"Hey," a voice called from the group.
The senator looked down distastefully at the thin man dressed in a black T-shirt and chinos. The man
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didn't have a TV camera trained on him, so the senator tried to dismiss him, but the T-shirted fellow was persistent. "I hear that mostly officers were killed on those bases. What happened to the rest of the men?" Remo asked.
The crowd murmured as the senator took a deep breath. Who was this nobody, he thought, and how did he know about the missing recruits? Only the army's cleanup detail knew the exact number of dead and their ranks, and no one would believe the army after today, anyway.
As Nooner worded his answer in his mind, the group of reporters around him swelled. The cameras whirred. He opted for an offensive position. "I don't know what you're talking about. Everybody knows the camps were entirely wiped out. To the last man ... person. And if you're some kind of crank who wandered into this extremely important conference to deter these fine men and women of the press from finding the truth in this terrible perversion of liberty, then you are as guilty as the Pentagon in protecting the menace to our American way of life that that vile organization represents."
The reporters cheered. Nooner breathed a sigh of relief. But he would have the young man with the thick wrists watched.
A woman reporter wearing a hot pink dress over her lush figure jiggled her way in front of the senator. "Is it true that your daughter is one of the officers at Fort Vadassar?"
Remo's ears perked. As the senator proudly affirmed the question, Remo saw Randy Nooner in her captain's uniform at the speaker's podium, stationed between a harrassed-looking man in white robes and a dark, mustachioed general who some-
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how seemed as if he would be more at home on a camel than in an American army barracks. To the general's left was a string of high-ranking officers, all ethnic-looking men with skins tanned dark from lifetimes of living in blistering sun.
Remo walked closer to get a better look at the men. As he approached, Randy Nooner's face froze in recognition.
"Hiya," he said, stepping up the bleachers to the podium. "Remember me? We had a date to go to prayer meeting, but you ran off with Ali Baba and the forty thieves here." The general' rumbled something in a strange language. The other officers rumbled back.
'Wo comprende, fellas," Remo said. "Back when I was in the army, we spoke English. But then I wasn't an officer."
"Remo, please. These are ranking military leaders."
"In whose army? Genghis Khan's?" The general half closed his lizard eyes and nodded to two of his officers. As they rose, one jerked his head toward the back of the stadium.
"Excuse me, Miss Nooner," Remo said. "I think these gentlemen feel like taking a stroll."
"Oh. Of course," she said. As Remo walked away, wedged between a colonel and a major, Senator Nooner came quietly to her side.
"I saw that man with you, honey," the senator said. "I want you to be careful. He was nosing around about things he shouldn't know anything about. He might be dangerous."
Randy pinched her father's cheek playfully. "Don't worry about a thing, Daddy. He's not going
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to be dangerous much longer. General Elalhassein sent two of his men to take care of him for us."
"Good. Thank you, General." The senator bowed to the reptilian little man wearing the ¦metal-encrusted general's uniform.
"In the service of our country," the general said.
"Ah, yes." The senator looked at the vast expanse of land and sky around him and breathed deeply. "Our country," he said.
Remo got only as far as the bottom step leading to the stadium's deserted back wall before the two officers pulled shiny knives out of their belts and inserted them between their teeth with the precision of Radio City Rockettes. With equally perfect timing, they each withdrew a long, curved saber and circled Remo, slashing as they moved.
"Hey, boys, over here," Remo said, dodging the saber swings so quickly that it seemed he hardly moved. "Missed again. Still, you fight better than you smell."
The slashing became more furious as the two officers moved closer together. Then, as the sabers nearly met, Remo caught both blades between his thumbs and index fingers and hurled them high in the air.
The officers gasped as they saw the lethal swords arcing gracefully over the wall of the stadium, turning, and shooting-downward with increasing speed toward the section of bleachers in which the podium was built.
The major took the knife from between his teeth and, roaring something wild and ancient-sounding, lunged screaming at Remo, who waited until the man was midway through a flying leap before
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grasping his ankles. The move was so fast that the major was still in position, stiff-armed, knife pointed straight ahead, while Remo swung him like a giant acne-scarred blackjack aimed for the other officer. The knife's blade struck the colonel's mid-section at the base. With a rip, it tore through his belly, gutting him amid screams of agony as the colonel's entrails spilled like slippery red fish onto the ground.
"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to play with knives?" Remo chided the major in his arms, whose face had become a study in horror. With one finger, Remo flicked the dagger from the man's hand, then crushed his skull to the consistency of used tea bags.
Back at the podium, a crowd had assembled to marvel at the two sabers, which still quivered on either side of General Elalhassein's legs. He was blubbering and incanting singsong prayers as the other officers tried vainly to remove the swords from the wood of the bleachers. "Did I miss something?" Remo asked.
The general cast a fearful glance his way and began screaming incoherently. He was led away by the other officers.
Randy Nooner stepped from her spot on the podium, catching Remo by the arm. "How did you do that?" she asked, her voice artificially even.
"Aw shucks, ma'am. T'warn't nothing. Who's your friend?" He nodded toward Artemis, who seemed oblivious to the goings-on, immersed as he was in folding and unfolding a piece of paper in his hands.
Randy called him over. "This is Artemis Thwill, our new religious leader," she said quietly, clasping
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her hands tightly together to keep them from trembling. It was an activity she had begun as soon as she saw the sabers falling from the sky.
"Well, nice to meet you, Artemis. Say, you aren't the same guy who was talking to the troops at Fort Wheeler, are you?
Artemis did not respond or change his expression. The worn piece of paper in his hands folded and unfolded.
Randy Nooner looked at Artemis, then at Remo. She looked back at Artemis. Her hands stopped shaking. She smiled. Brilliantly. She had an idea. "He's the one," she said, suddenly cheerful. "I'll arrange for you to talk to him at his home after the conference. Would you like that?"
"Oh, yes I would," Remo said. "I certainly would like to meet Mr. Artemis and talk things over with him."
"Good. Artemis?" She poked at Thwill's inert figure, as he folded and refolded his speech in his hands. "Artemis!" Randy yelled.
Thwill looked up, bewildered. "What? Did you say something?"