Voodoo Die

Corazon cackled. "So they got more power than me, eh? Cousin Juanita, she say so, eh? More power than me? Here's their power, laying in the dirt."

He kicked Remo in the side with his right foot and smashed out at Chiun's belly with his left foot.

"We see now who has the power." Corazon looked at the soldiers around him. "Who is the all-powerful?" he demanded.

"El Presidente, Generalissimo Corazon," they shouted in unison.

"That's right," he said. "Me. The power."

He looked down at the two unconscious men.

"What you want down with them, Generalissimo?-" Major Estrada asked.

"I want them put in cages. Put them in cages and then drive them back to my palace. I want them at my palace. Got it?"

Estrada nodded. He pointed to a lieutenant of the guards and told him to take care of it.

Corazon stepped toward the helicopter.

"You going back to the palace?" Estrada asked.

"Sure thing," said Corazon. "I got to break off the relations with the United States." He chuckled as he clambered onto the ' helicopter. "The power. I the power. Me."

He did not hear the voodoo drums begin thumping again in the nearby hills.

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CHAPTER NINE

Route 1 back to Ciudad Natividado was pitted and broken and the jeep bumped up and down off the roadway as its driver moved along. Although Baqia produced 29 percent of the world's asphalt through giant pitch lakes that dotted the island, it apparently never occurred to anyone in government to use the asphalt to pave the roadway.

In the back of the jeep, the bodies of Remo and Chiun were jammed into two small iron cages barely three feet high by two feet wide and deep. Guards sat on the back of the vehicle, their eyes scanning the barren countryside as if expecting an attack on foot any moment from Ruby Gonzalez.

And underneath the jeep Ruby Gonzalez kept her right arm hooked around the rifle she had jammed up into the vehicle's chassis and her legs over the jeep's frame.

Rocks from the pitted road kicked up and abraded

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her back, but she had been careful to get on the side away from the muffler, so she would not be burned by the heat. She figured she was good for forty-five minutes under the jeep before she couldn't hang on anymore. If that happened, she planned to release her rifle, slide out from under the jeep, blow out a tire with her first shot and hope to catch the three soldiers with her next shots before they got her. Risky, she thought, but better than nothing. Best of all, though, would be getting back to Ciudad Natividado.

Thirty minutes after leaving the prison compound, she could tell they had entered the capital city by the increase in people noise. When the jeep stopped for something, Ruby could hear voices crowding near. They were speaking island Spanish and talking about Remo and Chiun.

Ruby quietly let herself down into the dirt roadway under the jeep and lay there. As soon as the jeep pulled away and its wheels passed on either side of her, she scrambled to her feet and took a step into the crowd of people.

"Only way to get ride from de soldiers, okay?" she said in a passable imitation of the island's Spanish. Before anyone could answer she had walked away and headed for the outdoor peddlers' stalls.

The chances were that the Baqian soldiers would not remember to put a guard on her room to catch her if she came back, but she couldn't afford to take the chance.

The presidential helicopter already had landed inside the palace compound and Corazon was in his reception room talking to Estrada.

"Machine worked good on them," he said.

"They alive," Major Estrada pointed out.

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"Yeah, but I not hit them square. It was a wing shot," Corazon said.

"When you knock them out, why you not melt them then? When you got them close?"

"That's why I president for life and you never be," Corazon said. "First I keep them alive and the United States got to be careful how it deals with me. Maybe I parade these two into a war crimes trial and mess up America if they give me any more trouble."

"As long as they alive, you got trouble. Remember what you cousin Juanita she say."

"She say some power gonna give me trouble with the holy man from the mountains. But I gonna take care of that a different way."

"What different way?"

"I gonna go to the mountains and do what I shoulda do a long time ago. I gonna get rid of that old man. I the president for life, I should be the leader of the religion, too."

"No president ever did that before," Estrada cautioned.

"No president ever as glorious as Generalissimo Corazon," the president said modestly.

"Hokay," said Estrada. "So what's you want to do?"

"I want you to put those cages in the middle of the town. Put guards around them. Put a sign on them that this is how Baqia treats CIA troublemakers. Then you drop everything else and go call the United States and tell them we breaking off the relations."

"Again? I did that yesterday."

"And I undid it today. You go do it."

"Why we do that, General?"

"Generalissimo," said Corazon.

"Right, Generalissimo. Why we do that?" Estrada asked,

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"Because we better off dealing with Russians. If I breaks with America, they yell a lot but they leave me alone. If I stays break with Russia, they send somebody to kill me. That's no fun. And it better to be communist. Nobody start yelling at us for having political prisons and no food for the peasants and like that. Only countries that line up with America has to feed people. Look at the Arabs. They got all that money but they don't pay for nothing in the United Nations. Only American allies got to pay."

"Shrewd, Generalissimo," said Estrada. "That all you want me to do?"

"No. When you gets that all done, get the limousine ready. We gonna go out into the mountains and we gonna get that old man and kill him dead."

"People not like that, killing the religious leader."

"People not know anything about it," Corazon said. "Stop worrying. Now I gotta go take a nap and when I wake up, then we go. Any new women around?"

"I haven't seen any."

"Okay, I go to sleep by myself. Go put them cages in the square. And don't forget the guards."

Ruby Gonzalez traded her trousers and shirt, even up, for a Caribbean-style mumu, a long shapeless flowered green gown. But the belt wasn't part of the deal, she insisted.

When the woman in the peddler's stall agreed, Ruby went in the back of the stall, put on the gown, and underneath it took off her other clothes. She buckled her trousers belt around her bare waist. It would be handy to jam a gun into if she could get to her room to get a gun.

Then she sat on the dirt floor, out of sight of anyone on the street, and began running her fingers

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through her Afro, pulling it straight up from her head. When she had finished, the pure circular outline of the Afro was gone. Hair stuck up in clumps, straight away from her head, as if she were continuously being jolted with electricity.

Then, with practiced fingers, she parted her hair into sections and began braiding it into tight neat rows that lay close to her head. It took her five minutes. When she was done, she stood up and gave her trousers and shirt to the peddler.

With the corn rows and the shapeless dress, Ruby looked enough like a native Baqian to pass. She would have had to smile that wide, even smile for someone to have suspected otherwise, because her teeth were white and perfect and no one else on the island that she had yet seen had a halfway decent mouth of teeth. No problem, she realized. Not much to smile about.

While she had worked on her hair, Ruby had been thinking. The white dodo and the old Oriental had come to free her. But she had not been in prison long enough for them to have been sent from the States on that mission. They must have been in Baqia already and had gotten the assignment while there. How? The most logical way was by telephone, although she knew the CIA was so lunatic sometimes that they might have used skywriters to send their secret agents their secret assignments.

The telephone, most likely. It was worth a chance. She found the headquarters, field office, maintenance division, installation unit, and operations center of the ding-a-ling National Baqian Supreme Telephone Network in a one-story cinder-block building at the end of the capital city's main street. The person on duty was the director, maintenance chief,

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installation coordinator, customer service representative, and operations officer. That meant it was her turn to ran the switchboard.

She was sleeping when Ruby went inside because Baqia's three outside telephones didn't get much business, so Ruby of course told her she understood how hard the woman worked and how little the government appreciated her efforts to make Baqia a leader in international communication and sure, wasn't it just a few hours ago that her boyfriend had told her how quick he had gotten a telephone call from his boss in the States, but he had lost his boss's phone number and where did that telephone call come from anyway? And Ruby wouldn't even ask except she knew that this woman would know everything about telephones and that's what she told her boyfriend-Ruby glanced at the nameplate on the desk-she told her boyfriend that Mrs. Colon would know anything and everything about the telephones because in Baqia everybody knew that Mrs. Colon was what kept the country running and what was that number again? And the name of the boss? And I bet you could just get that nice Doctor Smith on the telephone again real fast so I can give him my boyfriend's message, because if Mrs. Colon couldn't do it, it couldn't be done.

When Mrs. Colon got Dr. Smith back on the line, Ruby worried for a moment about her overhearing the conversation but the worry was unfounded. The operator went right back to sleep.

"Listen, you Doctor Smith?" "Yes."

"Well, they got your two men. They hurt." "My two men? What are you talking about?" "Look, don't jive me. I don't have a lot of time."

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Smith thought a moment. "Are they hurt badly?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. But don't worry about it. Anyway, I'm gonna take care of it."

"You? Who are you?"

"You and I have the same uncle," Ruby said. "The big guy in the striped pants."

"And the machine?" Smith said. "That's what's most important."

"Even more than your men?" asked Ruby.

"The machine is the mission," Smith said coldly. "Nothing is more important than that mission."

Smith had barely hung up when the red panic telephone rang inside the top left drawer of his desk.

"Yes, Mister President."

"What the hell is going on now? That lunatic Cora-zon has just broken relations with us again. What are your men doing, anyway?"

"They've been captured, sir," said Smith.

"Oh, my God," the President said.

"I was told not to worry," Smith said.

"Who told you that stupid thing?" the President snarled.

"Ruby Jackson Gonzalez."

"And who the hell is Ruby Jackson Gonzalez?"

"I think she works for you, Mister President," Smith said.

The President was silent a moment. He was remembering the CIA's "big effort" in Baqia. A woman. A black. Spanish-speaking. One Goddam person. Just one. He'd fix that CIA director's ass.

"She say anything else?" the President asked.

"Just one comment," Smith said.

"Which was.?"

"It's not really germane to our problem, sir," Smith said.

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"Let me be the judge of that," the President said. "What'd she say?"

"She said that I be one mean mother to work for," Smith said.

The afternoon sun was like a hammer pounding at his skull and Remo groaned as he came to. His body felt cramped, as if he had been tied in a knot, and it took him a moment to realize where he was. He was in some kind of cage; the buzzing around him was the sound of people talking. He squinted and opened his eyes. There were faces staring at him on all sides. People jabbering at him in Spanish. Mira. Mira. They were calling their friends. Look. Look. Mira. Mira.

They had caged him and he was in the city square of Ciudad Natividado. But where was Chiun?

Remo opened his eyes wide. It felt as if they had been glued shut and it took all his strength just to open them. There was another cage next to him and Chiun was in it. He was lying on his side, his face toward Remo and his eyes open.

"Chiun, are you all right?" Remo gasped.

"Speak Korean," Chiun said.

"I guess we've been captured," Remo said in his thin Korean.

"You are very perceptive."

Chiun was all right, still alive enough to be nasty.

"What was it?" Remo said.

"Apparently the machine with the rays."

"I didn't think he could hit us with it," Remo said.

"Probably he did not. But we were told it does not work well on drunks. It works best on those with well-developed nervous systems, whose senses all work. And since ours work so much better than any-

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one else's, just deflected rays from the machine rendered us this way."

A young boy slipped by the guard who stood in front of their cages and poked at Remo with a stick. Remo tried to grab it out of the child's hand, but the little boy easily pulled it away. Remo clenched his fist and he could not feel tension build up in his forearm. He was awake but without strength, without even the strength of an average man.

The child started to poke again with the stick, but the guard slapped the side of the child's head and the young boy ran away crying.

Remo looked to his other side for another cage. There was none.

"Where's Ruby?" he asked Chiun.

A woman's voice came from near his ear, softly. "Here's Ruby, dodo."

Remo turned to look into the face of a woman with corn rows and a native dress. Only by her smile was he sure it was Ruby Gonzalez.

He looked at her native dress again.

"Now that's real country," he said. "Don't ever grouse about my white socks again."

"I spoke to your boss, Doctor Smith," she said.

"You did? How'd you get to him?"

"Don't worry about it. He one mean bastard."

"That was him," Remo said.

"Anyways, I got to go after the machine first. But then I be back for you. You all right?"

"No strength," Remo said. "The strength's been drained."

Ruby shook her head. "I knew you was going to be trouble when I first saw you. I just knew it."

"Listen, just get us out of here."

"I can't do it now. Too many people. The head man

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here, he just went off in his limousine with his machine. I'm gonna follow him. I'll try to get you loose tonight. Meanwhile, you rest up, try to get some strength back. Trust yo Aunt Ruby."

"If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be here," Remo said.

"If it wasn't for me stopping you from going out that door at the jail, you'd be a puddle. I be back." Ruby saw the guard turn to look at her and she twisted her face into a mask of hatred and rage and began screaming at Remo in Spanish. "Yankee dog, Beast, Killer spy."

"All right, you," the guard said. "Get outa there."

Ruby winked at Remo and drifted off into the crowd, which was still pointing and jeering. Remo looked at the faces twisted in hatred at him and to close them out he shut his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

He was not afraid for himself, but he was overcome with a feeling of shame that Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, should be subjected to this humiliation. The thought filled him with an intense fury, but he could not feel the fury fill his muscles with strength.

Revenge would have to wait until later, he thought. At least until he woke up.

But that was all right. Revenge was a dish best served cold.

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CHAPTER TEN

Following Corazon was easy for Ruby after she stole the army jeep.

She just followed the sound of the gunshots, because Corazon considered himself a hunter and while he was being driven pegged shots through the window of his limousine at everything that was not rooted. And sometimes rooted.

He shot at deers, at squirrels, at jungle rats and lizards, at cats and dogs, and when he did not see any of those he shot at trees, bushes, and, as a last resort, grass.

Major Estrada, sitting in the back seat next to him, refilled the general's gun when it was necessary.

"I get rid this old guy," said Corazon, "and then I boss of everything." He blinked a shot at a stump, which he thought had blinked at him. "No more worry about the voodoo people in the hills. No more

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worry about the holy man leading a revolution. This take care of it all."

"Sounds good to me," said Estrada. He took the pistol from the general and refilled it from a box of shells he carried on the back shelf ofthe Mercedes limousine.

Corazon pressed the electric button to roll up the back window as the sky darkened quickly and a flash thunderstorm hit. It was one of the byproducts of the tropical breezes and the warm, humid weather. Every day there were more than a dozen thunderstorms, never lasting more than a few minutes, barely dropping enough rain to dampen the dust of the island.

Five minutes later, Corazon depressed the switch again and lowered the window. The sun was shining brightly.

They drove another twenty-five minutes before the driver stopped at the base of a small mountain. A narrow footpath curled its way around the side of the hill. It was not wide enough for a vehicle.

The nose of the car was stopped at a slick black lake of goo, extending eighty yards long by twenty yards across.

Corazon stepped from the car and looked at the oily pool.

"If nature had give us oil instead of tar, we would be wealthy men. A wealthy country," he said.

Estrada nodded.

"Still, tar is all right," Corazon said. He plunked a pebble onto the lake of pitch. It sat atop the shimmery surface, floating there. "Tar all right. None of us starve," the Generalissimo said.

He looked to the two soldiers in the front seat. "Come on along with that machine," he said. "And be careful. We gonna use it soon."

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He laughed a rich big belly laugh as he walked off, the three soldiers following him onto a small path that skirted the tar pit and led to the walk up the mountainside.

The four men were just skirting the pitch lake when Ruby Gonzalez' jeep pulled up behind the limousine. She saw them walking away, the two soldiers lugging the heavy mung machine, and she could see their destination was the small cluster of huts at the top of the hill. The sounds of drums resonated in the air, gently, as if from far away.

Ruby backed up her jeep and drove it into thick brush where it could not be seen from the road.

She got out of the vehicle and looked up at the broad back of Corazon, slowly moving up the mountain. He was followed by Estrada and the two soldiers carrying the machine. As she looked the sun moved from behind a cloud and shone down brightly on the black lake of pitch, and at that moment Corazon, Estrada, the two soldiers, the entire mountain seemed to shift in Ruby's vision, as if it had all moved twenty yards to the left. She blinked her eyes, not believing what she saw. She opened them again. The images she was watching were still displaced.

She realized she was seeing a mirage. The bright sun was shimmering on the rain water on the surface of the tar pit and the vapors acted like a giant prism, moving images from where they should be.

She filed the phenomenon away as incidental information, then pushed her way through the brush and overgrowth and around the left side of the tar pit and began to clamber up the hill.

Her direct path was rougher, but would get her to the village before Corazon and his men.

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As she neared the crest of the small mountain and the grass huts there, the sound of the drums grew louder.

There were a half-dozen huts, built in a semicircle around a pit in which logs burned, despite the blistering heat of the Baqian summer. The drums which Ruby thought might come from the village were still sounding, from even farther away.

There was a sweet flower smell in the air, the scent of cheap after-shave.

As Ruby pushed onto the crest of the hill, she felt a strong pair of arms encircle her from behind. She looked down. They were bare black arms, a man's.

"I want to talk to the old man," she said in island Spanish. "Hurry, fool."

"Who are you?" a voice asked. It was a voice that sounded as if it had been rebounding around the walls of a tunnel for six weeks before reaching someone's ears.

"Some people are coming here to kill him and you, fool, stand here with your arms caressing my breasts. Quickly. Take me to him. Or are you afraid of a woman who carries no weapons?"

Another voice bit the air.

"A woman without weapons would be a strange woman indeed." She looked across the clearing. A small, wizened man with skin the color of roasted chestnuts was walking toward her. He wore black cotton trousers with ragged bottoms and no shirt. Ruby guessed his age at seventy.

He nodded as he reached them and the arms came loose from around Ruby. She bowed to the man and kissed his hand. She knew nothing of voodoo, but marks of courtesy were marks of courtesy everyplace.

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"Now what is this about someone coming to kill me?" the man asked. Behind him, Ruby saw people peering from behind the grass huts.

"Corazon and his men. They are on the hillside now. He wants to kill you because he fears you threaten his rule."

Without taking his eyes from Ruby's, the old man snapped his fingers. Behind him a young woman ran from behind one of the huts over to the edge of the clearing, looking down on the path below.

She scurried back to the old man.

"They come, master. Four of them. They carry a box."

"Corazon's new weapon," said Ruby. "It kills."

"I have heard of this new weapon," the old man said. He looked at the man behind Ruby and nodded. "All right, Edved. You know what to do."

The man brushed by Ruby and walked away. She saw he was a giant of a black man, almost seven feet tall, skin glistening plum-colored in the hot afternoon sun.

"My son," the old man said.

"Most impressive," Ruby said.

The old man took her elbow and led her to the other side of the small plateau.

"I guess it would not be good for the Generalissimo to find you here?" he said.

"No, it wouldn't."

"An American?" he asked as he led Ruby down the hillside, away from Corazon's men.

Yes.

"I thought so. But you speak the island language well. And your costume would fool almost anyone." Forty feet down the hillside, the old man stopped

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on a flat outcropping of rock. He pushed aside heavy brush and vines that grew from a tree and Ruby saw the opening to a cave. The cool air from inside felt like full-blast air conditioning.

"Come. We will be safe here and we can talk," he said.

He led her inside and as the vines closed, they muffled the sound of the distant drums, beating their insistent forty beats a minute, and she realized that she had become so accustomed to their sound that she no longer heard them.

The old man squatted on the ground in the dark cave, managing somehow to look regal in that inelegant posture.

"My name is Samedi," he said.

The name hit Ruby like a sudden attack of migraine.

She was five years old again and visiting her grandmother in Alabama. And one evening she wandered away from the shabby little house near the fly-buzzing pond and down the road and found herself outside a cemetery.

Night was falling fast, but she saw people inside the cemetery and she leaned on the stone wall to watch, because they were dancing and they seemed to be having a good time. Ruby started dancing, too, where she was standing, wishing she was grown so she could go over and dance with the big people. And then their dance stopped and a man with no shirt but wearing an Abraham Lincoln stovepipe hat came out of the far darkness, and the dancers fell to the ground and began to chant.

It was hard for Ruby to make out what they were saying because she had never heard the word before,

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but she listened carefully, and she recognized it. They were saying:

"Samedi. Samedi. Samedi."

Suddenly, Ruby didn't feel like dancing anymore. A chill swept her body, a sense of nameless fear, and she remembered she was five years old and this was a graveyard and it was night and she was far from home, and she bolted and ran back to her grandmother.

The old woman comforted the frightened child in her big warm arms.

"What happened, child?" she asked. "What give you this fright?"

"What is Samedi, Granna?"

She felt the old woman stiffen.

"You was down de cemetery?" the old woman said.

Ruby nodded.

"Some things child just don' gotta know about, 'cep-pin' you stays 'way from de graveyard at night," her grandmother said.

She squeezed Ruby hard to her, as if to accentuate her order, and Ruby stayed there, feeling warm and loved and protected, but still wondering, and later when her grandmother tucked her into bed, she asked again.

"Granna, please tell me, what is Samedi?"

"All right, chile, 'cause I get no rest iffen I don' answer you. Samedi be the leader of them people you saw dancin' down there."

"Then why was I ascared?"

"Because those people not like us. Not like you and me."

"Why aren't they like us, Granna?" Ruby asked.

Her grandmother sighed in exasperation. "Because they be already dead. Now hush your face and go to

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sleep." And the next day her grandmother would not speak about it anymore.

Ruby's mind was back in the cave and the old man Samedi was talking to her.

"Why would Corazon be here to kill me?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Ruby. "There are two Americans in town and he thinks that they're here to make you the ruler of this country."

"These Americans, they are with you?"

"No. We came separately to Baqia. They are now captives, so I am responsible for them. Corazon must want you dead so they will have no chance of succeeding in making you ruler."

The old man looked at Ruby with coal black eyes that sparkled even in the faint light of the cave.

"I don't think so," he said. "The government is Corazon's. The religious life is mine. It has always been that way and these mountains are far from Ciudad Natividado."

"But you thought enough of what I said to come to this cave with me to avoid Corazon," Ruby said. "You did not do that because you trust him as a brother."

"No. One must never trust Corazon too much. He killed his own father to become president. If he were to be leader of the island's religion he would rule for life. No one could oppose him."

"He has the army. Why hasn't he come for you before then?"

"The people of the island would not tolerate an attack on a holy man," Samedi said.

"But if they never knew? If you were one day just to vanish from the earth and Corazon made himself religious leader, he would be invincible. And as sure

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as God made green apples, he would lead Baqia into disaster and maybe war."

"You overstate it," Samedi said. "He is not a good man. He is not to be trusted. But he is not the devil."

"He is the devil," said Ruby. "And that is why I want you to help me overthrow him."

Samedi thought for only a few seconds before shaking his head no. Over the very faint thump of distant drums, there were suddenly women's screams to be heard, drifting down from the mesa above their heads.

Samedi cocked his head toward the sound, then looked back at Ruby.

"Corazon is asking where I am," he said. "But they will not speak. The only words spoken in these hills are the words of the drums and they speak all words to all men. No. As long as Corazon does not attack me, I will not attack him."

They sat in silence. There was a sharp crack and another set of women's screams and then all was silence except for the faraway thumping and bumping of the drums, like slow lazy rubber hammers attacking the skull.

They continued sitting in silence until they heard a woman's voice. "Master, Master! Come quickly."

Samedi led Ruby out onto the hillside, then strode quickly up the hill to the grass huts. A woman waited for him at the top of the hill. Tears rolled down her black face, like glycerine drops on chocolate pudding.

"O Master! Master," she sobbed.

"Be strong now," he said, pressing her shoulder. "The general is gone?"

"Yes, Master, but..."

Samedi had walked away from her. He stood in the

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center of the village, among men and women who were looking down at the ground where there was a greenish black oily slick.

Ruby pushed through the people and stood at his side.

Samedi looked around at all the faces. They were weeping quietly.

"Where is Edved?" he asked.

The silent weeping turned to sobbing and screams of anguish.

"Master, Master," one woman said. She pointed down at the green slick on the dry dusty dirt of the hilltop.

"Enough weeping. Where is Edved?"

"There," she said. She pointed at the slick of green. "There is Edved," and she let out a shriek that would curdle milk.

Samedi sank slowly to his knees and looked at the bile on the ground. He extended his hand as if to touch it, then withdrew it.

He knelt there for long minutes. When he rose and turned to Ruby there were tears in the corners of his eyes.

"Corazon has declared a war," he said slowly. "What is it you want me to do? I will do anything."

Ruby could not take her eyes off the green slick on the ground. The thought that somehow Corazon had reduced that giant young man to nothing more than a memory and a puddle made her shudder with loathing.

She looked into Samedi's eyes.

"Anything you want," he repeated.

And then he clapped his hands. Once. The sound reverberated like a pistol shot over the tiny village

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and carried out into the bright afternoon air, like an order.

And the drums stopped.

And the hills and the mountains were silent.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

There were no streetlights in Ciudad Natividado.

The city square was pitchblack and still except for the throbbing in Remo's temple.

But it wasn't throbbing. He was awake now and he realized the throbbing came from outside himself. It was the drums and they were louder than he had heard them before. Closer.

He lay quietly in his cage, feeling the cool of the Baqian night. He could sense that the guards standing alongside the cages were edgy. They shuffled back and forth from foot to foot and they spun around nervously, looking behind them, every time a night animal cried.

And the drums were getting louder, growing in intensity.

Trying to make no sound, Remo slowly extended his fingers toward the nearest bar of his cage.

His fingers circled the inch-thick metal. He

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squeezed, but felt no give of metal under his hand. He was still without strength. His body ached from the cramped position he had slept in.

He turned quietly in his cage, moving his head around to see how Chiun was.

His face was near the bars on the side of Chiun's cage. Through the bars he saw Chiun's face. The Oriental's eyes were open. His finger was at his mouth and he gave Remo a shushing gesture to keep him quiet.

They lay still and listened to the drums grow louder.

Louder and closer, louder and closer the distant thumping which had hung over the island like weather now was taking on a physical reality by its changing.

And then the drums stopped. The air was heavy with stillness.

And then there was another sound, a scratch as if something were being dragged across gravel. Remo listened intently. His muscles were weak but his senses seemed to be coming back. It was someone walking, scuffing his feet in the gravel and dirt. No. Two people walking.

And then Remo saw them.

Two men. Fifty yards away, at the end of the main street of Ciudad Natividado. They were shirtless and wore white trousers. Even in the dim moonlight and the occasional beam of light through a window of the presidential palace, Remo could see their eyes, bugged, large whites, staring out of their heads.

They were scuffing forward now, their feet kicking up small swirls of dust in the dry street.

They were only twenty-five yards away when the guards spun and saw them.

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"Stop!" one guard shouted.

The two men kept coming on, slowly, like glaciers inexorably powerful, and they lifted their hands in front of them as if they were divers approaching the edge of the high board. They opened their mouths and a thin low wail came forth. And the drams started again, so close that it seemed to Remo that their distance must be measured in feet now, not miles.

One of the guards shouted, "Stop or we'll shoot!"

The moan from the two men grew higher in pitch, climbing the scale of sound until it was a bitter high wailing scream.

The guards waited, looked at each other, then screamed themselves as the two men came clearly into sight.

"Duppy!" screamed one.

"Zombie!" shouted the other.

They dropped their rifles and ran toward the presidential palace.

Now Remo heard footsteps running quickly in the dirt street and then he felt his cage being lifted into the air and he was being carried away. When he looked back, the two men in white trousers had turned and were shuffling back the way they had come, their scuffing feet still kicking up dust in the street, but silent now, their wailing ended. Then they vanished into the dark at the end of the street.

Remo looked up to see who was carrying his cage but he saw only black faces against a blacker night.

They were carried into a small wooden shack. Its interior was dimly lit with candles and the windows were sealed with tar paper to prevent any light from spilling outside.

Remo looked up. Four black men had been carrying him and Chiun. Wordlessly they went to work on

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the cage padlocks with heavy bolt-cutters. Two strong snips and the cages were open. Remo crawled out, then stood up on the dirt floor. He stretched his muscles and almost fell to the ground. Chiun was standing alongside him and he put a hand onto Remo's arm for support.

The four black men glided toward the door and were gone.

Remo turned to look at them, to thank them, but before he could speak he heard a familiar voice.

He turned around to see Ruby staring at him, wearing a green tentlike dress, her hair neatly arranged in corn rows. She was staring at him, shaking her head.

"Minute I see you," she said, "I know you gonna be nothin' but trouble, dodo."

"You're cute, Ruby," Remo said.

He reached forward to touch her, lost his balance, and fell forward. Ruby caught him in her arms.

"I don' know what you get paid," she said as she struggled him over to a cot on the floor, "and I don' wanna know, 'cause it gonna be more than I make and I gonna he sick, 'cause anythin' they pay you's too much. Lay down and let Ruby fix you up."

She arranged Remo on the cot, then helped Chiun to the other cot in the room.

"I gonna get some food in you. Both you too skinny."

"We don't eat most things," Remo said. "We have a special diet."

"You eat what I gives you," said Ruby. "You think this some fancy white man's hotel? I gotta get you fixed up so we can take care of the general and get us outa here in one piece."

"And just how do you propose to do that?" asked Remo. "Corazon's got the machine and the army."

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"Yeah, fish, but there something he ain't got."

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"Me," Ruby said.

She went to Chiun and pulled a thin clean sheet up over him.

"Why do you call Remo fish?" asked Chiun.

"He look like a fish," she said. "He got no lips at all."

"He can't help that," Chiun said. "It is the way of his kind."

"He can't help it but that don' make it no better," said Ruby. "Now go to sleep."

Then she was quiet and in the background as he drifted off to sleep, Remo heard the drums begin again.

Generalissimo Corazon was in his long white nightgown when the two frightened guards were led into the presidential sitting room.

They prostrated themselves on the floor before him.

"It was the dapples" one of them wept. "Zombies."

"So you dropped your weapons and fled like children," Corazon said.

"They were coming for us," the other guard cried. "The drums stopped and then they came down the street at us and they had their arms up and they was coming for us."

"It was the voodoo. The zombies," the other guard tried to explain. "The evil power."

"The power, hah?" Corazon yelled. "I show you the power. I show you who gots the power, me or the voodoo. On your feet. Stand up."

He had the two men stand facing away from him and then took the drape off the mung machine and pressed the button. There was a loud crack, a zapping

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noise, and as the two men melted into mush Corazon shouted again, "Now you see power. Real power. The power of Corazon. That be power."

Major Estrada stood on the side of the room quietly watching, noting that this time Corazon had pressed only one button to fire the machine and remembering which button it was.

"And don't you just be standing there, Estrada," Corazon called out. "You go get me some salt."

Estrada left and went to the kitchen of the palace where he took two saltshakers. One he put into his pocket and the other he brought back to Corazon, who sat in his gilt throne chair, looking glum.

Corazon took the shaker, looked at Estrada shrewdly, then unscrewed the top of the shaker and stuck his big index finger into the small jar. He tasted it to be sure it was salt. He nodded satisfaction.

"Now I got the salt, I all right," Corazon said. "The zombie, he can't live with the salt on him. And tomorrow I gonna go kill that Samedi, and I be the spiritual leader of this country forever and ever, amen." He gestured toward the spots on the floor. "And you, clean up that mess."

Remo awakened to the smell of food. It was a strange smell, one he could not place.

"'Bout time you get you lazy butt up," said Ruby working at a wood-fire stove in a comer of the shack's single room.

"Is Chiun awake yet?"

"He sleeping still, but he older than you. He got a right to sleep late and hanging 'round with you must give him lots of things to worry about and sleep off."

"What are you cooking? It smells awful," Remo

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said. He flexed his muscles but realized with annoyance that the strength had not returned to them.

Ruby's voice rose in a piercing shriek. "Don't you worry about what it is. It put some flesh on you. You eat, you hear?" She was spooning food onto a plate. Watching her in her shapeless green dress, Remo could see the well-formed turn of her buttocks, the long line of thigh outlined by the material, the full, high breasts. He moved up into a sitting position on the cot.

"You know you'd be a good-looking woman if it wasn't for that hair of yours," he said. "It looks like something that was done by a high wind in a wheat field."

"Yeah, that's true," Ruby said thoughtfully. "But if I wore my 'fro, they recognize me around here for sure. This way is better, least till we be getting home. Here. Eat this."

She handed the plate to Remo, who examined it carefully. It was all vegetables-green stringy things and yellow stringy things. He had never seen any of them before.

"What is this? I'm not eating anything until I know what it is. I'm not eating any disguised neckbones or chitlins or like that," he said.

"It's just greens. You eat it." She began putting more on a plate for Chiun.

"What kind of greens?" Remo asked.

"What you mean, what kind of greens? It's greens. Greens be greens. What you need, a taster? Think you a king and somebody trying to poison you? You ain't no king, just a trouble-making turkey dodo fish-lip. Eat."

And because Remo feared that if he didn't Ruby

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would turn her hundred-mile-an-hour earth-moving screech of a voice on him, he tasted some.

It wasn't too bad, he decided. And nourishment felt good in his body. He saw Chiun's eyes open. Ruby must have seen it too, because she was quickly at Chiun's side, cooing at the old man, helping him to sit up and gently but firmly planting a plate in his lap with orders to "eat this all up and don't leave none."

Chiun nodded and picked slowly at the food, but ate it all.

"I am not familiar with this food, but it was good," Chiun said.

Remo finished his, too.

"Good, there's more," Ruby said. "It put strength back in your bodies."

She refilled their plates, then sat on a low wooden footstool and watched them eat, as if she were counting their chews to make sure they didn't cheat.

When they were done, she stacked the plates on the stove, then went back to sit on her stool. "I think we got to come to an agreement," she said. Chiun nodded. Remo just looked at her. "Now I'm taking charge here," she said. Chiun nodded again. "Why you?" asked Remo.

"Because I know what I'm doing," Ruby said. "Now you know I'm from the CIA. I don't know much about where you two are coming from, except it's something I probably don't wanna know about. But let's face it, you two just ain't much. I mean, you do a pretty good trick with that listening to people's feet so you know they carrying a gun, but what else do you do? You, dodo, you almost get yourself shot up by a guard and you bofe wind up in cages and Ruby's got to bail you out." She shook her head. "Not

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much to talk about. Now I want to get outa here alive, so we do it my way. I gonna get rid of that Corazon and get somebody else running this place and we gonna get his machine and then we going back to America. That all right with you, old gentle-mans?"

"His name is Chiun," Remo snapped. "Not 'old gentlemans.'"

"That all right with you, Mister Chiun?" Ruby asked.

"It is all right."

"Good," Ruby said. "Then it's agreed."

"Hey, wait a minute," said Remo. "What about me? You didn't ask me. Don't I count?"

"I don't know," Ruby said. "Let's hear you count."

"Aaah," Remo said in disgust.

"No, fish," said Ruby, "you don't count. You got nothin' to say about nothin.' And one thing more, when I get us all outa here-me and the old gentle-mans, Mister Chiun-we got a deal about that learning how people are carrying guns, right?"

"Right," said Chiun. "Forty percent."

"Twenty," said Ruby.

"Thirty," said Remo.

"All right," Ruby said to Remo. She pointed to Chiun. "But he pays you outa his share. Maybe you get enough to buy yourself some new socks." She sniffed her disdain. "Country," she said.

"All right, Madam Gandhi. Now that you're in charge, you mind telling us how and when you're going to move against Corazon?"

"The how don't concern you, 'cause you just mess it up. The when is now. We already started. Eat some more greens."

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"That's right, Remo. Eat some more greens," Chiun said.

Generalissimo Corazon had drafted the proclamation carefully. The old hungan had slipped through his fingers yesterday and the two Americans had escaped, but it did not matter. He had the mung machine and it worked against the Americans and it worked against the hungans family. He had proved it yesterday when he had obliterated the high priest's son. So he had no fear any longer as he drafted the proclamation appointing himself "God for Life, Ruler Forever, President Eternal of All Baqia."

He came out on the steps of the palace leading to the courtyard to read it to his troops before he led them to the mountains to flush out the old voodoo leader, Samedi.

But where were the troops?

Corazon looked around the palace courtyard. There were no soldiers to be seen. He glanced upwards at the flagpole. Hanging from the rope beneath the Baqian flag was a stuffed dummy. It was dressed in a soldier's uniform and wore riding boots and had a chestful of medals. It was grossly overpadded and meant to represent Corazon. Hanging from its chest was a cloth sign. A breeze caught the pennant and floated it out straight, so Corazon could read the words:

"The hungan of the hills say Corazon will die. He is a pretender to the throne of Baqia."

Generalissimo Corazon dropped the proclamation on the stone steps and fled inside the palace.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

It took four direct orders from Generalissimo Corazon to get a soldier to climb the flagpole and take down the dummy of the general and the threatening banner.

While he climbed, the drums began beating louder and the soldiers in the guard posts around the palace wall looked toward the hills in fear.

"Now burn it," Major Estrada said after the soldier had cut the dummy loose, to fall on the ground, and then slid back down the flagpole.

"Not me, Major," said the soldier. "Don't make me do that."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I probably dead already for what I do. Don't make me go burning no magic."

"There is no magic except El Presidente's magic," snapped Estrada.

"Good. Let El Presidente's magic remove the

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dummy," the soldier said. "I will not." He picked up his rifle and walked back to his guard station.

Estrada scratched his head, then dragged the dummy to a maintenance room near the palace garage, where he threw it on a pile of garbage.

Corazon thanked Estrada for removing the effigy. The president sat in his throne room, the saltshaker tied about his neck on a leather thong.

"We going to get rid of that old hungan in the mountains," he said.

"Who's going to do it?" asked Estrada.

"Me. You. The army."

"They scared. You be lucky to get six soldiers to go with you."

"They're afraid of what?"

"You hear those drums getting louder? They peeing their pants," Estrada said.

"I got the machine."

"The machine is a month old," Estrada said. "They haven't had time to learn to be afraid of it. But they been afraid of these drums all their lives."

"We gonna go anyway and get that old man. Then nobody is left to challenge me. The Americans probably on their way home by now."

"When you going to go?" asked Estrada.

"We are going as soon as I decide to go," Corazon said. He waved Estrada away with his hand.

It was 9 A.M.

By 9:45 A.M., a new dummy of Generalissimo Corazon hung from the flagpole in the palace courtyard.

None of the guards had seen anybody lift the dummy up the flag rope. And none could explain how the body of Private Torrez, who had climbed the pole

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to remove the first dummy, had gotten to the base of the flagpole.

Torrez was dead. His heart had been cut from his body.

This time no one would go up the flagpole to remove the manikin.

Estrada told this to Corazon, who came out onto the side steps of the palace and shouted:

"Hey, you, up there in the guard tower. Climb up that pole and get that dummy down."

The guard kept his back to Corazon and looked out over Ciudad Natividado.

"Hey, I calling you. Don't you hear me?"

The guard did not move a muscle to respond.

Corazon yelled orders to three other guards.

They ignored him.

And silence hung over the courtyard as Corazon stopped yelling, silence made deeper by the throbbing of the drums.

For the first time, Corazon looked at the dummy. It was another stuffed soldier's uniform, replete with medals imitating Corazon's fruit-salad chest.

A banner was tacked to the chest of this dummy, too. A dark cloud passed overhead, carrying a hint of rain and a puff of wind. It unfurled the banner.

The legend read:

"I wait for you today. At the pits. My power against your power."

Corazon screamed an anguished cry, compounded of hatred and annoyance and fear.

He turned to Estrada.

"Round up as many men as you can for this afternoon. We going up there to get rid of this man once and for all."

"Right, El Presidente," said Estrada. "Right."

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Corazon went inside to wait.

When Remo awoke from his nap, he knew it was back. His breathing was low and slow, filling his lungs with air, and he could feel the oxygen coursing through his body, flooding his muscles with a quiet energy. His senses were sharp. As he had ever since arriving in Baqia he heard the drums, but he also heard children and an occasional vehicle and chickens. One chicken was having its neck wrung. A jeep went by, tapping the tune of a defective cylinder. Children were skipping rope nearby. The smell of vegetables was in the air, but Remo no longer had to wonder what Ruby had cooked for them. He smelled turnip greens and some kind of mustardy vegetable, and there was a faint cooking aroma of vinegar.

"Chiun," Remo called as he hopped up off his cot, "I'm back together again."

"Sheeit," came Ruby's voice. "Everybody watch theyselves now. He's back together again. As bad as new."

Ruby was sitting on her stool in front of Chiun's cot. Chiun was seated. They were playing dice on the sheet.

"Who's winning?" Remo asked.

"I do not understand this game," Chiun said.

"I'm winning," Ruby said. "Two hundred dollars."

Chiun was shaking his head. "If she rolls a seven, she wins. I roll a seven and I lose. This I do not understand."

"Just the way the rules are," Ruby said. "It's all right. I trust you for the money. Besides we got to stop now."

She came to Remo and whispered, "How's he do that?"

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"Do what?"

"Roll a seven whenever he wants. They my dice, too."

"That's our business," Remo said. "We're gambling experts for the U.S. government. We came down here to open a luxury hotel and casino. We were going to open one in Atlantic City but we couldn't figure out who to bribe."

"Stop talking smart," Ruby said.

"Got any more greens?" Remo asked.

"You slept through lunch," Ruby said. "You slow, you blow."

Til show you how to roll the dice if you feed me," Remo bribed.

"We don't have time," Ruby said. "Besides, the greens all gone. Old gentlemans eat them all."

"Too bad. I'll show you what you're missing. Chiun, toss me the dice, please."

Ruby watched. Chiun held the two red dice in his right hand, looking at the white spots. He curled his long-nailed fingers, then propelled the dice from his palm. Faster than Ruby's eyes could follow, they sped across the ten feet of space between the two men, whirring.

Remo plucked them out of the air between his fingers, like a magician materializing a back-palmed card.

"Watch now," he said to Ruby. "I'll play you for ten dollars."

He shook the dice, called "Nine" and dropped the pair on the dirt floor. They hit, rolled, and turned up six and three.

Remo picked them up again. "Four," he said. "Hard way." He rolled the dice across the floor in a pair of twos.

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He picked them up again. "Pick a number," he said. "Any number."

"Twelve," Ruby said.

Remo shook the dice and rolled a pair of sixes in the dirt.

"Twelve," he said proudly.

"Boxcars! You lose," Ruby shrieked. "Where's my ten dollars?"

Remo looked at her in astonishment. "Chiun. I know how you lost."

"How?"

"She cheated."

"You just a sore loser," Ruby said. "I collect later. Come on now, we got to go." As they went out the back door of the shack, Ruby told Remo, "I forget the ten dollars if you teach me to roll dice like that."

"Anybody can learn," Remo said.

"How long it taker

"Average person, forty years, four hours a day. You, twenty years."

"Then it took you sixty years and you ain't that old. How you do it?" Ruby demanded.

She was leading them toward a pre-World War II green Plymouth that looked like a "speed kills" display by the National Safety Council.

"It's all feel," Remo said. "You feel the dice."

"I wanna know how you do it, not how you feel. You decide you going to tell me, you and me we can make a deal."

"I'll think about it," Remo said.

Ruby herded them into the car, started the motor, and drove off. She drove around the backs of shacks, avoiding children and chickens, until she was out of the main city. Then she cut through some barren flat-land to get onto the main road. Remo noted approv-

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ingly that she drove the old car expertly, not riding the clutch, shifting smoothly and changing ,gears at the precise moment to get the maximum power out of the old wreck.

"Mind telling us where we're going?" Remo asked. "We gonna finish this all up now, so I can get home," Ruby said. "By the time I get back to my wig factory, those damn 'Bamas, they have theyselves a union and everything. This trip be costing me money." Her tone left no doubt that Ruby thought losing money was important.

"How are we going to finish it up?" Remo said. "Correction. I'm going to finish it up. You going to watch. This no job for a dice tosser." "How?" Remo insisted.

"We gonna overthrow Corazon and we gonna put a new man in. And we gonna get that machine of his and you going to take it back to Washington with you."

"You've got it all figured out," Remo said. "Trust your old Ruby. And stay outa the way if things hot up, 'cause I don't wanna have to explain how I lost you."

"Are there any more home like you?" asked Remo. "Nine sisters. You wanna get married?" "Not unless they cook like you." Ruby shook her head. "They wouldn't have you, anway. Except one of 'em, she kinda stupid, she maybe would take you."

"You know, you're the first CIA type I ever met who could cook," Remo said.

"Stop talking stuff to me," Ruby said. "You know I'm the first CIA type you ever met who knew how to do anything. But they pav on time." "Hear, hear,'' called Chiun from the back seat. "You 171

see, Remo. This young lady knows what is important."

"You got trouble collecting from that Doctor Smith? He a tight and tired-ass-sounding old thing."

"Actually," Chiun said, "only Remo works for Smith. I work for the President. But Smith is supposed to pay us. He is awful. If I were not on him constantly, we would never get our stipend. And it is not nearly what we are worth."

"Well, maybe you," Ruby said, "but . . ." She nodded toward Remo.

"Chiun, knock it off," Remo said. "You get your pay all the time. You have it delivered by special submarine, for God's sake. And I don't notice you wanting for anything."

"Respect," Chiun said. "There are things, Remo, that money cannot buy. Respect."

Remo could tell by the way Ruby set her lips that she did not agree with Chiun, but wasn't prepared to argue it with him.

Ciudad Natividado was now far behind them. They were speeding along Route 1 toward the far-off hills. The dusty road was a meager two-lane strip cut through an overhang of jungle trees, so it seemed to Remo as if he were riding through a green tunnel. Even inside the car the sound of the drums was growing louder.

Remo heard a faint tapping sound and realized a light shower was falling. He was protected from it by the overhang of the trees.

Ruby noticed it, too. "Good," she said. "The old man told me it'd rain. We need that."

"Will someone please tell me what you're up to?" Remo asked exasperatedly.

"You'll see. We're almost there." She slowed down

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and as she did she twisted in her seat to look behind her. Far behind were two cars.

"'Less I miss my guess, that be Corazon," Ruby said. "Right on time."

Ahead Remo saw the black pitch pit at the base of the hill. It seemed to be giving off steam. Ruby pulled the old Plymouth off the road through brush and past walls of vines and stumps until she was fifty feet from the road, as unseeable as an Alabama motorcycle cop hiding behind a billboard.

"Now you two wait here. And keep your little lips still, you," she told Remo. "We don' want nothin' going wrong."

She jumped from the car and a few moments later had vanished into the brush.

"That woman thinks I'm an idiot," Remo groused to Chiun.

"Hmmm," said Chiun. "The rain has stopped."

"Well?"

"Well, what?" asked Chiun.

"What do you think about her thinking I'm an idiot?" Remo demanded.

"Some are wise beyond their years."

Ruby met Samedi walking slowly down the hillside toward the pitch pit. He wore the same shirtless black trousers and bare feet, but for the occasion he wore a top hat and a white collar around his bare neck. In his hand he carried a long bone that looked like the thighbone of a human being.

"Hurry, holy one," Ruby said in Spanish. "Corazon is almost on us."

He glanced up at the sky. The sun was moving out from behind a gray cloud.

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"The sun will shine," he said. "It is a good day for doing good works."

He followed Ruby down the hillside. She stopped ten feet from the tar pits, near a large rock outcropping.

"Here you must sit," she said.

He nodded and sank into a squatting position.

"You know what to do?" she said.

"Yes," he said. "I will know what to do to the murderer of my child and my land."

"Fine," said Ruby. "I will be near."

A few minutes later Ruby was back at the old Plymouth. The heavy roar of Corazon's limousine and a small backup jeep with four soldiers in it grew louder.

"Want to watch the fun?" Ruby asked.

"Wouldn't miss it," Remo said.

He and Chiun followed her to a break in the foliage from which they could peer out over the tar pit.

"Who's the old guy in the funny clothes?" asked Remo.

"He is Samedi," said Chiun, cautiously.

"How you know that?" piped Ruby. "I just found out yesterday his name's Sarnedi."

"Samedi is not a name, young woman. It is a title. He is leader of the undead."

"That mean zombies," Ruby explained to Remo.

"I know what it means."

"I see some of them walking around up there yesterday," she said, "and I don't know if they zombies or they just buzzing with something. But whatever they are, it was them that got you out of the cages."

"The zombie need not be evil," Chiun said. "He does the bidding of Samedi, the master, and if the master be good, the works be good."

"Well, this gonna be very good works. He gettin'

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rid of Corazon for us," Ruby said. "Shush now, they here."

The black presidential limousine rolled up and slid to a smooth halt only a few feet from the pit of pitch. The jeep stopped behind it and four soldiers got out of the jeep and stood with their rifles across their chests.

Corazon got out the door of the limousine on Remo's side and hoisted the mung machine out in his big thick arms. His chauffeur and another guard, both carrying pistols, got out the front doors. After Corazon set the machine on the ground, Major Estrada slid across the seat and came out the same door.

Corazon looked toward the tar pit. He saw the old man sitting on the rock, no more than one hundred feet away.

A broad smile split Corazon's chocolate face.

He pushed the mung machine in front of him. Its wheels were too small to roll smoothly over the rough road surface and the machine bumped and skidded as Corazon guided it toward the edge of the black lake. The pitch spit heavy fumes into the air. Heat shimmered from its surface as the hot afternoon sun dried the small shower sprinkle of a few minutes before.

"Samedi, I am here," Corazon bellowed. "To match your magic against mine."

"Your magic is no magic at all," Samedi called back. "It is the trickery of a fool, an evil fool. That trickery soon will be with us no more."

"We will see," Corazon said. "We will see."

The sound of the drums grew louder. It seemed to infuriate Corazon, who hoisted the mung machine into his arms. He aimed carefully at Samedi, who sat motionless on the stone, then pressed the button.

There was a ripping sound and then a green dart of

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light flashed out and splashed against the hill. But it missed Samedi by twenty feet.

"Aaargghh," screamed Corazon in enraged fury. He aimed the machine and fired again. Again he missed.

In the brush, Remo said, "He's taking dead aim. Why's he missing?"

"He is not seeing Samedi," Chiun explained. 'The vapor from the tar is creating a mirage and he is firing at the vision he thinks he sees."

"Thass right," Ruby said.

Corazon took a deep breath. He aimed carefully and fired again. Behind him, his soldiers leaned on their rifles, watching. Major Estrada sat on the front fender of the limousine, his watchful eyes surveying everything.

Corazon's shot missed and this time the green glow was a weak pale shimmer.

"He's not giving it a chance to charge up," Remo said softly.

Corazon shouted and in a mad rage raised the mung machine over his head and tried to throw it at Samedi. But the heavy machine sailed only ten feet through the air, then landed on the lake of pitch with a dull plop. It lay there like the hull of a wrecked ship half-buried in sand at low tide.

"And now you have no magic at all," Samedi called out. He clapped his hands and rising from clumps of brush on the hillside as if they were instant blooming trees rose ten, twelve, twenty black men, wearing white trousers and no shirts, all with the glazed eyes that Remo had seen the night before in the two men who had walked down Giudad Natividado's main street and terrified the guards.

"Attack," cried Samedi and the men raised their arms and began to shuffle down the hillside.

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Corazon realized that he had thrown away his only true hope of staying in power. He grabbed a stick and leaned over the edge of the lake, trying to spear the mung machine and pull it back to him.

As he teetered on the edge, Major Estrada tossed away his cigarette, took a deep breath, then charged forward. His outstretched arms hit Corazon midrump and El Presidente went tumbling forward into the lake of pitch. The black goo sucked at him, pulling him partly down, and he shouted, but he was stuck there, like a fossil embedded in amber. "I wasn't countin' on that," Ruby said. Estrada turned to the soldiers. "Now we return to the real island magic," he shouted. "Fire on them. Raise those rifles. If you want to live, fire." He pointed toward Samedi.

The soldiers looked hesitant. The zombies now had split into two groups and were coming around the lake toward the soldiers.

Estrada reached into a pocket of his tunic and pulled out a cloth bag of salt. He drew a large circle on the ground with the white powder and called the soldiers.

"Come inside. The dupples cannot harm you here. And then we rid the island of this foolishness." He waved his arm and the soldiers moved up to join him. Ten feet out in the lake Corazon had wrapped his arms around the mung machine and was screaming for help.

"Pull me out of here. Estrada, come get me." "Sorry, Generalissimo," Estrada called. "I've got Other things to do."

He grabbed the rifle of the nearest soldier and pushed it up to the soldier's shoulder. "Fire that

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weapon," he ordered. He pulled his automatic pistol from his holster.

"They gonna get the old man," Ruby said.

Remo looked at Chiun.

"Since I don't work for the President and I'm only here as a spectator, Chiun, what do you think?" he said.

"I think you are absolutely right," Chiun said.

And before Ruby could speak, Chiun and Remo had leaped from the ground and sliced their way through the heavy brush as if it were not there.

The soldiers had their rifles to their shoulders and were all aiming at Samedi. Estrada's finger was tightening on the trigger when Remo and Chiun hit the circle of salt.

Before Ruby's wondering eyes the bodies of khaki-clad soldiers began flying through the air. She saw Remo and Chiun moving through the seven men so slowly that it looked as if any one of the soldiers could have felled them just by swinging; his rifle. But where the soldiers grabbed, Chiun and Remo had just vacated. They moved strangely, fast without seeming to hurry, intensely without seeming to strain for power, and the air was filled with the thwacks of blows and the cracking of bones and the screaming of soldiers. The two men's hands were blurs.

In ten seconds it was over and the seven soldiers lay in the dirt, Major Estrada face-down, his hand still wrapped tightly around his pistol butt, but his trigger finger removed from his hand.

Now the zombies were around the lake and moving toward Remo and Chiun.

Remo saw them and said, "I wasn't exactly counting on this. Little Father. Quick. How do you kill the already dead?"

178

Before Chiun could answer, Samedi rose to his feet from the rock. He clapped his hands and the twenty men stopped as if they were automatons, all fired from a single power source that had just been turned off.

"Wowee," Ruby said. She rose up from the brush and joined Remo and Chiun in the roadway.

"How you do that? Hah? How you do that?" she asked Remo in a high screech.

"Ruby," Remo explained patiently, "shut up."

As Samedi came walking slowly around the lake of pitch men and women appeared on the plateau atop the hill, looking down, watching.

Generalissimo Corazon had sunk halfway into the tar, but with a mighty effort he turned himself half on his side, still holding onto the mung machine.

"You will never rule, Samedi," he shouted. "I have the power. Me. Corazon."

Samedi ignored him.

Corazon wrapped his arms around the mung machine, searching for the firing switch. He found it and squeezed. But the machine was aimed in the wrong direction. There was a sharp crack and then a green glow enveloped Generalissimo Corazon as the machine fired point-blank into his stomach, and he seemed illuminated for a split second before he turned into a green ooze that settled onto the surface of the lake. His cotton uniform vanished and all that was left to mark the remains of God for Life, Ruler Forever, President Eternal of All Baqia were his golden medals, which floated momentarily on the green puddle and then vanished into the lake of pitch as the mung machine sank under the surface with a sucking gulp that pulled down the medals, the nails

179

from his riding boots, and the green puddle that had been Corazon.

"Return," Samedi barked out and the twenty men with glazed eyes turned away and began to shuffle back toward the hillside, toward the village.

Samedi stopped in front of Ruby, Remo, and Chiun.

"Now what, child?" h£ asked Ruby.

"You be the leader," Ruby said. "It's up to you to run Baqia."

"I am old for leadership," Samedi said.

"A mere boy," said Chiun, his eyes on a level with Samedi's. "You have many years. And I am authorized by my employer, who is the President of the United States himself, because I do not work for minions, to tell you that the United States will give you all the help you need."

"Thank you," said Samedi. "But I don't even know where to start."

"Start by killing one hundred and fifty suspected traitors," Chiun said. "Why?" asked Samedi.

"It's good form. Everybody does it."

"We didn't get the machine," Ruby groused on the plane back to the States that night.

"Neither did anybody else," said Remo. "It's gone. Let's forget it."

"CIA crazy sometimes. I probably gonna get fired," Ruby said. "Gonna lose that check."

"Don't worry. Chiun'll put in a word for you with his employer. In case you're the only person in the world who hasn't heard it yet, he works for the President of the United States."

"No more," said Chiun.

180

"Oh?" asked Remo. "Why not? You mean you're coming back to join us peons working for Smith?"

"Why not?" said Chiun, his voice quivering with outrage. "Did you see my message of congratulations today when all was accomplished?"

"No," said Remo.

"Neither did I. I will not work for ingrates," Chiun said. "At least with Smith, you expect him to be a lunatic."

"True, Little Father. True. And what are you going to do, Ruby?"

"I going back to my wig factory and try to make ends meet. And then you gonna show me some of them tricks, like seeing the guns and rolling the dice and all."

Remo leaned close to her. "I'll tell you everything if you just go to bed with me."

Ruby laughed. "What I want with you? I already got a goldfish. You know," she said, "you ain't half-bad."

Remo smiled.

"No. You all bad," she said. "The old gentleman's going to show me."

"Forty percent," said Remo.

"Twenty," said Ruby.

"Thirty," said Chiun. "And I pay the dodo."

181

I he Uestroyer by Warren Murphy

Jemo Williams is the perfect weapon- a cold, calculating death. machine

developed by CURE, the world's most secret crime-fighting organization. Together with his mentor, Chiun, the oriental martial arts wizard/

The Destroyer makes the impossible missions possible.

Over 13 million copies sold!

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Death Check

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