"Rice," said Walid.
"Yes. Eat much rice," added Jalid.
"I hate rice," Abu Al-Kalbin said morosely.
Chapter 4
In the Peruvian hotel he had nicknamed "La Cucaracha Grande," Remo Williams sat stone-faced on a striped sofa, his dark eyes on the telephone as if willing it to ring.
"Tended water boils slowly," the Master of Sinanju called from his reed mat in front of the television set.
"And a watched pot never boils," Remo said morosely.
"That is an impossibility," Chiun squeaked.
"It's the American version."
"Americans are impossible. And why do you not call Emperor Smith again if you cannot wait?"
"Because I can't get through this frigging antiquated phone system," Remo said peevishly. "Smith should get my telegram any second now. He can get through to me. It's better than ending up on the line with Tibet, which is what happened last time. How the hell can these operators get Tibet when they can't connect to America?"
"Perhaps they are watching the famous American pot that never boils," Chiun sniffed.
Remo frowned. But his eyes were sunken with worry. He had been sent to Peru to head off a plot on the President's life. If Chiun had gotten Smith's message correctly-not a sure thing-then they had blown it. Or Smith had blown it. The President was dead. Remo wondered what Smith would say. No President had ever died on Smith's watch-not while he had Remo and Chiun working for him. Remo worried that Smith had suffered a heart attack. It was the only thing that could keep him from getting back to him.
Remo's eyes narrowed. He was actually concerned about Smith. He was barely speaking to the old SOB these days, the result of a complicated situation in which Remo had been "retired" to death row and nearly executed all over again as a result of a CURE operation that was triggered when Smith fell gravely ill.
It had been Smith who originally selected Remo, then a young Newark patrolman, to become the enforcement arm of CURE. Framed and sent to the electric chair for a murder he never committed, Remo had been revived with a new face and identity. A dead man. CURE's dead man. Placed in the hands of Chiun, the last Master of Sinanju-a legendary Korean house of assassins- Remo had developed into what he was now. A finely tuned human killing machine.
Remo had long ago gotten over Smith's manipulation of his destiny. But the recent near-brush with the electric chair had reopened old wounds.
Remo shook off the bad memories. He wondered what he would do with his life if Smith truly did die. He didn't know. He put the thought out of his mind. If the President had been assassinated, it would be up to him to assassinate the assassins.
It was an irony not lost to Remo Williams. CURE had originally been created by a young President who had later been assassinated after only one thousand days in office. Remo hadn't been part of CURE then. And Chiun, heir to the five-thousand-year-old tradition of Sinanju, sun source of the martial arts, then dwelt forgotten in North Korea. So much had changed since then. Remo was now an assassin-America's secret assassin-and he had grown proud of it.
The phone rang. Remo bounced out of the sofa as if a spring had burst through the colorful threadbare fabric.
He scooped up the receiver.
"Smitty?"
"Remo?" Dr. Harold W. Smith's lemony voice asked. "I received your telegram. I was just about to call you again."
"How bad is it?"
"Bad. Air Force One went down over the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. A National Air Transport Safety go-team is en route by helicopter, along with Secret Service and FBI forensic teams." Smith paused. "We do not expect survivors."
Remo's voice was hoarse when he found it. "What do you want Chiun and me to do?"
"What have you learned down there?"
"The Maoist crazies claim they were approached by the Colombians, but the deal didn't go through. I wasted them anyway. I didn't agree with their voting habits. "
"Then the Colombians are our prime suspects," Smith said. "I am booking you on an Aero-Peru flight to Lima. Call me when you get there. I should have specific instructions for you by then."
"Right. What's happening in Washington?"
"Controlled chaos. The news is being suppressed until we have confirmation of fatalities. The Vice-President doesn't even know."
"The Vice-President," Remo said suddenly. "Oh, my God, I forgot all about him. What are they going to do? I hear he can't find a lit bulb in a dark room."
"Press exaggerations," Smith said flatly-but the worry in his voice was unmistakable.
"I read that he thinks there are canals on Mars, filled with water."
"Apocryphal. "
"His wife can't even spell."
"A slip of the pen."
"He collects anatomically explicit dolls."
"A souvenir ."
"He has the IQ of a geranium."
"He may also be our next President," Smith said flatly.
"Let's pray for a miracle," Remo said fervently.
"Go to Lima, Remo," Smith said coldly, and the line abruptly disconnected.
Thousands of miles to the north, helicopter sounds bounced off the high ramparts of the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains in the predawn darkness. Fingers of intense white light combed the cracked desiccated ground, creating shape-shifting halos of light.
There was no moon. Starlight was plentiful. The helicopters crisscrossed methodically, twice narrowly impaling the burst airframe of Air Force One.
As the dawn approached, only the distorted doppler sound of rotors disturbed the eerie coffin that had been the presidential aircraft. A tiny flame burned within the surviving starboard engine, shielded by the shattered nacelle cowling.
And deep within the airframe, circuits and microchips that had not been installed by the manufacturer came to life, beginning to process information.
Injured . . .
Diagnostics began to run. Messages came back to a central processor in the crushed cockpit.
Tail shattered. Wires severed. Fiberoptic cables sheared at critical junctures.
A tiny flame in the inner engine nacelle was sensed and a C02 bottle was triggered, extinguishing it with a jet of foam.
At various points along the fuselage, skin-mounted sensors emerged like sluggish organs of sight and hearing. No sounds were detected from within the airframe. No hearts beat. The data were processed, and in the presidential section, twisted aluminum spars quivered.
A rope of multicolored cables twitched, then withdrew into its aluminum housing-the twisted leg of a chair. The two broken sections groaned as the sentient metal twisted, rejoined, and healed as if by an organic process. Wires established connections like veins regenerating themselves.
And overhead, a domelike ceiling light unscrewed itself, dropping its plastic casing, aluminum rim, and screws. The reflector and bulb dropped next, revealing a glass lens.
The lens looked straight down, and seeing the twisted metal and chopped-up seat cushions, shifted frantically, and seeing nothing, stopped like a frozen fish eye.
All over Air Force One, ceiling lights disassembled themselves and myriad glass eyes raked the tangled cabin for signs of life or a certain body.
Finding nothing, relays clicked. And an electronic imperative repeated itself.
It said: Survive . . . survive . . . must survive. Sounds approaching . . . aircraft overhead . . . survive . . . must survive.
The section of seating that had sheltered the President of the United States during the crash landing of Air Force One came to life. Aluminum legs began to grope blindly. They twisted like an undersea plant in a suboceanic current, waving and wavering, shifting and combining, straining mightily.
Floor bolts popped and an octopus tangle of aluminum legs marched into the litter-strewn aisle. Two of them flung up to form aluminum arms, and other limbs combined into a long semirigid spinal column.