"Neither are you, Mexican," the Master of Sinanju snapped in perfect Spanish.
Comandante Oscar Odio winced. "I see. Still, you will have no need for this man, I assure you. For I speak impeccable English, as you can plainly hear, Senor Yones."
"Jones."
"Yes. That is what I have said. Yones."
"He comes anyway," Remo said flatly. "Or none of us goes."
Comandante Odio stiffened. "As you say," he said, the smoothness leaving his voice again. "A helicopter awaits us. As soon as the representative from the Federal Judicial Police arrives, we will be on our way. "
"The who?" Remo said suddenly.
"I represent the Federal Security Directorate. The Federales have insisted on having an observer also."
"Look," Remo said testily, "this is an emergency. Do we have to stand on ceremony?"
"This is our country, Senor Yones. Not yours. Please be good enough to enjoy our hospitality while we wait. Would you care for a drink?" Odio reached into a desk drawer and extracted a large bottle. "Tequila?"
"No," Remo said flatly.
Odio turned to the Master of Sinanju, saying, "You, senor?''
"It has a worm in it," Chiun sniffed.
A peculiar smile settled over Odio's handsome features as he returned the bottle to its place unopened.
Remo looked out the window, where an olive helicopter with side-mounted machine guns sat under a tall ahuehuete tree. Worry rode his hard features. The President dead. Terrorists involved. He wondered where the Vice-President was now and if they were still keeping the news from him.
Deep within the Sierra Madres, Walid cocked an ear to the roof over his head and listened to the clatter. It was thin, and growing thinner.
"The helikobters are not so loud now," he ventured.
"The roof," Jalid observed, "it is covered with sand. Perfect camouflage against the Americans."
Abu Al-Kalbin shoved another wooden spoonful of steamed rice into his mouth. He wolfed it down greedily.
"Are you sure this will help?" he demanded of Walid and Jalid, white grains clinging from his half-open mouth.
"The rice, it absorbs water in the bowels," Walid said sincerely.
"Soon you will have firm solid stools," Jalid added, smiling.
"At this moment, I want that more than anything," Abu Al-Kalbin said fervently. "Even more than the Qaddafi Peace Prize."
He upended the bowl to let the clumpy rice tumble into his yawning mouth like dead white ants.
They spoke in Arabic, so that the President of the hated United States could not understand them. The President sat in a rude wood chair in the tar-paper-and-tin safe house nestled in the Sierra Madres, which had been arranged for them by their Colombian employer. Fki.rom the smell, they guessed it was a marijuana stash house.
The President sat, his head tipped forward and resting on his chin. A colorful embroidered blindfold shielded his eyes; his hands were bound to the two crosspieces of the chair back with twine. His feet were looped to the front chair legs with his own belt. It was a very fine belt. Abu Al-Kalbin hoped to keep it as a souvenir once they had sold the man into servitude.
Over in one dim corner, Walid was playing with a video camera. He pointed it at the President, and Jalid quickly jumped into the frame, throwing his arms around the President's thin shoulders, striking a pose and showing strong white teeth.
Pausing in his greedy rice devouring, Abu AlKalbin noticed Jalid's raked teeth and hissed a warning.
"You fool! Put on your kaffiyeh! If these films fall into bad hands, your foolish face will be on every wall and police bulletin board from here to Cairo."
Stung, Jalid reached behind him and pulled the tail of his fringed kaffiyeh around to his mouth. He restruck his cocky pose.
"How will we get him out of the country?" Jalid asked as Walid filmed him.
"I have not figured out that part," Abu Al-Kalbin mumbled through a mouthful of rice. "I am too busy setting my disgestive tract to rights. Curse these Mexican dishes. They go down like fire and come out of you the same way."
Walid and Jalid burst into laughter. Their raucous merriment died when a low groan escaped the President's compressed lips.
All heads turned to the President.
At that exact moment, there came a knock at the door.
All heads swiveled to the door.
"Who?" Abu Al-Kalbin blurted, rice grains dropping onto his lap.
"The Colombian?" Jalid suggested. "El Padrino?"
"He would not come here," Abu Al-Kalbin hissed. "Not while the U.S. helikobters comb the skies." He indicated the door with a sharp inclination of his head.
Walid grabbed up his AK-47 and went to answer the door. Jalid followed him with the whirring videoeam, while a second groan escaped the lips of the President of the United States.
Walid snapped off the safety of his automatic rifle. He held it low on his hip with his right hand, set himself in a widelegged combat stance, and reached out to throw open the door with his left.
At a nod from Abu Al-Kalbin, he yanked open the door.
He never fired.
For framed within the door was a tall blue-eyed, vacuously smiling man of young middle age.
Walid's jaw dropped. He recognized the face of the man in the doorway. His astonishment caused him to hold his fire.
And while his stupefied brain was registering the seemingly impossible sight of Robert Redford at the door, the American actor calmly reached over his shoulder and extracted a nine iron from his golf bag. He lifted it to his shoulder like a baseball player.
The club came around with such easy grace that Walid never saw the aluminum pole that dashed his brains out of his skull, sending hot yellowish brain matter splattering like grease.
A splash of it struck Abu Al-Kalbin in the face, momentarily blinding him. Curds of it dropped into his rice bowl, which fell from his hands and cracked on the floor.
Abu Al-Kalbin shot to his feet, pawing at the organic matter in his furiously batting eyes as the attacker stepped into the tar-paper shack, hurling his mangled nine iron away and selecting a driver.