"How'd you do that?"
"With ease," said Chiun, beaming. "It is called Sinanju."
"Is it like karate?" Remo asked.
"It is far superior. With Sinanju, I could reduce your tank machine to powder."
"No shit," Remo said skeptically.
"Indeed," Chiun replied haughtily. "I could teach you, perhaps?"
"Don't need it," Remo said, letting Lan help him into the driver's bucket. "I've got a right hook that can fell a tree." Why did he keep talking to the crazy old man?
"I could use a ride, for I am old and my feet tired."
"I'm sure there'll be a bus later on," Remo said. He reached up to pull the hatch closed after him. Something made him hesitate. He looked at the old Oriental who looked like Ho Chi Minh in drag. He didn't look familiar. But something kept him talking, something instinctive and familiar.
"You are cruel. I was wrong about you. You are not my son. My son would not leave me alone in the jungle to be eaten by tigers."
"I'm glad we have that settled," Remo said, clanging the hatch shut. He had gotten the last word. Somehow. that made him feel good. But when he painfully inserted himself in the driver's seat and started the tank, he felt a vague, elusive sadness-as if he were leaving something behind. Something important.
The Master of Sinanju watched the tank containing his pupil chug off into the night. He knew that Remo was not driving off in a huff. This was for real. He hadn't defended himself from Chiun's spiteful but harmless blow. His hands reeked of burned gunpowder and he was consorting with a Vietnamese.
Smith had been correct. Remo had backflashed. He had backflashed so far he no longer remembered the Master of Sinanju.
And worse, he no longer remembered Sinanju.
The Master of Sinanju sniffed the air. There were other ways to journey through Cambodia. Many other ways. He set off into the jungle to find one of them. The Master of Sinanju knew where Remo was going even if Remo himself did not. When Remo reached his destination, the Master of Sinanju would be waiting for him there.
Chapter 17
Captain Dai Chim Sao did not admit defeat. He would not admit defeat. He could not admit defeat. Returning to the base camp on foot, he informed the second in command, Captain Tin, that he had located the renegade American.
"My forces have him surrounded," Dai said rapidly. "It is just a matter of time now." He did not tell about the destroyed tanks. Or the soldiers who deserted under fire. Or how he had lain in the middle of the road for more than an hour, curled in a fetal position, after the tank had rolled over him. None of it.
"It will be dark soon," said Tin. "Do you need more men?"
"I need all of your men. Assemble them at once," Captain Dai ordered him stiffly.
"But if you have the American surrounded, then-"
"He could escape our cordon under cover of darkness," Dai snapped. "I will not take that chance."
"But if we deploy our entire force, who will defend this camp?"
"You will," said Captain Dai. "You will."
Captain Tin gulped and saluted. "Yes, Comrade Captain. "
The Hind gunships lifted off first. Captain Dai was in the lead helicopter. The tanks followed with frustrating slowness. Captain Dai had a plan. He would lead the helicopters to the ruined tanks and express his surprise.
He would curse and rage and blame his men for having let the American turn the tide against them. His men could not contradict his story. Those who had not discredited themselves by desertion were dead. Then he would switch to the ground vehicles and lead the attack.
No one would know or believe that Captain Dai had led his unit into ignominious defeat. Especially after he snatched success from the dragon's jaws.
The jungle shivered under the rotors of the lowflying gunships. The whole night seemed to shiver. The sun took a long time to fall under the horizon. the night would come like a curtain closing on the final act of a play. Or on someone's life.
It would not close on his own, Captain Dai Chim Sao promised himself. On his sham career, perhaps, but not on his life.
Remo sat with his back to a tree. A leech dropped onto his hand and he quickly plucked it free before it could sink its teeth into him.
The moon was rising like a crystal globe. Remo watched its reflection in the still water of a rice paddy. Even in reflection, the moon looked too perfect, almost as if it had been sculptured of frosted glass. Remo stared at its icy surface, trying to see through it. He could not, of course. It only seemed transparent to the eye.
Lan slept nearby. They had pulled the tank into a thicket of bamboo. Wood smoke wafted from a nearby village. No one had come to bother them. Remo guessed they had wandered across the border into Vietnam. It was quieter. There were no sounds of distant conflict. It was like the Vietnam he always imagined would exist after the war.
According to Lan, it was. Remo looked at her face, composed in sleep. It was a trusting face. It was hard to believe such a face would concoct such a series of fabrications as she had tried to convince him were true. But the other possibility was less plausible. The war was long over. America had withdrawn in defeat. Just that part alone was too much. And what was Remo doing in Vietnam twenty years after his last conscious memory of it?
On an impulse, Remo picked up his rifle, and walking low, worked his way toward the rice paddy. Its waters looked cool and inviting. But undrinkable without Halzatone tablets or boiling. He had no Halzatone, and lighting a fire was dangerous.
It was a perfect night for seeing. Not that Remo needed the moonlight. He had done so much night fighting during the war that he had taken to sleeping by day and avoiding artificial light. It built up his night vision until he could see like a cat.
That ability hadn't left him. It made Remo wonder. Where had he been all these years? Why couldn't he remember? As a kid he'd read stories about Japanese soldiers who were found hiding in the jungles of remote Pacific islands, unaware that World War II had ended long ago.
Was Remo like that? Had he been lost in the jungle, left behind? And what about his memory? He knew who he was, so he guessed that he wasn't suffering from amnesia.
The rice paddy was a perfect mirror. Remo crawled onto an earthen dike and looked down. His face was in shadow, his eyes hidden in hollows so that his face resembled a skull with flesh.
Leaning on his rifle, Remo got down on hands and knees for a closer look. He got a shock.
His face looked different, his eyes more deeply set than he remembered, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones. He didn't look nineteen anymore. But he didn't look twenty years older, either.
He was older-but not a lot older. It was his face, yes. But there were subtle differences. What did it mean?
When he got back to the tank, Remo sat down beside Lan. He stared at her innocent face as if something in her childlike features would reveal the truth. Finally he shook her awake.
Lan rubbed her green eyes sleepily.
"My time to watch?" she asked, pushing herself up.
"Later," Remo said.
Lan saw the stern look in his face. "What?"
"I have to know the truth."
"What truth?"