"Exactly," he said. "Make it look like we're battling the fire when we're actually feeding it. Afterward, invite the camera crews to watch for five weeks while you sift the ruins for teeth." His smile broadened. "Then sit back and watch the local, state and federal money pour in."
Remo seemed to be soaking it all in. As he looked from Joe to the fire truck to the men gathered around the sweets table, a somber expression took root on his face. He shook his head slowly.
"When I was a kid, Father Hannigan took a bunch of us altar boys to a fire station in Newark," he said softly. "I'll never forget it. The firemen were washing one of the engines out front. They even let us slide down the pole."
"Pete broke our pole," Burly Bob said. He jerked a greasy thumb to a particularly obese fireman. The man's blotchy red face was smeared with confectioner's sugar.
"It was a great day," Remo resumed, not listening. "It was because of that one visit that I knew I wanted a career where I could help people. I almost joined the fire department. But then I figured I could do more good as a cop."
Pastries fell from chubby fingers. All around, the firemen grew rigid, their faces drooping behind mustaches.
"You a cop?" Joe asked thinly.
Remo looked up. "Huh?" he asked. "Oh, no. Not anymore. That was a long time ago."
There was a collective exhale of sugar-scented bile.
"I'm an assassin," Remo supplied. "And officially, I was sent here to kill you guys because you're all guilty of murder and arson. On a more personal note, however, I want it to be known that I'm doing it because you have caused me to lose faith in my fellow man."
As he spoke, Remo noted the not-so-subtle nod from Firefighter Joe. As the lanky man backed up carefully against the truck, Remo sensed movement and heard the sound of wheezing breath behind him. He felt the burst of displaced air as a fat fist was launched at the back of his head.
Remo ducked easily below the blow, turning as he stood.
Burly Bob and Fireman Pete stood behind him. The men were winded from their three-yard walk from the refreshments table. Bob was bracing palms against knees, trying to catch his breath after his unsuccessful assault against Remo. As Remo stood calmly watching the first hyperventilating man, Pete hauled back.
Another fist came forward, this one even slower than the last. Remo leaned away as the big mitt swished by.
"Damn, I gotta start on the treadmill," Pete wheezed.
Remo offered him no sympathy. "Wanna see why they call those handlebar mustaches?" he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he took hold of one drooping fuzzy end of Pete's mustache.
As the beefy man howled in pain, Remo steered him around in a wide circle, slamming him hard against the side of the fire engine. He hit with a clang that left a big-and-tall-size dent in the truck's side. Bells ringing loud in his head, Pete fell to his back.
For an instant, the fireman clutched his face in pain. But all at once, a new idea flashed in his brain. "Ow, my back!" Pete yelled, his eyes growing crafty. "Call the union rep. I have to go on disability."
He tried slipping his hands behind his back, but his great girth prevented him from doing so. He opted to roll histrionically in place like an upended turtle.
"Oh, hell," Remo said, his face growing sour. With the toe of one loafer, he tapped Pete's massive chest.
The fireman's eyes grew wide in shock. Sucking in a horrified gust of air, he clutched at his heaving chest. Face contorting in sheer agony, he opened and closed his big lips like a gulping fish. He went rigid, then limp. When his hands fell slack at his sides an instant later, his face was already turning blue.
And as the life drained out of Pete, the remaining firefighters suddenly seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation.
Panic erupted in the firehouse.
Men used to a completely sedentary lifestyle tried to run for the first time since high-school gym class. They didn't get far.
Before the alarm sounded, Remo had already spun away from the dead man. As the others began their stampede for the door, Remo was already dancing down the thundering line. Flashing hands flew forward, hard fingertips tapping quickly and efficiently against bouncing chests.
One after the other, the firemen fell like obese blue dominoes. None of them had gotten even halfway to the door.
When Remo spun from the last tumbling body, he found Firefighter Joe right where he'd left him. The thin man was rooted in place next to the fire engine, his face frozen in disbelief. Eyes wide with shock, he took in the scene of carnage. Only when Remo began walking slowly back toward him did he realize he should have fled out the back door. Like a cornered animal, he remained in place. "You challenged my faith," Remo accused as he walked across the big bay. "I didn't even know that I had it, but I guess I did. The country's going to hell, but I still had faith in some institutions. Faith that there were people out there who were doing the right things for the right reasons. I had kept a tiny piece of my faith since the moment I slid down that fire pole when I was in fourth grade. But it's gone now. Every last bit of it. And you killed it." He stopped before Joe.
Firefighter Joe looked over at the bodies. He looked back up at Remo, trying desperately to think of the appropriate thing to say.
"Oops ... ?" Joe shrugged hopefully.
"And another thing that ticks me off," Remo said, annoyed. "Since when are firemen called firefighters?"
Firefighter Joe wasn't sure how to respond. Mouth twisting, he crinkled his long mustache in silent confusion.
"Don't bother," Remo said, exhaling in disgust. When he reached out a hand, Joe instinctively recoiled. When the hand went right past him, Joe sighed relief.
Remo grabbed something from the side of the truck. When his hand reappeared, the cringing fireman was confused to see that Remo was holding on to a long high-pressure hose. It was attached to the side of the fire engine.
"What are you doing with that?" Joe asked anxiously. For the moment he had forgotten the doohickey's name.
"Joining the volunteer fire brigade," Remo replied.
Joe didn't have a chance to ask what he meant. Before he could ask another question, Remo's hand whipped up and around. For Firefighter Joe, the world suddenly grew very dark and very, very cramped.
As he stuffed the fire hose over Joe Bondurant's head, Remo's expression was devoid of all emotion. The hose fit down over the fireman's eyes and nose like an aggressive nightcap. Most of Joe's giant drooping handlebar mustache was still visible. When he opened his mouth to yelp in pain, Remo slipped the hose down to his neck. After that it became a tight fit.
Remo had to pop the fat steel ring off the end in order to get the hose around Joe's shoulders. Once he got past the shoulders, it was clear sailing down the length of his body.
In a matter of seconds the fireman was swallowed up by the hose. He had stopped wiggling around the time his pelvis disappeared inside. The bulge that was Firefighter Joe filled a thick spot inside the hose. He looked like the victim of some fire-engine-dwelling South American snake.
A pair of black boots stuck out into the firehouse. Remo closed the end of the hose around Bondurant's toes, then knotted it tightly. Pummeling and kneading the body, he managed to work it up the long length of the hose.
By the time he reached the tank, Firefighter Joe was no longer in one piece. With a dozen fat plopping sounds, his body hit the liquid.
When he was done, Remo folded the hose back up into the cranny on the side of the truck. He turned from the engine, looking out at the bloated bodies lying on the garage floor.
He had hoped that by getting the bad guys, some of his lost faith would be restored. It wasn't. He still felt every bit as crummy as he had that morning.
He wasn't really surprised. At this point he didn't hold out much hope for anything anymore. The world was lousy, he felt crummy and that was that. Case closed.
Still, it would have been nice to feel something. "Crap," muttered Remo Williams, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets.
Leaving the dead firemen on the floor of Engine House Number 6, he strolled glumly from the station.
Chapter 3
Edwige Soisson didn't even try to hide his anxiety as he watched the men scurrying around the concrete base near the massive metal fins of the Every4 rocket. Why should he? After all, Edwige was acutely aware of everything that could go wrong in a space launch. He knew better than anyone that little things could cause major problems.
Back in the early nineties, as a high-ranking official at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in Paris, he had been liaison between the CNES and the space center at Kourou, French Guiana. Since Guiana was so close to the equator, it was an ideal location for launching rockets into space. Therefore the Kourou facility, northwest of the port capital of Cayenne, had always been of vital importance to the CNES.