"What's that?" Remo asked.
"Shut your face," Belloc said, pointing the revolver back at Remo. "It's time you and me had a talk. That means I talk, you listen. Got it?" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I listen better without a gun in my face," Remo said.
"Tough." He drained the flask and tossed it away with a clatter. " 'Cause that's where it's going to stay. Remember your buddy Pappy Eisenstein?"
"Just keep your mouth shut, Belloc," the pilot said. "You've talked too much already."
"How do you know?" Belloc shouted. "You don't know nothing."
"That's how I want to keep it. I'm sure as hell not getting killed because you couldn't keep your trap shut."
"Shit," Belloc said miserably. "It don't make no difference what I tell him. The twerp's going to die anyway."
For the first time, Thompson looked Belloc straight in the face. His expression was one of horror.
Belloc found it amusing. "Oh. Beg your pardon. You're just the' pilot, like you say. You don't know nothing."
"I didn't know you were going to kill a man."
"You going to do something about it?" Belloc pointed the gun at Thompson. It was a slow, deliberate gesture. Shakily Thompson faced front, gripping the steering column.
"That's better, flyboy."
"What about Pappy?" Remo was getting impatient.
"He set you up, jerk. Look, I don't know who you are, but I know you're some kind of fed. And you must be pretty hot stuff, too, 'cause the person who wants you dead ain't taking no chances." He squinted through the sight of the revolver. "A bullet in the head in the middle of Colombia."
"In the middle of Peruvina, you mean," Remo said. "A nice private burial on private property. No body, no explanations."
"You catch on fast, pretty boy." Belloc's index finger pulled almost imperceptibly on the trigger. As he did, Remo lashed out with his left hand and, at the precise moment when the bullet began its spiraling trajectory through the barrel, he clasped his hand over Belloc's and squeezed it around the length of the revolver. The heat from the trapped bullet fused the gun into a hot metal ball that burned Belloc's fingers to the bone.
Belloc screamed, trying to shake the blob of molten metal from his blackened hand.
"Now I'm going to ask the questions," Remo said. "Starting with who 'she' is."
But a terrible scraping rattle of metal reverberated through the plane. A black screen of smoke poured out of the engines. Red lights glowed on the instrument panel.
"What— what is it?" Belloc shrieked.
"Engines on fire, both of them," the pilot muttered, struggling with the controls. The plane whistled as it careened downward toward the hills 12,000 feet below.
"Who's 'she'?" Remo repeated, grabbing Belloc by the throat. Belloc only sobbed and hacked as the smoke filled the cockpit and the front of the windscreen burst into a wall of yellow flame.
Remo turned to the pilot. "What do you know about this?"
Thompson's mouth was set. "Mister, all I know is that this plane's been sabotaged. If I knew who did it, believe me, I'd tell you."
"Who's 'she'?"
"I never talked to her. Some woman gave Belloc his instructions over the phone. I didn't know they included you." He made a final desperate thrust on the controls. "Can't make it. Get the 'chutes from the back."
Belloc scrambled over Remo toward the back of the plane, weaving crazily with the craft's erratic movement.
"They're gone!" he screamed. "The parachutes are gone. The bitch! She did it. She wanted us all dead!"
The pilot sat back and exhaled deeply. "Nothing more I can do," he said.
"The bitch!" Belloc raged. He was like a crazy man, beyond comprehension, running through the fuselage as if he were on fire. "The murdering little bitch!"
Remo grasped the door by the hinges and ripped it off. A sheet of flames roared in. The pilot looked over incuriously.
"He's no use," Remo said, nodding his head toward Belloc. "But you're coming with me."
Thompson was stone faced. "Are you planning to get me down there in one piece?"
"No guarantees," Remo said. "You turning down the offer?"
The pilot unbuckled his safety belt. "Guess jumping's an easier way to die than burning."
Holding the pilot around the chest, Remo made a wide somersault clear of the flames lapping at the plane. Fifteen seconds later, the plane exploded in midair. A flying piece of metal struck Thompson in the chest. He cried out, and his head snapped back.
For a moment, Remo stared at the streaming wound in the man's chest, the blood flying into the air in spurting jets as the two men fell. If it weren't for the protection of Thompson's body, the metal would have hit Remo.
Isn't fate the damnedest thing, Remo thought as he floated in his free fall with Thompson's body lying weightless in his arms. He had made a decision never to kill again, and everyone around him had died. Now here he was, thinking he was saving a guy's life, and all he managed to save was his own. He wanted to feel relief. All he felt was nausea.
He directed his descent toward a cushion of trees on the top of a barren hill, turned onto his back to absorb the impact, crashed through, then landed flat on his feet on the downward slope and slid slowly to the bottom. It was as gentle as he could make it.
He felt Thompson's pulse. It was faint, but there. The wound was severe, and Thompson was unconscious. Remo examined him cursorily. Thompson wouldn't live much longer; he'd already lost too much blood.
He had two choices. He could kill Thompson now, painlessly, or he could try to patch him up with some of the regional herbs as Chiun had taught him to do.
Killing would be the easier way, and probably kinder, too, sparing the man from a lingering and almost surely painful death. There wasn't time for doctoring now. There was ajob to do. He didn't even know the pilot. And there was no point in carrying on the pretense that he wouldn't kill anymore. Death followed him like a shadow. Yes, killing the man would be easier.
Remo raised Thompson's neck, prepared to snap it, then stopped.
Killing was always easier. There had been so many killings lately that it seemed like the most commonplace thing in the world. If you didn't like the way someone looked at you these days, you killed him. Want a diamond ring for your girl? Walk into a store and murder the owner. Free gas? Just kill the station attendant. It's been done. Don't like the president? Piece of cake. Boom, problem solved. The easy way.
The easy way was how Remo and CURE had come to be in the first place. Too many people were taking it.
No, Remo decided, there had been enough killing. Someone had somehow found out about Remo, and so had decided— quite casually, it appeared— to kill everyone around him. Easy as pie. Well, at least one of those victims wasn't going to die any sooner than he had to.
Remo knew it was perverted thinking for a professional assassin, but then, killing for a living made you look at death from a funny perspective. From inside out and sideways, the way a magician looks at a deck of cards. Sometimes you just got so sick and tired of death you wanted to...
He didn't know what he wanted. That was why he was still an assassin, whether he ever killed again or not. And why he was gathering leaves to stem the bleeding of a man he didn't care about much.
"I don't think you're going to live more than an hour," he said out loud to the unconscious man.
An hour. An hour of life.
Suddenly it all made sense. It wasn't killing or not killing that was important. It was knowing the difference between who was decent and who wasn't. Thompson was a decent man. Remo didn't know him and didn't care about him, but he understood that much. An hour of life was Remo's gift to a decent man.
Remo searched the area for some herbs, made a poultice for the wound, then left Thompson to rest in a shaded area near a field of coffee plants.