"Would you like a demonstration?" asked Wissex.
"Sure. You. Carlito. General Carlito. Shoot that nigger in the face." He pointed to the Ghanaian.
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General Carlito wore dark sunglasses and many shiny medals. Walid ibn Hassan could hear the medals shaking.
General Carlito spoke. "You there. Captain. Shoot the nigger."
And the captain spoke.
"You there. Sergeant. Shoot the nigger."
And the sergeant, looking at the Ghanaian's fine rifle, and remembering tales of what happened when Wissex's knife fighter had come to the palace, jumped out the first floor window and ran.
"Must I do everything myself?" said Generalissimo Moombasa. He put his right hand on his pistol and with his left hand pointed to Hassan, who was holding his beloved one in his fingers in front of him.
"You there," said Moombasa and Hassan stepped forward.
Moombasa stared at him with Latin dark eyes. A deadly smile crossed his face. His weight balanced evenly on both feet. His hand rested on the pistol as light as a bird, but as deadly as a hawk.
"You there," said Moombasa again and beckoned slowly with a left finger. Moombasa's officers stepped aside lest a bullet stray, a bullet heading for their beloved generalissimo.
"You there," said Moombasa, his voice now even arrogant. "Shoot that damned sergeant who jumped out the window."
The Hamidian general staff applauded.
"We got to keep discipline," said Moombasa. The general staff agreed. Without discipline, man was nothing. Discipline, said one colonel, separated man from beast.
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"You got a point there," said the generalissimo.
Hassan walked casually to the window, raised his gun in a smooth motion, and fired as soon as it reached his cheek.
The Hamidian general staff thought he had made a mistake, that the gun had gone off accidentally. They had not even seen the Tunisian aim.
"You want another shot?" said Moombasa.
"Excuse me, Generalissimo," said Lord Wissex. "He hardly needs that, what?"
"What?" said Moombasa.
"Doesn't need that, what?"
"What? What what?" asked Moombasa.
"Please come to the window," said Lord Wissex.
The entire general staff moved to the window and there, lying at the wall of the palace courtyard, was the sergeant with a single shot in the back of his head.
"What you call that thing?" said Moombasa, pointing to the weapon in Hassan's hands.
"Beloved," said Hassan.
"Yeah. Where they sell them beloveds? Looks like a Mauser to me."
"Excuse me," said Lord Wissex. "The hiring of the tool includes the man."
"Can I shoot that thing?" Moombasa said.
"I am afraid that is one thing I cannot sell you," Wissex said.
"All right then. The rifleman," Moombasa yelled. "But 1 want that mountain of gold. I was assured that the knife fighters wouldn't fail."
"I beg your pardon," Wissex said, "but not so, sir. What we assured you was that we provided the finest knife fighters there are."
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"This time I want success."
"You are getting the best," said Lord Wissex.
"Make sure," said Moombasa, and while Hassan and the other snipers marched out, Wissex finalized the contract. Five million dollars more.
Before the snipers set off, Wissex described the woman they were to seize. Apparently, there was some obstruction, he said, some bodyguards that were better than the usual thick-witted musclemen.
"You there, Mahatma, you will be in charge. I want to know what the bodyguards are like, before you destroy them. But seize the girl unharmed."
And then Wissex took out a map and showed where the woman and her bodyguards would be going. It was a small village in the Yucatan peninsula.
"They will be going to this village. Camping over probably. And then on to this area over here, where the woman may find an inscription. That might be the best point because they will all be concentrating on that inscription. Do you understand?"
"Spoken is done," said Mahatma.
There were other things Terri Pomfret didn't like besides heights and depths. She didn't like mosquitoes. Some said the Yucatan grew them with bellies like baseballs and beaks like railroad spikes.
"How come he isn't bothered? Or you?" she said to Remo. They had stopped four times for her to rest.
"Because, like the forces of the universe, mosquitoes respect the good," Chiun said. "However,
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they do not bite Remo because I have taught him tricks."
"Teach me tricks," said Terri.