"Die and rot in hell," Helena continued, oblivious to all that was around her. "Eaten by cancer and maggots."
The meager drops of water had returned her voice. It grew stronger, more mocking as the words flowed out. She perspired madly through the heat, through the pain. The groans in the field of torment where she lay dying grew louder. Others joined the derisive chorus.
"Cancer and maggots ...cancer and maggots... cancer and maggots..."
Sultan Omay's eyes grew wild as they swept the area. The Americans continued their scornful wail. Furious, the sultan was on the verge of ordering violence against the insolent Americans, but before the order could be given, the young communications soldier raced up bearing the sultan's small cellular phone.
"Sultan," the soldier cried, "the Saudi, al Khobar, is not available."
Rage distracted, Omay wheeled away from the murmuring Americans. His wrinkled hand clasped the hilt of his dagger threateningly.
"What! Why?"
The Eblan soldier swallowed nervously.
"They say he is 'taking a meeting,'" the soldier replied fearfully.
Omay's hand left the dagger.
The chorus of defiant groans from behind him had begun to subside. Some of the men were losing consciousness.
The sultan's brow pulled gravely over his watery dark eyes.
"That is not one of our arranged signals," he said.
"Do you wish me to try again?" the soldier volunteered. He held up the phone, finger poised on Redial.
"No," the Sultan said somberly. "Brave Assola is dead. The Americans have bloodied their infidel hands on yet another hero of Islam."
And privately Sultan Omay knew that his great hope for destroying Hollywood had died with al Khobar. The Americans had been stronger than he thought. He was certain they would have waited for a diplomatic solution, giving Omay time to spring both ends of his trap. And he had come so close. Al Khobar had been nearly ready.
Now there was nothing to wait for.
"Colonel, ready your army," Omay intoned ominously. Legs wobbling, he turned back to his tent. "Yes, 0 great Sultan," the colonel replied crisply.
"But what of these vermin?" He spread a hand out over the numerous sun-tortured bodies.
Omay looked down at the prone forms of Secretary of State Helena Eckert and her entourage. "Leave them to the desert sun," he sneered. "If any are left alive after today's glorious battle, tell them that they lived to see the end of Israel. Then kill them."
And with that the Great Peacemaker shuffled away from the vast field of torture.
Chapter 26
Bindle and Marmelstein nearly danced into their office. The workmen were on their latest coffee break, so the room was almost empty. Almost but not quite. However, even the sight of Remo sitting on their couch was not enough to put a damper on their joyful mood.
"What are you two pinheads so happy about?" Remo asked as the Taurus executives breezed through the door.
"Oh, nothing," Hank Bindle sang. He grinned at Bruce Marmelstein. Marmelstein grinned back. Remo shook his head. Obviously the two men thought they shared some great private joke. "Before the pair of you lapse into Prozac comas, you want to tell me where your little buddy al Koala is?"
The smiles vanished so quickly they left white creases in the movie moguls' salon-tanned faces. "Who wants to know?" Hank Bindle challenged. Remo knew immediately something was wrong. He got slowly to his feet. Without even a single word to either man, he crossed over to their desks. The latest matching desks ordered by the two executives were huge mahogany affairs that weighed almost a thousand pounds each. Near Bindle's, Remo bent at the waist, gripping the fat middle section of one of the curved legs.
He stood. Bindle and Marmelstein were shocked to see the desk rise with him.
Remo stood there for a moment, the thousand-pound desk held away from his body in the same casual manner he might have used to hold a squirt gun. The huge desk did not waver one millimeter in his outstretched arm.
When he was certain he had their attention, Remo flicked his wrist. The desk rocketed away from his hand as if yanked on a line. It cracked straight through the ceiling-to-floor window at the rear of the office.
Both the desk and several huge glass shards seemed to hover in the air for an infinitely long moment before vanishing below the sill. A mighty crash rose from three stories below two seconds later. This was followed by angry shouts in Eblan Arabic.
Remo turned away from the hole in the wall. Paint-smeared tarpaulins rattled in the soft, warm breeze. He set his dead-eyed gaze on Bindle and Marmelstein.
"Where is he?" he repeated.
"Bruce had him kidnapped," Hank Bindle blabbered.
Marmelstein whirled on his partner.
"Me?" Bruce Marmelstein snapped, shocked. "It was all your idea. Check the check," he said, spinning to Remo. "Hank's handwriting is on everything but the signature."
Bindle looked horrified.
"You told me you didn't want to wreck your manicure!" he shrieked.
"Liar!" Marmelstein screamed.
Hank Bindle desperately searched his repertoire for an appropriate comeback. The one he found gave him intense satisfaction.
"Hairdresser!" Bindle screeched.
The look of pure hateful rage that blossomed on the face of Bruce Marmelstein quickly transformed into one of intense pain. Before he was able to screech a response back at his partner, he felt an explosion of raw agony at the back of his neck, as if someone were extracting his spinal cord and all his body's attendant nerves through an acid-formed incision. Through panicked, watering eyes he saw that Hank Bindle was in similar agony.
When the two partners searched for the source of the sudden pain, they found Remo standing between them. He was clutching them both by the tops of their spinal columns and lifting them off the floor. His face was a mask of rage.
"Where is he?" he said through clenched teeth.
"I don't know." Bindle winced.
"With Reggio Cagliari," Marmelstein pleaded.
"But we don't know where they are," Bindle gasped.
"You'd better be able to find out," Remo threatened. "Or when the next desk drops, you two nitwits will be under it."
Dropping them back to the carpet, he spun for the door.
Wind still blew in through the gaping hole in the wall. Bindle and Marmelstein glanced at the remaining enormous desk. They gulped simultaneously. The threat was too real for comfort.
Shuddering at the thought, both men trailed Remo rapidly from the office.
FOR MOST OF THE MODERN WORLD, the Eblan-Israeli war began with an electronic whimper. So it was for Harold W. Smith.
Tired eyes glued to his computer screen, haggard face illuminated in weird, amber-fueled shadows, Smith tracked the troop movements as they were recorded by satellites stationed in geosynchronous orbit above the region.
Eblan forces that had been massed along the Anatolia Corridor in the desert between Syria and Lebanon had moved down into the mountainous Golan Heights region just over an hour before. There would be no turning back.
Smith dipped in and out of various reports. From the satellite information, he shifted to the raw data collected by U.S. intelligence services. This was augmented by CURE's secret pipelines into the Mossad and Israeli military command. Throughout all this, Smith utilized the screen-in-screen function, devoting a small corner of his monitor to the constant video feed from the ITN cameras at the scene of battle.
It was proving to be a massacre of unbelievable proportions.
With his announced intentions, Israel had had almost two days to prepare for Sultan Omay's invasion. The disputed Golan Heights had been packed with enough firepower to repel any assault that Ebla could mount. The Israeli level of preparedness was proving to be more than formidable.
The casualty figures had not yet been reported, but news correspondents on the ground were likening the outcome of the first Ebla-Israel engagement to the routing of Iraqi forces in Kuwait during the Gulf War.