Warren Murphy: Dark Horse

On a nearby hump, a heron flew up.

Remo had heard it unfold its wing preparatory to flight. The sudden upflinging of colorful feathers did not take him by surprise-although it startled an alligator into slithering into the water.

Why would anyone pick the Florida Everglades to be baptized in? Remo wondered, not exactly for the first time.

It was probably the least of the questions hanging in the humid Florida air.

Remo had been assigned the job of eliminating General Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira, the deposed dictator of the Central American nation of Bananama. Snuffing out General Nogeira was something the Medellin drug cartel, assorted political enemies, and even the U.S. Rangers had attempted over the years.

Ever since he had risen up from rent-a-colonel in the Bananamian version of the CIA, to the day he was seized by U.S. forces as they liberated the country he had bankrupted through greed and corruption, Emmanuel Nogeira had proven immune to assassination.

The former general and self-proclaimed Maximum Chief had grinningly attributed his longevity to Voodoo-specifically to the red underwear he wore to ward off the Evil Eye. He ascribed his continual survival to a wide array of charms, friendly spirits, and ritual sacrifices-usually involving beheaded chickens. In actual fact, he had simply found the perfect-if somewhat inconvenient-sanctuary from his numerous enemies.

A United States federal prison.

The U.S. government had proclaimed a great victory on the day they captured General Nogeira. American servicemen had lost their lives in the effort to bring him to justice. He had been spirited into the U.S. and charged with violating American law through a pattern of drug-smuggling activities. The evidence against him was overwhelming.

Then General Nogeira proceeded to turn the tables on his captors, making a mockery of the American judicial system. He demanded-and got-prisoner-of-war status, a private cell, and privileges usually reserved for criminals serving time in corrupt Mexican jails. Not to mention the unfreezing of his assets.

Despite this, Nogeira had been convicted of drug trafficking, and sentenced to life without parole. But no sooner had that happened than the appeals began. It was estimated that the appeals process would not be entirely exhausted until the year 2093.

Since he had time to kill, General Nogeira announced that he had given up Voodoo, and was now a born-again Baptist. Or would be, once, as he put it, the "gringos" allowed him to be baptized.

Naturally, the prison authorities to whom he had put this unusual request had denied his petition, citing security risks.

Dipping into his seemingly limitless legal fund-the product of his voracious drug dealings, which he had managed to safeguard from confiscation by claiming it represented his income from the days when he was a CIA informer-General Nogeira enlisted the American Civil Rights Collective in his attempts to embrace his newfound religion.

It had taken nearly a year, but the ACRC had taken the issue all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. The Justice Department had caved in at that point. Not on principle, but because the appeals process was threatening to devour their entire operating budget.

General Emmanuel Nogeira had won-once again.

This time he publicly thanked Jesus Christ, whom he had claimed as his personal savior.

General Nogeira asked to be baptized in the Florida Everglades, claiming that it was the environment most like that of his native country, which he missed very much.

For the first time in nearly two years, General Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira would be outside the walls of the maximum-security federal prison in Miami.

There were rumors that the Medellin Cartel would hit him then. There was other intelligence that they actually planned to liberate Nogeira and reinstall him in Bananama, which he had single-handedly turned into the major coke transshipping point between Colombia and the United States.

That was when Upstairs had ordered the hit on Nogeira.

"Not that I mind," Remo had said at the time, "but why? He's going to rot in prison until the next century. Why not let him rot?"

"Because," he was told, "the man is costing this country thousands of dollars a day in legal fees. He's a common criminal, yet he has been declared a prisoner of war, entitled to wear his uniform and to an allowance of seventy-five Swiss Francs a day. He has his own private cell, and two adjoining ones for his shredding machine and a safe that contains classified U.S. documents the CIA was compelled to surrender to him in the name of a fair trial." Upstairs thinned already thin lips. It was clear that Remo's superior was offended by all this. Deeply offended.

Remo had to admit that Upstairs had a point. He didn't care if there were hit teams sent out to interrupt the baptism. He just wanted to get the hit over with and get out of the Everglades.

So the question remained: Before the baptism, or after?

It was a serious dilemma. If he hit Nogeira before he was baptized, then the general would probably go straight to hell. After, and maybe the guy had a chance to do penance. Spend a few centuries in Purgatory. Remo wasn't sure about that part. He had been raised Catholic. The Baptists might as well have been Jains for all he knew of their theological rules. Did they even have confession?

Crouching on the spongy isle, Remo frowned. The frown made his cruel face harden into angular lines. He was neither handsome nor ugly. Certainly not as ugly as Emmanuel Nogeira, who looked like a comic-book depiction of the Incredible Toad Man.

Remo's eyes were set deep into his skull, and his cheekbones pronounced. His body was lean, almost skinny, and unremarkable, except for his wrists. They were as thick as door posts, as if some mad surgeon had implanted steel rods where his ulna and radius connected with his metacarpals.

Except that the wrists were Remo's own. The two decades of training in the discipline that was Sinanju, the sun-source of the martial arts, had produced this freakish side effect.

Remo tried to imagine what his mentor, the Reigning Master of Sinanju, would say about his dilemma.

He could hear the squeaky voice in his mind's ear after only a moment's reflection.

"Do the House of Sinanju proud. Leave no trace."

Not much help there. Remo thought back to his orphanage days, and Sister Mary Margaret.

Remo wasn't quite sure what Sister Mary Margaret would have said, but it probably would have entailed calling off the hit. Not an option for America's secret assassin.

Finally, Remo considered the counsel of his superior, Dr. Harold W. Smith.

It was easy to figure out Smith's hypothetical advice. "Just do it quietly," Smith would say.

That went without saying. Smith, who ran the supersecret government organization for which Remo worked, had a mania for secrecy. And with good reason. The agency officially did not exist. It was known only as CURE. CURE was no acronym. The letters had no individual meaning. CURE was the symbolic name for the agency's function. That is, a prescription for American society, which criminals such as Emmanuel Nogeira had made sick by twisting constitutional guarantees to serve their own criminal purposes.

Remo had dealt with a great many people who made a mockery of the Constitution, but few did so as blatantly as General Nogeira, who wasn't even a U.S. citizen. This, perhaps more than anything, Remo decided, had offended the proper Smith.

The more Remo thought about it, the more it offended him, too.

He made his decision.

"Screw the baptism," he murmured. "Let him burn forever."

Just then the sound of approaching air-boats sent birds fleeing, and brought on a spasm of splashing in the cypress roots. Remo counted eight splashes. The identical number of alligator heartbeats his sensitive ears had detected pumping in syncopation with reptilian lungs.