Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed. "You wish this?"
"Very much. I must know if I am truly brave, as everyone says."
"Then go," Chiun said, rending Zhang's bonds with a slicing fingernail.
Shaking off the braided bamboo bonds, Zhang wheeled his mount and went racing for the narrow iron bridge.
Zhang Zingzong slapped his pony's flank with one hand. The bridge neared. Just short of it, he reined up and threw himself from the saddle.
He ran, and as he ran, he fumbled out a cigarette. One last smoke would do the job. He lit it with his Colibri lighter, reaching the bridge as the first dome-turreted T-55 rattled onto it, making it shudder in sympathy with the mighty engine of death.
Zhang walked across the bridge to meet it. His heart beat high and fast in his throat. He sucked in a brain-reviving cloud of tobacco smoke. It was just as it was after Tianamnen Square, in the moment that he had electrified the world. Except this time Zhang Zingzong was not burdened with bags of groceries in each hand. And here, there was no place for the tank to turn aside. It must crush him or back down.
The driver of the T-55 was a peasant from Shenyang. He was a good soldier, belonging to the Fortieth Army, which had refused to move against the pro-democracy demonstrators. He saw the man standing alone on the bridge, refusing to cower. It reminded him of another Chinese man and another Chinese tank not long ago.
He braked. He would not run this courageous man down.
Unfortunately, his tank commander had no such scruples. After a furious exchange, he reached forward into the driver's pit from the turret and pulled the stubborn driver out. He got behind the controls and sent the T-55 lurching ahead.
Still, the lone Chinese refused to back down. A second tank rolled onto the bridge behind him.
The commander hesitated. Beijing had told him that he would find the infamous counterrevolutionary Zhang here. The one who had faced down a column of PLA tanks. His orders were to take the man alive, for a propaganda trial. He grinned. What better propaganda than to force the man to back away, undoing his supposed feat?
He inched the tank ahead. Zhang Zingzong took a step forward too. The tank tracks gained another few inches. And Zhang matched them. He was not going to back down.
The tank commander hit the gas. The T-55 lurched ahead suddenly. Taken by surprise, Zhang flinched. The tank commander grinned. He would back down now, he knew. No mere student could face an oncoming tank. If not, there was plenty of time to stop.
Zhang Zingzong took a last puff of his Double Pleasure cigarette. He flicked it at the slitlike driver's periscope slot. It shed sparks going in.
The tank commander got a face full of embers as the butt bounced off his chin. He swatted it away angrily. It hit the floor. He stepped on it with his free foot.
And then his eye returned to the periscope. There was no sign of Zhang Zingzong.
He grinned. The coward had retreated. He sent the tank surging ahead with a heavy boot.
The grinding splintering sounds came from directly under his feet. His grin turned to a grimace of horror. He heard a muffled pong! and suddenly he had a vision of his own head dropping into a wicker basket-the penalty for giving the pro-democracy insurgents a greater propaganda tool than they had had in the living symbol of resistance that Zhang Zingzong had become.
Zhang Zingzong, the martyr.
The T-55 refused to go on. Somehow, those splintered bones had wedged in the tracks, freezing the tank in the middle of the bridge, and cutting off the others from access to the pass.
It would be up to the other unit now.
The tanks rolled around the bend and stopped, blocking the other end of the pass. Charging before them were PLA regulars, with bayonets fixed on their lunging AK-47's.
"C'mon, Little Father," Remo said. "I'll show you how to play pong."
"Really, Remo! Ping-Pong at a time like this?"
"Not Ping-Pong. Pong. Just watch me."
Remo rushed in to greet the first group of soldiers. Their fixed bayonets told him they were disinclined to shoot. That was a lucky break for him, but not for the soldiers whose green helmets were no protection from the rapid series of double-handed slaps that closed on them with jackhammer force.
Pong! Pong! Pong!
Three PLA soldiers dropped in their tracks, their heads crushed within the suddenly mangled shells of their duty helmets.
The sight of this had a profound effect on the soldiers directly behind them. They stopped dead in their tracks. Some started to back away in fear.
Remo turned to Chiun, saying, "See? Pong."
The Master of Sinanju floated up beside him. He took out two flanking soldiers with snapping circular kicks, landed lightly, and split the larynx of a third with a long fingernail.
"This is no time for games," Chiun said loudly.
"Why not? There's only a couple dozen. We can take them easy."
"Twenty-four here. Many on the walls above. Probably a hundred if not a thousand in reserve. For this is a land of a million green ants. We cannot fight them all." The tanks, forming a bulwark that jammed the pass, began to creep forward. Remo looked back over his shoulder. He lost his cocky grin. The lead tank on the bridge was bearing down on Zhang Zingzong.
"Can you hold then a little while?" he asked Chiun.
"Can a duck swim?" Chiun asked indignantly.
"Just hold that line." Remo rushed back to the limousine. He got behind the wheel and sent the limo charging in a circle. Bullets from the sharpshooters on the walls above drummed the roof and pocked the windshield. The limo was obviously bulletproof.
Out of the corner of his eye, Remo spotted Zhang Zingzong. The man was crawling under the bridge tank. Then it lurched forward, gnashing treads making a clattery sound on the bridge.
Remo tried to shut out the splintering-of-bone sound. Then he heard the distant, too-familiar pong!
Teeth clenched, Remo sent the limo's blunt nose toward the bulwark of T-55's, muttering, "Why didn't I think of this before?"
He raised the compartment lid beside his seat, exposing the twin rows of shiny black buttons.
The Master of Sinanju was dodging tanks. They lurched and lunged at him without success.
"Chiun!" he shouted. "Back away-now!" Without wait-
, Remo began stabbing buttons. The sound of hydraulics toiling came from under the hood and greenish gas spewed from the grille. Remo cranked up his window, as PLA soldiers dropped in their tracks.
He hit more buttons, and other things began happening. From his driver's seat, he couldn't tell what exactly, but there came a spray of sparks from somewhere low on the front end, a jolting recoil, and streaks of fire ripped the sir between the limo and the tank line.
Explosions began peppering the tanks.
"Rockets?" Remo said. He stabbed the button repeatedly. He got the same result. "Rockets," he said happily. Each stab discharged flame-tailed rockets. The constant recoil jammed him back in his seat, but he didn't care. He was having fun.
Remo veered away from the now-blazing tank line and pulled up at Chiun's side. "Get in," he said.
The Master of Sinanju leapt inside, saying, "We are still trapped here, and outnumbered."
"Us-outnumbered?" Remo said, looking through the windshield. The ground was littered with PLA bodies. Some dead, others actually snoring from the green gas. Bullet strikes from the sharpshooters above were visible all around them.
"The Chinese are inexaustible. We are not." Chiun sounded very worried.
Remo sent the car around in a circle, looking for a way out of the trap. His eye brightened at the cave entrance. It looked wide enough to accept the limo.
"Can't hurt to try," Remo muttered.
"No!" Chiun said abruptly. "Do not go in there."
"Why not?" Remo demanded. "It's shelter, isn't it? I'll just back in and hold 'em off with rockets."