He had seen Mactrug, so skillful with a bullwhip that he could remove a cigarette from a man's mouth.
"Colonel Mactrug fought against Castro in Cuba and against Communists in Vietnam, and he taught the Portuguese in Angola how to fight the guerillas."
"That's what I said. Why should I want to learn from him?" Remo said.
"But he's fought in all those places," the cabbie said.
"And never won anywhere," Remo said. "Have you ever thought of that?"
"Why you going there?" the driver said.
"I've got to deliver a package," Remo said. That was enough of a cover story. It would do. "Wait at the gate."
"How long?" asked the driver.
"I'll let you know when we get there," Remo said.
At the gate were the two flanking machine gun emplacements, with a guard in the middle. A broad flat field, protected by a rising cliff behind, was covered by riflemen on the ramparts of a tall cement bunkerhouse with gun slits in the reinforced concrete. Fortress Mactrug. Remo looked at it and told the driver, "A minute. Minute and a half. Four at the most."
"Should I leave the meter running?"
"Sure," said Remo.
The guard at the gate was a captain in Mactrug's army. He wanted to know Remo's business at Fortress Mactrug, and he wanted to see Remo's identification. He wore a black beret with an ornate brass pin through it. He told Remo there was no loitering. The guard told Remo he looked like a bum in his hippie T-shirt, and bums were not allowed to loiter around Fortress Mactrug.
"I've got business with Colonel what's-his-name."
"Colonel Mactrug is not a what's-his-name," said the captain. He had very shiny black paratroop boots,
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with a vicious-looking dagger stuck into the side of one of them. The captain had a thin blond mustache and a big-handled side arm. He could swagger standing still.
It was too early in the morning to swagger, thought Remo.
"I must warn you that under the trespassing laws of the state of Colorado, I am legally entitled to use whatever force..."
The captain did not finish the sentence because Remo did not want to wait around to hear the sentence finished. He knew it was going to be a long sentence full of legalisms, with vague warnings and ominous moves toward all the weapons. He knew it would be a speech for the two flanking machine gunners. People who wore daggers in their boots were not necessarily killers, but they were invariably speechmakers about killing.
Remo did a little thing for the captain. He put a finger in his heart and stopped it from working. The finger shot through the sternum like a spring bolt, but with no sound except a soft plud, like a crowbar penetrating a pile of loose bologna.
The captain stopped his speech because there was an intense shock in his chest. He had not even seen the hand move. He was talking, and then there was a shock in his chest, and then there was nothing. People do not work well without blood circulating through their system. The captain did not work at all.
With his index finger on the inside of the sternum and his thumb on the outside, Remo held up the captain's body. From a distance, it looked as if the captain had Remo's arm and was arresting him. If Remo balanced the body just right, he could keep the head from flopping over. Also, he had to keep the chest from spurting blood all over him, or he would have to get another "Do it in Denver" T-shirt or, worse, have to unpack back at the hotel.
So Remo crossed the yard with the captain carefully balanced to keep the head upright, yet not to go spurting all over his shirt. Long ago, Remo had been trained
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in balance so his body would adjust to whatever he was carrying. He walked from his own center, not from the striding of the feet. The chest thrust with which he had neutralized the guard was itself an act of balance. Most people, when they issued a blow, would brace and thrust from their feet. But that was because they were employing force. When Remo's hands moved, they were the creation of force—creating the force itself, not using it—so that the strike of forefinger had the power of a rifle bullet fired from just inches away. The danger in this stroke was that, if it was not properly balanced, the finger could be shattered as easily as the victim's heart. It was all balance and all breathing, and what was changed, what had made Remo different from other Westerners, was not what had happened in his body but in his mind.
Remo got the captain to a pair of steel doors at the entrance to the large concrete building. With his free hand, Remo knocked. A slot opened and two brown eyes peered out.
"I'm under arrest," said Remo.
"I don't see the captain's face. Maybe you have a gun in his chest. How do I know you don't have a gun in his chest?"
"I give you my word I do not have a gun in his chest."
"Colonel Mactrug said, 'A man's promise is only a puff of air. If it came from the other end, it would be called a fart.' "
"I give you my solemn word," said Remo. "Have you ever heard of a solemn fart?"
"Let me see you put your hands over your head."
"Open the door first."
"Colonel Mactrug says when you have the gun, you give the orders."
"Come on," Remo said. "It's getting late."
"Hands over the head."
Remo dropped the captain and put his hands over his head. The door opened. A gun poked out, followed
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by a little fellow with his hands on the trigger of an automatic rifle.
The little fellow put the gun barrel into Remo's belly, then glanced at what was lying in the dust before the headquarters of Colonel Mactrug—one dead captain belonging to Colonel Mactrug. The little fellow squeezed the trigger of his M-16. He kept squeezing as his hand went sailing into the dust next to the captain and the gun remained as quiet as a daffodil.
The little fellow went backwards into the headquarters. He went very fast until he hit a wall, shattering his spinal colunn and ribs and loosening most of his major joints.
And then, Remo was inside, and there was Colonel Mactrug himself, kilts, black beret, and silver eagles glorious on both shoulder boards.
His face was red but his grin was confident.
"That doorway is salted with enough dynamite to make you into shredded wheat. Move and you get blown up. You can move fast, but you can't move across a room faster than my finger."
"Dynamite? Oh, no. My senses," gasped Remo. And the thin body with the thick wrists collapsed on the floor. The mouth opened, and Remo's eyes rolled back in his head, which had hit the floor hard. There was no movement in the body.
Colonel Mactrug, who had been preparing for just such an attack some day, cautiously removed his finger from the switch that would set off the dynamite.
To finish the intruder off, he selected a fine .357 Magnum from a small case set up in front of him on the platform he had erected for just such an occasion. He chose special steel-tipped bullets. But before he left the platform, he put a sighting scope on a tripod, aimed it at the chest of the intruder who had collapsed, and turned on the mini-computer attached to the sighting device. It looked like an ordinary gun scope, but it was the latest device of the U.S. Army. It could detect movement, the slightest movement, a boon to snipers
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at night. If the intruder's heart even fluttered, it would register on the scope.
Colonel Mactrug could tell from the scope's digital readout even the extent of unconsciousness in a man. He loaded the .357 Magnum, then took a last glance at the scope. The numbers read 0-0-0.
It couldn't be. He could see through the open door the captain of the guard lying in the dust with a hole in his chest. He sighted on that body, careful to keep the gun ready. The dead captain read 0-0-0.
Colonel Mactrug put his hand in front of the scope and read. It registered 75.8. Movement. And life.
He aimed again at the intruder. The scope dropped instantly to read 0-0-0.