"Dammit," Remo growled. "Where'd he go?"
"Israel."
"Where in Israel?"
"I do not know."
"Chiun, this guy wants to shake hands." The Master of Sinanju took a step forward.
"I swear I do not know!" the man begged. Remo frowned. The PIO soldier was telling the truth.
"What about the President? He take him with him?"
"No," the soldier said. "The old devil is loose."
"What do you mean loose?" Remo demanded. "Where is he?"
"He escaped. Two men were killed."
Remo couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Where did he go?" he snapped.
"I do not know," the PIO man replied. His pleading eyes showed how hard he was straining to be helpful. "He left not long after Chairman Aruch. With his dying breath, one of the men he attacked said that he was going off in the same direction as our beloved leader."
"Perfect," Remo snarled.
With an angry slap, he smacked his palm into the man's forehead. Twin geysers of blood spurted from the soldier's ears. Spine snapping audibly, he folded back over Nossur Aruch's desk at a perfect right angle. Remo wheeled on the others, furious fire burning in his eyes.
"Get outta here," he ordered.
Rats escaping a burning building could not have fled faster. Using door and windows, the remaining PIO men dove out into sunlight. Remo followed.
"We better hurry, Little Father," he said tightly.
"We do not know where to hurry to," the Master of Sinanju noted as he trailed Remo out the door.
"Doesn't matter," Remo said gravely. "We've got a President as old as George Washington's grampa out trying to fight the bad guys, and a bomb that's about to melt every gun from here to Damascus." His face was dark. "We'd better drive like hell until we find one or the other."
The brittle door swung slowly shut behind them.
Chapter 27
The ground had been broken on the planned Israeli settlement during the tenure of the previous prime minister. Houses had not yet been built, but the plans had been laid out for the tiny Jewish community just outside Nablus, a town north of Jerusalem, in the mostly Arab West Bank.
Protests against the planned construction had been ongoing, some violent. Although the new Israeli government was wavering, its citizens who had bought the land were not. The land would be settled. It was just a matter of time.
Nossur Aruch had other plans.
"This is perfect," the PIO leader announced to Fatang as his car crested a stone-covered hill. "Stop here."
The three PIO trucks trailing the big sedan came to squeaking stops along the hillside road.
Aruch didn't wait for his phalanx of bodyguards to run up the hill and surround him. He jumped excitedly from his car, hurrying to the lead truck.
Bryce Babcock got out after Aruch, his drooping face hanging in fleshy sheets of fear. With great reluctance, he trailed the terrorist down the hill. By the time the interior secretary caught up with the PIO leader, Aruch was already overseeing the unloading of the neutrino bomb from the rear of the truck.
"Careful!" Nossur lisped angrily. "Do not damage it."
When the men finally slipped the bomb from the shadows in the rear of the truck, Babcock saw that the timer was down to twenty-seven minutes.
Like an anxious child, the interior secretary tugged at the back of Aruch's sleeve.
"Uh, we should hurry," the secretary suggested.
"We are, we are!" Aruch snapped. "Get out of the way!"
Shaking Babcock away, the PIO head herded his men up the hill. They huffed beneath the weight of their heavy burden.
The Jewish settlement was to be built at the hill's plateau. String tied to posts that had been driven into the rocky ground indicated where the future foundations would be. Aruch brought his men through the field of scrubby green brush and white-and-gray boulders to the very heart of the future development. Snapping the string with a thick boot heel, he ushered the men into the living room of a home that would never be built.
"There," he ordered, pointing. "That flat rock." Aruch climbed down to his knees, helping the men balance the bomb on the rock. Babcock grew more ill when he looked at the timer. Four more minutes had drained away.
"A statement to those who would steal Palestinian land," Aruch was saying to his men. "If only this area was inhabited..." There was disappointment in his wet eyes.
"Would you like a Kleenex, sir?" Fatang asked quietly.
"Hurry," Babcock pressed.
This time, Aruch didn't resist. When the PIO leader got to his feet, the interior secretary's relief was obvious. With one last longing glance at the neutrino bomb, Aruch led the charge back to the waiting cars.
When they cleared the edge of the flat hilltop, a vision more terrifying than an endangered condoregg omelet greeted Bryce Babcock.
Down the slope, an Israeli convoy had parked behind the PIO vehicles. Curiosity had led them to investigate, but when the armed PIO contingent burst into view, the spark of alarm charged through the Israeli forces.
"Halt!" an Israeli colonel shouted. He raised his Uzi the instant the PIO soldiers appeared atop the hill. His men followed suit.
The PIO soldiers skidded to a stop, reflexively aiming their weapons down the hill.
"We don't have time for this," Babcock warned Aruch.
The PIO leader's eyes darted from the Israeli soldiers to his own men. The Palestinians didn't look at their leader. Their collective gaze was fixed on the hated soldiers below.
For a moment suspended in time, nothing happened. Tension in the Mexican standoff grew to a pounding drum of fear in Bryce Babcock's ears. All at once, the head of the Palestine Independence Organization drew in a deep breath. When he spoke, he did so loudly and clearly, so there would be no misinterpreting his meaning.
"Fire!" Nossur Aruch screamed, wild-eyed, at his men.
And as the PIO leader and the American interior secretary dove for cover, the peaceful, rock-strewn hillside erupted in gunfire.