Troubled Waters

"What time?" Felicia said again.

"For God's sake-"

"Quiet, Robin!" Meg was both surprised and pleased when Robin shut her mouth and turned away. To poor Felicia she replied, "It's getting on toward ten o'clock, I'd guess. They haven't started setting up for lunch yet."

When Felicia nodded, it was like a puppet, or like one of those spring-loaded toys you sometimes saw in the rear windows of old people's cars, heads bobbing up and down. Except the plastic heads were always grinning, and Felicia still looked numb, a blank expression on her face.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome." Megan waited for a moment, letting the surrealistic moment pass, before she spoke again. "You know," she said, "the only way we're ever getting out of here is if we put our heads together and work out some kind of plan."

"Get out?" Robin pronounced the words as if they had been uttered in some foreign tongue. "You must be crazy, Meg. They'll never let us go. They're having too much fun."

"I didn't plan on asking their permission," Megan said.

"Oh, right! There's only thirty-five or forty of them, all with guns and knives and... Jesus, Meg, you wanna get us killed?"

Meg answered with a question of her own. "You call this living, Robin?"

"I'll help," said Felicia, speaking in a voice more like her own than Meg had heard her use since they were captured on the Salome, almost a week before. "Just tell me what to do."

"Robin?"

"Shit, you're right. This isn't living. What's the plan?"

"First thing," Meg said, "we have to find ourselves some weapons. After that..."

THE TWO COMBATANTS CAME together with a clash of steel, grim, sweaty faces close enough to smell each other's rancid breath if they hadn't been focused single-mindedly on spilling blood. Each pirate used his free hand, clutching at the sword arm of his adversary, seeking an advantage in the struggle that could easily result in sudden death.

Szandor was taller, heavier, Flick was lean and quick, making the two of them a nearly even match. It would have been a different tale if they were wrestling, even boxing, but the blades they wielded were the perfect equalizers. The briefest lapse by either duelist could leave him stretched out in a pool of blood.

It did not have to end in death, of course. A point of honor could be made by simple bloodletting, provided that both parties to the duel agreed. Considering the adversaries, though-both men with fiery, brutal tempers, prone to quarreling at the best of times-it seemed to Thomas Kidd that one of them had to surely die this morning.

That meant one less crewman for their raiding, one less pair of hands to help around the camp, but Captain Kidd, for all of his authority, couldn't prevent a righteous duel from being played out to the death if the combatants were agreed. It was a sacred point of law among the buccaneers, and he could violate it only at the risk of sacrificing his command.

The present quarrel, predictably, was over women-or, to be precise, one woman in particular. Both Flick and Szandor coveted the tall blonde taken from their latest prize, and while the wench was technically available to any man who paid the captain's price, an argument had broken out as to which buccaneer she favored of the two. It seemed a bit ridiculous to Kidd, grown men imagining a slave girl truly cared a whit for either one of them, but stranger things had happened in the world. Besides, he knew that logic had no place where lust held sway among the sort of men who followed him.

The challenge had been mutual, duly received and answered. Captain Kidd was not empowered to prevent the duel, although he might postpone it temporarily, in the event all hands were needed for a raid, or to defend their island stronghold. In the present circumstances, though, he would invite a mutiny if he denied the duelists their rights or kept his men of a diverting show.

Kidd had a ringside seat for the engagement, lounging in his high-backed wicker throne, the cutlass that was both a weapon and his badge of office resting on his knees. There were no rules in such a fight, per se, except that no one else could interfere to help either combatant. If another member of his scurvy crew so much as raised a hand in aid of either Flick or Szandor, it would be Kidd's task-indeed, his oath-bound duty-to step in and cut down the bastard.

There was small chance of that occurring, though, when most of the assembled buccaneers had placed bets on one swordsman or the other, and the few not wagering were glad enough to simply cheer on the fighters. It wasn't often that they had a full-fledged duel in camp-six months since the last one, if his memory was accurate-and everyone enjoyed the show.

Last time, prompted by an argument about some missing loot, the winner had been satisfied to draw first blood and let it go at that. Kidd had an inkling that this morning's duelists wouldn't be so easily deterred from murder, and while he was loath to lose an able-bodied crewman, the matter was out of his hands. As captain of the brotherhood, the best that he could do was to sit back and enjoy the show, keep one eye peeled for cheaters and assume that either Flick or Szandor would survive.

The captain's final thought had barely taken shape, when Szandor gave a mighty shout and threw himself at Flick, his sword thrust out in front of him to skewer the smaller man. Flick saw it coming, though, and sidestepped just in time to save himself. His own blade flashed toward Szandor's face, then dipped aside before his enemy could parry, swooping down to gash the taller pirate's thigh.

Szandor recoiled, now limping, and his roar of fury had become a howl of pain. Blood spurted from his wound, but it wasn't a mortal blow, the artery undamaged. Still, it slowed him and made his footwork clumsy, as his cunning adversary had to have planned.

There were no time-outs and no substitutions in a duel of honor. If a man was wounded, he could either keep on fighting, or throw down his weapon and beg mercy from his adversary. Sometimes, he who scored first blood was satisfied to see his enemy in pain, and let it go at that. This morning, though, Szandor didn't throw down his sword, and Flick displayed no evidence of magnanimity.

The fight went on, and now Kidd knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it would be a battle to the death.

One leg of Szandor's torn and faded denim pants was soaked with blood from thigh to ankle, yet he kept on fighting, lurching after Flick like some demented creature from the pit, too stubborn and too hateful to admit defeat or give his enemy the satisfaction of knowing that he hurt. In fact, while he was slowed by the wounded leg, his slashing thrusts still demonstrated the same power that had made him one of Kidd's most deadly fighters. Flick would be in trouble yet if he allowed himself to fall beneath that flashing blade.

There was a scowl of concentration on the smaller pirate's face as he continued fighting, dancing rings around Szandor in an attempt to wear out his adversary. Sadly for Flick, it seemed that Szandor had attained that place on the plateau of suffering where pain no longer made a difference. His movements might be clumsy, but they showed no evidence of flagging, even as fresh blood continued pulsing from the deep gash on his thigh.

The wound was killing him, Kidd knew, but Szandor seemed determined not to fall before he settled with his sprightly foe. He aimed a roundhouse swing at Flick's bald head, a move so telegraphed that a blind man could have seen it coming, but when Flick attempted to sidestep the slash, Szandor reversed himself with stunning speed and rammed his long blade home between the smaller pirate's ribs.

Flick stiffened, biting off a scream, and brought up his free hand to seize the blade where it protruded from his abdomen. Szandor was trying to withdraw his sword and strike again, to finish it, but Flick would not release the blade, in spite of fresh blood spilling from between his lacerated fingers. Stepping closer to his enemy, he seemed to drive the long blade even deeper, through his vitals, in his grim determination to strike back.

Szandor gave up, released his sword and was about to step back out of range, but he had stalled too long. Flick's sword came whistling down with all the little pirate's weight behind it, biting deep into the flesh of Szandor's shoulder where his neck joined with his trunk. A startled grunt escaped from Szandor's lips, immediately followed by a jet of crimson blood that struck Flick in the face and dribbled down his chest.

As Kidd and company looked on, the two men fell together, slumping to their knees, like lovers locked in an embrace, before they toppled over sideways, linked by the sharp blades that pierced their flesh. Both clung to life for several moments longer, but there was no power on the island that could save them now, no medicine or magic that could heal those massive wounds.

A groan went up around the killing ground, as disappointed gamblers realized all bets were off. Both men were dead, their deaths so nearly simultaneous that no one could have named a winner if his life depended on it.

Two men gone, and while the bout had been exhilarating, Kidd could not help thinking that he had no ready means of filling vacancies these days. Of course, they ran across the odd rogue every now and then who jumped at a chance to join the band, but they were few and far between. Most killers with that kind of nerve were operating on their own, freelance, or working for the syndicates that smuggled weapons, drugs and men among the islands, or to the United States.

Kidd was about to rise up from his throne when Billy Teach stepped up beside him, resting a hand on his shoulder. Kidd turned to face his first lieutenant, scowling at the hand until it was removed.

"Beggin' your pardon, Cap'n, but we've got another prize comin' our way."

"Says who?"

"Our man in Puerta Plata. Morgan."

"Well," Kidd said, "he hasn't failed us yet. We'd best be getting ready to receive more guests."

"Aye, sir."

"And, Billy?"

"Sir?"

Kidd nodded to the corpses stretched out on the ground within a few short paces of his chair. "Have someone haul that rubbish out beyond the reef, will you? Sharks have to eat, the same as anybody else."

Chapter 10

The sailor's name was not Enrique. Standing on the pier beside the Melody, Howard Morgan introduced the slender, twenty-something man as Pablo Altamira, and it hardly seemed worth Remo's time to ask for ID to verify the name. Remo didn't overlook the stylized tattoo of a sailboat on the web of skin between the young man's thumb and forefinger.

Among Latino gangs of the Caribbean and South America, he knew, that symbol indicated that its bearer was involved in smuggling, typically of drugs. So far, so good.

Tattoos aside, it would have taken psychic powers to peg Pablo as a bad guy at first glance. He had movie-star looks and wore his hair long, tied back in a ponytail that hung below his collar. Perfect teeth flashed in a smile as he was introduced to Remo first, then Stacy and finally Chiun. The old Korean, for his part, merely glared at them all from the helm, like an unpleasant sea captain forced out of retirement. Their so-called guide was casual but stylish in a chambray shirt, new Levi's jeans and a pair of spotless deck shoes worn without the benefit of socks. "Pablo knows all the islands hereabouts," Morgan was telling them, while his companion smiled and nodded in agreement. "You've my word that he'll show you things the average tourist never sees."

"I'm counting on it," Remo said. "How much?"

"A very modest twenty-five per day, U.S.," said Morgan.

"Very modest," Pablo echoed.

"It's a deal," said Remo. "When can we get under way?"

"Immediately, if not sooner," the travel agent answered.

"Great. Let's do it, then."

Remo endured another flaccid handshake, slipping Morgan a fifty-dollar tip that put some extra wattage in his smile. "Most generous, I'm sure," the travel agent said. "If I can ever help you with your travel needs again, don't hesitate to call."

"We'll definitely be in touch," said Remo, who read the insincerity in Morgan's behavior like he read the white letters on a red stop sign.

Pablo stood with them and watched as Morgan made his way back down the pier. When he was beyond recall, the newest member of their crew turned on another gleaming smile and nodded toward the Melody.

"Shall we be going, then, senor?" he asked.

"Suits me," said Remo, turning to include his "wife" in the exchange. "You ready, darling?"

"As I'll ever be," said Stacy Armitage.

Remo spent several minutes showing Pablo around the Melody, from her controls to such essentials as the galley, heads and sleeping quarters. The new member of their crew said little, but Remo had the feeling that he was sizing things up, taking the measure of the multimillion-dollar cabin cruiser and her passengers.

Toward what end?

It was a gamble, trusting Howard Morgan to produce a member of the pirate gang. Hell, Remo wasn't even sure there was a pirate gang, at this point, in the sense of one cohesive group that watched the ports and preyed on boats repeatedly. For all he knew, the death of Richard Armitage and the abduction of his wife could just as easily have been a one-time thing, or perpetrated by a loose-knit group that roved among the many islands of the blue Caribbean, killing time here and there between raids, living off the proceeds of their latest depredation until cash ran short again.

Still, there was the tattoo on Pablo Altamira's hand if that meant anything. Not much, Remo decided, as he thought about the countless Latin gang members in North and South America who sported tattoos on their hands. More to the point, while wanna-bes would seldom go so far as getting a tattoo, the marks were seen on many ex-gang members who had left a life of crime behind them, but who never had the inclination or the cash to have the brands removed.

So, he had nothing yet, except a young man without references beyond one dipsy travel agent, who was on the payroll now, for good or ill. If he turned out to be a spotter for the hypothetical buccaneers, so much the better. And if not... well, hiring him would mean that they had blown their chance to act as bait.

It troubled Remo that so much hinged upon his chance meeting with Ethan Humphrey in a bar, some fourteen hours earlier. The old man was eccentric, granted, but his personal enthusiasm for the sea rovers of yesteryear didn't mean he was presently involved in hijacking or worse. If that were true, then it would naturally follow that dragons were slain at Renaissance festivals, while Civil War "recreation" groups would be marching on Atlanta and Gettysburg, armed to the teeth.

Pablo met Chiun, after a fashion, in one of the main cabins, where Chiun had staked himself out, staring at the grainy image on a twenty-inch wallmounted LCD television screen. He wasn't squinting-Remo, in his whole life, had not known a man of any age with keener eyes-but Chiun was leaning forward slightly, hands braced on his knees, as he sat in a modified lotus position.

"What's on, Little Father?" Remo asked him.

"Butt Master," Chiun replied, his tone somehow combining fascination and disgust.

Remo stepped closer, peering at the screen. Three shapely women dressed in leotards stood with their backs to the camera, bent forward at the waist, as if to moon their audience. Their thighs were working, in and out, some kind of bellows action, as if each of them were holding an accordion between her knees. Instead, as Remo finally made out, their legs were clutching strange devices that resembled giant, twisted paper clips.

"Didn't Suzanne Autumns sell those things years ago?" Remo asked. "Isn't she the one who got bonked in the brain when one of her models lost control of the thing and it flew out from between her thighs?"

A moment later Suzanne Autumns herself appeared on-screen, looking twenty years older than she had ten years ago-and not much prettier. A Farrah-style hairdo, as outdated as her acting career, couldn't fully disguise the surgery scars on Autumns's scalp. "Now with rubber Thigh-Grip-Ers, so they're safer than ever!" she recited from a cue card.

"She talks like she has marbles in her mouth," Remo said.

"Butt Master is still better than Pec Man," Chiun informed him solemnly.

"He's right, senor," said Pablo, chiming in for the first time without a pointed invitation to speak. "I've seen the Pec Man ads. They suck big time. And they have Lady Pec Man, too. The things those women do with-"

"I believe we get the picture, Pablo. Thanks for sharing."

If the young man took offense at being interrupted, it did not show on his smiling face. "When shall we start?" he asked Remo.

"Sooner the better," Remo told him. "Right, Chiun?"

The Master Emeritus of Sinanju frowned and said, "Tell him to take us where we'll get decent reception."

Pablo appeared to know his business when it came to casting off and piloting the cabin cruiser out of port. In fact, there wasn't much to handling the cruiser, with its GPS positioning, automated piloting and other electronics that Remo had been instructed not to fiddle with. In fact, he had been keeping the thing under manual control since they took her out. Pablo engaged the electronics as a matter of course and soon had them on their way. Remo glanced at the controls, found all the blips and messages benign enough, as far as he could tell, and left him to it. If the course was not correct, he'd know, electronics or no.

The act of taking on a crewman for a boat the size of the Melody was more to give the passengers some extra leisure time than to preserve their lives at sea.

Some would have called the new addition to their crew a status symbol. Remo preferred to think of him as an investment in success.

The first day out from Puerta Plata they sailed east by southeast, roughly following the coastline, barely keeping it in sight, until they reached the Mong Passage and nosed due south. They had a distant glimpse of Puerto Rico, green on the horizon to their east, or left, but Pablo or his electronics seemed to know where he was going as they passed by the U.S. territory and sailed on, turning east again only when they were well into the Caribbean proper, the vast Atlantic safely behind them.

"Senor Morgan tells me joo are interested in pirates, si?"

"Could be," said Remo. "You know about that kind of thing?"

"Oh, si," said Pablo. "Anyone who grows up round this place knows pirate stories."

Remo noted that the young man didn't mention knowing pirates, and he wasn't sure if that should be a disappointment or relief. He experienced another moment of regret for letting Stacy Armitage aboard the Melody, but he suppressed it quickly, concentrating on the job at hand. That was when he noticed the scampering of small feet coming up to the bridge. Either the Melody had vermin or...

"You can show us where the pirates of old did their business?" Chiun squeaked as his head popped into view and he scampered up top.

It seemed to Remo that their pilot's grin was brighter than it should have been as he replied. "Oh, si, senor. This time manana, next day at the latest, joo see where the pirates lived. I think joo not be disappointed." Was there something in his voice, his eyes, besides the goofy smile? Or was Remo looking for some evidence of guilt and finding it where none in fact existed?

Before the summer afternoon began to fade, Stacy had already passed judgment on the new addition to their crew. "He's dirty," she told Remo as they sunbathed on the forward deck. "I feel it. Everywhere I go, he's watching me."

Remo considered the bikini bottoms she was barely wearing and the bikini top she had discarded entirely, and couldn't resist a smile. Her normal clothing flattered her, of course, but it didn't do justice to the supple body hidden underneath. A blind man would have dropped his pencils on the street corner if Stacy Armitage had passed by close enough for him to smell her sun-warmed, nearly naked skin. "He has good taste," Remo said.

"I'm being serious," she told him. "He may not be the one who set my brother up, but I don't trust him."

Remo had to ask. "Who do you trust?"

"Right now? Myself." She stared at Remo from behind big sunglasses, perhaps attempting to discover if his feelings had been wounded. When he gave no outward sign of injury, she frowned, whether from disappointment or concern, he couldn't say.

"That isn't fair, I guess," she said. "I should trust you."

"Don't be so hasty," Remo said, eyes closed against the sun's glare. "I've been looking at you, too."

She let that pass, but there was just a beat of silence, hesitancy, before she spoke again. "What do you think of him?"

He almost mentioned the tattoo on Pablo's hand, but let it slide. She was keyed up already, and he saw no point in goading her. If she was right about the new addition to their crew, it would be risky pouring any more fuel on the fire of her suspicion. She might say something, do something, that would divert the young man from his plan, either by scuttling it or striking prematurely. On the other hand, if Pablo was entirely innocent, Stacy might scare him off with some rash word or deed.

"I think we need to keep an eye on him," Remo stated, "but discreetly. If he has his own agenda, we don't want to spook him, right?"

"I'd like to crack his skull and toss him overboard," she said through clenched teeth, smiling at him all the while.

"That's my department," he reminded her, "and it would ruin any chance we have of finding out if he's connected to the men who killed your brother. Am I right?"

She was about to make a face at him but caught herself, glanced back toward Pablo in the wheelhouse, keeping up her smile. "He's watching me again," said Stacy.

"Good. That ought to keep him suitably distracted for a while, in case he has some kind of mischief on his mind."

"My God, it's true! You men are all alike, with only one thing on your minds."

"I'd say that depends," said Remo.

"Oh? On what?"

"The man, the moment and the inspiration," he replied.

Her voice turned coy, surprising Remo with the change, under the circumstances. "Would you say that I'm inspiring?" Stacy asked.

"I never thought about it," Remo declared, while pointedly avoiding even the suggestion of a glance in her direction.

"Is that right?" He couldn't tell from Stacy's tone if she was getting angry now, or simply teasing him.

"We're here on business," he reminded her. "Distractions could be fatal."

Remo felt her glaring at him after he had closed his eyes. The heat that radiated from her now had more to do with anger than the tropic sun above, or any fleeting passion that she may have felt. He felt an undeniable attraction to the woman lying nearly naked at his side, but Remo was at this point in his life enjoying the company of a woman who didn't get all aroused by the mere presence of his body chemistry.

It was an odd side effect of his Sinanju training. At first he thought it was the greatest thing in the world how women responded to him. They went gaga. They got all loopy. It got old pretty fast, having any woman you wanted.

Eventually he learned that eating shark meat dampened the effect. That created its own set of problems. Like Chiun behaving as if he had the world's worst BO and the fact that he wasn't all that fond of shark. Later Remo gained some control of the effect himself, but it came and went. It was one of those Sinanju skills that he never quite got full control of.

"How come you aren't getting burned?" Stacy demanded.

Remo shrugged. "I've got Native American blood. They don't burn as easy."

"Because of their skin pigmentation, which you don't show evidence of," she accused.

"I don't know, then."

He smiled at Stacy's muttering, as she rolled over on her stomach, offering her well-oiled backside to the sun. Once again, Remo found himself hoping that Pablo Altamira was one of the pirates they sought. Preoccupation with a raid to come might keep the young Dominican from making any moves on "Mrs. Rubble" that would ultimately lead to trouble on board the Melody.

The last thing Remo needed at the moment was a mutiny inspired by hormones. He had enough to think about, with Chiun still out of sorts about the lack of soap operas and whatever other bugs were up his Emeritus butt these days.

Their first night out of Puerta Plata, Remo sat with Chiun and Stacy at the table in the dining room, which could seat twelve, while Pablo took first watch. Chiun had done the cooking. Stacy seemed a little disappointed by the mound of rice and steamed fish on her plate.

"Everything all right?" asked Remo when his plate was nearly clean and Stacy had begun to eat with visible reluctance.

"Fine," she said. "I'm just not used to so much health food all at once."

"Americans eat garbage," Chiun declared, his chopsticks moving deftly, cleaning up the last few morsels from his plate. "Red meat and entrails. All things fried in pig's fat. Too much sugar, chocolate, grease-all poison to the body. No surprise that you are fat."

Stacy recoiled, as if Chiun had slapped her face or called her by a filthy name. She wore a low-cut cocktail dress that fit her like a second skin, and Remo noticed with amusement that she sucked in her stomach, perhaps unconsciously, as she replied to Chiun. "You think I'm fat?" She sounded horrified.

"I speak of Americans in general," Chiun said offhandedly. "White women feel they need huge breasts and buttocks to attract a man. Of course, white men encourage same, with their attraction to obesity."

"Obesity?"

Stacy resembled an incipient stroke victim. Remo knew better than to step in now. He ate his rice. "White women are beset by too much leisure time," Chiun said, continuing his lecture to a redfaced audience of one. "Watch too much television. Eat too many bonbons, cupcakes, dildos."

"Dildos?"

"He means Ding Dongs," Remo interjected. Chiun made a dismissive gesture with his chopsticks. "Ding Dongs, dildos, it is all the same."

"That's not exactly-"

"Of course, my son is the perfect example of the crude white male."

"Your son?" Stacy squinted at Remo. "He's really your father?"

"Not biologically," Remo explained.

"I'm surprised he is taken with you," Chiun rambled on. "You're one of the rare white women whose proportions have not been exaggerated through surgery or gluttony. Usually Remo likes his women to be balloon breasted."

"Congratulations, you've just been complimented," Remo said.

"That was a compliment?"

"As good as Chiun gives."

"Of course, the other extreme is just as repulsive," Chiun said. "Those emaciated, bloodless females who feel the way to attract a man is to look like a starving mongrel waif. I cannot understand where this attraction comes from. Starvation is not enticing. In fact, the starvation of the villagers of Sinanju-"

"Little Father?" Remo said.

"So does this character think I'm fat or not?"

There was a dead silence. Remo said, "She's talking about you, Chiun."

"I am not a character. I am Chiun. Young woman, you are reasonably proportioned for your race."

"Thank you," Stacy Armitage said, satisfied. "But your hips are too narrow," Chiun added.

"My hips are just fine!"

"They will constrict your birth canal."

"What?" She almost screeched.

"I assume you plan to coerce Remo into giving you his seed, but I must warn you that his offspring will give you a difficult birthing."

Stacy sputtered. No words would come. She looked at Remo for help, and he became very interested in the bland scraps of steamed fish on his plate. "I am out of here!" she blurted finally.

"One look at Remo's grotesquely huge skull should be warning aplenty," Chiun pointed out helpfully. "Would you attempt to pass an offspring with a head proportioned like his?"

She made a final furious sound and slammed the hand-hewed oak door behind her.

"Terrific," Remo muttered. "You couldn't have saved that for another time?"

"She clearly was not being too observant, or she would have come to this realization on her own. Your head is quite the monstrosity, my son."

"You might consider cutting her some slack, if not me," Remo said. "I'll go and try to calm her down. Pablo needs his dinner, while you're at it."

"So, I am a servant's servant now?"

Remo knew it was hopeless. Rising from the alcove where he sat, he followed Stacy topside, found her standing at the starboard rail, arms crossed, lips set in a thin, angry slash.

"You all right?" Remo asked.

"Obviously not," she snapped. "I'm lazy and obese from sitting on my ass all day and eating dildos. Not to mention my inadequate birth canal."

"Chiun has trouble with the language sometimes," Remo lied.

"Is that my problem?" Stacy asked him. "Is there any reason you can think of why I ought to take the heat because he has a thing about white women?"

"Welcome to my world. He dislikes whites in general," said Remo. "In fact, he dislikes virtually all races, creeds and nationalities."

"Except Koreans?"

"He pretty much despises Koreans, too, although less than everybody else."

"Does he even like his own villagers?"

"Not so much."

Stacy turned to face him, leaning on the rail provocatively. "So, as one persecuted honky to another, do you think I'm obese?"

"What difference does it make?" asked Remo suspiciously.

She frowned, a pouty look that had a feel of having been rehearsed about it. "Hey, we're man and wife, remember? Even if it's just for little Pablo's sake. A husband ought to show some interest, don't you think?"

She glanced up toward the flying bridge, then back at Remo.

"Strictly for the mission?" Remo asked her.

"Absolutely."

"Well, in that case..." Remo leaned in close enough that he could smell a hint of peppermint on Stacy's breath and wondered where it came from. "Why don't you go on ahead," he urged. "I want to have a word with Pablo."

"Don't be long."

He watched her go and had a fair idea what he was passing up. Already having second thoughts, he didn't intend to complicate the situation by engaging in a shipboard romance or even just a lusty romp.

He went aft, climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and met their pilot with a smile. "My turn," he said. "You've earned a good night's sleep."

"If you are sure?"

"I'm sure," said Remo. "See you in the morning."

Was there something devious behind the young man's smile as he made way for Remo at the console, or was that simply imagination working overtime? Remo could not be sure, but he was positive about one thing: if there were pirates waiting for them in the darkness, up ahead, he didn't want the new man at the helm.

Besides, he had schemes of his own to carry out. Carefully, so as not to touch any of the helm electronics, he lifted the satellite phone and dialed home. Dialing home consisted of leaning on the 1 key until somebody answered.

"Basique Boutique."

Remo honestly couldn't tell if it was a male voice or a female voice. It sure did lilt a lot. He said, "Give me Smith."

"We have a Judith working tomorrow." Remo realized that he was, in fact, talking to a computer. "Also a Maximillian."

"I want Smith."

"Well, actually, there's a new stylist starting tomorrow. Not sure of his name. You realize we're closed now, don't you?"

"If I don't get Smith, Harold W., in the next five seconds I'll call up Armitage, Senator Chester, and let him handle this problem."

"Remo, it's me," Smith said, coming on the line abruptly.

"Hey, Smitty, I don't appreciate having my chain jerked by your fruity little mainframes."

"It's a new system, Remo. Just be a little patient. It's not always easy to get a positive voice ID, especially on the poor audio signal a telephone provides."

"Is this screening really necessary?"

"My old methods of screening out bad calls just aren't as effective as they used to be," Smith explained curtly. "If I could convince you to learn a few basic code numbers-"

"Forget it," Remo sniped. "Where's the ferry?"

"On its way. Let's see. ETA twenty minutes."

"Who's handling the pickup?" Remo asked. "DEA."

"They know the plan?"

"Yes, they were fully briefed."

"I'd rather not go swimming this evening if they screw it up."

"They won't."

"Twenty minutes," Remo said.

"Make it nineteen," Smith answered tartly.

REMO DIDN'T WEAR A WATCH. He didn't need to. He had a clock in his head and it kept perfect time. He went belowdecks, moving silently. Not a floorboard creaked. He paused outside the economy berth belonging to Pablo Altamira and listened to the breathing of the man inside. Pablo was asleep. Then he went to the luxury stateroom where Stacy Armitage waited. She was in her vast, circular bed wearing only the ivory satin topsheet and a perky smile.

"I thought you wouldn't come," she said. He could read the arousal in the pattern of her breathing, in the dilation of her pupils.

He sat on the bed alongside her. She dropped the sheet. Remo nodded sadly and said, "Unfortunately, I won't."

She was confused for just a moment, then he touched her neck. She slumped over, unconscious, breathing peacefully. It took him minutes to stuff her limp limbs back into sweatpants, sandals and an oversize T-shirt from a Puerta Plata souvenir shop. It featured a large toucan lounging on a beach towel and drinking a tropical drink from a pineapple. It was emblazoned with the message, "I changed my attitude in Puerta Plata!"

"Not really, you didn't," Remo said to the sleeping daughter of a U.S. senator, who simply didn't know when to leave well enough alone.

He draped her over one shoulder and toted her onto the deck. He heard Pablo still sleeping, but knew he had someone waiting for him outside. "Oh, Remo, are these the tactics to which you are reduced to procure female companionship?" Chiun asked, shaking his head sadly.

"I wish. I'll have you know she was ready for a hay roll. Instead I put her to sleep and got her dressed without any hanky-panky."

"Because?"

"She was responding to the pheromones or whatever, just like all the others. No, thanks."

"Maybe it wasn't your Sinanju essence. Maybe she was attracted to you, Remo Williams." Chiun followed him down the length of the Melody.

"Come off it, Chiun."

"Unlikely, I know, but still possible. Stranger things have happened. I have seen the most hideous and deformed human beings with mates, so why not you, my son?"

"What, with this big head?"

"It is a comically oversized brainpan, yes, but there must be a woman somewhere who can overlook this trait. Perhaps the trollop sprung from the senator's loins was the one."

"I don't think so," Remo said as he yanked out a life raft and pulled the plug, hoisting it off the aft end of the Melody as it expanded from a tight rubber wad into an eight-person raft. He handed Chiun the line that held it and leaped down to the raft. He laid the unconscious woman inside it.

"Of course, there are also the ears, which are genuinely repulsive," Chiun mentioned. "And then there are your flabby, slobbering lips. They disgust me, but perhaps a woman in desperate straits would see past them."

"I doubt it," Remo said, half listening to Chiun as he peered into the wake of the Melody. The nineteen and a half minutes were up when he saw the strobing light, so distant as to be nothing more than a glimmer on the horizon.

"Let her go," Remo said.

Chiun shrugged and released the line.

Stacy Armitage, sleeping quietly, floated off into the blackness of the Caribbean night.

Remo watched the raft until even his sharp eyes could no longer make out the black shape on the black ocean.

"Wow, is she gonna be pissed," he observed.

"Yes," Chiun agreed. Remo could hear the amusement in his voice.

He returned to the helm and phoned Rye, New York, and found himself talking to Jude, the nightshift manager of Pets? You Bet! Pet Supply Warehouse, "where all rawhide chew toys are on sale for two weeks only!" Of course it was the new CURE call-filtering system. In order to provide the system with a sufficient audio signal from which to make a positive voice print ID, Remo began an in-depth description of what use she should make of her discounted rawhide bones.

"Does your mother hen know that kind of talk comes out of your mouth?" interrupted a familiar voice-but it was not Harold W. Smith's.

"That's nothing compared to some of the creative Korean stuff he says when the TV reception goes bad," Remo answered. "What's the status on our pickup, Junior?"

"Dr. Smith is in contact with the DEA agents, but it hasn't happened yet," reported Mark Howard, CURE's assistant director.

"Is there a problem? There better not be a problem."

"No. They've spotted her. They're just letting her float in. It'll be a few minutes."

"I'll hold."

Five minutes later Howard reported, "They've got her. Safe and sound and sleeping like a baby."

"My advice is that they stay clear when she wakes up," Remo said. "The fish are gonna fly."

THE MORNING WAS PEACEFUL. Remo enjoyed the quiet. Pablo was at the helm and hadn't blinked an eye when told Mrs. Rubble was feeling sick and was staying in her cabin. He'd have to think of a better excuse later if he needed to.

But Pablo started getting agitated later in the morning. He shifted his feet frequently. Remo saw Pablo scanning the horizon too intently, using the helm binoculars too often.

It was coming soon.

He wasn't surprised when he spotted the speck on the ocean.

Minutes later the speck was much bigger and he turned to Pablo Altamira, back on station at the helm, raising his voice to be heard above the sounds of the sea and their engine. He pointed out the other watercraft. "Can you make out what that is?" he called.

"Not yet," the young Dominican replied. "Too far."

Remo went belowdecks and found Chiun in front of the TV, sending hate rays from his eyes at a TV that alternated a snowstorm of static with a scene of two weeping and impeccably manicured women speaking Spanish.

"We may have company," Remo announced.

"I heard you bellowing. Are they pirates?"

"I don't know yet. You want to have a look?"

"Later," said Chiun.

"Fine," Remo muttered. "This is the worst three-hour tour I've ever been on." As he strolled back on deck he felt a minute shifting in the Melody's course. He glanced at Pablo in the helm seat, thought of saying something to the young Dominican and then decided it was better to keep still. Let the plan play out.

The speck, still better than a mile away, now appeared to be some kind of trawler, neither new nor very well maintained. He spotted one man at the helm, another at the stern, though Remo couldn't tell what he was doing. Neither man was obviously armed, but both had faces turned toward the Melody. He waved.

The trawler's helmsman turned, said something to his crewman in the stern, and Remo watched the second man move forward, pausing at the cockpit long enough to reach inside a cabinet and take out something. Remo couldn't have said exactly what it was, but the package resembled a square of folded cloth, partly red and partly black.

The crewman moved toward the stern, where the trawler's stubby flagpole was mounted. Now he separated one part of the bundle in his hands from another, shaking the first one open before he clipped it to the flagpole's halyard, briskly running it aloft. A crimson pennant caught the wind, unfurled and started flapping in the breeze.

Above and behind him, Remo heard Pablo call out, "They show a red flag. We must help if we can."

"Right!" he replied to their pilot. "Let's go, then."

The Melody was changing course, swiftly and smoothly, with Pablo's sure hands on the wheel. Remo saw the older, smaller boat turning to meet them now, assuming what was nearly a collision course. Her pilot and the crewman in the stern were still the only humans visible on board. Remo reached out over the water, trying to listen past the thrum of the engines and the distortion of the sea.

The distance between the two boats had halved, when the trawler's crewman turned back to the flagpole, swiftly lowered the red distress pennant and raised a square flag in its place. This one was black, except for the grinning skull and crossbones in the center of its field.

"You gotta be kidding me," said Remo to nobody, then turned to get Chiun.

"Stay where you are!"

Pablo Altamira's voice was no real shock to Remo. Neither was the pistol in his hand, its muzzle held rock steady at Remo's chest.

"Can we talk about this?" Remo asked the slim Dominican.

"Indeed we can-and will," said Pablo, grinning brightly now. "My friends will be most happy to discuss the situation with you. In the meantime, though, while we are waiting for them, please do nothing stupid that will make me kill you. Por favor?"

Chapter 11

"She don't look all that rich to me," the first mate said.

"Nobody asked you, Wink," Billy Teach replied.

"No, sir."

The first mate's given name was Lester Suff, but that would never do among the rowdy boys. They called him Wink because he had a nervous tic that made his left eye twitch an average of twice a minute, giving him the aspect of a chronic winker. It wasn't a bad nickname, as pirate handles went: less fearsome than a few, less embarrassing than most.

Wink didn't know what he was talking about, either. The cabin cruiser looked tame enough, but Teach could read the signs of her subtle luxury. He saw hand-hewed teak rails on the inner decks, and enough antennas for a small television studio. She wasn't flashy, but the Melody was worth big, big bucks.

It had better be, Teach thought. Better be worth the risk.

The word had come from port, their man in Puerta Plata, and it had been Teach's task to take the trawler out to sea. Most of his crew were concealed belowdecks, sweating in the hold and clutching weapons as they struck an intercepting course.

With this crew of merciless rabble, taking the floating puss parlor named the Melody would be a piece of cake-unlike the deadly and unexpected encounter of the night before.

They had run into the small, utilitarian craft almost by accident. Teach had been planning to leave it alone, but the men on the small boat had other plans. They had approached Teach's ship. To flee would have invited suspicion-and it turned out, these were very suspicious boaters.

They weren't suspicious anymore.

They were closing on the Melody now, their Jolly Roger flapping in the breeze, and Teach's men were lined up on the deck just like a proper firing squad, prepared to spray the yacht with bullets if their man on board couldn't control the passengers.

If anyone had asked for his opinion, Billy Teach would have informed them that he didn't care so much for planting men aboard the boats they meant to raid. His reasons were twofold. First, you couldn't really trust another pirate much beyond your line of sight, and he was always worried that the men they sent ashore to work as plants would turn somehow, betray them to the law, or else go into business for themselves. It hadn't happened so far, but there was a first time for everything, and it made Billy nervous. The second reason was that he preferred the old ways, coming at your target in a rush, catching him unawares if possible, or else compelling him by brute force to submit. It felt wrong, somehow, when the work was more than half done by a single man on board the target vessel, and the raiders hadn't even stepped aboard yet. Where was the adventure, then? The risk? The rush of spilling blood in combat?

He recognized the need for bloody action as a failing of his own. God knew, Kidd had reminded him of that time and again, telling him that the smart thief was the one who bagged his loot without a struggle, then disposed of witnesses as quickly and efficiently as possible. No fuss, no muss. Each time potential targets were engaged in combat, there was risk to Billy's crew, to Teach himself-and all for what? The path of least resistance was the road of preference for wily buccaneers, and those who lived to see old age would verify that fact.

Teach knew all that, and still he missed the action on an easy raid. Perhaps this time they would get lucky. Maybe someone on the tub they were about to loot would have more balls than brains and try to make a fight of it.

On the other hand, there were incidents like their predawn encounter. Those men had been nosy and stupid, a combination sure to get you killed. And it did get them killed. But the killing had been simple butchery. Very efficient, over within seconds and not very exciting.

Teach kept his fingers crossed and manned the railing as his first mate steered the trawler close enough for them to board the Melody. A sickly sweet name that was, but he reckoned the Colombians would change it soon enough if they agreed to buy the cabin cruiser. There was little fear that they would turn it down, given the way Ramirez and his people went through boats on smuggling runs to the United States. Between the Coast Guard, DEA and mainland hijackers, the cocaine barons never seemed to have sufficient vessels to fulfill their needs.

Three men were waiting for Teach at the Melody's starboard railing. One of them he recognized, if only vaguely, as their inside man. His name was Paco something, Billy thought, but it made no real difference. The only thing that mattered was that he had done his job, keeping the others covered, making sure they offered no resistance to the boarding party. Too bad.

Checking out the other two, Teach had to smile. In fact, it was an effort not to laugh out loud. The taller of the men looked soft, as tourists often did, more suited to a desk job than to a sailing tour of the treacherous Caribbean. Teach would have bet his share of any loot they found aboard the cabin cruiser that her skipper had soft hands, together with a yellow streak that ran the full length of his spine.

It was the Melody's second passenger who made Teach want to crow with laughter as they pulled alongside and prepared to board. He was an ancient Asian, possibly Chinese, whose few remaining strands of hair were baby fine, stirred by a breeze that wafted from the south. He wore some kind of robe that looked as if it were made of silk. Long sleeves almost concealed the old man's hands, but Teach could tell that he was scrawny in the Asian style, a stringy skeleton wrapped up in yellow skin. The man had to be a hundred, and he probably weighed less than that.

Some kind of servant, Teach decided. Probably the cook. It gave him hope if these two landlubbers were rich enough to drag a Chinese cook along with them when they went on vacation. That could mean there was cash aboard the Melody, perhaps with some expensive jewelry for dessert.

"Ahoy, there!" he called out to Paco something at the rail.

The young man raised his free hand in a kind of vague salute, keeping his pistol trained on Melody's passengers. "We ready for joo," he replied. "But there's a problem. I cannot find the woman!"

"Can't find the woman?" Teach knew the younger man was supposed to have his wife on board. His blood chilled slightly.

"We'll find her!" Wink shouted.

"Hold, dogs!" Teach commanded, and suddenly an odd stillness fell among the expectant, rambunctious crew. "Describe this woman!" Teach shouted.

"CAN WE KILL THEM NOW?" Chiun asked. He had grudgingly allowed himself to be rousted from the television at gunpoint to join them on deck, and the look he gave Remo spoke volumes. Remo could read those volumes, which mostly described how off-putting this entire charade was, how personally in debt Remo was for Chiun's vast patience with it all and how Chiun would much rather have silently switched Pablo off so he could go on watching his soap opera.

Pablo had seen the same look on the old Korean's face when he ordered him out of the media room, but to Pablo, ignorant of the fact that those who interrupted Chiun's TV watching were typically committing suicide, interpreted it as an expression of fear.

"Be my guest and swim on over," Remo replied, voice low and lips barely moving. Pablo was too busy to notice them speaking. "I think I'll wait until the boat is within jumping range. Just remember to leave enough alive to take us to their secret pirate fort."

"You want me to do all the work," Chiun complained.

Remo wasn't listening to Chiun any longer as the pirate on the approaching ship shouted to Pablo, "Describe this woman!"

Pablo looked confused, but shouted back a brief list of Stacy Armitage's physical attributes.

The pirate captain then looked worried. He turned to one of the crew and barked, "Bring her up."

"Oh, crap," Remo Williams muttered. He knew what he was going to see next, and Fate didn't disappoint him.

Stacy Armitage, disheveled, frightened and furious, was dragged up from the depths of the trawler. Chiun sniffed. Remo was more vocal in his frustration.

"Shut up!" Pablo said savagely. He was scared now. "What is going on?" he demanded of the pirate captain.

"We took her off a boat we met up with a few hours ago. She was with two DEA agents," the pirate called.

"Now can we start killing them?" Chiun asked as the pirates tossed padded grappling hooks over the Melody's rail and Pablo took the time to set them fast, still covering his prisoners.

Remo was watching the pirate captain, who placed a pair of his men to guard the senator's daughter, and sent them belowdecks.

"Not yet, Little Father. Not until Stacy is safe." Chiun gave Remo another look. It said simply, Well, okay, but you are going to owe me big time.

Okay, Remo thought, bringing the babe was a big boo-boo. Chiun was right and he was wrong. But what the hell was he supposed to do, let her wander the streets of Puerta Plata asking the wrong people the wrong questions until she got herself thoroughly killed?

Well, yeah, that probably would have been better than letting her fall into the hands of this freaked-out band of buccaneer wanna-bes.

Self-recrimination was one of the two trains of thought jockeying for dominance in Remo's brain as the pirates boarded the Melody. The second was an unquenchable disbelief in what he was seeing. He had never really believed they'd run into a bunch of pirates who really thought they were pirates. It was nuts. But here they were, all decked out in garb that, minus zippers and assorted other trivia, could easily have passed inspection in another century. Half of them were shirtless, while the rest wore shirts sporting bishop sleeves and antique-looking buttons where they closed in front at all. A lot of them left their shirts gaping open like some pretty boy on the cover of an historical romance novel. Their pants were faded, baggy, patched, some held in place with rope strung through the belt loops. Several of the men wore cross belts, supporting a variety of swords or sabers, in addition to the firearms they displayed. Bright-colored scarves were knotted around several necks, and two of the attackers wore bandannas on their heads. One of the boarders wore an eye patch, and the trawler's captain had produced a tricorne hat from somewhere, prior to boarding, and it perched atop his head now, like a kooky badge of rank.

"Permission to come aboard, sir," the pirate captain in the tricorne said, laughing aloud at his own wit. A couple of the others chuckled, too, but it was plainly more from courtesy than any real appreciation of the joke. Most of the boarding party had seemed intent on stripping Stacy with their eyes, or else examining the Melody for any sign of loot.

"Permission granted," Remo said, playing the game.

"Ah, courtesy." The pirate leader smiled. "We don't be seein' much of that these days."

"Life's hard," said Remo.

"That's the ever-lovin' truth, and gettin' harder all the time," the pirate said. "William Teach, at your service. I'll be takin' command of your vessel today."

It was a bad sign that the leader of the boarding party gave his name, Remo knew. It meant that Teach didn't anticipate survivors testifying in a court of law against him. Even though that knowledge came as no surprise to Remo, still it emphasized the desperate nature of his mission, and the peril facing Stacy, should anything go wrong beyond that point. "I don't suppose you'd entertain objections?"

Remo asked. It was pushing his luck, but he felt better, stalling for time.

"Oh, aye," said William Teach. "I'll entertain whatever you've a mind to offer, but I doubt that it will do you or the missus any good. If she's really your missus, which I doubt. Name?"

"I'm Remo Rubble. You've already met my wife, Stacy. And Chiun, a family friend." He let his voice turn hard as he glanced back toward Pablo Altamira. "You know our guide, I take it."

"That's the dyin' truth," Teach said, and laughed again. "Young Paco there's a friend o' mine."

"Pablo," the young Dominican corrected Teach.

"Whatever." Teach didn't so much as spare a glance for the offended gunman.

"Under the circumstances," Remo said, "he won't mind if I hold up payment for his services." Teach brayed another laugh, enjoying Remo's wit.

"Hold up his payment! That's a corker, it is. But you're right as rain, sir. You'll be payin' me this trip. I'll see young Paco taken care of, right and proper."

"That's a load off my mind," Remo told the pirate, managing a smile. "Why not let my wife join us?"

"No more games," Teach said, but he was still smiling. "You DEA?"

"No, but the DEA asked us to keep an eye out for suspicious activity while we were on our cruise," Remo said, coming up with a cover story on the spot.

"See, we have all this special stuff in the helm. Computers and what have you. Paid an extra half million just for the electronics. I guess the DEA's stuff isn't as good, so they said as long as we were cruising around maybe we could keep an electronic record of ship activity."

"That doesn't explain why we found the missus in a DEA boat before dawn this morning," Teach prodded.

"They radioed last night that they thought a big drug run was going on in the vicinity and offered to take Stacy to safety. Since she was debarking in a couple of days anyway, we took them up on the offer. Where are the DEA agents?"

Teach nodded vaguely at the vast Caribbean. The meaning was clear. The DEA agents were feeding the fishes. Teach's smile was taunting now. "Not a very likely story, Mr.... Remo, was it? Now, what kinda name is that, if I may ask?"

"Unlucky," Remo said.

The pirate laughed again. "Truer words were never spoke, my friend. Unlucky's what you are, all right, but as it happens, I've been feeling generous all day. How would it be if I said you could choose the way you'll die?"

"I'd pick old age."

"Well said!" Teach answered, chuckling. "But that method isn't on the menu, I'm afraid. Suppose I tell you what's available, and you pick what you like."

"Whatever."

"We could try keelhauling, but I don't recommend it to the friendly sort. There's still beheading, and the firing squad, of course. Old standbys, if you will. I'd offer you a duel, but that's too time-consuming, I'm afraid. If you're a sporting man, you just might want to walk the plank."

"And have you shoot me in the water?" Remo asked.

Teach placed one hand over his heart and raised the other, with a shiny pistol in it, to the sky. "My word of honor as a gentleman," he said without apparent irony. "We'll leave you sink or swim, as Fate would have it."

"What about my wife?" asked Remo. "And Chiun?"

"Your 'wife' goes with us, o' course, just in case your friends happen to catch up to us, which they will not," said Teach. "We're not as cruel as that, to kill a sweet young thing who's barely gotten started on the road of life. She'll not be lonely in her widowhood, I promise you. As for the Chinaman, I haven't made my mind up yet. He wouldn't cook, by any chance?"

Remo was sure Chiun was going to start doing some killing before the entire word "Chinaman" was uttered, but the old master stood stock-still, hands in his sleeves, face impassive. Remo couldn't begin to calculate the favors he was going to owe Chiun.

"This really is your lucky day," said Remo, holding on to his peculiar smile. "He makes the best damn Chinese food you ever tasted."

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try him out, then," Teach replied. "Not promisin' you anything, o' course, if he don't pull his weight."

"I understand," said Remo. "Every man for himself."

"That's it in a nutshell," Teach agreed. "Now, as to walkin' that there plank, we haven't really got a plank, as such. It's more a matter of you jumpin' o'er the rail, you see."

"Just diving in?"

"Simple as that," Teach said.

"And you won't shoot me, once I'm in?" asked Remo.

"I already give my word on that," Teach answered, frowning. "You're not tryin' to insult me, are you?"

"Not at all," said Remo. "I'm just making sure we understand each other."

"Fair enough, then. Off you go."

Remo strolled past Chiun and muttered briefly in Korean. "Keep them from killing her. Please. I'll catch up soon."

"There is very little an old Chinese cook can hope to accomplish," Chiun protested.

"Goodbye, old friend," Remo said formally, in English, for show.

"For me, Little Father," he added in Korean.

"I'll do what I can," Chiun sniffed.

Cripes, Remo thought. He was going to be doing all the cooking for the next six months.

"What'd you say to him?" Teach asked.

"I asked him to refrain from killing the lot of you before I could catch up," Remo said.

Teach chuckled as he and a couple of his crewmen herded him along the deck, their weapons trained on his back. Remo reached the stern rail, stepped up onto it, arms spread for balance and pitched forward, out of sight.

Teach wasn't chuckling now. He actually admired the man, going so stoically to his death. When the pirate on his left prepared to aim and fire his shotgun, Teach thrust out a hand and jarred the man off balance, cursing him.

"I give my word, you scurvy bastard! Make a liar outta me an' I'll be forced to do for you."

The pirate with the shotgun glowered but didn't protest the insult. Moments later, Teach came back to Chiun, surrounded by the other members of his boarding party.

"Mr. Chin, I hope for your sake that you make some mighty fine chop suey, because that's the currency yer gonna be buying your mortal existence on."

Chiun, Master Emeritus of Sinanju, said in a squeaky voice, "I understand, Captain."

But what he was thinking was, That inconsiderate white son of mine is going to be doing the cooking for the next six months. Maybe longer.

"Where are we going, Captain?" he asked.

"A true pirate's home," said William Teach. "A tropic island paradise, and no mistake."

REMO STRUCK THE AZURE surface of the water in an imperfect swan dive, making sure to create a splash. He could have entered the water soundlessly, without a ripple that the eyes of the pirates could see, but he didn't want them getting suspicious.

Plunging deep, he left a trail of bubbles in his wake for some distance, also for show on the surface. He submerged to thirty feet and began releasing only the tiniest carbon dioxide bubbles as he progressed rapidly. When he surfaced he was 150 yards due south of the Melody and her companion vessel. Without field glasses, he knew his head would be invisible to anyone on board the boats. He watched the activity. His plan was to board whichever vessel Stacy ended up on and get her safe. There was a sudden fury of activity, men passing between the vessels, and Remo was heading for the trawler when he smelled a distraction.

A slight tang in the water. Human blood. So Teach wasn't so honorable after all. He hadn't shot at Remo, as he promised he wouldn't, but he had taken some steps to insure Remo died in the water, one way or another.

Remo wasn't worried that the blood might be Stacy's. He knew she was a valuable prize and they wouldn't sacrifice her. And he didn't even consider it might be Chiun's. If the pirates tried to slit Chiun's throat, the sea would be scarlet with blood-pirate blood.

The faint smell had the odor of slight decay. It was one or both of the deceased DEA agents, steeped in the ocean to serve as a kind of dinner bell. And it worked.

He spotted a dorsal fin heading in his direction just as the boats were separated and the engines started. He didn't know what kind it was, but from the rough dimensions of the dorsal fin, he guessed that it was ten or twelve feet long. Too far away for him to get a decent look by ducking underwater, but he knew that any fish that size could be a problem if it caught his scent and felt like having him for brunch. Maybe it would just swim on by.

The dorsal fin became a thin knife in the water. The shark was coming directly at him. The trawler and the Melody started moving.

Remo made a swim for it, heading for the trawler with a sudden burst of speed that sent him through the water like a torpedo. The shark didn't know human beings well enough to understand that Remo was moving faster than humans were supposed to. Remo was just another fast-swimming, warmblooded creature to the shark. It ate them every day.

It veered at Remo, who was coming more or less in its direction anyway. When Remo had his first clear view of the shark, he guessed it was a tiger. There were no stripes readily apparent, but the broad, flat nose sparked memories of something he had seen once, years ago, in an aquarium. The gaping mouth was sickle-shaped and bristling with curved, serrated teeth, located well behind the snout, so that he guessed the fish would have to roll sideways to execute a strike.

The twelve-foot tiger shark changed directions in a heartbeat and did a good job of staying on an intercept course. Its muscular body convulsed to veer its trajectory to match Remo's long-range dodges. He realized he had a choice to make. He could go around the tiger shark or through the tiger shark.

The first option meant the boats would leave without him. Catching up would be iffy. Following their trail would be impossible, eventually, which meant he'd be swimming for the nearest land-not to mention depending on Chiun to handle the situation with Stacy.

The second option meant, well, that he had to deal with a tiger shark.

Remo had no choice at all, really. He hated that. Fate had a bad habit of spinning his life out of control without consulting him first. Fate was a bitch. Remo Williams swam at the shark.

Streamlined and perfected by several million years of evolution, the eating machine aimed itself directly at Remo's midsection, bearing down upon him like a gap-toothed juggernaut.

Lots of people had wanted to kill Remo over the years, but they usually had motivations other than lunch. He would be damned if he was going to end up being digested by this or any other fish, mammal, bug, whatever. He was distantly aware of the engine noises from the trawler and the Melody, moving away from him.

The tiger shark thrust its great body into Remo with a burst of speed and brought down its great jaws.

This wasn't Remo's first encounter with a hungry, huge elasmobranch, and he knew just how to dampen its spirits. As he corkscrewed in the water and the shark found its maw unexpectedly empty, Remo jabbed his fist into the exposed dental work. It was a hard, fast strike that shattered several serrated teeth and sent the fragments flying into the thing's mouth.

The tiger shark gyrated away, momentarily frenzied by pain and confusion, but came back around a moment later, moving faster, spurred by its frenzy.

It shot at Remo and snapped at him, but Remo was still too fast. He punched out another handful of shark teeth and when the shark whipped away he grabbed for the gills, digging his fingers like grappling hooks into the fleshy slits just forward of the big pectoral fin. The shark thrashed wildly, and Remo ripped out a handful of flesh along with a square foot of skin and gills. Blood clouded the water.

Smart move, Remo Rubble, he told himself. Do just the right thing to attract a bunch of sharks. Over his self-recrimination came a wave of alarm as he realized that the rumble of the boats was now just a tiny vibration in the water as the distance increased. Dammit!

The tiger shark was hurt but not slowed. It veered in a tight circle and came back fast. It was in pain and it was angry-but not as angry as the Reigning Master of Sinanju.

"I've had enough!" he shouted. It wasn't the most intelligent behavior for a Master of Sinanju who was twenty feet below the surface with a big carnivore to contend with, but the shout would have shattered a man's eardrums above water. The tiger shark's head snapped as if it had been sucker-punched, and it fled from Remo Williams.

Remo knew a good thing when he saw it. He made his way to the surface, gulped air and descended as the tiger shark came back at him. This time Remo had full lungs and he let the shark get close enough to touch, then he exploded "Back off!"

Your average human being couldn't have even come close to vocalizing so loud and so powerfully, and the wall of sound collided with the shark like a depth charge. It jerked away, stiffened momentarily and hung in the water. It made no motion for seconds, and its twelve-foot-long body began to descend in a lifeless twisting motion. Then it flicked its tail, righted itself and moved weakly away.

Remo spotted another dorsal closing in when he reached the surface. Time to get the hell out of there. He began to knife through the water, chasing the boats, but keeping an eye out just in case. The sharks might come after him, but their burst of speed could not be sustained like Remo could sustain his speed. Remo could swim for hours without resting, and swim fast, but not fast enough to catch up to the boats. The Melody was immensely overpowered for a pleasure yacht, and for once her engines were actually being used beyond a fraction of their capacity. The trawler was clearly outfitted with a power plant that was faster than your typical fishing vessel might need.

That maniac pirate captain, Teach, had obviously been spooked by his run-in with the DEA and the possibility that the Melody was a sting operation. He was getting out of the vicinity fast.

Too fast for Remo.

Well, shit.

The boats shrank to specks that appeared only occasionally over the tops of the waves, and when they were almost gone from his sight they veered in opposite directions. Cap'n Teach was going to confuse any pursuit that might be coming.

Remo kept swimming in the direction the boats had headed originally. He would keep going that way until he hit land. Any land. He wondered how long he would actually last.

Hell, he was warm enough. He could rest when he needed to. He could go for days if necessary. But days might be too long for Stacy Armitage. By this time tomorrow, Remo was grimly aware, she would still be alive, but in all likelihood she would have been subjugated to the entertainment of the pirates.

He had seen what that did to Stacy's sister-in-law. He didn't want it to happen to her, too. He kept swimming.

Then he saw a new speck.

It was a sailboat, gliding toward him, still something like half a mile away. If it held to its present course, he thought that it would pass within a hundred yards or so of his position.

Remo swam to meet it.

Chapter 12

Despite the brave front she had managed to put on for her abductors, Stacy Armitage was terrified. Her brother's death and the brutal torment suffered by his widow prior to her escape were still too fresh in Stacy's mind for her to cling to any illusions of security. Then the more recent whirlwind events. Just hours ago she awoke on a small boat with a pair of DEA men, put there by that asshole Remo Rubble. They were taking her to safety, they said.

That was twenty minutes before the pirates stopped them, shot them, slipped their bodies in the Caribbean, then sank their boat.

She was even more shocked when she was pulled out of her cell on the pirate trawler to find herself looking at the Melody. She saw Pablo, with a gun held on that asshole Remo and the old chauvinist Chiun.

She watched Remo jump to his death.

Chiun was put on the trawler with her, along with the buccaneer named Teach, and half a dozen of his crewmen. The remainder had been left to pilot the Melody, which ran a hundred yards or so behind the pirate craft. The skull-and-crossbones flag no longer flew above the trawler, which for all intents and purposes appeared to be a normal, run-down fishing boat once more-except that it went like a bat out of hell. The hull vibrated, and she could feel the engines straining to maintain the pace.

Stacy and Chiun were housed belowdecks, out of sight and under guard. They didn't have a pirate with them in the tiny cabin they had been assigned-more like a storage closet, Stacy thought, wrinkling her nose in disgust at the squalid room-but Teach had left a man outside the door, and others passed by, talking to him, at sporadic intervals.

She wondered how much time had passed since they were taken prisoner and Remo had gone overboard, but glancing at her wrist reminded Stacy that the pirates had already relieved her of her watch. It was a birthday gift, from Cartier, and while the watch itself was trivial, all things considered, staring at her bare wrist brought fresh tears to Stacy's eyes. She felt so helpless, and it galled her to have come this far, only to have her quest end in failure.

"Not to worry," said Chiun. It was the first time he had spoken since they came aboard the trawler, and his words took Stacy by surprise. "We have them now."

"Excuse me?"

Chiun edged closer so that he could speak without the guard outside their cell hearing his words. "These pirates have big trouble," he declared.

"Uh-huh. Just let me get this straight," she said. "We're trapped in here, but they're in trouble?"

"One man's trap may be another's opportunity," said Chiun.

"Confucius?"

The old Korean scowled. "Chiun!" he answered.

"Sorry."

"I could stop these vermin now, of course," Chiun went on, "but that is not the plan."

"The plan?"

"We must discover where they live and breed," said Chiun. "When Remo joins us, we shall know the time is right."

"Remo? But he ...I mean ...he's gone!"

"Dawdling, probably," Chiun corrected her. "There were sharks in the water when he jumped."

"What?" she gasped, terrified.

"He doubtless deemed it more important to stop to eat one of them before he joined us," Chiun sniffed. "The stink will make you less attracted to him."

Stacy already felt like Alice on the wrong side of the looking glass, but now she was convinced that she had lost her mind. She had heard so many astonishing and insulting statements at one time she didn't know how to sort it all out.

Chiun, she decided, had retreated into fantasy. Poor old man.

"Chiun," she said gently, "Remo is not coming. Remo is dead."

"Oh, no. Although he may try to use that as an excuse for his tardiness-I would not put it past him." Chiun spoke without blinking, his timeless face impassive.

She nodded solemnly. Clearly, the faithful old man had gone into some sort of state of extreme denial. That wasn't going to help them.

"But what if he is dead?" she pressed, but gently.

"Then I will kill them all myself." Chiun shrugged.

Stacy tried to imagine the frail old man in combat, but she couldn't manage it. With Remo, having watched him kill four men, it was a different matter. In Chiun's case, though, it was impossible to picture him engaged in any exercise more strenuous than watching television or preparing rice and fish.

"You let the pirates think that you're Chinese," she said.

Chiun's lips twitched. A grimace or a smile, Stacy could not have said exactly which it was. "Their first mistake," he said.

"Did you know Remo long?" she asked. The question came out of left field, surprising Stacy herself.

"Since he was born again," Chiun replied.

Another riddle. Remo had never impressed her as a religious man, especially after that scene in the alley in Puerta Plata. Still, there were all kinds of true believers, she decided. Pressing her luck, she tried for a follow-up question.

"Was he a fighter when you met him?"

"He was dead before then," the old Korean reminded her.

Stacy tried to find a riddle in his words, but Chiun appeared to mean the statement literally. She didn't pretend to understand what the old Korean meant, but rather tried to change the subject.

"What exactly did he do?" she asked.

Chiun considered that before replying. From a slight frown, Stacy watched his face relax into a calm expression of repose. "He is Reigning Master of Sinanju, more or less. Granted, he has much to learn still, but he makes minor progress, here and there."

"I meant to ask, what does he do for Uncle Sam? You know, the government?"

"Ah," Chiun replied, "the Emperor. Such things are not for woman's ears."

Stacy gave up. She couldn't tell the difference between when Chiun was playing games with her and when he was speaking from the wrong side of the dividing line between reality and delusion. Stacy had no idea as to who or what Sinanju might be, but she knew damn well there was no emperor in the United States. In fact, unless Remo had lied to her in Puerta Plata, her own father was instrumental, at least in part, for Remo's being on the case. That told her that he served the Feds in some capacity, whether he was a regular or some kind of independent contractor.

None of this was helping her get a handle on when to expect reinforcements from the U.S. to come barging in.

Chiun's lack of doubt in Remo's survival made her doubt what she knew had to be true. How long could a man survive at sea, without a raft, food, water? If there were sharks-although that may have been a part of Chiun's mental instability-they would have finished him off in minutes. She needed something, some hope to sustain her in her present situation, other than Chiun's assurance that he would eliminate the pirates by himself if called upon to do so. Stacy didn't doubt the old man's good intentions, but she didn't trust him as the last line of her personal defense.

If only she could believe that Remo was alive. If only there was some chance for him to appear and save her, save them both, from her private waking nightmare.

She shook it off. The fantasy was too seductive. She couldn't let herself slip into a fantasy world, too, if she wanted to have any hope of escape.

AN AUDIENCE WAS WAITING on the beach for the Melody when she entered the shaded cove on Ile de Mort. Kidd had refrained from going down himself, with the excuse that he had other business pending, but he really meant to take a smidge of pride away from Teach, before the youngster's britches got too small and Billy Boy got tempted to go shopping for a larger size. Something in captain's colors, for example.

It was trivial, as insults went, but Kidd was hoping he would get his point across. He valued Billy Teach, but not enough to jeopardize his own position as the leader of the pirate clan. Before he would allow a full-scale challenge-one that Kidd wasn't absolutely certain he could win-he would arrange an accident for Billy, maybe have him lost at sea, and choose another second in command while they were mourning the incalculable loss.

The "work" Kidd had to do while Billy brought his prize in was in fact another session with the slender brunette from their last raid, when the boarding party had come back with three girls. Kidd had already tested each of them in turn, as was a captain's right, but there was something in the sultry brunette's attitude, defiance simmering behind a mask of bland submission, that excited him almost as much as spilling blood. She was his favorite, and Kidd regretted that she probably would last a few more weeks at most.

He let the brunette please him, told her what to do, keeping a knife and riding crop within arm's reach, in case she tried to take advantage of her placement, kneeling in the space between his thighs. A captive woman had gone off on Wink, one time, and nearly ruined him. The twitching of his eye had been dramatically exaggerated after that, and there were some in the community who said that eyelid was the only part of Wink that twitched anymore.

Not this one, though. Kidd was too cautious for her, even in the final moments, when he felt himself begin to reach his peak. Kidd was particularly watchful then, when she would think him helpless. Curiously, vigilance enhanced the moment for him, rather than detracting from it, since his eyes saw every detail of her sweaty face, himself, the place where they were joined.

The wench was finished, slumped back on all fours, when Captain Kidd heard footsteps drawing closer to his quarters. Rising stiffly from his throne chair, one leg half-asleep, he pulled up his baggy trousers and buckled them in place. The cross belt that he wore across his chest was sweat-stained, like his clothing, but the cutlass it supported had been polished till the blade shone like a mirror. It was razor-sharp, that blade, and Kidd would gladly demonstrate on visitors if anyone provoked his wrath.

The kneeling woman scuttled off to one side, crablike, when rough knuckles rapped on Kidd's front door. She found a shady corner, huddled there, as if she somehow hoped to make herself invisible.

"Enter!" Kidd said, his tone imperious, but no more than his rank deserved. The door swung open on its badly rusted hinges. Billy Teach was the first man across the threshold, leading two fresh captives, who immediately seized Kidd's full attention.

The red-haired woman was striking in her own right, slightly older and vastly more attractive than the three young women Teach had found last time, aboard the star-crossed Salome. She was a fullfledged woman, rather than a pretty girl, and Kidd was drawn to her immediately, craving her, despite his just-finished tussle with the slim brunette.

The second prisoner was something else entirely. He was old, for one thing, and an Asian at that, and dressed in a robe that made Kidd's best pirate garb look subdued. Kidd would have been surprised to learn that he weighed ninety pounds. Almost completely bald on top, with yellowing fringes of white hair that hung delicately over his ears. There was something in his eyes that almost bordered on amusement, but he kept the main brunt of his feeling tucked away. At least he wasn't stupid, Kidd decided, or a coward begging for his life.

"Why that one?" Kidd asked Billy Teach, nodding to the old man.

"Guy said he cooks great Chinese food."

"Which guy would that be, Billy?"

"Skipper of the good ship Melody," his second in command fired back, without a moment's hesitation.

"He's no longer with us here, alas. A swimming accident."

Kidd smiled. At least Teach had not brought all three of them back to the camp on Ile de Mort. The woman would be useful in more ways than one, perhaps an item he could sell to the commercial flesh dealers, once he had sampled her himself. As for the ancient Chinaman, if he could cook and clean, so much the better. Captain Kidd would let him live while he was capable of doing women's work, and when his time ran out... well, there were always hungry fish in the lagoon.

"So far, so good," Kidd told his first lieutenant. "How's the tub?"

"A classy one," Teach replied. "Bet her retail value makes her one of our best ever. Don't know what we'll get for her, though. I reckon the Colombians will take it off our hands, but they won't appreciate her fine appointments."

"Let's check it out," the captain said, already moving toward the exit from his quarters, passing close before the redhead and the wizened Asian. "And leave the woman here," he added. "Under guard."

A frown at that from Billy Boy, and that was fine. He didn't have to relish every order from the captain, just as long as they were carried out immediately, to the letter.

And God help him on the day he failed in that.

THE SAILBOAT SLOWED WHEN it spotted him. There was a figure in the bow-a man, bare chested, heavyset-who pointed toward him with one hairy arm and waved the sailboat's skipper onward with the other.

Moments later, Remo's would-be savior plucked a life preserver from the deck, between his feet, and tossed it overboard. The outsized doughnut trailed a nylon line behind it as it splashed down on the surface at about the same moment Remo was hauling himself over the rail and onto the deck.

The hairy lookout was slack jawed for a second, then got his wits together. "Are you all right, pal?"

"Getting better by the second," Remo said. "How long you been swimming around out here?" The spotter's lanky sidekick demanded. "Couple of hours."

"Huh," the taller of the two men said. "You damn lucky we came along. You damn lucky Dink's got good eyes."

The lookout, Dink, was staring hard at Remo. "Two hours?"

"My boat went down," said Remo, improvising on the spot. "Some kind of engine trouble. I don't know exactly what it was. First thing I knew about it was a little smoke, and then the damn thing blew. I swear she went down five minutes flat. I barely got over the side."

"Explosion, huh?" the tall man said, still sounding skeptical. "We didn't hear a thing or see no smoke."

"It was a couple of hours ago, like I said," Remo said. "I'm not sure that I could have lasted if you hadn't come along."

"Nobody lasts out here, without a deck beneath 'em," Dink replied. "What kinda boat was that? What did you call 'er?"

"Trudy," Remo said, answering the final question first. "A cigarette."

"Where from?" the tall man asked.

"St. Croix. Took off this morning, but I must've lost my way."

"Don't read the compass all that well, I take it?" There was clear suspicion in Dink's voice this time.

"Apparently," said Remo. "Maybe there was something wrong with it."

"You shoulda checked it out before you out to sea," the tall man groused. "Damn foolishness to take a chance with your equipment thataway."

"You're right, I guess. Of course, it wasn't really mine. I borrowed Trudy from a friend of mine, back in Miami."

"He'll be tickled pink to hear this news," said Dink.

Remo considered Dr. Harold Smith, then thought of Chiun and Stacy, riding with the pirates toward an unknown destination. "Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised," he said. "Speaking of news, where are we putting in for the report?"

"I reckon Fort-de-France would be the closest," Dink replied. "Right, Titch?"

"That's it," the tall man said, still frowning.

"Fort-de-France it is," Dink said. "We best be haulin' ass."

Chapter 13

Howard Morgan smiled obsequiously, turning on the well-oiled charm for Mr. Burston Sykes, of Bristol, Connecticut, and his young, blond wife. She was so young, in fact, that Morgan would have pegged her as the fat man's daughter if Sykes had not made a point of introducing her otherwise. The wedding ring on Mrs. Sykes's hand was new, the solitaire diamond on her engagement ring an easy four carats.

That spelled money, and Morgan didn't care if Ellie Sykes was Burston's daughter, as long as some of the fat American's dollars found their way into Morgan's pocket. The American was big in textiles, or so he said. Probably meant he ran sweatshops in Third World nations, but the source of his money was likewise a matter of total indifference to Morgan. The travel agent always focused on the bottom line-meaning his bottom line, the profit he could turn from any given deal.

In this case, Burston Sykes and his child bride were talking package tour, the kind of deal that would turn a handsome profit for the owner-operator of Trade Winds Travel. It meant a boat and crew, provisions, berths and tours on sundry islands-all paid in advance, with a sweet commission for Morgan himself.

It was the best deal he had closed that month-the best legitimate transaction, anyway-and Morgan was already calculating how to spend the money as he finished touching up the deal on paper. He was dotting i's and crossing t's while his clients sat beneath the lazy ceiling fan and sweated through their clothes.

"Damn hot in here," Burston Sykes said. "Why don't you spring for air-conditioning?" he groused.

"Bit pricey in the islands, don't you know? We have to make ends meet," Morgan said, striving just a little harder to preserve the phony smile. "Trimmin' expenses does the trick, you know?"

"It's still damn hot," Sykes told him. "Keep your patrons sweating, and you won't have much repeat business. You mark my words."

"Yes, sir, I'll keep that fact in mind." The paperwork was done, and Morgan spun the contract deftly, pushing it across the desk toward Burston Sykes, offering his fountain pen. "Now, if you'll just sign here, right at where X marks the spot..."

The textile magnate looked over the contract, pausing here and there to read the fine print in detail, before he signed and dated it, then passed it back to Morgan. "Done," he said.

"I'll get to work immediately," Morgan said, reserving his brightest smile for the fetching Mrs. Sykes, "as soon as you've filled out that check we spoke about...."

Sykes frowned and reached for his hip pocket, bringing out a checkbook that was probably real alligator hide. He used the pen Morgan had handed him, together with the contract. Despite his evident wealth and the relatively small fee involved, Sykes still showed visible reluctance as he filled out the check, looked it over and handed it to Morgan.

"We done here?" the businessman asked.

"Indeed we are, sir," Morgan answered. "All you and your lovely wife must do, from this point on, is pack your bags and find your way to the marina in the morning. Let's say tennish, shall we?"

"Ten o'clock it is," Sykes said.

"Your vessel is the yacht Christina," Morgan said. "She and her crew will be prepared to sail when you arrive."

"I hope so," Sykes informed him, shepherding the missus out of Morgan's office to the street, where afternoon was baking shadows on the sidewalk.

Howard Morgan smiled, folded the check in two and slipped it into his shirt pocket. It was damn good money, and his five percent was still enough to put fresh lobster on his plate for several nights if he was so inclined-or land a fresh piece in his bed, assuming that he felt like shelling out a good deal more.

If nothing else, the Sykes deal meant that he could close down for the day. He would have to, in any case, if he was going to arrange the details of the tour package he had sold. The yacht Christina was on call, he knew, together with her captain and a two-man crew, but there was shopping to be done-for food and liquor, any incidentals that a rich man and his wife would likely carry with them on a tour of the Caribbean.

He pushed back in his chair, the casters rasping on the vinyl floor, and rose to hit the kill switch on the coffee urn that occupied one corner of the Trade Winds office. Morgan was a coffee addict, even in the tropic heat, without an air conditioner, and certain clients also favored it above the cold drinks he kept handy in his minifridge.

He was about to flick the switch off when a voice behind him said, "I'll take some if you've got it made."

The sound made Morgan jump, as unexpected as it was, but the surprise paled when he turned and recognized the man who stood before his desk. "Er...Mr. Remo Rubble, isn't it?"

"That's very good."

The travel agent glanced in the direction of his office door, wondering why the damn cowbell suspended on a leather strap had failed to warn him of a new arrival in the Trade Winds office.

"Back so soon?" he said, cold perspiration forming on his face. "There's nothing wrong, I hope."

The man he knew as Remo Rubble smiled and took a long step closer, smiling as he said, "Howard, I think we need to have a little chat."

"Of course," the worried-looking travel agent said. "Sit down, by all means. Where's the missus, then? What brings you back to Puerta Plata?"

"Just a hunch," said Remo, closing on the cluttered desk with easy strides.

"A hunch?" Morgan repeated. "As regards to what, if I may be so bold?"

"Your pirate buddies," Remo said. "I'm betting you can tell me where they spend their time when they're not looting pleasure craft."

"Pirates?" There was a hitch in Morgan's voice, a subtle paling underneath his tan, but he recovered quickly for a man with no experience of rough interrogations. Or perhaps it was the ignorance of what was coming that allowed him to preserve the calm facade. "I'm sure I don't-"

His first kick drove the desk back, scraping furrows in the vinyl, slamming into Morgan's thighs and pinning the travel agent with his hips against a waist-high counter, where his flailing arm upset the coffee urn.

"God's truth!" Morgan wailed, shoving at the desk with both hands, getting nowhere. Remo had it pinned against him with one foot. The travel agent would need far more power than he had to budge the desk. For emphasis, Remo gave the desk another nudge, the hard edge digging into Morgan's groin and thighs. A wordless squawk of pain escaped his lips, as they were drawn back from tobacco-yellowed teeth.

"Hold on a moment now! You've got this wrong, I tell you! I don't-"

Remo stepped back from the desk, as if considering the papers strewed across its top. Morgan prepared to take advantage of the respite, breaking off the lie he was about to tell and shoving at the desk with both hands to release himself.

Before he found the strength to move it, though, Remo bent forward and one hand slapped the desktop. The desk acted as if an ax crashed into it. A fissure opened in the wooden desktop, front to back, and Remo had resumed his easy stance before the shattered desk collapsed into a V-shaped ruin, pinning Morgan's feet and spilling papers all around his legs.

"God rot it!" Morgan blurted out, and lost his balance, toppling forward, sprawled across the desk to lie at Remo's feet.

Remo bent down to grab a handful of the travel agent's hair and hoist him upright, holding him so that his toes were barely grazing vinyl. Morgan was surprised by his new altitude, in evident discomfort from his thighs and groin, his feet, and now the pain that lanced his scalp.

"You're obviously quite upset," said Morgan. "I assure you, even so-"

"I'm running out of furniture to break," Remo warned. "If you plan on lying to me any more, you take your chances."

"Surely you don't mean-"

A twist of Remo's hand, and Morgan plummeted to strike the hard floor on his knees. The pain of impact was nothing to the burning of his scalp, however, where a fist-sized clump of hair had given way to raw, red flesh. The missing hair cascaded past his face, as Remo's fingers opened to release it.

"Looks a little thin on top," said Remo. "You should try some Rogaine."

"Jesus 'aitch!" the travel agent swore. "If you'd but let me speak a moment without smashing furniture or ripping out me hair, there may be something I can tell you."

"I've been counting on it," Remo said.

"You mentioned pirates, now," the travel agent muttered, struggling painfully to gain his feet. "Historically, this area-"

Remo grabbed the man by an earlobe. Howard Morgan never would have thought the most sensitive part of his body was his earlobe, so he got a real education in the next few seconds. The pain was excruciating, and it flooded his body from ear to toes.

He was mute with agony, although his mouth opened and closed, tears streamed down his face and his eyeballs rolled up into his head. He began to stutter finally, then a long low howl began to build up as the pain, impossibly, got worse.

Then, as if the heavens had opened up, the pain was gone.

But Mr. Remo Rubble still held on to the earlobe. Morgan's education continued.

"That was pain. This is no pain," Remo said, then tightened his fingers on the earlobe to an almost imperceptible degree. "You choose."

"No pain! Please, no pain!"

"If I want history," Remo said, "I'll stop by the library. The pirates I'm concerned with are alive and well right now, and one of them's your good friend Pablo Altamira."

"Pablo?" Morgan feigned amazement, lowering the red hand from his face. "He had the best of references. I would have trusted that boy with my life."

"Changed your mind, I see," Remo noted with a nod.

The first time he had given Morgan a full five seconds of the pain thing. But he was annoyed by this whole situation. Annoyed by people who dressed and talked like pirates. Annoyed by tiger sharks. Annoyed by Master Chiun the Moody. Annoyed by Stacy Armitage, because she was making him worry about her.

He gave Morgan ten seconds, and Morgan was blubbering and jerking involuntarily.

He gave Morgan ten more seconds, and Morgan was virtually unconscious from the pain.

"I guess at this moment," Remo said when he stopped, "I'm annoyed by you most of all." Morgan was different now. Not just different temporarily, but altered mentally. He had snapped and broken, and he was never going to get put together again. But he wasn't insane. Remo had stopped just in time.

"Talk," Remo said.

Morgan looked at Remo and did not see death. Death would have been preferable to the mind-expanding suffering he had just endured. He tried to speak and ended up baaing like a sheep.

Remo pinched him on the neck, and Morgan's bodily weakness seemed to recede.

"At your service," Morgan mewed.

"You book tours," said Remo, hoping to save time if he began the tale for Morgan. "Some of them include crewmen like Pablo-or Enrique. You remember him, don't you? He shipped out with Richard and Kelly Armitage, about a month ago. The man's dead, Morgan, but the woman made it out. You hear me? She can testify to your part in the scheme. How do they punish an accessory to piracy and murder here in the Dominican Republic?" Morgan wasn't afraid of the law. Nothing the Dominican jail could dish out would be as bad as the Earlobe Pinch of Remo Rubble.

"So, tell me about Captain Teach."

The travel agent's face went blank. "God's truth," he said, "I've never heard of him. I do all my communicatin' with a local jobber, and he sets up the contacts. He's an odd bird, too, I'll tell you that, and no mistake."

"His name?"

"Calls himself Ethan Humphrey. Old man, he is, got pirates on the brain. He runs an outfit here in town. The Cutlass Foundation, it's called. Some sort of research outfit, as he claims, but I'm not buyin' it."

"How often do you speak with him?" asked Remo.

"Maybe two or three times in a month," Morgan replies. "It all depends on prospects, see? Humphrey wants folks with money. Women, too, if it's convenient, but he don't want kids along if I can help it. Some of those want crewmen, like you did, sir. Others, I just point 'em where they want to go and get sufficient information for old Humphrey's playmates to identify 'em after, see?"

"It's clear," said Remo. "What about the crewmen you hire out?"

"They come around the day I need 'em," Morgan said, "with Humphrey's password. Never seen the same one twice."

"And you don't know the pirates? You can't tell me where they go to count their loot?"

"My honor, sir."

"In that case," Remo said, smiling, "I don't believe I need you anymore."

Morgan's face twitched. "No more earlobe, I beg of you, kind sir!"

Remo shook his head. "No more earlobe. I promise."

ETHAN HUMPHREY'S POWERBOAT had been christened the Mulligan Stew when he purchased it in 1990, and he had never taken time to change the name. It was inconsequential to him, like the color of the paint inside the master cabin. Humphrey cared no more about the vessel's name-or style, for that matter-than he did about the daily weather in Honduras, say, or the cost of bootleg videotapes in Beijing. What mattered was the fact that the Mulligan Stew was seaworthy, capable of taking Humphrey where he had to go, among the islands that were home.

The boat had cost him thirty-seven thousand dollars-more than Humphrey had paid for his small bachelor's home, back in Gainesville, when he went to work at U of F. It had wiped out three-quarters of his savings, but it was worth every dime for the freedom it gave him, the means of pursuing his lifelong desire.

Not that Humphrey could pursue that dream alone, of course. He was too old for that, by far. No pirate he, with years of sea raiding behind him, muscles toned from trimming sails, swabbing decks and hand-to-hand combat. He had missed his chance, spent years in school as both student and teacher, before he ever dreamed that the buccaneers he idealized still existed in a modern world of jet planes, nuclear power and the information superhighway. It had come as a complete surprise, the single greatest shock and thrill of Humphrey's life.

He was sailing this day, off to pay a little visit, as it were, but he wasn't sailing by himself. He knew the way by now-Kidd trusted him with that much, after all that he had done for the seagoing brotherhood-but Humphrey's strength and health were not what they had been in younger days. Whenever he went off to visit his new friends, Kidd needed warning in advance, and he would send along a man or two for crew and company.

This morning, waiting for him on the dock, were two of Kidd's men whom Humphrey recognized, although they hadn't previously pulled the escort duty. One was Pascoe, a stocky, balding sea dog in his late thirties, who shaved his scalp in defiance of the bare patch on top. He wore a tattoo of a grinning skull and crossbones on his chest, now covered by a denim work shirt with the sleeves cut off to show his burly, sunburned arms. The other was a skeletal rogue with greasy, shoulder-length hair, who called himself Finch. The long scar down his left cheek crinkled when he spoke and when he smiled-the latter event occasioned only by sporadic references to acts of bloodletting.

"You're late," Finch said, as Humphrey came along the pier. The duffel bag he carried as his only luggage was slung across one shoulder.

"No, I'm not." Humphrey didn't consult his wristwatch, knowing he was right on time. Finch always tried to pick an argument with anyone available, and it was best to put him in his place or simply ignore him. At the moment, Humphrey hoped he had done both.

"Let's get on with this," Pascoe said. "We're burning daylight."

Humphrey recognized the line but couldn't place it. Was it from a John Wayne movie? Never mind. He climbed the gangway, taking his time about it, dispensing with any further pleasantries. The men Kidd sent to chaperon him on these little jaunts weren't chosen for their winning personalities, nor were they meant to keep him entertained. Kidd never said as much, but Humphrey knew that even after all they'd been through, there was still suspicion in the pirate's mind, a fear that Humphrey would betray him somehow, change his mind about their mutual arrangement and lead the authorities to Kidd's lair. In that event, Humphrey knew, his payoff would be a swift death and a tumble overboard to feed the sharks, as befit any traitor.

But that would never happen, Humphrey knew. He had no intention of betraying Kidd or the others. It had never crossed his mind, in fact. Why should it, when the whole arrangement had been his idea to start with? He had dreamed about this moment all his life, without imagining that it could ever really come to pass. It was a fantasy from childhood, carried over into the adult domain with no good reason to suspect that he would ever have a chance to live it out.

How many men his age-or any age, for that matter-were ever privileged to truly realize their dreams? It was a first in his experience, and nothing in his life, he knew, would ever be the same again. He had already passed the point of no return, and there could be no turning back.

Not that he wanted to turn back.

Again, the possibility had never even crossed his mind.

"How long have you been waiting?" Humphrey asked, addressing the question to no one in particular.

"Feels like all damn day," Finch said.

"I make it forty minutes," Pascoe said.

"So, we're ahead of schedule then," Humphrey declared. "Just as well, because there are a few things I forgot."

"Such as?" Pascoe sounded suspicious now.

"Provisions," Humphrey said. In fact, he had forgotten nothing, but he liked to play games with his escorts, sometimes. Even when he yearned to be on Ile de Mort-an interesting name; he gave Kidd credit for the choice-it helped for him to have some measure of control.

"Goddamn it!" The disgust was evident in Finch's voice. "Go get the damn things, then."

"It would save time if you could do it," Humphrey said. "You know, since I have things to do on board, before we leave."

"Well, shit! You go," Pascoe said to his younger, long-haired shipmate.

"Why should I-?"

"It would be quicker," Humphrey interrupted them, "if you split up the list. Is that all right?" Pascoe was visibly suspicious now, while Finch was merely angry over the delay.

"You got some kinda list?" he asked, the corners of his mouth turned downward in a scowl.

"Won't take a minute," Humphrey said.

"No funny business while we're gone," the bald rogue cautioned him.

"I wouldn't think of it," Humphrey said honestly.

"All right, let's have it, then."

Humphrey chose wine and cheese, because the shops lay off in opposite directions from the waterfront and would compel his escorts to divide their forces. One more little goad, to keep things interesting, while he got busy stowing items on the boat and made ready to sail.

It was perfect. Humphrey almost felt like a fullfledged pirate captain himself, manipulating rogues who would have cut his throat in any other circumstances. Granted, it was Kidd's authority that stayed their hands, not any strength of Humphrey's, but illusions were like that, devoid of objective reality. And they still made him smile.

"Don't dawdle now," he told the grumbling buccaneers as they went down the gangway to the pier. "We're burning daylight, yes?"

IT TOOK REMO FAR Too long to cover the ground-make that water-between Fort-de-France and Puerta Plata, on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. On arrival, he had made his first stop at a public phone booth, where he found a home listing for Ethan Humphrey, complete with number and a street address.

There was no listing for a Cutlass Foundation in Puerta Plata, but the name alone gave Remo a fair idea of what it would entail. An outward cover for his fascination with the pirates of another century, for starters-and beyond that, what? Was Humphrey working on a book, perhaps, that would establish him as the ultimate expert in his chosen, highly specialized field? Or was something more practical involved, perhaps the distribution of loot taken from the private craft his friends were raiding throughout the range of the Lesser Antilles?

No matter.

Remo took the phone-book page with the home address listing for Ethan Humphrey, showed it to a cabdriver and soon found himself paying a call on the former professor at his home. The dwelling was a smallish bungalow, a quarter-mile inland, located in a residential district that would pass for middle class by local standards. There were roses and bougainvillea in the yard, behind a low, white-painted wooden fence. No lawn to speak of on the tiny lot, but Remo was more interested in the house. It had smallish windows, trimmed with lacy curtains, and a green door that contrasted nicely with the whitewashed stucco walls. The roof was Spanish tile and well maintained. It could have been an advertisement from Travel a getaway for the man who had everything and needed a place to hide from it on certain special occasions.

Remo had himself dropped off a half block away and didn't approach too closely. His hearing reached out to the little house and noted the sounds of quick movement. Somebody in a hurry, assembling some belongings. Remo forced himself to wait, and minutes later he saw Ethan Humphrey emerge. Humphrey had a green duffel bag in one hand, and he paused long enough to lock the door behind him before he moved to the gate and through it, turned left on the sidewalk and proceeded toward the harbor. Remo fell in step behind him. Humphrey never heard him, never sensed his presence.

Ten minutes later, as they drew closer to the docks, houses gave way to stores. Humphrey knew where he meant to go, and he let nothing slow him, distract him from his course. The jaunty stride, the smile he had been wearing when he left the bungalow, suggested that some kind of pleasure lay in store for him. Remo wondered what it was. His patience was running thin. All he needed was a moment of the pirate lover's time, in which to squeeze him like a toothpaste tube and see what came out.

Humphrey walked down to the marina and moved along one of the piers, out to a smallish cabin cruiser that was clearly years beyond its prime. Remo read the name someone had painted on the transom in italic script.

Mulligan Stew.

Okay, so it didn't have to make sense or fit the old man's personality. Remo doubted whether he had named the boat himself, and who cared if he had? More interesting, by far, were the two men awaiting Humphrey on the deck as he approached.

They didn't look like the role-playing pirates he'd run into that morning. No swords or flintlock pistols were in evidence, no eye patches, peg legs ...and yet, there was a certain air about the men that would have marked them down as criminals in Remo's mind, regardless of the circumstances. From ten yards away he eavesdropped on their conversation and was glad he had decided not to trounce Humphrey the minute the old man emerged from his little house.

They were about to embark on a sail to the pirate's island. Finally his lousy luck was starting to reverse itself.

There was some unpleasantness as Humphrey informed the two roughnecks he needed some supplies and convinced them to fetch the items in the interest of time. It was all a lie; Remo heard it in every syllable the old man uttered. Ethan Humphrey got his way, however, and the other two came down the gangway, moved along the pier with angry strides, passed Remo without seeing him and split up to move in opposite directions as they left the waterfront.

Humphrey had the Mulligan Stew to himself, but he was clearly in no hurry to leave, certainly not without the shipmates he had taken pains to send on some errand that got their blood up. He wouldn't sail without them; Remo was convinced. Whatever the charade Humphrey was playing, it looked more like something he had thought up to amuse himself.

Laugh while you've got a head to laugh with, Remo thought. You never know when somebody might find a good reason to remove it.

Chapter 14

Chiun had cooked rice so many thousands of times in his lifetime he could intuit the readiness of the water by breathing the steam and could sense its doneness by the richness of its aroma.

The man assigned to watch him was a toady with no intellect to speak of, surely nothing that would pass for functional imagination. He had watched Chiun build the fire and put the water on, offering no help as Chiun filled a bucket and brought it back from the stream. It gave Chiun the opportunity to moan and stagger slightly, listing to the right as if the pail were nearly too heavy for him to carry.

Chiun was smiling on the inside, and he made another sound, too quiet for the toady to hear: "Heh-heh-heh."

It said much of his present adversaries, Chiun decided, that they could behold a Master of Sinanju and believe that he was powerless. He was enjoying himself, although such clandestine behavior was well beneath his dignity.

There was just one reason he was willing to go along with it-and it was not because his adopted white son with the bulbous nose asked him to protect Stacy Armitage.

Oh, he would protect her. She would not be tortured or defiled under his watch. But as far as going on a killing spree and sending this bunch of pretenders from centuries past to their deserved graves, that would wait. When Remo came, they could perform the cleaning up. They'd have a better chance of saving all the prisoners on the island with two of them on the job.

But why kill the pirates now? They might serve a purpose still.

If this was the correct island, the place that had been known once as the Island of Many Skulls, it was not a small patch of land. Even a Master of Sinanju would have difficulties finding a treasure that had been buried here-a treasure buried centuries ago. Buried deep. Buried, in fact, by a Master of Sinanju.

If these pirates had some of their history, then maybe they could help him locate the landmarks described in the Sinanju scrolls. The nature of some of those landmarks made it unlikely that they still existed.

Chiun would know soon enough.

He began to add the rice, sifting a handful at a time into the boiling water from a heavy burlap bag the pirates had provided him at his request. The shellfish-peeled and deveined already, piled up in a wooden bowl, within arm's reach-would be the last addition, when the rice was nearly done. Meanwhile, he had time to observe his enemies and find them wanting in the skills that might have saved their worthless lives, once Remo was available to finish them.

It would take time, of course, for Remo to discover where the pirates were. Chiun wasn't precisely sure how that would be accomplished, but he had no doubt that Remo would succeed.

Remo didn't come across as one of great intellect. Or cunning. He wasn't prone to great feats of mental dexterity, or even mediocre ones. Some had even labeled him a simpleton.

But somehow Remo always failed to live up to others' expectations of idiocy. Somehow, like unexpected lightning, the flashes of insight would always come to the young white Reigning Master. Or he would simply worry the thing to death. Or meander aimlessly, so it seemed, into the solution. But the most important thing was that the solution was always reached. Chiun thought that there just might be-and he would never in a thousand generations admit this to Remo or another living soul or even dare notate the thought in the sacred scrolls of Sinanju or even think it too loud for fear some wandering mind reader would happen across it and blurt it out-but there just might be a streak of, well, brilliance to be found in there. Somewhere. If you really looked for it.

Chiun took a wooden ladle and began to stir the rice with lazy, counterclockwise strokes, putting a palsied shake into his hand just for added effect. His watchdog lit a hand-rolled cigarette and started puffing clouds of smoke into the air. He was within arm's reach of Chiun, a killing distance, but it wasn't time to start the deadly dance.

But first, the search.

"YOU'VE BEEN HERE HOW long?" Stacy asked.

The woman who had earlier identified herself as Megan Richards glanced at her companions in the dingy, thatch-roofed hut. Felicia Docherty frowned and shrugged while the other, introduced by Megan as Robin Chatsworth, sat still and said nothing.

"Four, five days," said Megan. "I'm not exactly sure. Time runs together here. You'll find out what I mean."

Stacy was hoping that she wouldn't be among the pirates long enough that she lost track of time, but anything was possible. With Remo gone-not dead, she told herself, please, God, just don't let him be dead-there was no way of knowing how or when she would be rescued from her captors.

"And they killed your boyfriends? Christ, I'm sorry."

"Not exactly boyfriends," Megan said. "It was a shame, though."

Megan Richards didn't sound as if it were a shame, but Stacy knew that people dealt with grief in varied ways. Or maybe there had been no more between these women and the dead men than casual sex. Less than that, perhaps, if they had just been "friends." Such things were not unknown.

"And what about your boat?" asked Stacy. "What was it, again?"

"The Salome," Felicia Docherty put in.

"Is that some kind of Arab name, or what?"

"I couldn't tell you," Stacy said. "Did you have anybody else on board?"

"Like who? You mean a chaperon?" Megan was close to laughter, but it sounded more like hysteria in the making than any real vestige of humor.

"No," said Stacy. "I was wondering if you had hired a guide, or anyone to help you with the boat along the way."

Meg and Felicia shook their heads as one, while Robin sat and stared. "Nothing like that," Felicia said. "The guys knew all about that stuff, okay? We didn't have the room, besides, and who wants witnesses?"

To what? Stacy was on the verge of asking, but she checked herself. She knew what the young woman meant, and what she had in mind. A college fling was easily forgotten, but it might come back to haunt you if your parents heard about it. From a stranger, for example, who had watched and listened, maybe asking you for money that would keep him quiet in the days and weeks ahead. Trust no one, if you didn't know them going back to grade school.

But it hadn't saved these three. Not even close. Their young men of the moment had been killed, three more lives wasted in addition to God knew how many that had gone before, and from the evidence before her, Stacy knew these three had suffered in captivity. The faded shirts and baggy, twice-patched pants they wore weren't the clothes they had been captured in; she would have bet her life on that. And from the bruises on their skin, the shadows underneath their eyes, the silence Robin held before her like a shield, Stacy was sure the men who stole their clothes had taken much, much more, as well.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Felicia asked.

"Not really," Stacy said. "They kept us down below after they took the Melody."

"That's not much better than the Salome," said Megan. "Jeez, where do they get these names for boats?"

"Who's the old man?" Felicia asked before Stacy had time to answer Megan's question.

Stacy wondered how much she should tell these strangers, and decided there was little they could do to help her, even less that they could do to help Chiun.

"He was my husband's friend," she said, preserving the fiction for what it was worth. "They've known each other from when Remo was a boy."

"Remo?" Felicia said. "What kind of name is that?"

"Armenian," Stacy replied, ad-libbing as she went along. "His great-grandparents came from Eastern Europe."

"Oh. Yeah, right."

"What happened? Can I ask you that?"

"They made him, uh, jump overboard," said Stacy. Even as she spoke the words, they had a kind of unreality about them, as if it were more of Remo's cover, something he had taught her to repeat on cue.

"That's rough," Felicia said. "Same thing they did with Jon and Barry. Did they shoot him, too?"

"Felicia, Jesus!" Megan sounded angry.

"I was just asking, for God's sake!"

"There was no shooting," Stacy said.

"Well, who knows?" said Felicia. "Maybe he's okay, then."

Megan glared at her, making Felicia shrug, but Stacy was already thinking, Yes, maybe he is. Maybe he is all right. And wouldn't that be something?

She would have to keep her fingers crossed, to wait and see. If Remo came, he came. If not... well, there was still Chiun, his promise to destroy the pirates on his own, if it should come to that.

With a start she saw the path her thoughts were taking. Crazy thoughts! Stupid dreams. She was losing touch with reality just as surely as poor old Chiun.

Remo was dead. Chiun was living in a fantasy world. He was a hundred years old-he was not going to start kicking pirate ass. If she let herself start believing all this make-believe stuff, she would never be able to think her way out of this situation.

She had to take care of herself.

The thought left her trembling with a sudden graveyard chill.

CAPTAIN THOMAS KIDD had a decision to announce. There were procedures to be followed, certain risks involved, but he had made his mind up on the crucial point, and there would be no turning back. If there were any challenges, then he would have to meet them as he always had before-head-on, with all his might and courage.

It wasn't the easiest decision Kidd had ever made, but he had weighed it carefully, examined all the angles and potential arguments against his choice, before deciding that he should proceed at any cost. The time was right; he wasn't getting any younger, and the notion was entirely logical when viewed from that perspective.

It was time for Captain Kidd to take a wife. A queen, more properly, to help him rule the kingdom he had carved out for himself. In other circumstances, bygone days, there would have been a chance for him to shop around, survey the prospects in the islands-maybe even sail away to Florida and try his luck among the coastal cities-but the modern pirate life had more severe constraints. The captain was required to make do with the stock at hand.

Most times, Kidd would have seen that limitation as an insurmountable impediment to courting, but Fate had a way of sneaking up on him sometimes. He was accustomed to the flow of captive women moving through the camp, few of them lasting long. A year or so had been the maximum for most; they had a tendency to die from tropical diseases, overwork or sheer despondency. A handful killed themselves, and one-the wench Billy Teach had captured aboard the Solon II-had actually managed to escape. Most were attractive in their way, some of them stunning, but they lacked a certain quality of majesty.

Until today.

Granted, she could have used a better name. Stacy was not a monarch's name, granted, but Captain Kidd was willing to ignore such minor flaws. It was the way this woman carried herself, defiance flashing from her bold green eyes, refusing to be cowed by her surroundings, even now.

She hated him, of course. That was a given, and he understood the feeling. What else could a kidnapper expect at first? Kidd knew it would take time for her to come around, but once she recognized her destiny, the transformation process could begin.

And there was no time like the present to proceed. Kidd armed himself and left his quarters, moving purposefully through the compound to a central point, beside the cooking fire. The captive Chinese cook glanced at him in passing, his head jittering from side to side from some sort of disorder of the nervous system, and turned back to his stirring of the large, fire-blackened kettle.

Captain Kidd stopped walking when he reached a kind of minigallows that had been erected near the center of the compound. It stood shoulder high, and where a body might have hung if it had been full-sized, a twisted triangle of rusty metal was suspended from a chain. Above it, on the crossbar of the wooden structure, lay an old screwdriver with a wellworn wooden handle and a twelve-inch blade.

Kidd took the screwdriver in hand and rapped the blade repeatedly against the rusty iron triangle. The clamor echoed through the pirate camp, bringing men from their huts, from their chores, one or two hobbling back from relieving themselves in the bush.

He waited until most of his men were assembled, roughly surrounding him, jostling one another for position. Several called out questions, which Kidd ignored, giving his rowdy brothers time to quiet down. When they were as silent as Kidd could expect, he raised his voice in order to be heard by everyone.

"I'll waste none of your time," he said by way of introduction to his plan. "The time has come for me to take a wife. A queen, in fact. A woman who will give me sons and raise them in the grand tradition of our brotherhood."

That brought a murmur from the crowd, more than a few of them regarding Kidd with curiosity or frank suspicion. They were skeptical of change, and with good reason, since most alterations in the daily lives of outlaws brought them to a jail cell or a rope. A few of them were also wondering which woman he had chosen for himself, Kidd knew, and calculating how his choice would slash the list of wenches otherwise available to the community at large.

"The woman I've selected is the captive known as Stacy," Kidd announced. "We'll marry in accordance with the laws of our community, and life will go on as before, except with prospects for an heir."

No one among Kidd's audience suggested that the woman might have anything to say about the union; that wasn't an issue in such cases, when a pirate chose himself a mate. Still, some of them were muttering, and Kidd paused, biding his time, waiting to discover if a man with courage would reveal himself among the crew.

"What's that leave for the rest of us?" a harsh voice challenged Kidd from somewhere in the ranks. He didn't see the man who spoke but thought he recognized the voice.

"Who asks me this?" Kidd scanned the rows of faces, waiting for the one outspoken buccaneer to show himself.

A tall man shouldered through the press to take a stand in front of Kidd, perhaps ten feet away. As Kidd had thought, it was scar-faced Rodrigo, standing with his feet apart, hands fisted on his hips. Kidd knew without having to check that Rodrigo was wearing a dagger sheathed on his belt, behind his right hip, where he could reach it swiftly as the need arose. He was no mean hand with the weapon, either, if memory served.

"I ask it," said Rodrigo. "And I wager that I'm not the only one who's thinkin' it."

Rodrigo glanced around to see if anyone would second him, and while a number of the others stared at Kidd, as if expecting the performance of a special drama for their entertainment, none was forward enough to support him in words.

The shortage of support didn't appear to cow Rodrigo. If anything, he seemed emboldened as he turned once more to face his captain, fists still planted firmly on his hips. Had the pirate's right fist edged closer to his knife?

"It is a captain's right to choose his mate," Kidd told Rodrigo and the rest. "Who would dispute this time-honored law?"

"I would," Rodrigo said without a moment's hesitation, "if it means a shortage for the rest of us, where nookie is concerned. I, for one, have been going without long enough."

"You've not been idle with the other hostages from what I hear," said Kidd.

Rodrigo frowned and cleared his throat. "That's neither here nor there," he blustered. "Whether these curs will 'fess up to it or not, I'm speaking for the lot of them. We want the redhead shared out with the rest. When we have wenches enough to go around, then it'll be time enough to think about your wedding plans."

Kidd smiled and clasped his hands loosely behind his back. "And is there aught else on your mind?" he asked.

Rodrigo hesitated for a moment, glancing back to left and right once more, then nodded to himself. "There is, indeed," he said. "This business of an heir is something some of us don't hold with absolutely, either. Any pirate's law I ever heard of called for captains to be chosen from the brotherhood, by challenge. When did we start breedin' 'em?"

"A question worthy of reply," Kidd said. Behind his back, the fingers of his right hand curled around the grip of a .38-caliber revolver, which he wore tucked into the back of his stout leather belt. In one smooth motion, Kidd drew the side arm, thumbing back the hammer, and thrust it out in front of him. The three-inch barrel was on target before Rodrigo knew what was happening, and Kidd squeezed the .38's trigger a heartbeat later.

The bullet struck Rodrigo squarely in the middle of his forehead, flattening on impact and toppling him over backward in the dust. Before the echo of the shot had died away, Kidd had another challenge for his men.

"Who else disputes my right to choose a mate?" he asked in his most reasonable tone.

When there was no reply, Kidd slowly lowered his revolver, turning back in the direction of his quarters. Offering his back to any coward who would take the chance, hoping that he would not be called upon to kill another of his men this afternoon.

Behind him, as he walked away, he heard the ancient Oriental's high-pitched voice. "Clear trash away!" he said. "Wash filthy hands and come to eat!"

The only one who dared speak was a senile old man-that brought a chuckle to the lips of Captain Kidd.

CARLOS RAMIREZ TAPPED the ash from his cigar into an ashtray fashioned from a jaguar's skull. It was illegal to hunt jaguars, since they had been registered as an endangered species, but such laws meant little to a multibillionaire who earned his living from cocaine.

"Another boat," Ramirez said. "Our friends are having busy days."

"They take too many risks," Fabian Guzman said.

"Life is a risk," Ramirez said.

"These locos thrive on danger," Guzman argued. "They are not normal businessmen."

"What's normal?" asked Ramirez. "The Jamaicans? The Italians? The Chinese? We have enough trouble with enemies, amigo. Do not borrow more by picking quarrels with our friends."

"Suppose they are discovered?" Fabian went on, insistent. "Do you think that they would hesitate to tell the Coast Guard or the DEA who buys the boats they steal?"

"I doubt that they would let themselves be taken," said the cocaine lord of Cartagena. "They are loco, as you say, and hate the law more than you do. Also, they seem to lead charmed lives. A padre told me once that God takes care of fools and children."

"They leave witnesses," Guzman replied.

"You mean the women? What is that to us? These locos need some entertainment on their little island, no? Is that so terrible? The women are not yours, amigo."

"I am told they let one get away."

Ramirez took a long pull on his prime Havana cigar, savoring the taste of it, slowly expelling twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. He had heard the story, too, about a Yankee woman who was fished out of the ocean, telling tales of pirates and the foul indignities she suffered at their hands, but nothing had been done about it so far. With no positive response from the authorities, Ramirez thought there must be one of two solutions to the riddle. First, the story might be false, one of those rumors that came up from time to time, without apparent origin, and got some people overheated while they sought in vain to track it down. The other possibility was that a woman had escaped the pirates, but that she could give no useful information to the law. She could be dead by now, perhaps deranged from her experience, or simply ignorant of where she had been held.

In any case, Ramirez told himself, no problem. Unless...

Carlos Ramirez had survived this long in a treacherous business, while others fell around him, because he left nothing to chance. His dealings with the pirates led by Thomas Kidd had amply benefited both sides, and he had no wish to sever the connection if there was a means of keeping it alive. Security came first, however, and he wouldn't sacrifice himself, the empire he had built from his estate outside of Cartagena, in the interest of some loco pirates who weren't even from Colombia.

"What are you thinking?" he inquired of his lieutenant.

"Simply that we must be cautious in our dealings with these people, Carlos. They are not part of our family-they never will be. When I talk to them and look into their eyes, it is like talking to-" Guzman dropped his voice to a whisper, though they were alone "-like talking to Jorge."

Ramirez looked at his lieutenant sharply, surprised at the breach in etiquette. Jorge's name was not to be mentioned.

"I say this," Guzman stated carefully and seriously, "so that you will know what I am thinking. If I am right, then we need to do something about it."

The brief flare of anger subsided, and Ramirez nodded in understanding. Guzman's point was well taken. Jorge, the unmentionable cousin, was a crazy boy, kept in seclusion in a comfortable but hidden and remote private asylum in the jungle. Just him and a few dozen overpaid caretakers. Ramirez and Guzman visited him regularly-every Christmas Eve without fail.

Jorge had insane eyes, and now that Ramirez considered it, he had maybe seen a touch of that in the eyes of the pirates. Just a little, but it was there, masked behind their animal cruelty.

Of course, you had to be crazy to live like they did. Kidd had insisted that they were like the American Amish people, who lived their lives by codes of conduct that the rest of the world forgot centuries ago. They just didn't happen to have the religious rationale that made the Amish look "normal."

There sure was nothing moral or ethical in the pirates' code. They were savage, even by the standards of the Colombian drug trade.

Bloodthirsty and at least slightly unbalanced. Not a good combination. Not the kind of people you necessarily should be putting your trust in.

Yes, he told himself. The loco label said it all. Still, they were useful in their way. They had supplied Ramirez with an average of ten to fifteen boats per year since he had first begun to deal with Captain Kidd. A handful of the craft were still in use on smuggling runs-repainted now, of course, with brand-new serial numbers guaranteed to pass at least a cursory inspection. The rest were either seized or sunk, some of them auctioned off by U.S. Customs or the DEA under provisions of the federal assets seizure program. It was a point of special, ironic pride to Ramirez that some of those very boats would be repurchased at a discount by his own jobbers, returned yet again to the smuggling trade ...and that they would no doubt be seized again at some time in the future.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Ramirez had trusted Thomas Kidd. Should he continue to trust the man-within the limits of his own ability to trust?

They would never be the best of friends, that much was preordained, but Carlos didn't think the pirate would betray him, either.

Not unless Kidd found a way to profit greatly from the treachery.

In the devious world of Carlos Ramirez, there were only two ways to insure loyalty-fear and favor. Colombians even had a phrase in Spanish that expressed the concept: plata o plomo. Silver or lead. If you didn't accept the silver that was offered willingly, you got the lead when you were least expecting it. Sometimes the other members of your family got the lead, as well.

Ramirez wasn't prepared for a war with the pirates of the Windward Islands. They had served him well, so far, without a hitch. It might be useful, even so, if he could find a way to reinforce their loyalty now, before some outside stress or stimulus should put it to the test.

"When are we picking up the latest boat?" Ramirez asked.

"Tomorrow or the next day," Guzman said. "Make it tomorrow. Send the word."

"Si, jefe."

Guzman didn't like the order, but he would obey it all the same. It was his nature to be second in command, a follower. That was why Ramirez trusted his lieutenant more than any other living man. He knew that even if poor Fabian should find the courage to rebel against his master, it wouldn't occur to him. He would no sooner try to run the family by himself than he would sprout wings and fly up to Panama City for carnival season.

"When we go, this time," Ramirez added in an offhand tone, "I'm going with you."

"Carlos! Why, for Christ's sake? It could be-" The cocaine lord raised his hand for silence, and Guzman's mouth snapped shut like a mousetrap. Angry color darkened Guzman's cheeks, but he had nothing more to say without permission from his commander.

"It has been some time since I sat down with Kidd and talked about our common interests," Ramirez said. "It can do no harm to show our partners that we value their participation. I may even feel disposed to pay a bit more for the next few boats, if it seems feasible."

"Carlos-"

"I must look into those eyes again, Fabian." Ramirez took another pull on his cigar, let the smoke leak slowly from between his teeth. "I must see if I see-what you see, then decide what to do."

Guzman understood. He said as much with new determination in his brief nod.

"Go send the word," Ramirez said. "And while you're at it, get the troops together. I want twenty men for this excursion, well armed."

"Si, jefe. As you say."

Guzman went off to carry out his orders, while Ramirez sat alone and thought about the day to come. A nice excursion to the islands, sun and sea, a bit of an adventure with the pirates waiting for him at the other end. And if his meeting with the pirate leader gave him any cause to think Kidd might betray them, well...

Plomo o plata, si. Lead and silver. They made the bloody world go around.

REMO THOUGHT THE Mulligan Stew would never leave. First Ethan Humphrey spent what seemed like hours in his cabin, unpacking his duffel bag and making up his room with the diligence of the true anal retentive.

Finally the buccaneers returned from their respective errands and groused with the master of the vessel over whatever it was that he had sent them off to fetch. Then, at last, they cast off.

Remo watched them go.

When they were about a hundred yards from shore, he ran after them.

Running on water wasn't easy, even for a Master of Sinanju. It involved, simply put, sensing the natural pressure of the water's surface and not allowing your footsteps to apply pressure in excess of that. Remo didn't understand it himself, exactly, and found it was better not to think about it too much. Just do it. If you wanted to keep dry, it was better than swimming.

The calm Caribbean helped. He crossed the open water in a smooth blur of flying feet that touched, but never quite broke the surface, and landed as soundless as a feather on the rear diving platform of the Mulligan Stew. And he wasn't wet except for some droplets clinging to his shoes.

Time to take over.

There was some kind of a racket on the front deck, a sound of spillage, something broken, followed by an angry outburst from one of the pirates. Heavy footsteps came around the back of the deckhouse and turned into the companionway without noticing Remo.

Remo followed him inside. It was the man with long hair, cursing to himself and reaching for a broom or mop in a closet, and he finally sensed trouble. He turned around fast, but it was too late for him. Remo took him by the scruff of the neck in a two-finger pinch that froze him solid.

Remo put the fallen mop in the long-hair's hand, closed his fingers around it and walked him back outside. Long Hair mewled.

Remo heard the skinhead muttering, while Ethan Humphrey told him to relax, that it was nothing to get excited about. A little glass, was all.

"Spilt milk," he heard the ex-professor say, and chuckle to himself.

It seemed that either Skinhead or Long Hair had dropped a pitcher with some kind of fruit drink in it, and fractured glass and pinkish liquid spread across the planking of the deck.

Skinhead's back was to him, Ethan Humphrey facing toward the open hatch as Remo stepped into the light with the silent Long Hair. The old man recognized him at a glance but didn't speak. His lips were working, but no sound was coming out. The bald man, as it happened, was busy staring and cursing at the mess around his feet, oblivious to Humphrey's sudden shock.

And then, the ex-professor found his voice. "My God!" he blurted out. "It's you!"

"Huh?" Skinhead grumbled. "What are you talk-?"

Skinhead stopped when he saw the old man's face, eyes focused behind him. He glanced across one burly shoulder, blinked at Remo in surprise and pivoted to face the stranger, reaching for something on his hip. A knife.

Remo moved in slow motion as far as Skinhead or the old man could tell, but the knife wasn't even out of its leather sheath before Remo took hold of the forearm that was grabbing for it. He bent the forearm, but it wasn't the wrist that turned at right angles suddenly-it was the forearm itself, and that required a lot of bone breaking to accomplish. Remo didn't mind putting out the little bit of extra effort.

Skinhead minded. The bellow that came out of him was extraordinary.

"Hey, hey, hey," Remo said as he pinched Skinhead behind the neck in a fashion similar to Long Hair; this made the bellow stop. "People will think you're a foghorn-you want to screw up shipping traffic from here to Key West?"

"What are you doing here?" Ethan Humphrey demanded.

"First things first," Remo said. "Do we or do we not need Dumb and Dumber to make the trip to the pirate island?"

"Wha-what?" Humphrey asked. "Pirate island?"

"They know where the pirate island is," Remo said matter-of-factly. "Don't you, boys?"

In torment, Skinhead and Long Hair still managed to produce vigorous nods of assent.

"If they can get me there, I'll keep them. Instead of you," Remo said. "Got the picture?"

"I get it," Humphrey said miserably.

"You take me where I need to go, and you just might survive," said Remo, "but you don't have tons of time to think about it. Tick-tock, Dr. Humphrey. Sink or swim."

"I'll take you." Humphrey hung his head.

"Good. Sorry, boys."

He lifted the pair of cutthroats and brought them together violently, shattering their bones and pulverizing their softer parts. What remained was fused into a mass of flesh and seeping blood. Remo heaved it into the water before it started to drip on the deck.

Humphrey was staring at Remo, aghast, as he turned back from the rail. "You ...you...killed him!" the professor stammered.

"I didn't check pulses but, yeah, I'm pretty sure dead is what they are," Remo asked.

"I'm to be next, I suppose?"

"Well, that depends on you."

"Excuse me?" Humphrey seemed confused.

Chapter 15

"Excuse me?"

"You're surprised," the man named Kidd responded. "Certainly, I understand how you must feel."

"I doubt that very much."

They were alone inside the squalid hut that served as Stacy's prison cell. The other three young women had been sent outside when he arrived demanding privacy. At first Stacy feared she was about to be assaulted, but the truth was even more bizarre, more frightening.

The pirate captain was proposing marriage.

No, that wasn't right. He wasn't asking her to marry him. Rather, he was informing her of his decision, standing back and smiling at her with his yellow teeth, as if she ought to be delighted by the news. He plainly viewed the prospect of their marriage as an honor that should be apparent to the most thickheaded woman on the planet.

"Married?" She repeated it as if the word were foreign to her, not a part of her vocabulary.

"That's the ticket," Kidd replied, still beaming at her with discolored teeth. "You're prob'ly wondering about the service."

"Well-"

"I grant you, we don't have a rightful preacher," he continued, "but we have our differences with Mother Church."

"I can imagine," Stacy said.

Kidd chuckled to himself, appreciating her wit, but it was artificial, like stage laughter, there and gone. He still had more to say, and while he hadn't exactly rehearsed the speech, he still seemed bent on making certain points.

"The good news," Kidd continued, "is that I'm the captain of this scurvy lot, and maritime law gives me the authority to pronounce nuptials."

"So, you can marry yourself?"

Kidd blinked at that idea, as if confused, then frowned slightly. "Perform the rights, you mean? Of course. I grant you, it may not be strictly legal on the mainland, but I've long since given up on courting the opinion of landlubbers."

"This is so sudden," Stacy said. It was the ultimate cliche, but she could think of nothing else to say. Her mind was racing, jumbled thoughts colliding, jostling one another, but she had a feeling that it would be foolish-maybe even fatal-to show weakness in the presence of this man.

"You'll get used to the notion," Kidd replied, "once we've been rightly hitched. You'll be my queen."

The final comment was so serious that Stacy almost laughed out loud. She bit her tongue instead and stood with eyes downcast, considering the best response.

"What sort of an engagement period were you considering?" she asked at last.

"Engagement?" Once again Kidd seemed confused. "To hell with that nonsense! Tonight's the night, my love. Your Chinky friend's already working on the menu."

"He's Korean," Stacy said, stalling for time.

"It's all the same," Kidd said. "You rest now. Get yourself shipshape for the big event."

"I don't have anything to wear!" she blurted out, the sheer absurdity of it all twitching the corners of her mouth into a near-hysterical smile that could just as easily have been a rictus of pain.

"No matter," Kidd replied. "We'll fix you up with something for the ceremony. Later on, of course, you won't need anything to wear."

He left her with a wink and leer in parting. Stacy stared after him until she was alone and fairly certain he wouldn't duck back to add some new announcement. She stiffened at the sound of shuffling footsteps, but it was her fellow captives returning. Megan came forward, while Robin and Felicia hung back, near the curtained entrance to the hut.

"I hear we're going to be bridesmaids," Megan said.

At that, a dam burst inside Stacy, and she stepped into the younger woman's arms, dissolving into tears.

CHIUN WAS WORKING ON A culinary masterpiece. It was to be a wedding feast, as he had been informed, and the ridiculous young men who thought he was their prisoner demanded "something special for the bride and groom."

Chiun intended to oblige.

The one-eyed cretin charged with guarding Chiun lurched to his feet as the Master Emeritus of Sinanju approached. "Need sumpthin', Chinaman?"

Chiun considered pulling off the pirate's arm and using it to rearrange his grubby features. It would be so easy. Once that simple chore was done, he could proceed to take the others as they came, one at a time, or in whatever combinations they preferred. There were no more than sixty-five or seventy in all. It would be child's play. If not for the prisoners. Surely the rabble would resort to using hostages once it became apparent that they were being picked off by an invisible killer.

How important, he wondered for the tenth time, were the prisoners, really?

Important enough to Emperor Smith, Chiun decided. He would be upset. As would Remo-and the bigmouthed boy would never let the subject rest. He would go on and on for weeks. Chiun would be in misery. He sighed mentally. He would have to wait. But the waiting wouldn't be wasted time.

"Your captain wants a special feast," Chiun said, making his voice higher and slightly squeaky.

"Our cap'n?" parroted the goon behind the crusty eye patch.

"As I said." Chiun could be obsequious when circumstances called for it, though it would never cease to gall him. "I require some spices."

"We got salt," said the pirate, swinging at the single wooden shelf in the cooking sty. "And we got pepper."

"Not enough," Chiun replied, gesturing toward the forest that surrounded the encampment. "I must go and look for other things."

"Like hell," the pirate snarled. "Nobody tole me nothin' 'bout you leavin' camp. Forget about it, Slant-eyes."

This time, Chiun imagined reaching deep inside the pirate's chest and ripping out the withered lump of gristle that sufficed him for a heart. Perhaps, on second thought, it would be more instructive to crack open his skull and examine the tiny husk of his brain.

Both prospects made Chiun smile, an uncharacteristic expression on his ancient face, but the pirate didn't know him well enough to realize that death was near.

"I cannot argue with such evident intelligence," he said. "No doubt, you will explain to Captain Kidd why his instructions for the wedding feast have been ignored. He will, of course, be sympathetic to your reasoning."

"You tellin' me the cap' n ordered this?"

"His excellency's order is for me to fix the ultimate gourmet repast. I have little to work with. Producing a special feast from this miserable larder will demand, at the very least, some distinctive seasonings."

The pirate tried to wrap his mind around Chiun's statement, which had an awful lot of long words in it, then snorted. "Where in hell you think you're livin', Chinaman? These ain't the goddamn spice islands, for Neptune's sake!"

"I have some knowledge of these things," Chiun replied. "There is no doubt the jungle, there, will yield surprises for the palate."

Chiun's watchdog glared at the forest with his one eye, finally turning back to face the Master Emeritus of Sinanju. "I don't like the jungle," he declared.

"By all means, then, stay here," Chiun offered. "After all, how can I run away?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" The pirate sneered. "Get me in trouble with the cap'n, jus' so you can go off playin' in the woods. No way you're gettin' off that easy, Slant-eyes."

"I will be most happy for your company," Chiun suggested, smiling pleasantly.

The gruff guard actually found himself amused by the tiny Chink codger, who had to be off his rocker. The old fart'd been prisoner here just a day and here he was happy as a clam.

The pirate might have thought differently if he saw the picture in Chiun's head-a vision of the pirate with his head cranked backward on his shoulders. "How long's this supposed to take?"

"Not long," Chiun replied. "The sooner I can find what I am looking for, the sooner we come back."

"I dunno how you think you're gonna find a goddamn thing out there," the pirate groused.

"Jungles are much the same," Chiun informed his captor. "I have every confidence."

"Le's get a friggin' move on, then!" the one-eyed pirate growled. "I wanna get back here and stick to business."

"As you say," Chiun replied. "Your wish is my command."

CARLOS RAMIREZ WAS A CITY boy at heart, though he had spent his first half-dozen years in the Colombian back country, where he observed the coca trade firsthand. He felt at home with solid ground beneath his feet, and while he owned two yachts himself, employing them for floating orgies on occasion, he was never perfectly at ease once they left the dock behind.

Ramirez didn't get seasick, exactly, but he always felt as if the deep water beneath his keel was in control, somehow, and he despised the feeling, as he hated anything that made him feel inadequate.

That afternoon, Ramirez had two boats to think about. He was aboard the Macarena, a sixty-foot luxury craft he had legally purchased in Miami two years earlier, allowing his then-mistress to name it. Iliana said it was "my favorite song from when I was a kid!" This from a girl still three months shy of being able to vote legally in her native Florida. But she was certainly grown-up enough to perform her duties as Ramirez's concubine.

A role without much job security, as Iliana learned about by the time she celebrated her eighteenth and final birthday. While Iliana was no more, the Macarena served Ramirez well enough. This day he shared the craft with Fabian Guzman, three crewmen and four soldiers. The second vessel was the Scorpion, a forty-foot speed launch with another two dozen shooters aboard.

"Carlos?"

Ramirez turned away from the port rail and found Guzman beside him, full lips curved into a frown. "Still worrying?" Ramirez asked.

Guzman rolled his massive shoulders in a lazy shrug. "This business with the pirates," he replied. "I keep thinking you would be safer back at home."

"But for how long?" Ramirez asked. "If there was any doubt in Medellin or Cartagena that I had the capability to deal with locos such as these, how long before I find my enemies attacking me on every side?"

"If you fear treachery, Carlos-"

Ramirez leaned in close to Guzman, with their noses almost touching. "I fear nothing, Fabian! Repeat it!"

"You fear nothing. Si, I understand, Carlos. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive, my friend. A mere slip of the tongue."

"As for these soldiers, though..."

"I want them in reserve, as I've explained," Ramirez said. "There is no reason to believe that Kidd is planning to betray us. Should he entertain such suicidal notions, though, we will have force enough on hand to deal with him."

"Three dozen guns, Carlos, if you include the two of us."

"Are you not still a soldier, Fabian?" Ramirez enjoyed the darkening of Guzman's countenance, the way his spine stiffened at the thinly veiled insult.

"You know I am," his second in command replied, "but they outnumber us two to one, at least."

"They are as children," said Ramirez. "They are locos, Fabian. You said as much yourself."

"Locos who aren't afraid to kill," Guzman replied. "They've proved that much. I simply do not trust them, Carlos."

"A wise decision," said Ramirez. "Trust is difficult to earn among the best of friends. The best of families have traitors in their ranks, as you know well. Strangers like these..."

He made a vague, dismissive gesture with one hand and turned back toward the rail. The deck shifted beneath his feet, Ramirez stretching out one hand to grip the rail and keep himself from wobbling where he stood. Behind him, Guzman stood with his feet well apart, arms crossed over his chest.

A backward glance showed him the Scorpion a hundred yards or so behind the Macarena, keeping pace. Most of the gunners were belowdecks, as he had commanded. The Scorpion wouldn't be putting into harbor when they reached the pirate stronghold-not unless and until Ramirez felt he needed reinforcements on the scene. If Kidd or one of his subordinates had any questions about the second vessel, Carlos meant to answer that he needed crewmen for the new boat he was buying from the pirates. It was all they had to know, unless Ramirez had some reason to believe that there was treachery afoot. In which case...

Carlos wished that he could have his soldiers check their guns again, but logic told him that wouldn't be necessary. They were all professionals and would have seen to their equipment well before they went aboard the yacht. If there was one thing that his soldiers knew about, it was preparing for a fight.

Ramirez craved a glass of rum, but knew that it wouldn't be wise for him to begin drinking now, with less than two hours to go before he met Kidd and the other buccaneers. There would be liquor flowing at the camp, he knew, and it was critical that Carlos keep his wits about him every moment that he spent in the presence of those locos.

Rum could wait. There was no time, at the moment, to mix business with pleasure.

At the very least, he had another stolen boat to purchase from the buccaneers, blood money changing hands. If there was treachery afoot, as Fabian suspected, then Ramirez would be forced to deal with that, as well. A little killing might even help settle his stomach, after spending so much time at sea.

The thought made Carlos smile again, with feeling this time.

Perhaps, after all, it would be an enjoyable day.

"YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND," said Ethan Humphrey, "what it's like to have a dream come true, when you've been hoping for it-waiting for it-all your life."

"Some dream," Remo said. He was standing off to one side of the ex-professor, in the cockpit of the Mulligan Stew.

"It must seem absurd to you, I realize," the old man said.

"Absurd doesn't quite say it," Remo said. "Try demented."

"My academic life-my whole life, dammit-has been dedicated to a study of the buccaneers who plied these waters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From childhood onward, they provided me with hours of escapist reading, academic study-in short, pure enjoyment. A reason for living, as it were."

"All fine and dandy until you start living it out, Professor," Remo said.

"These men are purists, don't you see that?" Humphrey frowned and shook his head, red faced in a way that had nothing to do with the afternoon heat. His topic clearly moved him in the same way that politics or religion moved other men, to the point of fanaticism and beyond.

"Pure killers, would that be?" asked Remo. "Pure hijackers? Or maybe it's pure rapists that you had in mind?"

"Their ethics represent another time, another era," Ethan Humphrey said, apparently unfazed by Remo's comment. "It's unfair to judge them by the standards of the modern era."

"You've discussed this with their victims, I suppose?"

A frown creased Humphrey's face. "You see me as a man devoid of sympathy," he said. "No doubt, you find me heartless. But consider this, my friend-the world today is overcrowded. Men lead lives of quiet desperation, in the words of Henry David Thoreau. Are you aware how many innocents are murdered every day in New York, in Chicago, in Los Angeles?"

"I'd look it up," said Remo, "if I figured it was relevant."

"But everything is relevant," said Humphrey. "Don't you see? So many sacrificed for nothing, while a handful put their puerile, wasted lives to better use."

"As fish food?" Remo asked.

"Sarcasm." Humphrey nodded like a wise man who expected no better from his intellectual inferiors. "I understand that you have difficulty grasping what's at stake here."

"Lives and property, you mean?" asked Remo. "It's a stretch, all right, but I can just about catch hold of it."

"I'm speaking of a race, a culture," Humphrey said. "What are a few lives in the balance, when it means the preservation of a cultural tradition?"

"Maybe you should ask the victims that," said Remo.

"Victims!" Humphrey spit out the word with a genuine expression of contempt. "Throughout recorded history, the sea wolves had been scrupulous in preying on the wealthy parasites who fatten on the lifeblood of society like ticks or leeches. Who else owns the yachts and other pleasure craft worth stealing? Who else can afford the ransom for a highpriced hostage?"

"So, if they're rich, you figure they're unfit to live. Is that about the size of it?" asked Remo.

"The wealthy breed like roaches," Humphrey said. "Look at the Kennedys, for God's sake. You can't swing a dead cat from Hyannis to Miami Beach without hitting some millionaire third-cousin of JFK's grandson. What on Earth do they contribute to society, beyond the weekly crop of tabloid headlines?"

"So, your pirates are a bunch of Marxist revolutionaries," Remo said. "The Pirate Liberation Army. It's a quirky twist, Professor, but I've got a problem with it."

"You miss the point. I merely meant to say-"

"They're killing people for the hell of it," said Remo, interrupting him. "Sometimes they let the women live, I understand, but those who do regret it, when they get to know your noble savages. We also have good reason to believe they're selling boats they steal to narcotraffickers from South America, to help the cocaine trade along. Of course, in your view, I suppose that's just another way of keeping up tradition."

Humphrey recognized that there would be no winning Remo over to his cause. His jaw was set now, lips compressed into a narrow slit below his nose, eyes fixed on the horizon.

"They'll be waiting for us," the professor said. "You know that."

"I'm counting on it."

"What does that mean?"

"Never mind," he said. "Just make damn sure that you don't lose your way. I understand the sharks are hungry hereabouts."

CHIUN SPENT FIVE MINUTES searching for the herbs he wanted. He found them, yanked the tuber out of the ground and into his kimono sleeve while his rather stupid guard was looking bored at a tree, then continued to search.

"Hey, slow down, would you?" the guard demanded.

"Do not tell me you cannot keep up with a bent old man such as myself," Chiun chided the guard. The guard huffed along behind him.

There was indeed a small outcropping jutting from the jungle. It was of a black rock that contained many gaping spherical shelves.

Chiun scanned the rock, looking for bone fragments and found none. But that meant nothing. If this was the rock described in the Sinanju scrolls, then its shelves would once have contained the skulls of pirate victims. But that was three hundred years ago, and it was unlikely that they would still be here, where the exposure to the elements would have eaten them away long ago.

"I thought you was looking for spices. This is a rock."

"You are a very smart man," Chiun remarked. "But what I look for is a kind of flavorful spoor found in certain lichens. I see none here-are there any more such escarpments?"

"Any more what?"

Chiun smiled at the guard benignly. "Big rocks."

"Oh. No. Just this one. Everything else is all sand."

"I see," Chiun said with disappointment, but inside he was frolicking with delight. Only one such formation on the island and the description matched that in the histories.

This was the first marker.

He circled to the north side of the rock formation and found, as promised, a small vertical ridge in the rock, at the bottom of which was a small natural rock shelf on which a man could stand, a few inches off the ground. He stepped up onto it, peering at the rock. His guard watched him for a moment, then got bored and looked elsewhere.

Chiun immediately turned and faced out, north, and looked for the Two-Headed Tree.

It was gone. Of course it was gone. There had been only the smallest chance that a tree in these climes would still exist after all this time.

With no two-headed tree, Chiun didn't know in which direction to walk. His treasure hunt was over almost before it had begun.

But not for long. This was just a start, really. There would be other ways, perhaps, of continuing the hunt.

He stepped up to within spitting distance of the daydreaming guard.

"Finished!" he clamored. The pirate jumped off the ground.

"Jee-zus, old man, you trying to get yourself killed!"

"I try to make feast for captain. He be velly angry you not get me back to camp fast." Chiun thought he did a pretty fair imitation of what an American would think an ignorant Chinese would sound like.

"All right, just don't go yelling at me like that anymore, will ya?"

"Velly solly!" Chiun screeched, louder than before.

Chapter 16

"What is it?" Fabian Guzman asked the lookout, eyes narrowed to dark slits as he stared across the sun-dappled water.

"A boat, jefe."

"I can see that, idiot! Give me the glasses!"

He snatched the binoculars and raised them to his eyes, adjusting the focus once he had the boat framed in his viewing field. It was approaching from the west, and while no name was painted on the bow, one glimpse told Guzman that the boat was not official. It wasn't Coast Guard or DEA, not Haitian or Jamaican or Dominican. An older boat, privately owned. Logic dictated that its presence, here and now, had to be coincidence.

And yet...

Suppose that he was wrong-then what? Guzman had been the strong right arm of his amigo, Carlos, for more years than he cared to think about, since they had risen from the mean streets of the barrio in Cartagena to command an empire stretching from Colombia to the United States and Western Europe.

The two of them hadn't survived this long by taking chances, banking on coincidence.

"Shall I fetch Carlos?" the lookout asked, nodding back in the direction of the cabin as he spoke. "You mean Senor Ramirez, eh?"

"Si, jefe." The contrition in the lookout's voice seemed genuine enough. It should have been, considering the penalty that insubordination carried in the family Ramirez and Guzman had built up for themselves.

"Stay here," he told the lookout. "If that vessel should change course or try to overtake us, let me know immediately. Is that understood?"

"Si, jefe! "

Guzman left him standing at the rail and moved back toward the flying bridge with long, determined strides. He climbed the ladder swiftly, ignoring the helmsman as he reached out for the radio, adjusted the frequency and hailed the Scorpion. Another moment, and recognized the voice of the Scorpion's first mate, a stone-cold killer named Armand Sifuentes.

"We have company," Guzman announced without preamble.

"I see them," said Armand. "What should we do?"

"Take three men in the motor launch," Guzman replied. "Be careful. Use whatever means you must to get aboard."

"And then?" Sifuentes almost chuckled as he asked the question. There could be no doubt about what Guzman had in mind for those aboard the aging cabin cruiser.

"Do what must be done," Guzman replied. "No witnesses."

"My pleasure," said Armand Sifuentes, sounding very much as if he meant exactly that.

Time crept along at a snail's pace while Guzman waited on the Macarena's flying bridge for the Scorpion's motor launch to appear with its cargo of gunmen. After a moment, Guzman realized that he was holding his breath, and he released it with a whistling sigh between clenched teeth.

Should he have checked with Carlos first, before he sent the gunmen off to deal with the intruders? Possibly, but he had judged that there was no time to be wasted in the present situation. Anyone aboard the weather-beaten cabin cruiser could identify the Macarena and the Scorpion from legends painted on their transoms. Granted, they were still miles from their destination, but Guzman had trained himself to think ahead, anticipate such problems and eliminate them in the embryonic stage.

Carlos would almost certainly agree with him, but Guzman would have wasted precious time by then. And if Carlos did not agree ...what then?

Then Carlos would be wrong.

It startled Guzman, thinking in such terms, but he didn't regard it as betrayal of his lifelong friend. The best and wisest men still made mistakes from time to time; it simply proved that they were human, after all. A friend stood ready to prevent such lapses of humanity from turning into fatal errors.

There! The motor launch was setting off from the Scorpion's port side, three gunmen leaning forward on the thwarts, while a fourth manned the outboard engine's throttle. Their weapons were nowhere in sight, but Guzman knew they would be close at hand, ready to open fire at the first indication of a threat from the old cabin cruiser.

In moments, they would draw abreast of the intruder. Moments more, and they would be aboard. A brief delay, while Sifuentes tried to determine if the new arrivals on the scene posed any threat to Ramirez and company, but it would make no difference in the end. Once they had stormed the cabin cruiser, everyone aboard would have to die. They were potential witnesses, and while the boat wasn't worth stealing, in and of itself, it could be scuttled, lost at sea.

Another mystery of the Caribbean, perhaps unsolved forever.

And if Carlos was displeased with the result, well, Guzman knew that he could reason with his old friend, given time. Their business with the loco pirates took priority, and nothing else could be allowed to slow them down.

He leaned against the rail and lit a cigarette, watching.

Waiting for the distant sound of guns.

"STAY COOL," REMO ADVISED the ex-professor.

"I don't recognize these men," said Humphrey, squinting in the late-afternoon sunshine as he watched the power launch approaching.

"Just remember," he warned Humphrey, "when the guns go off, you're standing in the middle."

"I don't recognize these men," the former academic said again. "Who are they?"

"Let's just wait and see."

Remo slid down the ladder and found a hiding place from which he could observe and overhear the new arrivals as they came aboard. The moments ticked away, Humphrey hauling back on the throttle as the strange craft approached. A voice hailed Humphrey from the launch, and Remo frowned. Their spotter didn't seem to recognize the old man, and he had what sounded like a South American accent. That wouldn't rule out a pirate, in itself, and yet...

There was a soft thump as the launch kissed hulls with the Mulligan Stew, and then boarders were scrambling over the rail, boot heels clomping on deck. Humphrey was agitated, calling down to them from his place on the flying bridge.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "What are you doing with those guns? This is-"

A stutter of automatic gunfire rattled overhead. Remo waited, half expecting a squall of pain, perhaps the sound of Humphrey's body sprawling on the deck above him, but instead he heard a scramble of feet as the professor ducked out of sight.

"Stand up, pendejo," one of the boarding party demanded. "There are questions joo must answer."

"This is a flagrant violation of-"

Another burst of gunfire silenced Humphrey, bullets smacking into bulkhead, one round glancing off the tarnished brass rail with a high-pitched whine.

"All right!" the old man shouted. "Please, stop shooting! Tell me what you want!"

"We gonna search joo boat," one of the shooters said. "Joo gonna tell us why joo're here."

"Look anywhere you want," the old man answered, groveling on the deck. "I have nothing to hide."

Remo heard footsteps on the deck, approaching his hideout. This was a nice spot, he decided. Out of sight of any binocular trained on the Mulligan Stew from the boat these losers came from.

He concentrated on the footsteps of the gunman who was closing on him, marking others as they moved off toward the bow.

The man who came around the corner was a twenty-something Latin, carrying an Uzi submachine gun in both hands, across his chest. Dark eyes went wide at the sight of Remo, but he had no chance to use his gun or shout a warning to the others in the split second of life remaining to him.

Remo grabbed the Uzi, grabbed its owner and inserted the former into the latter. The Uzi went pretty far down the gunman's throat, and with a little pushing and twisting it went in a lot farther.

Remo hoisted the gunner's deadweight and sat him in a bench seat in the cabin cruiser's galley. Above him, on the deck, more footsteps. Remo could hear someone shouting at Humphrey, the sound of an open hand striking flesh, a cry of pain and outrage from the ex-professor. Whatever kind of search was under way, it seemed haphazard and disorganized.

Remo emerged from the companionway into sunlight. Most of the noise was coming from his left, the starboard side, so Remo moved to port. He knew there was a gunman above him, grilling Humphrey, and another somewhere to starboard. That left the one making footsteps in Remo's direction.

"Uh-" the gunner said.

"Bye," Remo said, rapping his knuckles on the gunner's rib cage. The gunner's eyes went wild as his heart rhythm revved out of control. Remo held the guy's mouth closed with one hand to keep the screams from escaping, stepped on both the man's feet with his own and pulled the spasming body taut to keep him from making any loud noises. A few seconds later the gunner had stopped making noises forever, and Remo dropped him.

Remo went looking for gunner number three. The Mulligan Stew was a sort of floating sounding board, and Remo could easily track everyone on board by the sound and vibration of their footsteps. That meant the hunt for gunner number three wasn't even a challenge. He just walked up behind the man. The gunner turned to face Remo-his head, that was in Remo's hands, turned to face Remo. His body stayed facing front. The gunner was dead before he had time to figure out why the world had suddenly started turning in circles.

That left the man up top guarding Humphrey. "Wha' joo doin?" the apparent leader of the boarding party called down to his team of thugs, not knowing the gun squad was, each in his own unique manner, very dead. Remo saw a bulky shadow moving toward the port rail of the flying bridge as he came up on it.

The commander of the boarding party was a stocky man, solid muscle underneath a layer of camouflaging fat. He had some kind of submachine gun and he brought it into play when Remo rushed him and struck at his gun arm.

The stocky man was confused as to why his gun was silent. Then he heard an abrupt splash off the side of the boat. He looked over just in time to see his submachine sinking in the turquoise Caribbean water, dragging his arm down with it.

But that couldn't be right because the man who had attacked him didn't have a knife. How could he have cut off a whole arm?

The commander of the gunners decided the question was too difficult and he wilted where he stood as the blood pumped out by the pint.

Remo gave him a side kick that launched the gunner in a long arc and ended with another, bigger splash.

"Are you all right?" Remo asked Ethan Humphrey. The old man was sitting, his hands supporting his upper body as if he was about to collapse.

"All right?" The ex-professor looked confused, as if he didn't understand the language Remo spoke. Remo bent and gripped one of the old man's earlobes, pinching lightly, bringing Humphrey to his feet.

"Were those your friendly pirates?" he demanded.

"Pirates? Ow!" The old man struggled in his grip but could not break away. "Of course not! Those were total strangers. Kidd's men wouldn't try to kill me!"

"Then we'd better get a move on," Remo said. "Find out what kind of speed this tub can handle."

"Speed?"

"Unless you want to see how many other guns these guys are packing."

"Oh, I see. Yes, quite."

The old man turned and grabbed the throttle, pouring on the power.

"YOU'RE GOING THROUGH with it?" Felicia asked.

"Don't be an idiot," snapped Megan. "What choice does she have?"

Stacy had asked herself that very question, time and time again, and still no ready answer came to mind. Of course, she could reject Kidd's offer, but would that accomplish anything? If she refused to play along with the pathetic marriage ceremony, would it stop the pirate chief from claiming her, forcing himself upon her?

No.

The grim truth was that Stacy had no viable alternatives. Escape or suicide would place her beyond Kidd's reach, and at the moment, the two words appeared to be interchangeable. And whatever her plight, the second hard truth was that Stacy Armitage wasn't prepared to die. Not yet.

Not while her brother's death was unavenged. "Are you okay?" Felicia asked.

"Christ, that's a stupid question!" Megan snapped. "She's got a shotgun wedding to a psycho killer coming up in-what, about two hours-and you ask if she's okay? Did someone drop you on your head when you were little?"

"Just get off my case, all right?" Felicia's eyes were flashing, angry tears about to spill across her cheeks.

Stacy Armitage almost didn't hear them. She had spied one bright spot in the otherwise unrelieved darkness of her waking nightmare. If she was "married" to Kidd, labeled his private stock, it meant two things. First, the other pirates would be kept away from her, her suffering and degradation minimized. And, more importantly, it meant there would be times when she was left alone with Kidd, no bodyguards or chaperones. And sometime, sooner or later, the pirate would let down his guard.

And when that happened, it would be her time to strike. She would require a weapon, then, but there was time to pick one out. She might not find an opportunity the first week-or the first month, for that matter-but her time would come. One chance was all she needed, and it didn't matter if the effort cost her her life, as long as she could take Kidd with her.

As for Chiun, she didn't know what the Korean had in mind, but it was growing more apparent by the moment that she couldn't count on him to help her.

"Penny for your thoughts," Megan said, frowning.

Stacy's voice was grim as she replied, "It's nothing, really. I'm just looking forward to my honeymoon."

"YOU THINK THEY WERE Kidd's men?" Carlos Ramirez asked.

"Who else?" Guzman replied.

Ramirez scowled across the Macarena's railing, standing with his fists clenched at his sides. The battered old cabin cruiser, Mulligan Stew her name was, had managed to outrun his newer boats despite their crews' best efforts. It was obvious someone had been tending to the old tub's engine-one more indication, if Ramirez needed any, that an ambush had been planned.

By whom? he asked himself. Who else but Captain Kidd and company knew that Ramirez would be visiting the pirate stronghold, sailing through these waters at this particular time? Who else could have prepared the ambush that had claimed four lives?

Ramirez had found one of his men floating dead in the water, minus an arm, when the Macarena started to pursue the enemy. The others had been jettisoned during pursuit, one already savaged by barracuda before they reached his body. There was no point hauling them aboard-more awkward questions if he should encounter a patrol boat on the prowl-but even when he let them go, urging his pilot to the utmost speed, the Mulligan Stew still pulled away from the pursuit craft, ultimately vanishing among the islands of a nameless archipelago. "What shall we do?" asked Guzman.

"What do you imagine, Fabian?"

Ramirez didn't know why Kidd would turn on him, betray him after they had worked together for so long. It hardly mattered now. Ramirez had a list of enemies that ran from spring to Christmas, taking special care with his security, but none of those he watched his back for on dry land had known where he was bound this afternoon.

It had to be Kidd, unless...

Ramirez had considered simple chance, and just as quickly ruled it out. The four men on his boarding party had been armed professionals, adept at killing for a fee. Armand Sifuentes had been something of a one-man army in himself, with better than two dozen murders to his credit. It defied all logic to assume that simple fishermen or tourists could have dealt with men like that and managed to escape unharmed.

There hadn't even been gunshots. They would have heard them. These men could never, ever have been brought down that quickly unless the ambush had been well planned and flawlessly executed.

That kind of work required stone killers. Thomas Kidd and his community of pirates might be loco, but they also knew their business, and killing at sea was their specialty. Who else made a more likely suspect, in the circumstances?

"Bring us back on course for Ile de Mort," Ramirez ordered.

"We're still going, Carlos?" Guzman sounded dubious.

"Indeed we are, amigo. If I'm right, the captain won't expect us now."

"We take him by surprise," said Guzman, smiling now.

"We take him by surprise," Ramirez echoed. "Now, full speed ahead!"

Chapter 17

The root Chiun had discovered on his quick tour of the jungle wasn't precisely what he sought, but it would do. He had sliced it and diced it-with a knife, since using his fingernails might have been considered unusual-and sprinkled it into the simmering pot.

Pirates were drifting in from their appointed duties, some of them already having changed from their grubby clothing into more colorful garb. Chiun had yet to see one of them bathe, nor was he looking forward to the sorry spectacle. In fact, from the effluvium that wafted off their unwashed bodies, Chiun didn't imagine that he would be dwelling on the island long enough to glimpse such a unique event. Nor, he surmised, would anybody else.

His stew was almost ready, its aroma spreading through the camp. From the reaction of prospective diners, several of them passing by and peering down into the pot, he knew that it would do the trick. There might not be enough to go around, but even if he only reached two-thirds of his opponents, it would be sufficient.

The potion was indeed mere window dressing for his master plan. Chiun had no fear of his "captors," needed no tricks to defeat them singly or en masse, but it amused him to distract them from the woman while he made his move. The root he had selected was fast-acting, and should bring results within fifteen or twenty minutes after it had been consumed. The camp would be a great deal more malodorous once his surprise kicked in, but Chiun reckoned there would be little time to savor the result--or suffer through it, as the case might be-before he had to make his move.

It had been ordered that the feasting should precede the wedding ceremony. That was fine with Chiun; in fact, it suited him no end. He knew the hasty ritual would have no standing anywhere beyond the pirate stronghold, but it pleased him to consider frustrating the would-be king's design.

There had been no time for him to discuss his plan with Stacy Armitage, but that didn't concern Chiun. White women had a way of letting their emotions run away with them in crisis situations, and he understood that redheads were the worst of all in that regard. Brunettes were more sedate, if only by a matter of degree, while blondes were often too disorganized and witless to perceive real danger.

Chiun had learned that much from television, studying his favorite soap operas, where men and women acted in accordance with their roles in white society.

He wouldn't wait on Stacy, then, or trust her with the details of his plan. If she was not in a position to assist him, neither would she be a stumbling block when he began to smite their enemies.

In general, the Master Emeritus of Sinanju favored subtle killing, the ideal assassination having been defined as one in which no third party suspected assassination, but he also recognized that there were times when subtlety fell short of the desired result.

Times such as this.

Chiun watched the pirates lining up with plates and bowls in hand. The first man in the line was one of those who had repeatedly described him as Chinese. Chiun smiled and ladled out a double portion of his special gumbo to the unwashed buccaneer.

"Smell's durn good, Chinaman," the buccaneer said.

"You will velly tasty, you bet," Chiun answered. In his head he added, You be velly dead velly soon, ignorant white man.

And he meant it.

"WE'RE ALMOST THERE," said Ethan Humphrey, pointing with a hand that trembled now, despite his effort to control himself.

The island loomed in front of them, two smaller lumps of jungle-shrouded rock flanking it on either side. The center of attention, christened Ile de Mort, according to his skipper, was a mile long, give or take, with rugged peaks along its spine. Only the crags were naked stone; the rest was clotted jungle growth from mountain slopes down to a reeking mangrove swamp at water's edge.

"The anchorage is on the northern side," Humphrey explained. "We'll need another half hour to get there."

"I see an inlet there." Remo pointed toward the mouth of what appeared to be a brackish stream, amid the looming mangroves. It was wide enough for Humphrey's boat to pass. The water course might narrow inland, but he didn't care, as long as they could pull the cabin cruiser out of sight from any stray patrol boats that might happen by.

"You can't be serious," the ex-professor said.

"Not up to it?" He cracked a mirthless smile. "No sweat, Professor. I'll just take her in myself."

"You will not, sir!" His voice was stern, but Humphrey clearly realized that he could not stop Remo from seizing control of the boat if he was so inclined.

"Do they post lookouts?" Remo asked, as Humphrey nosed the boat toward shore.

"It's possible," said Humphrey, "though I've never asked. Myself, I think they trust in isolation here."

Humphrey drew back on the throttle as they neared the inlet. Remo's nostrils flared at the smell of rotting vegetation from the swamp, a stench primeval from the dawn of time.

The mangroves closed around them, branches drooping low, scraping the canopy above the flying bridge. Daylight was fading fast, but it was even darker in among the trees, a sudden twilight.

They had already moved some fifty yards inland when the cabin cruiser's hull struck something with a scrape and a shudder, groaning underfoot. Humphrey immediately throttled down and let the engine idle, turning to Remo with a worried frown.

"We can't go any farther," he insisted. "This is madness."

"Listen, Professor, you've got a bunch of friends who say 'yar' and wear puffy shirts. Nothing I do can ever be considered 'madness' by comparison. We'll take the skiff."

"If it's all the same to you," Humphrey replied, "I'll just wait here."

"It's not the same to me," said Remo. "I still need a guide. You're it. Let's go."

"I've never come this way," the old man said. "We may get lost."

"Then we'll get lost together," Remo told him.

"But-"

"Let's put it this way. I don't mind leaving you behind. Look how many other guys I left behind on this little three-hour tour."

Now Humphrey got the point and grimaced, starting down the ladder from the flying bridge. The skiff was stowed astern, a smallish aluminum rowboat with paddles for two. Remo untied it, dropped it overboard and hopped down from the transom, holding it steady while Humphrey came aboard.

In front of them, some twenty yards ahead, the stream forked at a clump of cypress, smaller brackish channels splitting off in a rough Y shape. For all Remo knew, they might join up again beyond the wall of trees, but he wasn't prepared to risk it.

"So, which way?" he asked of his reluctant guide.

"From where we are, it should be westward." To the right, then, if the old man wasn't lying to him, stalling in an effort to protect his friends.

"Be sure," said Remo.

"As I said, I've never tried to reach the camp from this direction. There's a possibility-"

"Be sure," Remo repeated. "I don't have the time or patience for mistakes. You're still expendable."

The old man thought about it for another moment, biting on his lower lip, then nodded. "Westward," he said again.

THE DRESS THAT STACY WORE wasn't a bad fit, pinned beneath the arms to take it in, floor-length blue satin, just a trifle loose around the hips. She thought about the woman who had worn it first, wondered what had become of her and how Kidd's pirates had obtained the formal gown. On second thought, she didn't want to know.

"You look really nice," Felicia said.

"Felicia, Jesus!" Megan scowled and shook her head.

"Hey, I was only saying-"

"Never mind, for Christ's sake!" Megan turned to Stacy once again, the frown still on her face. "You do look nice, though. I mean, for the circumstances."

"Thank you."

There was no mirror in the hut that served as their prison cell. Indeed, she would have been surprised if there was one in camp. Some of the pirates combed their hair, after a fashion, and most of them shaved-at least irregularly-but it was apparent from their general appearance and their hygiene that none of them spent much time before a looking glass.

"I like the flowers," said Felicia. Then, as Megan turned to glare at her again, she stuck her tongue out. "Well, I do, so there."

"I like the flowers, too," Megan admitted grudgingly. "God, this is so damn weird!"

The flowers were an added touch. Meg and Felicia had retrieved them from the forest near the camp, while Robin stayed with Stacy in the hut. She wasn't company, in any recognized sense of the word, but Stacy could talk freely to her, venting her fear and anger in full confidence that Robin would not interrupt her. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest the girl had understood a single word.

Megan had plucked the flowers carefully, long stems intact, and then had woven them into a kind of wreath that nestled in her hair. Stacy had no idea where Megan found the bobby pins, but she had come up with a pair of them to fix the wreath in place. Stacy imagined how she had to have looked-some kind of hippie princess, dressed up for a lovein-and her stomach churned.

The blushing bride, she thought, and felt like throwing up.

"What's going on out there?" she asked of no one in particular.

Felicia peered through a hole in the curtain that served as their door, shifting positions several times as she tried to get a full view of the compound.

"Eating," she replied at last. "The goons are lined up for some kind of stew. They've got your friend dishing it out."

So much for Chiun taking out the pirates on his own, Stacy thought. But what had she expected, really? He was one old man against a veritable army. Even if he used to know some kung fu moves, he was still outnumbered sixty-five or seventy to one, by younger men with guns and knives.

"Is this the shits, or what?" Felicia asked. "They're having the reception first, and they don't even feed the bride? What kind of weird, ass-backward deal is this?"

"You're sweating etiquette?" The tone of Megan's voice conveyed a mixture of dismay and gallows humor. "Jesus, Fe, you didn't pay that analyst of yours enough."

"That's cold," Felicia said, eyes smoldering as she returned Meg's glare.

Megan ignored her and addressed herself to Stacy. "So, have you decided what to do?"

"Looks like I'm getting married," Stacy said.

"I mean, after," said Megan. "When you ...you know ... ?"

Stacy wondered how much she could tell the younger woman without further jeopardizing herself. It took all of a second and a half to decide that her troubles could get no worse, barring an immediate sentence of death. Megan was still Kidd's prisoner, his enemy. If she betrayed Stacy, it might get her killed, but death was coming either way. It was only a matter of time.

"I'm going to kill him," Stacy said.

"Kill who?" Megan's voice dropped to a whisper as she spoke, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder, first toward Felicia, then toward the vegetative Robin.

"Kidd," Stacy replied. "Who else?"

"But...I mean, shit!" Megan was at a loss for words. "You'll never get away with it, you know?"

"I'll never get away, period," Stacy replied. "We're prisoners, in case you hadn't noticed. We're not going anywhere. They'll never let us go. Is any of this getting through?"

Anger flashed in Meg's eyes as she replied, "I hear you, dammit! And I've been here longer, in case you've forgotten. Anything that's waiting for you has already happened to me, to us."

"I'm sorry, Meg. I didn't mean-"

"How would you do it?" Megan interrupted her. "Kill him, I mean?"

"I'll have to wait and see," Stacy replied. "Of course, I'll need some kind of weapon. That could take a while, but I'll find something. All the guns and knives around this place, he'll have to let his guard down sooner or later."

It hardly qualified as a plan, but it was the best Stacy had been able to come up with, in the circumstances. One opportunity was all that she would need. No matter how long she was forced to wait, she meant to grab that chance and make it count.

"Are they still eating, Fe?"

Felicia peered outside again before she answered. "Yeah, still chowing down. The line out there, I'd say another twenty minutes, anyway, before they all get served. Then, figure some of them want seconds, and-"

"Enough, already!" Megan chided. "Next thing, you'll be telling us what kind of silverware they're using."

"Some of them are using fingers," Felicia said, "if you really want to know."

"We don't," Megan assured her. Turning back to Stacy, she went on, "I wish to hell there was some way we could get out of here."

But there was no point wishing. Just now, Stacy required all of her wits and nerve to face the grisly prospect of her wedding night.

Meanwhile, she hoped the feast would last for hours, and that the liquor would flow like water. It was one time when a stinking-drunk bridegroom was preferable to a sober one.

With any luck at all, Kidd might drink so much that he passed right out the moment they had gone to bed. If not...

Her stomach churned again, and Megan seemed to pick up on it from Stacy's expression.

"What?" she asked.

Stacy managed a smile as she replied, "Oh, nothing. I'm just hoping that they let me cut the cake."

CARLOS RAMIREZ COCKED his semiautomatic pistol, thumbed on the safety and slipped the weapon back into the shoulder holster worn beneath his stylish jacket. It was hot, despite the hour, and although Ramirez had already sweated through his shirt, he balked at taking off the jacket. He had a certain image to protect, and killing off his enemies was only part of it.

Whenever possible, he also had to be the best-dressed killer on the block.

Ramirez knew the way to Kidd's encampment, how to find it from the sea, but he wasn't prepared to land directly in his enemy's front yard. He still had no idea why Kidd would turn against him, but there was no arguing with facts. Four of his best men were dead, and Carlos knew of no one else in the vicinity who could have pulled it off without sustaining losses in the process. Even for a group of wily pirates, it would be a challenge, but the ease with which the killers had escaped him told Ramirez that they knew the local waters well indeed.

Ramirez and his men had been outnumbered when they sailed from Cartagena, and the odds weren't improved by losing four good men. Ramirez still had faith that he could win the day, but he was counting on surprise to make it possible.

They landed near the west end of the island, roughly half a mile from Kidd's compound. No lookouts were in evidence, but Carlos took no chances, posting sentries of his own while he addressed the others.

He had formed a simple plan after the ambush out at sea. His men would land well back from the encampment and march overland to take the pirates by surprise. There would be no need for discussion, nothing in the nature of a warning to the men he meant to kill.

Carlos Ramirez was no woodsman, but he reckoned he could hike for half a mile through even the most savage jungle, with the ocean on his left to help him find his way. It would take more time in the dark, of course, and night was falling fast. A handful of his soldiers carried flashlights, but they had been ordered to refrain from using them except in the most dire emergency, since strange lights in the forest would betray them to their enemies. They could afford to take their time, spend half the night walking if necessary. In truth, Ramirez thought it would be better if he found his enemies asleep, but he didn't intend to waste the whole night waiting unless it was absolutely necessary. Better to surprise the pirates at a meal, for instance, while his men were reasonably fresh, than to risk them getting jumpy, trigger-happy, maybe even dozing at their posts.