Grumbling, he pulled the headset down around his neck.
Probably just as well. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe at his age, it was time to get out. Rubbing his hands for warmth, he glanced over at Smeed.
The kid was sitting anxiously by the half-open rear door. He hadn't bothered to reholster his gun. It was sitting on his thigh. Every once in a while, he'd switch hands, wiping the sweat from his palms across his knee.
Smeed was cleaning off the latest cold perspiration when Cal Dreeder heard a distant pop. It was echoed on the headset around his neck.
Cal's eyes widened. A gunshot.
It was followed by another. All at once, a chorus of soft pops filled the freezing woods like winter crickets.
Smeed shot to his feet. "What's happening?" the young agent asked, gun raised. A gloved hand reached for the door.
"Stay put," Cal snapped, whipping his headset back to his ears.
Cal was instantly assaulted by the closeness of the gunfire. Between shots, men shouted.
It was an overlapping gibberish, back and forth. Although he couldn't make out what was being said, he'd heard enough. The number of voices shocked him.
"There's more than two," he said, his heart thudding.
The agents manning the equipment shook their heads in helpless confusion. "There were only two," one said, his eyes registering the first hint of panic.
"It's an ambush," Cal muttered hotly to himself. That was all Randy Smeed needed to hear. Gun in hand, the young agent hopped from the back of the van.
"Hold it!" Cal shouted, ripping away his earphones.
Too late.
A sudden grunt from outside. The door slammed shut.
Cal was diving for the door when he heard the muffled shots. Too close.
"Damn," Cal swore. He wheeled to the two stunned agents. They were like ice statues, frozen in their seats. "Draw your weapons," he ordered.
The men behind him dutifully dragged guns from holsters. Depositing their headsets on their eaves-dropping equipment, they stepped woodenly up behind Cal.
"Cover me," he snapped.
But as he reached for the handle, Cal froze. He cocked an ear. Listening intently, he wiped a sheen of cold sweat from his upper lip with the cuff of his windbreaker.
"What is it?" one of the young agents whispered.
Cal's voice was flat. "Gunfire's stopped."
So scared were they, the men hadn't realized it. Straining, they tried to make out the familiar pop of weapons' fire. There was none. The woods had fallen silent.
Cal Dreeder knew that could mean only two things. The DEA had either won or lost. Judging from the number of nongovernment voices on the squawk box, he had a sick feeling it was the latter.
In an instant, the air within the van seemed to grow noticeably hotter. More difficult to breathe. "We've got to get out of here," one of the men said, his voice tight. It was the young agent who had scowled at Cal's drug comments not an hour before. Cal shot the man a withering look.
There was only one real option, and Cal Dreeder wasn't happy with it.
There was no access to the cab from the rear. Someone would have to physically step outside the van and walk around to the front.
Smeed was dead. The bullets that had doubtless ended his young life had been fired right outside the door.
Yet there was silence now.
Maybe they'd retreated. Maybe if they gave Cal enough time, he could-
There came a wrenching from the rear of the truck.
"Ready!" Cal growled, falling back.
He aimed his gun at the door. The other agents followed suit, their faces sick.
When the door sprang open, Cal caught a glimpse of a hulking figure with a crowbar. Squeezing his trigger, the DEA man buried a slug in a spot below the edge of his stocking cap.
As the man collapsed, another sprang into view. This time, Cal's shot was wide. His opponent's was not.
The bullet caught Agent Cal Dreeder dead center above the bridge of his nose. With a meaty slap, it formed a deep black third eye between the fifty-four-year-old agent's shocked baby blues.
Cal toppled onto his back. Even as he fell, more scruffy faces appeared at the rear of the van.
The other two agents fired wildly. One shot clipped an assailant in the shoulder. The rest missed completely.
The shots fired into the van were far more accurate. In a matter of seconds, the last two agents joined Cal Dreeder in a bloody heap on the van floor.
Silence flooded the woods once more. The bodies were left where they fell. The gunmen hurried away from the van, back to the big building with the sickly yellow light.
THE VAN WOULD BE discovered at dawn the next morning. By that time, the five hundred million dollars of cocaine that had been stored in the old hangar would have already been shipped to a safer location.
That dreary post-New Year's day, four things would happen in the wake of the botched DEA raid.
ON THE NEW YORK Stock Exchange, a company called Raffair, which had recently gone public, would be the center of a buying frenzy. As the day progressed, the value of Raffair's stock would skyrocket in brisk trading.
AT A WROUGHT-IRON TABLE on a polished-granite Old World veranda overlooking a cold, dormant vineyard, an old man would open a newspaper. His weathered face would grow quietly pleased while reading of the unsuccessful raid across the Atlantic. It was all part of the master plan....
THE FAMILIES of the fifteen dead DEA agents, including Cal Dreeder's, would begin making funeral arrangements. In their grief, they would neither know nor care to know that the deaths of their loved ones were not in vain.
The audio recordings made within the bloodsoaked DEA van would be duplicated and analyzed by every concerned agency in the U.S. government. Through circuitous means, the information would be brought to the attention of a dull gray man in a small sanitarium in Rye, New York.
FINALLY, the most awesome force in the arsenal of the United States would be released against the agents' killers. So terrible would be his wrath that the very earth would tremble beneath his feet, and when vengeance finally came, it would be swift and brutal.
But before America's last, best hope could set out on this most violent path, he needed to do one tiny little thing first. He had to stop the future from happening.
Chapter 2
His name was Remo and there was a time in his life when he didn't believe in ghosts.
Back when he was a simple beat cop in Newark, New Jersey, Remo didn't have time to worry about ghosts or goblins or any of the other supernatural beings that sprang to frighten children from the minds of the Brothers Grimm. In those days, he was too busy just trying to stay alive.
Another lifetime and a million years ago, Remo Williams thought as he stared out the small airplane window.
The setting sun was an orange island of fire. On the ground far below, it was already growing dark. The commercial plane on which he was flying was bound for Puerto Rico. Unbeknownst to the other passengers, it had begun its descent a few seconds ago. Like a mild itch, the barely perceptible shift in altitude was registered by Remo's sensitive eardrums.
Only one other set of eardrums on the face of the planet would have detected the first subtle slide the U.Sky Airlines plane had made over the Caribbean island. At the moment, that pair of ears and their owner were back in Massachusetts. Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, the greatest house of master assassins ever to ply the art, was contemplating the future. Both Remo's future and his own.
Remo wasn't in the mood to think about the future. In fact, when Upstairs called with this assignment, Remo was more than eager to accept it. He had hoped that activity-any activity at all-would keep him from thinking about anything other than the here and now.