The Master of Sinanju tapped the slender fingertips of one hand to the dashboard. Annoyed, Remo glanced ahead.
The road from Tyre had taken them to Nahal Litani, a river northeast of the port city.
Settlements like border towns in an old Western grew among the trees alongside the road. They had just reached a sprawling collection of simple tenements and flat houses.
Using the directions given to them by the restaurant owner, they located the headquarters of the PIO. When they arrived at the dilapidated building, there were already several vehicles, mostly trucks and jeeps, parked in front. Angry men with coarse beards, automatic rifles and sloppy military garb stomped around the vehicles.
"Front door or back?" Remo asked, eyeing the men as he slowed the car. The men, in turn, looked on them with shock.
"This is Lebanon." Chiun shrugged. "Neither is safe."
"Front door it is."
Remo parked the Buick next to a jeep. The Arabs were like jackals on a carcass. The Buick was surrounded before he even shut off the engine.
Rifle barrels jammed through open windows. Wild eyes glared hatred at the two obvious foreigners. As he stabbed his gun muzzle against Remo's chest, the closest man let out a furious torrent of unintelligible Arabic.
Remo looked blandly from gun to Chiun. "What's he saying?" he asked.
"He wishes us to get out of the car," the Master of Sinanju replied. He was looking disdainfully at the multiple gun barrels jutting through his own window.
"You still in an accommodating mood, Little Father?"
The old man's nod was so subtle only Remo saw it. It was all Remo needed.
Remo's hand flew to the door handle. At the same time, Chiun's bony fingers flashed forward. They popped their respective handles simultaneously.
Doors flew open at speeds nearing Mach 2. Metal slammed flesh with meaty slaps. PIO soldiers were launched from the sides of the Buick like scattered seeds. Before the bodies struck dust, Remo and Chiun were already springing through the open doors.
The doors had taken out a total of seven men. They hadn't even crumpled to the ground before another thirty were flooding in to fill the void.
Automatics exploded to life, riddling the Buick with bullets. Tires erupted in coughs of dust and rubber.
Even as the old car was settling like a deflated balloon to the ground, Remo and Chiun were swirling into the midst of the furious PIO soldiers.
Remo snagged two kaffiyehs, one in each hand, yanking them together in a simple forearm snap. Skulls cracked open, popping squishy clumps of fat gray brain into the crystal-clear Mideast sky.
On the other side of the car, the Master of Sinanju's hand flashed up to the barrel of an extended rifle. A push popped the gun free of its owner. Unfortunately for the PIO soldier, his arm popped loose, too.
The rifle soared back, arm in tow. The gun became a missile unto itself as it pierced the chest of another PIO man. Shedding the excess baggage of its human appendage, the rifle continued straight through the soldier. It screamed in and out another advancing man before coming to a quivering stop in a third.
As the three men fell to the dust, Chiun was finishing off the original one-armed soldier with a sharp toe to the forehead. It had happened so quickly, the PIO man hadn't had time to mourn the loss of his arm before the blackness of oblivion overcame him.
Spinning from the body, Chiun whirled into the thickest cluster of men, catching up to Remo at the front of the car.
A mound of bodies decorated the ground at Remo's feet. Though their weapons were raised, the PIO soldiers seemed hesitant to use their guns in such close quarters.
"How many you get?" Remo asked Chiun as he worked.
The Master of Sinanju sprang off the ground, twisting in midair. Pipe-stem legs swirled into the throng of armed men. Two heads snapped around with brittle spine cracks.
"Six," he announced, kimono skirts settling around his ankles.
"You're slowing down," Remo chided. "I'm up to nine."
As he spoke, he launched an elbow back, catching a PIO soldier in the Adam's apple. When the man fell, clutching his throat, a heel kick collapsed his face into an angry smear of crimson.
"That is because I allowed you to work without distraction," Chiun retorted.
Sharpened fingernails slashed forward, ripping the throats from a pair of soldiers. Even as the first men were dropping, the old Korean threw his hands out to either side, catching two charging men in the chest. They stopped dead, quivering on the ends of extended index fingernails. When he pulled the nails away, the men collapsed.
The rest had gotten the message by now. The tattered remnants of the small PIO platoon decided to disperse. Abandoning their cars, they opted to leave on foot. Obviously, they thought screaming would somehow accelerate their pace. A theory not entirely unjustified given the speed at which they were flying down the street. They waved hands over heads as they shrieked.
"We're even," Remo announced, coming up beside Chiun. "Ten for you and ten for me."
A tie was apparently not good enough for the Master of Sinanju. Bending quickly, he wrapped one bony hand around the bumper of their Buick. With a painful wrench, he tore it free and hefted the heavy, rusted strip of metal high above his head. With a whoosh, it vanished from his fingertips.
Remo tracked the bumper as it flew end-over-end down the sun-cracked street. It soared only twenty yards before it lopped off the head of one of the fleeing PIO men. The body continued to run a few more steps as the head and bumper thudded to the road.
After brushing a cloud of imaginary dust from his palms, Chiun replaced his hands inside his kimono sleeves. He smiled triumphantly at Remo. "I win," he proclaimed.
"We'll settle up later," Remo said. "Let's go." On the way inside the building, they found a crumpled body lying facedown in the dirt. Remo toed it over.
Ree Hop Doe's glasses were askew, but his Asian features were unmistakable.
Remo's thoughts at once turned to the former President. "I smell a Los Alamos rat," he commented thinly as they viewed the body.
Leaving Doe to the desert sun, he pushed open the door.
There were PIO men inside, as well. These ones seemed to be more high-ranking than the corpses outside. Instead of rifles, they wore side arms. Once Chiun had liberated a few arms from a few sides, the initial anger they had displayed at the sudden appearance of the two men was replaced with intense agreeability. All around were nervous smiles.
"Where's Aruch?" Remo demanded of the man with the biggest epaulets.
Like the rest of the PIO membership, he wore a scruffy beard and fatigues.
"Gone." The man grinned, sweating. "Did he take the bomb with him?"
The PIO soldier nodded. Terrified eyes darted beyond Remo to the pile of arms the Master of Sinanju had stacked near the door. The old Korean stood impassive beside them.
"Dammit," Remo growled. "Where'd he go?"
"Israel."
"Where in Israel?"
"I do not know."
"Chiun, this guy wants to shake hands." The Master of Sinanju took a step forward.
"I swear I do not know!" the man begged. Remo frowned. The PIO soldier was telling the truth.
"What about the President? He take him with him?"
"No," the soldier said. "The old devil is loose."
"What do you mean loose?" Remo demanded. "Where is he?"
"He escaped. Two men were killed."
Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Where did he go?" he snapped.
"I do not know," the PIO man replied. His pleading eyes showed how hard he was straining to be helpful. "He left not long after Chairman Aruch. With his dying breath, one of the men he attacked said that he was going off in the same direction as our beloved leader."
"Perfect," Remo snarled.
With an angry slap, he smacked his palm into the man's forehead. Twin geysers of blood spurted from the soldier's ears. Spine snapping audibly, he folded back over Nossur Aruc
h's desk at a perfect right angle. Remo wheeled on the others, furious fire burning in his eyes.
"Get outta here," he ordered.
Rats escaping a burning building could not have fled faster. Using door and windows, the remaining PIO men dove out into sunlight. Remo followed.
"We better hurry, Little Father," he said tightly.
"We do not know where to hurry to," the Master of Sinanju noted as he trailed Remo out the door.
"Doesn't matter," Remo said gravely. "We've got a President as old as George Washington's grampa out trying to fight the bad guys, and a bomb that's about to melt every gun from here to Damascus." His face was dark. "We'd better drive like hell until we find one or the other."
The brittle door swung slowly shut behind them.
Chapter 27
The ground had been broken on the planned Israeli settlement during the tenure of the previous prime minister. Houses had not yet been built, but the plans had been laid out for the tiny Jewish community just outside Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem, in the mostly Arab West Bank.
Protests against the planned construction had been ongoing, some violent. Although the new Israeli government was wavering, its citizens who had bought the land were not. The land would be settled. It was just a matter of time.
Nossur Aruch had other plans.
"This is perfect," the PIO leader announced to Fatang as his car crested a stone-covered hill. "Stop here."
The three PIO trucks trailing the big sedan came to squeaking stops along the hillside road.
Aruch didn't wait for his phalanx of bodyguards to run up the hill and surround him. He jumped excitedly from his car, hurrying to the lead truck.
Bryce Babcock got out after Aruch, his drooping face hanging in fleshy sheets of fear. With great reluctance, he trailed the terrorist down the hill. By the time the interior secretary caught up with the PIO leader, Aruch was already overseeing the unloading of the neutrino bomb from the rear of the truck.
"Careful!" Nossur lisped angrily. "Do not damage it."
When the men finally slipped the bomb from the shadows in the rear of the truck, Babcock saw that the timer was down to twenty-seven minutes.
Like an anxious child, the interior secretary tugged at the back of Aruch's sleeve.
"Uh, we should hurry," the secretary suggested.
"We are, we are!" Aruch snapped. "Get out of the way!"
Shaking Babcock away, the PIO head herded his men up the hill. They huffed beneath the weight of their heavy burden.
The Jewish settlement was to be built at the hill's plateau. String tied to posts that had been driven into the rocky ground indicated where the future foundations would be. Aruch brought his men through the field of scrubby green brush and white-and-gray boulders to the very heart of the future development. Snapping the string with a thick boot heel, he ushered the men into the living room of a home that would never be built.
"There," he ordered, pointing. "That flat rock." Aruch climbed down to his knees, helping the men balance the bomb on the rock. Babcock grew more ill when he looked at the timer. Four more minutes had drained away.
"A statement to those who would steal Palestinian land," Aruch was saying to his men. "If only this area was inhabited..." There was disappointment in his wet eyes.
"Would you like a Kleenex, sir?" Fatang asked quietly.
"Hurry," Babcock pressed.
This time, Aruch didn't resist. When the PIO leader got to his feet, the interior secretary's relief was obvious. With one last longing glance at the neutrino bomb, Aruch led the charge back to the waiting cars.
When they cleared the edge of the flat hilltop, a vision more terrifying than an endangered condoregg omelet greeted Bryce Babcock.
Down the slope, an Israeli convoy had parked behind the PIO vehicles. Curiosity had led them to investigate, but when the armed PIO contingent burst into view, the spark of alarm charged through the Israeli forces.
"Halt!" an Israeli colonel shouted. He raised his Uzi the instant the PIO soldiers appeared atop the hill. His men followed suit.
The PIO soldiers skidded to a stop, reflexively aiming their weapons down the hill.
"We don't have time for this," Babcock warned Aruch.
The PIO leader's eyes darted from the Israeli soldiers to his own men. The Palestinians didn't look at their leader. Their collective gaze was fixed on the hated soldiers below.
For a moment suspended in time, nothing happened. Tension in the Mexican standoff grew to a pounding drum of fear in Bryce Babcock's ears. All at once, the head of the Palestine Independence Organization drew in a deep breath. When he spoke, he did so loudly and clearly, so there would be no misinterpreting his meaning.
"Fire!" Nossur Aruch screamed, wild-eyed, at his men.
And as the PIO leader and the American interior secretary dove for cover, the peaceful, rock-strewn hillside erupted in gunfire.
REMO HAD STOLEN a PIO pickup to replace his crippled Buick. The truck flew south.
Keeping the gas pedal flat to the floor, Remo drove like mad for the Israel border. He prayed Nossur Aruch wasn't taking the scenic route to the Jewish State.
At speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, they reached the border in less than fifteen minutes. The soldiers on the Lebanon side wished to detain them. Two foreign nationals driving in what was likely a stolen Lebanese truck cried out for arrest. Remo convinced them to look the other way by breaking all their noses. Faces gushing blood, they waved the two men through.
"Has Nossur Aruch been through here?" Remo asked on the other side as the young Israeli border guard checked his and Chiun's phony passports. The guard was all of eighteen years old.
"He passed through a few minutes ago," the soldier replied.
"Did you search his car?" Remo asked, shocked. He hoped Aruch hadn't ditched the neutrino bomb somewhere.
The soldier looked up, his face bland. "There were four vehicles in his motorcade. We let them all go without inspection."
"Are you nuts?" Remo asked. "The guy's a terrorist."
"We have standing orders from the new government. We are not to create an incident with him."
"What if I told you he plans to blow up your country?" Remo snapped.
"He would have to get in line," the soldier said, not even looking up. He handed back Remo's and Chiun's passports. "You may proceed."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Remo muttered. As the soldier headed back to his shack, Remo stuck his head out the window. "You at least have any idea where he might have gone?" he called.
The soldier shrugged as he walked. "He has an office in Hebron. In the West Bank."
"You know where that is, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju.
"Yes," Chiun replied, bored.
Remo gunned the engine. As they sped past the guard shack, he yelled, "And if you see a mushroom cloud, I'd suggest you duck and cover."
They raced down the road into Israel.
BRYCE BABCOCK FELT like one of the precious crocodiles his department had released in a downtown Kansas City park back in '97. They'd been shot at, too.
Bullets zinged all around.
The Israeli soldiers fired relentlessly, unleashing efficient, controlled bursts from their Uzis. The PIO's return fire was sloppy and impassioned.
Bullets whizzed crazily in every direction above the interior secretary's head.
Babcock and Aruch had taken cover behind a pear-shaped boulder. Endless ricochets sang off the rock. Chunks of stone and clouds of pebbly dust pelted their heads and backs.
The PIO leader had deliberately not unholstered his side arm. If push came to shove and his side lost, he intended to claim that his men had gone trigger-happy at the sight of the Israeli soldiers. He could probably make it stick. The current government in Jerusalem had already signaled great willingness to accept every cock-and-bull story Aruch pitched at them.
Beside the PIO chairman, Bryce Babcock was shaking visibly.
"We can't stay
this close to the bomb!" Babcock screamed over the gunfire, his fingers stuffed in his ears.
Uninterested, the Arab brushed dust from his kaffiyeh.
"Your colleague said it had a short range. This will be over soon. We are safe."
"No, we're not!" Babcock cried. "There could be a radiation-leakage problem before the bomb even goes off! It has a plutonium charge. If the shell gets pierced by a bullet while we're still in range, we could all end up with radiation poisoning!"
"I had not thought of that." Aruch frowned. "I suppose we could attempt escape."
To Bryce Babcock, sweeter words had never been spoken.
"How?" the interior secretary pleaded.
Aruch considered. "My car," he said finally. "It is closer than the trucks."
With saucering eyes, Babcock peeked around the side of the boulder. When he dropped back down beside Aruch, he was shaking his head violently.
"That's got to be a city block away," he said.
"An eighth of a mile. Perhaps a little less," Aruch said, reluctantly unholstering his handgun. As he was rising to a squat, Babcock grabbed his arm.
"We'll both be killed," the secretary whined.
Aruch's smile was thin. "Do you know how to drive?" he asked, cocking his automatic with calm assurance.
"Yes," Babcock admitted, momentarily confused.
"In that case, do not talk. Run."
With that, Nossur Aruch ran out from behind the rock. Keeping low, he raced for his big bulletproof car. Bullets screamed all around him.
Babcock gasped. He had no desire to follow, but he was more terrified of dying alone. Shaking in fear, he made an instant, albeit reluctant decision. Jumping out from behind the rock, he followed the terrorist at a gallop through the deadly cross fire.
REMO ASKED the first Arab they passed if he had seen Nossur Aruch. The scowl that appeared on the old man's face told Remo that he had.
"The traitor took the road to Nablus," the man snarled, spitting on the ground. It seemed to be a common Arab reaction to Aruch's name. "He thinks we do not know him in his bulletproof car."
The man was leading a rag-covered donkey down the lonely road. From his stolen truck, Remo observed silently that his style of dress and the beast of burden trailing behind him were a passport to another time. The man could have been transported to the same road two thousand years before and not attracted one second's worth of attention.
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