There was just enough sugar to pour into the gas tank of every vehicle. Remo replaced the gas caps and found his way to the barracks where the Amerasians were kept. A soldier in green was nailing bamboo splints across the broken window. Remo put him to sleep with a single chopping blow and removed the bamboo with quick tugs. He poked his head in.
"Next bus leaves in two minutes," he called. "You can buy your tickets on board."
They poured out of the window like lemmings. Remo helped the younger ones over the sill. When he had them collected in a group, he put his fingers to his mouth to gesture for quiet.
"Now, listen. I can get you out of here and away. But after that, you're on your own. Understand?"
They nodded, their faces pale and grateful.
"Okay," Remo said. "Single file, and follow me. Don't bunch up."
He led them to the next barracks and then to the one nearest the gate. Motioning for them to stay out of sight, Remo slipped to the gate and approached the guard.
Remo was almost up to him when his foot hit a rock. It was the strangest thing. He should have seen the rock. At the very least, he should have sensed it before kicking it. He was trained not to betray himself. But he had.
The guard spun. His Ak-47 hung from a shoulder strap. He brought it up snappily. Remo was quicker. He grabbed the weapon by barrel and stock, and spun like a top. The centrifugal force made the guard let go. The strap held for three revolutions, then snapped. The guard sailed over the fence and crashed into the upper branches of a rubber tree: He lay still.
Remo broke the padlock, kicked the gate open, and waved for the others to come.
They started off single file, but the open gate was too much for them. The orderly escape became a rout. Still clutching the captured rifle, Remo yanked the external lever that opened the folding bus doors. He slid behind the wheel as the others found seats and huddled under the exposed window glass. In a moment, Remo had hot-wired the ignition and got going. The sound of the bus rumbling brought excited yells from the camp. Engines started growling, but the engines didn't catch. That would be the sugar. Remo grinned.
In the rearview mirror Remo saw the Vietnamese soldiers pile into the road, some dropping into a shooting crouch, others bringing their rifles to shoulder height.
Mr. Hom, hopping up and down like an animated pelican, slapped their rifle barrels down before they could fire. He swore at them, pointing to the gawking tour group, who were watching the brave soldiers of the new Vietnam trying to organize pursuit without vehicles.
Remo grinned again. It reminded him of the day in September 1967 when he stole a North Vietnamese tank from under the noses of its sleeping crew. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, driving after the setting sun, toward Cambodia.
It was many miles before Remo hit a roadblock.
Two Land Rovers were parked nose-to-nose, blocking the road. About a dozen soldiers were standing in single-file formation in front of the Land Rovers, their rifles high and unwavering. They reminded Remo of paintings of the British Redcoats standing in strict military formation while American guerrillas picked them off from behind cover. Remo grunted to himself as he slowed the bus. The Vietnamese were acting like real soldiers now. That would be their mistake.
Remo barked, "Everybody get on the floor," to his passengers, yanked the door-opening handle with one hand, and scooped up his rifle with the other. He stopped. Noticing the rifle, he asked himself in a dazed voice, "What the hell am I doing?" Chiun would kill him if he caught him using a firearm. Remo left the weapon behind and walked into the bus's headlight glow with his hands hanging loose and empty.
He smiled as he approached the toylike soldiers.
"Is this the Road to Mandalay?" he asked cheerfully. "Or am I in the wrong movie?"
A dozen safeties clicked off at once.
"Yep," Remo said. "Wrong movie. I want Tarzan goes to Vietnam."
And without any preliminary tensing of muscle or other betraying action, Remo vanished from the twin spray of headlights.
The Vietnamese soldiers blinked. One of them barked an order. The soldiers advanced into the light, walking abreast.
Up in the overhanging tree where Remo had disappeared to, he was reminded again of the Redcoats. Only these soldiers were green. And not just in the color of their uniforms. Remo found a strong vine, tested it for weight, and pushed off.
He came down like a pendulum hitting dominoes. The first soldier never knew what hit him. Neither did the one next to him, who was thrown into the man beside him, who in turn clanged helmets with his comrade. The chain reaction of falling soldiers would have been comical had it not been for the sporadic eruption of automatic-weapons fire as frantic fingers tightened on triggers. Rubber-tree leaves were sickled off. Thick tree boles shattered, spewing milky sap. The Vietnamese cackled profanity. None of it did them any good.
Once they were tangled up on the road, Remo put the still-conscious ones to sleep with a series of butterfly jabs. He motioned for help, and several Amerasians dragged the soldiers off to the side of the road and confiscated their rifles. Remo had moved the Land Rovers close to the bus and started siphoning gas into jerricans bolted to the back of the bus when the Amerasians wandered out of the dark bush. They were wiping blood stains off confiscated bayonets.
Remo shrugged. War was war.
He finished siphoning off the last of the gas, hurried everyone aboard, and climbed back in. "Next stop, Cambodia---or whatever they call it now," he announced.
In the back, they giggled nervously. They were quite a mix. American faces with almond eyes. Asian faces with Western eyes. Some were white, some brown, others black. They looked lost.
A rusting road sign told Remo he was on Route Thirteen-what used to be known as the Road to Peace. If memory served, it went directly to the Cambodian border. He settled down for the long haul.
Hours later, a military Land Rover appeared in the rearview mirror and Remo again called for everyone to get onto the floor. They obeyed instantly and yelled, "Go, American!" Remo liked that.
The Land Rover drew abreast like a speedy cockroach and Remo waited until someone in a uniform stood up and shouted for him to pull over.
Remo did. In the Land Rover's direction. The vehicle swerved, precipitating the officer onto the macadam roadway. He rolled several times, his clothes coming off as if he were a shucked ear of corn: The Land Rover spun out of control and piled into a tree.
"Yay, American! Go, GI!" The Amerasians were shouting at the top of their lungs.
They weren't disturbed again until the low wop-wop-wop sound of an approaching helicopter intruded over the engine's rackety roar.
Remo held the wheel while he searched the sky. "Anybody see a chopper?"
All over the bus, the windows shot up and heads poked out, twisting faces craned to the sky.
The helicopter's wop-wop-wop changed to a whut-whut-whut and then became a clattering pocketa-pocketa noise, and Remo knew it was closing hard. But from where?
The helicopter-Remo recognized it as a Russian Hind gunship camouflaged green and brown jumped up from behind a grassy hill and the Amerasians in the right row called that they had spotted it.
"Thanks a lot," Remo muttered. Loudly he said, "Can anyone hit it?"
They tried. AK-47's erupted at the weapons-heavy gunship. It passed overhead, its racket deafening, and vanished from sight.
"Any luck?" Remo called.