Warren Murphy: The Last Monarch

"I will get my pay! I will not be denied my rightful throne as ruler of all the Middle East!"

Far above, the Iranian planes began to fire on the Libyan craft, chasing the first arrivals away. The moment the Mirage jets broke formation and tore away across the desert, the F-5s turned their attention back on the oasis.

Nossur Aruch felt exaltation right up until the point the first plane fired Maverick air-to-surface missiles into the cluster of flaming trees and brush.

Shocked, Aruch cowered from the blast. When he straightened up, he saw that Remo was walking toward him. The PIO leader reacted with surprising speed.

A hand dropped to his belt, ripping his familiar automatic free of its leather holster. In an instant, the gun was pressed up against the President's temple.

"Do not move!" Aruch ordered.

In spite of the danger to the man who at one time had been the most powerful leader on Earth, the younger intruder did something that surprised the PIO head.

Remo smiled.

"Sorry, pal," he said, still walking. "You lose." The leader of the Palestine Independence Organization had not expected his bluff would be called. But in a moment of shocking realization, he understood why this man hadn't stopped. His gun wouldn't work. It would have been rendered ineffective by the magnetizing wave of the neutrino bomb.

Desperate, Arach flung his gun away, grabbing at the knife in his waist scabbard.

He had only brushed the hilt when he felt a sharp stab of pain in his gut. The wind instantly whooshed from his lungs. When he doubled over, a knee crashed into his forehead. As he fell to the sand, Nossur Aruch saw the former President of the United States staggering over to the young white stranger.

Reaching out, Remo snapped the President's bonds.

"I think you might have picked the wrong line of work, Mr. President," he said, nodding approval.

"Which time?" the former President replied with a fatigued, boyish grin.

Nossur Aruch struggled to his feet. "You will not take him!" he shouted. "He is mine! I need him for arms! "

All at once, the PIO leader felt a gentle displacement of air. The old Asian was suddenly beside him. Aruch had not even seen him move.

"But you already have arms, foolish one," the Master of Sinanju explained in a squeaky singsong. Nossur Aruch felt a sudden wrenching sensation in his right shoulder. It was the worst pain the PIO leader had ever experienced in his life, as if a white-hot poker had been stabbed into the joint. And even as his shocked nervous system attempted to reconcile the horrid sensation with anything he had ever before experienced, the old terrorist's pain-flooded eyes detected something in front of his face.

It took a moment for Nossur Aruch to recognize his own right arm.

"You see?" Chiun said, waving the appendage before Aruch's horrified face. "And you are not only blessed with one, but two."

More pain. This time on the left.

Chiun held Aruch's other arm aloft. The white bone of the humerus jutted from the flesh. Muscle and tendons hung in ragged strips from the bloody end.

It was all too unreal. Reeling drunkenly, Aruch watched as the old Korean raised the inert arms high in the air.

With a violent snap, Chiun flipped the arms, now animated extensions of his own hands, toward each other. They swung around in two sweeping arcs, flat, lifeless palms eventually clapping with a terrific crack. However, in order for them to make such a sound, they had to first pass through the skull of Nossur Aruch.

The PIO leader's head exploded like a stompedon water balloon. Brains and blood burst out in squishy red lumps across his ancestral land.

When he was finished with the limbs, Chiun dropped them atop the PIO leader's twitching body. By now, there were more jets rending the sky above the oasis. Several more Libyan planes had joined the fray, replacing those that had fled. The rat-a-tat of autofire ripped across the warming sky. "We should make haste," Chiun suggested.

Remo nodded. "Get the President out of here. I'll be with you in a minute."

As Chiun hurried the old chief executive to their frightened horses, Remo strode across the clearing. He had spied the familiar figure cowering behind a pulpy white tree trunk. He stopped before the shaking man.

"You're Bryce Babcock, right?" Remo's tone was cold.

Eyes screwed tightly shut, the interior secretary had remained stock-still since Remo and Chiun's appearance, hoping that he would not be noticed. He jumped at the closeness of Remo's voice.

"Maybe," the secretary replied weakly.

"'This is all your fault," Remo said. It was not an accusation, but a statement of fact.

His accuser's gaze was too unforgiving. At Remo's harsh stare, Babcock broke down whimpering.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he wept. "It was supposed to bring peace. Peace to a region of the world that's never even known what real peace is. And if people here could finally get along, the rest of the world would have seen the light."

Remo's face was hard. "You're the one who had Earthpeace kill all those people in California just so they could kidnap the President."

Bryce Babcock sniffled. "You can't make an omelet without scrambling a few eggs," he offered timidly.

Remo's dark expression never wavered. "Prepare to be scrambled," he said icily.

Hands flashed forward. Remo clamped firmly to either side of Babcock's head.

Babcock's bladder sensed before any other part of him that something was desperately wrong. It was splattering its final contents onto his boots even as the first hint of pure alarm appeared in his sagging eyes.

Remo's hands vibrated. And as the movement worsened, the head between them shook with increasing fury.

It was as if the secretary of the interior had been hooked to a paint mixer. When Remo was through, Babcock's skull was filled with frothy gray sludge the consistency of a fast-food shake. Foamy brain overflow drizzled out nose and ears.

Dropping the lifeless body with its mushy pureed brain to the ground, Remo hurried from the oasis. The dogfight above the desert had grown more frantic.

Rocket pods were firing all around the area. Bullets sang in every direction-in the sky and from the land. Bodies of PIO soldiers littered the field of combat.

More Iranian jets roared in over the Jordanian desert. The Palestinians on the ground assumed correctly that they were under attack from another hostile force. Before they had even been fired upon, they began shooting at the incoming Iranian planes. The Iranian F-5s responded to the hostile gunfire from the ground by launching wing-mounted missiles into the horde of Arab soldiers.

A few burning fighter planes had joined the Russian Antonov in the sand.

Pockets of fire erupted in the desert. Explosions ripped away at the oasis, at the remnants of Nossur Aruch's men and at the downed planes.

Running, Remo met Chiun and the former President a mile away from the worst of the combat. Both men were already atop their horses. Remo swung up into his saddle.

More Libyan jets had roared into view behind them. They immediately engaged the fresh Iranian aircraft. In their spare moments, they joined in the attack on the ground. Their purpose for being there was forgotten. Killing the ex-President had become secondary to blowing up one another.

Spurring their horses on, Remo, Chiun and the former President of the United States rode for several miles, eventually climbing an isolated dune far away. Turning in their saddles, they watched the combat rage, the field of battle awash now in the blood-red morning sun.

"Well, I suppose some things never change," the President said softly as they watched the dogfight. Echoing gunfire rose from the distant sand. He looked back to the Masters of Sinanju. "Speaking of which, I had a talk with your boss. You fellas were supposed to do that amnesia thing on me again. I was hoping you could work it this time so I'd be okay. You know, just forget what I'm supposed to, and so forth?"