"They know the plan?"
"Yes, they were fully briefed."
"I'd rather not go swimming this evening if they screw it up."
"They won't."
"Twenty minutes," Remo said.
"Make it nineteen," Smith answered tartly.
REMO DIDN'T WEAR A WATCH. He didn't need to. He had a clock in his head and it kept perfect time. He went belowdecks, moving silently. Not a floorboard creaked. He paused outside the economy berth belonging to Pablo Altamira and listened to the breathing of the man inside. Pablo was asleep. Then he went to the luxury stateroom where Stacy Armitage waited. She was in her vast, circular bed wearing only the ivory satin topsheet and a perky smile.
"I thought you wouldn't come," she said. He could read the arousal in the pattern of her breathing, in the dilation of her pupils.
He sat on the bed alongside her. She dropped the sheet. Remo nodded sadly and said, "Unfortunately, I won't."
She was confused for just a moment, then he touched her neck. She slumped over, unconscious, breathing peacefully. It took him minutes to stuff her limp limbs back into sweatpants, sandals and an oversize T-shirt from a Puerta Plata souvenir shop. It featured a large toucan lounging on a beach towel and drinking a tropical drink from a pineapple. It was emblazoned with the message, "I changed my attitude in Puerta Plata!"
"Not really, you didn't," Remo said to the sleeping daughter of a U.S. senator, who simply didn't know when to leave well enough alone.
He draped her over one shoulder and toted her onto the deck. He heard Pablo still sleeping, but knew he had someone waiting for him outside. "Oh, Remo, are these the tactics to which you are reduced to procure female companionship?" Chiun asked, shaking his head sadly.
"I wish. I'll have you know she was ready for a hay roll. Instead I put her to sleep and got her dressed without any hanky-panky."
"Because?"
"She was responding to the pheromones or whatever, just like all the others. No, thanks."
"Maybe it wasn't your Sinanju essence. Maybe she was attracted to you, Remo Williams." Chiun followed him down the length of the Melody.
"Come off it, Chiun."
"Unlikely, I know, but still possible. Stranger things have happened. I have seen the most hideous and deformed human beings with mates, so why not you, my son?"
"What, with this big head?"
"It is a comically oversized brainpan, yes, but there must be a woman somewhere who can overlook this trait. Perhaps the trollop sprung from the senator's loins was the one."
"I don't think so," Remo said as he yanked out a life raft and pulled the plug, hoisting it off the aft end of the Melody as it expanded from a tight rubber wad into an eight-person raft. He handed Chiun the line that held it and leaped down to the raft. He laid the unconscious woman inside it.
"Of course, there are also the ears, which are genuinely repulsive," Chiun mentioned. "And then there are your flabby, slobbering lips. They disgust me, but perhaps a woman in desperate straits would see past them."
"I doubt it," Remo said, half listening to Chiun as he peered into the wake of the Melody. The nineteen and a half minutes were up when he saw the strobing light, so distant as to be nothing more than a glimmer on the horizon.
"Let her go," Remo said.
Chiun shrugged and released the line.
Stacy Armitage, sleeping quietly, floated off into the blackness of the Caribbean night.
Remo watched the raft until even his sharp eyes could no longer make out the black shape on the black ocean.
"Wow, is she gonna be pissed," he observed.
"Yes," Chiun agreed. Remo could hear the amusement in his voice.
He returned to the helm and phoned Rye, New York, and found himself talking to Jude, the nightshift manager of Pets? You Bet! Pet Supply Warehouse, "where all rawhide chew toys are on sale for two weeks only!" Of course it was the new CURE call-filtering system. In order to provide the system with a sufficient audio signal from which to make a positive voice print ID, Remo began an in-depth description of what use she should make of her discounted rawhide bones.
"Does your mother hen know that kind of talk comes out of your mouth?" interrupted a familiar voice-but it was not Harold W. Smith's.
"That's nothing compared to some of the creative Korean stuff he says when the TV reception goes bad," Remo answered. "What's the status on our pickup, Junior?"
"Dr. Smith is in contact with the DEA agents, but it hasn't happened yet," reported Mark Howard, CURE's assistant director.
"Is there a problem? There better not be a problem."
"No. They've spotted her. They're just letting her float in. It'll be a few minutes."
"I'll hold."
Five minutes later Howard reported, "They've got her. Safe and sound and sleeping like a baby."
"My advice is that they stay clear when she wakes up," Remo said. "The fish are gonna fly."
THE MORNING WAS PEACEFUL. Remo enjoyed the quiet. Pablo was at the helm and hadn't blinked an eye when told Mrs. Rubble was feeling sick and was staying in her cabin. He'd have to think of a better excuse later if he needed to.
But Pablo started getting agitated later in the morning. He shifted his feet frequently. Remo saw Pablo scanning the horizon too intently, using the helm binoculars too often.
It was coming soon.
He wasn't surprised when he spotted the speck on the ocean.
Minutes later the speck was much bigger and he turned to Pablo Altamira, back on station at the helm, raising his voice to be heard above the sounds of the sea and their engine. He pointed out the other watercraft. "Can you make out what that is?" he called.
"Not yet," the young Dominican replied. "Too far."
Remo went belowdecks and found Chiun in front of the TV, sending hate rays from his eyes at a TV that alternated a snowstorm of static with a scene of two weeping and impeccably manicured women speaking Spanish.
"We may have company," Remo announced.
"I heard you bellowing. Are they pirates?"
"I don't know yet. You want to have a look?"
"Later," said Chiun.
"Fine," Remo muttered. "This is the worst three-hour tour I've ever been on." As he strolled back on deck he felt a minute shifting in the Melody's course. He glanced at Pablo in the helm seat, thought of saying something to the young Dominican and then decided it was better to keep still. Let the plan play out.
The speck, still better than a mile away, now appeared to be some kind of trawler, neither new nor very well maintained. He spotted one man at the helm, another at the stern, though Remo couldn't tell what he was doing. Neither man was obviously armed, but both had faces turned toward the Melody. He waved.
The trawler's helmsman turned, said something to his crewman in the stern, and Remo watched the second man move forward, pausing at the cockpit long enough to reach inside a cabinet and take out something. Remo couldn't have said exactly what it was, but the package resembled a square of folded cloth, partly red and partly black.
The crewman moved toward the stern, where the trawler's stubby flagpole was mounted. Now he separated one part of the bundle in his hands from another, shaking the first one open before he clipped it to the flagpole's halyard, briskly running it aloft. A crimson pennant caught the wind, unfurled and started flapping in the breeze.
Above and behind him, Remo heard Pablo call out, "They show a red flag. We must help if we can."
"Right!" he replied to their pilot. "Let's go, then."
The Melody was changing course, swiftly and smoothly, with Pablo's sure hands on the wheel. Remo saw the older, smaller boat turning to meet them now, assuming what was nearly a collision course. Her pilot and the crewman in the stern were still the only humans visible on board. Remo reached out over the water, trying to listen past the thrum of the engines and the distortion of the sea.