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  "I lost it!" the copilot barked, craning to see out his side window. He caught a flash of one F-14 coming around, and only then became aware of the pilot's anxious chatter in his earphones. He ignored it, thinking, where'd that bogey go?

  Then a flash of light burst off to starboard. The aircraft shuddered and the controls seized up.

  Three red lights lit up, accompanied by the enginefire warning bell, shrill and insistent.

  "Number four engine," the copilot called hoarsely. "EPRS on one, two, and three dropping fast."

  "Fire the bottle and shut it down," Captain Flagg said crisply. Into his mike he said: "Monterrey. Monterrey. This is Air Force One."

  "Royer. Go ahead."

  "I am declaring a special emergency at this time. We're going to have to make an emergency landing in the desert."

  "Royer. Happy landings, Air Force One," Monterrey said unconcernedly.

  "Did he understand what you just said?" the copilot asked Flagg.

  "No," returned Captain Flagg, looking down at the intensely black wrinkled mountains that were coming up to greet him. He hit the ident button, which automatically doubled his radar blip for Monterrey's benefit, and switched the transponder to emergency frequency. He wondered if it would matter.

  In his private compartment, the President of the United States had already assumed the crash position -crouched over, hands on ankles and head between his knees-when he heard the mushy whump! of the explosion.

  It had all happened so fast. A steward had come in to say there was a problem. That was all his Secret Service guards needed. They were on him like reporters, practically smothering him with their bodies, pistols raised ineffectually, looking at one another in sick fear.

  "What was that?" one croaked.

  "Explosion. "

  "Oh, dear God, no."

  The President heard them as if through a curtain of roaring in his ears. He was thinking that this was a highly undignified way for the leader of the free world to die. He felt the blood rush into his brain as the craft began to plummet.

  He wondered if he would black out before the worst came. In his mind's eye he could see the seats in front of him accordion toward his helpless fetal-positioned body, the way he knew they did in airline crashes.

  Crushed between airline seats. It was a ridiculous way for a President of the United States to die, he thought again.

  And then he felt the seats in front of him press against the back of his neck, pushing his chin back into his seat. He didn't hear the horrible sound of impact, and he wondered why. In fact, he felt no fear. Only the comforting warmth of the seats around him as they pressed protectively against his coiled body. He felt safe. It was an odd feeling.

  Then came a sudden jarring and the President of the United States thought no more thoughts.

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he was trying to convince the guerrilla leader that, despite his UPI credentials, he was indeed an American spy.

  "You admit this?" the guerrilla leader asked. He wore a colorful poncho over striped trousers. His tall charro hat was the least riotous bit of his costume. He looked like an Incan cowboy.

  They were in the heart of the rain forest. Monkeys and macaws chattered in the distance. Remo, whose white T-shirt and black chinos were not exactly jungle attire, nevertheless did not sweat in the Turkish-bath atmosphere. Instead, he was idly wondering what the dozen or more members of El Sendero Luminoso were thinking of. As guerrillas of the Mao-inspired Shining Path revolutionary movement, they were dressed for moving unseen through a pinata forest, not a Peruvian rain forest. Or were pinatas Mexican, not Peruvian? Remo had no idea. He didn't get down south of the border much.

  "Sure," Remo said nonchalantly. "I admit it. I'm an American spy."

  "I do not believe you," the guerrilla leader-whose name was Pablo-said flatly.

  "For crying out loud," Remo said in exasperation. "I just confessed. What more do you want?" His hands, which had been lifted to the canopy of foliage, jumped to his hips. The Belgian FAL rifles, which had started to wilt, came up again. Remo ignored them. There were only seven Senderistas. And only two had their safeties off. That made five of them dead meat from the get-go. The others would be a nuisance if things got sticky. But only that.

  "The last time a man claiming to be a reporter came to this province," the Shining Path unit leader said, "we executed him on suspicion of being a CIA spy. Later we were told he was truly a reporter."

  "That's right," Remo said. "He wasn't CIA at all."

  "But before that," Pablo went on, "a man came here, also claiming to be a reporter. We did not molest this man, and later he bragged that he was DEA."

  "He was stupid," Remo growled. "He should have kept his mouth shut. He got an innocent journalist killed. But you clowns are no better. You keep shooting the wrong people."

  "Terrible things happen in war."

  "What war? You guys are insurgents. If you go away, there's no war."

  "We are the future of Peru," the rebel leader shouted, raising his machete in a macho salute. "We are spreading the revolutionary thoughts of Chairman Mao in our homeland."

  "The way I hear it," Remo pointed out, "you also cut the fingers off little children."

  "That is not our fault!" the rebel leader said. "The oppressors have coerced the people into participating in their sham elections. They make them dip their fingertips in ink and then make marks on their ballots, so the oppressors know by their blue fingertips who has voted and who has not." He smiled wolfishly. "We know too."

  Remo's deep-set eyes narrowed. "So you chop off a finger from a child here and a child there, and pretty soon the parents get the message."

  "It works."

  "It's barbaric."

  "You do not understand, yanqui. We are forced to do these things. We tried shooting peasants as an example, but the survivors still insisted on voting."

  "Imagine that."

  "We find it puzzling too," Pablo mused. "But we are in the right. These children suffer so that future generations will grow up in a Maoist workers' paradise where there are no oppressors, and everyone thinks in harmony. As Chairman Mao once said, 'The deeper the oppression, the greater the revolution.' "

  Remo yawned. This was taking longer than he'd expected.

  "Mao's long dead," he said. "And Communism is on the march into the boneyard of history. Just ask Gorbachev. "

  On hearing that name, the guerrillas spat into the dirt. Remo moved one Italian-made loafer out of the way of a greenish-yellow clog of expectorate.

  "Capitalationist!" Pablo muttered.

  "I guess word hasn't gotten this far yet," Remo said. "Look, this is really fascinating, conversing with you political dinosaurs, but how can I convince you that I'm really, truly a U.S. spy?"

  "Why do you want to do that? You know we will execute you for that. We despise the CIA."

  "Actually, I work for a secret organization called CURE."

  " I have never heard of it," Pablo admitted.

  "Glad to hear it. That's the way my boss likes it."

  "And you have not answered my question."

  "If you want the truth, it's because I know you'll take me to your leader."

  "Who will kill you," Pablo said fiercely.

  Remo nodded. "After the interrogation. Yes."

  The guerrilla leader looked to his fellow companeros. Their mean close-set eyes looked quizzical. Pablo's blanketdraped shoulder lifted in confusion. Remo heard the word "loco" muttered. He didn't speak Spanish, but he knew what "loco" meant. Fine. If they thought he was crazy, maybe they'd get this show on the road faster.

  The buzz of conversation stopped. In the background, the drone of insects continued like a subliminal tape.

  Pablo wore a cunning look when he asked, "You have-what you call-DI?"

  "It's ID," Remo said, "and what kind of spy carries ID?"

  "A real one." The guerrillas nodded among themselves.

  "Can you guys read English?"
Remo asked suddenly.

  "We cannot read at all, yanqui. That way we are not subject to faceless lies."

  "And you want to lead Peru into the twenty-first century," Remo muttered. Louder he said, "Okay, sure. I got ID. It's in my wallet." He patted a pocket.

  "Javier!"

  One of the guerrillas reached into the right-front pocket of Remo's chinos and gingerly extracted a leather wallet. He brought it to the commander. The Peruvian pulled out a MasterCard in the name of Remo Mackie.

  "That's my American Express card," Remo lied. "I don't leave home without it."

  "I knew that," Pablo said.

  "Good for you. And that white one is my social-security card."

  "Ah, I have heard of the infamous Social Security police." The Senderista compared the two cards. "But why is the last name not the same? I can see that by the shape of the . . . how you say it?"

  "We shamelessly literate Yankees call them letters."

  "Si. By the letters. Por que?"

  "Because I'm a spy, for heaven's sake," Remo said in exasperation. "I gotta have a lot of cover identities to get around people like you."

  The Senderista blinked. Remo could tell he was getting through to him. Maybe by Tuesday the guerrilla would consent to take him to his commander. But Tuesday would be too late. The Bogota summit would be over by then.

  So Remo decided to cut to the chase.

  "Those are my CIA credentials," he told the man when the latter held up a library card in the name of Remo Loggia.

  "You lie!" the Senderista spat. " I know the letters CIA. They are not on this card."

  "You're too smart for me," Remo admitted cheerfully. "You're right. It doesn't say CIA. It says DEA. You see, when we CIA types go into the field, we never carry CIA ID. Otherwise, when we're captured-such as in this case the CIA would get the ransom demands or the blame, whichever applies. By carrying DEA credentials, the agency escapes the heat and the DEA picks up the bad PR."

  The Senderista frowned like an Incan rain god about to pour his bounty upon the forest. His slightly crossed eyes almost linked up like a sperm and egg trying to become a zygote.

  "You yanqui running dogs are full of treachery!" he snarled.

  "That's us. We're even trained in the sneaky art of reading."

  "How do we know you are not a DEA operative telling me this to confuse me?" Pablo demanded.

  "Hey, I don't come with guarantees. And what difference does that make? CIA. DEA. CURE. PTA. Any way you slice it, I'm up to no good. You gotta take me to your leader for interrogation."

  "You are too eager. I need more proof."

  "Tell you what," Remo offered. "I left a conferedate back in town. He's a wiley old Korean. The jungle was too hot for him, so he stayed back in what passes for a hotel in whatever that town is called."

  "It is called Uchiza, ignorant one," the Senderista leader snarled. And everyone laughed at the stupidity of the gringo americano who could read but could not name one of the most prosperous towns in the Upper Huallaga Valley.

  "Whatever," Remo said dismissively. "Chiun-that's my friend's name-is a spy too. He'll vouch for me. Why don't you ask him?"

  The Senderista nodded to two of Remo's captors. "Paco! Jaime! Vamos!"

  The two guerrillas with the safeties off their FAL's hastened back in the direction of the town of Uchiza.

  "Don't rough him up too much," Remo called after them. "He's over eighty, but he's a stone killer." He smiled to himself, thinking: Two down, five to go. He made a mental note to pick up a couple of garbage bags on his way back to town. Leaf-bag size. The two departing guerrillas looked about leaf-bag size.

  "Well," Remo said, lowering himself to the spongy jungle floor, "I guess we wait. Hope it's not more than half a day."

  "No. We take you to our delegate commander. We will receive our compadres' report there."

  Remo shot back to his feet. "Fine by me," he said brightly. At last he was getting somewhere.

  The guerrillas crowded behind him, their Belgianmade rifles prodding his back.

  "You will walk with your arms raised high in abject surrender," the Senderista leader named Pablo ordered roughly.

  "Not me," Remo said in a nonthreatening tone.

  "We insist."

  "Insist all you want," Remo countered. "Be thankful I'm going quietly. And whoever has my wallet, try not to lose it. I'll need my passport for the return flight. "

  Pablo bared crooked teeth. "You will never see the Pentagon again, warmonger," he snarled.

  "Amen to that. It's ugly and the basement is full of roaches. "

  They walked through the jungle for nearly an hour. The guerrillas started to pant with exertion. Remo, not even sweating, picked up his pace. Time was wasting if he was going to interrogate the rebel commander before the drug conference.

  Except for the long commute, it was a relatively simple assignment. U. S. intelligence had received tips that Colombian narco-terrorists had increased their long-standing bounty on the U. S. President in anticipation of this latest drug summit. Message-traffic intercepts indicated that they had offered the assignment to the Shining Path, with whom they had an uneasy alliance here in the Upper Huallaga Valley, and who levied so-called "people's taxes" on all shipments of coca paste going north.

  Remo had come to Peru to find out if the reports were true and to eliminate the problem. His superior, Harold W. Smith, director of CURE-the agency for which Remo truthfully worked-had added that eliminating as many Shining Path guerrillas as practicible, guilty of complicity or not, would not be frowned upon.

  Remo was looking forward to that almost as much as he was to the interrogation.

  The Sendero Luminoso headquarters was a long plywood house set on stilts in a particularly thick section of jungle. They had to duck under a huge tree trunk that had fallen across the dirt path to reach it. The fallen trunk-covered with moss and creepers and looking as if it had been there since Elvis died-effectively blocked the path of any Land Rover or off-road vehicle.

  "Comandate Cesar!" one of Remo's escorts called out.

  A squat muscular man in a salmon-colored T-shirt and red baseball cap stepped out onto the bare sunporch.

  "Who is that?" he demanded.

  "He calls himself Remo. We think he is DEA."

  "CIA," Remo corrected. "Get it right. I'm CIA. I'm only pretending to be DEA."

  The man walked down to meet them. He carried no weapon, only a blue can of Inca Cola in one hand. He drained it quickly and dropped it to the ground.

  "Litterbug," Remo said pleasantly.

  "What you call me?" the Senderista comandante demanded.

  "You the boss of this chicken outfit?" Remo asked.

  " I am Cesar. I am a delegate to the People's Republic of the New Democracy."

  "Got news for you. The old democracy's stronger than ever."

  "Why are this prisoner's hands not fettered?" Cesar asked abruptly.

  A handful of FAL rifles poked at Remo. Remo smiled unconcernedly.

  "You will allow your hands to be tied," Cesar said flatly.

  "Maybe after the interrogation." Remo smiled good-naturedly.

  "Bring him," Cesar spat.

  Remo was escorted into the sparse one-room interior. At a glance, he could tell it was an abandoned cocaprocessing factory. There were vats and the flat trays on which the paste was dried by sliding the screen-mesh trays into an electric oven. The rough interior was bare of furniture and lacked plumbing. The house had been built of raw plywood. There wasn't even a door, just a frame covered by tattered mosquito netting.

  Cesar whirled and demanded, "Now, what is this about your being a CIA spy?"

  "I admit it. Freely," Remo said soberly.

  Cesar hesitated, looked to the others. They shrugged.

  "He admitted it from the first," Pablo explained. "How could we believe him? Only a fool would admit this to us."

  Cesar looked Remo up and down. He saw a tall Anglo man who might be a mature twenty-nine
or a youthful forty-two, clad in a white T-shirt and black chinos. American-made chinos. His shoes were of very fine leather, the kind Americans called loafers. His dark, humorous eyes sat above high cheekbones.

  As the man's wallet was passed to him, Cesar noted that he was well-muscled but on the lean side. His wrists were very thick. They looked hard, as if carved from fine pale wood. He rotated them absently, as if limbering up for a workout.

  Cesar looked to the ID cards.

  Big mistake. Suddenly the wallet flew from Cesar's hands.

  He looked up in anger. The wallet had returned to Remo's hands. Cesar hadn't seen him reach out for it.

  "Take him!" Cesar barked.

  Rifles swapped positions. Gun stocks lifted. They drove down for the americano's head and unprotected shoulders.

  It looked for a satisfying instant as if the Yankee would be driven to his knees. Cesar saw the stocks come within a hair of his head.

  Then they went chunk! against the hardwood floor, carrying their owners with them.

  The cream of Delegate Cesar's Shining Path guerrilla unit fell all over one another, their ponchos flapping, their rifles tangled among one another.

  The gringo was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

  "Donde? Como?" Cesar sputtered.

  A tapping finger caused him to turn around. It was a reflex action. Had he not been so stupefied by the sudden vanishment of the americano, Cesar would not have turned. He would have run. Instead, he did turn-to see the American's goofy grin. Steellike fingers took his throat.

  Cesar suddenly went as stiff as the hardwood flooring under his feet.

  He watched out of the corner of his eyes as the thin americano went among his companeros, calmly and methodically snapping necks and shattering skulls with stiff-fingered blows until the squirming heap of ponchos became an inert heap of ponchos, much like a stack of Andean rugs.

  Then the americano came back for him.

  "Time for the interrogation," he said, his fingers returning to Cesar's throat. Cesar found he could suddenly move. And he did. He ran.

  And fell flat on his face, never seeing the foot that tripped him.

  A hard knee pressed on the small of his back, holding him down by the spine. Cesar couldn't move.