After that time a few short months before, it had taken Remo a while to stop looking over his shoulder every two seconds. Even now he caught himself glancing around every now and then, looking for...
Well, he didn't like to think about what it was he was looking for. He certainly wasn't looking for his future. That was a long way off. He hoped.
Anyway, this day wasn't about the future. This day, thank God, he had work to do. Something to distract him from the bleak words of his ghostly visitor.
When the plane touched down at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, Remo was the first passenger down the air stairs. He found a cab in front of the main terminal.
His destination was in a seedier part of the capital, San Juan. He gave the driver the address from the scrap of paper he'd brought from the United States and settled back on the taxi's worn seat.
Twenty minutes later, the driver deposited Remo on a sidewalk in front of an old brick building that slouched along the edge of the road like a two-story vagrant. A faded rectangle above the door indicated where a sign had once hung. The sign, along with the business it had advertised, had long since fled the neighborhood.
The street was dark, but like most streets in San Juan it was crowded. A few weak lights pinched the heavy shadows.
"Thanks," Remo said to the anxious taxi driver. Without bothering to count, he peeled a number of twenties off a thick roll of bills.
"It is not safe here," the cabbie warned as he accepted the money. His accent was soft, his voice tense. "MIR owns this neighborhood. This is their stronghold."
At this, Remo offered a flat smile. It was a smile devoid of even a hint of warmth. "According to my guidebook, it's Menudo world headquarters. Tell you what." He peeled off another eight twenties. "I won't be long. Circle the block and meet me back here in ten minutes. If I don't come out with Ricky Martin's signature, this is yours." He held out the bills for an enticingly long moment before depositing them back in the pocket of his tan chinos.
The driver frowned as he eyed Remo's hard face. The fare looked to be in his early thirties. His white T-shirt was spotless, and his hand-sewn leather loafers held not a single scuff or scratch. Apart from the man's startlingly thick wrists, there wasn't anything outwardly extraordinary about him. Except for his eyes.
The driver found himself studying Remo's eyes. Set deep in his skull-like face, the passenger's brown eyes glinted with a quiet menace that stilled the cabbie's heart between beats. There was somehow the promise of otherworldly menace buried in the depths of those penetrating eyes.
The cabdriver nodded with slow fear. "Very well," he agreed. "I will return in ten minutes." When Remo turned to go, the cabbie called after him. "I am not for independence," the older man blurted.
On the darkened sidewalk, Remo turned silently. "I love America," the cabbie insisted. Realizing the building in front of which he was proclaiming his fealty for the United States, he pitched his voice lower. "I have never missed an opportunity to express my patriotism. In fact, in November I voted for the man who is to be the new President."
Remo considered the man's words for a long moment. At last, he gave a knowing nod.
"Too late to take it back now," commiserated Remo Williams, a man who yet possessed some vestiges of childlike patriotism, but who rarely found use for those who governed.
And turning on his heel, Remo headed for the building.
Behind the wheel of his cab, the driver didn't see the front door of the old building open. One moment, Remo was there; the next he was gone, swallowed by shadows.
The driver gulped. Although he did not agree with MIR or its tactics, the older man found himself saying a silent prayer for those inside that crumbling building.
Doors locked on the dangerous San Juan slum, he pulled out into the street.
EDUARDO SANCHEZ HAD SPENT nearly twenty years of his life as a political prisoner in a foreign land. That his incarceration had taken place not in Russia, China or even Cuba, but in the United States of America did not matter. Freedom was freedom and prison was prison. And he had spent a large part of his adulthood in a cold stone cell in a hellish New York maximum-security federal prison.
That he had been imprisoned for his politics, there was no doubt. Oh, there were those who would have said that he was a murderer. Sanchez wasn't one of them. The bombs he'd set had been the first salvos in the war for liberation.
That his victims had been largely innocent civilians mattered not. America was guilty of oppression. America was its people. Therefore, all Americans were guilty.
Back in the U.S. in the 1970s, Eduardo Sanchez's Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, or MIR for short, had set off dozens of bombs intended to liberate Puerto Rico from beneath the grinding heel of its American oppressors. The only things the bombs succeeded in liberating were a few American arms and legs from a handful of worthless American torsos.
Prison had kept MIR silent for years. Not anymore.
The time had came. Finally.
In a grimy old garage in the back of an old factory in the most squalid San Juan slum, Eduardo Sanchez and most of the upper echelon of the movimiento were in the process of planning the first in a series of events that would oust the rulers of their island nation once and for all and install a new leader of the People's Puerto Rico.
"My friends, the time is upon us," Eduardo Sanchez announced solemnly to those gathered around. There were sixteen of them in total, all dressed in the drab paramilitary chic of the 1970s. The same clothes most of them had worn during their trial years ago. "We exchanged inactivity for our freedom. The silence of the past year has been difficult for all of us to endure. Yet for our benefactor, we embraced the silence. For her, we have kept this temporary truce."
A small shrine had been constructed on an upended wooden crate. On it, surrounded by flickering votive candles and rose petals, was a lovingly framed picture of a woman. The photo was meant to show its subject as pensive and caring. Instead, it looked as if she'd had a bowl of glass for breakfast and was ready to spray fragments from her eyes at whoever had the misfortune of gazing at the picture too long.
Careful to keep his own eyes from meeting those in the photograph, Sanchez raised his hands in supplication. His dark, pockmarked face was somber.
"To you, Senorita Primera, we dedicate this new, fresh wave of bloodshed."
With the reverent tone taken by Sanchez, silence had descended upon the wide two-stall garage in which they were assembled. And in that moment of respectful, solemn silence, the gathered leadership of MIR was shocked when the woman in the picture seemed to speak.
"Oh, great, not her again."
It was disorienting. The picture was in front of them, but the voice came from behind. The man's voice.
The men and women of MIR wheeled around. A thin young man stood behind them, arms crossed in disgust over his chest. He was looking beyond the group of scruffy terrorists. The photograph of America's First Lady glared back at him. "You know," Remo griped, walking closer, "I have this feeling that you can trek into the middle of the Sahara, you could jump from a plane in the dead center of the Arctic Circle, you could hide out on the dark side of the moon, for God's sake, and I don't think you'd ever find a place in the universe where you're gonna be safe from those two." Only a few MIR members carried guns. Confusion quickly surrendered to professionalism. The weapons flew up and were leveled on Remo. The unarmed terrorists, including Eduardo Sanchez, took safety behind the rest.
"Who are you?" Sanchez demanded. "What do you want?"
"Besides mandatory muzzles for every politician and his wife in the forty-eight contiguous states?" Remo said, his voice thin. "What I want is for dirtbags like you to slither back under the rocks you climbed out from. And before this turns into twenty questions, I know what you're up to. I know part of the secret deal you cut for your pardons was to keep your noses clean until the President was out of office. I know he's gone by the end of the week, and I know you planned to celebrat
e this great peaceful exchange of democratic power by blowing up a couple of planes heading for the mainland from the San Juan airport. I knew everything but that." He pointed to the First Lady's picture.
For the first time, Remo noticed something lying on the floor beneath it. The thing had feathers. "Dammit, don't tell me you're sacrificing chickens to her?" he demanded.
Sanchez's spine stiffened. "We owe her our freedom," he sniffed. "If she had not wished to curry favor with the Hispanic community during her Senate campaign in New York, her husband would never have released us."
"Yada-yada-yada," Remo droned. "Let's just get this over with. I have a cab waiting."
When he took a step toward Sanchez, the raised guns rattled more alert. Remo was a hair away from the nearest gunman.
"I do not know how you learned of our plans, but you are not from the pig United States government," Sanchez insisted. "The President who released us still serves. He fears the wrath of his wife, so would not send anyone against us."
"You only heard from one part of the government," Remo assured the terrorist, "The part that studies polls and does focus groups and reads frigging tea leaves and Ouija boards to see what's the right or wrong thing to do on any given day. I'm not from that part of the government. I'm from the other part. The good part."
"There is no other part." Sanchez grinned malevolently. "We were given pardons by the President himself, thanks to the intercession of his lovely wife. We are free men. Free to do whatever we want. And you are a dead man."
The smile Remo returned was cold. "Been there, done that," he said. "At least five times. I've lost count." Not a facial muscle twitched as he studied the MIR leader.
Sanchez couldn't believe the stranger's nerve. He was as cool as they came, not even giving a hint of concern at the weapons that were trained on him.
"Presidents come and Presidents go," Remo continued. "The part of the government I work for isn't even really part of the government. We've lasted through eight presidents, about to go on nine, and we're still standing. We say the hell with what Jeanne Dixon and Dick Morris have to say. We do what's right because it's the right thing to do." And nearby, another terrorist spoke.
"We protected," the rotten-toothed man said, sneering. His cunning eyes were rimmed in black. A crooked yellow smile split the dark swath of his five-o'clock shadow.
Remo didn't like the satisfied smirk the man wore. In fact, he didn't like it so much that he decided to wipe the smile off the man's face. He did so with a sideways slap so fast that none in the room could hope to follow his hand.
Remo succeeded in wiping away the smile along with the rest of the man's face. Dislodged flesh and bone struck the grimy black wall of the garage with a hard wet splat.
So fast did this happen that the man didn't have time to relax his smile. As his body fell, his face remained fixed to the wall, a now toothless grin gaping like a happy mask at the other shocked MIR terrorists.
Seeing how quickly the stranger in their midst could move, the men and women of MIR, so used to delivering faceless death from safe distances, reacted like true terrorists confronted by risk to their own precious lives and limbs. They threw down their guns and threw up their hands.
"We surrender!" several cried.
"Prison in America is not so bad," Eduardo Sanchez agreed numbly as he eyed the smear of bloody bone that was once the face of his most trusted lieutenant. "Maybe if we go back to jail, Ed Asner will start returning my calls."
"Nope," Remo said firmly. "No jail. Not this time."
He was looking beyond the forest of raised hands. An old Ford Escort sat rusting in one corner of the garage. The car belonged to Sanchez.
"You are not here to arrest us?" the MIR leader asked. When he tore his gaze from the bleeding skull on the floor, his eyes were deeply worried.
Remo didn't answer. At least not directly. "Hey, you guys like the circus?" he said cheerily.
Hesitation from the crowd. "Uh..."
"Of course you do," Remo insisted. "Everyone likes the circus."
Like an elderly woman herding a flock of park pigeons, Remo guided the fifteen remaining terrorists back toward the car. When one or two tried to escape, he coaxed them back into place with a sound smack to the side of the head.
Going around the far side of the car, Remo quickly sealed the doors. Coming back around, he sprang the two doors on the nearer side. "Everybody in!" he proclaimed.
A wash of fresh worry passed over the crowd. "We will not all fit," offered a male terrorist.
"That's negative thinking," Remo warned. "We don't allow negative thinkers in the circus."
And lifting up the man bodily, he tossed him onto the far side of the rear seat. The terrorist cracked his forehead on the door. He fell back into the seat, dazed.
Sensing no escape, the others began to climb nervously inside the car. By the time only five of them were in, the sitting room was gone. The three in the back were already squeezed uncomfortably in place.
"The car is full." The next terrorist in line shrugged. She was a woman in her early fifties. She licked her lips nervously.
"That attitude'll get you thrown out of the big top, missy," Remo cautioned with a waggling finger.
And grabbing her by the neck, he tossed her onto the laps of the three men. When she tried to sit up, she found she couldn't. Another terrorist had been thrown in on top of her. His broad bottom pressed down on her face.
Another, then another terrorist flew in through the door. When the back was full, Remo piled more men and women in the front.
"There isn't room!" one voice cried desperately.
"Sure, there is," Remo insisted. "The nuns from the orphanage took us all to a circus when we were kids. There must have been thirty clowns stuffed in a car even littler than this. Just think skinny."
He braced the front door shut with his foot. He'd already slammed and sealed the back.
There was only one terrorist left. Heel holding the door in place, Remo reached for Eduardo Sanchez. "No, no, no," Sanchez insisted. He shook in fear even as Remo dragged him to the car. "This cannot be. You cannot be from the government. We were promised that we would be protected as long as the current President served."
"His term's up January 20," Remo said. "Yours is just running out a couple of days early." Springing the door, Remo stuffed Sanchez inside. It was a tight fit. The fourteen other terrorists inside moaned and yelped as Remo jiggled the door closed on the press of warm human flesh. He sealed the door with a metal-fusing slap.
Someone opened the sunroof. Hands clawed the air.
"Please keep your hands and feet inside the clown car at all times," Remo said. As a warning, he slid the sunroof sharply into the cluster of upraised arms. A few bones cracked audibly. The arms quickly retreated inside the car.
As the MIR leadership groaned, Remo did a quick search of the surrounding area. In one of the many crates stacked in the garage, he found something that looked like a cartoon bomb Snidely Whiplash might use. Several sticks of dynamite had been fastened together with black electrical tape. A digital clock was fastened to the side of the bomb, ominous wires strung to the explosives. The LED display of the clock was dark.
Remo brought the bomb back to the car. By this time, the windows were filled with nervous fog. Remo rapped his knuckles on the rooftop.
"Quick question before the finale," Remo called at the nearest steaming window. "How do you set this thing?"
There was a squeak of damp flesh on wet glass. A scrunched-up eye looked out from a mass of limbs.
The eye widened in abject fear.
"Let me out and I will show you," came the muffled voice of Eduardo Sanchez.
The terrorist's fat lips were plastered across the small triangular vent window on the passenger-side door.
Remo frowned at the pursing flattened lips. "Didn't they teach you anything in clown college? No one exits the clown car until the final act," he warned. "How 'bout if I press one of the little but
tons?"
The car began to rock on its springs. A chorus of nos filtered out through the ball of crammed flesh. "Okay, maybe not."
Remo's frown deepened as he studied the bomb more carefully. The look of confusion on the face of his captor was not lost on Eduardo Sanchez.
"If you let me go, I will show you how to set it," the MIR leader promised, his strained voice growing crafty.
Remo looked down at the man's one visible eye. "I don't believe you," he said.
"I promise," Sanchez insisted. "I give you my solemn, most holy and sacred word."
Remo gave the terrorist a deeply skeptical took. "You've made other promises in the past," he suggested. "Like not to blow up any more innocent people, for instance."
"That was politics," Sanchez dismissed. "This is a personal pledge. From me, Eduardo Sanchez, to you..." His voice trailed off. He suddenly realized that he didn't know the name of the scary, bomb-holding man who had stuffed him and the entire future ruling congress of the People's Puerto Rico into his hatchback.
"Tell you what," Remo offered. "I give you a counter promise. Show me how to set this, then I'll let you go."
Sanchez was reluctant to take the man at his word. On the other hand, he didn't appear to have much of a choice.
"Very well," the terrorist relented.
Nodding, Remo used the suction of his fingertips to pop open the small triangle of glass at the corner of the passenger-side window. A gush of nervous body odors flooded from the car's interior.
Wiggling like a snake shedding its skin, Sanchez managed to work one arm out the window.
"How long do you wish me to set it for?"
Remo considered. "Three minutes," he decided.
"That will not give us much time," Sanchez warned.
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