And alone among all the snipers Walid ibn Hassan saw 2:30 P.M.
And then a man was standing right in front of him, as if dropped by magic in the middle of the trail, so close that Hassan could not use the scope. He was a thin man with thick wrists and dark eyes and he was smiling.
"Hi. Nice jungle, isn't it?" said the man. He was American so he must be one of the three. But Hassan did not wait to make sure.
In every other service he had performed for Wissex, he had been careful to be exactly right about the target. But this time, he knew no one would punish him for shooting first. So he let his beloved kiss the man's chest. That would fell him. Then he would let his beloved kiss the white man's eyes and then his mouth. Those were Hassan's plans for the next shots.
But the first shot did nothing. The trigger was pulled and the man seemed to move even before the thought of the shot. He was standing sideways. Hassan squeezed off two more shots where the man's eyes had been, realizing that the man moved again even as his beloved was firing.
Hassan was now shooting without even aiming, pulling the trigger madly, until his beloved left his hands.
The man was standing over him, pawing his beloved.
"What do you call this thing?" Remo asked, noticing how well-polished the rifle was.
"Beloved," cried Walid ibn Hassan, reaching for
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the precious one that would return his honor in blood.
"I could never tell these things apart. I don't even know the names of guns, you know," said Remo. "A man who uses a gun, well, that means he doesn't have it within himself. But, honest, it's a pretty gun. Okay, sweetheart. Party's over," said Remo and Hassan felt his beloved's barrel puncture his belly with eye-popping pain.
Hassan dared not move because any movement increased the pain. He felt the barrel go higher, into his chest cavity, even to his breathing, and then he noticed he was high off the ground. The man was carrying him easily, high above the ground as a waiter would carry a tray and just as easily.
He was bringing Hassan back to the village where they had killed everyone-impaled on his beloved.
He was bringing him to that Oriental sign that the Chocatl chief had been pointing to as some form of protection. The chief had been the first to die with Hassan sending a kiss from his beloved to the man's forehead. The chief was now at the bottom of the pile in the pit. He had died still pointing to that symbol carved in jade before his hut.
Hassan was now being lowered to that sign, his face very close to it.
"See that? In Korean, that means house or House of Sinanju. Just house will do. It's become sort of a trade name in the past few thousand years. It means that this village was protected by the House of Sinanju, except we blew it, and protection is impossible since you've already killed everyone.
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However, the House of Sinanju is also big on meaningless vengeance. Do I have the safety on?"
"What?" grunted Hassan.
"Hold it. No, I don't think so. I think the safety will move. Yes."
And Walid ibn Hassan's beloved sent a kiss up through her master's brain, taking off a piece of cranium.
Remo discarded the gun and impaled owner in the bushes and returned to Chiun and Terri.
"I made a perfect shot with a rifle," Remo said to Chiun. "Got the brain easily. Dead center."
"You shot a man?" said Terri, aghast.
"Only one. There were nine others I didn't shoot," Remo said.
"Well, that's encouraging," Terri said.
"I don't like guns," Chiun said.
"Of course not," said Terri, gushing over the man in the kimono. "You're too gentle of heart, Master of Sinanju."
"Guns breed bad habits," Chiun said.
"I knew you were really against violence," Terri said. "Why is it people don't realize assassins abhor violence? It's the press. Ignorant and shallow as ever."
"An occasional shot won't hurt," Remo said.
"One is too much," Chiun said. "Even one. The first can lead to a second and then you will be using it for your livelihood and losing everything I taught you."
"Beast," said Terri, looking at Remo.
Barry Schweid had the greatest adventure script he had ever seen, right from the computer tales of
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the greatest killing weapon in the form of a human being.
"Stunning," was the one word he thought appropriate.
"Won't work," said Hank Bindle. "We need feminine jeopardy. We need him struggling and suffering. So you don't know who is going to win."
"You thought Superman was going to lose?" asked Schweid.
"Raiders of the Lost Ark," intoned Bindel.
"Starwars," added Marmelstein. "And think of what they could have made if they'd had a few nice boobs in there."
"But how do you make superweapons ordinary?" asked Schweid.
"Not ordinary," said Bindle. "Vulnerable."
"With shirts getting ripped," said Marmelsteiru.
"Hey, what about the hero walking down the street alone when all his friends desert him?" Schweid suggested. "And he is the only one left to face the killers."
"That's too weird," said Bindle. "Can't sell it."
''High Noon," said Schweid.
"There you go again. When we say we want original and we want fresh, we don't want you to copy the oldies. That's too far out. Copy what everybody else is doing now," said Marmelstein. He fingered the chains around his neck, then shouted, "That's it! Something really really new. I've got it."