Beside him the Master of Sinanju said, "Pretend we are innocent of any suspicion. They will not see us."
Eyeing Chiun's emerald-and-ocher kimono, Remo said, "I have a better idea."
He floored the Humvee. It surged ahead.
The oncoming armored column consisted of a toylike LAV followed by two light tanks. It slithered up the winding, mountainous road.
"We can outrun these guys," Remo said confidently.
As he accelerated, the Master of Sinanju reached out to hold on to the swaying machine. His balance was perfect. He could have remained comfortably seated through an ordinary turn. But the Master of Sinanju was familiar with his pupil's driving. He knew what was coming and didn't care to be flung from the vehicle.
Remo took the corner on two wheels. The narrowness of the road made that mandatory. Jerking the wheel hard to the right, he brought the wide Humvee all the way up on its right tires.
It was an impossible maneuver. Low-slung vehicles can't run up on two wheels unless they are out of control.
In a sense, Remo had thrown the heavy machine out of control. It would have crashed. No question of that. But Remo was master of his own body and balance, and as long as he could control that, he could control the hurtling juggernaut that was the Humvee.
At the apex of the turn, the Humvee was canted at an extreme perpendicular, running on rims of rubber. Chiun turtled his head between his thin-boned shoulders to protect it.
"Okay now," Remo said tightly.
In unison, they shifted left. The Humvee wobbled on its spinning tires, then like a gyroscopically controlled toy began righting itself in a smooth descent that looked like gravity taking hold but was really Sinanju.
When the left-side tires touched asphalt, Remo let the vehicle freewheel a hundred yards, then floored it again.
Behind them the armored column was laboriously turning around.
"They will never catch up to us," Chiun said with satisfaction.
"Not in a million years," Remo agreed.
A whistling came from behind, arced over their heads and landed with a bang that threw up dirt and clods of red soil.
They heard the cannon detonation somewhere in the middle of the whistle.
"They are shooting at us," Chiun remarked.
"Are they crazy? They don't know who we are. We could be on their side, or anyone."
"Yes, anyone driving a pilfered army jeep."
"They call them Humvees now."
"They are trying to stop their Humvee with whistles," said Chiun as another shell screamed over their heads. This one slammed into the road before them. It erupted in a shower of dirt and asphalt chunks.
Remo eased to a halt. Looking back over his shoulder, he threw the Humvee into reverse and stepped on the gas.
The machine responded, barreling back up the road and into the teeth of a tank gun.
"Why are you driving the wrong way?" Chiun asked without evident concern in his voice or face.
"Because I'm hungry, aggravated and most of all pissed off."
"And because of these temporary inconveniences, you have decided to commit suicide and are taking me with you?"
"I left out one thing."
"And what is that?"
"I know something these guys don't."
"Yes?"
"The effective range of a tank gun."
Remo stopped the Humvee two hundred yards short of the booming tank gun. A shell whistled overhead. Their eyes tracked it as if it were a silvery painted balloon floating by on a brisk wind.
A second shell boomed past, to join the one before.
Both tore up the road well beyond the Humvee. The detonations came only seconds apart, the second shell dispersing the dust cloud made by the first.
"If they want to knock us out with that thing, they'll have to back up another six hundred yards."
"And if they do?"
"We'll back up with them, but that won't happen.
"Why not?"
"Because in another minute they'll be out of shells."
It happened sooner than that.
No more shells boomed forth. Instead, the turret was popped, and a handful of Mexican soldiers armed with stubby Heckler ine guns came trotting up the road.
"I guess this is where we get personal," Remo said, leaving his seat.
Chiun also exited the vehicle.
The approaching soldiers fixed them in their sights and called, "Manos arriba!"
"You catch that, Little Father?"
"He is saying 'Stick them up.'"
"Must mean our hands," said Remo throwing up his hands because Chiun had taught him it brought the enemy closer.
It didn't work this time.
From the light tank a commanding voice called out one ripping word. "Disparen!"
Chiun started to say, "That means-"
The soldiers lit up their weapons, but Remo had already spotted their trigger fingers turning white the moment before the muzzle began flashing.
Chiun faded left. Remo dropped into a sudden crouch so the first vicious burst could pass harmlessly over his head.
They started moving in on their attackers.
There were only three. Their weapons had a high rate of fire, and clips began running empty.
It takes almost as much time to extract an empty clip and ram a fresh one into the receiver as it does to empty the first clip to begin with, Remo knew.
That was plenty of time when shooting at the unarmed or engaged in sporadic firefights from shelter. But it was fatally long when facing two Masters of Sinanju.
Remo arrowed up and ahead when the empty clip started dropping free. Less than a second transpired.
He had cleared the halfway point when the empty clip clinked to the roadway. He made a fist.
The soldier was whipping out a second clip from a belt pouch, and his speed was good. He wasn't taking chances even though he was trying to shoot an unarmed foe who had surrendered on command.
At the exact moment the soldier's fingers gripped the fresh clip, Remo's fist started up from his belt line.
It was a short blow. It struck the hovering gun barrel, which cracked off and jumped into the soldier's gaping mouth. The mouth shut reflexively.
It would have been comical except the metal fragment kept going, taking out the cervical vertebrae in the neck via a newly excavated exit wound.
The soldier dropped, and Remo turned to deal with a second soldier, who was popping bullets one at a time in an effort to conserve ammunition.
One at a time was easy. Remo struck a pose, making a teapot handle with one crooked arm so the first round had an empty space to pass through. The soldier kept trying to correct his aim, but Remo corrected his stance each time.
Stubbornly the soldier kept trying to perforate Remo's exposed chest, but the bullets only managed to speed by past his inner elbow. His face grew dark with rage as he put out snarling round after snarling round, wondering why his bullets insisted upon hitting a triangular patch of empty air instead of his taunting target. A triangle that seemed to grow in size with each shot fired through it.
He never realized the triangle was growing in size because he was so concentrated on his task he didn't sense the approach of two-footed doom.
"Can you say 'mandibular dislocation'?" Remo asked.
The soldier's response was to clench his teeth and redirect his weapon in Remo's direction.
So Remo showed him the harmless palm of his open hand before it slapped his jaw off its hinges to land in the dirt like a fresh-cut lamb chop.
When the soldier's remaining face hit the road, his dangling tongue hissed as it came into contact with a hot shell casing. He moaned.
Stepping up, Remo put him out of his misery with a hard heel that opened his skull like a cantaloupe.
He turned just in time to watch Chiun make a point about correct grooming. The Master of Sinanju was methodically flaying his antagonist.
The flayee seemed unaware of his plight at first. It was hard not to notice elongated strips of one's own flesh as they came off in long, thin peels, but the soldier's mind was obviously elsewhere.