"Who the hell'd you think it was?" Remo griped as they pulled themselves up the slippery stone wall. He had to help Bubu along. "And you've got a lot of nerve not being dead. Why'd you yell to me like that?"
Kneeling on the platform, Bubu's face beamed innocence. "I was warning you of the man with the gun," he replied. "And I did not know if the men would come in after me. They have killed Luzus before."
"Don't tempt me," Remo grumbled. His body had automatically shut down his pores before he hit the water, but his clothes were a dripping mess.
Bubu climbed to his feet beside Remo. A tear of the fabric at his shoulder showed where the bullet had grazed him. He was looking around the platform.
"Oh, my," Bubu announced all at once.
Remo tracked his gaze to the spot where F. U. Gudgel hung slack from the wall.
Bubu hurried over to the dead East African. When he tried yanking his spear free, it failed to budge. Awed eyes searched for his missing machete. He found it half-buried in the ceiling of the cavern.
"Do you possess skills greater than the Master of Sinanju?" he asked in wonder as Remo came over to him.
"Lesson number one," Remo snarled as he pulled Bubu's spear from the wall. "No one possesses skills greater than the Master of Sinanju." F. U. Gudgel dropped to the mossy floor. "What does this mean, 'lesson number one'?" Bubu asked.
"Nothing." Remo sighed. "Lemme get your steak knife."
Still on bare feet, Remo padded to the edge of the platform. The instant his toes curled over the edge, he launched himself forward.
Spinning in air as he sailed across the river, he hit the far wall with the soles of both feet. Before gravity could take hold, he used his momentum to propel himself up the wall and around the broad arch of the ceiling. He plucked the machete from where it jutted at the apex and continued his sprint down the far side to where Bubu waited on the platform.
When Remo presented him his blade, an amazed smile cracked the young native's dark face. "How is it possible for a man to do such things?" he asked.
"Gimme twenty years and maybe I'll show you one day," Remo replied. "For now, we should see what these guys were doing down here." He nodded to Gudgel's body.
At this, Bubu's expression became abruptly urgent. His amazement at Remo's abilities had made him forget why they were there.
"There were two more," Bubu announced. "We must give chase."
"You give chase if you want to," Remo said, picking up his shoes. "Thanks to your shit swan dive, they're long gone."
Spinning, Remo headed down the tunnel. Bubu trailed behind. The native held his weapons in one hand, rubbing his injured shoulder with the other.
"Don't fool around with that," Remo called without turning. "As it is, you've probably got typhoid fever and about fifty different kinds of V.D."
Remo followed the clumsy footprints Gudgel and the others had made in the moss to the end of the tunnel. Down another short corridor, the prints stopped abruptly.
Remo didn't need to see the nuclear device to know it was there. His body had detected the radiation leaking into the cavern before he and Bubu had even turned into the tunnel. Luckily, it wasn't bad enough yet to damage a body trained in Sinanju. The shiny silver bomb was tucked neatly away in a dank alcove at the tunnel's far end.
As Remo stood in silent contemplation of the hydrogen bomb Deferens's men had planted directly below the heart of Bachsburg, Bubu stole up behind him. The Luzu native stared in wonder at the bomb casing,
"What is it?" he whispered.
To the native, Remo's answer was chillingly calm. "A nuclear bomb," he said, biting the inside of his cheek in concentration.
It was all suddenly clear. Deferens ran the department that controlled East Africa's nuclear arsenal, and had kept the bombs after they were supposedly destroyed. Either on his own or at Mandobar's insistence, the defense minister had planted this bomb at the time when the most criminals would be in East Africa. Mandobar and Deferens intended to kill the very men they'd invited here-the criminals who were even now stirring from their restful night's slumber in fancy hotel suites far above Remo's head.
"Should we not do something?" Bubu whispered fearfully. His Luzu weapons were out before him, as if they would be enough to ward off the most awesomely destructive force human technology had ever harnessed.
Remo nodded slowly. A glimmer sparkled in the depths of his dark eyes. "You're right," he said. "We should do something."
And throwing back his head, Remo laughed out loud.
"Master Remo?" Bubu asked worriedly.
But Remo didn't hear. He had already turned from both bomb and native. Rubbing tears of mirth from his eyes, he marched back down the tunnel. His sinister laughter faded in the distance.
Chapter 24
When L. Vas Deferens stepped through the main door to his government suite, the offices of the Ministry of Defense were abuzz with activity. Much of the excitement spilled into the rest of the presidential palace, as harried workers labored to coordinate the events scheduled for the day.
Pagers buzzed and rang. Directions were barked into cell phones. Keyboards clattered relentlessly as computers connected to those at the airport recorded arrivals, adding them to the growing list of foreign dignitaries.
Everywhere, people were talking, running. Conducting the business of the new East Africa. It was a thrilling chaos, barely controlled.
Through it all, L. Vas Deferens strode, cooler than the air-conditioned marble beneath his feet. The defense minister had been inspecting his troops. As he walked from office to office, from floor to floor, the thing he was most proud of was the fact that the faces of all who worked for him were like his own: white.
It was an amazing thing to be able to get away with in this current mooka-loving East Africa, especially in the presidential palace of all places. After all, this wasn't like the old days.
Deferens had been born and raised in the whitest of white Bachsburg suburbs. His father had been a judge under the old system. In an irony that resonated with his son to this day, the older Deferens had been on a panel that had twice denied parole to political prisoner Willie Mandobar.
His mother had been the grande dame of the lilywhite East African society set. Before he could even walk, Deferens had long grown used to her daily abuse of the black help.
From his father's knee, straight through Bachsburg University, Vas had been conditioned to accept his superiority. So ingrained was it, it wasn't even an issue. He fervently believed in the Kipling theory that care of the dusky-skinned races was the burden of the white man.
But unfortunately for Deferens, the caste-system world of his parents would not last for his lifetime. Unlike most racists, Deferens had seen the way the wind was blowing. Back in the 1970s he had guessed correctly that the old regime was unsustainable. Already a low-level government functionary by this time, Deferens was risking all when he threw in with Mandobar's African Citizen Caucus.
At the time, his parents had disowned him, his wife had divorced him and his friends had abandoned him. But in the end, all the personal costs were outweighed by the benefits.
After the white government structure was dismantled, Deferens was one of the few nonblacks kept aboard. After all, he had a public track record of racial tolerance going back almost twenty years. Deferens was the reed that bent in the wind. And because of his pragmatic flexibility, he had prospered.
The public face of the ice cold defense minister was one of great liberal open-mindedness. But in that private part of himself that he dared not share with anyone, his racism blazed.
L. Vas Deferens was white.
L. Vas Deferens was proud to be white.
L. Vas Deferens hated anyone who was not white. And yet the world mocked him by forcing him to throw in with one of the most famous black faces on the planet.
No matter. Deferens had just made a deal that would guarantee insulation from nonwhites for the rest of his natural days. And Bachsburg would be a smoking crater. A final stab at the mookas who had led his nation to ruin.
A soft smile brushed Deferens's perfect white face as he headed down the hallway to his private office.
In the small lobby, his white secretary informed him that there had been an urgent call while he was away. When Deferens picked up the note, he found that it was from one of the scientists working on his special project.