"Another offensive."
"Read it."
So Remo read Chiun about the new offensive, and Chiun nodded.
"Why did not your government back the north? You have more money than anyone. Why did you not support the north?"
"Because they're Communist, Chiun."
"Communist, fascist, democratic, monarchist, loyalist, or falangist. There is only winning. Even you know that. But this is a silly land. And it is time for lunch. Today you may have duck."
"Roast?"
"Steamed."
"Oh. Where am I going to get steamed duck?"
"We will steam it here. And I shall add the most flavourful spices."
"Yeah," said Remo.
"A three-stone duck," said Chiun.
"They don't weigh by stones, Chiun. You know that. I'll get a two-and-a-half-pound duck."
"Three stones," said Chiun, refusing to be contaminated by Western measurements. And it was time for 'Edge of Dawn."
Remo was halfway out of the hotel door when a roly-poly fellow with a heavy beard accosted him. He introduced himself as Pigarello. He said Jethro wished to see him. He said Jethro was disturbed that Remo hadn't attended the victory celebration the night before. He said Jethro was a forgiving man. He said Jethro would forgive Remo if he came to see him right now. What could be more important than seeing the new president of the International Brotherhood of Drivers?
"A three-stone duck for steaming," said Remo.
"Wha?" said the Pig.
"Look. Don't bother me," said Remo.
Would it be all right if Pigarello walked along?
"Yeah. Yeah. Waddle to your heart's content," said Remo.
Pigarello knew a shortcut to a duck store.
"Ho, ho, ho," said Remo to himself. "That's nice," said Remo to Pigarello.
"It's through that alley over there," said Pigarello.
"Ho, ho, ho," said Remo to himself. "That alley. Will you come with me?"
Pigarello couldn't. He had to see the new president right away.
"All right. We'll square things later," said Remo. "Do you take a regular sized coffin or a hefty?"
"Ho, ho, ho," laughed Rocco 'the Pig' Pigarello.
"Ho, ho, ho," thought Remo, waving good-bye to Pigarello and walking casually into the narrow alley, just the width of a tractor trailer. Surprise, surprise, it was a dead end.
Surprise, surprise, the two doors in the alley leading into the surrounding brick buildings were locked. And surprise, surprise, across the street, across the street making its turn forty yards away, was a large, four-axle jobby. A tractor trailer it was, its horse a good fifteen feet high and diesel chugging the house-long shiny metal trailer.
It had to full-turn to come into the alley on a line because otherwise it would never fit. There was no extra room. The truck nosed into the alley, making a fourth side and blocking escape. The large side-view mirrors snapped at the alley entrance and Remo suddenly noticed a real surprise. He had committed the classic mistake of underestimating his enemy.
He had assumed they would use a regular tractor trailer with a regular bumper on the front of the horse. But this was a special vehicle, designed specifically for his death. In front, there was a bumper, but it was painted on. In front there were wheels, but they too were painted on in front of the real moving wheels. In front there were the headlights, but they, too, were painted. That they were false, did not matter. But beneath the painted bumper and between the painted wheels was the large dark space through which Remo had assumed he could easily slip. That was painted on and it could prove fatal for not being there. The false front appeared to be heavy steel, like a bulldozer. The front rode above the oil-slick, concrete alleyway by a foot, clear light under the oncoming steel wall.
A foot might just be enough. The front lowered, chipping the concrete, catching an empty can and sending it hurling over Remo's shoulder. Even the narrow space was gone.
The air was oppressively hot. The walls of the surrounding buildings trembled as the huge truck lumbered further in, like a giant prong in a giant socket. Remo could smell the sickening diesel fuel of the monster pushing the steel wall toward him in the three-sided alley. He looked back at the building to his left. It had a ledge. He could make the ledge, and he broke for it. But looking at the truck and the ledge instead of taking one thing at a time as he had been taught, Remo slipped. The fourth wall kept moving on, pushing his shoes, and Remo reversed, tumbled and retreated. Retreated past the doors through which he could have broken if he had not been so arrogant.
The truck closed the meagre space, driving several garbage cans in front of it. The garbage cans would crumble when the truck met the end wall. Remo would be splattered into the wall. The front steel plate caught part of the uneven alley wall, and chipped brick went flying forward.
Ten feet now, and the truck was coming on. Ten feet to manoeuvre and there was oil in his shoes from the fall. Six feet, and the steel plate loomed overhead cutting out the sun, making Remo's small room that much darker. Remo kicked off the slippery-soled shoes and moved forward into the metal plate with the painted truck front. Speed forward, the up-jump with the hands high, feel the top of the false front and neatly over to the hood, fast, in one movement like a cat, and there he was staring at two suddenly shocked men in the cab, one of them behind the wheel, both of them very unfortunate.
The truck cracked into the wall with a thud, shivering the surrounding buildings. But Remo was not on the hood. He was in the air above it just an eighth of an inch when the impact came. The drivers, despite bracing themselves, slammed into the windshield of the cab. Remo came back down gently. The drivers lunged for the cab doors, but the narrow alley locked them in.
The man riding shotgun to the driver tried to squeeze out of his window space but his torso got wedged halfway between wall and cab.
"You lose," said Remo, and the man's head suddenly spurted blood from nose and eyes and mouth, which is normal for someone who has just had his skull crushed between brick wall and a hand as hard as steel and as fast as a bullet.
The driver was stuck, too. He couldn't make it out his window side. His puffy red face contorted in terror. He tried to make it out the other window. But there was a body there.
"You've got an interesting problem there, buddy," said Remo. He squatted down close to the window. The driver covered his face, waiting for a blow. When he peeked out from behind his arms, there was Remo, still peering at him as if examining a paramecium or a chess move. No hate. No anger. Just interest.
"Are you going to come out or am I going to have to come in there after you?" asked Remo.
The driver lunged beneath the dashboard and came up with a forty-five, but his target was no longer on the hood. Where the hell was he? Then the driver felt a hand tickle his neck sort of, and then he felt nothing.
Remo scampered over the flat metal roof of the trailer. A head peered out of a window three stories up.
"Driver trainees. They took a wrong turn," yelled Remo to the person looking down at an alley full of truck. He took the jump in a straight down instead of going forward with the momentum. As soon as he hit the alley entrance he was walking normally and looking back like any other bystander puzzled by the loud noise and an alley-wide truck, stuck there like a broad broad in a girdle.
"Traffic is becoming impossible in Chicago," Remo muttered indignantly. Down the street, he saw the unmistakable waddle of his friend, the Pig, who would take a hefty coffin. Pigarello obviously had waited for the crash, then without looking back lest he appear guilty, had walked purposefully away, the only person on the block not looking at the alley. Remo caught up to Pigarello in a few moments. He couldn't lose him. He fell in, step to step, behind the Pig. The Pig got into a four-door sedan furtively, as furtively as a rolling, waddling pumpkin could. Remo opened the back door as the Pig opened the front door. The sounds coincided. The Pig stared straight ahead. So did the driver, whose neck was wet from perspiration. Remo eased down just beneath the line of mirror sight.