Lupe whirled back, and beheld the stunning sight of the Vice-President of the United States lifting a headless golf club to defend himself as Remo and Chiun closed in from opposite sides.
"Watch it, Chiun," Remo warned. "He's faster than you'd think with that thing."
"It is only because we are slowed by this infernal bad air."
"Just watch it."
The Vice-President looked at his maimed club. Without a flicker of his fixed expression, he tossed it aside and extracted a sand wedge. He faced them boldly, his grin like a photograph.
"If you think you can hurt us with a sand wedge, you're crazy," Remo said. "Now, put that down and we'll talk. It's not too late to straighten this out."
"Isn't it?" the voice of the Vice-President said as he took the steel sand-wedge head in one hand. He exerted momentary pressure. The metal went grunk! loudly, and when he let go, the head had a sudden sharp edge.
Remo blinked. "Where'd you learn to do that?" he demanded, dumbfounded.
The edge sliced for Remo's face. He faded back, lifting his right hand to parry the next blow, while Chiun slipped around behind their assailant.
"No good, pal," Remo said. "But go ahead. Take your Mulligan."
The club came back for another blow. Good, Remo thought. He's falling for it.
Then the crinkled blue eyes shifted right.
The figure of the Vice-President shifted like a spun top. Remo couldn't believe his speed. Or was it that his own senses and reflexes were so slowed by pollution inhalation? he wondered.
The gleaming edge snapped around. It went whisk! whack! furiously, narrowly missing Chiun on both swings.
"Be careful, Little Father," Remo hissed. "He's really, really fast." "No one is faster than a Master of Sinanju," Chiun cried, and his nails began weaving a defensive pattern before him until their reflection became a silvershard pattern of light.
The club descended. It bounced off the whirling barrier. The Vice-President lifted it again, this time with both hands.
That gave Remo his opportunity. He plunged in, his hands reaching for the Vice-President's smoothly tonsured neck.
The sand wedge broke off on the second blow. Remo's fingertips brushed the Vice-President's neck hairs for a brief instant.
And then, so quickly that he couldn't believe it, he was holding empty air, and his momentum was carrying him directly into the path of Chiun's deadly flashing nails!
Chapter 19
DFS Comandante Oscar Odio waited impatiently in the Hotel Nikko lobby for his blue-uniformed agents to arrive. Their sirens filled the air, but they had not yet arrived. He had contacted them as soon as he reached Mexico City airspace, obtaining instant use of a contingent of agents-no questions asked from the Distrito Federal comandante, with whom Odio had a working relationship. It was that simple.
The unit burst into the lobby from all doors like busy blue locusts.
Comandante Odio gave quick orders, stationing men at every exit.
"The remainder of you will follow me!" he cried, brandishing his pistol. "Vamos!"
They surged up the stairs because it seemed like the most macho thing to do, even though it was a sixteen-floor climb.
By the time they reached their floor, they were perspiring and out of breath. Even men accustomed to the city's rarefied air suffered its effects.
Officer Guadalupe Mazatl stood blinking at the impossibility of it all.
She saw three gringos, Remo and Chiun and apparently the American Vice-President, fighting like demons with fire in their veins and steel in their bones. Their hands moved like quicksilver.
It was not a battle of men, but of gods, much like the old gods of old Mexico to whom Officer Lupe Mazatl had prayed to as a child in the Catholic church whose altar displayed the Virgin of Guadalupe, after whom she was named, but behind which were hidden the true gods of Mexico, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, and Coatlicue.
They were swifter than the hummingbird, more ferocious than the ocelot. Even the Vice-President, with his ridiculous weapons. Lupe could hear the air crack as his club tore through it. He was beating in all directions at once, like some out-of-control machine.
As she watched, the conflict moved swiftly from attack to joined battle to resolution.
No sooner had the deadly sand wedge broken off against a spiderweb of light woven by the one called Chiun than Remo moved in to take the Vice-President by the back of the neck.
Lupe blinked. It seemed as if Remo had the man for certain. And in that blink, the Vice-President was suddenly gone, as if he had turned invisible.
And Remo, unable to check his lunge, was falling into that deadly web of light.
So many things happened in that next breathless instant that Lupe was never sure in what order they transpired.
The shouting at the door behind her first drew her attention. But the crash of shattering glass pulled her head back around again. She blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what was happening.
"What is going on here?" a familiar voice shouted arrogantly.
Lupe was yanked to her feet and shoved aside by a in-rushing tide of men.
"You!" the voice blurted.
"And you," Lupe said, recognizing Comandante Odio.
"What is going on here!" Odio demanded. "It's the Vice-President," Remo shouted, his voice twisting like metal in a forge. "He committed suicide!"
"What!" Odio said, racing past Lupe. His IFS forces followed him. Two hung back, seizing Lupe.
"Look!" Remo said, pointing out the big picture window, whose frame was festooned with dangling glass teeth.
Odio rushed to the pane. He looked down.
"Madre!" he shouted hoarsely. "It is true!"
Far below, sprawled on the circular driveway facing the Paseo de la Reforma, lay a tiny human figure, a golf bag across his back, spilling various woods and irons.
Odio turned to Remo. "It is the Vice-President?" he demanded.
"He jumped," Reno repeated, sick of voice. "What made him jump?"
"What I would like to know is, what made him so strong?" Chiun put in. He leaned out the window. His nose wrinkled at the sting of foul air in his delicate nostrils. Just as quickly, he withdrew.