"Hey, give it a rest." Youngblood's voice was gentle.
"Phong died for you, dammit," Remo said, shaking him. "Don't you understand? I left you behind the first time. I won't do it again. This can't all have been for nothing."
"It ain't, man. It ain't, 'cause I'm dying free." Then the breath went out of Youngblood's body in a slow, deflating rush.
"Dick . . ." Remo said, hugging the man tightly. "You waited so long. So damn long. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn't it have been one of the others?"
When the tears stopped, Remo pulled the body of his friend free. Dick Youngblood's massive body, for all its bulk, felt strangely light in his arms-as if the best part of him had deserted the physical shell.
With unseeing eyes, Remo walked toward the surf. He. was oblivious of the sight of his fellow Americans climbing into the submarine's deck hatches. He didn't notice the man with the iron-gray hair and military bearing crawl out from under a disabled tank, pick up a fallen Kalashnikov rifle from the sand, and point it at his back.
"You!" the man called in heavily accented English.
"Go away," Remo said dully. "It's over."
"I order you to surrender."
"Who are you to order me to do anything?" Remo asked stonily.
"I am the defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."
Remo stopped suddenly. An odd light leapt into his eyes.
"That means you're in charge of the Vietnamese military, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Now, drop that man. Quickly!"
Remo did as he was told. He placed Dick Youngblood's body on the sand with infinite care. He turned to face the man with the iron-gray hair.
"You speak English?" Remo asked.
"I participated in the Paris peace talks."
"Then you're just the man I want to talk to," Remo said, advancing grimly.
"I cannot allow you to live," cried the defense minister. And he opened up. Remo veered to one side, evading the bullet stream. The second burst was corrected for his new position, but he wasn't there either. The Kalashnikov ejected its last smoking cartridge. Remo let the fact that the weapon was empty sink into the man's astonished mind.
Then Remo took the rifle and reduced it to splinters and metal grit.
Remo jammed the defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam up against a decapitated tank. He rifled his pockets, finding a wallet. The wallet contained several folded sheets of paper.
"These will do," Remo said.
"What do you mean?" the defense minister sputtered.
"Can you write English as well as you speak it?"
"Perhaps. "
Remo scrounged through the man's pockets until he found a pen. He turned the man around and slapped the paper and pen onto the tank's flat superstructure. "Write," Remo ordered.
"What shall I write?"
"A surrender treaty. Unconditional surrender."
"I do not understand."
"You were part of the Paris talks. You signed a treaty there. This treaty will replace that one. The terms are simple. Unconditional surrender to the American forces. Me."
"Such a coerced document can mean nothing."
"Humor me," Remo said, forcing his finger into the small of the man's back, where it caused the lower vertebrae to grind together painfully. The defense minister gasped for breath. He began writing.
When he was done, he handed the scraps of paper to Remo with shaky hands. His eyes were stricken.
"It means nothing," he repeated.
"Wrong," Remo told him. "The first treaty meant nothing, because your people never intended to live up to it. But this one is different. It means my friend lying over there died for something. I don't call that nothing."
"Am I your prisoner?"
"I don't take prisoners," Remo told him. Then he released the man's vertebrae. The defense minister fell to the sand with his lungs expelling a final gusty breath.
Remo walked away from the body without a second glance and stood over the mortal remains of Dick Youngblood.
He looked at the papers in his hands and realized that he would have to make a choice. Dick's body or the papers. He couldn't swim with Dick's body in tow and still hold the treaty papers above the ruinous salt water.
Remo was about to drop the papers when the Master of Sinanju called out to him. Remo looked.
Chiun was returning to shore on the back of the elephant he called Rambo.
"The submarine is leaving now," Chiun told him emotionlessly. "Do you wish to come along?"
"Is there room for Dick on that thing's back?"
"He is dead."
"So?"
"So I do not understand. We can do nothing more for him. Why bring his remains back?"
"You'll never understand," Remo said levelly, hoisting Youngblood's body onto the elephant's back. "I'm a Marine, and we don't leave our dead behind."
Chapter 23
The morning sun sent splinters of light through the skylight of the Folcroft gymnasium as the Master of Sinanju finished screwing the drum magazine into the old Thompson submachine gun.