"Now!" Reverend Sluggard screamed. "Don't you understand the word 'now' ?"
Frowning, Remo went to the wheelhouse and relayed the order.
Immediately, white-uniformed crewmen began to cast off lines. The great dual diesel engines began to turn. When Remo, his head shaking in confusion, returned to the deck, he saw that Chiun was directing the uniformed guards to open the electrically controlled gates to the Eldon Sluggard World Ministries.
A lone boy walked in. The gate started to close after him. Chiun went to greet the boy, when, suddenly, a bus gunned up the street, executed a sharp veer, and skidding on three wheels, rammed the gate. The gate halves, not fully closed, went flying. One cracked the windshield and bounced away. The other went under the front tires as if swallowed by a voracious maw.
The bus bore down on Lamar Booe. The boy turned. And froze.
Remo, knowing he was too far away to affect what would happen next, looked for Chiun. But Chiun wasn't at the spot he had been. Remo's gaze returned to the bus. He caught sight of a flash of saffron. And Lamar Booe was carried out of the way of the juggernaut of a bus.
"Atta boy, Chiun!" Remo shouted.
The bus plowed into the quadrangle. It snapped the standing cross in two and only then skidded to a halt. The door flew open and dozens of men in kaffiyehs and faded dungarees stormed out of the bus. Their weapons, an assortment of machine pistols and automatic rifles, erupted all at once.
The cacophony of shooting and screaming reminded Remo of Vietnam.
Reverend Sluggard stomped up from below. "What's going on?" he thundered.
Remo opened his mouth to speak, but the sight of Reverend Sluggard stopped him. Reverend Sluggard wore a greenish-gold uniform. Gold braid decorated his epaulets. He wore a pristine white visored cap and a ceremonial sword in a scabbard. His ample chest was decorated with rows of military-style ribbons. But they were unlike any service decorations Remo had ever seen. Reverend Sluggard's chest looked like a circuit board. Remo saw crosses, circles and other arcane designs, including one that at a glance seemed to read "Order of the Wrath of the Lord."
"Reverend Sluggard. . . " Remo said dumbfoundedly.
"Reverend-General Sluggard," he boomed proudly. "When Ah'm in uniform, Ah'm Reverend-General Sluggard, the Lord's fearless right arm. Now, what's goin' on?"
"Iranians," Remo said, pointing.
Reverend-General Eldon Sluggard clutched his sword hilt. "How ... how can you tell?" he croaked.
"See those checkered things over their heads? That makes them Middle Easterners. Probably Iranians."
"Tell them to cast off."
"I did."
"Well, tell 'em to cast off faster. We got to get out of here!" The Lord's fearless right arm looked around frantically. He spied a bullhorn on a deck hook and yanked it to his face.
"Cast off! Cast this tub off! Hurry!" Then he turned his attention to the quadrangle. People were pouring out of the ministry buildings. Staff members. When they saw uniformed guardsmen fall, they retreated. Some of the new recruits stood frozen in uncertainty.
"You, there! Boys!" Reverend-General Sluggard howled. "Take up your swords and smite them shitty Moslems!"
A few of the braver volunteers started forward. They were cut down by a precision stream of fire.
"Let Chiun and me handle this," Remo said, starting over the rail.
"Don't be a fool. They're cannon fodder. And I need you here."
"And Chiun needs my help," Remo said. He hit the dock with no more sound than a paper cup and pelted toward the quadrangle.
Remo came around the corner of the Temple of Tribute, whose glass walls were already shattered from stray rounds, and paused long enough to fix Chiun's position. Chiun was slipping up from the gate. Remo backtracked him with his eyes and saw that the boy, Lamar Booe, was safely in one of the glass gate boxes where Chiun had left him. The boy was pounding to get out. The expression on his face was so frightened it looked to Remo like anger, not fear.
Remo caught Chiun's attention with a wave. He raised two fingers in the old V-for-victory sign. He hoped Chiun would recognize the signal for a double Scarlet Ribbon.
Remo had no time to wait. He began to run. He cut left, then right, not seeking shelter from the rounds that were flying in all directions, sickling leaves from trees and chopping the Spanish moss that decorated the eucalyptus. Remo picked up speed until he was moving in a weaving pattern known to old Masters of Sinanju as the Scarlet Ribbon.
Bullets flew around his head and feet. No one aiming could possibly hit him, Remo knew, because by the time they lined up on him, he was already moving out of target position. His only fear, strangely enough, was from wild ricochets. But as he wove the beginnings of the ribbon, his mind was free of all fear, all doubt. He was at one with the situation.
The ribbon started to gain color when Remo encountered his first opponent. He took him out with a slashing side kick to the testicles. Another terrorist spotted him, and Remo paused a half-step, whirled, and as the man opened fire, came up under the bullet track and slapped his larynx loose. He went down gurgling. The dying man's wild fire caused another terrorist behind Remo to scream in agony. His screams attracted the attention of the other terrorists and Remo became the focus of that attention.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
It was then that the Scarlet Ribbon truly turned scarlet.
Remo moved in and out between his attackers. A thrust here. A flying kick there. He lunged for a man who was frantically pulling an empty clip from a Mac 10. Remo yanked a full clip from the man's belt and jammed it into the man's cloth-covered mouth, spiking him to the side of the bullet-riddled bus.
Others, seeing him pause in mid-action, trained their weapons on him. Triggers were pressed. The crossfire missed Remo, who flashed into action again. It got several terrorists. For that was what the Scarlet Ribbon was designed to do-turn the fury of a large force upon its members with killing result.
Remo resumed his furious running. Halfway through the ribbon, he streaked by the Master of Sinanju. "Sluggard's taken off in a panic," Remo said.
"His kind always does," returned Chiun as he executed a Heron Drop. He flashed into the air, seemed to hang in space like a dandelion seed settling to earth, and while streams of fire converged on the spot where he floated, his sandaled feet, spreading, came down on the heads of two terrorists fighting at close quarters. Two necks collapsed like empty soda cans. Vertebrae shattered audibly. Chiun alighted delicately and moved on.
Rashid Shiraz saw his bullets miss the old Oriental once again. He saw him break two of his fellow Iranians' necks. He sighted on the Oriental again. He missed. He missed again. He reloaded. And in the precious seconds between pulling out the empty clip and snapping in a fresh magazine, three more of his men fell on the grass, their blood staining the ground.
Rashid turned his attention back to the white man. He was bigger. He would be a better target. But when he looked, he saw his men trying to cut the American down. The man zipped between the bullet tracks crazily. It was an insane maneuver because he was not running away from the bullets, but among them. It was as if he were daring the men to shoot at him.
Instead, the men ended up shooting at one another. Witnessing his entire force wilting like roses in the summer heat, Rashid felt his courage run down his legs. He ran for the bus, hoping its tires were not punctured. The bus started. He sent it lumbering around and steered for the gaping gate. One gate half was still caught under the chassis. It sparked and rattled, inhibiting speed.
As Rashid barreled toward the entrance, he saw the stupid American boy, Lamar Booe, in the guard box. He sent a spray of bullets into the box. Lamar went down. There must be no one left to talk.
The bus cracked the fieldstone gatepost going around the corner and Rashid floored the gas.
The bus picked up speed slowly. The chassis rattled against the trapped gate. In his right-side mirror Rashid spotted the white American running after the bus.
"Fool!" he spat. And then he noticed that the Oriental was coming up on the left side. He cursed the trapped gate. It was slowing him down so much that even the old one was gaining on the bus.
Rashid kicked at the gas pedal desperately. The speedometer hovered at fifty. He blinked, At fifty they should not be keeping pace. Yet they were.
Rashid, cursing behind his kaffiyeh, sent the bus skittering around. If he could not outrun them, he would run them down.
The bus slammed around. Its sharp turn sent the gate flying. The tires were free. Rashid pushed the accelerator harder.
The two saw him coming. They stopped, side by side in the middle of the road, as he bore down on them. They did not move. Rashid grinned fiercely. Good. They were paralyzed with fear.
Their faces did not look fearful as they filled the windshield, however. They looked resolute. Even fearless. Rashid could see the whites of their eyes now. There was no mistaking their resoluteness. Were they suicidal?
Rashid had no more time to contemplate it. The bus was upon them. He whipped the tail of his kaffiyeh in front of his face protectively. The impact would certainly shatter the windshield into a million dangerous pieces. He shut his eyes.