The rifle barrels were poked between the men, as if to separate them. The pair argued on, unconcerned.
Then the rifles were used to prod the two arguing ones.
Hands so fast they left no blurs in the night air rendered the weapons useless.
This was how Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla saw it:
The rifle muzzles were poked forward.
They never touched the bodies they were intended to prod. Instead his soldiers jumped back, as if startled by the unexpected sound that came from their muzzles.
It was not an explosive sound. Not even the click of chambers being charged.
The sound was more of a runk! Like a steel goose honking in the night.
The sound was what made his soldiers recoil, weapons coming up in their hands. The right-angle bend in their barrels was what made their eyes go round in their heads.
Leopoldo Zorilla changed his mind again. These men, for all their odd appearance and odder behavior, were highly trained professionals. He had never seen the likes of them before.
Wordlessly, he signaled his soldados to break up the argument.
The men, who were left clutching maimed weapons, startled expressions making their faces clownlike, retreated as the replacements came in.
Runk!
These too, stepped back, as if they had poked their barrels into the whirling blades of the most powerful fan ever constructed. But there was no fan. The pair seemed not to touch the weapons at any time. They merely used their hands to gesticulate angrily at one another. At no time did they appear to reach out and actually touch the rifle barrels. But this was the only explanation, that they were using their hands to create this wonder.
It is either that, Zorilla concluded, or they are protected by personal force-fields.
The thought, wild as it was, intrigued Leopoldo Zorilla. He lifted his open and weaponless fingers and inched them toward the Anglo named Remo, as if he were an electrician approaching a possibly live wire.
He received a shock that was no different.
It was not electrical in nature, but his fingers stung very suddenly. Zorilla withdrew them and looked at his fingertips.
The nails were already turning black, the way they had once when he had tried to fix a broken window in his Santiago de Cuba comandancia.
The upper casement had slammed down, catching the tips of his fingers. Within days the nails had blackened, eventually to fall off, leaving a black, gritty substance resembling crushed coal that was probably dried, trapped blood.
The pain this time was not nearly as intense, but the fingernails were already blackening and Zorilla felt them go numb.
"Are you injured, Comandante?" a corporal asked worriedly.
"Silence these two!" Zorilla ordered, a slow-traveling pain moving from the area of numbness up his arm and to his central nervous system. It was like a delayed pain. It shot through his muscles suddenly, and his teeth clamped down so hard he distinctly heard a bicuspid break.
This time, his soldados went to work in earnest. They brought the butts of their rifles around and prepared to club the still arguing pair apart.
This, apparently, was enough to make the pair notice that they were under attack.
This time, Zorilla could see their hands at work. Their feet as well. Kneecaps cracked like seashells. Fingers were bent backward, against the natural flex of the knuckle. Men were flying. Rifles cartwheeled from nerveless hands.
In seconds, the cream of his New Cuban Army was standing about as he: clutching injured members, or squirming in the dirt, weaponless and conquered.
The Anglo said, "Our information is that Uncle Sam has nothing to do with this little boot camp here."
"Your information is wrong," Zorilla muttered through pain-tightened teeth. A bloody chunk of tooth enamel dribbled from his mouth.
"What do you think, Chiun?" the Anglo asked the Asian.
"You have asked the question wrongly," said the Asian named Chiun.
And the Asian proceeded to ask the question in a unique manner.
He said not a word. He used the long, spidery nails of his right hand, which gleamed like curled ivory. He took Zorilla by the point of his chin and, neither exerting obvious pressure nor inflicting additional pain-not that any was needed-used that chin as a handle to bring Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla to his knees in the dirt like an effeminate maricon.
"You command this ragtag army?" he demanded.
"I do," Zorilla admitted through his teeth.
"And who commands you?"
"Uncle Sam."
"Liar!"
"I swear it is the truth! I serve Uncle Sam!"
"Satisfied?" the one called Remo asked.
"Pah!" said the one called Chiun. "We have been sent on a wild weasel quest."
"Wild goose chase, and right about now I think discretion would be the better part of valor."
"Meaning?"
"We'd better check with Smith."
"Who is Smith?" asked Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla, at the exact moment before the lights went out and he knew no more.
Chapter 9
Harold Smith was very close to falling asleep.
National security depended upon Harold Smith's remaining awake, alert, and in contact with the developing situation. Yet he found himself nodding off.
It was night over Long Island Sound. The moon was high and full, and its silver effulgence washed the dark pimpled water like a luminous bleach.
The light poured through the one-way picture window behind his Folcroft desk. It was made of one-way glass so that no one could look in on the office, over Smith's shoulder, and read the computer screen that often displayed the deepest secrets of America.
The overhead lights were fluorescent, and shook the air.
Except for the medical staff and security guards, Folcroft slept. Only Smith, in the administrative wing, was working.
He was at his desk. The CURE terminal was up and running. On a corner of the pathologically neat desk sat a tiny black-and-white television set. It was turned to a network channel.
The bearded face of El Lider animated the screen. Smith had the sound turned up. Still, even with the sound of that raging voice, he could barely keep his eyes open.
"Does that man ever stop?" he complained, catching himself nod off for the fifteenth time.
The situation in Washington remained tense. After the MIG interception over the Gulf of Mexico, there had been nothing from the President. Smith continued to watch the seemingly endless Castro speech. The networks, having been overwhelmed in South Florida by the more powerful signal from Havana, had made matters worse by repeating the signal to affiliates all over the nation, with a running translation at the bottom. It was certain to heighten tensions, but nothing could be done about it.
No doubt, Harold Smith reflected as he put eye drops into his bleary gray eyes in an attempt to keep them open, the President was working the phones in an effort to convince the networks to downplay the interruption of regular programming.
In the meantime, it was all Smith could do to stay awake. For all his bluster, Castro and his tirade were having a soporific effect on him. But he dared not shut off the set while there was a possibility the networks would break in with an important bulletin.
So, while the Maximum Leader of Cuba ranted on about the Cuban people being willing to eat their shoes and pick their teeth with the nails rather than turn away from Socialism, Harold Smith continued to monitor his computer, waiting for word from Remo and Chiun.
It came when the blue contact telephone began ringing.
"Yes, Remo," Smith said, replacing his rimless glasses.
"We got a problem, Smitty."
A surge of adrenaline perked Harold Smith up in his cracked leather executive's chair.
"What is it?" Smith asked, his voice lemon-bitter.
"We found Zorilla. All tricked out in his soldier suit, ramrodding a paramilitary outfit in the Big Cypress Swamp."