Finally, Remo whispered, "Guess who?" The Indian stalking in the dark suddenly screamed and tried to run for the exit. But he was caught by the neck and pressed into the ground.
"Hi. I am the great white spirit, come to break your skull," said Remo. "But I will make you a promise. Tell me who paid you, tell me who told you to do these things and I will let you live forever in a land where the water flows free and the skies are pure."
"Hey, man, we just needed the dough. Coke costs. We don't know who is behind it. We just got told there would be Army people coming in and we should kill them and then there would be a guy here and we should get him if we could."
"Who told you?"
"Crazy guy. Said that we would get paid ten grand to kill you and a hundred grand to describe exactly how we did it."
"What did he look like?" Remo asked.
"I don't know. We got an overnight delivery of cash with a phone number. We kind of advertise as guides to this place. Well, we had this phone conversation and he told us the Rangers or somebody was going to come and told us to be ready for them, and hell, when you get seventy-five hundred through Easy Express in the mail, you do tend to give a man service."
"You must remember more," Remo said.
"That's it. You know, we're Indian guides to the public. We don't ask too many questions. We usually get paid in tens and twenties and if we're lucky we can sell a frigging blanket. This man was talking big money."
"Okay. Thank you for your help. I think you've spoken truly," Remo said.
"Let me go then. I told you everything."
"No, I'm going to kill you," Remo said. "This is Indian country and it's a white tradition not to keep our word."
"But you said your word would be good as long as the water flowed."
"Yup," said Remo, severing nerves in the brain with a sharp painless pinch. "That's an old standby. We've used that a lot."
Remo continued his search for the bomb and finally found what he was looking for in the fourteenth quadrant. But it wasn't a bomb. His hands found a smooth plastic coating covering several barrels. It was a sticky substance, thick as a baseball glove, and that was good because no air could escape from that. In fact, any puncture in a barrel would be sealed by this covering. The people knew what they were doing. He found the barrels with the missing sections. The covering just flowed around the sections, keeping the liquefied gas secure inside. In fact, these barrels were not the most dangerous, as Smith had warned him. They were the safest, because they would not leak poison by accident.
But there was no bomb inside. He should have asked the Indians. Why not before he killed them? The problem with killing someone was you always had to get everything you needed first. You never had a second chance.
When Remo came out into the daylight, he had to keep his eyes shut because the sun felt like flamethrowers on his pupils. He heard chanting some distance away. It sounded like a protest.
"No, no, no to death. No, no, no more chemicals. No, no, no to the USA. USA, go away. USA go away."
Remo heard the outside guard move near him. "Are those Indians?" Remo said.
"No, they come from Carmel, California. They're here to tell the government to stop pushing around the Indians."
"Any Indians there?"
"They don't tell us. They don't let us near them."
When Remo's eyes lost their night sensitivity, he saw television cameras focusing on a line of men and women, some dressed quite fashionably. "USA, go away. USA, go away."
Behind them was parked a ring of cars like a circle of covered wagons. The sky was just a kiss of blue with cotton-white clouds and the air was light. It felt good to be above ground. Perhaps that was why Remo thought the woman speaking to the television reporter looked so beautiful. She also looked familiar.
He wondered whether he should warn people to evacuate. But evacuate for what? There was no bomb there. Why should anyone go to so much trouble to threaten the government with a bomb that wasn't there? Had he missed the bomb?
He doubted it.
And who would kill two Army Rangers for a bomb that wasn't there? And why wasn't there a demand for something? Free all prisoners or give them ten million dollars or something.
Barrels meticulously cut apart under airretardant plastic gel, sent to the right people to get a response, those responding getting killed, and then no one touching him and no bomb there. What was it all about? Had they done what they set out to do? If so, what was it?
The woman was a stunner. Rich black hair, sea-blue eyes and a body that could make a Trappist monk buy a hairpiece.
She was talking about chemicals. She was talking about death. She represented MAC, Mothers and Actresses Against Chemicals. It was going to roll over people.
"It's about time the United States government realized it can't come in here and push us around anymore. Get its murderous chemicals off our land."
There were an awful lot of cameras focused on her. All of them but one, and it was focused on Remo, who smiled at it and gave the peace sign. The camera turned away. Apparently it was getting some sort of crowd shot.
The spokesperson announced that she was not going to give any more interviews because everyone had driven several hundred miles to tell the government to get off their land and they were all very tired.
"No," she said. "I'm not an Indian and I don't live here. But I do live in this world. And even though I am Kim Kiley, actress and star, I feel I owe the world my presence here. Poison gas does not discriminate about whose lungs it tears up. Women, children, the lame, crippled, insane, drug dependent, blacks and Hispanics. And yes, famous stars whose multimillion-dollar-gross movie is appearing now at all your neighborhood film theaters. It was beautifully filmed on exotic locations. Star Lust. At neighborhood theaters now, starring Kim Kiley."
So that was why he recognized her. Behind one of the cars, a sharpshooter leveled a scope-sighted rifle at the thin man in the black T-shirt and black chinos. He aimed at the feet.
Remo thought the man could have held up a lollipop and still advertised that he was trying to shoot someone. His entire body was tensed, as if it were in pain. Remo saw the light of the gun muzzle, the line of the bullet, and moved out of its low path as it kicked up dust in the land of the Pakeeta reservation. Then came the crack of the sound catching up. The man fired again, this time at Remo's chest.
The bullet sang into the iron doors where the lead splattered with sledgehammer force. Two other gunmen joined, each behind one of the cars in the circle, putting Remo in a crossfire. Now they were aiming at him, not his feet.
Now there was yelling and screaming from the demonstrators who, as it always happened, looked for gunfire a good two seconds after the sound of the first shot. They saw the bullets kicking up dust. They saw a figure in dark shirt and slacks seem to writhe in the rain of fire and as if he were dust himself somehow move across the prairie grass like a wave, a wave that the gunfire could not quite catch.
Suddenly, as if the rifles were useless, the three snipers threw them to the ground. Each drew a .357 Magnum from his belt.
They were large handguns, whose bullets could shoot out the support beam in a bungalow. While some bullets could go through a car door, a .357 Magnum could take it off. Each gunman knew that at close range with a slug that big, they had only to hit part of their target to disable him. A .357 Magnum bullet could catch a leg with such force that the spine would shatter.
And each of the men had been given special shells.
"You might have some difficulty hitting him," they had been told.
"I took out the eye of a grape picker in Barcelona at a hundred yards," said one gunman.
"This is not some grape picker who has displeased his patron."
"I've shot kneecaps off running men," said another gunman.
"Good. Then you will be all the more certain to kill this one. Now I want you first, to fire around him, his feet, near his head. Perhaps for several shots. Then go for the body and then if you continue to miss, I want you to use these special shells in your handguns."
All three laughed. All three took the special shells. For the kind of money they were being paid, they would have taken a tank if the man had insisted. They had met him on a yacht off Little Exuma, a faggy kind of guy, but so were many rich Americans.
And there was that strange requirement. The American had insisted that if he found out that they had used their rifles for a close-up kill, instead of the special shells in a handgun, they would not get their special bonus.
No one asked Mr. Reginald Woburn III why he expected the victim to get close if they should miss him. In fact, after being shot at, the victim, if he weren't dead, would be running away and they would have a harder time finishing him with a pistol.