Remo didn't know or care. He simply brought the heel of his hand up from his knee and applied it to Bosko's aquiline nose. It was a good nose for shattering purposes. The cartilage bent to the left, snapped and, when the heel of Remo's hand impacted on the bone, it shattered like shrapnel.
Splat!
Bone splinters riddled Bosko's unsuspecting brain.
Remo reached up and pulled him by the hair over the seat and down onto the back-seat floorboards.
Getting out, Remo walked confidently to the front door. He liked front-door hits. No one ever expected his assassin to come knocking in broad daylight.
While he waited for a response, Remo put on his polite-encyclopedia-salesman face.
The door opened. It was General Tanko himself, eyes black as a crow's and his pugnacious features unconcerned. He wore the gold braid and tinsel that was his Serbian army uniform. General Tanko liked to wear his dress uniform. He was proud of the innocents he had butchered.
"General Tanko?"
"I am he. Who are you?"
"I'm from the U.S. Board of Unofficial Sanctions."
"Sanctions?"
"We sanction people like you. I'm pleased to announce that you are this month's sanctioned Serb."
"You cannot sanction a person. It is preposterous. Nations are sanctioned. Not persons. It is unhumane."
"You mean inhumane."
"Yes. Inhumane. Not to mention ethicless. How dare you come to me with this announcement of sanctions."
"We tried sanctioning your country," explained Remo. "But it's so poor, it can't get any poorer. So in its infinite wisdom, Uncle Sam has decided to sanction you personally. Think of it like having the Publisher's Weekly Prize Van roll up and take instead of give."
"I have rights."
"Everyone has rights," agreed Remo, still polite.
"Yes, everyone."
"Except the innocents you butchered."
"I am not butcher, but a Serb."
"In your case, it's the same thing. Now if you'll step out of your nice, ill-gotten house, we can get this sanction over with."
General Tanko blinked. "What does this entail?"
"A lecture on niceness."
Tanko blinked again. Then a slow smile spread over his coarse features. "I am to be lectured?"
"On being nice."
"By you?"
"Yep," said Remo.
"By an undernourished joke of an American such as you? You dare to sanction the great Tanko, the Scourge of Srebrenica?"
And General Tanko threw back his black head and roared his amusement.
Splat.
Remo couldn't wait. It was the description under nourished. Nobody called him that. He was not undernourished. It was that his body contained almost no body fat. He looked thin. He didn't look muscular: But he could erase General Tanko from existence with a sweep of his hand, which he did.
Remo's sweeping hand came up and impacted the cutting edges of General Tanko's upper teeth. The force was enough to shatter the general's teeth, but the angle was perfect. Instead, the teeth were forced into the jawbone, and the entire top of General Tanko's large head snapped back and, like a pineapple breaking off its stalk, it fell to the ground behind his back.
General Tanko's lower jaw remained attached to his stump of a neck. It sagged. The tongue remained attached to the lower jaw. It gave a meaty little toss as the nerves controlling it waited for signals from the disconnected brain and, receiving none, plopped dead onto the sagging jaw.
Remo pushed the tottering body back into the foyer and drew the door shut. Body and door impacts blended in one sound.
Reclaiming the cab, Remo drove back to the Sarajevo airport whistling.
He had made the world a safer place. And he would make his flight.
Chapter 3
Word of the ultimate sanction befalling General Tanko of the Bosnian Serb Army raced from Sarajevo to the capitals of Europe and to Washington, D.C., within thirty minutes of the discovery of his body.
It reached the lonely desk of Dr. Harold W. Smith in Rye, New York, at the same time it hit Washington.
The Associated Press report was sketchy.
Sarajevo (AP)
General Tanko, otherwise Tanko Draskovic, indicted Serbian war criminal, was discovered in his home, the victim of a savage attack perpetrated by persons unknown. General Tanko was found with his head ripped from his body as if by a tremendous force. Initial reports are he was not beheaded. What was meant by this statement in the context of his fatal injuries is not known at this time. Draskovic was fifty-six.
Dr. Smith read this without his gray eyes registering any reaction that it meant something to him. His gray, patrician face likewise registered no emotion. But the news told him that his enforcement arm had succeeded in his assignment.
If all went well, Remo would be en route to Kaszar Air Base in Hungary and safe passage home. If not, well, the Serbian authorities would suffer unacceptable casualties trying to prevent him from leaving the former Yugoslavia. Smith had no concerns for Remo's personal safety.
A long time ago, he had selected Remo to be his enforcement arm, framing him for a murder he didn't, commit. Remo had been a Newark beat cop in those days. Smith had railroaded Remo through a kangaroo court trial to the Death House. He had been one of the last men electrocuted by the state of New Jersey.
Remo Williams, believed dead and buried by the world, had been given over to the last Master of Sinanju for the training that transformed him into a virtually unstoppable killing machine. For over two decades, in missions great and small, Remo had never failed.
A phone rang. There were two on Smith's black glassy desk. One blue, the other gray. It was neither of these. The ringing came from the right-hand middle drawer of his desk. It was muffled but insistent.
Sliding open the drawer, Smith dug out a fireengine red desk telephone and set it on the desktop. He picked up the receiver and said, "Yes, Mr. President."
"I was just handed an intelligence report that General Tanko is dead," the familiar presidential voice said.
"I have read that report," Smith said noncommittally.
"Between you and I, was that your man?"
"Do you need to know the answer?" returned Smith in his natural lemony voice. It wasn't disrespectful. Neither was it inviting. It could be read either way.
"I was just curious," said the President. His voice was not exactly offended. Neither was it hurt.
"Intelligence came to me that General Tanko was considering a terroristic attack on the NATO Implementation Forces in Bosnia. Orders emanating from his political masters in the rump Yugoslavia. An expression of U.S. displeasure had to be undertaken."
"That's good enough for me," the President said. "This conversation never happened, by the way. You won't read about it in my memoirs."
"I intend to write no memoirs," said Harold Smith, who meant it.
The President hung up, and Smith returned the red telephone to the desk drawer and shut it. Before he left for the evening, he would lock it with a small steel key. It was a dedicated line directly to the White House, and was linked with its identical twin in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.
For the thirty years since Harold Smith had been plucked out of the CIA's data-analysis department to head CURE, the supersecret government agency that didn't exist, he had lived with the only private hot line to the Commander in Chief at his side. A President of the United States had created CURE in the lonely womb of the Oval Office. He had told no one of his idea until he had found the man to head the organization-Harold Smith.
"The nation is sinking into chaos," the President had told Smith, then many years younger but just as gray as today. Smith thought he was being interviewed for a security position with the NSA. That impression was dispelled once he found himself alone with the young, vigorous President who was soon to die a martyr's death. The month was June, 1963. Smith had forgotten the exact date, but the conversation remained etched in his memory like glass scored by a diamond.