General Nogeira grabbed her and wrestled her around and in front of him. Bullets chopped moss off cypress tree branches and made plinking sounds in the water.
Remo submerged.
The attacking boats were not far from his position. He laid his palms on his thighs and gave a great double kick.
Remo became a human arrow. As he passed under a pair of boats, he poked holes in the careening hulls. If any of the cameras had been underwater, they would have recorded a casual tapping. Remo used one finger. It was enough.
Perfectly round finger-sized holes perforated the hulls. Water surged in. Then the crafts began to wallow and slow down.
Remo veered toward an air-boat. Its flat bottom surged over him.
He took hold of the dangling rudder and made a fist. The fist went through the aluminum hull as if the fist were aluminum and the hull mere flesh.
Kicking back, Remo got out of the way.
The air-boat, being shallow, simply dropped. Mud began stirring up when the great spinning fan dropped below the water line.
Remo moved among the floundering passengers, pulling them down by their legs and breaking their spines at the neck like a farmer harvesting chickens.
Through the nicely sound-conducting water, Remo caught the shrill scream of panic.
"Gators! Look out! Gators!"
Remo grinned, letting a solitary air bubble escape through his teeth. If they thought he was an alligator, so much the better. He continued with his work.
He got a glimpse of brown faces as he pulled the attackers down. Bananamian or Colombian? He couldn't tell. It didn't matter. They were bad guys. Dealing with bad guys was his job.
Remo quickly brought most of the boats down. He didn't come up for air once. He didn't need to. If necessary he could hold his breath for hours, releasing only a little carbon dioxide at a time.
Keeping submerged, Remo swam around to the other side of the isle, away from the tumult.
When he stuck his head back up, he saw that the press had retreated for cover. All except one man, who lay screaming, clutching his minicam with one hand and his bleeding leg with the other. He was crying, "Medic! Medic!" and the look on his face was one of disbelief.
The FBI and Federal marshals had staked out firing positions. They were returning fire in a steady, methodical way, not wasting ammunition or firing recklessly.
A shrill voice carried over the concatenation, crying, "I'll sue! I'm suing everyone for violating my civil rights."
It was Rona Ripper. She was crawling on her stomach for shelter.
An FBI agent in a blue windbreaker started out to assist her. His head disappeared in a fine crimson mist as a dozen machine pistols sought his head.
Rona Ripper instantly started crawling backward, crying, "I surrender! I surrender!" Her face dragged in the sand because she was trying to crawl with her hands raised.
"Damn!" Remo growled, seeing no sign of General Nogeira.
A surviving cigarette boat veered off from the rest of the attacking flotilla and rounded the isle on the opposite side.
Remo figured it had gone after Nogeira. He jackknifed under and began swimming at high speed.
His ears picked up a clumsy splashing and he popped out of the water like a dolphin.
General Nogeira was stumbling out of the back side of the island. His pocked face was a picture of ugly fear.
He saw the churning boat, and his expression became ludicrous. He doubled back.
The cigarette boat piled up on the isle, and its passengers jumped off and gave chase. Some of them wore fawn-colored uniforms not much different from General Nogeira's. One, wounded, had to be helped along.
They all disappeared into the thick foliage.
Hanging back in the water, Remo wondered if he shouldn't let nature take its course. The way he saw it, the Bananamanian armed forces had dibs on the man who had ruined their country.
The decision was made for him. A scream rose up in the close, humid air.
A few seconds later, a man came stumbling back into the water. He ran blindly, his hands clutching his eyes. His fingers and lower face were slick with blood. The blood was coming from his eyes. The five bronze stars on his shoulder boards more than identified him.
The general was screaming in Spanish, a language Remo didn't understand. But the horrible tones told him all he had to know.
The man had been blinded. Probably by a knife across his eyeballs.
He proved this by stumbling over a twisted cypress root and falling face-first into the water.
Remo was wondering if he should put the suffering brute out of his misery when an alligator came charging out of the thicket.
"Charging" was the only word for it. The reptile erupted into view and ran like an absurd, clumsy dog for the water's edge. Its jaws snapped open and shut with every clumsy step.
The alligator plunged into the water and snapped up the general by one flailing arm. It wasted no time. It dragged the screaming man, pounding against its greenish hide, below the water.
After that, Remo decided to tread water and count bubbles.
When the bubbles stopped, Remo had counted forty-two. The water had become a diffuse color resembling pink lemonade.
Remo climbed onto shore with the intention of taking care of the assailants. They must be pretty dumb, he thought, to let the general get away from them like that. Or maybe not so dumb-since he hadn't actually gotten away.
The gunfire had died down.
It started up again, more ferocious than before.
Remo went through the saw grass like a lawnmower through hay. He got to the high hump and looked down.
The FBI and Federal marshals were pinned down in a crossfire. The withering fire was coming up, from the surviving boats, and down, from a line of fawn-uniformed attackers not a dozen yards below Remo's position.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe this was a Colombian hit team, after all.
Remo slipped down to the line and began relieving the assailants of their weapons. He did this in a novel way. He literally disarmed them.
The first man to be disarmed was down on one knee hosing the low ground with his Uzi when it happened.