Warren Murphy - Political Pressure

Smith, without a second thought, hung up on the President and replayed the videotape on his screen. Mark Howard had just finished working with a digital video stream they had intercepted feeding into the Flicker residence in Dallas.

Mark's changes were expertly done. Smith couldn't see the editing.

Still, there was much about this exercise that made him feel grim, and angry.

"I dig your threads, man," Remo said with genuine pleasure.

"Fah!" Chiun snapped.

"But it's the shades what make the suit."

"Leave me be, idiot!"

The senator was looking from one to the other, unable to come to terms with this pair of, well, whatever they were. They had squabbled like siblings ever since the old one was informed he needed to dress like an agent from the Service.

"Never! Not for all the gold under Fort Knox!"

The young one, Remo, finally convinced the old one to wear a dark suit jacket and dark glasses over his robe, which was obviously a traditional Asian garment of some kind.

"How will I see the projectiles with my vision obscured?" the old man demanded.

"You can take them off as soon as we get to the podium," Remo told him. "Nobody will be looking at you then, anyway."

The senator had his doubts about that. The old man, whose name he couldn't quite get his tongue around, was an unusual sight, and the jacket didn't disguise much of his unusualness. Everything else aside, he was a head shorter than any Service agent in history.

"We're ten minutes late—we ready or not?" demanded the senator's executive assistant, who served as his press secretary.

"I'm ready," Remo declared, folding his hands in front of him in a standard Service pose. "You ready, Little Father?"

The Asian made the sound of a striking cobra.

"He's ready," Remo told the assistant.

"I was asking the senator!"

"Oh. You ready, Senator?"

"Yes," he said to Remo, caught himself and said "Yes," to his assistant. She went to announce him, muttering.

"You must fire that woman," the Asian man instructed Whiteslaw. "She called us names."

"She'd divorce me if I fired her."

They emerged from the front doors of the Old S.O.B. The media was everywhere. The public cheered the elected official who had been attacked so heroically.

The senator was still being supported by the men as he walked, and they transported him with minimal fuss and without effort, as far as he could tell. They were scanning the crowd, and the sunglasses were lifted off their eyes the moment that all three of them came to stop at the oversized podium.

Whiteslaw was sweating under thick armor, but his head was entirely exposed. He still didn't quite understand how he was supposed to be protected in the event of a head shot from a sniper. He hoped he wasn't going to regret this....

Before the senator even opened his mouth the first shot was fired. Whiteslaw's first indication was when his vision was obscured. Somebody had put a big piece of metal in front of his face and before he could think it over there was a heavy metallic crunch, followed a second later by the sound of the shot.

Somebody had just fired a sniper rifle, right at his head, and the one called Remo had shielded him with a piece of armor plating that looked as if it had been literally ripped from under the body panels of one of the Service's armored cars. There were pieces of the electronic door latch dangling from it.

Next thing the senator knew, he was stuffed into the podium's hollow and the inch-thick steel door was slammed in his face. He was in darkness.

Rubin swore. Of all the dumb luck. They had to have guessed the sniper would fire the moment the Senator was in place, which meant they knew that the intent was to keep Whiteslaw from appearing on the media. Well, so far the news had nothing more than a few shots of him walking to the microphone, but the man was still alive, and conveniently trapped by his own bodyguards inside the armored shell of the podium.

General Rubin smirked at the foolishness of that act. The podium would be Senator Whiteslaw's coffin.

"Move in," he snapped into his radio and saw his four men push through the crowds of onlookers. Their attack came only heartbeats after the failed sniper bullet, and the Service was too slow. In fact, the Service seemed to be keeping to the fringes.

The pair in the middle were the ones who mattered, anyway. Rubin didn't know who they were, but according to his boss their deaths were just as important as that of the senator. Thanks to the new hardware his men was using, their deaths were a sure thing. No more machine guns. They had sawed-off combat shotguns, with a wide, deadly spread.

Rubin's men shoved their way into the open and targeted the podium pair, but for some reason there were no sounds of gunfire. Where were the shotgun blasts?

General Rubin of the White Hand had an unobscured view of the action. What he saw was the pair from the podium moving among his men like darting birds, snatching shotguns like worms. The shotguns clattered on the walkway and, like worms, they were now curved and bent. Useless.

The gunners were going for their backup weapons, but were demolished before they freed any of them. Rubin saw the light, impossibly swift strokes and didn't trust his own eyes. It was too swift, like flashes of sunlight The collapse of his four men was slow by comparison, and their precise wounds left Rubin with no doubts that they were dead.

How had this all gone so wrong so fast? Who were these two?

Whoever they were, they had no real cover. They wouldn't escape a sniper.

"Morton, take them out," Rubin said into his radio.

At that moment the pair turned and looked right at him, as if they had heard his voice.

"I'll get that guy." Remo spotted the man who was coordinating the attack. He was ensconced in a portable electronic sound booth, where the media had been required to stage its retransmitting equipment. Equipment trucks had not been allowed anywhere near the press conference.

Remo stepped around an incoming .357 sniper round that would have disemboweled him. The bullet chopped a hole in the pavement and sent concrete shards raining against the armored podium that protected the senator from California.

"The long-range boomer must be eradicated first," Chiun declared. "Draw his fire."

Chiun vanished as the next sniper shot passed through the spot where his body had been, continuing into the building facade.

Missed one old S.O.B. and tagged another, Remo thought as he retreated, maneuvering away from the screaming crowds who had the good sense to panic and flee. The Secret Service agents were also taking cover in flocks. Orders were shouted. Agents started moving out. They could not have been less relevant to the goings-on.

Remo dodged more rounds, trying to look lucky instead of deliberate, but the man who was coordinating the attack knew something was going on. Remo was trapped where he was. He had to keep the sniper's attention until Chiun neutralized him, but he wouldn't want to lose the one doing the supervising.

The man in the equipment booth bolted, knocking a pair of cowering equipment operators into their equipment. Dammit, where was Chiun?

Remo's gaze shifted back to the nearby rooftop where the sniper crouched. A rainbow of gold swept across the roof and pounced on the gunman's position, then Chiun stood and waved. The gunner was history. The crowd could now panic in peace, without risk of taking sniper rounds.

Remo ran fast, vaulting over a concrete barricade and glimpsing the fleeing man, but the electronics booth blew apart before he touched down. He felt it coming and rolled, exhaling, absorbing the blast as it rolled overhead, then springing to his feet again. A glance showed him four or five bodies in the booth, but the real goal of the explosive was to ensure no further transmissions came from this place.