The Last Monarch

Heart pounding a thrilling chorus in his ears, Nossur Aruch pushed open the door that led to his great destiny. With a devilish smile, he slipped inside the dimly lit chamber.

IF REMO WAS NOT POSSESSED Of the ability to unerringly judge direction by attuning himself to the gravitational force of the Earth, he would have been convinced they were riding in circles.

Every inch of desert they passed since riding across the Jordan looked exactly the same.

They were stopped now. Their horses whinnied, kicking up clouds of dust.

The sun had fled. The world around them had taken on shades of pale blue. Above them, the burning stars were close enough to touch off spot fires in the desert sand.

A cold night wind blew across their backs, sending up minicyclones of dust in the vast tracts of empty space before them.

As Remo and their PIO guide sat waiting on their mounts, the Master of Sinanju walked a few yards ahead. He was bent at the waist, staring thoughtfully at the ground.

"This sand is shifting so much you can't tell anything," Remo called to him. His horse gave an angry snort.

Chiun did not respond.

"It'd help if you knew where we were going," Remo accused the PIO soldier.

The Palestinian shook his head in apology. "I am from Hebron. I do not know the desert."

When Remo again looked to the Master of Sinanju, Chiun was kicking lightly at the sand. Puffs of dust swirled away from the toes of his sandals.

Turning back to the PIO man, Remo shook his head. "You're a sorry excuse for a guide, you know that?" he said. "Hit the road. But leave the horse."

He nodded to a second, riderless mount next to the Palestinian's.

The man eagerly unlooped the reins from his saddle, handing them over. Before Remo could change his mind, the soldier gave the ribs of his own horse a sharp kick. The animal began to beat a hasty retreat back toward Israel.

As the PIO soldier rode off in one direction, the Master of Sinanju came padding back from the other.

"Any luck?" Remo asked.

"They rode this way several hours ago," Chiun said as he pulled himself up into his saddle.

"How many?"

"It is difficult to tell. The tracks have degraded. Perhaps twenty-five score." His wrinkled face was troubled.

"Old Nosehair has pulled together quite a little army for himself," Remo said with a thin frown. "Whatever he's got planned, I say we nip it in the bud."

There was no disagreement from the Master of Sinanju. Nudging their horses with their heels, they rode off side by side into the silvery desert night.

THE STATICKY VOICE on the radio spoke English, but with a distinctly Russian accent.

"It will be our delight to aid the Palestinian people in this time of difficulty," the Russian colonel said.

"How soon?" Nossur Aruch asked furtively into the radio microphone. For some reason, he felt compelled to whisper.

It was cold in his bunker. He shivered in his artificial cavern far beneath the sand.

"The Pa-Roosski is off the coast of Lebanon now. We can airdrop you a shipment within four hours."

"What of the Americans?"

The Russian's smile was nearly visible across the empty miles that separated them.

"Their Sixth Fleet is drifting helpless at sea," the colonel said. "Some of their vessels have run aground. They are of no consequence to either of us."

Relieved that his one concern had been allayed, Aruch gave the Russian his coordinates in the Jordanian desert.

"Several packages will be arriving at your location shortly," the colonel said. "I know that you will use their contents wisely. Russia intends to enjoy a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Palestinian people and their president. Good night, sir." With that, the Russian was gone.

The deal was struck. Just like that.

Aruch slipped the receiver into the hook on the side of the large square box.

He had not even had to offer the former American President as payment. Money wasn't necessary now. The Russians only wanted to establish a new client state. Their first in years.

For Nossur Aruch, it was all too good to be true. He would get his guns and he would receive payment. After all, the ex-President was of no use to him. He would auction off the old one to the highest bidder.

Aruch lifted the phone once more. With a single, stubby digit, he began dialing the long code that would connect him to Tripoli.

Chapter 35

Remo heard the dull hum of the plane engine before the Master of Sinanju. It was coming from the north. Chiun's ears pricked up a microsecond after his pupil's. As they rode through the desert, they turned their faces to the sound.

The fat shape of a low-flying transport plane appeared as a dark shadow above the desert expanse. It was a Russian Antonov An-26 Curl. A popular light tactical transport craft. The drone of its twin turboprops grew to an earthshaking bellow as the plane roared over the desert only a few miles from where Remo and Chiun were following Aruch's tracks. Falling in line far ahead of them, the aircraft began to track the same course as the two Masters of Sinanju.

"I think it's safe to assume they're not delivering copies of your movie to the Assam Blockbuster," Remo said tightly.

The Master of Sinanju didn't reply. His narrowed eyes were trained on the Antonov's distant shuddering tail.

Desert wind pelting their faces with grains of fine sand, they raced after the plane.

EXCITEMENT HAD PREVENTED Nossur Aruch from sleeping. Although night was nearly gone, the PIO leader was still wide awake when the growing thunder that was the Russian plane reached his thrilled ears.

He leaped eagerly to his feet, racing through the tent flaps and out into the patchy green island of the oasis.

Most of his army was still awake. Men sat around open fires at the edge of the oasis. A corral for the horses had been roped off in the adjacent desert. Near it, Bryce Babcock sat glumly. Beside him, sleeping lightly, was the former President of the United States.

Although Babcock was free, the President was not. The ex-chief executive's wrists had been lashed together.

Aruch's army had heard the plane, as well. They rose expectantly to their feet, eagerly following their leader into the desert just beyond the edge of the oasis.

Along the horizon, predawn streaks had begun to bleed into the smothering veil of night. The massive shape of the Antonov-visible as a gray shadow against what remained of midnight's twinkling alabaster stars-was like some great primordial bird. Running lights off, the plane flew in low. It seemed to drag daylight in its wake as it closed the distance between them. The Antonov bellowed over their heads, its great belly clearly visible to five hundred upturned Arab faces.

Aruch saw the cavernous black opening of the rear ramp just up the fuselage from the huge tail section.

When the Russian plane had cleared the far side of the oasis, something big and blockish slipped from the blackness of the open ramp.

The huge shipping crate tumbled through the air only a few seconds before a perfect white mushroom shape blossomed behind it. The parachute snagged eddies in the chill air, slowing the descent of the massive crate. The box hit sand a few seconds later, and the nylon chute collapsed, spent.

A cheer went up from Aruch's army. His men swarmed from the oasis, racing up to the big crate. Crowbars were jimmied into the sliver of space between the wood on one side. Nails creaked in pain as the crate was pulled apart. The side dropped away with a sudden slap, disgorging contents at the feet of Nossur Aruch.

The AK-47s that spilled out had not been packaged as they would have during the glory days of the old Soviet Union. These guns were fully assembled. They had been piled in the crate with only torn sections of moth-eaten surplus Red Army blankets wrapped around them. Yellowed ten-year-old shredded copies of Pravda had been shoved in to fill any vacant space.

There were fifty guns in the case. These were hastily snatched up by the nearest PIO soldiers. The Antonov was making another pass. In the desert a half mile distant, it began to drop a series of smaller crates. These floated to earth more slowly, touching the sand at about the time Aruch and his men reached them.

When they were split open, the boxes revealed hundreds of smaller cases of ammunition.

Like starving men on a shipment of food, the Arabs dove for the ammo. This was distributed to those with guns.

By now, the sky had lightened.

Far across the vacant plain, the Antonov was turning back for another run. In it was the future of the Mideast. The future of King Nossur Aruch.

His plan was set. They would take back the West Bank by force. Organized, his men would swarm through Jerusalem and into Israel. From there, he would secure his seat of power, striking out into the region in all directions. Like the relentless magnetic wave of the neutrino bomb, he would sweep across the Middle East until everything-from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, from Turkey above to Egypt in northern Africa-fell beneath the trampling hoofs of his unstoppable Palestinian army.

The Antonov was nearly upon them once more. The desert shook with the violent force of sound flowing from the mighty turboprops of the impossibly large aircraft.

All at once, the big Russian plane seemed to make another, separate noise. A high-pitched shriek of rapid deceleration. Almost simultaneous to the appearance of the new sound came a blinding flash of light from the fuselage of the big plane. The Antonov appeared to jolt to one side as a crackling plume of flame and smoke erupted from her starboard nacelle. The engines exploded an instant later, ripping most of the right wing from the craft.

The crash came almost too quickly to be believed. At one moment, the Antonov was burning and airborne; the next it was plummeting earthward. It hit the sand with a thunderous boom, tearing a furrow of flame through the desert.

As the nose of the crashing plane barreled toward them, flaming out of control, Aruch and his men split apart. Screeching in panic and confusion, the soldiers raced into the desert, into the oasis, anywhere that would get them out of the path of the Russian plane.

As they ran, a pair of jets appeared up out of the growing dawn. The new planes screamed forward, ripping across the lightening sky.

Even as he ran, Aruch recognized the familiar flag painted on the tails of the two Mirage F-1s. It was a plain green, the traditional color of Islam. The flag of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Libya had blown the Russian plane, as well as Nossur Aruch's precious cargo, out of the sky. "Sons of dogs!" Aruch bellowed, shaking a balled fist at the jets as they flew over his family's oasis. In the desert behind him, the crashed Antonov exploded and burned. "The infidel Khaddafi did not pay for this!"

The jets took a wide arc over the Jordanian desert before circling back around. Holding formation, they raced toward the oasis.

The Palestinian army dispersed before the Mirages.

Aruch slowed his pace as the jets flew toward him. Even as he noted that the Sidewinder missile was missing from the port wingtip rail of the right plane, the left plane was loosing its pair of similar missiles.

They detached in a cloud of trailing white smoke, rocketing toward the oasis. Eyes wide, Aruch dove for the sand and covered his head.

When the missiles struck an instant later, it was as if the desert floor had turned to flame. Hundred-year-old trees exploded to smoking pulp. The plants were flung like matchsticks into the desert. Fire erupted from two smoking craters in the oasis. One heavy tree trunk crashed to the rope rail-the only thing that had prevented the terrified horses from running after the initial missile attack on the Antonov. The animals bolted now, racing across the desert.

By the time Aruch scampered back to his feet, the Mirage jets had circled again.

From the ground, rounds of automatic-weapons fire spit from the pitifully few guns the PIO soldiers had collected from the first and only Russian crate. The Libyan pilots returned fire on their way back to the oasis.

"He did not pay!" Nossur Aruch shouted as he bounded into the smoking ring that was his ancestral home.

Bryce Babcock greeted the PIO leader, grabbing him by the jacket. The interior secretary's drooping face was covered in grime. His eyes held a crazed, fearful look.

"What's going on?" Babcock begged.

"I am being cheated! That is what is going on!" Aruch screamed, shoving past the secretary. Babcock dogged him as he hustled over to the seated form of the ex-President. The din had awakened the older man.

"Who are they? What do they want?" Babcock sniffled, a fearful eye on the sky. It had suddenly grown eerily quiet.

"I contacted several parties last night who I thought might be interested in purchasing the old devil," Aruch said, waving at the President. "Libya and Iran agreed to bid on him. But that beast in human form Khaddafi has decided to kill him without paying!"

Aruch again shook a fist at the empty sky. As if in response, another rocket soared in out of nowhere, this one exploding in the dense greenery behind Aruch's tent. The PIO leader threw himself to the ground once more. Dust and rock pelted his back.

When he got to his feet, he found his tent had collapsed. Fire tore across the dry fabric. A few feet away, Babcock had crawled fearfully behind a shattered tree trunk.

With rage-twisted fingers, Aruch grabbed for the President.

"Looks like you should be trading up for a better class of friend," the old man commented, his weather-hardened face curled into the suggestion of a smile.

"Shut up!" Aruch snapped. "We will be safe in my bunker. I will get a fair bounty for you one way or another, old one." He dragged the President to his feet.

They had not taken a single step before an amused glint appeared in the eyes of the former chief executive. He was looking away from the burning tent. Toward the edge of the oasis.

"It's about time you fellas showed up," he said softly.

The voice that responded to the former President was new. And most terrifying of all, the words spoken were in unaccented English.

"Don't you remember? We always time these things for optimum dramatic effect."

Aruch whirled.

Two strangers had entered the oasis. A young white and an old Asian. As they slipped silently forward, Aruch stepped back, grabbing hold of the exPresident.

"He's mine!" the PIO leader screamed. As backdrop to his frantic shout, a new sound exploded in the sky above them.

A squadron of eight F-5s appeared out of the east. As they tore overhead, Aruch recognized the green, white and red flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A demonic look of glee appeared in the eyes of Nossur Aruch. Allies. Fellow Arabs to help him battle these two men and the treacherous Libyan planes.

"They are here for him!" Aruch cried victoriously. Grabbing the rope that bound the President's hands, he tugged the old man's wrists in the air.

"I will get my pay! I will not be denied my rightful throne as ruler of all the Middle East!"

Far above, the Iranian planes began to fire on the Libyan craft, chasing the first arrivals away. The moment the Mirage jets broke formation and tore away across the desert, the F-5s turned their attention back on the oasis.

Nossur Aruch felt exaltation right up until the point the first plane fired Maverick air-to-surface missiles into the cluster of flaming trees and brush.

Shocked, Aruch cowered from the blast. When he straightened up, he saw that Remo was walking toward him. The PIO leader reacted with surprising speed.

A hand dropped to his belt, ripping his familiar automatic free of its leather holster. In an instant, the gun was pressed up against the President's temple.

"Do not move!" Aruch ordered.

In spite of the danger to the man who at one time had been the most powerful leader on Earth, the younger intruder did something that surprised the PIO head.

Remo smiled.

"Sorry, pal," he said, still walking. "You lose." The leader of the Palestine Independence Organization had not expected his bluff would be called. But in a moment of shocking realization, he understood why this man hadn't stopped. His gun wouldn't work. It would have been rendered ineffective by the magnetizing wave of the neutrino bomb.

Desperate, Arach flung his gun away, grabbing at the knife in his waist scabbard.

He had only brushed the hilt when he felt a sharp stab of pain in his gut. The wind instantly whooshed from his lungs. When he doubled over, a knee crashed into his forehead. As he fell to the sand, Nossur Aruch saw the former President of the United States staggering over to the young white stranger.

Reaching out, Remo snapped the President's bonds.

"I think you might have picked the wrong line of work, Mr. President," he said, nodding approval.

"Which time?" the former President replied with a fatigued, boyish grin.

Nossur Aruch struggled to his feet. "You will not take him!" he shouted. "He is mine! I need him for arms! "

All at once, the PIO leader felt a gentle displacement of air. The old Asian was suddenly beside him. Aruch had not even seen him move.

"But you already have arms, foolish one," the Master of Sinanju explained in a squeaky singsong. Nossur Aruch felt a sudden wrenching sensation in his right shoulder. It was the worst pain the PIO leader had ever experienced in his life, as if a white-hot poker had been stabbed into the joint. And even as his shocked nervous system attempted to reconcile the horrid sensation with anything he had ever before experienced, the old terrorist's pain-flooded eyes detected something in front of his face.

It took a moment for Nossur Aruch to recognize his own right arm.

"You see?" Chiun said, waving the appendage before Aruch's horrified face. "And you are not only blessed with one, but two."

More pain. This time on the left.

Chiun held Aruch's other arm aloft. The white bone of the humerus jutted from the flesh. Muscle and tendons hung in ragged strips from the bloody end.

It was all too unreal. Reeling drunkenly, Aruch watched as the old Korean raised the inert arms high in the air.

With a violent snap, Chiun flipped the arms, now animated extensions of his own hands, toward each other. They swung around in two sweeping arcs, flat, lifeless palms eventually clapping with a terrific crack. However, in order for them to make such a sound, they had to first pass through the skull of Nossur Aruch.

The PIO leader's head exploded like a stompedon water balloon. Brains and blood burst out in squishy red lumps across his ancestral land.

When he was finished with the limbs, Chiun dropped them atop the PIO leader's twitching body. By now, there were more jets rending the sky above the oasis. Several more Libyan planes had joined the fray, replacing those that had fled. The rat-a-tat of autofire ripped across the warming sky. "We should make haste," Chiun suggested.

Remo nodded. "Get the President out of here. I'll be with you in a minute."

As Chiun hurried the old chief executive to their frightened horses, Remo strode across the clearing. He had spied the familiar figure cowering behind a pulpy white tree trunk. He stopped before the shaking man.

"You're Bryce Babcock, right?" Remo's tone was cold.

Eyes screwed tightly shut, the interior secretary had remained stock-still since Remo and Chiun's appearance, hoping that he would not be noticed. He jumped at the closeness of Remo's voice.

"Maybe," the secretary replied weakly.

"'This is all your fault," Remo said. It was not an accusation, but a statement of fact.

His accuser's gaze was too unforgiving. At Remo's harsh stare, Babcock broke down whimpering.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he wept. "It was supposed to bring peace. Peace to a region of the world that's never even known what real peace is. And if people here could finally get along, the rest of the world would have seen the light."

Remo's face was hard. "You're the one who had Earthpeace kill all those people in California just so they could kidnap the President."

Bryce Babcock sniffled. "You can't make an omelet without scrambling a few eggs," he offered timidly.

Remo's dark expression never wavered. "Prepare to be scrambled," he said icily.

Hands flashed forward. Remo clamped firmly to either side of Babcock's head.

Babcock's bladder sensed before any other part of him that something was desperately wrong. It was splattering its final contents onto his boots even as the first hint of pure alarm appeared in his sagging eyes.

Remo's hands vibrated. And as the movement worsened, the head between them shook with increasing fury.

It was as if the secretary of the interior had been hooked to a paint mixer. When Remo was through, Babcock's skull was filled with frothy gray sludge the consistency of a fast-food shake. Foamy brain overflow drizzled out nose and ears.

Dropping the lifeless body with its mushy pureed brain to the ground, Remo hurried from the oasis. The dogfight above the desert had grown more frantic.

Rocket pods were firing all around the area. Bullets sang in every direction-in the sky and from the land. Bodies of PIO soldiers littered the field of combat.

More Iranian jets roared in over the Jordanian desert. The Palestinians on the ground assumed correctly that they were under attack from another hostile force. Before they had even been fired upon, they began shooting at the incoming Iranian planes. The Iranian F-5s responded to the hostile gunfire from the ground by launching wing-mounted missiles into the horde of Arab soldiers.

A few burning fighter planes had joined the Russian Antonov in the sand.

Pockets of fire erupted in the desert. Explosions ripped away at the oasis, at the remnants of Nossur Aruch's men and at the downed planes.

Running, Remo met Chiun and the former President a mile away from the worst of the combat. Both men were already atop their horses. Remo swung up into his saddle.

More Libyan jets had roared into view behind them. They immediately engaged the fresh Iranian aircraft. In their spare moments, they joined in the attack on the ground. Their purpose for being there was forgotten. Killing the ex-President had become secondary to blowing up one another.

Spurring their horses on, Remo, Chiun and the former President of the United States rode for several miles, eventually climbing an isolated dune far away. Turning in their saddles, they watched the combat rage, the field of battle awash now in the blood-red morning sun.

"Well, I suppose some things never change," the President said softly as they watched the dogfight. Echoing gunfire rose from the distant sand. He looked back to the Masters of Sinanju. "Speaking of which, I had a talk with your boss. You fellas were supposed to do that amnesia thing on me again. I was hoping you could work it this time so I'd be okay. You know, just forget what I'm supposed to, and so forth?"

There was a hopeful look on the old man's face. It was the one question Remo hadn't thought to ask. "Chiun?" he said.

The Master of Sinanju shook his head sadly. "Lamentably, no," he intoned. "It is rare, but for those who are affected as you by the Emptying Basin, there is no alternative."

The President took a deep breath. Turning from them, he stared off into the distance.

The battle raging far away was not even a distraction. He was staring beyond it, at the sky, at the land. At something unseen, far distant.

It was as if in that one moment he wanted to lock on to a small part of the world. Of himself. To try to hold on to something. When he finally looked back at them, his lopsided, youthful smile had returned. There was a hint of wetness in his tired eyes.

"I suppose now's as good a time as any," he said.

Remo returned the smile, a hint of sadness on his face. "It can wait till we get back," he offered gently.

The President nodded. "I suppose it can," he agreed. "As long as the two of you keep an eye on me until then."

"Sinanju will forever be by your side, noble one," the Master of Sinanju nodded.

The President's smile broadened as he appraised them both. "Well, what are you two lollygaggers waiting for?"

With a boyish energy that belied his years, the old man gave a wrench at his reins. For a minute, Remo thought he was going to fall backward off the animal.

The horse rose majestically onto its hind legs. Whinnying once, it dropped its front hoofs back to the sand, launching itself forward as it did so. The animal raced off across the desert. The President bounced expertly in the saddle, shoulders hunched, elbows raised like a Pony Express rider. A cloud of dust followed him.

"I reckon some people just have a knack for flamboyance, eh, Mr. Chin?" Remo commented, turning to the Master of Sinanju.

A smile toyed at the corner of Chiun's papery lips.

With a tug, his own horse repeated the maneuver of the President's, lifting its front legs high in the air. Chiun held the animal there for a moment, finally launching it forward before its front hooves had even reached the sand.

He raced off after the President.

"I hope I have half that energy when I'm a hundred," Remo muttered to his pony.

"You should live that long," Chiun called back. Laughing out loud, Remo dug his heels into the sides of his horse. The three men rode off toward Israel, away from the rising sun.