Warren Murphy: Syndication Rites

Scooping up the masked man bodily, Emilio continued on. The two men were crushed into a pile of indistinguishable arms and legs against the cinderblock wall of the building. With a sigh of collapsed lungs, the big bundle of knotted flesh dropped to the floor.

Mark stared at them in shock.

Through the hole in the wall, he could hear the sounds of confused shouting. Men yelled in English and Spanish.

A persistent noise like that of snapping kindling rose to his ears. Somehow, Mark instinctively knew he was listening to the sound of snapping bones.

In spite of the fear he felt, Mark peeked through the jagged opening Emiiio Gabinetto had formed. He saw a flash of something small and red flying toward a cowering Jennio Gabinetto. Before the gangster could shoot, the red dervish was upon him. The instant the blur resolved into the shape of a tiny, kimono-clad man, Jennio became airborne. Mark's eyes hadn't yet understood what they'd just seen when the warning burst like a solar flare in his brain.

He threw himself to his belly an instant before Jennio Gabinetto soared through the hole his brother had formed.

The body pounded against the wall and bounced off, collapsing lifeless on the prone form of Mark Howard.

Mark felt the air rush out of him as the mound of dead flesh settled on his back. He struggled to pull air back in his lungs. He was trying to wiggle out from under the huge body when he heard an angry hiss of Spanish nearby.

Twisting his head, Mark saw that another commando had entered the room from the back door. Even as the firefight was dying in the front office, the man strode toward the CIA analyst.

Mark had dropped his gun in the fall. He made a frantic grab for it even as he squirmed under the body.

His fingertips had barely brushed the gun butt when the hard crush of a boot heel stomped on his wrist. He felt the sharp sting of snapping bone.

The commando swung his rifle barrel at Mark's exposed head. And in that instant before finger brushed trigger, Mark heard a shocked gasp.

"Remo, cover your eyes!" cried a squeaky voice. From his ankle-view of the world, Mark saw a pair of plain black sandals materialize before his eyes. There was a loud crack of shattering bone, and the body of the commando collapsed in a heap inches from Mark's nose.

"What's wrong?" asked a new voice. A pair of leather loafers appeared next to the sandals. "Who's that?"

"Do not look!" implored the first. "Whatever it is, it is writhing like a Pyongyang harlot beneath that behemoth."

"Top guy's dead, Little Father."

"Worse still. Stop that this instant," the first man clapped disapprovingly. "My young son does not need to see such depravity."

"By the looks of it, this guy wasn't very well liked by anyone around here."

A pair of hands dropped beside the loafers. A face at once both cruel and curious peered at Mark Howard.

"Hiya," Remo Williams said.

Mark felt a sudden blessed lightness as the body of Jennio Gabinetto was lifted off of him.

"Okay, what's your story?" Remo asked as he tossed the three-hundred-pound corpse lightly over his shoulder. His eyes strayed to the fresh rope burns on Mark's wrists.

The CIA analyst climbed to his feet, cradling his injured arm. "CIA," he explained, panting.

"Oh," Remo nodded, the light of understanding dawning. "The Keystone Kops of the spy world. Word of advice for the future, Nick Danger? Really bad form to get smothered under a big fat guy while you're doing that dippy spy stuff you people do." And with that, he turned from Mark. "This way," he said to Chiun, pointing out into the large back room.

Chiun was standing beyond Remo. His wrinkled face offered Mark a look of disapproval. When Remo headed for the door of the small office, the Master of Sinanju spun after him, kimono hems swirling around his bony ankles.

Mark knew without a doubt that these were Smith's men. And loud in his ears, the feeling was screaming that this was both a moment of great import and dire consequence.

By the sound of it, the two men had cleared a path to the front door. He could duck through the hole in the wall and escape into the night, without further risk to his own life. But his heightened instinct told him that there was something more to be learned here.

Scooping up his gun in his good hand, he hustled out into the big room after them.

Remo and Chiun were walking over to the far corner. The way they moved, it was as if theirs were a single mind, connected by a string of unspoken thought.

As they strode past the door leading into the front office, a huge figure suddenly lunged in at them like a wounded bison. Mark fell back into the wall, startled.

Fabio Gabinetto had been shot in one shoulder, yet he still lumbered forward. His arms were stretched out wide, ready to ensnare Remo in a crushing bear hug.

Remo didn't even seem to notice. At the moment when Fabio's arms should have encircled his chest, he simply ducked out of the way. Fabio's forward momentum couldn't be slowed. As he thundered impotently past, Remo snagged him by the scruff of the neck. His legs continued pumping as he dangled in midair from Remo's outstretched arm.

"There," Remo pronounced.

The rest rooms stood side by side in the corner of the room. Remo aimed a finger at the closed ladies' room door.

A few yards back, Mark was amazed to see that there was no sign of strain on Remo's face as he held the still cantering Fabio a foot off the floor. "Put that down," Chiun clucked.

"Huh?" Remo asked. He looked over at Fabio as if just realizing he was there. "Oh."

Whipping the gangster around, he planted his head neck deep in the nearby wall. The body went slack, toes barely brushing the dirty floor.

Chiun was already at the restroom door. He opened it with a simple hand slap.

A man was hiding inside the small room. When he saw the two men framed in the doorway, his eyes grew wide inside his ski mask. Something flashed in his hands.

Behind Remo and Chiun, Mark Howard caught the glimpse of movement. "Gun!" he yelled in warning.

As soon as he shouted, he threw himself at the floor, aiming his own weapon between the two men. Fresh pain from his broken wrist shot up his arm.

In the instant Mark winced, Chiun's hand snapped down. The CIA agent's eyes opened just in time to see the old man's fiercely sharp fingernails sail through the commando's gun barrel. Mark watched in astonishment as a section of rifle clanked on the tile floor. It was joined by two others. Sitting on the toilet in the single-stall room, the masked man suddenly found his hands grasping air.

"Thanks for the warning," Remo said dryly to Mark. "And if you wanna make a bang noise when you point that thing at people, you might want to take the safety off."

Turning back to the commando, he pulled off the man's black mask. The terrified face of General Rolando Rodriguez cringed from his darting hands.

"Okay, I've had it up to here with you nimrods trying to kill me six ways to Sunday," Remo said with a scowl. "I want to know why you're after me and I wanna know now. Otherwise, you're going headfirst into that bowl, and I won't stop flushing until there's nothing left but a pair of really smelly Che Guevara boots."

Rodriguez wanted to lie. But he had seen the result of this man's work at MIR headquarters back in San Juan. Fresh fear of the thin young man and his terrifying Asian companion supplanted all other concerns.

"She made me come after ju," Rodriguez blurted. His soles were on the toilet seat and he hugged his knees, shrinking from Remo and Chiun. "After what ju did to MIR in Puerto Rico, ju became a threat to her ambition."

"These attacks had nothing to do with Raffair?" Remo asked, surprised he'd been wrong all along. Rodriguez shook his head.