"You got it," said Ruby, who would have given forty percent if she had to. "And no backing off now. We got a deal."
Remo pushed open the upstairs door. They were on a flat roof two stories about the central courtyard of the U-shaped compound.
They leaned over the edge and looked down where Generalissimo Corazon stood by his helicopter, a metal box in front of him. Corazon moved over to
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squat behind the box, peering through a tube that served as a gunsight, aiming it at the door.
"Where are they?" Corazon grumbled to Major Estrada, who stood next to him, leaning against the plane, smoking.
"They'll be along," he said, smoking casually.
"See," hissed Ruby to Remo. "You go and you trust-in' that big clown. He jiving you."
"All right, all right," Remo said. He leaned back and looked around the roof. There was a guard tower twenty yards away, rising ten feet above the roof, with a guard staring out at the Baqian countryside, his back to them.
"Wait here," Remo said. "Let me take care of that guard."
He moved slow and low across the top of the roof toward the guard's tower. At just that instant, the guard turned around. He saw Ruby and Chiun standing twenty yards away from him and Remo running toward him. He threw his rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on Remo, and . . .
Boom. The guard's head exploded away as Ruby put a .38 slug between his eyes.
"You did not have to do that," Chiun clucked. "He could not have hit Remo."
"Don" matter to me none," Ruby said. "He coulda hit me if he'd a mind to. I'm watching out for number one." She smiled at Chiun, a warm afterthought. "Without me, your twenty percent goes down the tubes."
"Forty percent," corrected Chiun.
"Thirty," Ruby conceded. "But you take care of him."
Remo turned toward them in disgust as the guard
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toppled over the low rail of the tower and fell heavily on the roof. His rifle clattered as it hit and bounced.
Remo ran back. "Let's get out of here."
In the courtyard below, Corazon saw them, poised on the roof, silhouetted against the almost white Baqian sky.
He grabbed the mung machine in his arms and wheeled around. With no attempt at deception, he pressed the firing button. The machine hummed for a split second and then there was a loud crackling noise.
His aim was off. The green glow of rays bathed the roof, but missed the three Americans. Instead they hit the door of the roof entrance, rebounded, and bathed the three in a dim glow.
Remo said, "We better . . ." His voice slowed down. "Go . . ." he tried to say, but the word would not come from his lips. He looked at Chiun, a surprised beseeching expression on his face, like a wordless cry for help. But Chiun's eyes already had rolled back into his head and his legs gave way under him and he fell to the roof. Remo collapsed on top of him.
Ruby had no time to wonder why the misaimed rays had Foppled Remo and Chiun but had not harmed her. Time to think about it later. First things first. Number one. She moved to the far edge of the roof, ready to make the risky two-story jump down and start running. As she poised on the edge of the roof, she looked back. Remo and Chiun were lying together, looking like a pile of mixed laundry, Remo all cotton and Chiun all silk brocade.
She turned again to jump, then looked back once more.
She sighed and came away from the edge of the
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roof. She picked up the guard's rifle as she raced back to Remo and Chiun.
"Sheeeit," she said. "I just knew that turkey'd muck everything up."
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CHAPTER EIGHT
From down in the courtyard Corazon could not see that the first blast from the mung machine had felled Remo and Chiun. So he kept spraying the rooftop with bursts of energy from the device, but because the two men had fallen to the tarpaper roof the machine's rays passed harmlessly over them.
Still, Ruby Gonzalez wasn't going to take any chances.
She lay down on the roof to steady her aim, drew a careful bead on the mung machine, and fired her .38. The slug went wide and smashed a piece of metal out of a corner of the box.
"Damn borrowed gun," she spat. "No wonder this country don' amount to nothing."
She started to hoist the guard's rifle to her shoulder, but Corazon and Estrada already were hustling the mung machine back into the safety of the helicopter.
"Don't just stand there, fools," Corazon shouted to
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troops and guards who hid under the first floor overhang of the buildings. "Get up there. Capture them."
Corazon was hiding behind the helicopter when Ruby pinged a rifle shot into the soft side of the plane.
She glanced toward Remo and Chiun.
"C'mon, you two. Get up," she said. "Cmon now. Get yo' butts movin'."
They lay still and unmoving.
Ruby fired two more rifle shots to slow down the troops who were clambering up the steps leading to the rooftop that faced hers from across the courtyard. The position was desperate.
If Remo and Chiun couldn't move, she could not hold out much longer. She couldn't do much damage with borrowed guns, but if she kept firing and forced the soldiers to take her with overwhelming firepower, it was probable that the white man and the Oriental would be killed by stray bullets.
The soldiers were now on the rooftop across from her and had begun laying down a line of bullets.
"We all gets dead and nobody saves nobody," Ruby said to herself. She leaned over to Chiun and spoke into his ear, hoping he might hear her. "I be back for you," she said. "I be back."
She rolled away from the two men so they would be less likely to get hit by soldiers returning her fire. She fired two more shots from the rifle.. Every time she fired, she noticed all the soldiers ducked their heads.
She moved back toward the wall leading to the countryside surrounding the prison compound. As she neared the edge she fired two more shots and then shouted at the top of her voice.
"Stop firing! We surrenderr
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Before the soldiers could look up from their hiding places, Ruby jumped off the roof, twenty feet to the ground below.
The soldiers waited on the opposite roof for further evidence of the surrender.
Corazon's bellowing voice filled the now-silent compound.
"They said they surrender, you idiots. Get over there and get them." He carefully remained hidden behind the helicopter.
Reluctantly, the soldiers began to move, afraid of a sneak attack by the one woman arrayed against them.
When no bullets were fired, the bravest of them stood up. He was not shot down so all the rest stood and began to run to the other side of the roof.
When they got there, they found Chiun and Remo lying unconscious on the roof. Ruby was gone.
"The lady be gone," a sergeant shouted to Corazon. He wondered if her successful escape, even though not quite as planned, still entitled him to $73 million. "But the two men be here."
"Bring them down," Corazon said. "And search for her."
The soldiers looked over the edge of the wall at the land outside the prison compound.
The terrain stretched away flat and empty for miles in all directions. The woman could have found no shelter in that barren landscape. Running, she would have been picked out as easily as an ink blot on a marshmallow. The soldiers scanned in every direction.
Ruby Gonzalez had vanished.
The soldiers dumped the bodies of Remo and Chiun in the dirt in front of Corazon. "They been shot?" he asked.
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The soldiers shook their heads.
Corazon cackled. "So they got more power than me, eh? Cousin Juanita, she say so, eh? More power than me? Here's their power, laying in the dirt."
He kicked Remo in the side with his right foot and smashed out at Chiun's belly with his left foot.
"We see now who has the power." Corazon looked at the soldiers around him. "Who
is the all-powerful?" he demanded.
"El Presidente, Generalissimo Corazon," they shouted in unison.
"That's right," he said. "Me. The power."
He looked down at the two unconscious men.
"What you want down with them, Generalissimo?-" Major Estrada asked.
"I want them put in cages. Put them in cages and then drive them back to my palace. I want them at my palace. Got it?"
Estrada nodded. He pointed to a lieutenant of the guards and told him to take care of it.
Corazon stepped toward the helicopter.
"You going back to the palace?" Estrada asked.
"Sure thing," said Corazon. "I got to break off the relations with the United States." He chuckled as he clambered onto the ' helicopter. "The power. I the power. Me."
He did not hear the voodoo drums begin thumping again in the nearby hills.
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CHAPTER NINE
Route 1 back to Ciudad Natividado was pitted and broken and the jeep bumped up and down off the roadway as its driver moved along. Although Baqia produced 29 percent of the world's asphalt through giant pitch lakes that dotted the island, it apparently never occurred to anyone in government to use the asphalt to pave the roadway.
In the back of the jeep, the bodies of Remo and Chiun were jammed into two small iron cages barely three feet high by two feet wide and deep. Guards sat on the back of the vehicle, their eyes scanning the barren countryside as if expecting an attack on foot any moment from Ruby Gonzalez.
And underneath the jeep Ruby Gonzalez kept her right arm hooked around the rifle she had jammed up into the vehicle's chassis and her legs over the jeep's frame.
Rocks from the pitted road kicked up and abraded
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her back, but she had been careful to get on the side away from the muffler, so she would not be burned by the heat. She figured she was good for forty-five minutes under the jeep before she couldn't hang on anymore. If that happened, she planned to release her rifle, slide out from under the jeep, blow out a tire with her first shot and hope to catch the three soldiers with her next shots before they got her. Risky, she thought, but better than nothing. Best of all, though, would be getting back to Ciudad Natividado.
Thirty minutes after leaving the prison compound, she could tell they had entered the capital city by the increase in people noise. When the jeep stopped for something, Ruby could hear voices crowding near. They were speaking island Spanish and talking about Remo and Chiun.
Ruby quietly let herself down into the dirt roadway under the jeep and lay there. As soon as the jeep pulled away and its wheels passed on either side of her, she scrambled to her feet and took a step into the crowd of people.
"Only way to get ride from de soldiers, okay?" she said in a passable imitation of the island's Spanish. Before anyone could answer she had walked away and headed for the outdoor peddlers' stalls.
The chances were that the Baqian soldiers would not remember to put a guard on her room to catch her if she came back, but she couldn't afford to take the chance.
The presidential helicopter already had landed inside the palace compound and Corazon was in his reception room talking to Estrada.
"Machine worked good on them," he said.
"They alive," Major Estrada pointed out.
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"Yeah, but I not hit them square. It was a wing shot," Corazon said.
"When you knock them out, why you not melt them then? When you got them close?"
"That's why I president for life and you never be," Corazon said. "First I keep them alive and the United States got to be careful how it deals with me. Maybe I parade these two into a war crimes trial and mess up America if they give me any more trouble."
"As long as they alive, you got trouble. Remember what you cousin Juanita she say."
"She say some power gonna give me trouble with the holy man from the mountains. But I gonna take care of that a different way."
"What different way?"
"I gonna go to the mountains and do what I shoulda do a long time ago. I gonna get rid of that old man. I the president for life, I should be the leader of the religion, too."
"No president ever did that before," Estrada cautioned.
"No president ever as glorious as Generalissimo Corazon," the president said modestly.
"Hokay," said Estrada. "So what's you want to do?"
"I want you to put those cages in the middle of the town. Put guards around them. Put a sign on them that this is how Baqia treats CIA troublemakers. Then you drop everything else and go call the United States and tell them we breaking off the relations."
"Again? I did that yesterday."
"And I undid it today. You go do it."
"Why we do that, General?"
"Generalissimo," said Corazon.
"Right, Generalissimo. Why we do that?" Estrada asked,
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"Because we better off dealing with Russians. If I breaks with America, they yell a lot but they leave me alone. If I stays break with Russia, they send somebody to kill me. That's no fun. And it better to be communist. Nobody start yelling at us for having political prisons and no food for the peasants and like that. Only countries that line up with America has to feed people. Look at the Arabs. They got all that money but they don't pay for nothing in the United Nations. Only American allies got to pay."
"Shrewd, Generalissimo," said Estrada. "That all you want me to do?"
"No. When you gets that all done, get the limousine ready. We gonna go out into the mountains and we gonna get that old man and kill him dead."
"People not like that, killing the religious leader."
"People not know anything about it," Corazon said. "Stop worrying. Now I gotta go take a nap and when I wake up, then we go. Any new women around?"
"I haven't seen any."
"Okay, I go to sleep by myself. Go put them cages in the square. And don't forget the guards."
Ruby Gonzalez traded her trousers and shirt, even up, for a Caribbean-style mumu, a long shapeless flowered green gown. But the belt wasn't part of the deal, she insisted.
When the woman in the peddler's stall agreed, Ruby went in the back of the stall, put on the gown, and underneath it took off her other clothes. She buckled her trousers belt around her bare waist. It would be handy to jam a gun into if she could get to her room to get a gun.
Then she sat on the dirt floor, out of sight of anyone on the street, and began running her fingers
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through her Afro, pulling it straight up from her head. When she had finished, the pure circular outline of the Afro was gone. Hair stuck up in clumps, straight away from her head, as if she were continuously being jolted with electricity.
Then, with practiced fingers, she parted her hair into sections and began braiding it into tight neat rows that lay close to her head. It took her five minutes. When she was done, she stood up and gave her trousers and shirt to the peddler.
With the corn rows and the shapeless dress, Ruby looked enough like a native Baqian to pass. She would have had to smile that wide, even smile for someone to have suspected otherwise, because her teeth were white and perfect and no one else on the island that she had yet seen had a halfway decent mouth of teeth. No problem, she realized. Not much to smile about.
While she had worked on her hair, Ruby had been thinking. The white dodo and the old Oriental had come to free her. But she had not been in prison long enough for them to have been sent from the States on that mission. They must have been in Baqia already and had gotten the assignment while there. How? The most logical way was by telephone, although she knew the CIA was so lunatic sometimes that they might have used skywriters to send their secret agents their secret assignments.
The telephone, most likely. It was worth a chance. She found the headquarters, field office, maintenance division, installation unit, and operations center of the ding-a-ling National Baqian Supreme Telephone Network in a one-story cinder-block buildin
g at the end of the capital city's main street. The person on duty was the director, maintenance chief,
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installation coordinator, customer service representative, and operations officer. That meant it was her turn to ran the switchboard.
She was sleeping when Ruby went inside because Baqia's three outside telephones didn't get much business, so Ruby of course told her she understood how hard the woman worked and how little the government appreciated her efforts to make Baqia a leader in international communication and sure, wasn't it just a few hours ago that her boyfriend had told her how quick he had gotten a telephone call from his boss in the States, but he had lost his boss's phone number and where did that telephone call come from anyway? And Ruby wouldn't even ask except she knew that this woman would know everything about telephones and that's what she told her boyfriend-Ruby glanced at the nameplate on the desk-she told her boyfriend that Mrs. Colon would know anything and everything about the telephones because in Baqia everybody knew that Mrs. Colon was what kept the country running and what was that number again? And the name of the boss? And I bet you could just get that nice Doctor Smith on the telephone again real fast so I can give him my boyfriend's message, because if Mrs. Colon couldn't do it, it couldn't be done.
When Mrs. Colon got Dr. Smith back on the line, Ruby worried for a moment about her overhearing the conversation but the worry was unfounded. The operator went right back to sleep.
"Listen, you Doctor Smith?" "Yes."
"Well, they got your two men. They hurt." "My two men? What are you talking about?" "Look, don't jive me. I don't have a lot of time."
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Smith thought a moment. "Are they hurt badly?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. But don't worry about it. Anyway, I'm gonna take care of it."
"You? Who are you?"
"You and I have the same uncle," Ruby said. "The big guy in the striped pants."
"And the machine?" Smith said. "That's what's most important."
"Even more than your men?" asked Ruby.
"The machine is the mission," Smith said coldly. "Nothing is more important than that mission."
Smith had barely hung up when the red panic telephone rang inside the top left drawer of his desk.
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