And Remo back-flipped into the water.
SANDY HECKMAN WAS watching this time. She saw Remo standing there, still in the black neoprene wet suit, then suddenly he'd vanished. She heard the splash this time. It wasn't much of a splash. Porpoises sliding back into the water make a smooth entrance almost as devoid of sound.
She leaned over the bow rail. The water was already regathering at the point where Remo cut the surface. There was no sign of him.
Sandy turned to the Master of Sinanju. "He'll be killed."
"He will succeed. For he has been trained by the best."
"The best what?"
"There is no what when one speaks of the best. The best is the best."
"And who or what is the best?"
"I am," said Chiun.
Sandy trained her binoculars on the submarine. They were jockeying the deck gun around again, looking very determined. Or as determined as a trio of clown-faced sailors could look.
"We can't wait for them to get lucky." She raised her foghorn voice again. "I need a gun crew here."
Coast Guardsmen came running up to man the sixteen-inch gun.
JUST UNDER THE OCEAN surface, Remo arrowed toward the sub dolphin style, feet flippering like a frog long enough to create momentum. The rest of the way he simply glided. That way there was no wake or surface disturbance to betray his line of attack.
The sub was a big target. He reached it, slipped under the hull using his hands to guide him. This got him to the other side of the rolling U-boat, unseen and unsuspected.
The gun crew had just lobbed its third shell at the zigzagging cutter when Remo's wet head came out of the water. He lifted his hands and took hold of the hull. It felt slimy to the touch, but he got up onto deck with a smooth pulling motion.
Pausing to let water drain from his suit, Remo raised his body temperature to take care of residual wetness and crept toward the preoccupied gun crew.
He took them out the easy way.
Two were hunkered over the swiveling mount mechanism, and Remo just grabbed them by the backs of their heads, bringing them together before they registered they were in trouble.
Their heads split open with a dull, pulpy crack, and the two seaman dropped from Remo's grasp, their exposed brains mingling like two flavors of pudding.
That left the gunner. He had his hand on some kind of pull-cord trigger and was getting ready to yank it again.
Slipping up, Remo tapped him on the shoulder.
Startled, he turned.
"It's not nice to shoot at the good guys," Remo said.
The man's blue-rimmed mouth dropped open in his white face. It looked like a toothy red cavern, and he started making inarticulate fish sounds of surprise.
"Can you say myxobolus cerebralsis?" Remo asked.
"Buh-buh-buh."
"I didn't think so," said Remo, who shook the man by the head so fast his brain discombobulated into cold gray scrambled eggs. The seaman stepped back, eyes rolling in opposite directions, while staggering and stumbling about the deck as his nonfunctioning brain gave his body unrecognizable neural signals.
When he walked off the deck and into the brine, Remo figured he got what he deserved.
Stepping away from the gun so he could be seen, Remo lifted both arms, crossed them and waved broadly.
The cutter was bearing in on them, and Remo started to wave it in.
A second later he was ducking. The bow deck gun shed a shower of icicles, and out of a sudden cloud of gunpowder came a smoking shell.
On either side M-16s began spraying bullets in stereo.
Remo hit the water ahead of the storm.
The din of striking rounds penetrated the cold ocean water. There was a dull boom. The sub shuddered and rolled, and when Remo lifted his head out of the water, he saw the cutter had scored a direct hit. The amidships hull was perforated at the waterline. The sail had taken a direct hit and was a smoking tangle of ruptured steel. Waterline bullet holes were drinking seawater and giving back air, making the sea bubble and bloop drunkenly.
A seaman poked his head up from the deck hatch. Remo put two fingers in his mouth and whistled to get his attention.
The seaman blinked, looking around in confusion. Remo whistled again and he crept as close to the water as he dared.
With a kick Remo came up out of the water like a dolphin standing on its tail. He grabbed the sailor's blouse with one hand. When gravity pulled Remo back down, the seaman came with him.
Underwater, he fought Remo with a flurry of kicking arms and legs. Remo ignored him. The cold quickly made his struggles feeble.
Resurfacing, Remo started back toward the cutter with the captured seaman in tow, his head held above the water.
The man sputtered something Remo didn't catch.
"Parlez-vous French?" asked Remo.
If the man's response was in French, it was impossible to say. It sounded like sputtering to Remo.
A dull boom sounded behind them.
Looking back, Remo saw the sub start to list and said, "Great. I had them where I wanted them and now they're going down."
The sub's decks were awash with frantic seamen. Someone got a collapsible aluminum lifeboat out of a hatch and was putting it into the water when another sailor came out and shot him in the back without a word of warning.
The sailor and his boat slipped into the water to sink from sight. Only a thin blot of blood showed he had ever existed.
The rifleman lined up on Remo, and Remo pulled his prisoner under water with him.
Rifle bullets started striking the surface immediately above them.
They hit true, but veered crazily once they slipped underwater. One angled toward Remo. He released his prisoner and, sweeping out with his bare palm, created a wall of deflecting water. The bullet met the wall. The wall won. The bullet lost the last of its punch. Spent, it sank like a lead sinker, which for all practical purposes, was what it was.