"You got it," said Ruby, who would have given forty percent if she had to. "And no backing off now. We got a deal."
Remo pushed open the upstairs door. They were on a flat roof two stories about the central courtyard of the U-shaped compound.
They leaned over the edge and looked down where Generalissimo Corazon stood by his helicopter, a metal box in front of him. Corazon moved over to
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squat behind the box, peering through a tube that served as a gunsight, aiming it at the door.
"Where are they?" Corazon grumbled to Major Estrada, who stood next to him, leaning against the plane, smoking.
"They'll be along," he said, smoking casually.
"See," hissed Ruby to Remo. "You go and you trust-in' that big clown. He jiving you."
"All right, all right," Remo said. He leaned back and looked around the roof. There was a guard tower twenty yards away, rising ten feet above the roof, with a guard staring out at the Baqian countryside, his back to them.
"Wait here," Remo said. "Let me take care of that guard."
He moved slow and low across the top of the roof toward the guard's tower. At just that instant, the guard turned around. He saw Ruby and Chiun standing twenty yards away from him and Remo running toward him. He threw his rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on Remo, and . . .
Boom. The guard's head exploded away as Ruby put a .38 slug between his eyes.
"You did not have to do that," Chiun clucked. "He could not have hit Remo."
"Don" matter to me none," Ruby said. "He coulda hit me if he'd a mind to. I'm watching out for number one." She smiled at Chiun, a warm afterthought. "Without me, your twenty percent goes down the tubes."
"Forty percent," corrected Chiun.
"Thirty," Ruby conceded. "But you take care of him."
Remo turned toward them in disgust as the guard
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toppled over the low rail of the tower and fell heavily on the roof. His rifle clattered as it hit and bounced.
Remo ran back. "Let's get out of here."
In the courtyard below, Corazon saw them, poised on the roof, silhouetted against the almost white Baqian sky.
He grabbed the mung machine in his arms and wheeled around. With no attempt at deception, he pressed the firing button. The machine hummed for a split second and then there was a loud crackling noise.
His aim was off. The green glow of rays bathed the roof, but missed the three Americans. Instead they hit the door of the roof entrance, rebounded, and bathed the three in a dim glow.
Remo said, "We better . . ." His voice slowed down. "Go . . ." he tried to say, but the word would not come from his lips. He looked at Chiun, a surprised beseeching expression on his face, like a wordless cry for help. But Chiun's eyes already had rolled back into his head and his legs gave way under him and he fell to the roof. Remo collapsed on top of him.
Ruby had no time to wonder why the misaimed rays had Foppled Remo and Chiun but had not harmed her. Time to think about it later. First things first. Number one. She moved to the far edge of the roof, ready to make the risky two-story jump down and start running. As she poised on the edge of the roof, she looked back. Remo and Chiun were lying together, looking like a pile of mixed laundry, Remo all cotton and Chiun all silk brocade.
She turned again to jump, then looked back once more.
She sighed and came away from the edge of the
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roof. She picked up the guard's rifle as she raced back to Remo and Chiun.
"Sheeeit," she said. "I just knew that turkey'd muck everything up."
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CHAPTER EIGHT
From down in the courtyard Corazon could not see that the first blast from the mung machine had felled Remo and Chiun. So he kept spraying the rooftop with bursts of energy from the device, but because the two men had fallen to the tarpaper roof the machine's rays passed harmlessly over them.
Still, Ruby Gonzalez wasn't going to take any chances.
She lay down on the roof to steady her aim, drew a careful bead on the mung machine, and fired her .38. The slug went wide and smashed a piece of metal out of a corner of the box.
"Damn borrowed gun," she spat. "No wonder this country don' amount to nothing."
She started to hoist the guard's rifle to her shoulder, but Corazon and Estrada already were hustling the mung machine back into the safety of the helicopter.
"Don't just stand there, fools," Corazon shouted to
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troops and guards who hid under the first floor overhang of the buildings. "Get up there. Capture them."
Corazon was hiding behind the helicopter when Ruby pinged a rifle shot into the soft side of the plane.
She glanced toward Remo and Chiun.
"C'mon, you two. Get up," she said. "Cmon now. Get yo' butts movin'."
They lay still and unmoving.
Ruby fired two more rifle shots to slow down the troops who were clambering up the steps leading to the rooftop that faced hers from across the courtyard. The position was desperate.
If Remo and Chiun couldn't move, she could not hold out much longer. She couldn't do much damage with borrowed guns, but if she kept firing and forced the soldiers to take her with overwhelming firepower, it was probable that the white man and the Oriental would be killed by stray bullets.
The soldiers were now on the rooftop across from her and had begun laying down a line of bullets.
"We all gets dead and nobody saves nobody," Ruby said to herself. She leaned over to Chiun and spoke into his ear, hoping he might hear her. "I be back for you," she said. "I be back."
She rolled away from the two men so they would be less likely to get hit by soldiers returning her fire. She fired two more shots from the rifle.. Every time she fired, she noticed all the soldiers ducked their heads.
She moved back toward the wall leading to the countryside surrounding the prison compound. As she neared the edge she fired two more shots and then shouted at the top of her voice.
"Stop firing! We surrenderr
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Before the soldiers could look up from their hiding places, Ruby jumped off the roof, twenty feet to the ground below.
The soldiers waited on the opposite roof for further evidence of the surrender.
Corazon's bellowing voice filled the now-silent compound.
"They said they surrender, you idiots. Get over there and get them." He carefully remained hidden behind the helicopter.
Reluctantly, the soldiers began to move, afraid of a sneak attack by the one woman arrayed against them.
When no bullets were fired, the bravest of them stood up. He was not shot down so all the rest stood and began to run to the other side of the roof.
When they got there, they found Chiun and Remo lying unconscious on the roof. Ruby was gone.
"The lady be gone," a sergeant shouted to Corazon. He wondered if her successful escape, even though not quite as planned, still entitled him to $73 million. "But the two men be here."
"Bring them down," Corazon said. "And search for her."
The soldiers looked over the edge of the wall at the land outside the prison compound.
The terrain stretched away flat and empty for miles in all directions. The woman could have found no shelter in that barren landscape. Running, she would have been picked out as easily as an ink blot on a marshmallow. The soldiers scanned in every direction.
Ruby Gonzalez had vanished.
The soldiers dumped the bodies of Remo and Chiun in the dirt in front of Corazon. "They been shot?" he asked.
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The soldiers shook their heads.
Corazon cackled. "So they got more power than me, eh? Cousin Juanita, she say so, eh? More power than me? Here's their power, laying in the dirt."
He kicked Remo in the side with his right foot and smashed out at Chiun's belly with his left foot.