National Podium, the great central dais that stood out in the open at the north end of the square, was getting the message late. Remo could see them now, the ministers in their perfect suits and medal-festooned military uniforms. Even a mile away Remo recognized the prime minister from the photo Smitty provided. The prime minister was said to be a pretty smart guy, but right now he looked as dull-witted as the rest of them, squinting at the smoke and the wreckage of the cars. Now the honor guard was showing signs of alarm. But they were standing on National Podium with crowds on all sides of them. They had no easy way to escape. But also, the attackers had no easy way in.
Or so he assumed.
Idiot! he thought. Why didn’t he ever think the worst of people? People always did the worst thing you could imagine them doing. At the first signs of trouble, the race-car drivers escalated their attack timetable. They veered off the parade route—directly into the crowd of onlookers.
There was a traveling tide of horror as arms of flame protruded from the nose of each racer into the people, who fled from the cars, some of them burning. Remo could see clear plastic canopies sliding into position over the tops of the driver cockpits. They were in attack mode. He scooted among the crowd, but even he was having trouble finding room to maneuver as the concern turned to panic. He moved up onto the fight posts, clinging and leaping onto the high-tension lines that stretched between them with banners bearing patriotic and advertising messages. Remo moved hand over hand, fast, as the sea of humanity became a shocked swell just inches below his feet.
He could hear the individual screams, but he could hear, too, the ugly sound of a population in terror. The swell pushed relentlessly. People began to go down in the crush. Many of them would never get up.
No matter if Remo had saved ten or twenty lives by diverting the explosion on the packed street—the true death toll was going to come from the riot of panic that gripped the tens of thousands of Ayoundis.
He found himself in the open, hard on the heels of an attacking column of race cars. What kind of morons was he dealing with here, attacking in frigging race cars? He hit the ground and ran fast, catching the front racer and leaping onto it. The driver inside showed surprise when the white man suddenly perched on the cowling of the racer. The facer veered hard right and left, and somehow the man with the thick wrists stayed where he was, as if his scuffed Italian shoes were glued to the Milkie Queen logo.
“This will get you off!” shouted the driver inside his cockpit, and he stabbed at the fire button on his flame thrower. One of those Italian shoes was just inches from the nozzle….
Remo felt the mechanical movement inside the car as the discharge valve snapped open and the high-pressure tanks pushed out a powerful stream of flammable liquid. He grabbed the nozzle and gave it a quick twist, just as the igniter snapped. The torrent of flame drenched the car from front to rear and the tires burst open, bringing the car to a halt.
Remo stepped off and caught a glimpse of the driver, gazing in horror at the plastic shield just an inch above his head. It would have protected him from defensive gunfire, but now it was melting in the intense heat and in seconds it would start to drip on him. Remo wondered how good his helmet and driving suit would be at protecting him.
Not much, he decided, when the screaming started.
Already the Master of Sinanju was moving like a shadow around the fire tongue from the next car. His training taught Remo long ago that one might step aside from any projectile, be it rock or bullet or slow-moving flamethrower. The driver discerned the failure of the flame and quickly turned to more conventional firearms, tattering the square with machine-gun fire. Remo dodged the fusillade. A bullet, after all, was just a fast rock.
But he was painfully aware that the good people of Ayounde didn’t know how to dodge bullets. He put a halt to the gunfire by leaping like a feather into the air, then falling like a boulder onto the protruding muzzle of the weapon. The canopy collapsed under him, crushing vital components, but Remo kicked out the tires for good measure. He delivered an identical kick to the plastic cover over the driver.
The plastic didn’t budge. It didn’t shatter, or even crack.
The infuriated driver laughed heartily at Remo. “You couldn’t get me with a bleedin’ sledgehammer!” he taunted.
“But I can get you with this finger,” Remo replied, and he used it to tap the plastic in a few places. Even over the sounds of confusion he could hear and feel how the plastic resonated with each tap, until his brain had identified a weak spot in the plastic. Then he tapped that spot quickly, creating a destructive vibration. The plastic shattered.
“Son of a—”
That was as far as the driver got. Remo palmed his head by the helmet and withdrew him from the cockpit, stretching him out and dragging him into the jagged shards of leftover plastic. He moved the driver in a circle, gashing his throat open completely all the way around.
Remo spotted the smoking ruins of another column of cars and glimpsed the rapid flash of Chiun heading toward the podium. Remo was already on his way—and it was already too late. Another column of cars was already reaching the podium, reaching it from the side opposite himself and Chiun. A pair of cars was making widening circles around the podium, driving back the crowds and cutting off the officials on the podium.
Remo heard another sound above the whine of the racers. A helicopter was coming. That couldn’t be good news.
Remo came upon a flame-throwing car so quickly the driver never saw him. He leaped, landed and took the front wheel of the racer in both hands, bringing it to a sudden halt. The other front wheel tried to move but shuddered on the pavement as the rear end flew up. The driver wore a shocked look. The racer landed upside down, flamethrower still spurting and creating a pool of flaming liquid under the car.
The second flame-throwing racer came straight at him, revving up, spurting flame, and Remo ran to meet it. It looked like a suicidal game of chicken. Remo was feeling a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that the crowds had fled. He had lots of room to work with. He skirted the line of flame and walked onto the cowling of the grand prix racer, grabbing the flamethrower nozzle and making a quick adjustment.
The driver yanked the car into a series of quick swerves, but the g-forces didn’t dislodge the attacker. The man simply jogged over the top of the car, perfectly balanced, which was impossible. Right? The driver pulled the car into a hard U-tum and found the stranger running toward the podium faster than was humanly possible. But the race car was faster than that. It had to be. The driver accelerated and jabbed the flamethrower. He’d barbecue the intruder yet.
The driver noticed too late that the flame nozzle was now pointed straight up, and the column of flame that flew skyward became a mushroom. Burning incendiary liquid rained down.
The driver forgot the man he was trying to kill and focused all his concentration on attempting to outrun the fountain of flame coming from his own car.
Ayounde Prime Minister Shund Beila couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. His people were being herded out of the square at gunpoint. The attackers were using race cars, of all things, and the race cars were turning out to be extraordinarily effective.
“Where’s the emergency-response units?” Beila demanded.
“Assembling, Prime Minster.” Minister of Internal Security Antoine Fudende looked in every direction, except into Beila’s eyes.