“The Mexico guvmunt sends them Mexicans to take our best people down there. Like Phil Leary. Best foreman we ever had, and the Mexicans stole him away in the night!” The old man who explained this hadn’t missed a meeting of the union local in forty-three years, so he had some credibility—but it was widely known he hadn’t been sober in forty-three years, either, and was now senile to boot. So you took what he said with a grain of salt. But now Paul Pirie knew the truth. The old man was right.
“The old man was right,” Pirie declared forcefully.
“Who gives a hoot about the old man?” said Alma. “It’s the young stud muffin I want to get my hands on.”
She was chained up next to Paul Pirie in the battered pod. They had all managed to survive the grueling, endless second phase of their trip down the subterranean river, thanks to the two strangers, but the two strangers refused to let them out of the pod now that they had beached it.
“He’s a Mexican,” Paul accused.
“Doesn’t have a Mexican accent.”
“Alma, I know you’ve lost your marbles but you gotta listen. We’ve been captured by the secret Mexican technology railroad! We’ve discovered how they’re stealing America’s factories and stuff and taking it to their own places south of the border. It explains everything!”
“And you’re calling me crazy?” Alma scoffed. She said to Remo, “Where ya off to, big boy?”
Remo Williams tipped his imaginary hat. “You folks sit tight while we scout on ahead.”
“Why can’t we go with you?” demanded one of the other captives.
“This is the safest place for you. Trust me.”
“I’ll never trust a Mexican secret agent!” Paul Pirie shouted defiantly. “Don’t try to deny it!”
“Stupid gringo, we’re not Mexicans, are we, Little Father?”
“Certainly not,” squeaked a voice out of the darkness where the old one had been standing idly as the young one pulled the pod above the waterline. “The Mexicans could never stand against us.”
“Besides, this place has belonged to us way longer than the Mexicans.”
Pirie thought hard. The Mexicans’ ancestors were the Spanish who first claimed the Americas for the civilized world. The only quote-humans-unquote who were here before that were the—
“You’re redskin Indians!”
“Exactly,” Remo agreed.
“I am not!” protested the old man.
“You’re trying to take it all back for the Cherokee nation!”
“Cherokees are kitty cats compared to us. Now we go kick-um some heap big paleface butt. Don’t wander off.”
The malnourished-looking man with the long face was shouting accusations, the scraggly woman was proclaiming her willingness to perform various services and the other captives were simply trying to scream their fool heads off. The sound followed them for a mile.
“Guess they didn’t want to be left behind,” Remo said. “Can’t say I blame them.”
“It would have been deadly for them to accompany us, for I would have annihilated them myself.”
They had beached the pod when they felt eddies of air swirling back in their faces, potent with albino smell. Knowing Jack Fast and Jacob Fastbinder, there would be nasty surprises awaiting them. It was better to leave the captives behind and retrieve them later. Hopefully. Now they walked along the river’s edge.
Thousands of years ago a massive river carved a wide tunnel, then the water flow dwindled. The reduced river created a much smaller channel on the floor of the old tunnel during the next age of erosion, leaving walkable banks on both sides. The signs of albino foot traffic showed that they used it regularly.
“Chiun,” Remo said, and lifted the glow stick. Above their heads, where most eyes would have seen only pitch-blackness, they could make out a man-size access tunnel and a bundle of explosives affixed to the ceiling. More bundles stretched across the roof in an arch.
“I don’t get why they’d close up the river tunnel,” Remo said. “Unless they thought they could bring it down on top of us.”
“If so, they missed,” Chiun observed. “That is not a mistake I would expect of this young madman.”
“Yeah. So what’s he planning?”
“I know not, but he will have a plan,” Chiun said confidently.
As they followed the river, walking shoulder to shoulder, Remo conjured the image of a beautiful garden grove on the Mediterranean shore of Spain. “What troubles you?” Chiun asked.
“I was thinking of Barcelona. We knew there was something out of the ordinary waiting for us inside that mansion. That was the first time we had a run-in with the Fastbinder arsenal of doodads and gizmos, and we got our asses kicked.”
“It was the proton-emitter device that weakened us. Without it, all the silly army toys would have been ineffectual,” Chiun said.
“Doesn’t matter. The emitter was there and we almost got whacked.”
“This, perhaps, is not the best time to discuss the results of the emitter.”
Remo smiled. “When we went into the hotel room in D.C. those emitters were just as strong, but they didn’t give me the same sort of a mind-suck. I’ve grown calluses in my head.”
“You don’t know this.”
“Yeah, I feel it.”
