"Yes?"
"The effective range of a tank gun."
Remo stopped the Humvee two hundred yards short of the booming tank gun. A shell whistled overhead. Their eyes tracked it as if it were a silvery painted balloon floating by on a brisk wind.
A second shell boomed past, to join the one before.
Both tore up the road well beyond the Humvee. The detonations came only seconds apart, the second shell dispersing the dust cloud made by the first.
"If they want to knock us out with that thing, they'll have to back up another six hundred yards."
"And if they do?"
"We'll back up with them, but that won't happen.
"Why not?"
"Because in another minute they'll be out of shells."
It happened sooner than that.
No more shells boomed forth. Instead, the turret was popped, and a handful of Mexican soldiers armed with stubby Heckler ine guns came trotting up the road.
"I guess this is where we get personal," Remo said, leaving his seat.
Chiun also exited the vehicle.
The approaching soldiers fixed them in their sights and called, "Manos arriba!"
"You catch that, Little Father?"
"He is saying 'Stick them up.'"
"Must mean our hands," said Remo throwing up his hands because Chiun had taught him it brought the enemy closer.
It didn't work this time.
From the light tank a commanding voice called out one ripping word. "Disparen!"
Chiun started to say, "That means-"
The soldiers lit up their weapons, but Remo had already spotted their trigger fingers turning white the moment before the muzzle began flashing.
Chiun faded left. Remo dropped into a sudden crouch so the first vicious burst could pass harmlessly over his head.
They started moving in on their attackers.
There were only three. Their weapons had a high rate of fire, and clips began running empty.
It takes almost as much time to extract an empty clip and ram a fresh one into the receiver as it does to empty the first clip to begin with, Remo knew.
That was plenty of time when shooting at the unarmed or engaged in sporadic firefights from shelter. But it was fatally long when facing two Masters of Sinanju.
Remo arrowed up and ahead when the empty clip started dropping free. Less than a second transpired.
He had cleared the halfway point when the empty clip clinked to the roadway. He made a fist.
The soldier was whipping out a second clip from a belt pouch, and his speed was good. He wasn't taking chances even though he was trying to shoot an unarmed foe who had surrendered on command.
At the exact moment the soldier's fingers gripped the fresh clip, Remo's fist started up from his belt line.
It was a short blow. It struck the hovering gun barrel, which cracked off and jumped into the soldier's gaping mouth. The mouth shut reflexively.
It would have been comical except the metal fragment kept going, taking out the cervical vertebrae in the neck via a newly excavated exit wound.
The soldier dropped, and Remo turned to deal with a second soldier, who was popping bullets one at a time in an effort to conserve ammunition.
One at a time was easy. Remo struck a pose, making a teapot handle with one crooked arm so the first round had an empty space to pass through. The soldier kept trying to correct his aim, but Remo corrected his stance each time.
Stubbornly the soldier kept trying to perforate Remo's exposed chest, but the bullets only managed to speed by past his inner elbow. His face grew dark with rage as he put out snarling round after snarling round, wondering why his bullets insisted upon hitting a triangular patch of empty air instead of his taunting target. A triangle that seemed to grow in size with each shot fired through it.
He never realized the triangle was growing in size because he was so concentrated on his task he didn't sense the approach of two-footed doom.
"Can you say 'mandibular dislocation'?" Remo asked.
The soldier's response was to clench his teeth and redirect his weapon in Remo's direction.
So Remo showed him the harmless palm of his open hand before it slapped his jaw off its hinges to land in the dirt like a fresh-cut lamb chop.
When the soldier's remaining face hit the road, his dangling tongue hissed as it came into contact with a hot shell casing. He moaned.
Stepping up, Remo put him out of his misery with a hard heel that opened his skull like a cantaloupe.
He turned just in time to watch Chiun make a point about correct grooming. The Master of Sinanju was methodically flaying his antagonist.
The flayee seemed unaware of his plight at first. It was hard not to notice elongated strips of one's own flesh as they came off in long, thin peels, but the soldier's mind was obviously elsewhere.
Mistaking Chiun for a pushover, the soldier had dropped his submachine gun and pulled his combat knife out. It was a bad error in judgment. Chiun might have put him down with a quick blow otherwise, but the soldier gave him an irresistible opportunity.
"We don't have all day," Remo called over as the Master of Sinanju deflected a knife thrust and stripped the soldier's forearm skin on the return.
The soldier started to notice he was losing strips of hide. But he was game. He shifted hands. Chiun obligingly shifted hands, too.
The rest was a forgone conclusion. It was only one knife against ten fingernails.
Chiun extended a deadly sharp fingernail and parried every blow. The clash of tempered steel and flexible nail sounded like metal on horn. The thin, bamboolike nail gave just enough not to break.