They followed him to a point behind the dry hump of land, a stretch of seemingly open water. Yet Zorilla strode into it seemingly without fear of the cottonmouth moccasins that glided along, leaving V-shaped wakes.
His soldier's boots barely sank into the water.
They followed, staying low.
At the mangrove clump where Zorilla had stepped into the water, they paused.
Remo slipped a hand into the stagnant water. It was warm, pungent with life. Barely an inch beneath the surface, he felt the sliminess of submerged wood.
"Walkway," he said softly.
The Master of Sinanju nodded. Without a word of communication, they slipped beneath the water and moved through it with the soundlessness of swimming manatees.
Eyes adjusting to the lack of light, they used their ears to follow their quarry. His boots made the walkway creak, and the sound carried perfectly.
A cottonmouth, gliding along the surface, suddenly dropped toward Remo like a coil of discarded rope, its jaws distending.
Remo reached up and grasped its head, forcing the jaws together and the brittle skull apart. He released the limp reptile, shedding a cloud of blackish blood, and swam on.
When the ground began to slope upward they hung back, releasing air bubbles one at a time, three per minute, so as not to betray their position.
The creaking ceased, so they let their natural buoyancy carry them surfaceward.
Two heads broke the calm swamp surface as one. Two pairs of eyes scanned the night.
They saw a lone figure vanish between tangles of cypress, and not long after heard the sound of a car engine disturb the night. Headlight glare flared and then swept around, casting elongated shadows that made the world seem to be turning on a plate before their eyes.
"Let's go," Remo said.
They left the water erect, not seeming to hurry but moving with urgent speed nonetheless.
They found the road and spied the retreating headlights.
They were other vehicles parked there. Cars. Trucks. They picked one of the former. Remo popped the ignition with a skill picked up in the Newark streets of long ago, and soon they were following the car at a careful distance, lights doused.
They drove with a wide silence between them.
Remo broke it after a while.
"My money says Zorilla wiped out Ultima Hora."
"You may keep your money," Chiun said.
"He must have woken up and called someone."
"Obviously he woke up."
"That someone heard we were sniffing around, and ordered the operation terminated," Remo went on.
"A wise someone."
"This still smells of the CIA to me."
"I only smell blood and the lack of proper credit," said Chiun.
"Those guys back there were patriots," Remo said bitingly. "I don't care what anyone says."
His dark eyes, fixed on the moss-draped road ahead, were like pools of death.
"We may be on the same side, but I want the guy who gave that order."
"Beware of what you hope for."
"Why?"
"Because you may receive it," said Chiun, his yellowed visage tight with the wise webs of his years.
Chapter 11
Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla drove north through the Florida chill without expression. His face was stoic. He was a man. A Cuban man. As such, he was machismo personified.
Machismo left no room for regrets, never mind tears.
Still, the tears came. He could not help them. He was a soldier true. And a soldier followed orders.
But to slaughter his own men? The hope of Cuba's future? He let the tears flow. For Guillermo the brave. For Fulgencio the sly. Young men who knew Cuba only from TV travelogues and tales told by fathers and uncles. Young men who would liberate Cuba and return it to the welcoming arms of the world.
Caught unprepared, they had died shamefully. They never dreamed their own commander would turn on them and slaughter them so cruelly.
It had happened after they had aroused him from his state of unconsciousness.
"Que? What happened?" he asked.
"It was the two. The Anglo and the other," had said Jose. He of the quick smile and killer eyes. "They did this. We could not stop them, comandante mio."
"Why not?"
Ruefully, they displayed their injured hands.
"We can no longer hold our rifles, comandante," Roberto said miserably.
Zorilla was helped to his feet. He examined their fingers. Some were broken. The trigger fingers. It was as if these intruders who claimed to have been sent by Uncle Sam had set out to maim them.
"Give me a rifle," said Comandante Zorilla.
They scrounged up a single FAL whose barrel had not been bent.