhale the first breathy consonant of his order. His brain died before his face hit the rug.
The others failed to see the blow that felled him. They were too busy dying. The Master of Sinanju crushed a convenient kidney with one fist and jellied testicles with a high-kicking sandaled foot.
Remo waded in to help, pitching one DFS agent out the shattered window and lifting another off his feet bodily. He threw that one toward the door, where the remaining DFS agents had Officer Mazatl in custody.
"Duck!" Remo said quickly.
"Que?" they said in unison.
"Too late," Remo said as the flying body bowled Officer Lupe Mazatl and her captors out into the hall.
Remo leapt after them, and quickly crushed the DFS men's windpipes with the heel of one Italian loafer. He gave Officer Mazatl a hand, bringing her to her feet with a smooth retraction of his arm.
"You killed them all," Officer Lupe Mazatl said in a dazed voice.
"And on our worst day, too," Remo said. He plunged back into the room, where the Master of Sinanju was opening the closet. It was empty.
"Too bad," Remo said, looking in. "I had my hopes he'd have been stashed there."
"You killed five DFS officers with your bare hands," Officer Mazatl said, her voice tight and sick.
"They knew too much," Remo said. "Come on. We've got to go to Plan B."
"What is Plan B?" Lupe wanted to know as she was pulled by one hand out the door and to the elevators.
"Be prepared to improvise," Remo said bitterly. "First we check the Vice-President. Maybe he has something on him that'll help."
"Such as?"
"A safe-deposit-box key or a bus-terminal-locker tag," Remo growled unhappily. "I don't know. Look, I just had the Vice-President of the United States attack me and then take a header out an open window. I'm having a terrible day."
"Do not worry," Chiun put it. "I will vouch for you with Smith. None of this would have happened had Smith not sent us after ferocious geese."
"That's going to mean a lot, if we don't locate the President," Remo said sourly.
The elevator brought them to the lobby, where they were greeted by two DFS officers with drawn pistols.
The officers said, "Alto!" and Remo returned their greeting by cracking their pelvises with a swift upkick to each man.
He left them writhing on the floor, not exactly dead, but in no mood to celebrate life.
The lobby was free of other human encumbrances. In fact, it was deserted.
"It is not like one such as Odio not to have the lobby guarded by more men than those two," Lupe said as they made for the main entrance.
"I'm not complaining," Remo growled.
Out in the circular driveway, they discovered why the lobby was empty. Everyone was out there-DFS agents and Nikko employees alike-standing in the broken glass and staring at a body.
Remo pushed through the crowds. A DFS officer pushed back. Without looking, Remo casually batted with the back of his hand. The agent's head jumped off his shoulders with a report like a mushy cannon shot and struck a nearby bronze horse.
That got the crowd's attention. They backed off with gape-mouthed respect.
Remo knelt beside the body. It was dressed in a blue DFS uniform. It was the one he had pitched out the window. "Damn!" he breathed.
Jumping to his feet, Remo raced through the crowd. Everywhere he went, a path was cleared for him. A few people panicked and ran off. There were no other bodies.
"I don't see the V. P. !" Remo called to Chiun. "Where is he?"
Officer Lupe Mazatl demanded the same question of the crowd. One of the DFS officers meekly replied, and she translated for Remo's benefit.
"He says there is only one body, that one."
"Well, I saw the Vice-President lying right here," Remo snapped. "He didn't just get up and walk away. "
Lupe put the question to the DFS agent.
"He says that they heard a crash of glass," she said, translating the man's voluable Spanish. "They came out and saw nothing but a man with a golf bag walking away."
Remo blinked. "Then what?"
"Then the DFS officer fell from the sky."
Remo looked to Chiun. "Is she translating it right?" he wanted to know.
The Master of Sinanju nodded. "The President of Vice got up and walked away. But it is not possible."
"Not possible?" Remo snorted. "It's ridiculous."
Officer Mazatl put in her two cents. " I have read that it is a great puzzle why your presidente picked that man to be his second."
"Yeah?" Remo said slowly.
"A man who can fall sixteen stories and walk away is a man. What we call mucho hombre. It is no wonder he was chosen."
Remo blinked some more. "That almost makes sense," he said.
"Enough," Chiun snapped. He turned to the DFS agent and rattled off a string of Spanish questions.
"He says our quarry walked in that direction, toward Chapultepec Park," Chiun translated.
Remo looked across the Paseo de la Reforma, where the thick green of the park shivered in the passing hurricane of traffic.
"Then we start our search there!" Remo said. "Come on!"
No one got in their way as they ran for the side street, Calzada Arquimedes, and to the Reforma.
They stood on the corner of Arquimedes and the Reforma, beside the glowering statue of Winston Churchill, who looked as if he were emerging from a mud slide. Comandante Odio's helicopter sat on a nearby traffic island, its rotors drooped.
The traffic was like a fast-moving wall that spewed noxious fumes in their faces.
Almost immediately, Remo became aware of the tight band encircling his head.
He looked to the Master of Sinanju.
"Oh-oh, I'm starting to feel woozy again," he said.
" I too," said Chiun.
"It is because you have been exerting yourselves," Lupe told them. "You must not run."
"We gotta," Remo said. "Finding the Vice-President is our responsibility. He's our only lead to the President. "
"If you faint, then, do not blame me," Lupe said flatly.
"Little Father?" Remo said.
Chiun lifted a wise finger. "We will not run," he announced. "But we will walk very fast."
"Maybe we'd better split up?" Remo suggested.
"Yes. We will take opposite sides of the street," Chiun said. " I will allow you to cross the traffic," he added.
"Thanks," Remo said dryly. "Let's try to maintain eye contact until one of us spots something. It's gonna take both of us to catch the Vice-President-especially in our present condition." Remo turned to Lupe. "Mind staying with him?"
"Of course not, I prefer it," Lupe said tartly.
Remo looked back and saw the orange-pipe footbridge. He used it to reach the other side of the Reforma.
Once there, Remo walked along the broad shady sidewalk, keeping pace with Chiun and Guadalupe on the other side.
On his side, Chapultepec Park was bound by an iron fence. As Remo walked, he noticed bushes sculptured into the shapes of animals-a ram, a llama, and a particularly joyful-looking hippopotamus-on the other side of the fence. A little farther on, he spied a miniature railroad through the thick foliage. Probably the children's section of the park, he concluded.
Through the trees beyond, Remo saw no sign of the Vice-President, who by all accounts should be lying in a pool of blood and glass back in front of the hotel.
He couldn't figure it out. What was the deal here? Like many Americans, Remo had been mystified by the selection of an obscure Hoosier senator to be elevated to the vice-presidency. There was obviously more to the man than anyone had thought, if today's events meant anything.
Maybe that was it, Remo thought. Maybe he was the President's secret weapon. This President had once considered shutting down CURE. But if that was the case, why, after rescuing him, had the Vice-President hidden the President?
Across the Reforma, the Master of Sinanju crossed a side street to a brick-paved park dominated by a tall bronze statue of a man in military uniform. Probably some Mexican general, Remo thought. He walked on.
He came to a huge wrought-iron gate. It was closed. Remo looked back to the other side of the Reforma, saw the Master of Sinanju stopped before the bronze statue, head cocked inquisitively, and waved. Chiun did not look in his direction. He seemed fascinated by the statue for some reason. Probably Lupe was explaining its historical importance.
"Great," he muttered. "We're only trying to rescue the President, and those two are playing tourist and native guide."
Remo hesitated. The thrum of traffic was like a wall of sound. No point in trying to yell. He decided to go over the fence, knowing that if the Vice-President had entered the park, every minute counted.
The Master of Sinanju walked slowly, deliberately. His magnificent lungs drew in empowering oxygen. The trouble was, it tasted like nitrogen coming in, and with each exhalation, Chiun felt as if he were venting precious life-giving oxygen.
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