A lone man stood framed in the salon entrance. He wore black. He was unarmed. Yet the expression on his face was one of utter confidence. "What the fuck!" snarled Uncle Sam.
"Jou again!" gasped Dr. Revuelta.
"Que?" gulped Fidel Castro.
"Que sera, sera," said Remo, showing off his newly acquired knowledge of Spanish.
The Maximum Leader of Cuba looked at the darkeyed Anglo with the high cheekbones and thick wrists, and spat out a harsh question in English.
"Who are jou, Yanqui?"
Remo smiled. "Yo soy soldado de los Americas."
And the Maximum Leader of Cuba did a slow burn that all but singed his curly beard. Who was this gringo, to claim the sacred mantle of the Latin American revolutionary?
Before he could voice the question, Uncle Sam Beasley thundered, "Somebody shoot that pain in the ass!"
It was an unfortunate order. Fully half the armed guards thought the pain in the ass was the Cuban leader. The others correctly took the command as directed toward the skinny guy in black.
"No! No! Not that pain in the ass! The other one!"
The soldiers who had been pointing their weapons at Remo redirected them at Fidel. Their opposite numbers executed the opposite maneuver.
Uncle Sam Beasley stood up, howling, "No! No! No! You're getting it all wrong! Listen to me, I'm the director here! Ten-hup! Right shoulder arms!"
Like marionettes, the soldiers clapped the AR-15s to their immaculate white shoulders. Their chins lifted at attention.
It was the perfect opportunity, so Remo swept in and grabbed the President of Cuba by his long gray beard. Without pausing, he gave a flick of one thick wrist, and suddenly the giant Cuban was whirling around Remo's head like a bull roarer. And emitting much the same howl.
"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Beasley yelled. "The trial isn't over yet!"
Remo released the beard. And the howling man flew, polished hobnailed combat boots first, toward one line of soldiers. They collapsed in a heap of bruises and broken bones.
Uncle Sam was screaming inarticulate orders now.
Remo was moving between the dining tables, casually flinging them about like oversized frisbees. They lopped off heads, broke rifles, and made short work of the white-uniformed soldiers with the corn-fed faces still on their feet.
Not a single shot was gotten off.
Remo stepped up and reached into a pile of tangled white arms and legs, to pull out a kicking olive-drab figure.
"I'm not done with you yet, Bushy," he growled.
He dragged the moaning President of Cuba back to the long banquet table, where assorted copyright and trademark characters sat very, very still.
"That was nice work," said Uncle Sam in a too-calm voice.
"Thanks," Remo said absently. He slammed the President of Cuba into one of the few still standing chairs.
Sam Beasley stood up. "No, I mean it."
Remo refused to look in the man's direction. "Okay, you mean it. I'll get to you in a minute."
"Seriously, I'd like to shake your hand, my boy."
Remo hesitated.
"Come on, come on. I won't bite. I know when I'm licked. I'm big enough to admit it."
Remo looked at the hand. It was empty. His ears picked up the bellows sounds of the man's ancient lungs. There was no heartbeat, but a steady humming from deep within his chest.
"What the heck," Remo said, reaching out his hand. "I used to be one of your biggest fans."
"And now you're the biggest chump on earth," snarled Uncle Sam, as he began to squeeze Remo's outstretched hand with the constrictive force of a trash-compacter.
Remo was so shocked by the unexpectedness of what was happening to him, that he did something he had not done in years. He screamed in pain.
The Master of Sinanju heard the scream while he was making the soldiers of Ultima Hora hors de combat. These were not evil men, so he had been going among them dislocating their shoulders. He did this by the deceptively simple action of grasping them by their shoulders and separating the arm bones from their rotator cuffs as he dodged their ineffectual blows. The motion was as simple as removing the lens cap from a Kodak.
Although the soldiers did scream louder than a camera would.
The sound of Remo's scream was unmistakable and unforgettable. Chiun had dragged such complaints out of Remo during the early difficult phases of Remo's training in Sinanju, when he had stubbornly persisted in eating meat and breathing incorrectly.
He flung himself up from the lower holds, where Ultima Hora awaited the signal to emerge and take unprotected Havana, and flashed toward the sound of Remo's agony.
Remo Williams was unaccustomed to pain. On the one hand, his nerves had been trained to sublimate ordinary pain. On the other, his entire body had been raised to enormous levels of sensitivity to external stimuli. And he had been caught by surprise.
Excruciating agony made his highly refined nervous system explode into white noise. His senses shut down. Red sparks danced before his eyes. He could feel his finger bones and metacarpals grinding together under a handshake that he realized too late was composed not of ordinary flesh and bone but of some powerful hydraulic mechanism sheathed in a realistic-looking fleshlike covering.
Worst of all, he couldn't pull loose.
"Left my right hand in the freezer, as it were," a familiar voice chuckled. "But the animators gave me a new one. Like it?"
Waves of pain rolled through Remo's stunned brain. His training told him to lash out at the source of the agony, but his mind warned him that he would be killing Sam Beasley; Uncle Sam. The kindly old Uncle Sam who had told him stories way way back in another life, spent around an old staticky black-and-white TV set, watching cartoons with his fellow orphans.
And as he hesitated the pain redoubled, and Remo had lost his chance to strike. No longer in control of his body, he went down on one knee, his teeth clamping tight and a black cloud passing over his thoughts.
Then another voice came. High and commanding.
"Hold!" it said. Chiun!
Uncle Sam's voice turned icy with anger. "I'd like to know who the hell you two are."
"I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said in his most dramatic voice. "And that is my son you are harming. Release him at once!"
"My pink ass!"