Warren Murphy - Look Into My Eyes

"Only if you keep your hands on my wrist," she said. "Where did you ever figure out that the wrist had an erogenous zone?"

"The whole body is an erogenous zone if you know how to use it," said Remo.

"Could you teach me that trick on the wrist?"

"You have to know balance and things."

"Do you ever need women?"

"I don't need women. I like women. Say, what are we going to look for down in Sornica? Once you lock eyes with this guy you're done. And I'm sure Smith knew that, too."

"Good point. Then we know now Vassily can seize your mind even if you are not looking at him. We'll have to plan on working on his hypnotism. The point is that we may figure out how to succumb while still being able to operate. That may be a solution," said Anna.

By the time the plane landed they were the only ones on the press plane who were not sure what they were going to find.

Chapter 13

The defenses around one small area were incredible. The Sornicans had dug themselves a network of concrete trenching and underground tunnels. Vast, flat, open fields-deadly target ranges for the defenders-surrounded these hills.

The most modern weapons in the Eastern-bloc arsenal sprouted from more hidden bunkers per foot than any site outside Russia.

Every patrol ran into this, and Rabinowitz had shrewdly bypassed it in the opening days, in order to get at the main Sornican force. Besides, all interceptions of communications from those hills revealed Russians talking.

He wanted to save them for last. But now was last. The Sornican army, supplied by Russia, trained by Russia, filled with recruits from the land drafted under protest, now had returned to its villages in peace. Only its highranking officers with their American goods wanted to continue the fight. They had never lived so well before this supposed people's revolution, and in their Gucci loafers and eyeglasses they were telling their favorite columnists about American oppression, aggression, racism, and poisonous minds.

No one could deny America had sent three columns of troops into the heartland of Sornica.

"Why does America hate us? We feed the poor. We lift the shackles of oppression. So they must destroy us. America is the enemy of all mankind," said the chairman of the Revolutionary Council, Umberto Omerta.

An aide ran into his mountain villa with the grim news about the revolutionary struggle.

The People's Democratic Revolutionary Council of Sornica was down to its last case of Dom Perignon. The beluga caviar was still in good supply, but all of Comrade Omerta's designer eyeglasses, fifteen thousand dollars' worth kept securely in his five estates, were gone. His suicidal revolutionary commandos had not been able to save them because they were defending their compact-disc players and Zenith stereos. They had lost no men, but they were executing those Sornican peasants who were refusing to die for the revolution-or to guide Western reporters to sites of American atrocities.

Any body would do. The more mangled the better. The nice thing about these modern reporters was that most of them were interpretive journalists.

Some few would ask how this body or that body got to the side of the road, and where the proof was of who killed it. Then the revolutionary suicide commandos would accuse the reporter of being an American agent, a fascist, or a Jew. The latter was especially useful in front of Arab groups, but generally anti-Semitism, after a half-century of disuse by the left, was now considered not only acceptable, but a sign of being progressive. Once this was the province of only the radical right, but it now suited the revolution perfectly, especially since the monster-maniac-fascist-Zionist heading the American invasion was named Rabinowitz.

President Omerta used the name extensively. He knew it would be instantly identifiable. He knew the columnists he was talking to would also use it extensively.

"Only a Rabinowitz would seek to suck the blood of poor peasants trying to be free," said President Omerta. "They're all no good. Bloodsuckers. Why would anyone want to attack a peaceful, freedom-loving people, other than to suck the blood through their evil fangs sharpened on Passover wine."

In previous years, statements like these would have been considered racist, but now the columnists couldn't wait to get down the words "courageous opinions, strong convictions."

Omerta signaled that the last bottles of Dom Perignon were to be opened. This was an emergency. This was a fight to the death.

And then someone yelled.

"The Americans have got the hill fortress surrounded."

"Excuse me," said Omerta. "I must attend to the struggle immediately."

He ran to the man who had just screamed out the bad news. He cornered him in a closet. He wrung his neck so hard, his own designer glasses almost fell off, and this during wartime, when President Omerta had no idea when he would be able to get back to America or Europe to do more shopping.

"Listen, stupid. The next time you mention the hill fortress in front of Americans I will have you shot. Have they taken it yet?"

"No. But they have it surrounded."

"What are the Russians doing?"

"Fighting to the death, sir."

"Good. Now Russia must reinforce. They can never let the hill fortress be taken. We're saved. We may have a world war."

"What if we lose it?"

"If it goes on long enough, we can't lose. We have friends in America. Go in there and feed them the party line. And don't get it wrong. Remember, this stuff is going to be taught in the classrooms in America."

President Omerta dashed out of his mountain villa, screaming for a command car.

"You want to get to the Russian ambassador?" asked the driver. He knew about the hill fortress being surrounded.

"No. I want to get away from the Russian ambassador. We were supposed to defend that with our lives."

"And we didn't?"

"If you had a choice of Louis Vuitton luggage or five hundred smelly Russians with equipment, which would you take?" said General Omerta.

Rabinowitz looked at the map. Chiun stood behind him. Everyone was covered by the hot dust of Sornica, caked onto their faces by the sweat of battle.

Everyone except Chiun. Somehow he managed to bathe twice a day, keep his steamer trunks with him, and maintain a happy appearance.

Several times Rabinowitz had heard him say:

"This is too much like a war. We must stop wars, with all these amateurs doing the killing."

"They're not amateurs. It's a great army. When the Americans get down to fighting, no one can beat them. No one."

"Still an army. After all, how good could hundreds of thousands of people be, Great Wang? Let us face it. These are soldiers."

"Right. I'm doing something with them. Leave me alone."

Now the situation on the map looked grim. The massive amounts of weapons, the way they were used showing virtually limitless ammunition, made the cost of taking the hill too great.

"We could keep it surrounded, and starve them out," said one colonel who felt he was talking to an old instructor from West Point. He had always thought this man he had learned to love with more respect than any other, had been denied battlefield command. But he was glad to see he was a general now.

"The problem is," said his old instructor, "that may be just what they prepared for."

"I don't follow, sir," said the colonel.

"Look. If they are firing their ammunition with abandon, and they're not raw troops as we know they're not, then they have an almost limitless supply of ammunition. Therefore, we've got to assume they have the same in food and water, at least for a half-year. But that's not what worries me." Rabinowitz felt the men crowd around him.

He was in this thing now. Thousands of people depended on him for their lives; any move he made affected them. And therefore any problems they had were his problems. For a moment he realized that in his quest to be left alone, he now had eighty thousand people who could not leave him alone because their lives depended on him. And they were the ones on his side. Then there was the enemy. Which understandably wanted to kill him. And of course the Oriental who kept him alive.