"At this moment, I want that more than anything," Abu Al-Kalbin said fervently. "Even more than the Qaddafi Peace Prize."
He upended the bowl to let the clumpy rice tumble into his yawning mouth like dead white ants.
They spoke in Arabic, so that the President of the hated United States could not understand them. The President sat in a rude wood chair in the tar-paper-and-tin safe house nestled in the Sierra Madres, which had been arranged for them by their Colombian employer. Fki.rom the smell, they guessed it was a marijuana stash house.
The President sat, his head tipped forward and resting on his chin. A colorful embroidered blindfold shielded his eyes; his hands were bound to the two crosspieces of the chair back with twine. His feet were looped to the front chair legs with his own belt. It was a very fine belt. Abu Al-Kalbin hoped to keep it as a souvenir once they had sold the man into servitude.
Over in one dim corner, Walid was playing with a video camera. He pointed it at the President, and Jalid quickly jumped into the frame, throwing his arms around the President's thin shoulders, striking a pose and showing strong white teeth.
Pausing in his greedy rice devouring, Abu AlKalbin noticed Jalid's raked teeth and hissed a warning.
"You fool! Put on your kaffiyeh! If these films fall into bad hands, your foolish face will be on every wall and police bulletin board from here to Cairo."
Stung, Jalid reached behind him and pulled the tail of his fringed kaffiyeh around to his mouth. He restruck his cocky pose.
"How will we get him out of the country?" Jalid asked as Walid filmed him.
"I have not figured out that part," Abu Al-Kalbin mumbled through a mouthful of rice. "I am too busy setting my disgestive tract to rights. Curse these Mexican dishes. They go down like fire and come out of you the same way."
Walid and Jalid burst into laughter. Their raucous merriment died when a low groan escaped the President's compressed lips.
All heads turned to the President.
At that exact moment, there came a knock at the door.
All heads swiveled to the door.
"Who?" Abu Al-Kalbin blurted, rice grains dropping onto his lap.
"The Colombian?" Jalid suggested. "El Padrino?"
"He would not come here," Abu Al-Kalbin hissed. "Not while the U.S. helikobters comb the skies." He indicated the door with a sharp inclination of his head.
Walid grabbed up his AK-47 and went to answer the door. Jalid followed him with the whirring videoeam, while a second groan escaped the lips of the President of the United States.
Walid snapped off the safety of his automatic rifle. He held it low on his hip with his right hand, set himself in a widelegged combat stance, and reached out to throw open the door with his left.
At a nod from Abu Al-Kalbin, he yanked open the door.
He never fired.
For framed within the door was a tall blue-eyed, vacuously smiling man of young middle age.
Walid's jaw dropped. He recognized the face of the man in the doorway. His astonishment caused him to hold his fire.
And while his stupefied brain was registering the seemingly impossible sight of Robert Redford at the door, the American actor calmly reached over his shoulder and extracted a nine iron from his golf bag. He lifted it to his shoulder like a baseball player.
The club came around with such easy grace that Walid never saw the aluminum pole that dashed his brains out of his skull, sending hot yellowish brain matter splattering like grease.
A splash of it struck Abu Al-Kalbin in the face, momentarily blinding him. Curds of it dropped into his rice bowl, which fell from his hands and cracked on the floor.
Abu Al-Kalbin shot to his feet, pawing at the organic matter in his furiously batting eyes as the attacker stepped into the tar-paper shack, hurling his mangled nine iron away and selecting a driver.
The driver caught Abu Al-Kalbin in the jaw, knocking it off with a bone-meal crunch. The driver went back to the wielder's shoulder. This time it drove in for the exposed neck. It connected with such inhuman force that it tore Abu AI-Kalbin's head off his shoulders.
The head struck and bounced off the wall.
Jalid watched all of this through the range finder of his video camera. The range finder made the rapid series of violent actions seem as if they were very, very far away. Jalid retreated to a far wall, still recording the sight as if the camera offered him not only distance and perspective but also protection. Many war correspondents caught in free-fire zones had made that mistake. A few survived it.
Jalid did not survive his.
A putter lifted in very bad form like an ax about to chop down. It struck Jalid or the exact top of the head, separating skull plates that had been fused since Jalid was only six months old.
The golf-club wielder released the putter. It went down with the corpse, sticking up from the broken bleeding head like a fifth appendage. It quivered. So did Jalid's other appendages. The ones whose nerves were receiving electrically disrupted signals from its disrupted brain.
Ignoring the corpse, the man walked over to the bound form of the President of the United States, whose head groggily lifted off his chest. He craned his long Ichabod Crane neck as if trying to see past his blindfold.
"Hello?" he croaked, his voice anxious. " I can't see. Where am I? Can anyone hear me? I hear you moving around. Hello? Answer me!"
The President of the United States felt strong fingers touch his forehead, plucking away the blindfold with an easy rip that broke the fabric as clean as a knife. He lifted his face. The early-morning sunlight coming through the single window was not strong, but it hurt his eyes nevertheless. He looked up at the figure that towered over him, his vision gradually clearing.
The figure spoke. It said, "Hello is all right."
"Dan?" the President of the United States croaked in disbelief.
Chapter 7
The woman in the fawn-colored uniform had the saddest face Remo Williams had ever seen on a woman.
She ignored Chiun and himself as she stepped into the office of Zone Comandante Oscar Odio, executed a crisp salute, and announced herself.
"Federal Yudicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl reporting, Comandante."
Comandante Odio returned the salute with only a slightly annoyed expression on his face.
"We have been awaiting you, senorita,'' he murmured.
"Officer," Guadalupe Mazatl corrected. She was a short woman, perhaps only five-foot-four, with a sturdy body that made up in rounded strength what it lacked in grace. She had coffee-colored skin, strong high cheekbones, and extremely black eyes. They might have come from the same military store as her shiny black boots and gunbelt. Her dark hair was short and severe.
"And these are the gringos?" she said, indicating Remo and Chiun with a toss of her black hair.
"You must excuse Officer Mazatl," Comandante Odio said, throwing the woman a hard glance while bestowing a smooth smile upon Remo and Chiun. "She has evidently left her manners behind."
"My manners are fine," Mazatl snapped. "It is the gringos who have swooped down upon us, despoiling our sovereignity. just as they did in Panama."
"Look," Remo said tensely. "Can we just go?"
"Naturally," Comandante Odio returned with a quick bowing of his head. He took his service cap off his desk and put it on. A white silk scarf went around the neck of his blue uniform. "Follow me, por favor," he said, adding mirrored aviator sunglasses to the ensemble.
Officer Mazatl fell in behind them without a word.
As they walked to the waiting helicopter, Comandante Odio whispered to Remo, "My apologies, senor. The Federales are notoriously lacking in pleasantness. The few women especially so. And corrupt."
"I'll keep that in mind," Remo promised, inwardly wanting only to get on with it.
The helicopter lifted off with a clattery whir and angled toward the foreboding Sierra Madres. Comandante Odio himself piloted the ship. Remo sat up front beside him, looking down as the brown ridges floated under the ship's skids. His Sinanju-trained eyes raked the barren peaks, looking for signs of life-or death. He saw neither. There were roads and railroad tracks crossing the range, but the peaks and mountainsides looked as if the First Wind had scoured them clean and no foot had known them since.