"It's in kilometers. I only know miles."
"I have told you that you should be acquainted with all tongues," Chiun sniffed.
"Give me a break! The kilometer isn't a verb. It's a unit of measure. A stupid, useless unit of measure. I figure we've come thirty miles. What I want to know is, how many kilometers is that?" He looked toward a nearby city. "If that's Sancti Spiritus, we should take the left-hand road. But I don't see any signs saying it is."
"Even if you did," Chiun sniffed, "it would not help you, who cannot read elementary Spanish."
"I can read signs," Remo said defensively.
"If that is so, why can you not read a simple plan, on which circles and lines have been drawn for you in crayon? A child could follow that map."
Remo got the Gazik in gear, saying, "It's not crayon. It's Magic Marker."
Chiun sniffed. "An American crayon. There is no difference."
They received a lot of attention as they barreled along. Natives of amazingly varied skin colors waved to them as they passed.
It was crazy, but Remo took a chance and stopped.
"Sancti Spiritus?" he asked a roly-poly woman who looked amazingly like Aunt Jemima, pointing to the left-hand road. She was carrying her wet wash bundled on her head.
"Si, si, " she said pleasantly.
Remo threw her a gracias and took the left fork with confidence.
"The natives are unaccountably friendly," Chiun remarked.
"Or dumb as posts," Remo muttered. "We could be Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell, for all they know."
Behind them they heard a low roar, growing louder as it came closer. They looked back and saw a mechanized column approaching at a high rate of speed.
"Uh-oh," said Remo, pulling over to the side of the road. They got their vehicle into some brush and waited for the convoy to pass.
It was big. And long-consisting of T-64 tanks, BMP armored vehicles, and lurching Gaziks like their own. There was also a flock of military bicycles.
"They appear to be in a hurry," said Chiun, peering through rank foliage.
"I wonder," Remo muttered. "Could they be going where we're going?"
"If that is so, the attack has begun."
Remo got the stubborn engine going. "Let's follow them."
They shot out of the brush and fell in behind the column. Fortunately the roads were of hard-packed dirt, and the long tunnel of dust the convoy was generating was more than enough to conceal them.
At a major fork in the road the convoy encountered another and, after some argument over who would get to lead the march, formed one long olive-green line. A few miles along, the long convoy absorbed another.
Overhead, a lone observation helicopter sputtered along, heading north. It seemed to be running on empty.
"We may be too late," Remo said darkly.
By the time the swamp-stink had begun to tickle their sensitive noses, they could hear the sound of automatic weapons fire, punctuated by the relentless boom-boom-boom of artillery pieces and 125-mm tank cannon.
"We're too late!" Remo snapped. He was standing up in his seat, trying to make out the scene through the haze of gunsmoke and roiling oil smoke.
"What do you see?" asked Chiun, straining unsuccessfully on tippytoe.
"I see barges out in the water. They're taking a pounding."
"Is this good or is this bad?" Chiun wanted to know.
Remo had to think about that a minute.
"It's good for our mission, I think," he said slowly. "But it's bad for Cuba."
"Is it good for the bearded tyrant, the preempter of beauty and joy?" asked Chiun. Remo's brow puckered. "Yeah. Dammit, it is."
Chiun's face darkened. "There is no justice."
"Let's see if we can't scare up our own," Remo said, dropping into the seat and sending the Gazik bumping and jouncing along the rough terrain.
As they drove, their tires popped the swarms of fleeing red crabs, with a sound like a symphony of flat tires.
When they had reached the edge of a vast swamp, they jumped out and climbed a hillock.
They had a panoramic view of the Bay of Pigs. The barges were as thick as ice cakes in an Arctic sea. As they watched, men in old-fashioned pirate costumes shouted in Spanish and swept the defenders strung along the swamp with concentrated fire. Remo recognized a few choice curses.
A number of barges had run aground and been blown up in the mangrove tangle. They were littered with heads and limbs and other body parts. There was no visible blood on the wrecked amphibious barges.
But they did notice the radar dishes shaped like Mongo Mouse heads.
"Why do they need radar?" Remo wondered.
"Because they are blind," said Chiun.
Remo looked down at the Master of Sinanju blankly. "Try me again, Little Father?"
Chiun beckoned for Remo to follow. Remo complied.
They came down the hillock, as the bullets and shells whistled all around them. They slipped down to the moonlit water and waded through the mangroves, which resembled multi-legged trees attempting to rise up out of the water.
They worked their way to one of the half-sunken barges.
"Behold!" cried Chiun, dragging a corsair off the rail where he had been slumped. His body ended at the waist, tapering into a male electronic connection the size of a fireplug.
Remo grunted. "Hey, this guy's animatronic!"