"Half hour," said Remo.
Remo followed the wires to the large, flat monument. From ground level it looked like a gigantic fallen tombstone. He hopped up onto the marble base and saw where the previous dynamite blast had chipped away pieces of the bronze. He felt his stomach weaken and his mouth go very dry.
He knew that what was beneath his feet could turn this prairie, this state, and many surrounding states to deep holes in the ground. And somehow, even though his mind told him that death was death, whether by hurled stone or other guided missile, there was something more terrifying about being in the center of a nuclear holocaust.
Following death, the body normally rots and is broken down into other substances. And while Remo believed that death ended it all, somehow it was still part of continuing life, even if you were just fertilizer for a daisy. But a nuclear holocaust destroys matter. It doesn't just burn it into gases that float away or leave a carbon cinder—it simply eliminates matter from existence. And there was enough nuclear power under Remo's feet to eliminate most of the matter from the Rockies on the west to the Appalachians on the east.
Remo bent down and unsnapped the two strands leading to the sticks of dynamite. Holding them in his hand, he felt safer. Then he went to every one of RIP's forty-man army of occupation and made sure they had no more dynamite. He found one of the explosives men in the bathroom of the church.
"You ain't telling me what to do, buddy," said the man, still angry about being kicked in the groin. If I want to blow that frigging hunk of rock, I'm gonna blow that frigging hunk of rock."
Remo reasoned with him. He explained that to the man that, perhaps, he was being a bit childish. Perhaps this hostile immaturity stemmed from a lack of proper toilet training. Remo understood. He understood the basic problems deriving from earliest childhood. And he knew that what the man really needed was not to blow up a monument. No, the man needed proper toilet training.
"Oh, yeah," said the man, smirking at the kinky runt who had gotten in a lucky punch before out at the monument when all he'd been doing was stringing the wires for the blast.
"Yeah," repeated Remo as he reintroduced the man to the toilet in exact reverse of the way his parents had done it more than two decades before. This time there were no complaints, no requests to leave potty, none of the psychological damage that comes from too early an introduction to modern man's bowel control. There were just a few bubbles in the bowl, and then there was nothing. The man slumped, chin over toilet lip, water dripping from his mouth, his eyes blank. Remo rammed the dynamite sticks down the dead throat into the cooling intestines where they would be safe.
Twenty braves had gathered in the growing dusk outside the church, volunteers for the great raid. Lynn Cosgrove wanted to come along.
"But keep your mouth shut," said Remo. "And you, Lupin, stop hitting her in the face."
"I was only trying to help," said Lupin.
"Leave her alone," Remo said.
"I will chronicle your brave exploits," said Burning Star. "How the brave bands raised their pure hearts to the buffalo and to the elk, how the braves set out to make America beautiful again, a home where clear waters run from mother ocean and high big mountain.
Remo gently placed a finger over Burning Star's swollen lips. "We're going to rip off a liquor store and a supermarket, not storm the Bastille," he said.
"The liquor store and the supermarket are our Bastille," said Burning Star.
"We are all Bastilles," yelled someone raising a Kalashnikov.
"Shut up or you don't eat," said Remo.
There was silence on the Montana prairie except for the buzzing noise from the far-off circle of newsmen. Remo could see their lights and trailers and tents. In the darkness, atop a hill to the left, was the town of Wounded Elk, populated by Apowas who would, if Petty were accurate, kill anyone from RIP. And in the center of this mess was the end of America under a loose bronze plate that had almost gone with the first blast.
Far beyond the circle of newsmen and marshals was the motel where Chiun was watching Van Riker, who was supposed to be calculating something scientific that Remo hoped he would keep to himself.
At least no one would be blowing off the nuclear cap with dynamite, thought Remo, as he told his band to keep quiet and follow him.
"And lo, onto the dark trail went the mighty band, first among them the man called Remo, and then upon that trail, the Oglala and the Chippewa, the Nez Percé and the Navaho, the Mohawk and the Cheyenne, the…"
"Shut up, Cosgrove, or you're not coming," said Remo.
As they went clanging noisily through the trench in front of the monument, Remo realized they weren't going to make it. Too much noise. So as they moved toward the line of federal marshals, Remo tapped one and then another, telling each to go back. As they approached the first federal outpost, Remo was left with one, but he knew that one quiet moving person was better than a crowd. He did not even notice who the person was, but he knew good balanced movements when he heard them, that internal sort of walk that kept energy centralized.
"Put your hand on my back and follow me," said Remo. "Wherever I move, you move, and move slowly, nothing fast."
Feeling the hand on his back, Remo walked stealthily over the soft earth. When there was silence, he stopped. When there was buzzing, he moved forward, each movement attuned to the earth and the people. Spotting a slouching, bored marshal who seemed to have turned off his senses, he crept to within fifteen feet of the man. Then he stepped out into the light, grabbed the person behind him, and spun around so he and his companion appeared to be running toward the monument instead of away from it.
"Follow me," said Remo loudly. "We got by him."
"You there, halt!" shouted the marshal. "Come back here."
"Bastard," said Remo glumly.
"You people could have gotten yourselves killed trying to get past me," said the marshal. He tilted back his blue baseball cap with the federal emblem on it. "Don't try it again."
"Okay, you win," said Remo, his hands in the air. He and his companion walked past the guard toward a crowd of newsmen.
"And lo, the brave warrior named Remo, who walked in darkness, moved with pure heart…"
"Shut up, Cosgrove," said Remo, realizing it was Burning Star who had the best balance of the band he had started with.
"She's in deerskin," said the marshal. "Is she a newsman or what?"
"She's a newsman," said Remo.
"A newsperson," said Burning Star.
"Shut up, Cosgrove," said Remo.
"Call me Burning Star."
"Where did you learn to move like that? That's better than a karate black belt," Remo said.
"Ballet," said Burning Star,
"Hah. So much for tribal heritage," said Remo.
"You look Indian," said Burning Star. "I realized it back there. You are Indian, aren't you?"
"I wouldn't know," said Remo honestly. "In my recent training, I've learned that the world is made up of Koreans and a bunch of other people."
Seeing Burning Star in deerskin, several newsmen attempted to interview her, but Remo quietly explained to her that they had to lose the newsmen because it was not the wisest thing to steal a truck on coast-to-coast television.
Telling the most persistent newsman that yes, she believed the Euro dollar would come back into its own if the gold market steadied, she ducked behind a network truck. Remo explained to the driver that he had to move the truck because he didn't have residual clearance.
"Wha?" asked the driver leaning out of the cab. Remo explained the rest carefully, leaving him somewhat unconscious underneath a nearby car.
"Couldn't you get anything less conspicuous than a network broadcasting truck?" asked Burning Star with a toss of her long, straight red hair.