A speeding truck with a set of bullet-pocked air-stairs scooted out from a hangar and ran parallel to the open door.
"I demand this craft halt and I be allowed to leave it with the dignity befitting my station," Chiun told the stewardess in charge.
"It would be suicide to stop," the stewardess said.
"Come on, little Father," said Remo, hanging in the door frame. "Shake a leg."
The stewardess tried to pull Remo back in with her gold-painted nails. "No, please do not go. It would be suicide."
"Why are you okay with him getting off and not me?" Remo wondered, indicating the Master of Sinanju.
"He is old and will die soon. You are full of youth and brimming with sperm."
"Sperm?"
"Your sperm is important to us,"
"Check with me on the ride back," said Remo, jumping off and onto the rattly top step of the speeding air-stairs.
The Master of Sinanju floated off and joined him. There were no other passengers.
The truck careered toward the terminal and came to a brief stop at the gaping hole where the jetway ramp used to be before a mortar barrage had taken it out. It still smoked a little in the brassy midday sun.
Remo and Chiun stepped across the gap and entered the refugee-choked terminal. On the tarmac the jet screamed back into the sky with tracers chasing it.
There were no taxicabs waiting outside, but there was a line of scarred and bullet-pocked camels.
Chiun walked up to the man who seemed to be in charge of the camels and began conversing with him in fluent Swahili.
"I am not riding any camel," Remo called over. Chiun continued his haggling. Hot words were exchanged, and the argument might have gone on two or three hours except one camel expectorated on the Master of Sinanju's sandals.
Emitting an offended scream, Chiun began walking in circles, alternately pointing at the offending camel, at the offending camel's owner and at the offending camel again, his squeaky voice escalating into fulsome shrieks.
Chiun came back leading the offending camel by a thick rope. "We have a steed," he announced.
"No, you have a spitting camel."
The camel obligingly backed up Remo's statement by spitting rudely in the dust of Nogongog.
"He cannot spit on those perched atop him," Chiun declared.
"No sale. And don't think I didn't see what you did, because I did."
"I have gotten redress for an insult."
"My left foot. You saw that camel was spitting to beat the band. You moved your sandal closer to take a shot in the foot."
"Ridiculous. It was an insult."
"Even if you didn't move your foot into spitting range, you could have moved it away in plenty of time."
"I gave the camel drover a choice. Loan me the offending beast without charge or wipe my sandal clean with his beard."
"You don't have to tell me how it turned out," Remo said, glumly, eyeing the camel. The camel eyed him back. His rubbery mouth masticated something dark and malodorous with ominous relish, and Remo took three hasty steps back and one to the right.
The saliva made a greenish splash off to his left. The camel resumed his patient masticating.
"I'm not riding that spitball maker!"
"Of course," said Chiun. "You must bargain for your own camel."
"I don't ride camels. They smell, they're unsanitary and they're rude."
"Then you may walk," said the Master of Sinanju, motioning for the camel to kneel. To Remo's surprise, it did, getting down on all four knobby knees.
When Chiun was comfortably balanced atop its hump, he made a clucking sound, and the camel rose with a strange grace to his feet.
The camel started off. Remo followed.
He soon found there was no happy place to walk near a moving camel. If he led, the camel tried to taste the back of his T shirt. Walking on either side invited expectoration.
And walking in the rear subjected Remo to camel gas or puddinglike droppings.
The city seemed to be victim to the immediate aftermath of revolution. There was looting. Dark, frightened faces peered from bullet-broken windows. Fires had blackened many buildings.
They were only challenged once when a Stomique technical came rattling up a dirt road to block their path.
It was a pickup truck, a .35-caliber machine gun bolted to the bed. The perforated muzzle swung in Remo's direction, and something was said in harsh Swahili.
Remo lifted his hands to show he was unarmed, walking up to the muzzle as if it were no more threatening than a water pipe. He offered his wallet. An eager hand reached out to snatch it. Remo pulled it back before questing fingers grazed it.
The red-bereted Stomiqui soldier screeched something angry and brought his thumbs down on the machine gun's trips.
The bullets began knocking out of the barrel.
The first shell exploded a full second and a half after Remo had given the cold muzzle a casual bat with one hand.
The weapon spun on its steel tripod so fast that when the first bullet emerged from the flaming barrel it had swung a full 180 degrees.
The machine gunner screamed surprise as his belly was ripped apart by the very bullets he himself had unleashed.
There were other rebels in the truck. They stuck their heads out of the cab to see what had happened, and Remo showed them how vulnerable their eardrums were. He clapped their ears between his hands, producing a thunder that never ended.
The two ran off with their eardrums permanently ringing.
"Okay," Remo said as they resumed their stroll through the remains of Nogongog. "What brings us to this hellhole?"
"We have come for the gold," said Chiun, searching the neighborhood from the high vantage of his ungainly perch.
"What gold?"
"Do you not see that there is a rebellion?"
"It looks more like an earthquake with small-arms fire for punctuation."
"This sorry nation is in revolt. Ruling heads are about to be separated from ruling shoulders. Allegiances are soon to change. And where there is revolution, there is sure to be gold and treasure destined to change hands."
"I take it we're after the gold and treasure?"
"No. You are."
"It's mine to keep?"
Chiun nodded. "If you can seize it without losing your life."
"Is mere gold worth my life?"
"Ordinarily, perhaps."
"Do I have any say in this?"
Chiun shook his head firmly. "None."
THEY CAME UPON the presidential palace in what had been the southern outskirts of the city before the jungle had begun to overrun it. Two things were noteworthy about it. It looked like a giant frosted cake standing at the jungle edge. And it was the only building in all Stomique that had not been scorched and broken by rebellious residents.
The Master of Sinanju brought his ungainly steed to a halt outside the palace gates.
"I don't see any guards," Remo said.
"A good sign."
"Couldn't that mean the gold is already gone?"
"If you are unfortunate, that is possible," Chiun admitted.
"I don't care if I grab off any gold or not. I'm on an unlimited expense account."
"If you do not seize this gold, you will be reduced to pillaging Fort Knox."
"I don't think they have gold in Fort Knox anymore, Little Father."
"Then you will have to strain the very gold dust from the ocean to accomplish your task."
"That could take years."
"Especially if you strain this gold with your teeth."
"Be back in a minute or two," said Remo, hopping the twenty-foot fence from a standing position. There was no warning. Remo didn't even flex his knees visibly.
When his feet hit the ground on the other side, they did so with no more noise that an autumn leaf touching grass.
Remo advanced, his entire body keying up. His eyes scanned the ground for faint depressions that would tell of buried land mines. None. Motion-vibration detectors were either off line or untended.