Warren Murphy: Syndication Rites

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 buttons?"

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.

"Plenty of time," Remo assured him.

As Remo held up the bomb to the terrorist's eye, Sanchez carefully entered the time. When he took his finger away, the clock had begun to tick a three-minute countdown.

"Now let me out," Eduardo Sanchez insisted, wriggling his arm back inside the car.

Remo leaned in close to the terrorist's one visible eye. "Sorry." He smiled. "That was just a terrorist's promise. Besides, the Local Brotherhood of Clowns, Mimes and Tumblers would put my ass in a sling if I violated the sanctity of the clown car."

With a gentle push, he slipped the bomb through the small triangular window. It bumped against several thrashing legs on its way down to the foot well.

The small car began to shake like a can of paint in a hardware store mixer. Screams and muffled curses rose from out of the car's sweat-drenched interior.

"I know one group of clowns who don't know the clown code," Remo warned. "I'm gonna have to report you to Bozo. And if you thought America was tyrannical, wait'll you see what he does with a seltzer bottle."

And with that, he left the garage and its carload of terrified terrorists.

The last image the horrified eye of Eduardo Sanchez saw before the window in front of him steamed up for the last time was the First Lady's grinning face. As the fog enveloped her image, votive candles surrounding her carefully coiffed hair in an ethereal nimbus, the soon-to-be-late Eduardo Sanchez had a sickening realization.

"She is angry with us," the terrorist whined as her face faded forever from his sight. "I told you we should have sacrificed more chickens."

WHEN REMO SLIPPED Out the front door of MIR headquarters, his cab was already slowing to a stop. He hopped into the back seat.

In the rearview mirror, the driver noted the cruelly satisfied smile on his fare's face.

"You ever wonder how they fit all those clowns into that little car in the circus?" Remo asked in satisfaction.

The driver frowned confusion even as he began to drive down the winding street. "There is a trapdoor on the bottom of the car. The clowns climb up from beneath the floor."

Remo snapped his fingers. "I knew there had to be some kind of trick," he said, his brow creasing. And as his fingers snapped, there came a muffled thud from somewhere far behind them. Remo alone felt the gentle rumble of earth beneath the cab.

He felt good. For the moment, he had forgotten about the future. It was a feeling he could get used to.

He settled back comfortably in the seat of the cab for the winding trip back to the airport.

WHEN HE SAW the thin man leaving MIR headquarters, Corporal Rolando Rodriguez stopped dead. He loitered on the street corner near a group of rowdy drunks until the cab drove away. Tucking the small box he was carrying tightly under his arm, he hurried across the street to the rotted old building.

The first thing Rodriguez did upon entering the garage was vomit. The walls were smeared with globs of flesh-like hurled meat. Eduardo Sanchez's car was curled apart at the top like a stubbed-out cigar. Twisted black metal sent threads of smoke into the fetid room.

Rodriguez backed into the office. As he put his box down, the contents rattled. They were the new identifying pins. The ones designed by their leader. Had he not been sent to retrieve them, Rolando would be dead, too.

With shaking hands, he found Sanchez's little black book and dialed the special number. When the woman answered, he felt his frightened breath catch.