Rats escaping a burning building could not have fled faster. Using door and windows, the remaining PIO men dove out into sunlight. Remo followed.
"We better hurry, Little Father," he said tightly.
"We do not know where to hurry to," the Master of Sinanju noted as he trailed Remo out the door.
"Doesn't matter," Remo said gravely. "We've got a President as old as George Washington's grampa out trying to fight the bad guys, and a bomb that's about to melt every gun from here to Damascus." His face was dark. "We'd better drive like hell until we find one or the other."
The brittle door swung slowly shut behind them.
Chapter 27
The ground had been broken on the planned Israeli settlement during the tenure of the previous prime minister. Houses had not yet been built, but the plans had been laid out for the tiny Jewish community just outside Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem, in the mostly Arab West Bank.
Protests against the planned construction had been ongoing, some violent. Although the new Israeli government was wavering, its citizens who had bought the land were not. The land would be settled. It was just a matter of time.
Nossur Aruch had other plans.
"This is perfect," the PIO leader announced to Fatang as his car crested a stone-covered hill. "Stop here."
The three PIO trucks trailing the big sedan came to squeaking stops along the hillside road.
Aruch didn't wait for his phalanx of bodyguards to run up the hill and surround him. He jumped excitedly from his car, hurrying to the lead truck.
Bryce Babcock got out after Aruch, his drooping face hanging in fleshy sheets of fear. With great reluctance, he trailed the terrorist down the hill. By the time the interior secretary caught up with the PIO leader, Aruch was already overseeing the unloading of the neutrino bomb from the rear of the truck.
"Careful!" Nossur lisped angrily. "Do not damage it."
When the men finally slipped the bomb from the shadows in the rear of the truck, Babcock saw that the timer was down to twenty-seven minutes.
Like an anxious child, the interior secretary tugged at the back of Aruch's sleeve.
"Uh, we should hurry," the secretary suggested.
"We are, we are!" Aruch snapped. "Get out of the way!"
Shaking Babcock away, the PIO head herded his men up the hill. They huffed beneath the weight of their heavy burden.
The Jewish settlement was to be built at the hill's plateau. String tied to posts that had been driven into the rocky ground indicated where the future foundations would be. Aruch brought his men through the field of scrubby green brush and white-and-gray boulders to the very heart of the future development. Snapping the string with a thick boot heel, he ushered the men into the living room of a home that would never be built.
"There," he ordered, pointing. "That flat rock." Aruch climbed down to his knees, helping the men balance the bomb on the rock. Babcock grew more ill when he looked at the timer. Four more minutes had drained away.
"A statement to those who would steal Palestinian land," Aruch was saying to his men. "If only this area was inhabited..." There was disappointment in his wet eyes.
"Would you like a Kleenex, sir?" Fatang asked quietly.
"Hurry," Babcock pressed.
This time, Aruch didn't resist. When the PIO leader got to his feet, the interior secretary's relief was obvious. With one last longing glance at the neutrino bomb, Aruch led the charge back to the waiting cars.
When they cleared the edge of the flat hilltop, a vision more terrifying than an endangered condoregg omelet greeted Bryce Babcock.
Down the slope, an Israeli convoy had parked behind the PIO vehicles. Curiosity had led them to investigate, but when the armed PIO contingent burst into view, the spark of alarm charged through the Israeli forces.
"Halt!" an Israeli colonel shouted. He raised his Uzi the instant the PIO soldiers appeared atop the hill. His men followed suit.
The PIO soldiers skidded to a stop, reflexively aiming their weapons down the hill.
"We don't have time for this," Babcock warned Aruch.
The PIO leader's eyes darted from the Israeli soldiers to his own men. The Palestinians didn't look at their leader. Their collective gaze was fixed on the hated soldiers below.
For a moment suspended in time, nothing happened. Tension in the Mexican standoff grew to a pounding drum of fear in Bryce Babcock's ears. All at once, the head of the Palestine Independence Organization drew in a deep breath. When he spoke, he did so loudly and clearly, so there would be no misinterpreting his meaning.
"Fire!" Nossur Aruch screamed, wild-eyed, at his men.
And as the PIO leader and the American interior secretary dove for cover, the peaceful, rock-strewn hillside erupted in gunfire.
REMO HAD STOLEN a PIO pickup to replace his crippled Buick. The truck flew south.
Keeping the gas pedal flat to the floor, Remo drove like mad for the Israel border. He prayed Nossur Aruch wasn't taking the scenic route to the Jewish State.
At speeds in excess of ninety miles per hour, they reached the border in less than fifteen minutes. The soldiers on the Lebanon side wished to detain them. Two foreign nationals driving in what was likely a stolen Lebanese truck cried out for arrest. Remo convinced them to look the other way by breaking all their noses. Faces gushing blood, they waved the two men through.
"Has Nossur Aruch been through here?" Remo asked on the other side as the young Israeli border guard checked his and Chiun's phony passports. The guard was all of eighteen years old.
"He passed through a few minutes ago," the soldier replied.
"Did you search his car?" Remo asked, shocked. He hoped Aruch hadn't ditched the neutrino bomb somewhere.
The soldier looked up, his face bland. "There were four vehicles in his motorcade. We let them all go without inspection."
"Are you nuts?" Remo asked. "The guy's a terrorist."
"We have standing orders from the new government. We are not to create an incident with him."
"What if I told you he plans to blow up your country?" Remo snapped.
"He would have to get in line," the soldier said, not even looking up. He handed back Remo's and Chiun's passports. "You may proceed."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Remo muttered. As the soldier headed back to his shack, Remo stuck his head out the window. "You at least have any idea where he might have gone?" he called.
The soldier shrugged as he walked. "He has an office in Hebron. In the West Bank."
"You know where that is, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju.
"Yes," Chiun replied, bored.
Remo gunned the engine. As they sped past the guard shack, he yelled, "And if you see a mushroom cloud, I'd suggest you duck and cover."
They raced down the road into Israel.
BRYCE BABCOCK FELT like one of the precious crocodiles his department had released in a downtown Kansas City park back in '97. They'd been shot at, too.
Bullets zinged all around.
The Israeli soldiers fired relentlessly, unleashing efficient, controlled bursts from their Uzis. The PIO's return fire was sloppy and impassioned.
Bullets whizzed crazily in every direction above the interior secretary's head.
Babcock and Aruch had taken cover behind a pear-shaped boulder. Endless ricochets sang off the rock. Chunks of stone and clouds of pebbly dust pelted their heads and backs.
The PIO leader had deliberately not unholstered his side arm. If push came to shove and his side lost, he intended to claim that his men had gone trigger-happy at the sight of the Israeli soldiers. He could probably make it stick. The current government in Jerusalem had already signaled great willingness to accept every cock-and-bull story Aruch pitched at them.
Beside the PIO chairman, Bryce Babcock was shaking visibly.
"We can't stay this close to the bomb!" Babcock screamed over the gunfire, his fingers stuffed in his ears.