"Say, where did you guys learn that stuff? That's some incredible shit."
Chiun glared at him. "It is Sinanju."
"Far, far out," Wolfshy said admiringly. "How long does it take to learn something like that? I've seen those ads in the backs of magazines. You know, the Quick Way to Killing Power… Thirty Days to a Better Build, things like that. You just mail in the coupon—"
"It takes a lifetime," Remo said.
"Longer, if you're white," Chiun added.
"Well, I'm red. I bet I could pick that up in a couple of weeks. I was watching. It's all in the wrist, isn't it? If I just—"
"If you just shut up, you can take Karen into Santa Fe," Remo said.
"Uh-uh, no way," Wolfshy said. "She'll be safe going down the mountain. You guys might need me."
"Highly unlikely," Chiun said.
"Well, what about just now?"
"Just now with the soldiers?" Remo asked. "You were in a tree, remember?"
"I was distracting them. Besides, you hired a guide, right?"
"Yes," Chiun said dryly. "Unfortunately, we got you."
"Sam's right," Karen said. "There aren't going to be any soldiers between here and the city. But I'll need the jeep."
"Whoa," Wolfshy said. "Nobody said anything about loaning my jeep. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Anyway, that northeast trail's going to be rough on the engine."
Remo sighed. "The route into Santa Fe runs due south." He reached into Wolfshy's jacket, extracted the keys, and tossed them over to Karen. "I think you'll be better off without him anyway."
Karen caught the keys and smiled. "One thing," Remo said. "When you get to the police, don't mention us, okay? Just tell them you escaped and then stole the jeep from an empty campsite. Sam can pick it up later."
"Okay." She kissed him softly. "Thanks for everything. Thank you all."
When she was gone, Chiun sat back on the ground, his eyes half-closed. "Now perhaps an old man may sleep."
"I'm with you," Remo said. "I'm beat."
"That is unfortunate. Because someone has to clean up that mess you made."
"I made? I didn't guillotine anybody."
"Naturally. Your technique is not adequate for precision work. But even such as you may be useful in your way. Clear away this disgusting refuse. These bodies are a blight on the landscape."
"Who are you, Ranger Rick?"
"And take that talkative person with you. Keep him silent if you can."
Wolfshy followed Remo to the first body, but since the sight of blood made him sick, the Indian was of little use.
"You're really worthless," Remo said as Wolfshy lay quivering on the ground after a bout of retching.
"That's what my uncle says. That's what just about everybody says about me."
"Well, just about everybody's right." He hoisted the body onto his shoulders and lugged it down the slope, where he left it in a shallow arroyo.
If it's not trunks, it's bodies, Remo thought bitterly. It seemed he spent the better part of his life carrying something heavy from one place to another.
The whir of a helicopter sounded in the distance. Alarmed, he strained through the darkness to make out its lights. The chopper seemed to be making a loop around the side of the mountain, but it wasn't coming as far down as their campsite. He relaxed. Then it hasn't spotted Karen. It was probably searching for the band of soldiers that had ambushed them.
The drone receded, grew louder, faded again. Whoever's running the operation at the top of the mountain, Remo thought as he lugged the bodies to the arroyo, he's got his own private army.
The sound droned on. Remo felt his palms moisten. He didn't like the sound of helicopters. Or gunfire. Or children screaming. They reminded him of the war, and more than all the other hurts of his life, he wanted to forget that one.
But he couldn't. Every time he heard a chopper, he remembered.
?CHAPTER SEVEN
Mostly he remembered the bodies.
It happened on some jungle hill on the outskirts of some jungle village in Nam. Remo's platoon had run out of rations and were foraging for food, feasting on exotic plumed birds and prehistoric-looking greens. They'd held the Hill for more than six months. It looked like time to get out.
Again.
Only every time the food ran out, choppers would fly in from Malaya or Sumatra with more. And with the choppers would come a fresh influx of sniper fire on the camp.
It was useless. Remo knew it, and so did everybody else in the outfit. Maybe in the whole army. You can't hold a hill with seventy men when you're surrounded by an inexhaustible supply of enemy firearms.
Still, they held it, for weeks, months. And while the men were being picked off one by one, the choppers kept flying in with more food for the ones who were still alive.
The choppers never brought in replacement troops. The only men that flew into that hellhole were occasional CIA agents, looking for God knew what. They came with their sunglasses and fancy handguns and stayed awhile and didn't talk to anybody. Then the CIA men would leave on the next food chopper.
Sometimes the enlisted men would ask the CIA experts when they were getting off the Hill, but the intelligence men either didn't know or wouldn't talk. They didn't have much to do with the army and didn't interfere.
Even with the bodies.
They were the CO's idea.
They started appearing after the first month on the Hill. The men were washed out by then, filthy and isolated and scared to go to sleep at night. The only thing that sustained them was the type of black humor peculiar to men who faced death too often to take it seriously anymore.
All but the CO. He was a major, and he thrived on the Hill. Every morning he was up before the rest of the platoon, dressed and shaved and whistling. He slept like a rock and woke up ready to kill. The major was at his best during an attack, especially when he could fight hand to hand. More than once, Remo had seen him throw back his head in laughter while he strangled a Viet Cong invader with his bare hands.
As time went by, while the other men were quietly descending to subhuman level, the major only got cleaner and brighter and more eager. He loved the action on the Hill. It sent a shiver down everyone's back when they realized that he was never going to pull them out, and that the reason was because he loved it.
Then the bodies came. One sweltering summer morning Remo and the others got up to find the mutilated bodies of six dead VC strung on a wire on the edge of camp. They were tied by their wrists. Their open eyes and gaping wounds were already black with crawling flies.
"A little reminder to the enemy, boys," the major said with a grin, as his troops stared with astonishment. "We're going to surround the camp with their carcasses. That'll teach 'em to fuck with the U.S. Army." With a brief, confident nod, he strode away, as if he had just presented the men with a gift.
There was a CIA man on the Hill then. He'd come a couple of days before. His name was MacCleary, and he looked different from the other intelligence officers who'd been in camp. For one thing, he wasn't the weasel-thin government-issue spy. MacCleary was big, bordering on fat. For another, he had a hook instead of a right hand. MacCleary looked as if he could get mean if he wanted to, but like the others, he seemed determined to mind his own business. Even when he saw the bodies crucified on the wire that hot August morning, he said nothing.
Later that day, Remo approached him. "Get us out of here," he said quietly. "The CO's nuts."
MacCleary spit on his hook and polished it on his trousers. "I know. I can't." He walked away.
Everyday, more bodies were added while the old ones rotted off the wire. Occasionally, a bird would carry a fallen hand a few yards before dropping it, so that the camp was littered with gray, maggot-ridden hands and fingers.
At first, the only bodies strung up were VC who'd tried an attack on the Hill. But when they shied away, the major would send out expeditions to bring back more. Little by little, the camp was surrounded by a curtain of corpses that melted and rotted in the unrelenting sun. The smell of death was everywhere, and no one got used to it. When the circle of bodies around the Hill was complete, the major ordered a second wire to be put up.