"This is the spot?" the leader asked. "You sure?"
"I counted it off," offered one of the others with a nod. "It's 334 paces."
The leader stepped away from the other three and stared into the depths of the forest, nearly at the spot where Remo stood.
The leader shot a glance back at his men. "You're positive?"
The other soldier nodded.
Enough was enough. Remo's curiosity was piqued, but not so much so that he'd stand in the middle of the woods until moss sprouted out his north side. He moved an inch.
The lead soldier spoke up. "Hello?" His voice echoed uncertainly in the forest.
Remo remained frozen, his breathing keying down to minimal cycles of respiration.
The Ragnarok soldiers searched the silent evergreens with nervous eyes.
"This is the foretold spot?" the leader said, turning to his men once again.
"And the right time," stressed the second man.
"Maybe they're not here," someone else suggested.
In the thicket Remo focused his senses beyond the soldiers. A few yards into the woods on the opposite side of the path, he could hear the sound of Chiun's breathing—inaudible to anyone's ears but his own.
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The Master of Sinanju had stopped beneath the lazily swaying bows of an evergreen. Remo could tell by his shallow intake of air that Chiun was pondering the strangeness of their situation.
It looked like the soldiers were expecting someone. Intruders. Infiltrators. But other than he and Chiun, there was no one around. And there was no way they had been detected. Even something as impalpable as an infrared beam would have been felt by either Remo or the Master of Sinanju if they had interrupted the beam with their stealthy bodies.
Yet the leader was calling out to someone. Calling in their approximate direction.
"Hello? Excuse me, gentlemen."
He couldn't be talking to us, Remo thought. I didn't make a sound.
He thought of Chiun. Not only would the Master of Sinanju never make an unintentional sound, but he would also disown Remo at the merest suggestion of such an accusation.
That brought it back to Remo again.
Remo tried to recall if he'd stepped on a branch or dried leaf. One thing was certain: if Remo had made a noise, he'd never hear the end of it.
"They're not here," said another of the soldiers.
"He insisted they would be. He also said they'd be hiding." The lead soldier addressed the woods once more. "We've been instructed to meet the two of you and lead you back to Ranch Ragnarok," he called out.
How could they possibly know we'd be here? Remo thought.
And because Remo could think of nothing better to do, he stepped out onto the path.
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Even though they were looking for someone, the soldiers were still surprised to see their quarry materialize before them. The three at the back started to reach for their weapons, but thought better of the move. Their hands returned to their sides.
"Looking for me?" Remo asked airily. He pointed a finger at his own chest.
"Yes, sir," said the lead Ragnarok soldier. "We're your escort."
"We didn't call ahead for an escort," Remo said reasonably.
"But you are expected."
Remo pitched his voice over their heads. ' 'What do you think, Chiun?"
"It is rude to refuse an escort," a squeaky voice came from too close behind the soldiers.
They spun around, coming face-to-face with the Master of Sinanju. He perched on the path like some great yellow parrot, face inscrutable, hands tucked inside the sleeves of his billowing kimono. The elderly Korean had slipped up behind them without so much as a whisper of his sandal soles.
"That's it," said the second man to the patrol leader. "Two of them." He and the others glanced nervously up and down the path, obviously uncomfortable with the idea that the woods through which they had marched so frequently could have harbored unseen assailants all along.
"Will you gentlemen follow us?" the patrol leader invited.
And with that the patrol turned and headed back down the path.
Remo shot a glance at Chiun. The Master of Sinanju
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wore a puzzled frown. What else could they do? They were obviously expected.
They fell in step behind the soldiers.
"Think Smith told them we were coming?" Remo whispered out of the corner of his mouth. A tree branch hung in his way. It became so much falling wood chips after Remo made busy motions with his hands.
Chiun's hazel eyes squeezed like a wary cat's. "Smith is a lunatic, but he is not stupid."
"Did you tell him you wanted to quit? Maybe this is his idea of an ambush. Dead assassins tell no tales."
"And live ones sometimes speak too much," Chiun replied. "I am not stupid, either. Of course I did not speak to Smith of our intentions."
"Your intentions," Remo corrected.
"Details," the Master of Sinanju said dismissively.
About a half mile along, the path opened up on a vast expanse of virtually barren fields. An eight-foot-high fence, woven at the top with tumbleweeds of gleaming razor wire, sprouted from the parched Wyoming plain—the only crop in this wide, alien vista.