Warren Murphy: Balance of Power

"I know," Daniels said. "Tie us up and then clear out. They won't fire with him in the way."

"We can use him as a shield and get out of here," Jackson said.

"I'm staying," Barney said. "Get out that rope."

Jackson bound the wrists of the two men together with the length of rope. He blindfolded Estomago, then Barney, and placed a long knife in each of their hands.

"Leave now, Doc," Barney said. "Use us for cover."

Doc didn't answer.

"Don't try any heroics. Just get out. And Doc."

"What, fool?"

"Thanks for saving my life. I needed it for this."

Barney began to stalk Estomago in a slow circle around the clearing, listening for his footfalls and frightened breathing.

"You will not live through this," Estomago shouted, his voice trembling. "My men have instructions to follow me wherever I go. Half the Hispanian embassy is waiting nearby to slay you."

The slash of a blade sang past Estomago's ear. He would not let the sound of his voice betray him again.

The two men circled. And Barney Daniels in his baggy clothes, his belly aching for food, heard once again the slippery animal noises of the jungle, smelled the lush tropical greenery. He was back outside the hut, fighting again for his life. Only this time he was not drugged, and he was not fighting a boy who had saved him from dying of thirst, and the crowd of spectators was not cheering.

This time he had to win.

Estomago stepped and thrust like a fencer, then jumped back and slashed around him. Barney heard the knife cutting through the air. He attacked from the other side, but Estomago was ready. He whirled out of the way with the grace of a bullfighter.

Robar Estomago had grown up fighting with knives. Despite his fear, he knew that the American was not accustomed to the blind fighting used in the ritual of the bat.

And Daniels was sickly. The past year, the constant abuse, the continuous consumption of tequila to satisfy the drug craving in his body, had all done their work.

Estomago breathed easier. He moved quickly on the balls of his feet, his poise returning.

Barney swung at him with the knife but the attack was slow and Estomago dodged easily.

"You have made a mistake," he hissed. "You know nothing of the ritual. I will kill you like a fly on the wall." With that, he lunged forward with a low thrust. It caught the edge of Barney's left side. Estomago ripped outward.

Barney suppressed a scream and only grunted with the pain.

Doc turned to see Remo and Chiun standing alongside him, watching the battle. Across the clearing stood eight men, Hispanians, also watching.

"I can't help, can I?" Remo asked Chiun.

"No. It would be a dishonor to Daniels to be aided. We must wait," said Chiun.

Doc Jackson shook his head. Softly, he said, "He can't win. He's too weak. Too sick."

Chiun touched the big black man on the shoulder. "You forget," he said, "that there are such things as character and cause. He rights now for something besides alcohol poisons. Watch. He fights like the man he once must have been."

Across the clearing, Remo could hear the breathing of men waiting, their sweat sour with anticipation. He looked at Daniels, blood flowing from the wound beneath his ribs.

"Come, drunkard," Estomago said, a smile on his lips. "Permit me to kill you quickly before you bleed to death. It is more respectable, although why a whore's husband would care about respectability, I would not know."

He laughed as he parried again. His knife nicked Barney's shoulder. The rope tightened as Barney recoiled from the second blow. Estomago moved in quickly, preparing to slit Barney's stomach agape with one long slash.

He missed. As Barney ducked and rolled, coating the grass with his blood, he yanked on the rope and sent Estomago sprawling to the ground.

"Pig," the ambassador spat, bringing himself slowly to his feet. "Now I kill you. For myself and for El Presidente." He threw himself at Daniels.

He held the knife overhead, then slammed it down toward Daniels's face. At the last moment, Barney turned his head and the knife slid alongside his cheek, burying itself into the ground.

Estomago reached behind him to remove the blindfold.

As he did, Barney's right hand reached over and his knife cut cleanly across Estomago's throat. The ambassador's last vision was of a wounded specter of a man watching him with hate-filled eyes, his blindfold pressed to the cut in his arm, standing in front of a pulsing fountain of bubbling blood. He heard Daniels say: "For Denise."

The knife dropped from Estomago's hand as he began to choke on his own blood, spurting with each heartbeat and staining the ground dark. His eyes rolled back in his head as he withered to the earth. Then, one quick convulsion, and the general lay still, the gash in his throat smiling upward like a giant red mouth.

And then the men came from across the clearing, armed with knives, stripped ceremonially for jungle fighting.

With a wave of the knife, Barney slashed the rope, freeing his wrist from Estomago's, Then he went into a crouch, holding the knife in front of him in his right hand. His left hand gestured toward the Hispanians, taunting them, urging them to come on, to join battle with him.

Remo looked at the gray-haired man in his dirty bloodstained clothes and knew this was someone he had never seen before. The Barney Daniels he had known had been a worthless drunk, done, washed out, finished with life.

But this man standing alone in the clearing was something more than that. Faced with death, he throbbed with life. He grinned as he waited for the eight killers.

And then he was not alone. To his right stood Doc Jackson. On his left stood Remo and Chiun.

"I don't need any help from you. From any of you," Barney snarled over his shoulder at Remo.

"Anything I hate, it's a surly civil servant," Remo said. Before he could say more, the eight men were on them, and the dozen men were turned into a human anthill, squirming with wild activity. Next to him, Remo saw Barney take down two of the Hispanians with straight-ahead knife thrusts that parted their bellies like a comb. One Hispanian soared out of the anthill like a rocket, flying free and screaming until he hit the trunk of a tree. He had found Chiun.

Another attacker leaped at Remo with his hands trying to close on Remo's throat. Remo rolled backward and put the man up and over. Just before the man's back hit the ground, Remo reached back and wrapped his arm around the man's throat. The man's back went down, but his head and neck stayed up, across Remo's upper arm and shoulder. There was a satisfying snap as the spinal column splintered.

Remo rolled up to his feet. To his right, he saw Doc Jackson struggling beneath the weight of a man with a blue-tinged dagger aimed at his eye.

He leaped forward toward the man, but before he could reach him, Barney Daniels whirled past him. With the side of his right hand, he swung at the temple of the man astride Doc Jackson. The hand hit with a loud clap, almost thunderous, and the man dropped the knife, and slowly keeled over on his side, his skull shattered by Barney's killing stroke.

"Good work," Remo said.

They stood side by side and turned around. Jackson scrambled to his feet. The three saw the last two Hispanians advancing on Chiun.

"Shouldn't we help?" Daniels said.

Remo shook his head. "Don't worry about it." He called out. "Chiun. Be sure to keep your elbow straight."

Chiun did, straight through one Hispanian face, straight through the back of the skull, straight into the next Hispanian face, and then the two men's bodies were lying at his feet.

"Fair, Little Father," Remo said. "Just fair." He turned to look at Daniels, but Doc Jackson was already kneeling alongside him, checking the wound in his side.