Across the clearing, Remo could hear the breathing of men waiting, their sweat sour with anticipation. He looked at Daniels, blood flowing from the wound beneath his ribs.
"Come, drunkard," Estomago said, a smile on his lips. "Permit me to kill you quickly before you bleed to death. It is more respectable, although why a whore's husband would care about respectability, I would not know."
He laughed as he parried again. His knife nicked Barney's shoulder. The rope tightened as Barney recoiled from the second blow. Estomago moved in quickly, preparing to slit Barney's stomach agape with one long slash.
He missed. As Barney ducked and rolled, coating the grass with his blood, he yanked on the rope and sent Estomago sprawling to the ground.
"Pig," the ambassador spat, bringing himself
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slowly to his feet. "Now I kill you. For myself and for El Presidente." He threw himself at Daniels.
He held the knife overhead, then slammed it down toward Daniels's face. At the last moment, Barney turned his head and the knife slid alongside his cheek, burying itself into the ground.
Estomago reached behind him to remove the blindfold.
As he did, Barney's right hand reached over and his knife cut cleanly across Estomago's throat. The ambassador's last vision was of a wounded specter of a man watching him with hate-filled eyes, his blindfold pressed to the cut in his arm, standing in front of a pulsing fountain of bubbling blood. He heard Daniels say: "For Denise."
The knife dropped from Estomago's hand as he began to choke on his own blood, spurting with each heartbeat and staining the ground dark. His eyes rolled back in his head as he withered to the earth. Then, one quick convulsion, and the general lay still, the gash in his throat smiling upward like a giant red mouth.
And then the men came from across the clearing, armed with knives, stripped ceremonially for jungle fighting.
With a wave of the knife, Barney slashed the rope, freeing his wrist from Estomago's, Then he went into a crouch, holding the knife in front of him in his right hand. His left hand gestured toward the Hispanians, taunting them, urging them to come on, to join battle with him.
Remo looked at the gray-haired man in his dirty bloodstained clothes and knew this was someone he had never seen before. The Barney Daniels he had known had been a worthless drunk, done, washed out, finished with life.
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But this man standing alone in the clearing was something more than that. Faced with death, he throbbed with life. He grinned as he waited for the eight killers.
And then he was not alone. To his right stood Doc Jackson. On his left stood Remo and Chiun.
"I don't need any help from you. From any of you," Barney snarled over his shoulder at Remo.
"Anything I hate, it's a surly civil servant," Remo said. Before he could say more, the eight men were on them, and the dozen men were turned into a human anthill, squirming with wild activity. Next to him, Remo saw Barney take down two of the Hispanians with straight-ahead knife thrusts that parted their bellies like a comb. One Hispanian soared out of the anthill like a rocket, flying free and screaming until he hit the trunk of a tree. He had found Chiun.
Another attacker leaped at Remo with his hands trying to close on Remo's throat. Remo rolled backward and put the man up and over. Just before the man's back hit the ground, Remo reached back and wrapped his arm around the man's throat. The man's back went down, but his head and neck stayed up, across Remo's upper arm and shoulder. There was a satisfying snap as the spinal column splintered.
Remo rolled up to his feet. To his right, he saw Doc Jackson struggling beneath the weight of a man with a blue-tinged dagger aimed at his eye.
He leaped forward toward the man, but before he could reach him, Barney Daniels whirled past him. With the side of his right hand, he swung at the temple of the man astride Doc Jackson. The hand hit with a loud clap, almost thunderous, and the man
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dropped the knife, and slowly keeled over on his side, his skull shattered by Barney's killing stroke.
"Good work," Remo said.
They stood side by side and turned around. Jackson scrambled to his feet. The three saw the last two Hispanians advancing on Chiun.
"Shouldn't we help?" Daniels said.
Remo shook his head. "Don't worry about it." He called out. "Chiun. Be sure to keep your elbow straight."
Chiun did, straight through one Hispanian face, straight through the back of the skull, straight into the next Hispanian face, and then the two men's bodies were lying at his feet.
"Fair, Little Father," Remo said. "Just fair." He turned to look at Daniels, but Doc Jackson was already kneeling alongside him, checking the wound in his side.
"You are the luckiest son of a bitch in the world," Jackson said. "Another inch and bingo."
"I've got to be lucky," Daniels said. "I've got work to do." Then he looked at Remo.
"You know what's going on?" he asked.
Remo nodded. "The whole thing. Russian bombs. Threats to America. The works."
"Are you here now to kill me?" Daniels asked. When he said that, Jackson got quickly up to his feet, standing alongside Daniels, facing Remo.
"Naaah," Remo said. "I don't know any more. First it was kill you. Then it was don't kill you. I don't know anymore. I don't care. The next thing they tell me to do with you, they're going to have to do it by registered mail, return receipt requested. You're more trouble than you're worth."
"He always was," Doc Jackson said.
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Barney looked at Remo and the eyes were clear and bright. "I know you don't want to tell me who you're working for," he said. "That's all right. But tell me this. Can you give me some time?"
"For what?"
"To finish my business in Hispania," Barney said.
"How much time you need?"
"Twenty-four hours," Barney said. He looked hard into Remo's eyes. "Please," he said. "I need this one."
Remo searched Daniels's eyes. He felt Chiun's soft hand touch his back.
Remo nodded. "For the next twenty-four hours, I think I'm going to be busy," he said.
"With what?" asked Jackson.
"Teaching Chiun to keep his elbow straight," Remo said with a smile.
"Thank you," Barney said. He turned to Jackson. "You didn't have to fight, Doc," he said.
The black nostrils flared. "I don't have to go to Hispania with you either, but I'm going."