"It's what I was supposed to do before you tricked me into playing Prince Charming for that gang on the mountain," Remo said.
"Please not to embarrass me," Chiun said. "The Loni might hear of any foolishnesses of yours and this would lower me in their eyes," Chiun led the way up one of the stone walls of the house and into an open second-floor window. The room they entered was empty; they moved out into a broad dimly-lit hallway, built like a balcony, from which they could see the main door of the house below.
Behind the door were a half-dozen soldiers wearing Busati whites and carrying American Army grease guns. One of the soldiers was a sergeant. He looked at his watch.
"Very soon now," he said. "Very soon we will have our company and we will put them to sleep."
"Good," one of the privates said. "I hope they come quickly so we have time to sample the merchandise."
"By all means," the sergeant said. "This merchandise is to be sampled as often as possible, as vigorously as necessary. Mi casa est su casa."
"What does that mean?" the first soldier asked.
"That means screw your brains out," another soldier said. "Use up that white ass."
"I can hardly wait," the first soldier said. "Where are those bastards anyway?"
"Right here," Remo said. He stood on the balcony looking down toward the main entrance. At his side stood the tiny Chiun, wearing not his customary robe, but a black Ninja costume which he wore only at night.
"I said, right here, you stupid gorilla bastard," Remo said, louder this time.
Chiun shook his head. "Always on display," he said. "Do you never learn?"
"I don't know, Chiun. Something about him there just pisses me off."
"Hey, you, get down out of there." The sergeant spoke.
"Come and get us," Remo said. "Use the stairs. They work both ways."
"You come down from there or, by God, we're gonna plug you."
"You're all under arrest," Remo said, seeing himself as Gary Grant in the temple of the thugs.
Chiun leaned against the railing, shaking his head in disgust.
The sergeant started for the stairs, followed by the other five soldiers. They moved slowly and Remo wondered why.
"Oh, oh," Remo said. "I just thought. If they fire their guns, the guys outside'll hear it and come in," Remo whispered to Chiun.
"I doubt much that you 'just thought' of anything," Chiun said, "since you seem incapable of thought. But if that worries you, don't let them fire guns," Chiun said as if that answered everything.
"Of course," Remo said. "Why didn't I think of that? Don't let those six men fire their guns."
"Not six. Ten," a voice said from behind Remo. He turned. Standing in an open doorway was another soldier in Busati whites. He carried an automatic. Behind him in the dimness, Remo could see three more men. He realized now why the sergeant had been very slow about leading his men upstairs; he was waiting for the other half of the trap to close.
"I surrender," Remo said, raising his hands.
"A wise decision, friend," the soldier with the automatic said. He nodded to the other three men who poured out of the room and joined the six men coming up the stairs. They put their guns away, slinging them back over their chests, as they surrounded Remo and the small Korean.
After all, ten against two did not require weapons, did they?
Of course not.
The sergeant, who was the house doorman, as much as told them that before he felt himself being lifted up by the small Oriental, and then being spun around as if he were a long stick and used as a battering ram against the other men.
The soldier who had been in the doorway reached for his automatic again to free it from the holster. But the holster was gone, ripped away from his side by the young American. "This yours?" Remo said. Stupidly, the soldier nodded. Remo gave them back. Holster, automatic and ammunition right through the soldier's face into his throat. Deep.
Behind him, Remo heard the thwack, thwack, thwack, the machinelike periodicity that meant Chiun was at work.
"Chiun, keep one of them alive," Remo yelled, before two soldiers were on him. Then he violated his own injunction, dropping them heavily onto the body of the soldier whose face had sprouted a gun.
Then there were no more sounds. Remo turned to Chiun who was releasing the feet of the sergeant he had used as a battering ram. The soldier slipped shapelessly onto a pile of bodies.
"Chiun, dammit, I said…"
Chiun raised a hand. "This one breathes," he said. "Therefore present your lectures to someone who needs them. Perhaps you might talk to yourself."
The sergeant groaned and Remo reached down and yanked him roughly to his feet.
"The girls," Remo said. "Where are they?"
The sergeant shook his head to clear it. "All this for women?"
"Where are they?" Remo said.
"The room at the end of the hall."
"Show us." .
Remo shoved the sergeant who led the way down the wide oak-planked hallway, staggering slightly from side to side. A head wound dripped blood onto his white uniform. His right arm hung limply; a shoulder separation, Remo thought. He grabbed the sergeant's right wrist and yanked, then choked off the sergeant's scream by tossing his hand around the soldier's mouth.
"Just a reminder," Remo growled, "that we ain't your friendly neighbourhood team of United Nations advisors. No tricks."
The sergeant, his eyes wide with fright and pain, nodded quickly, almost frantically.
He walked faster, then stopped outside a large oak door at the end of the hall. "In there," he said.
"You first."
The sergeant unlocked the door with a key from a ring on his belt, pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The room was just beginning to be lit by the first dim blush of the morning sun. Remo forced the pupils of his eyes to wide, and in the darkness, he could see four bunks. Each was occupied.
The four women in the beds were naked. They were tied with ropes, their arms up over their heads lashed to the bed posts. Their legs pulled wide apart and their ankles tied to the posts at the foot of the beds. Cloth gags were in their mouths.
In the faint glints of light from the window and from the hallway, their eyes sparkled as they watched Remo. They looked like animals peering from the dark ring around a campfire.
The room smelled of excrement and sweat. Remo brushed past the sergeant and entered the room. The sergeant looked around but Chiun stood in the doorway behind him, blocking escape.
Remo took the gag from the girl in the nearest bunk and as he did leaned forward close enough to see her clearly. Her face was scarred and broken. One eye had been deformed from a badly healed beating. Her mouth was toothless.
Whip marks covered her naked front from her face to her ankles. Hard black cankers dotted her body where it had been used as an ashtray.
Remo released the gag and said, "Don't worry. We're friends. You're going to be all right now."
"Be all right," she repeated dully. She smiled suddenly, the toothless grimace of an old hag. Her eyes sparkled. "Treat you nice, mister. You like to whip me? I do everything if you whip me. Hard. You like hard? I like hard. Make me bleed, I treat you nice, mister. You like kiss me?" She puckered up her mouth and scroontched an imaginary kiss toward Remo.
He shook his head and backed away from her.
"Hee, hee, hee," the vision cackled. "I got money. I treat you right if you whip me hard. My family is rich. I pay. Just hit me, soldier boy."
Remo turned away. He went to two more girls. They were the same. Lamed, twisted, mindless husks that once were people. None of them could have been much over twenty, but they spoke with the grim sadness of ancient wizened women who sit on corners and whose eyes suddenly light up as they remember something nice that once happened to them. Nice was, for these girls, the whip, the chain, the knife, the extinguished cigarette.