Instead, he found himself gently deposited on a hot rattling metal surface.
"Where the hell are we?" the President demanded, pulling himself together.
The answer was all around him.
The President found himself sprawled on the platform of a caboose. The smell of diesel smoke was in his nostrils. His teeth shook and the train went clickety-clack on the rail segments. Grit popped under the spinning steel wheels. A mournful whistle gave out.
On either side of them, huge mountains reared up. They were traveling through a mountain range. "Is it safe here?" the President asked, hanging on to the railed back of the platform.
"Safe here it is," the Vice-President said, his fixed-smile face lifting to the sky, visible above the caboose's roof overhang.
Two helicopters zipped past like harridan vultures. They flew low, but from this vantage point the President could make out only their sun-shadowed underbellies. There were no markings visible.
"This is awful," the President groaned. "We're in deep doo-doo."
"I do not understand 'doo-doo,' " the Vice-President said without evident humor.
"You will," the President said unhappily as the desolate landscape unfolded around them. "Down here, it's everywhere you go."
Chapter 9
They could smell the bodies before they sighted the desolate shack.
Remo and Chiun had stepped up on a tumble of dusty rocks in an effort to see more clearly.
Chiun spotted the forlorn-looking shack in the brown foothills.
"The smell of death," he intoned, pointing. "It comes from there."
"Come on!" Remo said, rushing for the cabin.
"I do not understand your unseemly haste, Remo," Chiun said as they sprinted through the scrub desert, their light feet leaving only the merest prints on the sand.
"He's the President," Remo hissed.
"But we work for Smith."
"And Smith works for the President," Remo added.
"But is not answerable to him."
"That's the way the organization was set up in the first place. So no one could abuse CURE. America isn't a police state."
"A good thought. Only Smith is privileged to abuse the organization."
"Smith would never do that. That's why he was chosen for the job."
"He is a mere man, and therefore corruptible."
"I'll give Smith this," Remo said. "He does his job. Sometimes too well. But he does it."
"I still fail to understand your concern. You have lost a President. But they are like rugs. You dispose of them every four years. Sometimes every eight years. But they are clearly superfluous. I have heard some boast that any waif can grow up to be President. If that is true, then there is nothing special about any of them. They are not a bloodline, so no dynasty is threatened by the death of this President. He is voted in. And is voted out. So? This one has been voted out by terrorists."
"Terrorists don't vote," Remo said grimly. "And I don't believe he's dead. Yet."
"I smell death," Chiun warned. "You should be prepared. "
Remo should have slowed down when he got within range of the cabin. But the Master of Sinanju saw with a frown that he did not. Remo plunged into the open door like some ninja blunderer.
Chiun had no choice but to follow him in, and he did.
He found Remo ranging around the single room, upsetting tables and chairs and ignoring the three Middle Eastern corpses that were flung around the interior like so many unwanted dolls.
"No sign of him!" Remo said anxiously.
The Master of Sinanju strode immediately to one of the chairs Remo had upended in his controlled fury.
It was damaged, and lengths of snapped twine clung to the pieces.
"He has been here," Chiun said loudly. "And he was alive. No one binds a corpse to a chair."
Remo stopped what he was doing. He accepted frayed ends of twine from Chiun's long-nailed fingers.
"So who freed him?" Remo wondered. "And where did they go?"
"I do not know," said the Master of Sinanju, looking about the room. His eyes gleamed and he brushed past his pupil. Remo followed him with his eyes.
The Master of Sinanju reached down and lifted a black video camrecorder.
"Probably taken from Air Force One," Remo suggested.
"How do you work this device?"
"If it's one of those that give you instant playback, you rewind it and just press the trigger like on a gun. Then you look through the viewfinder."
"I cannot find this so-called viewfinder," Chiun complained.
"Give it here."
The Master of Sinanju retreated away from Remo's outreaching hand, saying, "No! I will do this myself."
Remo folded his arms in annoyance. "You won't see anything useful anyway. These ragheads probably stole it just to hock it. They wouldn't actually record the abduction. They're not idiots."
The Master of Sinanju paid no attention to his pupil's prattle. He found the proper buttons and lifted the device to one eager hazel eye. He depressed the trigger.
And before his eyes an amazing procession of images was displayed.
"I see the President!" Chiun cried in triumph.
Remo started. "You do?"
"He is answering questions put to him by unseen interrogators."
"Oh," Remo said, subsiding, "press-conference stuff."
"Wait! There is more!"
"What?" Remo said, reaching out again. Chiun faded back even though one eye was closed and the other was glued to the viewfinder.
"I see these three corpses lying dead about us, but in life."
"You do?"
"Yes. And they are recording the abduction of the true President, who appears to be unconscious, much like your President of Vice, except that the President's eyes are closed."
"He's alive!" Remo blurted.
"They are carrying him off, the imbeciles."
"Yeah?"
"Now they are posing with him," Chiun squeaked. "The President is bound to the chair with twine and a belt."
"Are they torturing him?"
"If he were awake, it could be called that," Chiun snapped.
Remo's fists clenched. "No!"
"They are capering around him like baboons, making inane comments and acting in jest. They are truly imbeciles." Chiun stopped speaking.
"What's happening now?" Remo demanded.
"I am coming to that," Chiun said, turning the video camera this way and that, as if to get a better view. "Ah!" Chiun breathed. Then, in a hard voice: "Oh! Oh, no!"
"What? What?" Remo asked anxiously.
"It is a plot!" Chiun cried in triumph. "I was right. "
"What? About what?"
"Behold," the Master of Sinanju said, quickly passing the video recorder to Remo.
Remo caught it up to his eyes. He pressed the trigger. He saw the late Abu Al-Kalbin at the exact moment he was beheaded by a number-one wood, wielded by familiar hands.
"It's the Vice-President," Remo said in disbelief.
"The schemer!" Chiun added indignantly.
"My God, he's pulverizing these terrorists."
"A subterfuge," Chiun cried. "He is disposing of his underlings so they cannot betray him. We will be vindicated in Emperor Smith's eyes, after all. He sent us on a ferocious goose quest."
"Wild-goose chase."
"The very same!" Chiun's voice rose with the indignation of it all. "And while we were dealing with foreign enemies, this stripling, this callow pretender to the throne, was manipulating his hireling killers, who performed the dastardly deed for him. And now the President of Vice has taken the true President off to some dank dungeon for possible execution or some worse fate."
"I see it, but I don't believe it," Remo said in a low voice.
"Believe it. Sony would not lie."
"He's gotta be almost as strong as us," Remo said doubtfully.
"Not if he must use mere tools to work his wicked will," Chiun countered. "Sinanju has not employed implements of destruction in generations."