Rifles swapped positions. Gun stocks lifted. They drove down for the americano’s head and unprotected shoulders.

  It looked for a satisfying instant as if the yanqui would be driven to his knees. Cesar saw the stocks come within a hair of his head.

  Then they went chunk! against the hardwood floor, carrying their owners with them.

  The cream of Delegate Cesar’s Shining Path guerrilla unit fell all over one another, their ponchos flapping, their rifles tangled among one another.

  The gringo was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

  “Donde? Como?” Cesar sputtered.

  A tapping finger caused him to turn around. It was a reflex action. Had he not been so stupefied by the sudden vanishment of the americano, Cesar would not have turned. He would have run. Instead, he did turn–to see the American’s goofy grin. Steel-like fingers took his throat.

  Cesar suddenly went as stiff as the hardwood flooring under his feet.

  He watched out of the corner of his eyes as the thin americano went among his compañeros, calmly and methodically snapping necks and shattering skulls with stiff-fingered blows until the squirming heap of ponchos became an inert heap of ponchos, much like a stack of Andean rugs.

  Then the americano came back for him.

  “Time for the interrogation,” he said, his fingers returning to Cesar’s throat. Cesar found he could suddenly move. And he did. He ran.

  And fell flat on his face, never seeing the foot that tripped him.

  A hard knee pressed on the small of his back, holding him down by the spine. Cesar couldn’t move.

  “Please,” he panted. “What do you want?”

  “Believe I’m a spy now?” Remo inquired coolly.

  “Sí! Sí!,”

  “Good. Not that it matters. Let’s start the interrogation.”

  “Hokay. Who do you work for, really?”

  “You got it backwards, pal. You’re the interrogee.”

  “I will tell you nothing, imperialista!” Cesar spat.

  “I’ve heard that one before. Usually before I do this.”

  Remo reached up under Cesar’s throat, found the Adam’s apple, and gave it a sharp squeeze. Cesar’s tongue jumped out of his suddenly open mouth like Jack coming out of the box. It stuck out so far Cesar could plainly see the taste buds on its blunt pink tip.

  “Now, let me see...where did I put that butane lighter?” Remo wondered airily, making a pretense of slapping his pockets with his free hand.

  Cesar’s eye widened. He experienced an immediate vision of his tongue shriveling into crisp charcoal before his helpless eyes. Who was this americano who could manipulate his highly trained body as if he were a puppet?

  He tried to tell the yanqui imperialist that he would talk. All he managed to produce was a nasal hum and some leaking drool.

  “If that’s a sí, stick out your tongue,” Remo said cheerfully.

  Cesar pushed at his tongue. He thought it was already all the way out. To his eternal surprise, it emerged another half-inch. He had had no idea it was so long. He hoped the root would hold. It felt very strained back there at the root of his tongue.

  “If I let your tongue back in, will it wag for me?” the yanqui named Remo said.

  Cesar tried to nod. No nod came. He pushed at his tongue, mentally damning the stubborn root–anything to spare him this humiliation.

  Suddenly the fingers were at his throat again. His tongue recoiled like a turtle’s head. The crushing knee lifted from his spine.

  Shakily Cesar was rolled over to a sitting position. He felt his throat. It hurt. His tongue felt like sundried beef. He swished it around his stickily parched mouth. Eventually he got it semi-moist–enough to spit.

  “What do you wish to know?” he croaked.

  “Word is, you Maoist throwbacks are in league with the Colombian cartels,” Remo suggested.

  “We spit on all narco-traficantes!” he said, suiting the words to deed.

  Remo complimented Cesar on his power to expectorate and went on, “That’s not what I hear around the ol’ campfire.”

  “The narco-traficantes made this valley the lawless place that it is,” the comandante admitted grudgingly. “Perfect for us. And the campesinos–those who grow the coca leaf–their interests must be protected.”

  “I’ll take that as an admission of guilt,” Remo said. “Next question. Pay close attention. This is the big one.”

  “Sí?”

  “The Colombians want the President killed before the summit. Some say you boys took the assignment.”

  “We do not need the Colombians’ filthy drug money to bring down the American President. He is our enemy too.”

  “Do I detect another sí?” Remo asked archly.

  “Sí. I mean, no. We were offered this thing. We turned it down.”

  Remo’s fingers took the man’s throat again.

  “Not what I heard.”

  Cesar’s eyes widened. “Very well,” he said. “We were prepared to do what they wished. But the Colombians changed their minds. They hired others. I do not know who.”

  “You can do better than that,” Remo prompted.

  “I truly do not know who,” Cesar protested. “It is not my concern. I am a revolutionary, not a gossip.”

  “Great epitaph,” said Remo Williams, who believed the man, and, having what he wanted, drove the heel of his hand into the Senderista comandante’s face. The face was instantly transformed into a flat membrane in which faint hollows were the memory of the organs of sight, smell, and taste. There was no blood. It was all collecting behind the gravel-like curtain of the facial bones, many of which had been pushed back into the brain with fatal consequences. Cesar the Senderista fell forward, his featureless face striking the floor with a gravelly beanbag sound.

  On his way out, Remo picked up the can of Inca Cola and threw it back into the house with the rest of the trash. He smiled, even though it was a long, long walk back to Uchiza. He had done his part to keep the Peruvian rain forest free of litter. It was a good feeling.

  · · ·

  Hours later, looking dusty but unwilted in the early-morning heat, Remo stepped out of the jungle to the sprawling town of Uchiza. It was a flat gold-rush-atmosphere boomtown, thanks to the local coca growers. The so-called main drag was lined with boxy stucco hovels. There were a lot of house trailers too. Despite its flat primitiveness, it boasted a small airport.

  Remo walked past the stalls where kerchiefed Peruvians sold black-market sunglasses and videotapes celebrating the exploits of high-roller drug kingpins–culture heroes to these simple destitute people by virtue of the fact that they brought money into the local economy. Patrolling Peruvian Army soldiers watched him with sullen interest.

  Uchiza’s only hotel looked like it had been abandoned, but the satellite dish atop it was shiny and new. Remo walked straight for it. Then, suddenly remembering something, he stopped and accosted one of the stall vendors.

  “Trash bags, señor?” he asked. “Say, this big?” He spread his hands to indicate the length of an average Peruvian guerrilla.

  The vendor happily produced a yellow box of trash bags. When Remo offered him American dollars instead of Peruvian currency, he dug out six more.

  “One box is plenty,” Remo said, making the exchange. “There were only two of them. Gracias.”

  He entered the hotel room minutes later without knocking or using the key. There had been no key. It was that kind of hotel.

  Inside, Remo almost tripped over a body. It was one of the Shining Path guerrillas who had been sent back to verify his identity as an American spy.

  The guerrilla lay on his back, his arms splayed, his teeth showing in a grimace or possibly a fixed smile. Remo decided to give the corpse the benefit of the doubt and smiled back.

  “Nice to see you again too,” he said pleasantly, breaking open the yellow box and withdrawing a green plastic trash bag. He snapped the mouth open and, kneeling, drew it over the corpse’s head and on down to the dusty booted feet.

  He noticed with a frown that the feet didn’t quite fit.

  “Wrong size,” he muttered. So he sheered off both feet at the ankles with the side of one hand, tossed them in, and closed the bag with a twister seal.

  Standing up, Remo looked for the second corpse, which he knew would be there.

  “Must be in the next room,” he said, and headed for the room from which the sound of stagey British voices was coming.

  There, a TV set flickered. A small wispy figure in a purple-and-yellow silk kimono sat on the floor regarding the screen, paying no heed to Remo’s entrance or the body under the table set with bottles of complimentary Electro agua purificada.

  “How’s it going, Little Father?” Remo asked pleasantly.

  “I am not cleaning them up,” Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, said querulously.

  “Don’t sweat it. They’re mine. I sent them here.”

  “I know. They rudely entered just as Derek was breaking the harsh news of his secret past to Lady Asterly.”

  “You know,” Remo said in a cheerful voice, stopping to cram the second corpse into a fresh bag, “I never thought I’d see the day when you returned to watching soaps.”

  “These are not mere American soaps, which wallow in filth and sexual perversion,” Chiun said. He lifted one desiccated finger to the ceiling. It was tipped by an impossibly long nail. “These are the finest of British dramas. Would that your backward land still produced such richness as this.”

  “Satellite feed from America coming in clear?”

  “It serves.” Chiun’s eyes never left the screen. The back of his head was shiny with age. Two white clouds of hair floated over his ears.

  “Good. Because Smith must be paying a fortune in satellite time to feed you today’s crop of British soaps.”

  “I am worth it.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Without me, Harold Smith would not now be poised on the brink of greatness.”

  Remo looked up from his work. “What greatness is that?”

  “Stepping forward as the true ruler of America.”

  “Got news for you. Smith only runs CURE. He has no designs on the Oval Office.”

  “Then I fear for the future of your country, now that the President of Vice is about to assume the Eagle Throne.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The President of Vice,” Chiun repeated. “The one everyone is ashamed of, whom they keep from view like an idiot child. He now rules your country.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From Smith. He called an hour ago to inform me that your President had perished at the hands of villains.”

  “What!”

  Chapter Three

  Abu Al-Kalbin watched as the navigation lights of Air Force One plummeted in the darkness of the Mexican night.

  “We have done it!” he croaked, holding his kaffiyeh close to his mouth to keep out the putrid smell of the puddle slowly collecting between his squatting legs.

  “It is trying to stabilize!” Jalid cried, pointing.

  Air Force One dipped, then rose as if fighting to stay in the air. They could not see the damaged engine nacelle, but they spied a sputtering flare that told them of the damage their Stinger had inflicted.

  “No,” Abu Al-Kalbin said hollowly. “It is falling. It is doomed.” The enormity of what he had done was sinking in. He felt like an ant that had brought down a tiger.

  Air Force One went in. Its engines continued straining until it pancaked to the ground and the sparks spurted from its squealing underbelly. They cut off as if suddenly depowered.

  From his mountainous vantage point, Abu Al-Kalbin watched Air Force One slide along the desert floor, breaking up as it went. An engine disintegrated. A wing tip snapped and cartwheeled away. The aircraft seemed as if it would slide forever. It slewed toward the base of an adjacent mountain. The nose crumpled upon impact. The tail section literally broke off. Luggage spilled from the burst holds.

  The sounds were horrible, wrenching, metallic.

  “Is that screaming?” Abu Al-Kalbin asked, momentarily forgetting what he was doing and standing up in awe.

  “It is the tortured metal,” Jalid said.

  “It sounds like screams to me,” Abu Al-Kalbin muttered.

  “It is metallic,” Walid agreed.

  “Still. It reminds me of dying screams.”

  Air Force One lay inert in the desert far below. The lights had gone out in cabin and fuselage. One surviving engine burned with fitful yellow flames. A stinging smoke smell was already fouling the still air.

  Abu Al-Kalbin and his men watched it burn in silence.

  After a while, Jalid and Walid turned to their leader.

  “We have done it, Abu!” Jalid cried. “We have extinguished the American President like a candle.”

  They noticed Abu Al-Kalbin’a naked legs.

  “Are you done?” Walid asked.

  Abu Al-Kalbin looked down, and very quickly he crouched down to finish what he had started.

  When he stood up again, several agonizing and embarrassing minutes later, he used his kaffiyeh to wipe himself and then threw it away.

  Walid and Jalid stood off to one side, watching the F-14’s circle helplessly.

  “They cannot see us,” Jalid suggested.

  “Neither can they land,” Walid added.

  “Then we are safe to examine the fruit of our triumph,” Abu Al-Kalbin decided. “Come, take up your weapons.”

  Walid and Jalid followed Abu Al-Kalbin down the barren mountainside to the desert floor. The air was cool, and bitter with the smoke of the burning engine. But Abu Al-Kalbin preferred that stink to the other, which trailed him like a miasma.

  Reaching level terrain, they crept to the wreckage cautiously.

  “No one could survive such a crash,” Walid said quietly.

  “For this brave feat,” Jalid said, “we will attain the prize we have for so long sought without question.”

  “Yes, Brother Qaddafi will not deny us this time,” Abu Al-Kalbin agreed, his voice rising in exultation.

  Still, they approached with raised rifles. Not that weapons would help them if the aircraft unexpectedly exploded, as they feared it might.

  “We will need proof,” Abu Al-Kalbin muttered. “Which one of you has the camera?”

  Walid and Jalid stopped in their tracks and looked at one another, eyes widening in their kaffiyehs.

  “I thought you had the camera, Abu,” they said together.

  “It must be back in the safe house,” Abu Al-Kalbin muttered. “Maleesh. Never mind. The President always travels with the media, who are like flies around dung. There will be a camera in the plane. We will use that. Come.”

  The fallen Air Force One was even more impressive up close. Debris littered the crash site. The tail sat apart and almost upright like a big abstract kite with a U.S. flag emblem on it. Except for the broken tail, the fuselage had survived largely intact.

  They went in through the open-end tail. It was like entering a dark tunnel.

  Abu Al-Kalbin immediately tripped over the body of a Secret Service guard, instantly recognizable by his sunglasses and coat-lapel button. Abu Al-Kalbin shot him three times in the chest to make sure he was dead. The body jerked. The sunglasses jumped off. The eyes that looked up were glassy and sightless.

  Abu Al-Kalbin stepped over the body and pushed on. Faint starlight picked out details.

  The next section of the plane was a roomy bedroom. The silk covers had come off the mattress. Beyond it was a private lavatory. Past the lavatory was a passenger cabin. Seats and cushions were thrown everywhere. They had to push aside uprooted seats to get into it. Here were many more Secret Service bodies.

  That told them they had come to the presidential section.

  “One bullet for each, to make certain!” Abu Al-Kalbin barked.

  Walid and Jalid applied the muzzles of their weapons to every sunglass-festooned forehead, giving each a single bullet.

  One agent stirred in a tangle of cushions. There the seats were mashed out of shape. The man had landed or thrown himself over the nest of compressed seating. The attitude of his body was one of protecting another. He moaned.

  Abu Al-Kalbin stepped up to him and yanked his head up by the hair.

  “President...” the agent croaked, his eyes twitching in their sockets.

  “Where is he?” Abu Al-Kalbin asked urgently. “Tell us!”

  “Must...protect President...”

  “Where!”

  The agent expelled a rattling breath and his head went limp.

  Abu Al-Kalbin jammed the AK-47 muzzle into the man’s open mouth and fired twice to make sure death had claimed him.

  He withdrew the suddenly red muzzle and said, “He must be forward.”

  They passed into the next section, where the overhead bins had spilled a profusion of video and camera equipment.

  “Excellent!” Abu Al-Kalbin cried. “Take one, each of you. Brother Qaddafi will have ample proof of our mighty deed.”

  Abu Al-Kalbin fell upon a camcorder. He dropped his rifle in order to get it.

  “This is perfection,” he cried, looking through the viewfinder. He panned around the cabin, past the bodies of dead journalists. Through the shattered cabin windows, the burning engine cast a campfire-like illumination. He fiddled with the buttons until he got a video light. He pointed the lens at his men, who were pointing cameras back.

  Camera flashbulbs flashed.

  “Yes,” Abu exclaimed. “Good! Photograph all the bodies, and I will record all with this video camera.”

  They spent several minutes recording the carnage aboard Air Force One for posterity. They worked their way forward to the electronic-warfare compartment, just behind the cockpit. They managed to get the cockpit door to open, but didn’t enter. They couldn’t. The cabin had been mashed flat to the bulkhead. The contents of the cockpit–instruments, controls, and crew–had been rammed into the bulkhead wall. Once they had got the door open, a shattered arm popped out from the tangle.

  They took film of that, too, taking turns posing with the sight. Abu Al-Kalbin took the unknown crewman’s dead hand in his and pretended to shake it. He smiled broadly, a proud and pleased smile. It went out like a cheap flashbulb when he felt his belly gurgle suddenly.