Uncle Sam was screaming inarticulate orders now.
Remo was moving between the dining tables, casually flinging them about like oversized frisbees. They lopped off heads, broke rifles, and made short work of the white-uniformed soldiers with the corn-fed faces still on their feet.
Not a single shot was gotten off.
Remo stepped up and reached into a pile of tangled white arms and legs, to pull out a kicking olive-drab figure.
"I'm not done with you yet, Bushy," he growled.
He dragged the moaning President of Cuba back to the long banquet table, where assorted copyright and trademark characters sat very, very still.
"That was nice work," said Uncle Sam in a too-calm voice.
"Thanks," Remo said absently. He slammed the President of Cuba into one of the few still standing chairs.
Sam Beasley stood up. "No, I mean it."
Remo refused to look in the man's direction. "Okay, you mean it. I'll get to you in a minute."
"Seriously, I'd like to shake your hand, my boy."
Remo hesitated.
"Come on, come on. I won't bite. I know when I'm licked. I'm big enough to admit it."
Remo looked at the hand. It was empty. His ears picked up the bellows sounds of the man's ancient lungs. There was no heartbeat, but a steady humming from deep within his chest.
"What the heck," Remo said, reaching out his hand. "I used to be one of your biggest fans."
"And now you're the biggest chump on earth," snarled Uncle Sam, as he began to squeeze Remo's outstretched hand with the constrictive force of a trash-compacter.
Remo was so shocked by the unexpectedness of what was happening to him, that he did something he had not done in years. He screamed in pain.
The Master of Sinanju heard the scream while he was making the soldiers of Ultima Hora hors de combat. These were not evil men, so he had been going among them dislocating their shoulders. He did this by the deceptively simple action of grasping them by their shoulders and separating the arm bones from their rotator cuffs as he dodged their ineffectual blows. The motion was as simple as removing the lens cap from a Kodak.
Although the soldiers did scream louder than a camera would.
The sound of Remo's scream was unmistakable and unforgettable. Chiun had dragged such complaints out of Remo during the early difficult phases of Remo's training in Sinanju, when he had stubbornly persisted in eating meat and breathing incorrectly.
He flung himself up from the lower holds, where Ultima Hora awaited the signal to emerge and take unprotected Havana, and flashed toward the sound of Remo's agony.
Remo Williams was unaccustomed to pain. On the one hand, his nerves had been trained to sublimate ordinary pain. On the other, his entire body had been raised to enormous levels of sensitivity to external stimuli. And he had been caught by surprise.
Excruciating agony made his highly refined nervous system explode into white noise. His senses shut down. Red sparks danced before his eyes. He could feel his finger bones and metacarpals grinding together under a handshake that he realized too late was composed not of ordinary flesh and bone but of some powerful hydraulic mechanism sheathed in a realistic-looking fleshlike covering.
Worst of all, he couldn't pull loose.
"Left my right hand in the freezer, as it were," a familiar voice chuckled. "But the animators gave me a new one. Like it?"
Waves of pain rolled through Remo's stunned brain. His training told him to lash out at the source of the agony, but his mind warned him that he would be killing Sam Beasley; Uncle Sam. The kindly old Uncle Sam who had told him stories way way back in another life, spent around an old staticky black-and-white TV set, watching cartoons with his fellow orphans.
And as he hesitated the pain redoubled, and Remo had lost his chance to strike. No longer in control of his body, he went down on one knee, his teeth clamping tight and a black cloud passing over his thoughts.
Then another voice came. High and commanding.
"Hold!" it said. Chiun!
Uncle Sam's voice turned icy with anger. "I'd like to know who the hell you two are."
"I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said in his most dramatic voice. "And that is my son you are harming. Release him at once!"
"My pink ass!"
And through the roaring in his ears, Remo heard the tiny gasp that came from Chiun's offended mouth.
"You are not Uncle Sam!"
"The hell I'm not!"
"Uncle Sam would never use such language."
"A lot you know. And who are you two clowns, CIA?"
The question was ignored. Chiun pitched his voice to Remo's roaring ears. "Remo. This man is an imposter. Smite him at once."
"I-I can't!" Remo gasped.
"Banish the pain," Chiun urged.
"It's not the freaking pain. This is Uncle Sam! The real one! I can't hurt him!"
"Nonsense."
"He's got an animatronic freaking heart!"
"Radio-animatronic," Uncle Sam corrected in his famous professorial tone. "Use the correct terminology, please."
"Radio?" It was the dazed voice of the President of Cuba.
The hand slackened its excruciating grip. Remo forced his eyes open. He looked up. Uncle Sam, dressed in the Stars and Stripes, loomed over him, grinning wickedly.
"Controlled and kept beating indefinitely by an outside signal. No need to change batteries, or replace defective parts. They say I've got another ninety years in me, at least."
"You are a machine," Chiun accused.
"I'm just as human as the next guy. I've only been augmented."
"Chiun," Remo gasped. "Don't just stand there debating. Do something!"
The Master of Sinanju's eyes became slits. Coldly, he intoned, "Remo, stand up. Do not shame me before this bearded ruffian of a tyrant. Show that you are worthy of the training bestowed upon you."
"I can't kill him! You know who he is!"
"You must!"
"Look, you do it!"
"Remo! I cannot have the children of Sinanju believing that I dispatched their favorite white in all the universe. You must do this yourself."
Remo started to rise. The hydraulic hand clamped down hard.
"Another move like that," Beasley warned, "and I'll squeeze his hand to bloody pulp."
"Another word like that, and my pupil will grind you into powdered bone meal," Chiun countered.
"I can't do it, Chiun!"
Across the room the Master of Sinanju stood his ground, his hands having retreated to their concealing sleeves. He looked to his pupil, humbled before the very eyes of Mongo Mouse and the others. It was unseemly.
He noticed the bearded tyrant. Castro struggled to his feet.
"Jou," he groaned, addressing Chiun. "I will give jou anything jou name if jou save me from this loco gringo."
"Have you gold?" asked Chiun, interest flavoring his voice.
"Si. Si. As much as jou wish."
"Five billion," Chiun said quickly.
"Que?"
"Five billion in gold. Will you pay?"
"No! It is a preposterous amount. Who do jou think jou are?"
"I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said haughtily, eyeing the tyrant to see what his reaction was.
"By the beard of Che! I have heard of you!"
Chiun smiled thinly. "I thought you would."
"Jou are a North Korean."
"Correct."
"The last of my trustworthy allies," the Cuban President said hollowly. "Have they strayed from the Socialist path, as well?"
"I am no tool of Pyongyang," Chiun spat.
"Then who do jou work for?"
"Your mortal enemy."
Castro groaned. "Then I am a dead man."
"Only if this is my wish," Chiun said dryly.
Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta had had enough of this charade. Every moment delayed his assuming the presidency of Cuba, his beloved island.