The flankers came at Remo then, from the sides. He hesitated for a crucial instant, then stepped backward, watched them both slam on the brakes to keep from meeting like a couple of defensive linemen on the football field. That was enough for Remo, giving him the chance to drop both of them together at his feet for a truly prolonged break, like an extended convalescence if they got lucky.
That left four, and the guy detailed to hold the woman was already scrambling to his feet, the job forgotten as he fished around inside his pocket for a folding knife. The naked woman could have bolted but she made no attempt to rise. It could have been the shock, some kind of injury, or maybe she simply wanted to see how it turned out. Whatever, Remo had no time to chat with her just now.
The four survivors had begun to circle him, as if he were the maypole in a children’s rite of spring. Three of them brandished knives or razors now, while number four had donned brass knuckles, trusting in his biceps and the moves he had picked up through brawling on-the street.
“Next up,” said Remo. “I don’t have all night.”
He heard the punk behind him gliding forward, trying to be subtle with the move, but making noise enough to wake the dead. A sharp blade whispered through the night, and Remo turned to meet it, gripped the young man’s wrist and twisted, using the laws of physics as the Masters of Sinanju had for centuries on end. Momentum, torque, resistance, pressure.
There was a wrenching sound, and someone started screaming. But the teenage gangster lapsed into mindless silence. Remo dodged and closed the gap between himself and yet another adversary, using a floating strike to drive stunning blows to the heart and lungs.
Five down, and two remaining.
Neither one of the survivors was really up for fighting anymore, but they had stayed too long to have a choice. They were lucky because Remo suspected they could be patched up, and he didn’t know if they deserved it. Experience told Remo that predators usually don’t learn from the mistakes of others. He wasn’t being careful, or pulling his punches, but something inside knew that for whatever reason, he was giving them a very narrow margin for survival.
The punks were backing off a little, toward the trees, and Remo followed. On his right, one of them tried to reach the woman, maybe use her as a hostage, but a straight-arm shot to the chest collapsed his lung and left him gasping on the grass like a stranded trout.
He wasn’t going anywhere, and Remo went for number seven, smiling at him as he closed the gap between them.
“Man, who is you?”
“Death,” he told the punk. “It’s your turn.”
“Y’alls leave me alone!”
“Too late.”
Too easy. Remo reached out to take the young man’s knife away and pin his hand to the tree behind him.
All done.
The woman’s clothes were a mess. Remo took a jacket off one of the punks and gave it to her, turned his back to offer her a modicum of privacy while she slipped into it. Her voice had come back, somewhere in the middle of the massacre, though it was strained from screaming, taut with fear.
“Who are you?”
“Just a Good Samaritan.”
“I mean…how did…are they…?”
“You need some help,” he said. “Let’s walk back to the street and find a cop, okay?”
“Yes, please.”
They walked in silence toward Alondra Boulevard. A squad car was idling just across the street. The lady turned to ask her savior something, and she found herself alone.
It was not that cool out so as Remo made his way south on Sunset Boulevard, no one paused to give the stranger dressed in a thin black T-shirt and chinos a second glance.
He was two minutes early, Remo saw as he stepped into the hotel and crossed the spacious lobby, headed for the bank of elevators opposite. His pulse was normal, respiration normal, nothing in his bearing to suggest that he had squared off against a gang of seven killers a half hour before.
Piece of cake, he thought.
A nice walk in the park.
Chapter 3
He had the elevator to himself, a smooth ride to the fourteenth floor that took all of sixty seconds. It was actually the thirteenth floor, of course, but superstition dominated architecture even in the nineties in Los Angeles. The numbered buttons skipped from twelve to fourteen, just like that, and everyone pretended not to notice, willing to believe that clumsy sleight of hand could dazzle Fate.
An old man and a sexy blonde who could have been his granddaughter were waiting for the elevator when he disembarked, and Remo gave them both a smile.
More power to you. Grandpa. Smoke ’em if you’ve got’em.
Number 1425 was on his left, around a corner from the bank of elevators. Signs directed Remo to his destination, and he moved swiftly down the hall, past numbered doors. He could pick out voices, television background noise, a toilet flushing. Not as bad as some motel out on the highway, but for total privacy you would need megabucks, the presidential penthouse suite.
He stopped outside the door to 1425, knocked twice and waited. On the far side of the door, a shadow blocked the peephole, lingered for a moment, finally moved away. The dead bolt snapped. The knob turned.
“Remo, right on time.”
“We aim to please.”
“Come in.”
A psychoanalyst at Langley, working for the CIA, had once declared that Dr. Harold W. Smith had “no imagination whatsoever.” He was wrong, but no one could have guessed it from examining the old man’s outward lifestyle. He wore the same gray suit, white shirt and Dartmouth tie to work each day, ate the same lunch—a cup of prune-whip yogurt— and was never seen to smile. Ironically, Smith’s personality—or lack thereof—had served him as they perfect cover for his true role as the head of CURE.
A supersecret agency designed specifically to deal with problems that were physically—or legally—beyond the normal government purview, CURE survived because successive Presidents had found they couldn’t do without it in the crunch. They needed a lethal, ruthless instrument from time to time, in these days when surveillance was a dirty word and oversight from Congress handcuffed agents in the field. When a radical solution was needed, the President of the United States picked up a special phone hidden in the Lincoln Bedroom. Harold Smith was waiting on the other end.
The key to secrecy is limiting access to information. CURE met that requirement in spades. Only four men on the face of the planet knew of its existence. They were: Smith, of course. Next was Remo, CURE’S one-man enforcement arm. The sitting President at any given time was third, although his knowledge was necessarily limited. Lastly was Chiun, Remo’s trainer, the aged Master of Sinanju, although the old Korean was scarcely interested in the goings-on of the secret organization.
Smith’s gray face puckered to resemble the look of a perpetual dyspeptic.
“It is unusual for me to meet you this way, I know,” the CURE director began. “However, there is a computer exposition in Los Angeles that I wished to attend. Please have a seat.” He motioned to a nearby chair.
They settled into modernistic metal chairs and faced each other, with a small round table separating them. Though Smith’s decrepit leather briefcase was on the table, he did not open it immediately.
“Have you seen the news within the last few days?”
“National or local?”
“Either.”
“Nope,” Remo said. “It’s on against The Simpsons.”
Smith frowned. “You didn’t hear about what happened in Wisconsin Tuesday afternoon?”