"What does that mean?"
The old Oriental shrugged. "Only that your escape may have been detected. Did you think of that?"
"Well—"
"Of course not. At your age, one considers only action, never reaction. You never gave any thought to what the Olmec would do if they discovered your absence, did you?"
"What would you do if you were an Olmec?" Remo asked.
"Just what they have done. I would wait."
"Where?"
"Here."
The old man shoved Remo to the ground. In that moment, the sky lit up with six shafts of white lightning, causing the dark jungle brush to burst into flames and the water of the river to shimmer like silver. On the peak of Bocatan, no less than twenty men fell, their silhouetted postures those of men dying in agony.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"It was only now that I became certain of it. Find the men with the guns. They must go first."
They fought their way through the onrush of Olmec warriors, seeking the laser bearers in the rear flanks.
Accustomed to jungle fighting, the Olmec splintered and fled, scattering in all directions so that they could not be taken in a single assault. Remo worked his way through the ranks of warriors, but not a single laser blast was seen again.
"Where'd they go?" Remo said as he launched two Olmec into a double air spin to collide with the soldiers behind them.
Then they came again, the dazzling spears of light that bored holes into the sides of Bocatan. The origin of the beams was high overhead, and considerably closer to the Mayan camp than Remo and Chiun were.
"They're in the trees," Remo said despairingly. "We've been fighting down here, and those guys with the lasers have been moving ahead through the frigging trees." Without waiting for Chiun to speak, he climbed up a tall jujube tree and scrambled over its branches to the next.
They were dangerously close to Bocatan. The Mayans, with no leader, were no match for the warring Olmec with their weapons from the twenty-first century. There was only one way to stop them from swarming over the volcano into the city of Yaxbenhaltun: Remo would have to create a distraction that would give Chiun enough time to work his way through the foot soldiers and then take out the laser bearers.
When he reached the marsh, past the Forbidden Fields, he ran at double time toward the volcano. Earlier, when he had climbed the eastern slope of Bocatan with Lizzie, they had made their way up a narrow pass. If he could collect the Olmec there, Chiun would have an easier time of getting rid of them.
He approached the pass minutes before the six Olmec.
"Hey, you fruits, hubba hubba," he shouted to the oncoming warriors. A laser shimmered in the air toward him. It struck the exact location where he stood, but in the split second it took the beam to travel, Remo was gone. The shaft dug a deep crater into the side of the volcano.
"That's good, fellas. Just what I wanted." He stuck his thumbs into his ears and blurted a rasberry at the confused soldiers. "Come on, creeps, it's target practice."
Another laser lit up the sky, striking the hillside. And another.
"Chiun, get a move on, will you?"
"Watch your tone of voice," Chiun said indignantly from the shadows. He leaped high in the air, taking off the top of a man's head in his descent.
"Good work, Little Father."
"Mind your own affairs."
Remo was ready. One of the warriors, aiming his weapon directly at him, stood in firing position, open from every angle.
"The problem with guns," Remo said as the man's finger moved back imperceptibly on the trigger, "is that your body is wasted." He spun out of the way of the fiery charge. The soldier tried to get a bead on him again, but he was gone.
"The only part of your body you use with a gun is your finger, see," Remo said from behind him. The warrior spun around. No one was there.
"The rest of you is completely vulnerable." The soldier turned again, firing without looking. The beam tore into the side of the mountain.
"See what I mean?" Remo said, delivering a kick to the man's kidneys that turned them to brown jelly. The corpse's fingers twitched spasmodically on the sensitive trigger. A burst of fire sliced into Bocatan's worn and pitted slope. Remo reached the weapon and crushed it to gravel in his hands.
"Okay, who's next?" he shouted. Chiun was in the process of splintering someone's neck into a thousand pieces with a rapid drum of his fingers. The man's weapon soared upward. The other laser bearers were fleeing back toward the caves. "Oh, no you don't," Remo said. "You're not getting another chance, Bonzo." He took off after the man, caught him, and smashed his weapon to shards in front of his face.
The man's mouth dropped open.
Remo said, "You were willing to fight me when you had the laser. Now I insist we go on."
But the man only sputtered, his eyes staring straight ahead of him. He raised a violently shaking finger and pointed behind Remo's back.
"Come on," Remo said in disgust. "That's old. I look behind me and you get a chance to break my nose. Well, it doesn't work that way, chum." He tossed the man to the ground, looked behind him, and within a half a second picked the man up again. "See? Oh, God."
Bocatan was cracking open before his eyes.
The probes made by the lasers had torn her surface to shreds. Now the swollen volcano glowed red from its gurgling mouth to its base, streaked with deep fissures where pulsating red liquid oozed out.
"Remo!" Chiun shouted from the far rim of the volcano's peak. "Leave the warriors."
"Gotcha," Remo said, suddenly remembering the Olmec soldier supported in his hands. Almost absently he tapped the man's solar plexus. The man slumped to the ground.
And the fire mountain exploded.
Its entire eastern side blew in a stream of lava shooting from its base. The red mouth of the volcano darkened and receded as the lava spewed out of its collapsing side.
The heat and force of the molten rock blew Remo aside like a weightless feather as it tumbled onto the valley, swallowing rocks whole and burning a blinding path past the marsh and into the Forbidden Fields, where the burning miles of white flowers gave off a stench of sweet decay.
Above the din of the collapsing volcano could be heard the wails of the Olmec trapped in the inexorable flow of molten death, their screams sounding like the chattering of small birds, insignificant in the roaring eruption.
A man, his face burned horribly, ran toward Remo carrying a long-bladed knife in his hands. The entire top half of his body was blackened. On his shoulders were huge bubbling blisters, sprouting from deep within the muscle tissue. Remo could tell the man wouldn't last for ten minutes.
"Don't put yourself through the trouble," Remo said, taking the knife. The man covered his face with his charred hands.
"I'll help you to die," Remo said quietly, placing his arms around the man's body so that he would feel as little pain as possible. Then, with two fingers, Remo prepared to touch a cluster of nerves at the base of the man's throat that would put him to sleep painlessly and forever.
As if he could read Remo's thoughts, his eyes widened. In a burst of strength he pushed himself away.
"You're him, aren't you?" Remo said. "Quintanodan."