Shooting Schedule

"That will never, repeat, never happen in this film," Bronzini promised. "We know our weapons."

Colonel Tepperman reached for his telephone. "Okay. I'll make that call," he said decisively. "Do you have a part for a Marine colonel in this movie of yours?" Bronzini looked to Jiro with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes," the Japanese said smoothly. "This very ambitious firm. We have parts for as many men as you have. But they must bring own weapons. We wirr need many authentic American weapons."

"We have all you need."

"Of course, they must be roaded with prop burrets."

"Damn straight," Colonel Tepperman said as he listened to the ringing in his phone receiver. "Hello, put me through to the commandant of the Marine Corps." The base commander at Luke Air Force Range was stubborn.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I can't allow this," said Colonel Frederick Davis. "I appreciate what you have in mind, but I can't have a movie crew tramping all over my base. Too irregular."

"We wirr not require to be on the base for very rong," Jiro Isuzu said eagerly. "An afternoon at most." Bronzini noticed the Japanese was sweating. On a shooting schedule this tight, it was no wonder.

"No, I doubt it," Colonel Davis was saying.

"I'm sorry." Bronzini broke in. "What we want to do, sir, is a massive parachute drop, using as many airmen as you can spare."

"You want me to provide airmen?" Bronzini nodded.

"In full gear."

"We wirr suppry the parachute, of course," Isuzu said. "And pay arr operating expense. Okay by you?"

"And a per diem for everyone," Bronzini added. He noticed a faint gleam appear in the colonel's evasive eyes. "My God, man, do you realize what's involved? You'll need C-130 Hercules transports."

"We'd like three," Bronzini said with calm assurance.

"We want to have the men drop into the Yuma Desert. Naturally, we'll need to film the planes taking off from here. And the operation in its entirety."

"Sounds spectacular," Colonel Davis mused. He had never been in combat, never participated in a military operation on the scale this flat-cheeked actor was describing.

"Think of the publicity for the Air Force," Bronzini said. "In the script, they are the forces that engage the invading Chinese on the ground and destroy them."

The colonel thought long and quietly.

"You know," he said, sitting up in his chair, "our recruitment people tell me that every time you do a Grundy film, enlistments go up twenty percent in all branches of the service."

"Maybe this time it'll be thirty. Or forty."

"Sounds tempting. But it is a lot to ask. I don't think I could get the Pentagon to go along."

"Marines arready say yes," Jiro Isuzu inserted.

The colonel's face clouded over. "Those jarheads," he muttered. "What kind of parts are they getting?"

"Their base is overrun by Chinese Red Army in first reer," Jiro told him.

"He means the first reel," Bronzini translated.

"I might be persuaded to make a few phone calls," Colonel Davis said. "But you'll have to do something for me in return."

"Name it," Bronzini said. "An autograph? A photo?"

"Don't be absurd, man. I don't want any of that worthless junk. I want to be the first man out of the plane. "

"Done," said Bartholomew Bronzini, rising to his feet. He shook the colonel's hand. "You won't regret this, sir."

"Call me Fred, Bart."

Chapter 10

Sheryl Rose wondered what kind of a name Chiun was as she pulled up to the Yuma International Airport terminal. It sounded Asian. Probably Japanese. He'd almost have to be to cover this film. She parked the studio van at the curb and stepped inside.

There was only one man waiting inside. He was about five feet tall and wore a colorful silk robe. He looked lost, and Sheryl's heart went out to him.

"Are you Mr. Chiun?" she asked.

The tiny Asian man turned stiffly and said, "I am Chiun."

"Well, howdy, I'm Sheryl. From the studio."

"They sent a woman?"

"I'm the only unit publicist on Red Christmas," she said pleasantly. "Take me or leave me, but I hope you like me."

"Who will carry my luggage?" the little Asian asked plaintively. Sheryl noticed his shiny head, bald but for little cloudlike puffs over each fragile ear.

"No hat? Didn't your editor tell you that the sun is very, very strong in Arizona? You'll get a terrible sunburn going around like that."

"What is wrong with my attire?" demanded Chiun, looking down at his robe. It was cactus green. Scarlet and gold dragons marched across the chest.

"You'll need a hat."

"I am more concerned about my luggage."

"Now, don't you fret, I'll take care of it. Meanwhile, why don't you step into the gift shop and treat yourself to some headgear?"

"My head is fine."

"Oh, don't be shy," Sheryl told the sweet old man. "The studio will be glad to pay for it."

"Then I will be happy to take you up on your generous offer. My luggage is in that corner," he said, gesturing with his impossibly long fingernails to several lacquered trunks stacked at odd angles in the waiting area. Then he disappeared into the gift shop.

Sheryl touched one experimentally. It felt like it was filled with hardened concrete.

"Me and my helpful mouth," she said as she struggled to wrestle the top trunk to the floor.

An hour later, she had got the final trunk to the curb. "Perhaps you need assistance from a man," Chiun said. His head was tilted back so he could see over the floppy brim of a ten-gallon cowboy hat.

"Do you see any stray helpful males?" she asked him, looking around.

"No. Perhaps I should help?"

"Oh, I can handle it," Sheryl puffed, thinking: What a sweet little man. He looked positively frail enough to break in a stiff breeze. God knew what would happen if he tried to pitch in. He might have a heart attack or some such thing.

Finally she hoisted the last trunk into the back.

"Do you always travel with five steamer trunks?" she asked as she climbed behind the wheel, checking the rearview mirror to grimace at the dusty sweat-streaked mask her face had become.

"No. Normally it is fourteen."

As she drove away, Sheryl breathed a prayer of thankfulness that he had decided to travel light this time. "I'll bet you're excited about interviewing Bronzini," Sheryl said as they pulled onto the desert location twenty minutes later.

"Which one is he?" Chiun asked as base camp came into view. His hazel eyes narrowed at the sight of so many uniformed men.

"I don't see His Bronzeness at the moment," Sheryl said, looking around.

"I am unfamiliar with that form of address."

"It's just a little joke around the set. They call Bronzini the Bronze Bambino. Some of the trades refer to him as 'Your Bronzeness.' I thought everyone knew that."

"I do not. But then, I am not everyone," Chiun said haughtily, "I am Chiun."

"O-kay." Sheryl cranked down her window and spoke to a Japanese grip. "Where's Bronzini?"

"Overseeing setup on first unit," she was told. "Thanks," Sheryl said, setting the van in motion. They bounced and weaved into the vast arroyo where the tanks were arrayed. "This is where they'll be filming the main desert battle sequences between the Chinese invaders and the American defense forces," she explained. "Do you know the story line?"

"No," Chiun said distantly. He was looking at the milling Japanese. They stared back with suspicious eyes.

"Maybe you should take notes. Or do you use a tape recorder?"

"I use my infallible memory, which requires neither sharpening or batteries."

"Suit yourself."

"Why are those men wearing Chinese uniforms?"

"Those are the extras. They play the Chinese invasion force."

"But those are Japanese!" Chiun hissed.

"Do tell. Almost everyone on this set is Japanese."

"This is foolishness, Chiun sputtered. How can they expect people to believe their story when they have crafty Japanese pretending to be lazy Chinese?"

"I take it you belong to neither category," Sheryl remarked dryly.

"I am obviously Korean," Chiun said testily.

"I did notice that you can handle your L's," Sheryl said. "I guess people from your side of the world notice the difference better than we Americans." She pulled the van into the shadow of a sandhill.

"A worm would notice the difference. A grasshopper would notice. An American possibly would have to have it explained to him. Twice."

"Well, come on. Let's find Bronzini. It shouldn't be hard. He'll be the one with barbells in each hand."

As they stepped from the van, a red-and-white Bell Ranger helicopter lifted over a ridge and orbited the arroyo. It settled down in the clearing, rotors kicking up sand. A door popped open.

"That's the camera ship and there's his Bronzeness, making another spectacular entrance," Sheryl pointed out. Two men stepped from the helicopter.

"I must interview him. At once," Chiun said firmly.

"Wait a sec. You don't just walk up to him. First, I have to clear it with Jiro. Then he has to take it up with His Bronzeness. He tells me, and I tell you. That's the way it works around here."

"He will speak to me," said Chiun, storming for the helicopter, where the two men stood engaged in earnest conversation. The Master of Sinanju ignored the shorter man, and accosted the taller one.

"I am Chiun, famous author," he said in a loud voice. "The readers of my magazine are clamoring for an answer to the most pressing issue of the day. Namely, how can you expect to have any properly colored persons take your movie seriously if you insult their intelligence with Japanese pretending to be Chinese?"

Bill "Sunny Joe" Roam looked down at the querulous face and said, "You're barking up the wrong tree, chief."

"Something I can do for you?" Bartholomew Bronzini asked, his face quirked with amusement. He looked down at a ten-gallon hat that might have belonged to a rodeo clown.

Sheryl Rose broke in.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bronzini," she said hastily. "He got away from me. This is Mr. Chiun, from Star File magazine. "

"Now you call him Mr. Bronzini," Chiun said huffily. "A moment ago he was His Bronzeness."

Sheryl's eyes widened in horror. But before Bronzini could react, the little Asian stepped back so he could see past his hat brim.

"You!" the Master of Sinanju gasped. Quickly he composed his features and executed a formal, if stiff, bow. "I am surprised to see you here, great one," he said guardedly.

"I'm still getting used to it myself," Bronzini grunted. "Mind if we do this later? The interview, I mean."

"As you wish," said Chiun, bowing once more. He held his hat before him in working fingers.

As the two men trudged off, Sheryl stepped in front of the Master of Sinanju and put her hands on her hips. "You never, ever approach a star of Mr. Bronzini's magnitude again," she scolded. "And you don't repeat anything I tell you off the record."

"He is amazing," Chiun said, watching Bronzini walk away.

"He's very powerful. He could make or break my career. I hope you can regain your composure when he okays the interview. If he ever does."

"He is the very image of Alexander." Sheryl blinked.

"Alexander?"

"Now I understand," Chiun said, gesturing to the array of soldiers and military equipment that ringed the arroyo. "No wonder he makes films such as these. They remind him of his glory days. It is sad that he should have come to this, however."

"Come to what? Who's Alexander?"

"The Great," said Chiun.

Sheryl pursed her lips. "Yes ... ?" she prompted. "The great what?"

Chiun's eye met Sheryl's. "Alexander the Great."

"What on earth are you going on about?"

"That man," Chiun said as he watched Bronzini's retreating back, "is the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. What else would explain his mania for reenacting the fury of battle?"

"Oh, I'd say the twenty million dollars they pay him per film might have something to do with it."

"He looks exactly like Alexander," Chiun went on. "The straight nose. The sleepy eyes. The sneering mouth."

"Actually, I always thought of him as having Elvis Presley lips," Sheryl remarked. "And I take it you knew Alexander personally."

"No, but one of my ancestors did. I wonder if Bronzini would remember."

"I doubt it."

"Good. That way he cannot bear a grudge against my house. "

"Okay, I'll string along a little further. What house?" Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed.

"I am forbidden to say, for I am here under cover. But one of my ancestors slew Alexander."

"Really? Fancy that."

"Oh, it was nothing personal, I assure you. I am glad that I met this Bronzini. And I look forward to speaking with him at length. It is very seldom that one encounters the truly great in the modern world."

"Well, this is fascinating," Sheryl said distantly as she looked around the location, "but why don't we get started on the interviews? Let's see ... who can we set up first? I don't see Jiro. Bronzini's personal technical adviser won't be here till tomorrow. You already met Sunny Joe, our stunt coordinator. That was him with Bronzini. "

"Yes," Chiun said quickly. "I would like to interview one of the stunt persons."

"Anyone in particular?"

"Yes. The name is Remo."

"Remo. Remo Durok? You want to start with him?"

"Yes, please upset it."

"Set it up, you mean."

"I mean what I say. Let others interpret it as they will. "

"Remo doesn't have a speaking role. He's really unimportant. "

"Can I quote you?" Chiun asked.

"No! Don't quote me about anything!"

"I will promise that if you take me to Remo." Chiun beamed.

Sheryl looked around, biting her lower lip. "I don't see him anywhere. Let's head back to base camp. Someone must know where he is."

At base camp, they were serving lunch in an orange-and-white-striped mess tent. Crewmen and extras lined up at a food-dispensing trunk.

"Let's see what's for lunch, shall we?" Sheryl suggested. Chiun sniffed the air.

"It is rice," he said.

"How do you know that?"

"They are Japanese. They eat rice. It is the only thing about them I do not detest."

"Did your editor know about your ... uh ... attitude toward the Japanese when he sent you to this shoot?"

"He is barely literate. Besides, I am not hungry."

"Suit yourself. Let's see if there's anything we can do. Maybe there's something going on in the director's office. "

The director's office was the last in a line of Nishitsu RV's. It was emblazoned with the Red Christmas logo, a Christmas tree bedecked with hand grenades and crossed ammunition belts superimposed over a mushroom cloud. Sheryl knocked on the door. Getting no answer, she turned to Chiun. "Guess it won't do any harm to poke our heads in."

She opened the door and let Chiun go first.

The Master of Sinanju found himself in a sparsely , furnished interior. The walls were covered with long rice-paper strips on which Japanese ideographs made vertical lines. Papers lay on a desk.

"Not as neat as I expected," Sheryl noted.

"The Japanese never show their true faces in public. This rat's nest you see is how they are when they think no one is looking."

"I've seen worse," Sheryl said, looking around. "I guess this here's a copy of the script." She opened it up. "Now, don't this beat all? It's in Japanese too. Maybe there's an English translation somewhere about."

Chiun went from strip to strip, reading. "These are accountings of provisions," he told Sheryl.

"Doesn't surprise me none. It takes a lot to mount a movie of this scale. It's practically an epic."

"Many weapons, much ammunition, and supplies. They have a great deal of rice."

"They eat a lot of rice. You know that."

"How long will this film take to finish?"

"They told me the shooting schedule is four weeks."

"Then they lied to you. According to this note, the shooting schedule is five days."

Sheryl put her head next to Chiun's. She examined the paper.

"You must be reading it wrong," she said. "You can't hardly film a sitcom in that time."

"Are you conversant with Japanese writing?"

"Well, no," Sheryl admitted.

"I speak and read it fluently, and this stipulates that they will take Yuma in five shooting days."

"Take?"

"I am giving the literal translation. Is 'take' a movie term?"

"Yes. But a take is a good scene. One they'll use. I can't imagine what they could mean by taking Yuma. I know they'll be filming in the city later on, but that can't be it."

"I will gladly listen to your translation," Chiun told her coolly.

"Don't be silly. Someone just made a mistake. This is a four-week production."

"They have rice for nearly six months."

"Says who?"

"Says I. Just now." Chiun tapped another rice-paper strip. "According to this, they have rice for six months. Twice the amount they believe they will require."

"Well, there you go. The other thing must be wrong, then. They wouldn't have a six-month supply of rice for a five-day shoot, now, would they?"

"They would not have such a supply of rice for a four-month shooting schedule either," Chiun said slowly. "Why do they call it a shooting schedule?"

"You've heard of shooting a picture?"

"I have heard of taking a picture. Is that the 'take' they meant?"

"No. When they film, they call it shooting a movie. Therefore, shooting schedule. Wait a minute. You should know that! You're a film correspondent."

"I know it now," Chiun said, turning abruptly. "I would like to see their rice supply."

"Why, for Pete's sake?"

Before the Master of Sinanju could reply, a Japanese crewman leapt into the trailer.

"What you do here?" he barked. "Off rimits!"

"Oh, we were just looking for Jiro," Sheryl said.

"Off rimits!" the Japanese repeated spitefully.

"I don't think he speaks English," Sheryl whispered.

"Allow me to answer this," Chiun said. He lapsed into guttural Japanese. The other man's face quirked in astonishment. He grabbed for the Master of Sinanju. Chiun sidestepped the thrust. The Japanese kept going. He fell on his face. He bounced to his feet and made another move toward the tiny Korean.

"You cut this out, both of you!" Sheryl said, getting between the two of them. "This here's Mr. Chiun. He's with Star File magazine. You behave yourself "

The Japanese pushed her aside roughly and lunged at Chiun.

Smiling, Chiun spoke a simple, pungent word in Japanese. "Yogore." His opponent howled and lunged. The Japanese went sailing past him, his feet tripping on the RV's steps. They scrambled for footing, but to no avail. He fell facedown into the gritty sand.

Calmly the Master of Sinanju walked down his legs, over his back, and stepped off his head to alight on the sand. He turned.

"Why do you loiter?" he asked Sheryl. "He will be awake soon."

Sheryl looked around. There was no one in sight. "I'm with you," she said as she stepped over the man. As they slipped to the cluster of tents, Sheryl said in a tight voice, "You know, sometimes the atmosphere around here is so tense you can break off pieces and chew them instead of gum. If this is how these folks make movies, God help us if they ever take over our movie companies. I, for one, will be looking for a new line of work, thank you."

The food-provision tent faced the busy food-service truck. Chiun and Sheryl ducked behind it.

"How are we going to get in?" Sheryl asked, feeling the coarse fabric.

"You will stand guard?"

"Sure as shootin'."

After Sheryl had turned her head, the Master of Sinanju plunged a fingernail into the cloth and slashed downward so swiftly the rip sound was compressed into a rude bark. He masked it by feigning a cough.

"What's the matter, poor thing?" Sheryl asked. "Inhale some sand?"

"Behold," Chiun said, pointing to the cloth. At first Sheryl couldn't see what he was talking about, but when Chiun touched the fabric, a vertical slit appeared as if by magic.

"Well, how about that?" she said. "Must be our lucky day. "

For the long tear exactly followed the line where a white stripe joined an orange one. Chiun held the tent open for her.

"Must be a defect in the workmanship," Sheryl said when Chiun joined her inside the cool tent.

" 'Workmanship' is not in the Japanese vocabulary," Chiun sniffed. He walked around the tent. It was crammed with burlap sacks. lie touched one, and felt the hard-packed rice grains give like gravel.

"There is enough rice here to maintain many men for many months," he said gravely.

"There you go. What'd I tell you?"

"More than four weeks' supply. More than four months. Depending on the numbers of persons involved, perhaps nearly six months."

"So, they're prepared. Like the Boy Scouts. Films do run beyond their shooting schedules."

"It is not good that Bronzini leads them."

"Why not?"

"In his earlier existence, he was a dangerous man," Chiun mused. "He aspired to conquer the known world. Many suffered, not the least of which was my village in Korea. There was no work for as long as he massed his forces and conquered empires."

"Look, I'm going to ask this straight out because it's starting to drive me crazy, but you aren't from the Enquirer, by any chance, are you?"

"No. I am here officially from Star File magazine, although if the truth be known, I am a poet. In fact, I am thinking of writing of my experiences here in Ung poetry. The short form, of course. Regrettably, Star File magazine does not publish two thousand-page issues. I am thinking of calling it Chiun Among the Yumans. Perhaps I will consent to sell the movie rights now that I have contacts in this industry."

"Look, we really shouldn't be here. Especially if we're going to be talking this trash. Let's skedaddle."

"I have seen what I wish. Now I must speak with Remo. "

"Okay, great. Let's find him."

None of the A. D.'s could locate Remo, although their walkie-talkies crackled messages all over the location area. Finally the word came back.

"Remo gone to Ruke," the A.D. informed them, and walked away.

"Okay," Sheryl told Chiun. "You speak Japanese. You translate."

"Is there a place known as Luke near here?" Chiun asked.

"Luke? Sure, Luke Air Force Range. That must be it. Remo and Sunny Joe probably went there to do preproduction on the parachute drop they got set for tomorrow. If you don't mind waiting till tomorrow, we can watch them film it."

"Perhaps I should speak to the Greekling," Chiun said.

"The which?"

"Bronzini."

"He's Italian."

"Now. Before, he was a Greekling."

"Which movie was that?"

"When he was Alexander."

"I have a crackerjack idea," Sheryl said suddenly. "Let's get out of this sun. I think if we sat in the shade a spell, it would clear our heads right quick."

The Master of Sinanju looked up at Sheryl inquisitively. "Why?" he asked. "Has the sun affected your mind?"

Lee Rabkin thought it was the strangest negotiation session he had ever taken part in. As the president of the IATSE local, he had been involved in many bitter union disputes.

He had expected the usual. After all, Red Christmas was a Japanese production. They did things a little differently. So when Rabkin received a call at two A. M. from producer Jiro Isuzu that the production, bending to Bartholomew Bronzini's preferences, had reconsidered their nonunion stand, and could he bring his negotiators to the location immediately-Isuzu had pronounced it "immediatry"-Lee Rabkin was up and banging on the others' doors before Isuzu heard the phone click.

Nishitsu vans were waiting for the sleepy union protesters. They were driven in silence to the location and let off at a base camp of circled tents and RV's.

Somewhere nearby, a portable gas generator started up with a coughlike complaint.

Jiro Isuzu stepped out of an RV and bowed so low that Lee Rabkin took it as a sign of total surrender. "Ready to play ball, Isuzu?" He sneered.

"Barr? Not understand. Brought you here to negotiate union rore in firm."

"That's what I meant," Rabkin said in a superior voice, thinking: Boy, this Jap is dumb. No wonder he tried to dance around the union.

"Forrow, prease," Isuzu said, turning smartly on his heel. "Negotiation trench has been prepared."

"Trench?" someone whispered in Rabkin's ear. Rabkin shrugged unconcernedly and said, "Hell, they sit on the floor at mealtime. I guess they negotiate in trenches."

They followed Jiro Isuzu beyond the base-camp tents and a short way into the desert. It was an eerie sight by moonlight. Hollows lay in impenetrable shadow and the gentle dunes resembled silvery frosting. Up ahead, three men stood in silhouette, AK-47's cradled to their chests.

"What's with the guns?" a union member asked nervously.

"It's a war picture," Rabkin said loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Maybe they're rehearsing."

Isuzu suddenly disappeared. Rabkin hurried to catch up and found that Isuzu had simply walked down a plank and into an eight-foot-deep trench in the sand. Shovels stood chucked on one side of the freshly dug pit.

Isuzu called up, "Come, prease."

"When in Rome, I guess," Rabkin muttered. He went in first. A guard hurried off to the generator. "They must be going to rig lights," Rabkin told the others following him into the trench.

"Good. It's as black as a snake's asshole in here." When at last everyone was standing in the dark trench, Jiro Isuzu barked a quick command in Japanese.

"Well, do we sit, or what?" Rabkin demanded, trying to see Isuzu's face in the murk.

"No," Jiro Isuzu told him in a polite voice, you simpry die."

And then Lee Rabkin's eyeballs seemed to explode from within. He felt the electric current ripple up through the soles of his feet and he fell on his face. His nose completed the circuit and fried his brains like scrambled eggs and cooked his corneas cataract white.

Jiro Isuzu watched the bodies Jerk and fall disinterestedly. They smoked like bacon even after the electric current was shut off from the metal plates under the sand at their feet. Although it was again safe for him to walk from the trench, he preferred not to step over so many white-pupiled corpses and accepted the hands that reached down to pull him off the protective rubber mat that was the same beige shade as the sand.

Isuzu threw another order over his shoulder and walked off without a backward glance. Dawn was only an hour away, and there was still much to do. . . .

Chapter 11

On the morning of December 23, a Canadian cold front descended on the United States of America, plunging the nation into below-zero temperatures. On this historic day, the two warmest cities of the country were Miami, Florida, and Yuma, Arizona. And it was not warm in Yuma.

When the morning sun broke over the Gila mountains, Bartholomew Bronzini had been up an hour. He had a quick breakfast in the Shilo Inn restaurant, then returned to his room to do his morning workout.

When he stepped out of the lobby, two things surprised him. The first was the cold. It felt like forty degrees. The other was the absence of union picketers. Bronzini ducked back into the lobby.

"No pickets today?" he asked the girl at the registration desk. "What goes on?"

The receptionist leaned closer. "I have a girlfriend at the Ramada," she whispered. "That's where they're staying. She says they left in the middle of the night without paying their bill."

"Probably ran out of money. Thanks."

There were no picketers at the location access road when Bronzini blasted his Harley-Davidson onto it. He passed the checkpoint, which consisted of two Japanese guards standing near the destroyed T-62 tank.

The guards attempted to wave him to a stop. Bronzini didn't bother to slow down.

"They must be joking, trying to keep me off my own set," he muttered. "Who do they think they're dealing with? Heather Locklear?"

The base camp was deserted. Off in the near distance, one of the prop tanks was chugging back and forth in the sand. It had a bifurcated plow blade mounted on the front. The tank used the blade to make piles of sand and push them into a hole.

Bronzini sped up to the main-unit location. He got a surprise when he turned the corner.

There were over a thousand men lined up in battalion formation. They wore brown People's Liberation Army uniforms and stood with their AK-47's at parade rest. On either side of them, the tanks and APC's had been lined up in ruler-straight rows. Tank commanders and crewmen clustered in front of the waiting machines. Jiro Isuzu stood facing them, his back to Bronzini.

Bronzini dismounted and walked up to him. "Bronzini san," Isuzu demanded hotly, "what you do here so earry?"

"Nice uniform, Jiro," Bronzini said coolly. "If you're going to be an extra too, who'll be directing? A gaffer?" Isuzu's face darkened.

"I wirr direct from within shot at times. You are famiriar with technique."

"I've directed myself," Bronzini admitted. "Never with a sword, though."

Jiro Isuzu grasped the scabbard of his ceremonial sword. Bronzini knew swords. It was not Chinese, but a samurai sword. It looked authentic, too.

"Sword bring good ruck. In famiry many generation."

"Try not to trip over it," Bronzini told him. He indicated the phalanx of extras. Several of the crewmen were going from man to man, distributing Federal Express envelopes. "We are firming Chinese sordier preparing for battre,' Jiro said unctuously. "Not need you yet."

"Yeah?" Bronzini noticed the Japanese crewmen were also in uniform. Several were filming the proceedings with hand-held Nishitsu video cameras. A big yellow Chapman crane lifted a thirty-five-millimeter film camera over the men, capturing a breathtaking panoramic shot of the formation.

"Cameraman in uniform too?" Bronzini said quietly. "We need every man. Not enough extras."

"Uh-huh." As Bronzini watched, the soldiers squat ted in the sand and, removing knives from belt scabbards, started paring their fingernails. They next chopped off a lock of hair. The clippings and hair were carefully deposited in the Fedex envelopes and sealed.

"What the heck is this about?" Bronzini asked. "Chinese war custom. Sordiers going into battre send home parts of serves to be buried in famiry urn if they not return."

Bronzini grunted. "Nice touch, but don't you think the Fedex envelopes are a bit of a stretch?" Uniformed groups went through the formation as the extras climbed to their feet. They collected the envelopes.

At a nod from Isuzu, they raised their fists and shouted, "Banzai!"

"Banzai?" Bronzini said. "Stop me if you've heard this one before, Jiro, but 'banzai' is Japanese."

"Extras get carried away. We edit out. Okay?"

"I'll want my technical adviser to okay all this stuff. He's due in today. I won't have my name on a piece of shit. Understand?"

"We arready reave message at hoter. Ask him to meet us at airdrop site. Okay?"

"Not okay. I read the script last night. I know this is a Japanese film, but does my character have to die?"

"You hero. Die tragic heroic death."

"And the part about the Americans nuking their own city really bothers me. What do you call that?"

"Happy ending. Evil Red Chinese die."

"So does the civilian population. How about a rewrite?"

"Rewrite possibre. We talk rater."

"Okay," Bronzini said, eyeing the soldiers in formation. "This is amazing. How many people you got here?"

"Over two thousand."

"Well, I hope they're cheap. This is the kind of thing that put Grundy IV over budget."

"We are under budget. And on schedule. Prease to wait at base camp."

"A couple of questions first. What were they burying by the base camp?"

"Trash."

"Uh-huh. The Indians are sure going to appreciate turning their reservation into a dump site."

"Indian paid off. No trouble from Indian. Arso, have reached understanding with union. They agree to stay out of this firm, we use them in next. You go now."

"Let me know when you're ready for the first setup." Bronzini looked at his watch. "This time of year, there's only twelve hours of daylight till magic hour."

"Magic hour?"

"Yeah. After the sun goes down, there's an hour of false light before it gets dark. On American productions, we call it magic hour. It gives us extra shooting time. Don't tell me you never heard the term."

"This first firm for Nishitsu."

"No shit," Bronzini said, vaulting onto his bike. "And you know, Jiro, I think it's going to be your last. I just hope you don't drag my career down with yours."

Bronzini sent the Harley rocketing back to base camp. Remo Williams arrived at Luke Air Force Range at eight A.M. He stopped his rented car at the checkpoint. An airman stepped up to the car.

"I'm with the movie," Remo told him. "Your name, sir?"

"Remo Durock."

The guard consulted a checklist.

"My name should be easy to find. I think there's only four or five non-Japanese with the film."

"Yes, Sir. Remo Durock. You're free to pass. Take a right, then two lefts. It's the red brick building."

"Much obliged," Remo said. He parked his car in front of the red brick building. It was near the airfield. A small propeller-driven plane was idling on the flight line. It looked ridiculously tiny when compared to the hulking C-130 Hercules transports parked wing to wing on the near side of the tarmac.

Remo went inside, showed a fake photo ID in the name of Remo Durock to a desk sergeant, and was directed to a room.

"Hey, Remo. You're late." It was Bill Roam.

"Sorry. I had trouble finding the main gate," Remo said. He noticed a heavyset man in a khaki safari jacket and bush hat with Roam.

"Remo, meet Jim. This is Bronzini's technical adviser, Jim Concannon."

"How're you doing?" Remo asked.

"Outstanding," Concannon replied.

"Jim's our all-around expert on military matters," Roam explained. "He worked with Bronzini on all the Grundy flicks. Right now, he's walking me through checkout on these Japanese parachutes."

Remo noticed that the room was filled with parachute packs. Hundreds of them. They were black.

Concannon was unpacking one now, untying the canvas covers to examine the nylon chute bell. He examined the fabric carefully, holding it up to the light.

"You check every stress point," Concannon was explaining. "Don't worry about any little holes you find in the canopy. Just make sure the shroud lines are anchored firmly and not tangled up."

"Right," Bill Roam said. He tossed a pack to Remo. Remo caught it. "Lend a hand, son. It's your ass that's onna be dangling from one of these Nipponese umrellas. "

Remo set the pack on the long table and undid the flaps. He checked the lines, tested the fabric. It felt sound.

"Hell of a point to come to," Bill Roam was saying as Jim showed them how to repack the chutes. "I can remember a time when Japanese products were the joke of the Western world. And today I'm working for a Japanese film company and booting several hundred Air Force boys out the back of a transport with Japanese parachutes strapped to their backs."

"Okay," Jim said. "These appear to be strack. Now, who wants to be the guinea pig?"

"Hell, man. Not me. I'm too old," Bill Roam said.

"I haven't jumped from a plane since Korea," Jim added.

They both looked at Remo.

"You game?" Bill Roam asked him.

"Why not?" Remo said, pulling the chute onto his back.

They walked out to the idling prop plane. An airman was at the controls. He wore aviator sunglasses and chewed gum vigorously. Remo climbed in.

Jim Concannon clapped him on the back.

"You be sure to let us know if it doesn't open, hear?" Everyone laughed but Remo. The door was slammed on his impassive face. Providence was still on his mind. The plane hummed down the runway and lifted awkwardly. It climbed up and out over the desert.

The pilot spoke up over the engine drone. "I'm going to stay as close to the base as I can. Not much wind right now. So you ought to land close enough to be picked up by helicopter. That okay with you?"

"Sure, Remo said. He pushed open the passenger door, placed a foot on the wing, and as the plane tipped that wing to earth, Remo launched himself into space.

As he fell, the sleeves of his Air Force uniform chattered wildly. The vast expanse of southwestern Arizona hurtled up to meet him. Remo reached for the D-ring and pulled.

The pack vomited a cloud of black nylon. The updraft filled it, and Remo was yanked back violently. Then he swung like a pendulum. He looked up.

The big black bell was floating above him. He looked past his boots and saw the sand rising to meet them. When Remo hit the ground, he rolled and shucked off the parachute webbing all in one motion.

A helicopter rattled overhead moments later. It settled several yards distant. Its rotors blew sand in every direction, kicking up a momentary sandstorm. Remo shut his eyes until it subsided. Then he ran for the waiting chopper and ducked under the rotor.

Sunny Joe Roam put out a big hand and pulled him aboard.

"Nice jump," he said. "You know your stuff. Military background?"

"Marines," Remo admitted.

Jim Concannon grunted. "Jarheads," he said. He said it with a smile.

"Don't mind ol' Jim," Roam laughed. "He's ex-Army. He may talk like a grunt, but there's none finer. Speaking of which, Jim, we gotta get you over to that drop site. You'll be with the desert drop unit today."

"Where will Bronzini be?" Remo asked in concern.

"Search me," Roam told him. "Latest I hear, filming's split into nine units. We'll be with the parachutedrop unit. Bronzini will probably be with the tank units at the Marine Air Station. We'll have the fun. All they're doing is running tanks in and out of the main gate. Anyway, much obliged for doing the drop. I'd have sent up an airman, but if we'd lost him, they would have held it against us, probably. Right, Jim?" The two men joined in good-natured laughter as the helicopter lifted off.

"What about the other parachutes?" Remo wondered.

"Hell," said Sunny Joe. "What do you want, to go jump in every dang one of them?" Their laughter increased. "They looked sound and yours tested out. They work."

"That's the problem with parachutes," drawled Jim. "They're like condoms. Good for that first plunge, but I wouldn't want to depend on them a second time."

"Well," Remo said, looking back at the deflated mushroom of his parachute as it flapped in the rotor wash, "we know that one worked." His face was worried. Not about the parachute drop, but over the fact that he wouldn't be working near Bronzini this first day. Maybe that wouldn't be a problem. He hadn't seen any picketing outside the hotel or at the air-base gate.

The camera crews were the first to enter the Yuma Marine Corps Air Base gate outside the city limits. Colonel Emile Tepperman was there to greet them. He wore his best utilities, and a pearl-handled sidearm at his hip. It was loaded with blanks.

The Chapman crane came next. It was a four-wheeled vehicle with a telescoping boom-mounted camera. The cameraman wore an authentic-looking People's Liberation Army uniform, down to the sidearm. The crane positioned itself on one side of the approach road.

A half-dozen Japanese piled out of a van, lugging Nishitsu video-cameras. They deployed snappily, impressing Tepperman with their near-military discipline.

Then came the Nishitsu car carrying Jiro Isuzu. He was swiftly passed through the gate. Emerging from the car, he walked up to Tepperman, trailed by a retinue of men in desert camouflage carrying leather cases.

"Good morning, Mr. Isuzu, " Tepperman said heartily. "Great morning for it, isn't it?"

"Yes, thank you. We are ready to begin."

"Where's Bronzini?"

"Bronzini san in read tank. On way. We wish to firm tank entering base. Your men fire on them. Tank fire back. Then you surrender."

"Surrender? Now, wait a minute. This isn't consistent with the image of the Corps."

"This earry in firm," Isuzu assured him. "Rater we firm Marines crushing wicked Chinese Red Army."

"Well, in that case," Tepperman said, "as long as the Corps emerges victorious, I'll go along."

"Excerrent. Stand very stirr, prease."

Two uniformed Japanese began clipping metallic buttonlike objects to Tepperman's uniform.

"What are these little doodads? Acting medals?"

"Squibs. When we fire, they break. Spirr fake brood. Very convincing."

"Does it wash off?" Tepperman asked, thinking of the dry-cleaning bill.

"Yes. Very safe. You have brank sherr?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Brank sherr," Isuzu repeated. "You have?"

"I don't quite get your drift," Tepperman admitted. Jiro Isuzu thought before speaking again. Then he said, "Brank burret."

"Oh, bullet. You mean blank shells!"

"Yes. Brank sherr."

"Yes, I received them. My men have them too. Don't worry. There'll be no accidental shooting on this base."

"Exerrent. We begin soon."

Isuzu turned to go, but Tepperman caught him by the sleeve.

"Hold on. What about my mark?"

"Mark?"

"You know. I understand that the first thing an actor has to learn is how to find his mark."

"Ah, that mark. Yes. Hmmmm. Here," Jiro said, picking a squib from Tepperman's uniform. He dropped it and stepped on it.

"You stand there," he said, pointing to the bloody blotch.

Tepperman gave a relieved smile. He hadn't wanted to look like an idiot. A lot of his relatives were moviegoers. "Great. Thanks," he said.

Colonel Emile Tepperman stepped onto the blotch. He placed his hand on the flap of his side holster, and struck a rakish pose as he awaited his international film debut.

On either side of the approach road, his Marines were positioned, their M-16's in hand. Japanese special-effects technicians finished applying blood squibs to their clothes.

Finally the grumble of the tanks came from beyond the perimeter fence. A wide grin broke out on Emile Tepperman's face. Through the dust, he could see Bart Bronzini in the lead tank. He was standing up in the open turret hatch. Tepperman wondered if he would be visible when the tank rolled by. He would really enjoy being in the same scene with the Steroid Stallion.

The tanks stopped.

Jiro Isuzu looked up at the camera operator perched on a saddle at the end of the Chapman crane boom. Someone ran up and placed a clapper board in front of the camera. Tepperman smiled. It was just like he'd seen in movies about movies.

"Rorring!" Jiro called.

The clapper clapped. The man dropped it and ran to retrieve an assault rifle he'd left leaning against the guard box. The camera panned toward the tank line.

They started up the road, a rumbling line of clanking machinery, dust tunneling in their wake.

Tepperman felt a thrill of expectation course through him. So real. He saw his men tense expectantly. He had lectured them last night about looking sharp. And not looking into the camera. He had read somewhere that that was a no-no, the mark of an amateur actor. Tepperman took pride in the professionalism of his men. He just hoped they had sense enough not to upstage him.

The tank column turned into the gate, and on cue the guard fired his M-16 three times, and it occurred to Tepperman for the first time that if this was supposed to be the enemy rolling in, why was the hero standing in the lead tank? He decided the plot must be more complicated than he'd been led to believe. Tepperman watched as the guard went down in a return hail of fire. Blood squirted from the radiocontrolled squibs. He threshed wildly as he went down, and Colonel Tepperman made a mental note to reprimand the guard for overacting.

The tanks split into two columns. Isuzu raised his sword and brought it down with a flourish.

That was Tepperman's cue.

"Return fire!" he thundered, dropping into a crouch. His weapon came up in his hand. He snapped off eight rapid shots, hoping the pearl handles showed up on camera. Tepperman noticed with a frown that none of the Chinese troops hanging off the tanks were going down.

"Dammit!" he muttered. "Where's the realism?" He saw Marines drop all around him, their shirts spattered with realistic-looking blood. One man was really yelling his head off. "Damn these overactors," Tepperman grumbled, reaching for another clip.

Tepperman squeezed off another shot, trying to knock off a tank machine-gunner. He didn't go down, which of course he would not. Tepperman was not using live ammunition. He hoped someone would blow this take, so he could tell Isuzu that what this scene really, really needed was for the heroic base commander to score a few hits. For the good of the story line, of course.

Tepperman was screwing his face into a heroic grimace when he felt something clutch his ankle.

He turned, still crouched on his haunches.

A pain-racked face stared up at him. It was a Marine. He was on his stomach. He had crawled from the side of the road to his commander's side, leaving a very realistic trail of blood.

"Nice touch, son," Tepperman hissed. "The old dying soldier trying to warn his superior officer. Good. Now play dead."

But the Marine clutched Tepperman's ankle more tightly than ever. He groaned. And through the groan came rattling words that were audible above the percussive cacophony of gunfire and tank clatter.

"Sir ... the bullets ... real," he choked out.

"Get a grip on yourself. It's only a movie. What have you been smoking? Loco weed?"

"I'm wounded ... sir. Bad. Look ... blood. "

"Squibs, man. Haven't you ever seen special effects before?"

"Sir ... listen ... to ... me...."

"Calm down," Tepperman said savagely. "That's Bart Bronzini in that lead tank. Get a grip on yourself. You'd think a Marine could stand the sight of fake blood. You make me sick to my stomach."

The Marine let go of Tepperman's ankle and reached under himself. He grimaced. When his hand came away, it was covered with dripping red matter.

"Here ... proof," he croaked. Then his cheek dropped to the ground.

Colonel Emile Tepperman looked at the red matter that had been plopped into his hand. It looked astonishingly like human viscera. On impulse, Tepperman sniffed it. It smelled like an open bowel wound; Commandant Tepperman knew that horrid smell well. He had done a tour in Vietnam.

Tepperman jumped to his feet, horror making the points of his mustache quirk like cat whiskers.

"Stop the action!" he cried. "Hold it! Something's gone wrong! This man is really wounded. Someone must have mixed up the ammunition."

The firing roared on, directed by Jiro Isuzu with an upraised sword.

"Isuzu! Bronzini! Bronzini!" Tepperman hollered hoarsely. "For God's sake, can't anyone hear me?" Not thinking, Commandant Emile Tepperman stepped off his mark. Unexpectedly, the blood squibs in his uniform erupted in all directions. He ignored them. "Stop this. Turn off those cameras!" Tepperman bellowed, without result. "Dammit," he muttered. "What's the word they use? Oh, right." He cupped his hands over his mouth. "Cut! Cut!"

But the shooting continued. Marines fell. Some of them spurted red fluid in ways that were obviously special effects, but others went down with arms and legs suddenly bent at weird angles. A Marine's head exploded in a halo of blood that no Hollywood special-effects shop could duplicate-because it was horrifyingly real, as Colonel Emile Tepperman now knew.

The tanks rolled over many of the bodies with callous disregard for human life. Some of the men were already dead. Others simply played dead, not realizing that the script had been changed. The expressions on their faces when they felt the bite of steel tank tracks was horrible, their screaming inhuman.

It was completely out of control.

Tepperman yelled "Cut!" until his voice cracked. He stumbled between the tanks and the broken bodies until he reached Jiro Isuzu. He grabbed the Japanese by the shoulder and whirled him around.

"Stop this!" Tepperman thundered. "I order you to stop this at once. What are you doing?"

"We are firming," Jiro said. He pointed above their heads. A big square camera lens was focused on them. "This is carnage, slaughter, and you're filming it."

"Branks," Isuzu told him, smiling toothily. "Not to worry. "

"Those tanks aren't blanks. They're real. They're crushing people. Listen to those ungodly screams.

"Perhaps mistake has been made. Gun, prease. I check." Dazedly Colonel Tepperman allowed Jiro Isuzu to take his sidearm. The Japanese was so calm and unruffled that for a moment Tepperman doubted the reality-or unreality-of what was going on all around him.

Isuzu placed the muzzle to Tepperman's forehead. "Now, for camera. Do you surrender this base?"

"Uh, yes," Tepperman stammered.

"Say the word, prease."

"I surrender," Tepperman said.

"Now I wirr purr trigger. Not to worry. Brank. Okay?" Tepperman steeled himself. He knew that a blank shell could not hurt him. He never learned differently. For when the trigger was pulled, it was as if a sledgehammer had struck Tepperman between the eyes.

The explosive force of the gunpowder had punched a hole in his skull. Propelled by expanding gases, the paper wadding penetrated his brain. He hit the ground as dead as if shot by a steel-jacketed round. The only difference was that there was no exit wound.

"You never surrender," Jiro Isuzu told his unhearing ears, as the last involuntary twitching of his leg muscles died down. "It is shameful."

Chapter 12

Bartholomew Bronzini had been accused of many things during his cinematic career. He had been criticized for making too much money, usually by the rich. He had been criticized for his monotone delivery, usually by out-of-work off-Broadway actors. He had been criticized for being prolific, usually by someone who had never done anything more creative than listing a Cocker Spaniel as a dependent on a Form 1040.

Bronzini got used to those things. They were the price of fame. Like signing autographs for people who insisted they wanted them for relatives.

But the criticism that really perplexed Bartholomew Bronzini was the accusation that he was somehow a phony when he played the American war superhero Dack Grundy without ever having served in the U.S. military himself.

The first time he fielded that question during a TV interview, Bronzini replied "What?" in a dumbstruck voice. The interviewer assumed that was his definitive answer and went on to the subject of his latest multimillion-dollar divorce settlement. By the time he was asked it again, Bronzini had formulated a ready-made answer. "I'm an actor playing a part. Not a soldier playing at acting. I'm a John Wayne, not an Audie Murphy." Bartholomew Bronzini was not acting now.

He was perched on the sloping turret of the lead T-62 tank rolling along the main road of MCAS Yuma. Behind him, a Japanese crewman stood in the turret well and sprayed the air with the swivel-mounted .50-caliber machine gun. Defending Marines were corkscrewing more realistically than any extra. Heads exploded. Arms were sawed off by bullet streams.

Bartholomew Bronzini was no fool. He might never have seen combat, but he had made a lot of war movies. He realized before anyone else that this was no movie. This was real.

Yet they were filming it. It made no sense. Isuzu had told him that they were going to make a grand entrance to impress the Marines, and that Bronzini should ride on the lead tank. But as soon as the column passed the gate, the Marines had opened up. With blanks. Then all hell broke loose.

Even though it wasn't in the script, Bronzini leapt upon the machine-gunner. The Japanese released the gun's trips and tried to rabbit-punch the powerful actor. Bronzini took the man by the back of the head with one hand and pummeled his flat features to a pulp with the other. Then he knocked the Japanese off the tank and took the .50-caliber in hand.

Bronzini swept the gun muzzle around. He had never fired a loaded .50 caliber. But he had fired many blanks. Pulling the trigger was no different. It was what came out the barrel that counted. He pulled the trigger.

The face of the Japanese driver in the following tank disintegrated. He slumped forward. Out of control, the tank veered left, cutting off the tank behind it. The tracks merged and began shredding one another.

Bronzini swiveled his .50 toward the Japanese foot soldiers. He cut them down with a long burst. A Japanese popped out of the turret of his own tank. Bronzini didn't waste any bullets on him. He yanked the .50-caliber's muzzle around and brained the soldier with it, putting him over the side. As he lay stunned, the second tank crushed his legs with a splintery sound.

Bronzini looked around. He saw Jiro Isuzu off to one side of the entrance, his samurai sword high in the air.

He was directing the action in a style that was half-Hollywood and half-military.

Bronzini sighted on his open mouth and pulled the trips. Nothing happened. He spanked the breech with the heel of his hand, saying, "Come on, you mother!" Then he saw that the feed belt was empty.

A bullet spanged off the turret by his boot with so much force Bronzini felt the impact in his clenched teeth. Another round went past his ear. It made an audible crack as it split the air.

"The fuck!" Bronzini said, seeing AK-47's in the Japanese hands lining up on him. He was no soldier, but he knew that when you're taking fire, you seek shelter. He dived into the turret.

He found himself sprawled behind the cannon breech. Obviously, the tanks had been restored to fully operable condition before they crossed the border. Beside it was the open hatch that led to the driver's cockpit, which was set forward, inside the hull.

Bronzini crawled to the hatch. The driver was down in his seat, peering through the periscope as he guided the tank by its handlebarlike lateral controls.

Bronzini silently unshipped the combat knife sheathed in his boot. It was no prop. He reached in and took the driver by the throat and ran the knife into his kidneys. The Japanese thrashed, but there was nothing he could do in the cramped driver's cockpit except sit and struggle against the remorseless hand that found his mouth with a stifling hold as the knife was slowly turned clockwise, and then counterclockwise, until he was dead.

Bronzini pulled him back and squeezed into the bloodsoaked driver's seat. There was no time to sort this out. Bronzini was on automatic pilot, going on pure instinct, the very thing that had guided his career.

Bronzini realized that he couldn't hope to fight the Japanese from the driver's seat. He had no gun or cannon control. He'd need a tank crew for that.

So he jammed the lateral to the left, sending the tank pivoting on one locked track. The perimeter fence came into view. Beyond it was an endless expanse of sand.

Bronzini lined up on the fence. There were knots of crouching Japanese soldiers between him and freedom. "Fuck 'em," Bronzini said, sending the tank clanking ahead, "and the rats they rode in on."

Bronzini kept the fence in view. The Japanese saw him coming. They scattered. He heard frenzied screaming as his tracks caught a running man's boot and pulled him into the rollers. Bronzini kept going. Somewhere in the din of gunfire, he could hear Jiro Isuzu shouting the name "Bronzini" over and over.

Two Japanese suddenly appeared in the periscope. They set themselves against the fence and, firing single shots, tried to hit Bronzini through the periscope.

Bronzini hunched down and floored the gas. The T-62 surged ahead like a steel-plated charger.

The tank's smoothbore cannon went between the soldiers, collapsing the fence like so much mosquito netting. The soldiers, lashed by Isuzu's harsh voice, held their ground, trying to put their shots into the bouncing periscope port. One went in. It missed Bronzini's head and ricocheted once, digging a furrow across the top of the seat back.

Then the tank rolled over the fence. And the two men. Their screams were cut off very quickly.

Bronzini sent the tank across the road. The clatter of its tracks on asphalt turned with a gritty growl as it dug into the sand. Bronzini put the tank on a straight heading.

He abandoned that tactic when a geyser of sand and fire exploded thirty yards in front of him. A dull boom echoed in the cockpit.

Bronzini threw the tank sharply to the right, then to the left. Another cannon shell struck off to starboard. Sand particles peppered the hull like a fine dry hail.

Bronzini zigzagged across the desert. He popped the driver's hatch and craned his head out. Back at the ruined fence, two T-62's were elevating their 125-millimeter smoothbore cannon. One cannon spit a flash of fire. The recoil sent the tank rolling back.

The shell overshot Bronzini's tank by an easy hundred yards. The wind kicked up and began dispelling the floating sand cloud. But more sand blew in with it. Bronzini buttoned up the hatch.

"Sandstorm," he muttered, grinning like a wolf.

He sent the tank into the obscuring storm. Sand came in through the port, making it impossible to see where he was going. But Bronzini didn't care. A cannon boomed far behind him, and was answered by an equally distant detonation. If anything, the shell had fallen further away than the last one.

Bronzini set his tank on a straight line and held it. The Japs could empty their cannon all over the desert, for all he cared. He was driving a sand-colored tank through a sandstorm. It couldn't be more perfect than if he'd written the script.

Then Bronzini realized that in a way he had. His Sicilian face darkened with wrath. Hunched under the sand-spitting port, he fumbled for the protective goggles he knew every tank carried. He found them and yanked it over his eyes. They afforded him no more visibility than he'd had before, but at least he could look out the periscope. Sand stung his face like hot needles, but Bronzini felt a different kind of pain.

Somewhere beyond the haze lay the city of Yuma and help. Bartholomew Bronzini vowed he wasn't going to stop until he reached the city.

"I should have known!" he muttered. "Nobody pays an actor a fucking hundred million dollars for a one-picture deal. Not even me."

The C-130 Hercules transports were warming up, their rear drop gates down and gaping like maws as First Assistant Director Moto Honda pulled up in a microwave-equipped TV transmission van.

Air Force Rangers stood waiting under Colonel Frederick Davis' proud steely gaze.

"Snap to it, men," he barked. "It's showtime."

The airmen were attired in their camouflage utilities. First A. D. Moto Honda approached Colonel Davis with a hard face that might have been formed out of a block of dog chewbone.

"You men ready, Coronel?" he demanded brusquely.

"Just say the word," Colonel Davis returned. "Just don't forget-I jump first."

"Understand," Honda said, bowing. "You jump first. Be first to hit ground."

"Real fine," Davis said. "How're the Marines doing?"

"Not werr. Base has farren to invader."

"That's what I like. Hardheaded realism." Davis noticed the camera being set up. Another camera was being lugged by another uniformed Japanese crewman. "So shall we go for a take?"

"One moment. Sright change in script. Propman make mistake with parachute."

"Which one?"

"Arr parachute." When Davis looked his lack of comprehension, he added, "Every one."

"Oh. I understood they were thoroughly checked by your people as well as my own. Where's that stunt guy of yours, Sunny Joe?"

"Here!" Sunny Joe Roam called. He loped up to the knot of men. "There a problem, Colonel?" he asked.

"Smarr probrem," Honda said. "Change in script. We wirr not firm parachute drop as night scene. Parachute must be ... What is word?"

"Substituted?"

"Yes. Thank you, substituted. Instead of brack parachute, we issue white day parachute."

Colonel Davis looked at Sunny Joe Roam.

"What do you think?" he asked uneasily. "My people found them shipshape."

"They're good chutes," Roam admitted.

Honda spoke up. "New chutes from same factory, Nishitsu. Only finest materiars. But we must hurry."

"Hold your water," Roam snapped. "I'm responsible for the safety on this shoot."

"We lose much money by deray," Honda pointed out. "Shooting schedule tight."

"Damn!" Roam said distractedly. "Sure wish Jim was here. Well, trot them out. We'll both look 'em over. That good enough for you, Colonel?"

"Yes. Anything to keep the film on schedule." Honda led them to the back of a van filled with packed parachutes. They were so tightly jammed into the van that Sunny Joe Roam and Colonel Davis had difficulty extracting a pair. Finally, two came loose. They knelt on the ground and opened them.

"Looks good to me," Roam said, running his fingers between shroud lines.

"I'm satisfied," Colonel Davis agreed.

Honda grinned tightly. "Very good," he said. "Have men rine up for exchange."

Colonel Davis returned to his men. Sunny Joe Roam stood by his side, his face troubled, his big arms folded over his chest.

"Listen up, men," Davis bellowed. "There's been a script change. We're getting new chutes. Each drop team will form a line at that van." He pointed back to the van, where uniformed crew members were hastily dumping parachutes onto the ground. They set several of these aside. No one noticed that this weeding-out included only the chutes that had formed the exposed group from which the test samples were selected.

Three lines of airmen formed up. They shucked off their chute rigs and traded them for white packs. Remo Williams was at the end of one of the lines. He caught Sunny Joe's eye. Sunny Joe sidled up to him. "What's going on?" Remo whispered.

"Another damned script change. They were going to film the scene with filters to make it look like a night drop. Now they want a day drop. So out go the black parachutes and in come the white parachutes."

"Anybody test these things?" Remo asked worriedly.

"The colonel and I looked a couple of them over."

"That's it?"

"They're as good as the others. If you're worried, think of it like this. Out of five hundred chutes, how many of them could go bad? One, maybe two. The odds of your getting a bad one are pretty damn slim."

"Whatever you say," Remo said. He was still concerned. He hadn't expected filming to be this immense and fragmented an operation. How the hell was he going to protect Bronzini if they kept getting separated? Not that Remo cared much about Bronzini. The guy was obviously a stuck-up jerk. But an assignment was an assignment.

Remo was the last in his line to pick up his chute. He buckled it on and tested the webbing straps. They seemed solid.

As three lines formed near the three droning transports, Colonel Davis looked to First A. D. Honda. Honda was looking through the lens of the camera. He looked up and nodded to Davis. Sunny Joe ducked into one of the transports to get out of camera range. "Action!" Honda called.

Another crewman warned, "Rorring!"

Davis turned and shouted a command to his men over the climbing whine of the transport turbines. The airman teams turned snappily and humped up the ramplike drop gates. As they crouched down on the floor of cargo bellies, the gates rose like hydraulic jaws. Remo watched the sunlight being swallowed by the closing gates and felt the plane shudder as the brakes were released. He felt like Jonah being swallowed by a whale. The noise was overpowering until the Hercules lifted off the flight line.

Sunny Joe Roam hunkered down beside Remo. "You go last!" he shouted over the engine sound.

"Is that an honor?"

"No, you're the only civilian on the jump. If something goes wrong, the others will catch you." Roam clapped Remo on the back. Remo was not amused and said so.

"What's eating you?" Roam asked.

"Never mind. Let's say this wasn't what I expected." The flight was short. When the pilot called back that they were over the drop zone, Bill Roam worked his way forward to the cockpit. He looked out the window. Down on the desert floor, a worm of purple smoke lifted lazily. It showed perfectly against the color of the sand. He spotted the green-and-white tent where the ground camera crew was positioned, and a pair of APC's. "Try to find the camera ship," Roam told the pilot.

"Got it." The pilot pointed to a tiny red-and-white dot at one o'clock. It was the Bell Ranger helicopter.

Roam nodded. "Okay. Radio the other pilots to drop their gates when I give the word."

"Roger." The pilot spoke into his microphone. Then he handed it to Roam, saying. "You're all set."

Bill Roam watched the mountainous expanse of the Yuma Desert roll down below.

"This is your jumpmaster," Bill Roam said in the mike. "Stand up!"

Instantly, in each Hercules transport, airmen jumped to their feet and formed three lines down the center of the cargo bay.

"Hook up!" Roam called.

The airmen attached their chute lines to the nylon static lines suspended the length of the cargo belly. "Drop gates!"

As the grinding sound of hydraulics came from in back, Bill Roam saw the two leading transports start to open up. Then he called "Jump!" and rushed back to the cargo belly.

"You're on," he told Remo, as wind rushed into the cargo bay. "Happy landings!"

The men went out single file, clutching their chest packs. Once out, the wind whipped them to one side. Their drag lines pulled taut from static-line tension.

So rapidly did they jump that the last man in each transport was in free-fall before the first chutes deployed. The first man in the lead plane was Colonel Frederick Davis. He had served his country for over ten years in peacetime and he was never prouder of himself than on this day as he led his men into cinematic greatness. He didn't notice that his back chute hadn't deployed. He twisted his head around and saw that, above him, his men were falling, their arms jerking like the legs of beetles that had been turned on their backs.

He realized their chutes weren't yet open. And, with a shock, that his hadn't deployed either.

"Goddamn cheap Japanese equipment!" he snapped. He yanked the D-ring of his reserve chute.

"Jesus Christ!" The ring had pulled free of the tab. He threw the useless ring away and grabbed at the tab with both hands. He pulled. The tab tore free like cheesecloth, leaving a tiny shred. Cursing, Colonel Davis pinched at that little shred with his fingertips. It was all that stood between him and a hard, hard landing.

Colonel Davis was so absolutely enthralled by that ragged, frayed bit of cloth that time seemed to stand still. The piece of frayed nylon became his whole world. He pulled at it until it was down to three threads. And even though it was hopeless, he pulled at those too.

But time wasn't standing still-not when you're falling at terminal velocity.

Colonel Frederick Davis struck the Yuma Desert so hard he bounced four feet. He was only the first of many. Remo Williams was the last to leave his plane by a scant second. He felt a tug as the drag line, still attached to the static line, pulled free. It felt weaker than he expected. But he wasn't worried.

He began to worry when he realized that although there were approximately five hundred airmen freefalling in nine lines that stretched for nearly two miles above the desert floor, he wasn't seeing any parachutes. Including his own.

Remo went for his D-ring. It tore free of the tab. Remo threw the tab away and clawed at the folds of his reserve chute. The canvas separated and a billowing eruption of white silk spewed in front of him.

The updraft filled the chute. It turned into a white bell, as perfect as a big silk flower.

Remo vented a gusty sigh of relief. The sigh was short-lived as Remo realized that while the parachute was floating gracefully above him, he continued dropping like a stone.

The shroud lines had pulled free of their anchorage. Remo looked down and saw a gentle puff of sand. It looked like smoke. Another puff followed it. And another. And then, as the first concentration of bodies reached the ground, there came a silent spattering of puffs, which repeated until the beige desert floor erupted into a pocked lunar landscape, and Remo realized that he was witnessing cold-blooded, wholesale murder in which he was simply the last to die.

Chapter 13

The waitress at the Shilo Restaurant and Lounge set two steaming plates on the table.

The Master of Sinanju looked at the boiled brown rice on his plate and his face broke into a pleased smile. His hazel eyes shifted to Sheryl Rose's plate and his mouth wilted in prim disapproval.

Sheryl Rose let the succulent smell of steak fill her nostrils and start her mouth juices flowing. She regarded Chiun's brown rice with muted distaste.

"How can you eat that for breakfast?" she asked.

"How can you eat that at all?" Chiun snapped back.

"I'm a western gal. I was raised on steak and home fries for breakfast."

"It is a wonder you survived your childhood," Chiun sniffed disapprovingly.

"You're right welcome," Sheryl returned tartly. What a pain, she thought. Well, it beat holding up cue cards for the local news airheads.

"There's no one in the production office," Sheryl told Chiun after they had chewed their food in silence for several moments. "No call sheets either. 'Course, if there were, I'm not sure I could read them, But it is powerful odd, you know."

They were seated in a window booth with a spectacular panoramic view of farmland north of Yuma. Beyond, flat desert stretched for miles. It seemed to reach all the way to the Mohawk Mountains.

"I do know," Chiun returned. "There is something wrong with this so-called shooting schedule."

"You're not going to start with that Alexander stuff? I mean, you're not going to write it up that way."

"A true author does not discuss his work before he has written it," Chiun said flatly.

Sheryl sighed as she cut off a wedge of steak. Red juices ran freely, causing Chiun to look away. He noticed, high over the desert floor, three tiny dots. To his magnificent eyes, the dots resolved into bulky aircraft. Tiny figures began to drop from them like jimmies falling off an ice-cream cone.

"They are performing the parachute fall," Chiun said testily. "Why are we not there to observe it?"

Sheryl looked up. "What?"

"There," Chiun said, pointing. "They are doing it."

Sheryl squinched her gray eyes. "I don't see anything."

"Are you blind? They fill the sky."

"All I see are a couple of itty bitty dots."

"There are three of those. They are aircraft."

"If you say so," Sheryl said, returning to her steak. "I can't make out a dang thing."

"There are men falling from those planes."

"I don't see any parachutes."

Chiun's voice was cold. "There are no parachutes. They are falling to their death."

"Oh, go on. That can't be."

"I see them as clearly as I see you," Chiun insisted.

"Probably dummies. It must be a rehearsal run."

"I see their limbs waving in terror," Chiun said.

"Probably the updraft. It's fierce. Can you imagine jumping out of one of those things? Brrr. Gives me chills, thinking about it. Know what I mean?"

"Yes," Chiun said. "I feel such a chill even now." He stood up. "Come, we must investigate this."

"Why?"

"Because while you were devouring the bloodied flesh of some unfortunate cow, many hundreds of men have been falling to their doom."

"Now, listen you-" Sheryl started to say. The brittle look in the Master of Sinanju's eyes stopped her, a piece of red beef suspended on a fork before her face.

"Okay," she said as she signed the bill, "one less steak in my life isn't going to be missed, I guess. Although it was a good one.

They walked out to the parking lot in silence.

"I was unable to reach Remo," Chiun said tightly.

"Your friend? I plumb forgot you were looking for him. Don't you worry, Sunny Joe probably took him out on the town-what there is of it."

"Was Remo to participate in the parachute scene?"

"Probably. I don't know. If we could scrounge up a call sheet, I could tell you. Why?"

"Because if he did, then he is now dead. And a terrible price will be exacted from those who were responsible."

Sheryl suddenly understood why the tiny Korean's cold demeanor had quelled her will to resist him. She said nothing as she opened the door to her jeep.

Chiun noticed that a chrome plate on the glove compartment said: "Nishitsu Ninja."

"Why is this vehicle called that? Ninja?"

"It's advertised as the Stealth jeep," Sheryl told him as she turned the key in the ignition. "But everyone knows it is because of the sneaky way it will tip on you when you take a corner. Jiro stuck me with this thing until my replacement is shipped."

Chiun nodded. "True ninjas fall over without reason as well. Usually due to rice wine."

"That explains why this beast guzzles gas like she does," Sheryl muttered as she took Route 8 east. "You're really fretting about your friend, aren't you?"

Chiun said nothing.

"Now, look. We'll just go to Luke and see for ourselves. And don't you worry," she added, patting Chiun's bony silk-covered knee, "I'm sure your friend is fine."

Chiun lifted Sheryl's hand from his person and replaced it on the steering wheel.

"We have a destination," Chiun snapped. "I suggest you take us to it."

"You're the boss," Sheryl told Chiun as she sent the jeep toward the city outskirts.

They were surprised when they passed a lone T-62 tank on the way.

"That little dogie must have strayed from the herd," Sheryl remarked. Chiun ignored her. He was looking at the city skyline. A column of smoke suddenly boiled up from the downtown area.

Seconds later, there came a distant boom and the jeep began to slew from side to side.

"My goodness," Sheryl said. "They weren't kidding when they said these Ninjas are prone to falling on their sides. A little piece of thunder and we almost turned turtle."

"That was not thunder," Chiun intoned. Sheryl peered past Chiun's parchment profile.

"Fire," she decided. "Wonder where it is."

"That was an explosion," Chiun intoned.

Before Sheryl could say another word, two more explosions rocked the city. Sheryl had to pull over, the Nishitsu Ninja began bucking so hard.

"My God, will you look at that?" she said. "They must be shooting in the city."

"No, those were bombs."

"Probably gasoline charges. I saw them rig a few the other day. They look like those plastic pillows with red cough syrup in them. But they are gasoline. Supposed to make a big blast and column of fire. They do amazing things with special effects, as you probably know."

"We must hurry," Chiun urged.

"Okay," Sheryl said, taking off again. "But if I hear another loud noise, I'm pulling over right quick."

At the point on Route 8 where the city stopped and desolation began, the road was blocked by two desert-camouflage T-72's parked hull to hull. Their fudgeripple turrets were turned sideways so that one pointed toward them and the other down the road to the desert.

"They aren't supposed to be filming way out here," Sheryl muttered as she slowed the Ninja. The tanks did not part for her, so she leaned on the horn.

A Japanese in a Chinese PLA uniform popped the turret hatch and scrambled down to the road. He unlimbered an AK-47 and pointed it at the jeep as he advanced in a classic "marching fire" stance.

"Road crosed!" he barked.

"What?" Sheryl called.

"That cretin is trying to tell you that the road is closed," Chiun said flatly.

"I know that. Now, hush up a minute while I get this straightened out."

Sheryl pushed her head out of the driver's window. "I'm Sheryl," she called. "I work for Jiro Isuzu as unit publicist. We're trying to get out to Luke. Would you mind making way?"

Another Japanese came out of the tank. This one lugged a video camera on his shoulder. He knelt down beside the tank and sighted through the lens.

"Why the heck are they filming us?" Sheryl wondered. "And with a camcorder to boot."

"Road crosed. Go back!" the Japanese with the AK-47 shouted again.

Sheryl muttered, "He probably doesn't speak English. Wait. Maybe the tank driver can help us out." Sheryl alighted from the jeep and, leaving the driver's door open, started for the Japanese. Her cowboy boots covered exactly seven steps; then the Japanese gave a hiss like a cat and let go with a short burst. Sheryl jumped nearly a foot. The noise was suddenly all around her. A burst of pops in front and a rattling drumroll behind her. The drumroll worried her the most. Blanks didn't make sounds striking targets, she knew. The paper wadding burned away in flight.

She looked back at her open door. It was riddled with vicious black holes. The glass had shattered.

"Are you insane!" Sheryl screamed at him. Her pretty face worked angrily, but she didn't budge from where she stood. She couldn't because, as impossible as it seemed with a camera taping her, the extra had been firing real bullets.

"Is this a take?" Sheryl stuttered nervously.

The Japanese laughed raucously. "Hai!" he said. "We take city."

"No, no, I mean, is this going to be in the film?"

"Hai." He started to line up on her stomach. Sheryl hesitated. Her heart was pounding high in her throat. Her brain fought two conflicting emotions. Disbelief and a palpable fear of that deadly weapon pointing at her.

"Do you mind lowering that thing?" Sheryl said in a voice that sounded stretched too tight.

The Japanese tightened down on the trigger.

He stopped at the sound of a pungent word delivered in a squeaky voice.

Sheryl looked back over her shoulder. "No! Don't shoot him!" she cried.

For the little Korean named Chiun was out of the jeep and striding for the Japanese, his fists clenched like ivory bone, his sweet face now a mask of cold fury. The AK-47 burped smoke and noise.

The Korean danced to one side. It was an elegant little two-step. He kept coming on the Japanese. Sheryl blinked. Had the gun been loaded with blanks after all? She looked back at her car door. Still riddled. And off to the side of the road, a cluster of puffs marked the impact points of the rounds Chiun had avoided.

The Japanese hunkered down and braced the rifle stock against his hip. Barely ten feet separated him from his intended target.

Sheryl couldn't bear to look. She covered her face and twisted around. A horrible high-pitched scream assaulted her ears and she transferred her hands to them to keep out the sound of the poor Korean gentleman's death screams. They were unearthly. It sounded like he was being torn limb from limb-although no more shots rattled out.

Slowly, Sheryl found the courage to turn around. She was on her knees in the middle of the road. The Japanese with the AK-47 was flat on his back. The one with the video camera was the one who was screaming.

He was attempting to clamber onto the open tank. Chiun had caught him by one ankle. Even though the Japanese was much younger than the Korean and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds, he was howling as if an alligator had snapped at his foot.

It was unbelievable. And then it became absurd. Chiun pulled the cameraman to the ground. One sandal lashed out. Sheryl could almost feel the gravely crunching sound of the cameraman's skull fragmenting. Then Chiun was atop the tank.

A helmeted head lifted up from the other tank's turret. Chiun pushed it back in and slapped the hatch shut. He hammered on it rapidly and stepped to the forward hull. He stamped on the driver's hatch, then leapt to the second tank. He performed some violent manipulation on that tank's hatches.

Sheryl knew they were violent because metal squealed like mice under the old Oriental's nimble fingers. Chiun alighted and padded back to her. He stopped, his hands sliding into his voluminous sleeves.

"You may go around these Japanese deceivers without fear for your safety," he intoned.

Sheryl followed Chiun to the jeep and got into the driver's seat, pulling the shattered door closed. The bullet-chewed handle came off in her hand.

Before she could start the engine, reaction set in. She hugged herself and started to worry her lower lip with her teeth.

"My God! What's happening here?" she asked weakly.

"They are taking Yuma," Chiun said. "And they will be punished. First we must see to Remo's fate." Getting a grip on herself, Sheryl got the jeep going. She drove it over the sand and around the tanks and back onto the road on the other side. As they passed the tanks, she could hear frantic yelling coming from inside the vehicles. It was in Japanese. The tone was universal, however. The tank crews were trapped. But they were not helpless, as Sheryl realized when she caught a flicker of movement in her rearview mirror. The turret cannon was elevating. It coughed a blast of dirty smoke and flame.

A geyser of sand erupted beside the road. Sheryl pressed the accelerator to the floor. She no longer questioned what was happening. It was happening and she wanted only to get away from it.

There were Red Chinese tanks blocking the main gate to Luke Air Force Range. But that was not the strange thing. On the flagpole near the guard box, a white flag was flying. It was not the white flag of surrender. In its center was a blood-red ball.

"Call me superstitious," Sheryl said, turning off the engine suddenly. She let the jeep coast to the side of the road. "But I don't think we should go in there."

"A wise decision," Chiun said. "You will stay here." He got out of the jeep.

"Where the heck do you think you're going?" she called after him.

"I seek my son. I will return."

"You and MacArthur," Sheryl muttered. She clutched the steering wheel anxiously. Her arms trembled. And up in the impossibly blue sky, the first of three C-130 Hercules transport planes were coming in on approach.

The Master of Sinanju drifted to the air-base perimeter fence. It was a wire-link fence. Chiun's fingernails slipped into the holes like so many darning needles. They clicked busily. Links snapped and parted. A tear opened up in the fence like a rip in a screen door.

Chiun slipped through quietly. He moved from low building to shrubbery. He passed many Japanese attired in their ridiculous Chinese military uniforms. Whom did they think they were trying to fool? Chiun wondered. It was so transparent.

He found his way to the flight line, where several tanks were moving in the shelter of a row of hangars. Chiun saw a Japanese in a captain's uniform lunging about, directing his men into positions.

The first transport rolled to a halt. The second touched the tarmac with a barking of landing wheels. The third was fast behind it.

The pilots took a long time to shut down the engines after the C-130's rolled to a stop, wing tip to wing tip. Before they could emerge, the drop gate of the third plane eased down and Bill Roam, known as Sunny Joe, walked out on wobbly knees.

Oblivious of the men moving on him, he sank to the grass and put his head in his hands, and began making long arduous retching noises.

Two Japanese tried to haul him to his feet.

That was a mistake. Bill Roam got to his feet like a water buffalo breaking the surface. He decked one Japanese with his first punch. The other took three punches. Two to the stomach and one which turned the man completely around before sprawling him on the grass.

"You bastards!" he screamed. "You cheap motherloving bastards!" He shouted it to the sky. When his head came down, his eyes saw the helmeted Japanese marching toward him. They were fixing bayonets.

All except the one with the video camera. He scrambled along beside the others, trying to keep them all within camera range. He dropped to one knee as the Japanese, led by First A. D. Moto Honda, advanced on Sunny Joe Roam.

"They're all dead!" Roam said in a grinding voice. "Do you hear me, Honda? Every one of those boys ate sand for his last meal."

Honda's answer was in Japanese. Bill Roam didn't understand it, but the Master of Sinanju did. It was an order to stab Roam to death.

Bill Roam realized this only after the little Oriental appeared in front of him. The Oriental stood resolute in the face of the advancing Japanese. He paused, only to turn his head slightly and whisper a question.

"Those who died. Was Remo among their number?"

"Yeah," Bill Roam croaked. "He was a good kid." The bald head swiveled back. The scrawny neck stiffened and the long-fingered hands clutched into fists. "Aaaieee!"

The cry split the still air. The Japanese froze, for it was no war cry, no shout of defiance, but a scream of pure anguish. It shook their inflexible robot faces.

Then the Oriental was among them. He slapped bayonets away with curt blows. The bayonets quickly shifted back. Some began to poke at the Oriental's vermilion kimono. They seemed to score several hits, but the Oriental was unfazed.

Then a Japanese screamed. A comrade's bayonet was sticking through the fleshy part of his forearm. Another Japanese lunged at the Korean. Somehow he managed to impale the man who had been behind him.

The Oriental whirled, going deep into the knot of men. The Japanese lunged, never realizing that they were being manipulated like chess pieces. For they soon became a hurricane of hate, whose object defied the eyes.

Japanese struck Japanese. Honda shouted at them. Others went down. Blood squirted. They were at too close quarters to shoot. But they might as well have, for those who did not fall victim to their comrades found cold hands drifting toward their throats. One man's collar split and his jugular gushed like a fountain. He placed a hand over it and staggered off.

First A. D. Honda saw his men turned into self-mutilating buffoons and realized his honor was at stake. He raised a pistol to shoot the Korean and aimed carefully. He shut one eye, blinked the other in that millisecond of adjustment, and it turned out to be Honda's final millisecond.

His stiffened arm compressed like a spring. He fell, his gun hand buried in a cauliflower of flesh that had been the flesh and blood of his arm.

"What the hell is going on?" Bill Roam yelled when Chiun reappeared in front of him. "Are they on drugs?"

"I will explain later," Chiun said. "You will take me to the body of my son, Remo."

"Remo! He's your son?"

"I will explain later," Chiun said. "We must hurry. The roads are fast becoming impassable."

Sheryl Rose saw the expressions on the faces of Chiun and Bill Roam when they appeared in her rearview mirror. They filled her with dread.

"Drive," Chiuri said when they got in.

"What's happened, Sunny Joe?"

"The drop went bad. They're all dead."

"Including Remo." Chiun s voice was a tight string. Sheryl checked his austere profile for tears. She saw none. It surprised her.

"Where are we going?" she asked dully. "Where can we go?"

"To the place where the bodies fell," Chiun said. "We'll have to go through town to do that."

"Then we will go through town."

"I'm afraid of what we'll find when we get there."

"I understand your fear. Mine lies out in the desert, but I will go to it bravely, for what else have I on this terrible day but my own courage?"

Chapter 14

The first indication the outside world had of the situation in Yuma was when Wooda N. Kerr switched channels to watch his favorite program.

Wooda lived in a house trailer in Mesa, Arizona. Mesa was 150 miles northeast of Yuma, but it received the Yuma TV stations. KYMA showed Tombstone Territory reruns at ten A. M. and Wooda never failed to watch it, even though he had seen each episode a dozen times.

Today he saw only static on the channel. Wooda grumbled as he fiddled with his rabbit ears. When they didn't help, he went next door to John Edwards' trailer. John got cable.

The door was open and Wooda stuck his head in. "Hey, John. Can you get Channel Eleven?"

"Let me see, now," John said, reaching for his remote control. He got static too.

"Now, don't that beat all?" Wooda said. "I can't figure it out. TV stations don't broadcast static like that. The least they do is run a test pattern."

"Channel Nine is dead too," John grunted. "That's a Yuma station. Let me check Two."

Channel Two was dead as well. All the local stations were coming in fine. Those from Yuma were off the air. "What do you think it is?" Wooda wondered, playing with the turquoise stone of his bola tie.

"Cable from Yuma must be on the fritz," John Edwards ventured.

"That don't explain why I can't get it off the air," Wooda pointed out. "I'm gonna ask my sister, Mildred. She's down there. This has got my curiosity tweaked." But when he dialed his sister's phone number, all Wooda Kerr got for his pains was a recorded message saying, "We are sorry but all circuits are busy at this time. Please hang up and try your call later."

Wooda did. The operator told him that the lines to Yuma were down.

Wooda shrugged and ended up watching The Dating Game. He was sixty-seven years old, and thought it was the most outlandish nonsense he had ever seen. He became a regular viewer.

By late morning the lack of telephone communication with Yuma was known in Phoenix, the state capital. It was unusual, but hardly important enough to warrant special attention. Yuma was, after all, way down in the desert by the Mexican border. Back before telephones and the automobile, it had been a rough little outpost. The people could get along without their phones for as long as it took to get them fixed.

Telephone crews were dispatched to the city. They did not return. That was not thought unusual either. It was a big desert.

The abrupt cessation of television and radio signals emanating from Yuma went completely unnoticed by the state government. Thousands of people missed their favorite soap operas and game shows, but when they were unable to get through to the Yuma stations to complain, they simply switched channels and forgot about it.

Official Washington became aware of the developing situation slowly. It began when telephone traffic between Luke Air Force Range and the Pentagon stopped. Calls did not go through. On an ordinary day, this might have been shrugged off, except that the Air Force's senior general was anxious to know how the Bartholomew Bronzini filming was going. He ordered radio communication established with the base.

The radio calls went unanswered.

"This is damned strange," he muttered. He put in a call to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson.

"We can't raise Luke," he told the base commander. "Send up a couple of planes to check it out."

Ten minutes after the general had hung up, two F-15 Eagle combat jets were streaking over the Santa Rosa Mountains, east of Yuma.

Captain Curtis Steele watched the endless desert crawl under his wings. The other F-15 flew on his left, and in his ear was the tinny voice of his backseat fire-control officer, saying, "What do you suppose is up at Luke? It's spooky, no radio contact at all."

Steele laughed. "Maybe they went Hollywood on us. "

"Yeah, probably living it up with some babes right now. But this is one party they're gonna pay for!"

Just then, the cockpit radar beeped and Steele called out, "Look sharp! I have two bogeys at angels twenty-three. Seventy miles and closing."

Steele checked his IFF display-Identify Friend or Foe. A graphic display would tell him if the two aircraft closing on him were American or not.

Steele was not surprised when an F-16 Fighting Falcon graphic appeared on his heads-up display. "They're ours," he said. Then, in a louder voice he called, "Come in, come in, this is Echo oh-six-niner. Come in, I say again, this is Echo oh-six-niner from Davis-Monthan. Do you read?"

Staticky silence came over his helmet earphones. "I don't like this," Steele's wingman said flatly.

"Stay in tight," Steele muttered. His eyes sought the IFF display again. Friendly. Definitely friendly.

"So why no answer?" his backseat wondered.

"Oh, damn," the wingman croaked. "They're locking onto us."

"I see it," Steele cried. Radar told him that the F-16's were arming and locking their missiles onto them. He called for a split. He sent his F-15 left. The wingman went right. The two bogeys were not yet visible. But it wouldn't take long. They were approaching one another at over thirteen hundred miles per hour.

Steele radioed the airborne-warfare commander at Davis. He explained the situation and got a Weapons Hold command. He was not to fire unless fired upon. And his instrumentation was screaming that he was about to be fired on.

"It's our asses," he growled. "Screw it. Master armament on," he told his backseat officer.

"Master arm on," backseat called back.

The oncoming planes whipped between the separating F-15's so fast they were a blur.

"Did you see them?" Steele radioed his wingman. "F-16's. Confirm. They're ours."

"Then why the hell did they lock on?" Steele said anxiously, twisting in his cockpit to get a fix on them. "Attention, unidentified F-16's, this is Captain Steele out of Davis-Monthan. Do you copy? Over."

The helmet earphones were eerily silent as Steele sent his bird careening around in a slow 180. The unresponsive planes were also coming back.

"Bogeys are jinking back," the wingman warned. "I got them."

"They're trying to lock on again."

"Okay, wingman, we have to assume they got a good look at us too. We can't assume these are friendly birds. Repeat. These are not friendly birds."

"Roger. Good luck, Steele. "Stay sharp."

Steele saw the F-16's closing on him. Thirty miles separated them. Then twenty-five. Steele maneuvered the nose of his jet until the T-for-target symbol on his canopy lined up with a dot projected by the fire-control system.

"Select Fox-1," he called. "Roger. "

Steele kept his bird steady. Twenty miles. Then nineteen. Eighteen. He was within firing range now. He hesitated. These were American birds. What if their radios weren't working? He dismissed that thought instantly. Not both planes. Not at once.

"Seventeen miles," he called tightly. "Fox-1!"

A Sparrow missile fwooshed out from under the wing. Steele banked sharply. Sky and earth swapped perspectives. When he came back around, his radar man was screaming excitedly.

"Good hit. Good kill!"

Steele didn't see it until he got the jet level again. The sky was a pristine blue. There was a blot like floating ink. Falling from it, trailing fire and smoke, was a pinwheeling aircraft. As he watched, one wing separated from the fuselage like a broken blade.

"I got one!" Steele shouted exultantly. "Where's your kill?"

There was no answer from his wingman. "Stockbridge. Do you copy?"

Captain Stockbridge didn't copy. He would never copy anyone again. Steele realized this when two jets formed up and jinked back on him like darts at a target. Both were F-16's. Stockbridge was the one going down. "They got Stockbridge," Steele said in an arid voice. "Aw damn," the wingman said hoarsely.

Steele saw the F-15 Eagle auger in as he tried to get a radar tone on the approaching bogeys. It hit the desert floor in a splatter of boiling flame.

"Any parachutes?" he asked his backseat anxiously. The reply was subdued.

"No, no chutes. Sorry."

"Not as sorry as those two are going to be," Steele promised when he finally got a tone signal. "Fox-2!"

A Sparrow rocket cut loose for the approaching attackers. They split, but not before a boil of fire spat from one wing tip.

"He got a missile off," Steele warned. He threw the plane into an evasive turn, and G-forces smashed him against his seat. The blood drained from his head faster than his constricting G-suit could fight it. His vision went gray, then black. He fought to stay conscious.

He pressured the fly-by-wire stick right. His vision went gray again. Then black. He risked joining his wingman as a smoking hole in the desert, but Steele had no choice. He had to lose that missile.

The desert floor spun under the F-15's nose as it fell into a tailspin, a heat-seeking missile fixed on its tailpipe. Steele recovered. He leveled off hard, skimming the ground. The Sparrow, not as maneuverable, kept going. It kicked up a cloud of dust when it hit.

"Still with me, guy?" Steele called.

"Barely," the radar man said.

"Where are they? Do you have them on visual?"

"I'm looking, I'm looking. There! I see them. They're banking. Jesus Christ!"

"What?"

"I see markings."

"Identify."

"You're not going to believe this, but they're Zero markings."

"Say again. I don't read you."

"Zeros. You know. Like the Japs used to fly." Steele's mind raced. He was so focused on his flying that his brain refused to sort out the chatter of his radar man. Did he say they were Zeros? They were F-16's. Steele had seen that as plain as day.

Then the radar man was shouting. "They're diving!" Captain Curtis Steele couldn't go down. There were mountains on his right. So he climbed.

His F-15 stood on her tail and strained toward the sun.

"Lock him up!" the backseater cried. "I can't get a tone," Steele said. "There're two of them. You gotta."

"I can't get a fucking tone," Steele shouted, pounding on his instrument board. "I'm gonna go through them if I can."

Steele held the stick steady. He let them lock on him. He intended to bluff his way through. It would take nerve, but anyone willing to strap on forty thousand pounds of careening machinery and go head-to-head with another jet had that in spades.

The paired F-16's were diving now. Steele focused on the space between their wings. If only they didn't launch too soon....

Then, sickeningly, his afterburner flamed out and Steele felt himself lifted out of the nearly horizontal seat back as the powerless F-15 Eagle began to fall back like a dart thrown up into the air.

"I've lost it! I've lost power!" Steele was shouting. He clawed at the restarter. The engine whined. Nothing. The nose of the jet was tipping earthward again and there was the desert floor spinning like a plate.

"Eject! Eject!" he called, hitting his ejection button. The canopy popped. Then he felt a gorge-lifting kick in the butt as the ejection-seat charge exploded. Then everything exploded. The F-15 burst like a pressurized can in a microwave, going in an instant from magnificent winged metal bird into so much slicing shrapnel.

A section of wing decapitated Captain Steele before he realized what had happened. His backseater was too slow hitting his ejection button. He went down with the plane.

High above, two F-1S Fighting Falcons with Rising Sun markings streaked away like fugitive arrows. When Davis-Monthan Air Force Base informed the Pentagon that they had lost contact with their scout planes, the joint Chiefs of Staff were assembled. Admiral- William Blackbird, chairman of the joint Chiefs, ordered two Marine F/A-18 Hornets to the Yuma Marine Air Station, which had also stopped communicating with the outside world. Then he put in a call to the President of the United States.

He was told by the President's chief of staff that the President was pitching horseshoes in the new White House pit and would he mind waiting for a callback.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs told the chief of staff that a callback would be just fine. Then he turned to the assembled Joint Chiefs.

"It's ours. That idiot chief of staff must think that if we don't scream emergency, then the Pentagon can wait. So what's the situation on those Hornets?"

The commandant of the Marine Corps held up an annoyed hand. Then he clapped it to an ear while he listened to a voice on the other end of the telephone line. When he lifted-his head, his face was pale.

"We've lost contact with the Hornets."

"What happened?"

"The Air Force shot them down."

The silence in the room was palpable.

"Check all bases," Admiral Blackbird ordered. "Find out what's going on."

"We're doing that, Admiral." All around the room, the combined leaders of America's military command structure were doing what they did best: making phone calls.

One by one, they updated the chairman. All other bases and units reported normal situations.

"It seems to be confined to the Yuma area," suggested the chief of Naval Operations.

"This could be a diversion. I want a worldwide status report. "

The order was carried out at once. All over the continental United States and Europe, U.S. bases were contacted. KH-11 recon satellites shifted in their orbits.

Telephone and telex activity centering on the Pentagon grew frantic. It threatened to jam the phone lines of official Washington.

As the hours passed, word came back that there were no unusual events anywhere in the world. There was only Yuma.

And out of Yuma, there was only silence. Remo Williams closed his eyes.

It was not to block out the macabre bouncing of the airmen's bodies as they struck the desert floor. Too many of them had hit like rag dolls for it to hold meaning anymore. The screams were faraway in his ears, masked by the rushing of air as Remo fell in the so-called "dead-spider" free-fall position.

Remo closed his eyes to better focus on his breathing. For in Sinanju breathing was all. It unlocked the reservoirs of potential that lay in every man. Some men, when faced with a crisis, could summon up a portion of that inner power. Great strength, inhuman speed, impossible reflexes-all were within the spectrum of human ability. Remo, because Sinanju training put him at one with the universe, could utilize every aspect of that spectrum in simultaneous harmony.

People had fallen out of airplanes before and survived, Remo knew. Usually they shattered every bone in their bodies. And those were the lucky ones.

Remo intended to survive. He shut his eyes, the better to attune his breathing to the universe. He locked out all sound and sensation and looked within himself.

And somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach, a cold fire began to burn. Remo willed himself into that point. He willed every essence of his being to compress into a pinpoint of icy fire. The wind roaring in his ears cut off as if they had been shuttered. He felt his fingertips go numb. And his toes lose feeling.

The feeling drained from his limbs and rushed, like blood, to his stomach-according to Sinanju teaching, the seat of the human soul.

Remo felt lighter, as light as a snowflake. But even a snowflake fell. Remo dared not strike the desert with the force of a falling snowflake, for in this state, his bones were too fragile to survive. All his mass was concentrated in one point. He weighed no more than a snowflake. His bones were as hollow as a snowball. But, like a snowball, he was bound by the irresistible pull of gravity.

Remo willed his essence tighter. He would never understand the physics of what he was attempting to do, any more than he comprehended the natural laws he bent every time he sent a forefinger through plate steel or saw as clearly as a cat in absolute darkness.

When he felt his mass to be nearly negligible, he allowed his shuttered ears to open. The wind was no longer a roar. Remo smiled. He was no longer dropping like a stone. But he was still dropping. He reached out to feel the wind, his fingers touching the palpable updrafts of heat rising from the desert floor. He was at one with those updrafts. They were his friends. He would ride them to a gentle landing on the ground far below. Remo opened his eyes.

He saw the sand. It was inches from his face. His smile broke into an open-mouthed shout. He never got any sound out because his mouth was suddenly full of sand, and his neck snapped back with a dry crack.

And in the black heart of the universe, angry red eyes snapped awake and a cruel mouth opened in howling rage.

Retired Master Sergeant Jim Concannon had been too young for World War II. By the time Vietnam came around, he had a paunch, although during his long Army career he had served in Pleiku and Da Nang.

But for the Korean conflict, Jim Concannon was just right. It was in Korea that then-Private Jim Concannon learned to fight, to survive, and to witness horror without being psychologically incapacitated by it.

But here, in peacetime, out in the Yuma Desert, as Bronzini's technical adviser watched more than five hundred young airmen fall to their death, he stood, his mouth agape, for once in his life paralyzed into inaction.

When the final body, which took an agonizingly long time to land, finally did strike, retired Master Sergeant Jim Concannon pulled the binoculars from his staring eyes and turned to Fourth A. D. Nintendo Toshiba.

Toshiba was smiling. It was a sick, twisted smile. Concannon jumped the Japanese.

Toshiba went down under his pummeling fists. Concannon took him by the throat and tried to squeeze his eyes out of his head. Then one of the crewmen in desert utilities came up from behind and knocked him flat with the butt of his AK-47.

Concannon was dimly aware of his being lugged into a waiting APC and unceremoniously dumped in back. His ribs hurt. As the APC started off, he understood why. He had been thrown onto a stack of boxes.

Concannon played dead while he slowly walked his fingers to the side of a crate. It smelled faintly of lettuce. A lettuce crate. He wormed one hand into the spaces between the rough slats and touched something smooth and nonmetallic. He pulled the object out and opened his eyes a crack.

Jim Concannon saw that he had his hands on a Chinese stick grenade. A Type 67. He suppressed a pleased smile. In Korea, he used to carry a box of grenades during patrols. He was laughed at for lugging all that weight. Until one day, outside of Inchon, when his unit was ambushed by a Red Chinese patrol. As his buddies were mowed down, Jim Concannon wrenched open the box and began pulling pins and tossing grenades in every direction. There was no science to what he did. He just let fly.

When the forest had fallen silent, Jim Concannon got up off his stomach. On all sides, there were Red Chinese corpses-corpses dressed much like the two lines of soldiers sitting in the back of the rolling APC nearly forty years later and half a world away.

Jim Concannon had saved his patrol that day back in 1953. He knew he could not save those who died on this day, but he could avenge them.

One by one he slipped stick grenades from the crate. When he had five, he unscrewed the blade caps at the ends, exposing the pull cords. He yanked the caps, igniting the time-delay fuses. Then he made his move. He rolled suddenly, and hurled the grenades.

There is no place to run in a sealed APC. Not that the Japanese soldiers didn't try. They saw the bouncing sticks and leapt to their feet, bumping helmets and tripping over one another's feet and suddenly-forgotten rifles in a desperate effort to escape.

But there was no escape. One by one, the grenades detonated, and although only three exploded-which was par for the Type 67 stick grenade-they rendered the human cargo of the APC unrecognizable.

Chapter 15

They came for Arnold Ziffel as he was having his morning coffee.

Arnold Ziffel always knew they would come. Sometimes they were Russian and sometimes they were Cuban. Other times they were black or Asian or even Mexican. The face of the enemy that coveted the Land of the Free continually changed in Arnold Ziffel's mind.

But Arnold Ziffel's resolve would never change, he vowed. That was why he had laid away a three-month food supply in his garage. That was why he kept his AR-15 assault rifle fully loaded at all times. He was not going down without a fight. The bumper sticker attached to the back of his pickup truck summed up Arnold Ziffel's philosophy perfectly: "My wife, yes. My dog, maybe. My gun, never!"

When they came, they didn't want Mrs. Arnold Ziffel. They kicked his dog, Rusty, out the front door and locked him out. They also locked out Arnold Ziffel's AR-15. It was in the back of his pickup.

"What do you want?" Arnold sputtered, rising from his breakfast nook as three soldiers prodded his wife into the room at the point of fixed bayonets.

"Christmas tree!" one of them screeched. "Where is?"

"My tree?" Arnold blurted. "You want my Christmas tree?"

"Where tree?"

"For God's sake, Arnold," Mrs. Ziffel said shrilly. "Tell them!"

Arnold Ziffel decided that he could live with handing' up his Christmas tree.

"In the next room," he said.

"You show!" the leader demanded. He was Asian. As he pulled Arnold into the den, he recognized their People's Liberation Army uniforms. He was a regular reader of Soldier of Fortune magazine. The funny thing was, these folks didn't look Chinese at all.

"Here it is," Arnold said, waving to a stunted Scotch pine growing in a tree box. It was tastefully decorated with alternating red and silver ornaments.

"Stand by tree!" the Chinese soldier said.

"Come on, Helen," Arnold said, taking his wife by the arm.

"What can they want?" Helen Ziffel whispered.

"Shhh." Arnold put his arm around his wife's thin shoulders. He felt her tremble. Suddenly, despite her faded pink housecoat and rat's-nest hair, she seemed more precious to him than his beloved AR-15. He was about to tell her so when the leader shouted something in a foreign tongue and into the den came other soldiers, lugging camera equipment and lights. They set up the lights in opposite corners of the den and turned them on. They hurt Arnold's eyes. Then the camera was put into position, and Mrs. Ziffel said something that sent a wave of relief through Arnold's wobbly legs. "Arnold. These must be the movie people."

"Is that true?" Arnold stammered. "Are you with the movie they're shooting?"

"Yes, yes," the leader said distractedly. He conferred with a cameraman. They were holding up a pocket device and trying to read the meter. It looked exactly like the light meter that came with Arnold's thirty-five-millimeter Nishitsu Autofocus.

"Arnold, do you suppose we're going to be in the movie?" Helen Ziffel wondered.

"I'll ask. Hey, friend, are you going to shoot us?" The leader turned, his eyes cold black opals.

"Yes, we shoot you soon. Wait, prease."

"Did you hear that?" Arnold told his wife excitedly. "We're going to be in a Bronzini movie." Arnold Ziffel had seen all the Grundy's twice, once for the story and then a second time to count the technical mistakes.

Then the cameraman got behind his camera and the leader called out to the Ziffels.

"Adorn tree, prease," he said.

"Beg pardon?" Arnold said, blinking.

"Tree. You make rike you adorn with ranterns, okay?"

"I think he wants us to pretend we're putting the bulbs on, Arnold. That's what he meant by lanterns."

"But the dang things already decorated," Arnold hissed through a set-toothed smile. He didn't want to have a fight with his wife in front of thirty million moviegoers.

"Then let's pretend," Helen Ziffel said tightly. "This is a major movie, for goodness' sake. Try to go along, for once in your life."

Arnold and Helen got on either side of their Christmas tree and each removed a bulb. Helen took a silver one and Arnold took a red one.

"How's this?" Arnold asked, and he fumbled the tiny hook back onto the tree.

The leader barked something unintelligible and the ornament exploded in Arnold's surprised face. His wife screamed. The tree shivered manically, ornaments popping like flashbulbs, limbs snapping like brush.

Arnold Ziffel saw the raw ruin that had been his upraised hand and felt the sledgehammer blows of automatic-weapons fire punctuate his trembling body. He joined his wife on the floor. The new light fixture he had bought for the den shattered within its Santa Claus wrapping under the impact of his 195-pound weight. His surviving hand fell onto his wife's cheek, and even though he couldn't feel it, Arnold knew she was dead. The gunfire stopped.

Arnold Ziffel lifted his face shakily and tried to see into the blinding lights. Just before he died, he wondered why, if this were just a movie, the bullets had been real. And why, if, as he had suddenly suspected, they had finally come for him, were they filming it?

Mayor Basil Cloves wanted to know if this was in the script when the uniformed Japanese barged into his office and dragged him out of his executive chair.

He was still asking it five minutes later when they forced his head into the V of the curb in front of city hall and rolled a tank up onto the sidewalk. The left front track stopped just inches from his head.

Third A. D. Harachi Seiko demanded, "One rast time, I ask for your surrender. Do you agree?"

Cloves hesitated. "Is this in the script?" he asked again. Seiko barked an order in Japanese. The tank inched closer. Cloves felt the coldness of the curb against his face. A kneeling Japanese kept his face pressed to the gritty street. Another one squatted harpy-like on his legs. A third pinioned his arms behind his back.

"Tell me what you want me to do!" Cloves said in an agitated voice. "If the script calls for it, I'll surrender."

"Choice is yours," Seiko said flatly. "You surrender and terr citizens to ray down arms. Or you die."

Basil Cloves cringed from the spittle spraying from the Japanese's screaming mouth. Through the triangular frame of the arm of the soldier who had his head, he could see a video camera aimed at his own face. Maybe he should play the brave public servant.

Behind the video camera a man was walking down the street, looking dazed and crying in a voice choked with disbelief, "But this is America. This is America!"

He was quickly surrounded and bayoneted in the stomach.

It occurred to Mayor Basil Cloves that perhaps this wasn't a movie after all. That the explosions he kept hearing were not special effects. That the sporadic gunfire was not harmless.

Basil Cloves in that moment realized what he had done. And he made his decision.

"I'll never surrender," he said quietly.

The next sound he heard was a guttural order, then the clanking of the tank. The man holding his head down turned his face to the dirt-caked track, which gleamed at its wear points. The track inched forward.

"You change mind?" Third A. D. Seiko demanded.

"Never!" Mayor Cloves spat. He knew they could not run him down. Not with four men holding him down. They'd be run over too.

Yet the track continued gnashing toward him.

The man at his head suddenly released his hair. He stepped back. Cloves lifted his head. But that was all he could lift. The others kept his arms and legs down.

Then the track bit into the mayor of Yuma's nose. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the shattering of his teeth and the pulverizing of his facial bones.

Mayor Basil Cloves never heard the pulpy crack that caused yellowish brain curd to erupt from the fissures of his broken skull.

Third A. D. Harachi Seiko ordered the tank to back up so the cameraman could come in for a close-up of the mayor's head. Then the tank rolled forward again. It went back and forth until the mayor's head was nothing more than a meaty stain.

Linda Best was only dimly aware that there was a film being shot in Yuma. It was the day before Christmas vacation and that meant there was a lot of homework to collect and tests to give to her third-grade class in the Ronald Reagan Elementary School.

So when the Asian soldier entered the class as she was passing out a grammar test, the last thing that Linda Best thought of was a movie.

She saw the AK-47 in the Asian soldier's hands and all she could think of was the incident in California, where a maniac in fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon had killed or maimed nearly thirty children.

She cried "No!" and flung the papers in his face. The man flinched. Linda Best leapt at the man in the desert camouflage fatigues before he could recover. Her hands clawed for the gun. She never felt the sharp edge of the bayonet as it sliced one grasping hand. The other got the barrel. Linda pulled. The Asian man fought back. He was small. Linda was not. They struggled as the children began ducking under the desks.

"Give me that thing!" she sobbed rackingly.

The man grunted inarticulately. Somewhere, through a rushing in her ears, Linda heard commotion elsewhere in the corridors of the school. A popping like firecrackers. She was barely aware of it. All her thoughts, all her strength, were focused on the sweating face that grimaced only inches in front of her.

Linda Best knew she couldn't hope to overpower him by sheer strength. Surprise had carried her this far. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw some of the children crawl out the open door. Good children, she thought. Run, run. Get help.

Then she felt the strength begin to leave one arm. No, not now, not yet. She moaned silently. Lord give me strength. And she saw why. The blood had practically painted her bare forearm. She had been unwittingly clutching a bayonet.

Linda released the rifle. The Japanese scrambled to bring the weapon to bear. In that instant, Linda Best kicked him in the crotch. The Japanese doubled over. His weapon fell into Linda's waiting arms.

Linda Best had never held a rifle in her life. She had never fired a shot. She had never struck a blow in anger. She never wanted to.

But on that day in December, with the children scrambling between her legs to safety, she found the strength to place the muzzle of the unfamiliar weapon to the face of the man who had had the temerity to enter her classroom with murderous intent, and gave him the contents of its clip in one pull of the trigger.

"Everyone, hurry," Linda called, looking away from the result of her courage. "Follow me!"

The children came, some of them. Others huddled and cried. Swiftly, gently, Linda Best went among them, prying fingers from desk legs. She pushed them to the safety of the door, admonishing them not to look at the man who lay with agitated limbs across the doorway.

She carried the last two in her arms. They were crying for their mothers.

It was too much to hope that in their panic the children would all reach the fire exits. Linda stumbled out into the corridor hoping for best, fearing the worst. She did not expect the sight that awaited her.

The corridor swarmed with students. And among them were armed soldiers, men with hard foreign faces and merciless weapons. A fellow teacher bumped into Linda. It was Miss Head, who had the fifth grade.

"What is it? What's happening?" Linda asked breathlessly.

"We don't know," Miss Head hissed. "They want us to assemble outside."

"But why? Who are they?"

"The assistant principal thinks they're with the movie. But look at how they're behaving. I think it's real."

"I know it is," Linda said, holding up her hand. It was stiffening. Miss Head saw the already-browning blood and put her hand in front of her mouth.

Then they were both prodded toward the front doors by insistent bayonets. There, the children were being forced to sit on the grass, their hands clasped behind their heads like POW's in a war movie. It would have been cute had it not been so grotesque.

Rough hands segregated Linda and her colleague from the milling children. They were made to stand with a growing knot of teachers.

Linda found herself shoved next to the principal, Mr. Mulroy. "Can this be for real?" she asked.

"They're serious. Rothman and Skindarian are dead."

"Oh, no!"

"No talking!" a voice barked.

When the last of the children were forced onto the ground, the soldiers turned to the teachers. One wearing captain's bars directed the others. The faculty was forced to stand in a line as a camera was set up.

"Look, they're filming this," Miss Head whispered. "Maybe it is a movie, after all."

That happy thought lived only as long as it took for several soldiers to drag the blood-spattered corpses of three fallen teachers out into the sunlight.

No one believed it was only a movie after that.

The Japanese captain waited tensely for the cameraman to signal him. He nodded back. Then the captain called, "Rorring. Fire!"

The camera hummed. And AK-47's slapped to uniformed shoulders. The gunfire came in single shots, execution-style.

The entire teaching staff of the Ronald Reagan Elementary School were executed without benefit of blindfolds or final words. The captain went among the dead and delivered a vicious kick to each body. Those who groaned had a bayonet plunged into their throats.

The children watched this in silence.

All over Yuma, the schools were cleared and the staffs put to death. Every food outlet was placed under armed guard. The gun shops were quarantined. All roads were closed and the Amtrak rail beds were dynamited.

Three hours into the Battle of Yuma, the electricity went out. The Yuma reservoir was placed under occupation control and water supplies shut off. Telephone lines to the outside world were severed. All television and radio stations were seized and taken off the air.

The police station was surrounded by T-62 tanks, which opened up with their .125-millimeter smoothbore cannon until the one-story stucco building was a shattered tumble. Individual police units were hunted down and crushed. The National Guard headquarters was seized and its weapons stores confiscated.

By noon, the tanks and the bodies had convinced the majority of the population that this was no film. Those with firearms took to the streets. For two more hours, pockets of resistance, snipers and roving groups of citizens, fought back with hunting rifles and handguns.

Then, at 2:06 in the afternoon, tanks blocking the runway of Yuma International Airport rolled aside to allow a squadron of five propeller-driven planes to take off. They lined up and crossed the sky under the high cirrus clouds. Simultaneously, each plane emitted a puff of white vapor. Then another puff.

Across the sky, in fluffy dot-matrix-style letters, the skywriting planes spelled out a message: RESISTANCE WILL END OR YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE!

All over the city, sporadic gunfire began to die down. Not all citizens threw down their weapons at first. A few-those without families-kept on fighting. Those who weren't hunted down by Japanese troops were quelled by Yuma citizens with children at risk.

By six P. M. the city was quiet. The chill of afternoon deepened into a still cold. Fires burned at scattered locations, sending smoke into the air. Tanks prowled the streets with impunity. The sun fell behind the mountains, casting long, forlorn purple shadows on the surrounding sea of sand. It was magic hour.

Yuma, Arizona, had fallen to the Nishitsu Corporation.

Chapter 16

The closer she got to the Yuma city limits, the more afraid Sheryl Rose became. Yuma was her home. She had been born in Yuma, gone to school there, and after graduation from nearby Arizona Western College, got a job at a local television station. A scary day was when she got the cue cards out of order.

Sheryl fiddled with the radio. Stations as far away as Phoenix came in clearly. But none of the hometown stations were on the air.

If Sheryl hadn't been in broadcasting, it might not have hit her as hard. But the dead air was like a knife in her stomach.

"They got the radio stations," she sobbed. "How could this happen? This is America."

"And Rome was Rome," said Chiun gravely. "It, too, fell when it became old. Where is the Greece of days gone by? The Egyptians no longer rule their part of the world. Do not think because your nation has existed without knowing the tread of an invading army, that it could never happen. It has. Now we must deal with what has taken place, not deny it."

Bill Roam spoke up for the first time since they had left Luke.

"You're acting like Yuma has fallen to the Nazis," he said. "It's only a movie company. Sure, they've gone crazy, but they can't hold an American city indefinitely. And they sure can't widen their area of operations. They barely have the manpower to hold this city. When the shock wears off, the people will grab their guns and beat them off. You watch. You'll see."

No one responded to that. They came to the roadblock. The two T-62 tanks were still in place. But now they were quiet. As the Ninja passed them, the sound of its engine caused the trapped Japanese crews to begin pounding and shouting for attention.

"What happened to them?" Bill Roam wanted to know, looking back in bewilderment.

"He did," Sheryl said, jerking a thumb at Chiun.

"You must know some right powerful medicine, chief," Roam said.

"Yes," Chiun said. "Very powerful."

"Well, I know a few tricks myself," Roam said, his eyes on the desert. "Maybe I'll get to use them before this is done. I helped three planeloads of airmen step into eternity out there. Only blood will redeem that."

Chiun's eyes were on the desert too. He said nothing. They followed Route 8 through the city. Abandoned cars burned, releasing smudgy smoke that hung in the air like the visible stench of defeat. They stopped at a roadside pay phone at Chiun's insistence, but he returned complaining that it was broken.

Every pay phone they encountered was out of order. "Face it," Roam told him. "They've cut us off from the outside world."

"Oh, my goodness," Sheryl said in a small shocked voice. "Look!"

Off the road, there was a school. A desert-camouflage armored personnel carrier stood parked in front like some absurd ice-cream truck. Uniformed soldiers stood guard over the grounds, where rows of children squatted, their hands folded behind their heads. Other soldiers dragged adult bodies back into the building.

"Jesus!" Bill Roam muttered. "This can't be happening. "

"Stop the car," said Chiun.

"Are you crazy?" Sheryl cried. "They look like they'd shoot us as soon as look at us."

"I cannot allow those children to be threatened." Sheryl grabbed Chiun's sleeve.

"Look," she pleaded. "Think this through. There are more of them than there are of us."

Chiun looked into Bill Roam's weather-beaten face. "I'm up for it," Roam said quietly.

They both looked to Sheryl.

"All right," she said reluctantly. "But I don't think I'm going to be much help. My knees are shaking so hard I can barely keep my feet on the brake."

"Just keep the engine running, little lady," Bill Roam said as the jeep pulled over to the side of the road a ways beyond the schoolgrounds. "The chief here and I will do the rest."

"Why do you call me that?" Chiun asked.

"Because you look like a chief. Ready? Let's go." The two men left the car in silence. They worked their way toward the building. Chiun seemed to drift like so much silent smoke. Bill Roam walked low, so his tall lanky frame was not so obvious. Sheryl thought he moved like a stealthy Indian brave; then she remembered that Sunny Joe Roam was an Indian.

She watched anxiously through her rear window. The Master of Sinanju took a position behind a cactus that afforded a commanding view of the school, front and rear. It was as tall as a man and shaped like a barrel. He touched one of the long needles and found it quite sharp. With one fingernail he razored the needles off, collecting them in his hand like so much straw. Chiun peered around the side of the cactus and looked for Sunny Joe Roam. He frowned. There was no sign of him. Could he have been captured already? Even for a white, that would have been inordinately clumsy. Taking care not to be seen, Chiun moved to the other side of the cactus. He spotted Sunny Joe Roam sneaking up on a Japanese guard loitering near the back of the school, out of sight of the others. The Japanese was half-turned from Sunny Joe Roam. As Chiun watched, the soldier pulled a cigarette pack from his uniform blouse pocket and shook out a cigarette. He struck a match. The wind blew it out.

Moving on cat feet, Sunny Joe quickened his approach. Chiun, knowing the reason why, felt a tingle of admiration for the Indian. He realized that the guard would have to turn out of the wind to light his cigarette. And Sunny Joe was walking into the wind.

Chiun lifted a handful of needles, preparing to throw them.

He never had to. The Japanese turned; Sunny Joe shifted to one side and froze beside a lantana shrub. The guard was looking directly at the bush as he lit the stubborn cigarette. The bush shook slightly from a desert breeze. The Japanese seemed not to notice. Chiun's parchment face relaxed in mild surprise. He had never seen a white move so stealthily. Not since Remo. He lowered the needles and watched.

The guard reached for his fly, turned to the schoolhouse wall, and Sunny Joe came out from behind the bush like a ghost, one fist up.

Chiun turned away. Roam would not need his help.

He directed his attention to the guards surrounding the hostage children. Chiun shook his arms free of his sleeves and prepared to hurl the twin handfuls into the air. Above his head, he heard the drone of planes flying in unison. The wind was strong, but steady. He could compensate for it.

The Master of Sinanju brought his hands up in an underarm throw. The needles left his splayed fingers like splinters of pure light.

The first fusillade went the furthest. The needles arced high. Dropping their points as if programmed by a computer, they began to fall. The other needles reached the apex of their flight almost at the same time.

The Master of Sinanju jumped out from behind the sheltering cactus. If he was seen now, it would not matter. Arms pumping, he ran toward the children.

Then Sunny Joe came out from behind the schoolhouse. He carried an AK-47. Chiun hoped he had restraint enough not to use it.

The needles fell in two focused groups. They struck the soldiers wherever they stood, but none fell within the circle of guards to hit the children.

Seeing needles seemingly sprouting from their arms and shoulders, the guards had a perfectly sensible reaction. They gave the Japanese equivalent of "Ouch!" and looked up. They also raised their weapons defensively.

They were still looking up when the Master of Sinanju began to explode their internal organs within their bodies. Chiun's bony fists found abdomens and backs. He struck only once at each man, but his splindly arms struck like steam-driven pistons. No soldier made a sound after he fell. And all of them fell.

Instantly Chiun was in the midst of the children. "Make haste!" he scolded. "On your feet, little ones. You must flee. Return to your families. Go!"

The children reacted slowly. Not so the Japanese in the APC. They boiled out of the back like cockroaches from a lighted oven.

Bill Roam picked them off as they came with cool single shots from his AK-47. The first two out went down without firing a shot. Others ducked behind the machine and tried to return fire from under the eight-wheeled undercarriage.

Roam dropped to his stomach and lined up. He hit a tire, corrected his aim, and erased the face of a Japanese who was sighting down the barrel of his rifle. Roam's next shot took out the front tire. The APC listed suddenly; and the driver started the engine in an effort to escape. He didn't get far. There was still one sharpshooter under the chassis. The good rear tires ran over him, splintering his rib cage with a sickeningly loud sound. The Japanese must have been packing grenades, because his body exploded when the tires ran over it.

The APC jumped four feet into the air, then fell back, blowing the remaining tires.

Bill Roam peppered it with single shots, taking his time to aim, but giving the occupants of the APC no time to organize a response.

By that time, prodded by the Master of Sinanju, the students had all taken shelter inside the school building. Chiun shut the door after the last one.

He hurried to Bill Roam's position.

"Cease your firing," he told Roam. "The children are safe. I will deal with these vermin now."

"Mind if I join the festivities?" Roam said, standing up.

"Only if you do two things for me."

"What's that?" Roam wondered.

"Leave the weapon and do not get yourself killed."

"You got 'em both," Roam said, letting his AK-47 fall onto the grass. "It was about out of bullets anyhow." They moved on the APC from two directions. Chiun took the back. Roam went for the driver. He slipped up under the driver's angle of vision and took the door handle. He yanked it open so fast the driver, huddled under the steering wheel, only realized he was in trouble when an unexpected breeze touched his face. He opened his eyes. He saw Bill Roam's fist. Then he saw nothing. In the rear, three Japanese were crouched, their rifles aimed at the open doors. Smoke came up through the damaged floor, but no shrapnel had penetrated the APC's hard steel flooring.

The Master of Sinanju appeared framed in the opening like some wrathful spirit. One clawlike hand swept out, batting aside a rifle muzzle before its owner could pull the trigger. Another was sucked from its owner's clutch so fast that skin came off his fingers.

Chiun's fingernails found both men's throats at once. They sank in and then slipped out in a flash. Blood followed them out, in bright arterial streams. He hurled the dying soldiers from the vehicle with careless yanks.

One soldier remained. He fired a burst that would have gone through the old Korean's head had it not been for the unfortunate fact that between the time the trigger was pulled and the first bullet emerged from the muzzle, the rifle inexplicably swapped ends.

Instead, the bullets destroyed the soldier's intestinal tract. He looked down at his stomach. It was a ruin of camouflage cloth, now suitable only for blending in with hospital wastes. He noticed that he was holding his rifle the wrong way. How had that happened?

Then the old Korean set his palm against the butt end of the stock and pushed. Too late, the soldier realized that his bayonet was affixed to the muzzle. His eyes rolled up into his head. He was still clutching his weapon when he collapsed to the floor.

Chiun emerged from the APC with hard visage. A hulking shadow came around the side. Chiun whirled suddenly, taken by surprise. It was Bill Roam.

"You are very silent on your feet for a white," he said with a hint of respect in his dry voice.

"I'm an injun, remember?" Roam laughed. "And I told you I knew some powerful medicine."

"Your tribe. By what name does it go?"

"You never heard of them," Roam said evasively. "So what are we going to do with the children? They sure won't fit into our little jeep. Or this thing either," he added, smacking the APC's flank with his meaty hand.

"Perhaps they are safer here," Chiun said slowly, as he saw Sheryl drive up. She honked her horn repeatedly. "Uh-oh, I don't like the sound of that," Roam said ominously.

Sheryl leaned her head out the jeep's window, calling, "Look!" She pointed at the sky.

There, five airplanes were finishing writing a message in puffs of white vapor: RESISTANCE WILL END OR YOUR CHILDREN WILL DIE!

Roam grunted deep in his throat. "Empty threat now. "

"No," Chiun replied. "For if they have this school, they have the others."

"Damn! What are we going to do?"

"I know the Japanese mind," Chiun said levelly. "They ruled my homeland for many bitter years. They will instigate reprisals for what we have done."

"We gotta get those kids to safety. How about we make a dash for the reservation? The Japs might not have bothered with my people. The kids would be as safe there as anywhere."

"No," Chiun said. "There is a better way. We will send them back to their own homes."

"I get it. It's harder to bring down one pigeon than a flock of them, right?"

"Exactly. Come."

Moving rapidly, they emptied the school. The children were sent off in groups, older ones paired with the younger. It took most of the afternoon, but by the time they were done, every child had escaped into the city.

"Some of them might not make it," Sheryl said as she watched the last of them go.

"Some of them will not," Chiun said flatly.

"Then why send them? Wasn't there a better way?"

"The only other way was the desert. None of them would have survived the desert. Come."

They got into the jeep in silence.

Sheryl put the key into the ignition. "Look. If it's as bad as we think, we won't get through the city unchallenged. Not in broad daylight. My house isn't far from here. What do you say?"

"The little gal makes sense," Roam said.

"Agreed," Chiun said. "For if we are to deal with this situation, I must devise a plan."

"Deal?" Sheryl said as she spun the car around and ran in toward the city. "I vote we just wait until the Marines or the Rangers or whatever land."

"That is the problem with you people," Chiun sniffed. He was watching the puffy skywriting spread and thin.

"What people?" Sheryl wanted to know as she took an off ramp.

"Americans," Chiun returned. "You are such creatures of your technology. Do you remember the time those whales were trapped in an ice hole?"

"Sure thing. It was in all the papers. What about it?"

"The Eskimo wanted to begin cutting a channel to the sea to release them," Chiun went on, "but the Americans refused to allow this. They said that when their ice-crushing ships arrived, they would do the job faster."

"And they came."

"After many delays in which the animals suffered. The ships could not break the ice fast enough. Finally the Americans relented and the Eskimo were allowed to begin cutting a channel by hand."

"As I recall, between them they got the job done."

"One animal died. Had the Americans not insisted on waiting for their mighty technology, no animals would have died, and the others would not have suffered."

"Am I missing something here? What does that have to do with our situation?"

"Americans always act helpless while waiting for their technology to arrive. It does not always arrive in time, nor does it always work when it does."

"What he's saying, Sheryl," Bill Roam cut in, "is that we can't afford to wait for the Marines."

"But they're coming, aren't they? I mean, the U.S. government isn't exactly going to sit on their duffs while Yuma is terrorized."

"You don't know the military," Roam said tightly. "The first thing they're going to be looking at is their posteriors. "

"That's crazy talk, Sunny Joe," Sheryl retorted. "This is America, not some banana republic where anyone can just waltz in and take over."

"Got news for you, kid. They already have."

"Oh." Sheryl sent the jeep down Arizona Avenue and took a right onto Twenty-fourth Street. The roads were deserted. Crude signs hung from lampposts: CURFEW IN EFFECT. VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT. "We're gonna be awful conspicuous," she muttered.

As they drove past Kennedy Memorial Park, they saw the bodies twisting in the trees.

"Hell!" Roam exploded. "Don't look now, but they hung the City Council."

A T-62 tank suddenly lunged from the park like a sluggish spider from its lair. Sheryl hit the brakes. The Ninja slewed wildly. She pulled hard on the wheel and sent the machine in a tight circle.

Too tight, as it turned out. The Nishitsu Ninja heeled like a sloop in a stiff crosswind. It went over on its side and it slid until friction brought it to a halt.

Chiun flung the door open and crawled out. Bill Roam unfolded his long lanky frame after him. Together they pulled Sheryl from the interior.

The T-62 clanked to a halt.

Swiftly the overturned vehicle was surrounded by tight-faced Japanese.

"You surrender!" one spat fiercely.

"Dammit, they got us!" Sheryl said woozily. "All right, we-"

"No!" Chiun said coldly. "We will never surrender." The Japanese stepped closer.

"For God's sake," Sheryl hissed, "they'll shoot us."

"You surrender, woman!" the Japanese repeated.

Before Sheryl could say anything, Chiun snapped, "None of us will surrender. We demand to be taken to your leader."

The Japanese hesitated. Their rifle muzzles quivered nervously. Finally the squad leader relaxed slightly. "Okay, we take you," he said.

"Do as they say," Chiun whispered. "The Japanese despise those who surrender. Trust me."

"Look, chief," Bill Roam protested, "I can't go along with this. We may not be prisoners exactly, but we sure as hell ain't free either. I've got to get to my people."

"You are no good to them dead," Chiun warned.

Roam's big fists were clenched tightly. His sun-squint eyes switched between the encircling Japanese.

"My people depend on me," he said quietly.

"I understand your concern. Do as I say, and you may live to see them again. "

"And if they're dead?"

"Then I will help you avenge them," Chiun promised, his steely eyes on the Japanese.

"I'm going to count on that," Roam said as the Japanese yanked them apart and searched them for weapons. Roam endured it stoically, his arms raised. Sheryl's face turned a bright red as two soldiers ran their hands up and down her tight dungarees. Chiun slapped the first Japanese who dared to lift the hem of his kimono. The second one lost the use of his hands. None of the others made a move toward him after that.

They were marched at gunpoint down the center of the deserted street. The sun was setting. The T-62 muttered behind them.

"What do you think is going to happen to us?" Roam asked out of the side of his mouth.

"I will meet the man who has killed my son."

"And what are you going to do when you meet him?" Sheryl asked nervously.

"I do not know," Chiun admitted.

Sheryl and Sunny Joe both looked at the impassive face of the Master of Sinanju. It was fixed, as if preserved by a veneer of beeswax. His old eyelids squeezed into walnut slits.

The Nishitsu corporate jet circled Yuma International Airport while tanks were withdrawn from the runway. Jiro Isuzu watched it touch down. He stood at attention in his PLA uniform, his ancestral samurai sword at his hip. Behind him, a black Lincoln Continental limousine waited like a hearse. As the jet rolled to a whining halt, an honor guard of his men rushed to form two lines between him and the aircraft.

The ramp dropped and down the stairs came Nemuro Nishitsu. He wore a dark business suit. His white shirtfront seemed radiant in the late-evening chill. It was unseasonably cold in Yuma, and Jiro Isuzu was shaken by the difficulty with which his mentor negotiated the steps.

Nemuro Nishitsu walked down the steps on uncertain feet. But he walked alone and unassisted, a cane draped over one hand. He seemed close to falling.

When he reached the ground, he walked stiffly to his second in command. Jiro Isuzu bowed low, saying, "Greetings, Nishitsu san san," he used the most respectful form of address possible.

Nishitsu returned the bow.

"You have brought great honor to the emperor's memory, Jiro kun," Nemuro Nishitsu said quietly. His eyes shone. Isuzu thought he would weep with joy, but Nishitsu did not weep. Instead, he asked a question.

"Has there been any communication from the American government?"

"No, sir. As I told you by radio, we have shot down several reconnaissance planes. There have been none since afternoon."

Nemuro Nishitsu looked up. He wore a Westernstyle porkpie hat and had to crane to see beyond the brim. His chin quivered with the effort.

"They will use their satellites to look down upon us," he quavered. "And they will fail on this night."

Jiro nodded, looking up at the high cirrus clouds.

"It is cold, sir. Will you come now? I have an entire city to lay at your feet."

Nishitsu nodded, and allowed Isuzu to open the limousine's rear door. Jiro took Nishitsu by the elbow and guided him into the roomy interior. Isuzu hopped in.

The driver pulled out of the airport. The honor guard broke up and returned to their tanks. Within moments, the runway was blocked again.

In the speeding limousine, Nemuro Nishitsu asked the question Jiro Isuzu expected.

"Your captured television stations, will they transmit?"

"Our engineers have familiarized themselves with the transmitting equipment. We can broadcast your demands at any moment you choose."

"I wish to broadcast no demands at this time," Nishitsu said dismissively.

Jiro Isuzu frowned. Before he could comment, Nemuro Nishitsu put to him the question he dreaded.

"Where are you holding Bronzini?"

Isuzu hesitated. He lowered his eyes in shame. Nishitsu's voice was disapproving. "I understood you pacified the city and all who dwell in it."

"Bronzini escaped in a tank during action at Luke Air Force Range. He disappeared into a sandstorm. Our captured F-16's have been unable to spot him."

Nemuro Nishitsu's wizened visage darkened. "We need Bronzini," he said firmly.

"But he has served his purpose."

"We need him. Find him. Find Bronzini." Nishitsu pounded the floor with his cane. His eyes squeezed into black slits of venom. His voice was cold as the desert night.

Isuzu swallowed uncomfortably. "At once, sir," said Jiro Isuzu as he picked up the cellular phone, saying, "Moshi moshi." He wondered why his superior wanted the American actor, who was no longer necessary now that Yuma had been conquered. But he dared not question him. For Jiro Isuzu was only midoru-middle management.

When the mobile operator answered in Japanese, Jiro Isuzu asked to be put through to Imperial Command Headquarters at the Shilo Inn.

Admiral William Blackbird, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leapt to his feet as the President of the United States entered the Situation Room in the White House basement.

"Mr. President, sir," he said, executing a snappy salute.

The President did not return it. The remaining members of the joint Chiefs pointedly stood with their hands dangling at their sides. And Admiral Blackbird knew he had stepped in it, tactical-wise.

"How was your game, sir?" he asked brightly.

"I lost," the President said sourly in his homogenized Connecticut-Texas-Maine accent. "Let's have the straight skinny on this emergency thing." He wore a white Wndbreaker over a red sweater vest.

"Yes, sir. In a phrase: We've lost Yuma, Arizona. These satellite photographs have just been received from NORAD."

The President leaned over the stack of photographs. They were still wet from their chemical bath.

One particularly grisly set of photos showed scores of bodies lying in sand.

"You're looking at the bodies of airmen from Luke Air Force Range," the admiral said. "We believe they were pushed from aircraft. They're all dead."

"This one looks like he's walking away," the President said, tapping a photo showing an apparently upright man.

"Probably an optical illusion. Nobody walks away from a fall like that. Maybe he struck feetfirst and rigor mortis did the rest."

Other photos showed ordinary city streets, deserted of people and moving traffic. Except for the tanks and armored personnel carriers.

"Whose tanks are these?" the President demanded. The Secretary of Defense, who had entered with the President, spoke up a beat before the chairman could frame his answer.

"They're Soviet," he said confidently.

Because that was the answer he was going to give, Admiral Blackbird contradicted the Secretary of Defense. "Not necessarily," he said. "They could easily be Chinese. The main Chinese battle tank is a knockoff of the Soviet T-62. These are T-62's."

"Yes, they are T-62's," the Secretary of Defense insisted just as firmly. "Soviet T-62's."

"None of these photos show markings," Admiral Blackbird countered. "Without markings, we can only make an educated guess."

"And mine," the secretary said pointedly, "is that they are Soviet machines."

"In other words," the President interrupted, "neither of you can give me a straight answer."

"It's not that simple," the Secretary of Defense said. Deciding that he was about to be outflanked, Admiral Blackbird quickly added, "I concur with the secretary." The sour expression that crossed the President's face told the admiral that he had made another tactical mistake. It also told him that the secretary had taken the President in horseshoes. No wonder the old man was ticked off.

The President sighed. "Is there any indication of this thing spreading?"

"No, sir. They-whoever they are-have Yuma. They appear to be consolidating their position. But we can't be sure that the city isn't merely a staging area."

"By gosh, how many soldiers can there be?"

"We estimate no more than a brigade."

"Is that as big as it sounds?"

"Normally a brigade could be isolated and easily neutralized, Mr. President. Not in this case. If you'll take a look at this map, you'll understand."

The President followed the others to a wall map of Arizona. The admiral poked Yuma with a fat finger. "As you can see," he rumbled, "Yuma is completely isolated. It's entirely surrounded by desert and mountains. The Mexican border is only twenty-five miles south, and the border with California a mere stone's throw west. It's entirely self-sufficient for its electric and water needs. It's surrounded by three military installations, MCAS Yuma, the Yuma Proving Grounds, and Luke Air Force Range. The invader apparently overran Luke and the Marine Air Station by force. Using aircraft captured during those operations, they bombed the Army proving grounds here to the north. It was a brilliant tactical and strategic move. In one stroke, they acquired a staggering air defense capability they could never have hoped to bring into our borders. F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, and Cobra attack helicopters. As we've already discovered, when we send our planes in, they shoot them down. At the moment, we're stalemated."

"Are you telling me that we can't retake our own city?" the President demanded.

"It's not that we can't, it's that we don't yet know who our enemy is. The dogfight suggests highly trained Russian pilots, but the Chinese can't be ruled out."

"Why don't we put feelers out to both governments. You know, kinda take their temperature?"

"We can't do that, Mr. President. It would show weakness and indecision."

"And what are we showing here? So far, I haven't heard a concrete suggestion out of anyone in this room."

"There's a reason for that, Mr. President. They have two of our air bases, and all the communications equipment that goes with them."

"My God," said the Secretary of Defense as he realized the importance of the admiral's words.

"Don't tell me they've captured nuclear weapons," the President demanded.

"Worse than that," the admiral replied. "We have to assume they're listening in on our message traffic. If we go to Defcon One-which I do recommend-they'll know it. Normal contingency for a situation such as this would be to mobilize the Eighty-second Airborne out of Fort Bragg, but we'd have no element of surprise. We can't make a move without their seeing it coming. Whoever these people are, they are tactically brilliant. They pinpointed the most isolated, vulnerable, yet defendable city in the nation. In one bold stroke they have coopted our entire military communications network and all our ground assets in the war zone."

"War zone . . . the President muttered. "How?"

"This is where it gets sticky, Mr. President. We've had no inkling of any military activity that could be read as a precusor to a strike of this brilliance. We are assuming that the tanks came across the Mexican border."

"Wouldn't we have detected them?"

"Er, it may be that we let them in."

"Explain," the President said tightly.

"Customs allowed a tank column to legally enter this country only two days ago. They were to be used in the making of a film. Simultaneously, permission was given to film scenes at MCAS Yuma and Luke. We believe that's how the bases were penetrated."

"The Pentagon allowed this?"

"We thought it would be good for the image of the service branches involved," the admiral said defensively.

"I don't understand."

"It was a Bartholomew Bronzini film. I think it's Grundy IV."

"No," piped up the commandant of the Marines Corps, "it's not a Grundy at all. It involves another character. A new one."

Everyone looked at him as if to say, "Thanks loads for the non sequitur." All except the President, who was looking at the floor in stunned silence.

"Sir?" asked Admiral Blackbird.

The President looked up from his thoughts. "Go to Defcon One. Continue to monitor the situation. I'll get back to you."

"Where will you be?" the admiral asked, surprised at the President's sudden forcefulness.

"I'll be in the john," said the President as he slammed the Situation Room door behind him.

The admiral looked at the Secretary of Defense and asked a low question.

"How bad did you take him?"

"Bad enough," the secretary said morosely, "that I'm going to make a point of losing every match for the remainder of the President's first term."

The President of the United States did not go to the bathroom. He went directly to the Lincoln Bedroom and to the top drawer of a nightstand, which he pulled open to reveal a red telephone with a smooth blank area where a dial would normally be. He lifted the receiver.

The sound of ringing penetrated his ear. After only one ring, a lemony voice asked, "Yes, Mr. President?"

"Is your man still in Yuma?"

"Actually, both of them are."

"Have you had any contact in the last few hours?"

"No," Smith admitted. "This is a routine assignment. Check-ins are not necessary. Is there a problem?"

"We've lost all communication with Yuma. There are tanks in the streets."

"It is a war movie," Smith pointed out.

"Well, it's turned real. A Marine air station and an Air Force range are in unfriendly hands. They already shot down two recon patrols."

"Oh, my God," said Harold W. Smith. "This is a Japanese production, isn't it?"

"Yes, you know it is. The Nishitsu Group is behind it. "

"The Japanese are supposed to be our allies. Is there any chance that this is actually a Soviet or Chinese operation? Could Nishitsu be a dummy corporation or something?"

"If so," Smith returned, "then the situation is graver than Yuma. There are literally hundreds of Nishitsu plants in the country. But I do not believe that theory makes sense. Nishitsu is too big. They're definitely Japanese."

"How about Japanese Red Army connections? They're among the most vicious terrorists in the world."

"Doubtful."

"Smith, use your computers," the President rapped out. "Dig into Nishitsu's background. Find out everything you can about them. I need answers."

"Specifically, Mr. President?"

"Specifically, why they would invade the U.S. I need something I can take to the Japanese ambassador. Maybe we can sort this out quietly."

"Mr. President," Smith said sternly, "if what you tell me is true, we have an American city under occupation. I do not think this is something that can be negotiated away. It calls for a swift response."

"That's why I came to you, but you can't reach your people. "

"If Remo and Chiun are in the area, you can be assured that they will not stand idly by while an American city is overrun."

"You're using the wrong tense, Smith. Yuma has been overrun. It's fallen to the Japanese or whoever these people are. And where are your people?"

Smith had no answer to that.

The President continued. "If I unleashed our military, the civilian casualties would be enormous. No, I can't have that. Quiet diplomacy, Smith. This must be solved with quiet diplomacy. Get back to me as soon as you can."

The President hung up. Miles away, Dr. Harold W. Smith hunched over his computer terminal. As his fingers flew over the keys, he wondered what could have happened to Remo and Chiun.

Chapter 17

It was bad enough, thought Bartholomew Bronzini, that he had been shot at by a crazed movie crew. It was bad enough that he had been chased out into the desert with his tail between his legs. Running from a fight was not Bartholomew Bronzini's style, in real life or on the screen.

But as night fell over the desert and the cold got worse, he started sneezing over and over.

"Perfect," he said, trying to keep the T-62 tank pointed at Yuma. "Just when it couldn't get worse, I've caught a freaking cold."

Bronzini had run the tank blindly through the desert until he knew he was in the clear. The sandstorm had long since died down. There was no water. Just mountains and low rippling desert sand as far as the eye could see. He had to go around the mountains frequently in order to stay on course for Yuma. The detours cost him all sense of direction.

Bronzini was no longer sure that he was still headed toward Yuma.

He came across the bodies quite unexpectedly. First there was a man lying in his way. Bronzini stopped the tank and leapt out of the driver's pit. He went to the body, which lay on its stomach, clad in desert utilities. An unused parachute pack was strapped to the body.

Bronzini rolled the body over. One look at the face confirmed that it was a body. The man's eyes were wide open. His face was undamaged, but the expression on it was one of stark horror. The mask of the face had hardened with the mouth open in a frozen scream.

Bronzini wondered what had killed the man. There wasn't a mark on his body. Had Bronzini had the nerve to squeeze the body at any point, he would have felt the gravelly grit of pulverized bone under the skin instead of a skeleton structure.

Finding nothing, he got back into the tank and pushed on. Bronzini ran the tank around a sandhill, hoping for fewer sandhills beyond it. He got what he wanted.

Before him lay a sea of sand. And like motionless corks on the undulating waves were hundreds of bodies. Bronzini jockeyed the tank between them gingerly. It was a sight of unearthly stillness. Every body wore a parachute pack. They looked as if they had simply dropped dead as they walked through the sand.

It took a while for the enormity of it all to sink in. Bronzini might not have figured it out except that beside one of the bodies was a smoke canister stuck in the sand. It had been used.

"The fucking parachute drop," he said. His voice was etched with disbelief. He looked up into the sky. It all made sense then. The drop had been sabotaged.

Bronzini hunkered down in his seat and pulled the hatch closed. It was harder to pilot the tank using the periscope, but it was preferable. He didn't see as many staring dead.

Bartholomew Bronzini immediately picked up the tracks of heavy vehicles. He lined up on the tracks and followed them, figuring they would lead him to Yuma.

Along the way, he came upon an APC that lay, still smoking, in the sand. There was a horrible stench coming from it. He popped the hatch and circled the APC. The back was blown open, uniformed bodies hanging out the door like they had been expelled from a dragon's mouth. One of the bodies looked familiar. It wore a bush hat. The man who had worn that hat in life had been his military adviser through all three Grundy films. Jim Concannon.

"What is this shit?" Bronzini howled.

Bronzini didn't stop. He pointed the muttering T-62 toward Yuma and kept on going, pushing the tank as hard as he dared. He started to wonder if going to Yuma was such a smart idea after all. He tried not to think of what had happened back at MCAS Yuma. It made no sense. It was only a movie. But now that he knew the parachute drop had gone bad, all hope that the Marine unit had simply gone berserk evaporated. He felt cold inside. And he couldn't stop sneezing.

Bronzini drove all night long, fighting to keep awake. The coyotes helped. When the sun broke over the mountains, he popped the hatch.

He was astonished to see a man walking ahead of him in the clear dawn light. The man was striding through the desert at a steady, monotonous pace. Bronzini ran the tank up alongside the walking man.

"Yo!" he called over, struggling to keep the tank on course.

The man didn't respond. He simply walked in a direct line. Bronzini took in the profile of his face. The man's features looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place them. Bronzini saw that his face was red from a combination of sunburn and wind abrasion.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Bronzini shouted.

No reaction. Bronzini noticed the robotlike swing of his arms, the masklike impassivity of his face. It was devoid of expression, like something chopped out of rock. He wore desert utilities like those of the dead paratroopers, but his hung in rags, leaving the arms are and exposing the white of a T-shirt.

"Is it something I said?" Bronzini joked, not expecting a response. He was not disappointed. He tried again in a joking voice, "I don't suppose you can direct me to Yuma. I'm late for first call."

Nothing.

Finally, in frustration, Bronzini put his fingers into his mouth and gave an attention-demanding whistle. This time the man did react. His head swiveled like a jewelry display in a rotating pedestal. The metronomic swing of arms and legs continued without varying. But the eyes that looked back at Bartholomew Bronzini frightened him. They were as unwinking as a serpent's. Set deep in hollow sockets, they seemed to burn with a fanatical light against dry, wasted flesh. The guy's face looked dead. There was no other word for it.

"Why don't I go bother someone else?" Bronzini said suddenly.

The head swiveled back and the man kept walking. Bronzini stopped the tank. He watched the man walk, like an automaton, along the APC tracks.

It was only then that Bartholomew Bronzini noticed a curious thing. It caused him to turn the tank north and stomp the gas pedal down as hard as his combat boots could press.

The man was striding through sand so loose that the wind blew it off the prominences in hissing sprays. It was not hard-packed stuff at all.

Yet the man left no footprints behind him.

Nemuro Nishitsu looked up from the reports on his desk. The nameplate on the desk read "Mayor Basil Cloves." He had not bothered to change it. He did not expect to occupy this office for very long.

Jiro Isuzu bowed in greeting.

"A man insists upon meeting with you, Nishitsu san -san," he said in a respectful tone.

Nishitsu's old brow wrinkled distastefully. "Insists?"

"He is a Korean, very old. He claims to represent the American government. And he asks to hear your terms."

Nemuro Nishitsu put aside his reports. "How do you know he is Korean?" he demanded. "How did he get here?"

"I do not know the answer to your second question, but to the first, I can only say that he claims to be the Master of Sinanju."

Nishitsu raised a tired eyebrow.

"Sinanju? Here? In America? Is it possible?"

"I thought the line had died out."

Nishitsu shook his tremorous old head. "During the occupation of Korea," he said, "I heard stories of how our forces dared not enter one fishing village, called Sinanju. This village was respected, not for tradition's sake, but out of fear of reprisals. I will see him."

Nemuro Nishitsu waited pensively for Jiro Isuzu to return. He came back accompanied by a cold-eyed Korean in a vermilion kimono.

"I am Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju," the Korean said in excellent Japanese. His face lacked warmth. It also lacked respect.

Nishitsu frowned. "How did you come to be in this, of all cities?" he asked, also in Japanese.

"Think not that your evil scheme was hatched in total secrecy," Chiun said craftily.

Nemuro Nishitsu accepted this in silence. Then he said, "My aide, Jiro, informs me that you are with the Americans. How is it that the House of Sinanju has come to this?"

"I serve America," Chiun said haughtily. "Their gold is greater than that of any modern nation. The rest does not concern you. I am here to hear your terms."

Nemuro Nishitsu regarded the old Korean at length. His thin lips compressed into a bloodless line.

When he spoke, his words surprised Jiro Isuzu as much as they did the Master of Sinanju.

"I offer no terms."

"Are you mad?" Chiun spat. "You cannot hope to hold this city against the might of the Americans forever."

"Not forever, perhaps, but long enough."

"I do not understand. What is your purpose here?"

"It is about kao. It is about face."

"You and I understand face. But Americans do not."

"Some do. You will see. You will understand in time. Everyone will understand." Chiun's face puckered.

"What is to prevent me from extinguishing your life, here and now, Japanese?" he queried levelly.

Jiro Isuzu went for his sword. He was surprised that the Master of Sinanju simply stood there as he placed the tip of the blade before the old Korean's chest.

Chiun's eyes went to Nemuro Nishitsu.

"Do you value this bakayaro?" he asked quietly.

"He is my right arm," Nishitsu said. "Please do not kill him."

Jiro Isuzu could not believe what he was hearing. Did he not have the upper hand?

Nemuro Nishitsu's next words told him that despite all appearances, he did not.

"Jiro kun," Nishitsu whispered, "put that away. This man is an emissary. He must be treated with respect."

"But he threatened you," Isuzu protested.

"And he has the means to carry out that threat. But he will not, for he understands that if he spills my blood, there is nothing to prevent my soldiers from putting to the sword every man, woman, and child in this city. Now, put your sword away."

"Tradition demands I quench this sword in blood now that I have drawn it," Isuzu said stubbornly.

"If you wish to commit seppuku," Nishitsu told him coldly, "then it is your choice. Either way, you are dead. But do me the courtesy of not ensuring my death along with yours, and with it, the ruin of all we have achieved together."

Jiro Isuzu's face was stung. He lowered his eyes as the sword whispered back into its sheath. His chin quivered uncontrollably.

"Know, Japanese," Chiun said forcefully, "that if the lives of innocents were not in peril, I would rend your very heart and lay it steaming at your worthless feet."

"You may take my words back to your American masters," Nemuro Nishitsu said pointedly. "I will see that you are given safe passage to the desert."

"I have two others with me, a man and a woman. The man is of a tribe that dwells in the desert. It is there that I wish to go."

"Tribe?" Nishitsu said. His eyes sought Jiro.

"Indians," Jiro supplied. "They do not matter. Our tanks surround their land. They are known to be a peaceful tribe. None have ventured out, nor will they. Indians do not love the whites, their oppressors."

"Then go," Nishitsu told Chiun.

"One other matter," Chiun said quickly. "I demand to ransom the children. They are innocents. Whatever you intend by this outrage, they are not a part of this."

"They keep the adults passive. Fewer of my men die this way, and I am able to spare more Americans."

"Then the youngest of them," Chiun suggested. "The ones under eight years. Surely they are not necessary to your plans."

"The youngest ones are the most precious to their mothers and fathers," Nemuro Nishitsu said slowly. "But I might offer you, say, the students of one school if you will do something for me in return."

Curiosity wrinkled Chiun's wise face. "Yes?"

"I seek Bartholomew Bronzini. If you can deliver him to me, alive and in good condition, I will surrender to you the school of your choice."

Chiun frowned. "Bronzini is not your ally in this?"

"He is a pawn."

"I will consider your offer," said Chiun. And without bowing, he turned and left the mayor's office.

Jiro Isuzu followed him with hate-filled eyes. Then he turned to Nemuro Nishitsu.

"I do not understand. Why do you not offer terms?"

"You will see, Jiro kun. Is the television station ready?"

"Yes. "

"Then begin broadcasting."

"This will enrage their military."

"Better. It will humiliate them. They are impotent and soon the entire world will know it. Go now!"

The Master of Sinanju was silent all during the ride to the reservation, his eyes fixed on some imaginary point beyond the sand-scored windshield.

Neither Bill Roam nor Sheryl Rose tried to converse with him after Sheryl offered what she thought was a comforting suggestion.

"You know, Remo might not be dead. I read about a fellow who survived a skyjumping accident. It happens."

"He is dead," Chiun had said sadly. "I do not sense his mind. In the past, in times of great urgency, I have been able to touch him with my thoughts. I cannot now. Therefore he is no more."

Bill Roam was driving. They were in Sheryl's Nishitsu Ninja, which Chiun had restored to its wheels with what had seemed to be an effortless expenditure of strength. So stunned were they by the events of the day that neither Bill Roam nor Sheryl remarked on Chiun's many feats.

A single road led to the reservation. It was fenced off, but the gates were open. Beside it was a weatherbeaten wooden sign. The legend was half-obliterated by desert sun and wind-driven sand. The top line was nearly unreadable, except for the letter S at the beginning of an indecipherable word. The bottom line said: RESERVATION.

"I could not read the name of your tribe," Chiun said as they passed through the fence.

"You wouldn't know the name," Bill Roam replied dully. His eyes searched the road ahead as a line of cracked adobe buildings came into view.

"I did not suggest that I would," Chiun said flatly. "I asked the name."

"Some people call us Sunny Joes. That's where I get my nickname. I'm sort of the tribal guardian. It's a hereditary title, being a Sunny Joe. My father was one."

"Your tribe, they are mighty warriors?"

"Hell, no," Roam scoffed. "We're farmers. Even back before the white man came."

Chiun's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

Bill Roam let out a relieved sigh as signs of life began to show in the doorways of the buildings they passed. He pulled up in front of one and got out.

"Hey, Donno, everything okay here?"

"Sure thing, Sunny Joe," a fat old man in blue jeans and a faded cowboy shirt replied. He clutched a bottle of Jim Beam. "What's doing?"

"There's trouble in the city. Spread the word. Nobody goes off the reservation unless I say so. And I want everyone in the meetinghouse inside of ten minutes. You hustle now, Donno."

"You got it, Sunny Joe," said the fat old man. He slipped the bottle into a back pocket and disappeared down the sidewalk, which was raised off the dusty street like an old-fashioned western boardwalk.

Bill Roam parked in front of the meetinghouse, a long wooden building that resembled an old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse right down to the rows of folding chairs inside. Roam went among the chairs, clapping them shut in his big hands. He stacked them against the walls with intent fury.

"Hope you don't mind squatting on the floor," he said after he cleared it. "It's clean."

"It is the preferred way in my village too," Chiun said. He gathered his skirts up and settled to the floor. Sheryl joined him. They watched as the reservation Indians drifted in, their faces sun-seamed and stoic. Most were older than Sunny Joe Roam. There were no children and very few women of any age.

Sheryl leaned over to Chiun. "Will you look at them! I've never been here before. But darned if they don't look sort of Asian about the eyes."

"Don't you read books?" Bill Roam said. "Every one of us sorry redskins came across the Aleutian Islands from Asia."

"I have never heard that," Chiun said.

"How could you, chief? You're one of the ones who got left behind. But it's a fact. If the anthropologists can be believed."

The last tribesmen slipped in and took their places on the floor in stony silence.

"That's everyone," the fat old man named Donno called out as he closed the door.

"You forgetting the chief?" Roam asked.

"Not me, Sunny Joe. He took off for Las Vegas with the money he got for leasing the reservation to that Bronzini fella. Said he was gonna double it or get drunk."

"Probably both," Roam muttered.

"What kind of leader deserts his people in their hour of need?" Chiun said querulously.

"A savvy one," Roam remarked dryly. He stood up; raising his hands, palms open. "These are my friends," he announced. "I bring them here because they seek retisae. The man is called Chiun. The girl is Sheryl. They are here because there is trouble in the city."

"What kind of trouble, Sunny Joe?" a wizened old man asked.

"An army has come from across the seas. They have captured the city."

The tribespeople turned to one another. They buzzed in conversation. As it settled down, an old woman with iron-gray pigtails asked, "Are we in danger, Sunny Joe?"

"Not now. But when the government sends in troops, we could be in the middle of a powerful lot of fighting."

"What can we do? We aren't fighters."

"I am the Sunny Joe of this tribe," Bill Roam rumbled. "I will protect you. Don't anyone worry. When the bad times came, my father, the Sunny Joe before me, kept us fed. During the hard days of the last century, his father watched over his people. Before the whites came, your forebears lived in peace going back all the way to the days of the first Sunny Joe, Ko Jong Oh. This will not change while I walk the ground of our ancestors. "

Chiun had been listening to this with growing interest on his parchment face. His head snapped around suddenly.

"What name did you speak?" he insisted.

Roam looked over. "Ko Jong Oh. He was the first Sunny Joe."

"What is the name of this tribe?" Chiun demanded. "I must know."

"We are the Sun On Jos. Why?"

"I am known as the Master of Sinanju. The place I come from is called Sinanju. Does that name mean anything to you?"

"No," said Sunny Joe Roam. "Should it?"

"We have a legend among my people," said Chiun slowly, "of the sons of a Master of Sinanju, my ancestor, whose wife bore him two sons: One was named Kojing." Chiun paused. In a firm voice he added, "The other went by the name Kojong."

"Ko Jong Oh was the progenitor of the Sun On Jos," Roam said slowly. "Coincidence."

"It is tradition that the son of the Master of Sinanju be trained to follow in his father's footsteps," Chiun said, his voice rising so that everyone heard him clearly. "For Masters of Sinanju were great warriors. But only one Master of Sinanju could exist in a generation. The mother of Kojing and Kojong knew this. And she knew that if the father of the boys learned she had borne him twins, one would be put to death to prevent a dangerous rivalry when they became men. But the mother of the two youths could not bring herself to do this. She concealed Kojong from his own father. And when it became time to train Kojing, the mother artfully switched babies every other day, so that both Kojing and Kojong were trained in what we call the art of Sinanju."

Chiun's hazel eyes swept the faces in the room. The eyes that looked back were so like those of his own village, far away on the West Korea Bay. The men and the old men. They had unfamiliar faces, but each was touched by something Chiun recognized.

Chiun resumed his story, his voice deepening.

"The father, who was called Nonja, never knew this, for he was old when he sired the twins. His eyes were failing. Thus, the artifice went unsuspected. And one day, Master Nonja died, He went into the Void never knowing that he left behind two heirs, not one. On that day, Kojing and Kojong appeared together in the village for the first time, and the truth was revealed for all to see. No one knew what to do, and for the first time in history, there were two Masters of Sinanju."

Chiun took in a deep breath that expanded his frail chest.

"It was Kojong who provided the solution," he continued. "He announced that he was leaving the village to find a place in the outer world. He swore never to pass along the secrets of the sun source, but to pass along the spirit of Sinanju in case there would ever come a time that Sinanju would need it."

Chiun looked at Sunny Joe Roam. Bill Roam spoke up slowly.

"We have a legend too," he said. "Of Ko Jong Oh, who came from across the western sea. From the east. He was the first Sunny Joe, for he bore the spirit of Son On Jo. He taught the Indians the ways of peace, how to farm and not hunt the buffalo for meat. He showed the Indians another way, and in gratitude, they, our ancestors, took on the tribal name of Sun On Jo. Each generation, his eldest son would replace him as the guardian of the tribe. Only these sons, which we call Sunny Joes, were allowed to fight. And then only to protect the tribe. For the Sun On Jos believed that if they used their magic powers to kill, it would bring down upon the entire tribe the wrath of the Great Spirit Magician, Sun On Jo-He Who Breathes the Sun. "

Chiun nodded. "Your words ring true. Kojong understood if he plied the art of Sinanju, the art of the assassin, he would be in competition with the true Master of Sinanju, and would have to be sought out and destroyed, for nothing must interfere with the work of the Master of Sinanju. Not even competition from blood."

"You think we're kin?" Roam asked slowly.

"Do you doubt it?"

Bill Roam paused before answering.

"When I was young," he said at last, "I believed in it all. A lot has happened to me since then. I'm not sure what I believe now. There are a lot of legends in the world, full of great warriors, civilizers, culture heroes. Just because your legend and mine have a few syllables in common, I don't see that that's any reason to get all worked up about it. Especially now."

"What happened to you to crush your faith, you who are to your people what I am to mine?" Chiun inquired. Before Bill Roam could answer, a racket outside the meetinghouse caused the assembled Sun On Jos to jump to the windows.

"Sounds like a tank," Sheryl breathed. Bill Roam pushed his way to the door.

Outside, the Master of Sinanju joined him. They watched a sand-powdered tank rattle up the road, spinning a slow worm of dust in its wake. Its engine sputtered and missed like a recalcitrant lawn mower.

"Think we've been double-crossed, chief?" Roam asked Chiun.

"We are dealing with the Japanese," Chiun replied. "For them not to display treachery would be surprising, not the opposite."

The tank suddenly stopped. Its engine died out.

The driver's hatch popped up, and Bill Roam turned and shouted at the faces huddled in the doorway. "Everyone, back inside! I'll handle this!"

Turning to Chiun, he said, "if I don't make it, I'm counting on you to protect my people. Savvy?"

Chiun looked up curiously. "You believe?"

"No. But you do. And I'm going to count on that."

"Done," said Chiun. His smile was tight.

A head poked up from the open hatch and a flat voice called out, "Sunny Joe! That you? Man, am I glad to see a friendly face."

The voice belonged to Bartholomew Bronzini.

Chapter 18

On the morning of December 24, Radio Free Yuma went on the air.

Radio Free Yuma was a lawyer named Lester Cole with a ham radio set in his den. He put out a call to all stations listening on his band. A dentist in Poway, California, acknowledged his QSL.

"We've been invaded," Lester Cole said tightly. "Get word to Washington. We're cut off. It's the Japanese. They've pulled another Pearl Harbor on Yuma."

The Poway dentist thanked Lester for his entertaining story and signed off with a curt "Out."

Lawyer Cole-as he was known to friend and foe alike-had better luck with his second call. He happened to get an Associated Press stringer in Flagstaff. The stringer listened to his story without interruption.

At the end, Lawyer Cole told the stringer, "You can check this out. We have no phones, no TV, no radio."

"I'll get back to you. Out."

The AP stringer confirmed that Yuma was incommunicado. He put in a series of calls to the state capital. No one in Phoenix could explain the problem. The stringer didn't repeat Lawyer Cole's wild invasion story. Instead, he returned to his ham set and tried to raise Cole.

There was no answer.

Clarence Giss didn't look at it as betraying his country. Yuma was under curfew. He dared not set foot outside his house because they were shooting anyone caught out-of-doors. Giss lived alone. The way he saw it, America hadn't done much for him. His social-security disability check wasn't even enough to stock his refrigerator properly. Giss had been on disability since a bad acid trip in 1970 made it impossible for him to hold a steady job. As he had explained it to his caseworker, "My foot flips out right regularly. I can't work."

So when the Japanese rolled in and shut down Yuma, Clarence Giss just settled back to wait. Who knew, maybe things would improve. They couldn't get any worse on only $365 a month.

He stopped thinking that when the APC rolled down the streets blaring a warning in Japanese.

"A man is broadcasting his radio," the amplified voice thundered. "This man wirr surrender himserf or one house on every street wirr be set on fire."

Clarence Giss didn't want to lose his house. He also knew that the man who owned the only ham set in the neighborhood had once beat him good on a vandalism charge. He also had a feeling the Japanese didn't intend to let anyone out before they set their fires.

But most of all, Clarence Giss was out of beer.

He stripped off his sweaty undershirt and attached it to a mop handle with a rubber band. Giss waved his makeshift white flag out a window and waited for a response.

Presently an APC pulled up and two Japanese came to his door. They pounded on it with their rifle butts. "I know who's doing the broadcasting," he told them through the door.

"Terr us name."

"Sure thing, but I want something in return."

"What do you want?"

"A beer."

"Terr us name and we wirr bring you biru," he was told.

"His name's Lester Cole. He's a lawyer. Lives six or seven houses down, this side of the street."

The soldiers humped down the street at top speed. Clarence could hear them break in Lawyer Cole's door all the way up the street. There came a pause. Then a shot. Two. Two more. Then silence.

Clarence Giss was shaking when the soldiers returned to his door. He opened it a crack. One soldier shoved a can of Buckhorn through the crack.

"Here," he said, "biru."

"Much obliged," Clarence said hoarsely.

"Maybe we can do business again sometime." The soldiers went away and he returned to his living room, where he popped the pull-tab. Clarence Giss took a short swig and started crying uncontrollably.

The beer was warm.

When the AP stringer finally gave up on reaching Lester Cole, he thought long and hard. He decided that the transmission was not a hoax. He called his boss.

"I know it sounds insane," he said after he finished relating his story, "but there was something in the guy's voice. And I haven't been able to raise him since."

"Did you say Yuma?"

"Yeah. My atlas puts it near the border."

"Something came over the wire about a funny TV transmission from Yuma," the AP desk man said slowly. "Sounded like filler-story material. Hold up. It's on my desk here somewhere. Here it is. Get this. Station KYMA went off the air yesterday, along with two other Yuma stations. Now KYMA is back, showing what looks like war footage. Executions. Hangings. Bizarre snuff-film kinda stuff. It's been going on all day. People have been watching it, thinking it's some kind of grisly movie, but there's no plot. It's just atrocities."

"What do you think?"

"I think I'd better boot this upstairs. Back to you later. "

The networks had the story of the weird TV transmission by noon, Pacific standard time. They broke into regular programming with footage videotaped off network affiliates in Phoenix. An entire nation watched in shock the sight of foreign troops occupying an American city. That it was a city hardly anyone outside of Arizona had heard of, or could place on a map, didn't matter. Most Americans couldn't find Rhode Island if it were outlined in red. They watched as fellow Americans were hunted through the streets and bayoneted to death. Footage of the Ziffel family gunned down as they were trimming their Christmas tree was seen in all fifty states. The capture of MCAS Yuma and Luke Air Force Range was shown in all its grisly spectacle.

Among the viewers was the President of the United States. His face looked like dried white clay even though everyone else in the White House Situation Room was sweating. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were clustered behind him.

"This is the worst thing that could happen, Mr. President," Admiral Blackbird said angrily. "Now the whole world will know."

"What could they want?" the President said half to himself. "What do they hope to gain from this?"

"If the world sees this," the admiral continued, "then we'll look weak. If we look weak, then some aggressor nation could see this as an opportune time to strike. For all we know, this could be a diversionary action."

"I disagree," said the Secretary of Defense. "Every reconnaissance flight, every surveillance satellite shows the world situation to be quiescent. The Russians are on standdown. The Chinese are minding their own business. And our supposed allies, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, are not mobilized."

"I've spoken with the Japanese ambassador," the President said, turning from the screen to face the Joint Chiefs. "He assures me that his government has nothing to do with this."

"We can't exactly take an assurance like that on faith," Admiral Blackbird sputtered. "Remember Pearl Harbor."

"Right now I'm thinking of the Alamo. We've got an American city held hostage. They're slaughtering people indiscriminately. But why? Why broadcast it?"

Admiral Blackbird drew himself up stiffly. "Mr. President, we could debate the whys until the next century, but we've got to knock out those transmissions at their source. They're practically commercials for American military impotence. The loss of prestige will be incalculable. "

"Am I hearing you right?" the President snapped. "Are you talking about prestige when we're helpless witnesses to a slaughter?"

"You've got to understand the geopolitical reality of deterrence," the admiral insisted. "If we lose face in front of our competitors on the world stage, we might as well fall on our swords. They'll come after us like pit bulls. We must neutralize the situation."

"How? We've already been over the military options. There's no way we can mount a full-scale assault without huge civilian casualties."

"This is going to be hard for you to understand, but please try," said the admiral. "During the Vietnamese action, we regularly faced operational dilemmas such as Yuma. Sometimes we were forced to resort to extreme measures to prevent certain villages from being overrun by enemy forces. Regrettable as it was from the human-factor standpoint, we had to destroy certain villages in order to save them."

The President of the United States took an involuntary step backward.

"Are you suggesting that I order an air strike on an American city?" he asked coldly.

"I see no other alternative. Better we show the world that we're not going to flinch from the tough decisions when it comes to protecting our borders. Do this and I guarantee there'll never be another Yuma."

The President's mouth came open. The words on the tip of his tongue never came out because, behind him, the endlessly repeating images of slaughter and death were replaced by the benign face of an old Japanese man. He began speaking in a quavering voice.

"My humble name is unimportant, but I am pleased to call myself Regent of Yuma," he said.

Every man in the Situation Room watched him in silence. The old man was seated at a desk. The white flag of Japan was spread out on the wall behind him. The red rising sun precisely circled his old head like a bloody halo. He resumed speaking.

"In my country we have a saying, 'Edo no kataki wo Nagasaki de utsu.' It means 'Take revenge at an unexpected place.' I have done this in the name of Showa, known to you as Emperor Hirohito. He was my emperor, whom I served with honor, and whom you humbled. Although he is with his ancestors, I now exalt him with this mighty deed."

"Nagasaki?" said the Secretary of Defense. "Didn't we nuke that city once?"

"If the American President is watching me," the old man continued, "I bring you greetings. I regret the loss of life, but it is necessary. I fear it will, and must, continue until the American government has surrendered itself to me. Sayonara."

The picture went black. Then another film clip came on the screen. It showed a man being held down while a tank ran over his head. At the bottom of the screen a legend flashed. It read, "The Execution of the Mayor of Yuma by New Imperial Army Forces."

"He's mad!" the President said. "Does he think we'll really surrender?"

"I don't know what that old rice-gobbler thinks," Admiral Blackbird growled, "but I implore you to consider my advice before the Russians or Chinese decide to take advantage of this."

"Hold on," the President said, leaping for the door.

"Where are you going?" the Secretary of Defense demanded.