To the eyes of the Russians, Remo seemed to float toward them, his feet barely touching the ground-but in actuality he was striking with the nervous speed of a fer-de-lance.
Remo hit the nearest Russian with an openhanded palm. The soldier's rib cage was instantly turned to Jell-O. He collapsed from the sudden lack of skeletal support.
"We have found him!" called another soldier. "The American."
"Right," said Remo, chopping him down like a sapling. "I'm the American."
The Russians broke in all directions, seeking cover in the higher rocks. Remo moved toward the nearest group, pulled them off the rocks like bugs off a wall. He appeared only to tap them, but they did not rise from where they fell.
"American," called Colonel Ditko from the rocks above where Remo stood amid a pile of Soviet corpses. "What?" Remo shot back.
"We do not wish to slaughter everyone. We only want you."
"I'm not going to Russia," snapped Remo.
"And Russia does not want you. But we will exchange your surrender for the lives of these people."
"You can't get them all," Remo said, trying to bluff. "But I'll get all of you."
"If you wish a war, than so be it," said Ditko, whose orders were to erase all traces of the village of Sinanju and its people. "I will order my men to fire into the crowd."
Remo saw the villagers huddled behind their homes, their faces wearing that soul-shocked look that he had seen a thousand times in Vietnam. He felt a wave of pity for them. They were not-and never had been-masters of their own fate. Centuries of dependence on the Masters of Sinanju had stripped them of all self-reliance. It was not their fault they had turned out the way they had. They were no longer Chiun's people. They were his now.
Remo hesitated, calculating the positions of the Russians. Only a handful remained. Maybe there was time to get to them before they picked their shots.
But then Remo saw Mah-Li being dragged into view by one of the Russians. She struggled. "Mah-Li!" he said under his breath. She was not wearing her veil. Her delicate face shone with anxiety. "Okay, you win," said Remo. And he put up his hands.
They came down from the rocks carefully, their Kalishnikov rifles pointed unwaveringly at Remo's head.
"Bring him," ordered Colonel Ditko. "And round up the rest of the villagers. We will execute the American as an example to them."
"This wasn't the deal," said Remo.
"Wrong. This is the deal our leader made with your leader."
"Where's Chiun?"
"On his way to Pyongyang airport. And I must hurry to join him. I am to present him to the General Secretary myself. It will be a great day for me. Now I must leave you."
And Colonel Ditko hurried back to a waiting car and drove off.
His second in command marched Remo to the wall of the nearest hut and stood him up against it. He gave sharp orders and the five remaining commandos lined up in single file, their rifles aimed at Remo's chest.
"No blindfold?" asked Remo.
The soldiers ignored him. They squinted down the sights of their weapons.
"Ready!" ordered the second in command.
Remo saw Mah-Li fall to the ground and cover her face. Her shoulders shook with emotion.
"Aim!"
"If you harm these people after I'm gone," said Remo in a brittle voice, "I'm coming back after you all."
"I do not believe in ghosts," said the second in command.
"Maybe not. But if you don't listen to me, you'll be believing in Shiva the Destroyer."
There was something about the tone of the American's threat. The second in command hesitated. It was a very big mistake.
Before the firing order could be given, five spiteful shots rang out from the high rocks. And, one by one, all five members of the firing squad fell with their skulls shattered.
Remo broke his bonds with a hemp-splitting tug. The second in command never saw the hand that reduced his face to raw meat.
Remo looked up. Smith lay on his stomach, smoke drifting from the muzzle of his gun. Then he collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been clipped. Smith closed his eyes.
Remo ran to him and saw that he was going into convulsions.
Remo flipped Smith over on his back. The older man's face was turning the color and texture of blue cheese. Poison.
"Dammit, Smitty!" Remo screamed at him. "Did you have to go through with it? Couldn't you have waited?"
Remo tore Smith's jacket, vest, and shirt open with a single exertion. Buttons popped in all directions. Remo placed both his hands on Smith's wrinkled stomach and started to massage the solar-plexus muscles rapidly. He was rewarded by a rapid suffusion of color under his kneading fingers. That meant poison-fighting blood was concentrating where it was most needed.
Remo turned Smith onto his back, so that his head hung over the edge of the outcropping. He stuffed a large stone under Smith's feet to keep the blood flowing to the stomach.
Smith began to gag. He gave a low strangling groan, like a woman giving birth. But life had nothing to do with the sound that Smith made.
It was now or it was all over.
There were nerve clusters at the throat and solar plexus, and Remo took them, one in each hand, and performed a manipulation that a chiropractor would have understood.
Smith started vomiting violently. An ugly black bile erupted from his mouth and nostrils, spraying the sand below. Smith convulsed. His eyes opened, rolled up into his head as if the muscles behind them had lost tension.
Then Dr. Harold W. Smith lay still.
Remo listened. No heartbeat. He felt the carotid artery. No pulse.
"Dammit, Smitty! I need you!" Remo yelled again, and flipped Smith over one last time.
Sinanju techniques had gotten rid of the poison, but not in time. Smith's heart had stopped. Remo laid a fist over Smith's stilled heart and brought the other fist down atop it. Once, twice, three times, until he had established a rhythm. He kept the rhythm going, even though the heart muscle did not respond to it.
"Dammit!" he swore, and punched Smith's stomach to expel clearing air through his windpipe. Smith took in a reflexive breath. And then Remo felt the beat. Irregular at first, but more regular as Remo kept up the beating of his hand. He pounded his fist in synchronization with Smith's heart, staying with its rhythm, until the rhythms were one. And then Remo picked up the pace, forcing Smith's heart muscle to match it.
When he was sure that Smith's heart would continue beating on its own, Remo stopped.
He waited. One minute. Two. Five.
At length Dr. Harold W. Smith opened his eyes. They looked horrible, like those of a man who had awoken one morning to discover that maniacs had stripped the flesh from his body.
"Remo," he said weakly. "You should have let me die."
"You're welcome," Remo said bitterly. "Never mind that crap. Chiun's gone to Russia. I need your help. I gotta get there. Fast."
"They betrayed us, didn't they?" Smith said dully, sitting up.
"You learn to expect that from certain kinds of people," Remo accused. "Even friends."
Smith said nothing.
"Here's your briefcase," Remo said, throwing the leather valise onto Smith's lap. "Get on the horn and make the arrangements to get me to Moscow."
"I can't. The President has a deal with the Soviets."
"Get me to Moscow or I'll kill you," Remo warned.
"I'm already a dead man," said Smith.
"You sold us out and the Russians betrayed everyone. You owe me, Smitty. But if you won't do it for me, or for Chiun, or for what's left of the organization, then do it for America."
And through the pain, Dr. Harold W. Smith felt a chord being struck. The only one he would respond to.
Smith made an absurd show of straightening out his ruined clothes and opened the briefcase.
"The Darter is still lying off the coast," he said emotionlessly. "Their orders were to leave if they didn't hear from me by dawn. I'll call in a landing party. We can get to Kimpo air base in South Korea by midnight at the latest. From there, I think I can still order an Air Force jet into action. The organization may be finished, but I'm not powerless. Yet."