"This time you will look into the barrel of the gun. Look for the bullet."
"I can't. My nerves are shot."
"Nonsense. I have just helped you tune them. You are now truly ready to dodge the harmless little rock." Remo knew he had no choice. He focused on the black blot of the pistol bore. He tensed. Chiun held his fire. Then Remo remembered his training. An assassin did not tense before danger. He relaxed. He let his muscles loosen, and Chiun nodded with satisfaction. Then he fired.
Remo saw the muzzle quiver. He saw the black maw turn gray as the bullet filled it. Then he moved. The bullet passed wide and struck a chinning bar with a hollow sound.
Remo grabbed his elbow again, hopping and howling. "Ouch! Yeoow! What happened? I dodged the bullet. I think."
"True," said Chiun, blowing smoke from the muzzle the way he had seen American cowboys do on TV. "But you did not dodge the ricochet."
"You did that on purpose," Remo growled.
Chiun smiled, wrinkling his wise countenance. "You dance funny."
"On purpose," Remo repeated.
"An enemy would have aimed his ricochet at your heart, not at your funny bone," said Chiun as he replaced the pistol on the table.
Remo looked at his arm. There was no blood. Just a red crease where the bullet had grazed him.
"My turn," said Remo, reaching for the pistol.
"Your turn, yes," agreed Chiun. "But also we are out of bullets."
"Well, at least I proved I can dodge bullets now."
"From a single-shot weapon, yes," said Chiun. "Tomorrow we will try it with a timmy gun."
"Tommy gun. And there's no way I'm going to let you open up on me with a machine gun."
But he had. Not the next day, but three days later, after Chiun had shot at him with a Winchester repeating rifle, a .357 Magnum revolver, and finally a vintage drum-loaded tommy gun. Remo had learned to see the bullets coming, to dodge even the ricochets, until he reached the stage where a man coming at him with a loaded gun no longer tweaked his adrenals but made Remo smile condescendingly. He had learned that a gun was only a clumsy device for throwing rocks. Puny little rocks at that.
And so he watched Fester Doggins and the Colombian throw rocks at one another. Sometimes one of the rocks zipped up toward him. Remo shifted to one side to let the speeding pebble slide past him. He was far beyond the bullet-dodging stage now. His eyes had learned to read the path of a bullet in flight, like a pool hustler calculating where the eight ball would drop. He didn't know how he did it, any more than a runner completely understood the complex relationship between brain impulses and leg-muscle responses that combined to make running happen. He just did it.
When the gunfire died down, there was only the Colombian huddled in the wheelhouse of his yacht and Fester Doggins hunkered down behind his pickup truck. Everyone else was dead. Remo waited. If one killed the other, that would leave only one for Remo to dispose of personally. It would be nice if they polished each other off, but Remo knew that was too much to ask.
While the two men caught their breath and reloaded, Fester Doggins happened to look up. He saw Remo. Remo gave him a friendly little wave.
"Hey!" Fester Doggins called up to him. "Who the Sam Hill are you?"
"Sam Hill," Remo replied. "In the flesh."
"DEA?"
"Nope. Free agent."
"Good. Whose side do you want to be on?"
"Mine," said Remo.
The Colombian, hearing Remo's voice, raised his rifle and drew a bead on Remo's head. Remo knew he was a target when he felt a dull pressure in the middle of his forehead. He looked down at the yacht. He shook his head and waved a finger at the Colombian. "Naughty, naughty!" he admonished.
The Colombian fired once. Remo jerked his head to one side and the bullet shattered the rock face behind him.
Remo picked up a stone not much larger than a quarter and flicked it back at the Colombian. It struck the rifle just ahead of the breech. The rifle broke in two and the Colombian sat down on the deck, hugging his bone-shocked arms and sucking air in through whistling, clenched teeth.
"Where were we?" Remo asked Fester.
"I got a proposition for you," Fester Doggins called up.
"Shoot," Remo said.
"Take care of the Colombian and I'll cut you in on my score."
"How much?"
"One-quarter. We're talking fifty kilos here. It streets at twenty thousand dollars a kilo. What do you say?"
"Who unloads the boat?"
"We do."
"No sale," said Remo. "I don't do heavy lifting. Tell you what you off load and it's a deal."
"We're talking a quarter of a million dollars your end. All you gotta do is whack that brown bastard."
"I got a bad back," Remo replied unconcernedly. The Columbian was struggling with an Uzi submachine gun, trying to make his numb fingers release the safety. Fester noticed this, realized the Colombian had a better shot at him than he had at the Colombian, and yelled his answer.
"Deal! Now, let's go!"
Remo slid off the rock like a spider.
The Colombian stood up suddenly, the Uzi clenched in both hands. He opened up just as Remo's feet touched shore.
Remo wove through the storm of lead as if it were a light rain. Bullets kicked up rock dust, shredded weeds, and hit everything in sight. Except Remo Williams. Remo stepped lightly onto the boat. The Colombian stood there, his mouth slack and his gun smoking and empty.
"Habla espanol?" the Colombian asked.
"No. Speak Korean?"
"No, senor."
"Too bad," said Remo, and ignoring the Colombian, he dragged the heavy anchor chain up from the water.
"What are you doing?" Fester Doggins called from behind the pickup. "Stop screwing around. Whack him. "