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  "Very soon now," he said. "Very soon we will have our company and we will put them to sleep."

  "Good," one of the privates said. "I hope they come quickly so we have time to sample the merchandise."

  "By all means," the sergeant said. "This merchandise is to be sampled as often as possible, as vigorously as necessary. Mi casa est su casa."

  "What does that mean?" the first soldier asked.

  "That means screw your brains out," another soldier said. "Use up that white ass."

  "I can hardly wait," the first soldier said. "Where are those bastards anyway?"

  "Right here," Remo said. He stood on the balcony looking down toward the main entrance. At his side stood the tiny Chiun, wearing not his customary robe, but a black Ninja costume which he wore only at night.

  "I said, right here, you stupid gorilla bastard," Remo said, louder this time.

  Chiun shook his head. "Always on display," he said. "Do you never learn?"

  "I don't know, Chiun. Something about him there just pisses me off."

  "Hey, you, get down out of there." The sergeant spoke.

  "Come and get us," Remo said. "Use the stairs. They work both ways."

  "You come down from there or, by God, we're gonna plug you."

  "You're all under arrest," Remo said, seeing himself as Gary Grant in the temple of the thugs.

  Chiun leaned against the railing, shaking his head in disgust.

  The sergeant started for the stairs, followed by the other five soldiers. They moved slowly and Remo wondered why.

  "Oh, oh," Remo said. "I just thought. If they fire their guns, the guys outside'll hear it and come in," Remo whispered to Chiun.

  "I doubt much that you 'just thought' of anything," Chiun said, "since you seem incapable of thought. But if that worries you, don't let them fire guns," Chiun said as if that answered everything.

  "Of course," Remo said. "Why didn't I think of that? Don't let those six men fire their guns."

  "Not six. Ten," a voice said from behind Remo. He turned. Standing in an open doorway was another soldier in Busati whites. He carried an automatic. Behind him in the dimness, Remo could see three more men. He realized now why the sergeant had been very slow about leading his men upstairs; he was waiting for the other half of the trap to close.

  "I surrender," Remo said, raising his hands.

  "A wise decision, friend," the soldier with the automatic said. He nodded to the other three men who poured out of the room and joined the six men coming up the stairs. They put their guns away, slinging them back over their chests, as they surrounded Remo and the small Korean.

  After all, ten against two did not require weapons, did they?

  Of course not.

  The sergeant, who was the house doorman, as much as told them that before he felt himself being lifted up by the small Oriental, and then being spun around as if he were a long stick and used as a battering ram against the other men.

  The soldier who had been in the doorway reached for his automatic again to free it from the holster. But the holster was gone, ripped away from his side by the young American. "This yours?" Remo said. Stupidly, the soldier nodded. Remo gave them back. Holster, automatic and ammunition right through the soldier's face into his throat. Deep.

  Behind him, Remo heard the thwack, thwack, thwack, the machinelike periodicity that meant Chiun was at work.

  "Chiun, keep one of them alive," Remo yelled, before two soldiers were on him. Then he violated his own injunction, dropping them heavily onto the body of the soldier whose face had sprouted a gun.

  Then there were no more sounds. Remo turned to Chiun who was releasing the feet of the sergeant he had used as a battering ram. The soldier slipped shapelessly onto a pile of bodies.

  "Chiun, dammit, I said…"

  Chiun raised a hand. "This one breathes," he said. "Therefore present your lectures to someone who needs them. Perhaps you might talk to yourself."

  The sergeant groaned and Remo reached down and yanked him roughly to his feet.

  "The girls," Remo said. "Where are they?"

  The sergeant shook his head to clear it. "All this for women?"

  "Where are they?" Remo said.

  "The room at the end of the hall."

  "Show us." .

  Remo shoved the sergeant who led the way down the wide oak-planked hallway, staggering slightly from side to side. A head wound dripped blood onto his white uniform. His right arm hung limply; a shoulder separation, Remo thought. He grabbed the sergeant's right wrist and yanked, then choked off the sergeant's scream by tossing his hand around the soldier's mouth.

  "Just a reminder," Remo growled, "that we ain't your friendly neighbourhood team of United Nations advisors. No tricks."

  The sergeant, his eyes wide with fright and pain, nodded quickly, almost frantically.

  He walked faster, then stopped outside a large oak door at the end of the hall. "In there," he said.

  "You first."

  The sergeant unlocked the door with a key from a ring on his belt, pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  The room was just beginning to be lit by the first dim blush of the morning sun. Remo forced the pupils of his eyes to wide, and in the darkness, he could see four bunks. Each was occupied.

  The four women in the beds were naked. They were tied with ropes, their arms up over their heads lashed to the bed posts. Their legs pulled wide apart and their ankles tied to the posts at the foot of the beds. Cloth gags were in their mouths.

  In the faint glints of light from the window and from the hallway, their eyes sparkled as they watched Remo. They looked like animals peering from the dark ring around a campfire.

  The room smelled of excrement and sweat. Remo brushed past the sergeant and entered the room. The sergeant looked around but Chiun stood in the doorway behind him, blocking escape.

  Remo took the gag from the girl in the nearest bunk and as he did leaned forward close enough to see her clearly. Her face was scarred and broken. One eye had been deformed from a badly healed beating. Her mouth was toothless.

  Whip marks covered her naked front from her face to her ankles. Hard black cankers dotted her body where it had been used as an ashtray.

  Remo released the gag and said, "Don't worry. We're friends. You're going to be all right now."

  "Be all right," she repeated dully. She smiled suddenly, the toothless grimace of an old hag. Her eyes sparkled. "Treat you nice, mister. You like to whip me? I do everything if you whip me. Hard. You like hard? I like hard. Make me bleed, I treat you nice, mister. You like kiss me?" She puckered up her mouth and scroontched an imaginary kiss toward Remo.

  He shook his head and backed away from her.

  "Hee, hee, hee," the vision cackled. "I got money. I treat you right if you whip me hard. My family is rich. I pay. Just hit me, soldier boy."

  Remo turned away. He went to two more girls. They were the same. Lamed, twisted, mindless husks that once were people. None of them could have been much over twenty, but they spoke with the grim sadness of ancient wizened women who sit on corners and whose eyes suddenly light up as they remember something nice that once happened to them. Nice was, for these girls, the whip, the chain, the knife, the extinguished cigarette.

  "The fourth girl began to cry when Remo removed her gag. "Thank God," she said. "Thank God for somebody."

  "Who are you?" Remo asked.

  Through her tears and sobbing, she said, "I'm Hillary Butler. They kidnapped me. I've been here two days."

  "Kinda rough, kid, huh?"

  "Please," she said. Remo began to free her.

  Behind him, he heard the sergeant start to speak. "I have nothing to do with it, man," but his words were cut off as he oomphed, Chiun putting a hard hand into his back.

  "Who are these others?" Remo asked, as he tore the knots from Hillary Butler's ropes.

  "I don't know," she said. "Americans too, the sergeant said. But there's nothing much left of them. They're on heroin." />
  "You too?" Remo asked.

  "Just twice," the girl said. "Last night was the first time, and then this morning."

  "You may be all right then," Remo said. "It doesn't work that way."

  "I know." The girl stood up and then suddenly put her bare arms around Remo and began to sob heavily. "I know," she blubbered. "I've been praying. And I knew when I stopped praying that it would be all over. I'd be just like them."

  "It's okay now," Remo said. "We got here in time. At least for you." He led her to a closet where robes hung and covered her uncut naked body with one. "Can you walk?" he asked.

  "Just bruised but unbroken," she said.

  Remo's voice grew hard and cold. "Chiun, take Miss Butler downstairs and wait for me. You," he said to the sergeant. Get in here."

  Reluctantly, the sergeant entered the room. Remo closed the door behind him, after watching Chiun lead Hillary Butler down the hallway.

  "How long have these girls been here?" Remo asked.

  "Different times," the sergeant said. "Three months. Seven months."

  "You give them the narcotics?"

  The sergeant looked toward the closed door. He looked toward the window where the sky was brightening with the pre-dawn sun rays.

  "Answer me," Remo said.

  "Yes, boss. I give them. They die now without them."

  "There was a man named Lippincott who came here. Where is he?"

  "Dead. He killed one of the girls. She recognized him, probably. So he got killed too."

  "Why all the soldiers here tonight?"

  "General Obode put the guard here. He expected someone to break in, must have meant you. Look, I got some money. If you let me go, it's yours."

  Remo shook his head.

  The sergeant's eyes brightened. "You like the girls, mister? They take good care of you. I housebreak them well. Anything you want, they do." His voice came faster now. It pleaded even though the words themselves were not a plea. Not yet.

  Remo shook his head.

  "You going to kill me, man?"

  "Yes."

  The sergeant lunged at Remo. Remo waited; he let the sergeant grab his arm; he allowed the sergeant to hit him with a punch. He wanted to put meaning into what he was about to do, and the best way was to remind himself that this was a man. Let him touch, let him feel, let him understand what was coming.

  Remo waited, then jammed his left fingertips forward into the sergeant's separated right shoulder. The sergeant stopped as if suddenly simonized in place.

  Remo hit again in the same spot with his left fingertips, then with his right, then with his left again, hammering shot after shot into precisely the same place. The sergeant swooned and fell to the floor. Remo kneeled down over him, grabbed a handful of neck and twisted. The sergeant came awake, his eyes staring at Remo in horror and fright, glinting, Remo realized suddenly, like the eyes from the beds, watching the tableau.

  "Awake now?" Remo said. "Good."

  He lunged forward again into the injured shoulder. Beneath his fingertips he could feel the once strong and stringy muscles and fibres turning into soft mush. Still his fingertips pounded. The softer the target became, the harder Remo struck. The sergeant was unconscious now, long past reviving. Remo wished he could think of something more painful. The cloth around the sergeant's shoulder was ripped now and pummelled into powder. Remo kept hitting. Blood and ooze and chips of bone came out under his fingertips. The skin had long since given way.

  Remo reared back and came forward one last time. His right fingertips went through where once there had been cloth and skin and muscle and flesh and bone. The fingertips came to rest on the wooden floor.

  His anger spent, Remo stood. He kicked the sergeant's right arm away. It rolled awkwardly like an imperfect log, finally coming to rest under the bed Hillary Butler had vacated. Then Remo came down on the sergeant's face with both feet, feeling the crunch and crack beneath him. He stood, looking down at the sergeant, realizing that he had taken out of him a payment in advance for what Remo still must do. The three women, still tied in their beds, looked at Remo wordlessly.

  He moved to them one after another, sitting on the edges of their beds. To each one he whispered, "Dream happy dreams," and then as gently and painlessly as he could, he did what he had to do.

  Finally he was done. He untied the hands and feet of the three dead girls and covered their bodies with robes from the closet. Then he walked out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

  The instructions from Smith had been to keep Obode alive. Well, Smith could take his instructions and shove them. If Obode got anywhere in Remo's way, if he got within his line of vision, if he came anywhere within reach, Obode would know pain such as he had never even guessed existed. When Remo was done with him, he would consider the sergeant in the girls' room blessed.

  Chiun waited at the foot of the steps with Hillary Butler. She looked at Remo. "The others?" she said.

  Remo shook his head with finality. "Let's go," he said evenly.

  Already, Smith would go berserk because Remo had not freed the other three girls. But Smith had not been there, had not seen them. Remo had freed them, the only way they could be freed. It had been his decision and he had made it. Smith had nothing to say about it, just as he no longer had anything to say about what Remo would do to Obode if the chance presented itself.

  Only two soldiers guarded the back of the building through which Chiun and Remo exited. "I'll take them," Remo said.

  "No, my son," Chiun answered. "Your anger breeds danger for you. Protect the child."

  The sun was almost rising. Remo saw Chiun and then in a flash, saw him no longer as the little man in the black costume of the Ninja night devils slid away into what was left of the darkness.

  From his position inside the back doorway of the house, Remo could see the soldiers clearly, twenty-five feet away at the base of a tree. But he never saw Chiun. , Then he saw the two soldiers, still there, but suddenly their bodies were twisted, useless. Two corpses, Remo strained his eyes. Still no sign of Chiun. Then, Chiun was in front of him. "We go."

  Two blocks from the house, an Army jeep was parked at the curb with a soldier behind the wheel. Remo came up behind him. "Taxi," he said. "This is no taxi," the soldier said, wheeling and staring angrily at Remo.

  Remo extended his bloodied hands toward the soldier.

  "Too bad, Charley, cause that was your only chance," Remo left the soldier's body lying in the street and helped Hillary Butler into the back where Chiun sat alongside her.

  Remo started the motor and peeled rubber, burning off down the pockholed dirt street, heading for the hills over which the sun was now rising in its daily ritual of the affirmation of life.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "How many are dead?" Obode's question was an elephantine trumpet.

  "Thirteen," General William Forsythe Butler said.

  "You said there were only two men coming."

  "That's all there were."

  "They must be very special men," Obode said.

  "They are, Mr. President. One comes from the East; the other is an American. Already, the Loni talk that they are the fulfilment of the legend."

  Obode slumped down in his velvet-backed chair in the big Presidential office.

  "So they come to restore the Lord to power by grinding into dust the man of evil."

  "That's what the legend says," Butler said.

  "I have tolerated the Loni and their legend long enough. I was wrong, Butler, to listen to you, to try to bring the Loni into the government. Now, Dada is going to do what he should have done before. I am going to wipe out that accursed tribe."

  Butler lowered his eyes so that Obode would not see the exultation there. Let him think Butler looked away to hide his disagreement. But now that the cursed Oriental and American had escaped the trap, this was best. Let Obode chase them; let Obode kill them; and then Butler would take care of Obode. Men loyal to him were now in positions of power throughout
the government; they would flock to Butler's support. The Loni would acclaim him as the man who embodied the legend, and with a united country, Butler could return Busati to the power and dignity it held centuries before.

  "Shall I mobilize the Army?" Butler asked.

  "The Army? For the Loni? And for two men?"

  "Those two men just killed thirteen," Butler protested.

  "Yes. But they did not face Big Daddy. And they did not face you, Butler. One company and us. That will be enough to take care of both the Loni and the legend, once and for all."

  "You have tried before to eliminate the Loni," Butler reminded him.

  "Yes. Back before you arrived here. And always they scurried, like bugs before heat. And then I stopped because I listened to you. But this time, I will not stop and I do not think the Loni will run." He grinned a broad faceful of mirth. "After all, are not the redeemers of the legend there among them?"

  Butler nodded. "So it is said."

  "Well, we shall see, Butler."

  Butler saluted, turned and walked toward the door. His hand was on the knob when he was halted by Obode's voice.

  "General, your report lacked one item."

  Butler turned. "Oh?"

  "Your women. What happened to them?"

  "Dead," Butler said. "All of them."

  "Good," Obode said. "Because if they lived they might speak. And if they spoke, it might be necessary for me to make an object lesson of you. We are not yet ready to defy the American government."

  He meant it, Butler knew, which was why he had lied in the first place. Soon enough, Qbode would be dead and the kidnappings could be blamed on him.

  "Dead," Butler repeated the lie. "All dead."

  "Don't take it so hard," Obode said. "When we are done with these accursed Loni, I will buy you a new whorehouse."

  Obode smiled, then thought again of the thirteen soldiers dead at the hands of the American and the Oriental. "Better yet, Butler. Make that two companies of soldiers."

  Princess Saffah came from the hut wiping her hands on a small cloth.

  "She sleeps now," she told Remo.

  "Good."

  "She has been ill-treated. Her body has been used badly."

  "I know."

  "Who?" Saffah asked.

  "General Obode."