Pedro Ramirez was convinced something was wrong. He sat in the den of his cabin, the sun roof showering him in golden sunshine, thinking that this was better than Miami. But anything was better than Miami, where rivals would whack you while you sunned yourself on your own frigging porch. Whatever the problem, it was fixable.
He grabbed the mike of the portable radio set. The guards were under orders to check in at three-minute intervals in rotation. That way Pedro knew within three minutes, tops, if he had a security problem. Usually sooner, because the perimeter was staked with concealed video cameras. They fed the banks of screens that were duplicated on every inner wall of the cabin. That way, no matter which wall Pedro Ramirez faced, he had his eye on things.
"Santander, come in," he barked into the microphone. He was as brown as an old shoe. Not unusual. Most people who grew up in Peru were richly colored. Most people who grew up in Peru grew up dirt poor and were buried in Peru. Pedro Ramirez might have been buried in Peru, except for the magic coca leaf. It had made him rich. And its derivative, crack, had made him powerful.
He was so powerful that although the authorities of virtually every American and European nation had issued warrants for his arrest, and business rivals had contracts on his brawn skin, he was still able to set up housekeeping in the heart of the nation that most wanted him.
"Santander! Bandrillo! Paeo! Sangre de Cristo, someone answer. "
Pedro shot a glance at the video screen. There was no sign of trouble, no unusual movement. Was that good or not? He decided not. At least one of his guards should have strolled on camera by now.
"Pablo! Zenjora!" he yelled. "Madre de Dios!" Over the radio he heard a peculiar sound.
His brown forehead wrinkled. He could not place the sound. It was not a gunshot. It did not possess that popping firecracker quality that denies its deadliness. This was not an explosive sound. It was more ... meaty.
Remo Williams picked up the sixth and final head. He had to kneel to do it, and catch a loop of hair with his pinky. The other fingers of both hands were occupied with other loops of hair.
It was awkward, carrying three heads in each hand so that they did not bleed all over him, but for what Remo wanted to do, it would be worth it. Especially with the cigarette lighter he had taken off the body of the late cigar-smoking guard.
Remo ghosted past a video camera concealed in a hollow of a dead oak. Even if Upstairs had not briefed him about the camera's location, Remo would have spotted it. It was so obvious. The entire thirty-acre area surrounding the solar-powered log cabin was immaculately groomed. A dead oak tree in the middle meant that it had a purpose other than being a former tree.
Remo stopped at the edge of what Upstairs had, in the briefing, called the inner ring. Remo dropped to one knee and pulled a water-soluble folded map from a back pocket. It showed the location of every buried antipersonnel mine in the inner ring.
The trouble was, Upstairs had forgotten to draw compass points on the map.
"Damn Smith!" Remo muttered, turning the map every which way. He tried to align the map with the dead oak tree. When he thought he had it, he tucked the map into his back pocket and gathered up the six heads. The hairtonic smell was getting to him.
Remo strode for the place where the nearest mine should be, knowing that he would be exposed to the video camera once he stepped into the expanse of greensward where the mines lay buried.
What the hell? he thought. If they don't see me coming, they sure are going to hear me coming.
Several minutes after the last pop emanated from the radio set, Pedro Ramirez was sweating. Something was truly wrong. The one good thing, he thought, was that he handled his own security problems himself. An underling, faced with the absence of hard intelligence, might hesitate over disturbing his superior. Whatever the problem was, Pedro Ramirez had a head start on it.
Working the controls that governed the pan-and-scan function of the video cameras, Pedro set them for wider coverage.
The camera showed nothing at first. Not even the guards. It was as if they had vanished. Then Pedro realized a flaw in the system. The cameras pointed straight out. They were not set to scan the sky or the ground. The ground was where his six guards must be. There was nothing in the sky, because the roof-mounted parabolic mikes hadn't picked up helicopter blades and the sun roof was wide enough to reveal parachutists or hot-air balloons.
Pedro Ramirez has everything covered. But still he sweated. He had lots of enemies.
The oak-tree camera caught a momentary glimpse of something. He adjusted the controls, sending the camera in reverse. When it framed the man in black T-shirt and pants, he froze the gear.
Pedro leaned closer to the color monitor. The intruder was as lean as a two-by-four. He had deep-set dark eyes and high cheekbones. He was walking through the mine field so quietly that Pedro thought the mike system was broken, except that it clearly picked up the sound of a squirrel-dropping hitting a leaf. Pedro relaxed a little when he realized the man was alone. What kind of fool would send one man to kill him? He shrugged. Probably the same kind of fool who would go.
Grinning a little, Pedro Ramirez watched the man. He was walking around the mine field in a twisting path. The idiot. Better to run through in a straight line, if one hoped to avoid the mines.
They were beautiful mines, too. They had been deployed during the Vietnam war specifically to decimate small units. The unique design actually did no physical damage to the man stepping on the mine. It was those who surrounded him who were riddled with shrapnel. Usually the man on the mine was so psychologically devastated that he had to be removed from combat. Tactically, that meant no survivors.
Pedro watched as the man tramped through the grass. What were those things he carried? Pedro wondered, noticing what looked like bags. Perhaps filled with hand grenades, he thought. Well, he would not worry about hand grenades until the man got through the mine field, which of course he would not. After all, if an army couldn't penetrate that field, what could one man do? Especially one who kept stopping to test the ground with his feet. A stupid amateur.
Remo stomped again. He hit the area where, according to the map, a mine should be. Nothing happened.
"It's always something!" he said, annoyed. He trird moving to the left. He stomped the grass. Nothing. He moved to the right, and felt, under his gum-soled shoes, the light depression that was the result of rain tamping down the loose earth that had been redeposited over the buried mine. He pressed firmly. He was rewarded with the warning click that would have frozen his blood back in his Vietnam days. Today he grinned.
The explosion sent dirt, rocks, and fire spraying outward. "There," Remo said, lifting one bundle of human heads and talking to them politely. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" The heads didn't reply. But Remo noticed that the eye of one deceased guard had popped open again. His hands were full and he couldn't shut it. Remo pressed on, searching out more mines.
Pedro Ramirez jumped in his cushioned chair. He was learning that antipersonnel mines designed to destroy and demoralize small units were not equal to every task. The idiot was going out of his way to set off every mine in the field. As soon as he stepped on one, he went on to another. The explosions didn't seem to faze him at all-and it was a miracle that the concussion didn't trigger one of the grenades in those bags.
The realization of those potential weapons made Pedro Ramirez think that it would not be long until the man was knocking at his front door.
It was time to go to the defense of last resort. Not even a man who walked with impunity through a mine field could overcome Big Bonsalmo, who stood gleaming by the fieldstone fireplace.