This wasn’t like it had been the other times she had been attacked these past few days. There was fear now, to be sure, but not terror. Her worries were larger than herself.

  Lying on that dirty deck on a rented Brazilian scow, Amanda Lifton prayed that Remo and Chiun would be safe. Not for her sake, but for the sake of the entire world.

  Dr. Myron Phelps tried to adjust the night scope of the sniper rifle, but his pinkie was stuck.

  “Ow, ow, ow. Blood blister, blood blister,” Myron said as he wrenched the digit free.

  Whatever he’d done to the gun loosened the scope. It was wobbling on the stock as he brought it back to his eye. He tried balancing the gun and its wobbly scope while simultaneously sticking his wounded finger in his mouth.

  “Did you get them?” Dr. Archie Lancer whispered.

  Archie and seven other men hunched behind Myron on one of the boats rented by the Congress of Concerned Scientists. Dressed in their familiar Sage Carlin uniforms, they were all peering into the night at the nearby boat.

  “No,” Myron snarled as he sucked his injured pinkie. “They moved.”

  “Are you sure?” one of the seven scientists hovering alongside Archie asked. “Maybe you’re not using it right.”

  “It’s a gun, not a particle accelerator,” Myron snarled. “You point and pull the trigger.”

  He demonstrated. This time he was pretty sure he missed the boat altogether. He also managed to get his index finger stuck in that little hole dealie the trigger went in.

  “Ouch it all to heck,” Dr. Myron Phelps complained.

  He didn’t know why they had to do this anyway. Hubert was supposed to have a man for this sort of thing. This wasn’t the proper job of the CCS board. But Dr. Lifton and her bodyguards were apparently proving difficult to remove, even for Hubert’s supposedly perfect assassin.

  Myron could almost see why. A minute ago he had had the two men dead to rights as they stood on the deck of the boat. He had even taken a bead on the old one’s chest. But then the two of them had vanished.

  It wasn’t possible that they’d gone in the water. Only a fool would do that, what with all the piranhas in the area. No, they were still on the boat somewhere. Hiding.

  He’d worry about them later. Right now he was tracking Amanda Lifton.

  He had seen her briefly, peeking out over the railing. Outlined in ghostly green, thanks to his special night scope.

  Getting her would be sweet revenge. Not only was she out to stop the CCS from bringing about the death and rebirth of the current Earth, but the stuck-up little socialite bitch had refused to go out with him last Valentine’s Day.

  He tracked her from her last known location, carefully scouring the deckline at the base of the solid railing.

  He found her. A bright green glow shining out through a gap at the rail’s base.

  Myron pulled his pinkie from his mouth. He aimed the gun very carefully at the warm green glow.

  “Washing your hair, my foot,” Myron muttered as his finger squeezed the trigger.

  Instead of the satisfying crack of the rifle followed by the even more satisfying pop of Amanda Lifton’s snooty head. Dr. Myron Phelps saw a sudden flash of movement very close by. And in the instant before his finger completed its violent act, something appeared before him.

  Of course that was impossible. Being a man of science, Myron knew that matter didn’t just appear from nothingness. But there it was, as big as life. In the shape of a man. More specifically, in the shape of the old Asian man Myron had failed to shoot not one minute ago.

  And then the man who shouldn’t have appeared in the first place because it defied the laws of physics for him to do so was pulling the gun out of Myron’s hands and planting the barrel deep into Myron’s disbelieving brain.

  Myron Phelps fell to the deck, the barrel of his rifle sticking out of his head like a unicorn’s horn.

  Behind his falling body, the rest of the CCS group was blinking in unison. The men didn’t seem to know which was more shocking, the suddenly dead scientist lying on the deck or the two terrifying men who had appeared impossibly before them as if they’d just beamed down from a Borg cube.

  As Remo and Chiun approached, the men cowered together in a corner of the deck.

  Remo passed his finger over the terrified group. “Eenie, meenie, miney…you.” He pointed at Archie Lancer. “Okay, Poindexter, where are the seeds?”

  Archie looked down at Myron. Swallowing, he puffed out his chest bravely.

  “I—I won’t tell,” he said, gulping.

  “Fine,” Remo said.

  Grabbing Archie by a bell-bottomed ankle, Remo upended him and brought him to the edge of the deck.

  “Feed the fishies,” he said, dunking Archie into the water as far as his chest.

  The water stirred from below the surface.

  When the piranhas closed in, there was a great churning and frothing. The half-submerged CCS member waved his arms frantically. Then not so frantically. And then not at all. When Archie’s arms flopped into the water, Remo dumped the rest of the body into the river.

  “Okay, who’s in favor of talking now?” Remo asked.

  Seven hands shot in the air. The men looked like corduroy-clad Nazis.

  “Hubert took them,” one scientist offered.

  “They’re not on board these tubs?” Remo asked.

  A second boat was anchored behind the first. It bobbed on the waves. Remo sensed only two heartbeats on board. He assumed they belonged to the Brazilian pilots.

  “We started out with three boats. Hubert had us load all the seeds onto one a few hours ago. It continued on without us while we waited here to stop you.”

  “Swell,” Remo groused.

  “If the vessel is loaded down, it will not be able to travel fast,” the Master of Sinanju pointed out. “If we hasten, we should be able to overtake it.”

  “I suppose that’s some kind of good news,” Remo grumbled. He turned his attention back to the CCS scientists. “You’ve got a lot of stuff here,” he said, waving to the piles of provisions stacked all around the overloaded boat. “I’m guessing you’ve got a plan that doesn’t involve suffocating along with the rest of us.”

  The men glanced at one another.

  “We have made, um, arrangements,” one volunteered. “It will be necessary for those who understand what’s going on to record the planetary ecological changes for whatever agrarian civilizations the new Earth gives rise to. That way they won’t make the same environmental mistakes we did.” His face grew hopeful. “You’re welcome to join us. You could keep us safe if the hordes of dying humans figure out where we are.”

  “No, thanks,” Remo said. “Don’t like the dress code. Is St. Clair planting the seeds in that valley?”

  “No,” a scientist said. “The valley is where we’re going to record the last days of the first Earth.”

  “So where’s he planning on planting them?”

  “Around,” the man said with a timid shrug. “Here. Anywhere. They’ve been engineered to take root everywhere.”

  Remo could tell the man was telling the truth. To make matters worse, he was talking about planetary mass extinction without a hint of remorse.

  Remo was turning to the Master of Sinanju when he sensed movement in the water. Glancing over, he saw something big and black sliding along the side of the boat.

  The animal was so large, the craft rolled to one side as it passed. Remo saw a pair of bright yellow eyes peering over the surface of the water as the creature slipped by.

  “What the hell’s that?” Remo asked.

  The nervous scientists leaned forward. The boat’s wan deck lights gave some illumination to the water. “I think it’s a caiman,” one scientist said with a gulp. “They’re related to the alligator. They’re nearly extinct. It’s unusual to find one this far north.”

  “No kidding?” Remo asked coldly. “Big trip like that it must be hungry.”

  Grabbing two clumps of corduroy, he tossed a pair of scientists out in front of the gliding black shape. There was a scream as a pair of jaws yawned wide then snapped shut. A great black tail lashed the air, splashing water across the deck of the rocking boat.

  Even as the caiman was turning its attention on the second scientist Remo was using a hand slash to sever the line between the two boats. The men from the boat-rental agency weren’t to blame for the sins of the CCS.

  “Let’s go, Little Father,” he said.

  Once they’d slipped over the side, he sent a hard heel into the hull of the boat. The wood and fiberglass cracked, and the boat began to take on water.

  By the time they reached their own boat, the lights of the CCS boat were disappearing below the dark water. Screams pierced the night.

  When she saw them climbing back aboard, Amanda Lifton’s face collapsed in great relief.

  “You’re both safe,” she exhaled, climbing to her feet.

  To Remo it almost seemed as if she were legitimately concerned for their well-being. He chalked it up to shock, assuming it would pass the minute she found the fresh bullet hole in the side of her last pink suitcase.

  “St Clair’s moved the seeds to one boat,” Remo said. “If we pick up the pace, we should be able to catch up.”

  Leaving Amanda on the deck, he and the Master of Sinanju headed into the cabin to consult with Chim’bor.

  Alone, Amanda gripped the railing. She looked up at the sky, tears of fear and relief in her eyes.

  “Thank God,” she muttered to the heavens. “Thank God.”

  Chapter 22

  Remo felt the eyes watching him from out of the darkness. This time he was determined to ignore it. Folding his arms tight, he rolled over onto his side. The eyes watched his back as he lay on the boat’s deck.

  The Master of Sinanju was sound asleep in the front of the boat. Every once in a while, the godawful honk of the old man’s snoring would slice the humid night air.

  The distant jungle on either side of the river teemed with life. Animals screeched and howled at the crescent moon. Here and there were lights from small villages. Chim’bor was at the helm. Half-dozing, the native was unmindful of anything beyond wheel and current.

  The eyes stared at Remo for nearly twenty minutes. Finally, a figure of shadow crawled across the deck on all fours. When the hand reached out for Remo’s shoulder, he rolled flat on his back.

  “What?” he demanded of Amanda Litton.

  Amanda seemed startled. “Oh, you’re awake.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? You’re the loudest starer I’ve ever met. What, do you need me fluff the deck or something?”

  She didn’t respond as he’d come to expect. As she knelt on the deck, she wore a different expression than he’d seen on her before. As if she’d made some important decision.

  Amanda studied the blackness of the night.

  “Remo, I don’t matter,” she announced.

  “Oh, brother,” Remo said, his head clunking back to the deck. “Is this some sort of life crisis because someone ripped the arms off that stuffed panda of yours back home?”

  “No,” she insisted.

  “Good, because I didn’t do it And besides, it was an accident.”

  She grew angry. But not in the spoiled, pouty, verge-of-tears way that was normal for her.

  “None of that nonsense matters,” Amanda insisted seriously. “It doesn’t and I don’t. Remo, you’ve got to promise me something. If it comes to a point where you have a choice between saving me or stopping Dr. St. Clair, please forget about me.”

  Remo frowned. “What’s with the attitude transplant?”

  “Simple,” she said. “I’ve finally come to realize that there’s something bigger than me out there.”

  “You’re kind of old to be just figuring that out now, aren’t you?” Remo asked.

  “Listen to me,” she insisted harshly. “Daddy sent you to protect me, right? Well, you’re through. I’m firing you. I don’t want your protection anymore.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that back when I told you to stay at the hotel.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I had to come. If I can offer any help, I will. I’m responsible for all this. But you’ve been putting yourself in danger to protect me. No more. You’re through doing that. That’s an order.”

  “I don’t get it,” Remo said. “I thought you got off on bossing people around.”

  “I do. I mean I did. I mean—”

  She stopped to collect her thoughts. When she looked down at him, her eyes were clear and deadly serious.

  “I’ve helped to unleash a monster on the world, Remo,” Amanda insisted. “And as far as I can tell, you and Chiun are the only two people who might be able to stop it.”

  Across the deck, the tone of Chiun’s snoring changed. It grew slightly softer. Remo noted the difference.

  “You’ve got to make sure every last one of those seeds is destroyed,” she continued. “You can’t let him plant them in that valley or anywhere else. They’ll spread like weeds. You can’t be weighed down with worrying about me. Not when the whole world is at stake.”

  “Someone’s always saying it’s the end of the world,” Remo said. “Someday it’ll be the real thing. Tomorrow, a million years from tomorrow. Somebody will have to be there to see it. Whoop-de-do if it’s us.”

  Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of a helicopter rattling over the jungle.

  “Remo, the whole world. Everything. Gone.” She shook her head. “You can’t be so blasé.”

  The helicopter noise melted into the other night sounds. Remo rolled his gaze to Amanda.

  “My whole world is that little pain in the neck making a racket up there,” he said. With his chin he pointed to the front of the boat where, unseen, the Master of Sinanju continued his incessant snoring.

  “You don’t act like he means that much to you,” Amanda said. “The two of you seem to fight a lot.”

  “That’s because he’s irritating as hell,” Remo said.

  The snoring stopped.

  Remo knew it. The old coot was listening.

  “And he’s a nasty-tempered, racist old nuisance,” he added.

  Then he pitched his voice low so that only Chiun could hear. “Mind your own business,” he whispered.

  “In that case, stop shouting,” came the disembodied reply, so soft that Amanda failed to hear it. “And if you try coupling with that female, listen for the splash, for I will be huffing myself overboard.”

  The snoring resumed.

  “The piranhas will spit you out, you bag of bones,” Remo muttered.

  “What?” Amanda asked.

  He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Nothing,” he said.

  Amanda didn’t seem to care. She was staring across the river. The nearer shoreline was a smear of black.

  “I guess you’ve got a different way of showing your affection,” she said, her voice faraway. “In my family it was a big breakthrough in communication if Mother and Daddy abused the butler together.” She sat next to him on the deck, hugging her knees to her chin.

  For the first time Remo wasn’t really bothered by her presence.

  “I guess,” Remo admitted with a heavy sigh. “Actually, for a pint-sized pest, he casts a big shadow.”

  “I don’t have that with my family,” Amanda said. “I was raised one way. The Lifton way. I think it blinded me to anything beyond the end of my nose.” She shook her head bitterly. “I should have seen that Hubert was up to something with those trees.”

  She had grown more angry with herself as she talked. Lying on his back, Remo looked up at her.

  She had pulled her knees tighter to her chin. Vacant eyes stared at the night.

  Seeing the look of worry and regret on her beautiful face, Remo felt an old stirring.

  Reaching out with his left hand, he tapped the inside of Amanda’s left wrist. She sucked in a little gasp of air.

  It was the first of the twenty-seven steps designed to bring a woman to sexual ecstasy. He hadn’t used it in a while, and he was afraid he might be a little rusty. He needn’t have worried. As he continued tapping in rhythm to her quickening heartbeat, Amanda let out a contented purr.

  The sound beat all to hell her usual blubbering. Or the way she was always prattling on about her father. In fact, with her mouth shut, Remo was finally noticing just how attractive Amanda Lifton was.

  He switched to her right wrist, and she arched her back in delight.

  What the hell, Remo thought. It had been a long time. Besides, there was the romantic backdrop of the warm Brazilian night, the soothing rush of water and a tapestry of a million stars flickering overhead. Not to mention the impending Apocalypse.

  By the time he’d worked his way to step four, she had rolled over to him. One breast pressed against his shoulder.

  She smelled good.

  By step six she was wriggling out of her khaki shorts and pink panties. Shaking fingers undid her blouse. Massive firm twin mounds exploded from the fabric.

  For a moment the snoring stopped across the deck. There came a snort of disapproval. With a honk the snoring resumed.

  Amanda had been lowering herself to Remo. Quivering in her desire, she hesitated at the sound.

  “Do you think we should?” she whispered huskily.

  Remo smiled up at her. “Hey, you rather the world end with a whimper or a bang?”

  He pulled her down to him.

  “I am not angry at you, Remo.”

  This did the Master of Sinanju announce at daybreak. He stood at the front of the boat. Remo had just come up to join him, leaving Amanda sleeping back behind the cabin.

  Day broke bright and hot around the wizened form of the old Korean. Hands clasped behind his back, he surveyed the awakening Amazon.

  “Great,” Remo said. “Good. That makes two of us, cause I’m not angry at you, either. You see a Dunkin’ Donuts anywhere?”

  Chiun’s brow lowered and he turned his attention from the jungle. “As usual you are babbling,” he said. “I said that I was not angry at you.”

  “And I said right back at you,” Remo said. “I think it’s more humid than yesterday.”

  He breathed deep. The Amazon smelled muddy, but it was a clean kind of muddy. The current had grown stronger in the early hours before dawn. The boat weaved in long, lazy arcs to avoid half-submerged rocks.