Political Pressure

15

The bloody puddle had collected at the base of a maintenance ladder, and the drops vanished at the curb next to a No Parking sign.

Remo consoled himself with the knowledge that he still had one surviving commando.

Dinky was a mess. The entire front of his body was seared, black, bloody and blistered. Large chunks of flesh had been literally dragged off him in the high-powered slide to safety.

"Guess I should have slid you on your back instead of your front," Remo commented.

The commando's eyes rolled in opposite directions but seemed to focus for a moment on Remo.

"Can't even call you Dinky anymore, can I?" Remo said with a grimace. "I'll call you Ken, okay?"

"Kill me kill me kill me," Ken rasped.

"Oh, that's too good for ya."

"Jesus, where's your compassion?" blurted the arriving paramedic, who seemed unfazed by the extensive burns.

"Don't waste any compassion on this guy, uh, Shorley," Remo said reading her name tag.

"It's Shirley, moron, and this is a human being in terrible agony." She turned to her partner and started ordering up injectables.

"Your name tag says Shorley, Shorley, and this guy tried to murder a bunch of people with a submachine gun." He nodded at the efficient, quick procedures being performed by other paramedics over their blood- soaked gunshot victims. "I see four people with gunshot wounds and five people with sheets over their faces. That makes me care about this guy's suffering not at all."

Shirley yanked at her name tag, glared at it and swore savagely. "Okay, you're right about the name tag, but this man is not guilty until the court says he's guilty. Our human conscience obligates us to ease his suffering, so you just back the hell off, asshole!"

"Okay. See you, Shorley."

Shirley had been about to inject a massive dose of morphine into her patient when her hand came up empty. She looked on the floor. Her syringe couldn't have gone very far.... She swore and demanded another syringe of morphine.

"Don't you have the morphine?" her partner asked.

"I dropped it! Give me another!"

"What I mean is, don't you have all the morphine?

"Cause the kit's empty. Shit, everything's gone—all the painkillers."

Shirley knew—she knew—that the asshole smart aleck jerk had somehow just snatched all their morphine. That was so heartless. "This man is suffering! Give me something!"

"Well," her partner said, "we have this."

He handed her a single-dose packet of Tylenol, and it wasn't even Extra-Strength.

Remo found Chiun standing in the hall near the blackened entrance to a men's room. No explanation was needed. Chiun had dispatched the gunners from the rear and tossed them into the men's room, then kept out the general public until the corpses blew up. Remo felt coldly despondent as he emptied the contents of several single- dose dispensers of painkillers into the water fountain.

"You are finally quitting your nasty morphine habit, I see," Chiun commented.

"Can it!"

Chiun was silent while Remo poured out the morphine, rinsed the bottles, then stuffed them in the nearest garbage can. In silence, the two Masters of Sinanju left the building without being noticed. Their hotel was only six miles away, and they wordlessly agreed to walk it. The stagnant front that locked in the bad air over Denver had yet to move on, and Remo breathed dirty air. He felt the smog taint his lungs and trickle into his blood. There was no way to stop it from happening, and he felt dirtied by it.

"These assholes are not like us."

It was a full two minutes before Chiun said, "I agree."

"I thought maybe we should go easy on them. Let them take out some of the garbage before we plugged them up. But I saw a lot of dead people back there who weren't guilty of anything."

"It is not the reason Emperor Smith would give," Chiun said, "but I think it is a better reason—as long as we're being paid anyway."

"In a couple of hours we can go visit Ken in whatever burn unit they put him in," Remo said. "But he's probably a know-nothing grunt."

"Did you learn more about him than his name?" Chiun asked.

"I didn't even learn his name. I was calling him Dinky first."

"Why?" Chiun asked.

Remo explained and Chiun smirked.

"But then, you know, I decided dinky wasn't accurate anymore so I switched to Ken."

"Why? What is 'Ken'?"

Remo once again explained.

Chiun smirked again, and steered them in the direction of a toy store that was on the way to the hotel.