The fear in the old prop airplane was palpable. He could smell it. It was a mix of adrenalin, perspiration, released urine-a combination of odours.
"Heads forward," commanded a black woman in yellow dashiki and high turban. The passengers looked forward. Remo walked up the aisle directly to the muzzle of the .50 calibre. It was pointed at his groin.
A man squatted behind the gun and the woman stood over him.
"Put down the bags," she ordered.
Remo lowered the bags.
"Close the door, Kareem," she yelled to the guard at the rear of the plane.
"Just a minute," said Remo. "You don't need these hostages."
The woman looked coldly at Remo. Her face was fatty but hard and her neck rolled in darkening thickness.
"Don't tell me what I need and don't need."
"You don't need seventy frightened people who might do something stupid. Not when you've got me and the pilot and the co-pilot,"
"And the stewardesses," she said. Her voice was clipped and her accent was Boston or New England.
"You don't need the stewardesses either. A hostage is a hostage. Anything more than that is baggage."
"You're very concerned with my problems," she said.
"I'd like to see the passengers and stewardesses out of a tense situation. I'm showing you why it's in your interest also."
The woman pondered a moment and Remo could see the quick sharp calculations begin in her eyes.
"Open the bags," she said.
Remo unsnapped both canvas bags and brought out two hands full of money. "Small unmarked bills," he said.
"Put them back. You're not as good a hostage as seventy people."
"I think so. I'm vice president of the First Trust Company of Los Angeles," said Remo nodding to the markers on the canvas bags. "You know what we capitalists think of bankers."
A cold smile crossed the woman's face.
"You don't look like a banker."
"You don't look like a terrorist"
"You'll be the first to die if anything goes wrong," she said and then, waving to the back of the plane, barked an order. "Kareem, open the door."
She did not announce to the passengers that they would be freed, but told the rows closest to her to stand, then waved them to the rear of the plane. Shrewd enough to avoid panic, Remo thought. The plane emptied in less than three minutes. A young black boy wanted to return to his seat to get his toy fire engine, but his mother tugged him along angrily.
"Let him take his engine," said the woman in the dashiki.
One of the stewardesses refused to leave. "I'm not leaving until the pilots leave," she said.
"You're leaving," said the woman in dashiki, then Kareem grabbed the pale neck and flung her down the aisle and out the door. He shut it behind her.
The woman knocked on the cabin door. It opened, and a small black man with a large forehead and metal rimmed eyeglasses poked his head out Remo saw the tip of a .357 Magnum.
"You people wouldn't happen to have any elephants on board this thing, would you?" said Remo.
"Who is that?" asked the man with the Magnum.
"A banker. Our hostage. We have the money. We can go now. How is fuel?"
"Fuel's adequate," said the pistol-wielder.
"Okay, let's move it," said the woman.
The engines revved up and Remo felt the plane gather power for the takeoff.
"Do I stand here or may I sit?"
"Stand," said the woman.
"If the plane jerks, I could lose my balls."
"We're willing to take that risk."
"If you're willing to parachute with your bodies, why should you care about mine, right?" asked Remo.
The woman's face remained cold. "What makes you think we're going to parachute?"
"Your fuel. This is a prop job. You would have grabbed a jet if you were going out of the country. So you're going back east, I guess. The plane wouldn't go too far. Just for guesses, I'd say you're headed for somewhere mid-American, cause that's a good middle point, and for the sake of a good parachute escape, I'd say some very desolate or woody place where you're not going to land on Main Street."
"You're not a banker, are you?" asked the woman.
Remo shrugged.
"I hope you'll do as a hostage. For your sake," she said.
"You're pretty arrogant for a corpse," said Remo and when the plane reached four thousand feet, he smiled at the machine gunner.
"Guess what?" he said.
"What?" said the machine gunner.
"You lose," said Remo and came down with his pinkies, shattering the machine gunner's wrists. The black head came forward and Remo clapped flat hands against eardrums, creating skull pressure like a concussion grenade. The eyes bulged and were blank in death.
It happened so quickly, the dashiki-clad woman barely got a hand on a pistol inside her garment. Remo squeezed the wrist and hoisted her, hand under butt like a bag of groceries, and used her as a chest-high shield as he dashed down toward the rear of the plane where Kareem was trying to get a clear shot. Instead, he got the woman, full face, bodies colliding with a whoomph against the lavatory door.
Up front the cockpit door opened and Remo snatched his human shield again for another run. This time, he did not hurl her hefty unconscious body into the gunman, but moved forward around her just as he reached the cockpit door. A downward hand chop and the pistol fell harmlessly to the carpeted aisle, and the man tumbled over the dead machine gunner. The barrel of the .50 calibre pointed harmlessly to the ceiling.
"You guys okay in there?" Remo yelled into the cockpit
"Yeah, what happened?" said the pilot turning around.
Remo moved him face away from the door so the pilot could not see him. "Nothing," he said. "The plane is secured."
"We can head back to L.A. then?"
"Not yet. Better give me ten minutes of air-time, and then head back. I've got some talking to do. And stay off the radio for a few minutes." Remo reached over the two male bodies and shut the cabin door.
He hauled the dashiki-clad woman and the pistol wielder down the aisle, like baggage, to Kareems who was regaining consciousness. With cups of water splashed on them, they all woke up. The pistol-wielder groaned when he tried to move his right hand.
"Wha happened?" said Kareem.
The three hijackers sat, rump on aisle, back to lavatory door.
"We're going to play a game," said Remo. "It's called Truth or Consequences. I ask you questions and you answer them right or you pay the consequences."
"I demand a lawyer. I know my constitutional rights," snapped the dashiki-clad woman.
"Well, there's a little problem with that," Remo said. "Because of people like you, our government has an agency that works outside the Constitution. This agency employs one of the meanest sons of bitches you are ever going to meet He wasn't trained in legal technicalities. In fact, he only follows the law of the jungle."
"And that's you, honky, right?" said the woman.
"Well, let me warn you, you try any of your police brutality and they'll be a picket line from here to Washington looking for your ass. You hear me, honky. Looking for your ass."
Remo smiled and with a fluid move of him right hand, shattered her raised kneecap.
"Aaargfa," screamed the woman, grabbing for her knee.
"That's my introduction. I'm the mean son of a bitch. Now for your names, folks. Believe me. After this, you'll welcome police brutality."
"Kahlala Waled," said the woman, her face screwed in pain.
"Your real name."
"That is my real name."
"You've got another knee."
"Leronia Smith."
"All right. Good. Now you, Kareem."
"Tyrone Jackson."
"And you?" said Remo to the man who had held the cockpit
"Mustafa El Faquar."
"Let's try again," said Remo.
"Mustafa El Faquar."
"No. Not the game of t
he guy who sold your great grandpa to the slave traders. Your name."
"Mustafa El Faquar."
Remo shrugged. So be it. He caught the man by the fold in his neck and hoisting him off his backside dragged him the two steps to the door. With him left hand, he snapped open the plane door. A wind gust slapped his face. The pistol-wielder's dashiki fluttered like a flag amok.
"Okay, Mustafa. Why don't you think about it on the way to the street?"
"You wouldn't throw me out. You full of shit."
"What do I have to do," Remo said, "to convince you people I'm not your friendly police community relations team?"
"You bluffing, whitey."
"Goodbye, sweetheart," said Remo and flipped the neck into the wind. The body followed and disappeared without even the scream catching up to the open door.
Kahlala Waled and Kareem suddenly realized they had not been oppressed for three hundred years, and began to think of Remo as a friend. Really a friend. They hadn't even wanted to do the hijacking. They were just led astray.
"Thass right, astray," said Tyrone Jackson, alias Kareem.
Who led them astray?
A radical. A real rotten mother. Did they wish they had him here now. Would they tell him a thing or two. Kahlala and Kareem loved America. Loved people of all races. Loved mankind. Martin Luther King had the right idea.
"You're right," Remo said. "I could never handle a Martin Luther King. But you two are right up my alley. Now what is the name of your leader and where did you get your training?"
They didn't know his name, but the training was at Patton College, near Seneca Falls, New York.
"Come on now, who trained you?"
"We never saw him. Honest," said Tyrone.
Remo believed him. He believed Tyrone because those were the last words on Tyrone's lips all the way to the door and through it.
"All right, ma'am," said Remo. "Give me a fast rundown on your training, how many months, what methods."
"An afternoon," said the woman. Her eyes were tearing from the pain in her knee.
"Let me pay you a compliment. You're too good for an afternoon. Too damned good. Now, let's try again."
"I swear. An afternoon. You're not going to kill me, are you?"
"Of course I am," said Remo.
"Then you go screw, you honky bastard."
Remo said goodbye to the woman and ushered her to the door, shutting it behind her wind-whipped robes. She had vanished into a cloud, when Remo snapped him fingers in annoyance. Damn. He had forgotten to ask them. How had they smuggled the weapons aboard the plane? Smith would be sure to ask him that. Damn and double damn.
Remo went to the cockpit and told the pilot to return to Los Angeles. At the airport, a team of radical lawyers were waiting for their clients. Remo told Agent Peterson, the first man to board the plane, that the lawyers should have left their briefcases at home and brought sponges instead. The parachutists tried to escape, he explained, and their chutes failed to open. Remo vanished into the crowd, and the next day, when Peterson told a superior that a man from Washington headquarters had killed the Hijackers, he was brought up on quiet departmental charges. Washington, an agency spokesman said, had never sent any such man. Peterson would face a departmental hearing. Privately, he was assured that he would face nothing worse than ten years in Anchorage.
CHAPTER FOUR
Remo turned the Rolls off the Palisades Parkway onto the New York Thruway. He had driven from the coast nonstop and non-sleep, the last thousand miles of which were accompanied by Chiun's complaints. They ceased only when the daytime serials began. Chiun sat in the back seat with his portable television rig. With Remo's driving up front, it made it seem as if he were now the chauffeur for the Master of Sinanju. The problem was Barbra Streisand.
When Chiun had heard Seneca Falls was in New York State, he had asked:
"Is that near Brooklyn?"
"No, it's not near Brooklyn."
"But it is in the same province."
"At opposite ends."
"We will pass Brooklyn on our way to Seneca Falls, correct?"
"Not exactly. It's out of our way."
"A little stop in Brooklyn would not be so awesome a task for a 'not-exactly.'"
"What's in Brooklyn, Chiun?" Remo had asked.
"I wish to visit the monument to Barbra Streisand who was born there."
"I don't think there is a monument in Brooklyn to Barbra Streisand."
Chiun looked up, puzzled.
"You have a Washington Monument, correct?"
"Yeah," said Remo.
"And a Lincoln Memorial?"
"Yeah."
"You have a Columbus Circle?"
"Yeah."
"Then let us visit the Streisand monument, for surely if Americans could honour a lecher, a failure and a navigator who got lost, they must mark the birthplace of one of their most beautiful souls."
"Chiun. Barbra Streisand is not a national hero."
"And that is the sort of country you think worth saving?" asked Chiun. He had been silent since Youngstown, Ohio, when "As the Planet Revolves" came on. Remo could have sworn that the plot never changed, not even the point in the plot that he had overheard the year before in Miami when Dr. Ramsey Duncan feared telling Rebecca Wentworth that her stepfather, William Vogelman, the discoverer of a cure for malnutrition among the Auca Indians, was not her stepfather at all but the lover of her half-sister who had threatened suicide. Zipping out of Youngstown one year later, Remo heard the television set in the back seat disclose that Dr. Duncan was still pondering whether to tell Rebecca about her stepfather.
But now, in New York State, the soap operas were ended and Chiun was sitting silently in the back seat, his eyes closed.
Dr. Smith had wanted Remo to fly to Fatten College, but Remo feared being seen at any airport. The news was full of the mystery-man imposter who had boarded the plane and perhaps even pushed them to their deaths, and while the cameras only got the back of Remo's head, and the artist's sketches were no closer to his looks than the cover of a paperback book, all airports were very much aware of a six-foot man with dark eyes and thick wrists.
Smith had continued his strange excitability concerning this terrorist thing-Dr. Harold W. Smith, who had been chosen a decade or more before to head CURE because of his integrity and stability.
Smith had flown out to Los Angeles to brief Remo personally again, knowing full well that each meeting was a risk to CURE'S almost sacred cover.
"We can get you to Pattern College tonight. Navy Phantom. Less than three hours from coast to coast," Smith had said.
"With the whole country associating air and the mystery man? Suppose someone gets word of a guy looking like me getting taken for a ride in a Navy jet? C'mon, Smitty. What's the matter with you?"
"You don't know how urgent this is, Remo."
"All the more reason to be careful and proper and competent"
"You're beginning to sound like Chuin now," Smith said.
"I'm beginning to sound like you used to sound."
"You've got to smash them now, Remo. Now."
"I'll get them, and I'll get them right. Now relax."
"The international conference on terrorism is scheduled for New York next week. We can't allow this force to be in existence by then. Do you understand? Do you really understand what's involved?"
"Yes," said Remo. "We're up against it."
"Right," said Smith, and suddenly him lemon face flushed maroon.
"Are you all right?" Remo asked softly.
"Yes, yes. I'm fine. Fine. Perfectly all right"
"Can I get you a glass of water?"
"No. I'm all right."
That had been two days and a few thousand miles ago and Remo was still worried about Smith, not that he cared really about the man's well-being. Rather, Smith uncorked was like a violation of the universe as Remo knew it Smith knew what the job could do to him, and Remo knew what his own waiting due-bill was. Still, to see Smith l
ike that, well.....
Remo slowed the Rolls to pick up an entrance ticket at the toll booth. The late afternoon sun cast a reddish glow over the foothills around them. Only the smoggy
pollution of the air reminded Remo they were still near a major city.
"We have passed Brooklyn," said Chiun as Remo sped into the center lane.
"Yes."
"It would have been nice to see the street where she was born."
"Streisand?"
"Yes. It would have been a blessed relief for a poor aging benefactor who has given so much to so unworthy a recipient"
"Well, we're not going back to Brooklyn, Chiun."
"I know," said Chiun sadly. "I know that Brooklyn would be out of your way. It would be an inconvenience. And who am I to cause you any inconvenience, no matter how my heart longs for a bit of pleasure? After all, I am only the man who has transformed worthless cow dung into...."
"Yes," said Remo, attentive now, awaiting praise.
". . . into something barely adequate," said Chiun. "In this world, there is no reward for excellence, for perfection. What a man gives, he gives, and from the ungrateful it never comes back."
"We're not going to Brooklyn, Chiun."
"I know that, Remo. Because I know you."
On that, Remo knew he must avoid getting close to other cars. When piqued, Chiun had a habit of taking vengeance on passing vehicles. him long nailed hands would flick out the car window and snip an aerial or a rear view mirror off a passing car. Then Chiun would smile and wave at the driver.
Remo felt the wind at the back of his neck and knew Chiun was readying his game. Remo managed to save a Volkswagen and a Buick but failed on a beige Cadillac Brougham whose driver waved back pleasantly with a smile. This robbed Chiun of his pleasure and Remo felt the wind cease on his neck. The window was up.
"Little Father," said Remo seriously, "I am worried. I am worried about Smith."
"It is a good thing to put one's mind to the wellbeing of an employer. But not to worry. To understand."
"I think Smith is losing bis balance and I don't know what to do about it,"
"The only thing you can do, my son. Your craft, taught to you as it was taught to me. Practice your calling."
"But... ."
"But this and but that. There is always a but to excuse a foolish move. You have one thing that you do better than any white man. You are not skilled in diplomacy or the civil service, nor can you lead hundreds of men. You are an assassin. Be satisfied with that. For if you fail in that, you fail in all things."
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