His name was Remo, and his orders had been simply to disarm any troublemakers. That was the word from Upstairs if things got real—disable their weapons, and leave them for the police.
Dismantling guns was one of Remo’s favorite parts of the job. There was something musical in the tinkling of metal on pavement as overpriced and over-accessorized rifles fell into pieces, something magical in the dilated pupils of the men who watched it happen. But these guys had made a fatal mistake. They had pissed off Remo Williams, former Newark beat cop, and current Master of Sinanju.
The Dallas intersection was in chaos, with police falling, crowds shouting, victims screaming. On one side of the street marched a parade of women coalescing under the banner of #WeaponWisdom. Remo found himself wondering again when the pound sign had become the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet, and how one was even supposed to pronounce it. He had concluded it had to be silent, because as often as he had seen it in the news, he had never heard the movement’s figurehead, Cheryl Sparks, ever put any inflection before the words whenever she mentioned the WeaponWisdom movement, which was every third sentence she uttered.
Across from the women chanting for safer guns and safer bullets, and kept at bay by Dallas police officers on horseback, was what Remo assumed to be a small community in search of a trailer park. There were several American flags, more than a few “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags, and even an enormous Confederate flag. The flags hung from poles mounted in the flatbeds of parked pickup trucks, or were draped over makeshift sawhorses. An elderly woman sat in a plastic-weave lawn chair with a shotgun across her lap, propping up a sign that read GLOCK LIVES MATTER. But no one in that crowd had a free hand to hold a flag or a sign, since their hands were filled with various kinds of long guns, bristling with scopes, bump stocks, and extended magazine clips. At the forefront of the group was a pot-bellied, bearded man with the biggest gun of all resting against his shoulder.
Remo went unnoticed as he leaned against the side of a mailbox. Anyone who saw him would recall, at most, a thin man wearing chinos and a tight black t-shirt. The most perceptive of them might remember his Italian loafers, or the way his skin seemed drawn tightly over his skull. But if pressed, nobody would provide anything close to an accurate description of him.
Being nondescript was a necessity for someone in Remo’s line of business, which, if it was not the oldest profession, it was certainly a close second. Remo Williams was the enforcement arm of a government organization so secret it had no classification. Known only as CURE, and known only to the people who worked for it and the President of the United States, CURE was created to carry out operations that did not fall within the parameters of the Constitution. The organization had only one operative, Remo Williams.
He had not volunteered for the job. In fact, he did not even know he had been recruited until after he had been framed for a murder he did not commit, and for which he had been summarily executed. But the execution had been all been a sham designed to make Remo Williams a man who no longer existed. Only then was Remo told about CURE. It was also how Remo had been introduced to the man who would become an irremovable pain in his ass, and the closest thing to a father that Remo ever had.
Chiun, Master Emeritus of Sinanju, stood nearby, examining the clocks on display in the store window.
If Remo’s ability to be forgettable was impressive, it paled in comparison to Master Chiun’s, who was able to pass unnoticed despite his brilliantly violet kimono embroidered with twisting yellow dragons. His balding, mottled head sported wisps of soft white hair at each temple. Another thin wisp grew from his chin. His eyes seldom appeared fully open, often giving the appearance he was about to fall asleep, yet Remo knew there was not another man walking the planet more alert and more observant than Master Chiun.
The first shots broke through the din of competing chants. Remo sighed. “Well, I guess that was too good to last,” he said. More shots rang out, and people from both crowds ran pell-mell. Remo scanned the crowd and saw three men clustered together at the far end of the street, hidden in the shadows of the fourth floor of a parking garage. Two of them had their weapons drawn, while the third was struggling to get his off his shoulder. He also saw two police officers fall from horseback, bleeding from their necks. The bullets had found the vulnerable spot between their bulletproof face shields and Kevlar vests.
Remo glowered. “Screw Upstairs. They’re toast.”
“Emperor Smith insisted they be disarmed only,” Chiun called after Remo, before muttering to himself, “which is a tremendous squandering of the talents of Sinanju, but who am I to question the insanity of a madman?”
“Fine,” Remo grumbled as another shot rang out, and a third officer fell. “Disarmed it is.”
Weaving effortlessly through the screaming people, shouting police officers and rearing horses, Remo made his way down the street to the base of the garage. Looking up, he could see the tips of two barrels sticking out over the concrete ledge of the fourth level. Remo’s fingers gripped the concrete of the exterior column. The rough texture offered so many finger and toe holds that Remo scaled the column as smoothly and quickly as an ascending elevator.
· · ·
Marcus Bodeker ejected the clip from his rifle, replacing it with one of a dozen more in his open duffel. He wore an American flag bandana tied around his forehead, and crisscrossing bandoliers over his chest. A silver handgun hung over the side of his boot, and another handgun was tucked down the front waistband of his green camouflage pants. His belly pushed the butt of the handgun forward, which angled the barrel inward into a position that most people would describe as uncomfortable. “Braden, you dipshit! What’s wrong with your damn weapon?”
Next to Marcus, Brody Mallott laughed. “Ain’t nothing wrong with his weapon,” he said. “Braden’s always been more of a man on the Internet than he is in real life. Maybe you should’ve sent them some tweets, bro.”
“Screw you, little brother,” Braden stammered, still fidgeting with the clip to his rifle, struggling to get it fitted into place backwards.
“Whatever, wuss,” Brody said. He sneered and turned back to fire more shots over the concrete barrier. “Holy—!”
His cry was cut short by a vision of the impossible: coming over the barrier, four stories up, was a man’s head, grimmer than death, with deep set eyes glowering beneath a prominent brow.
“Peekaboo,” Remo announced before flexing his fingertips and flipping his entire body through the gap and into the garage, landing behind the gunmen.
Marcus Bodeker spun to face Remo, holding his modified AK-47 at his shoulder. “Get him!” he yelled.
Inwardly, Remo bemoaned the lack of eloquence that was always the hallmark of the terminally stupid. How come the bad guys never engaged in some snappy patter? He would have even welcomed an over-the-top melodramatic soliloquy. But no, ‘Get him’ was about all he ever got.
Marcus and Brody began firing, while Braden, who actually did know better than to attack someone who had just climbed four stories with his fingers, ran for the elevator. Remo advanced, sidestepping the bullets so deftly it gave the illusion they were going right through him. When he got between the two men, he grabbed the barrel of each rifle, breaking off piece after piece of them as he continued deliberately walking forward.
The metal fragments clinked musically on the pavement, while the eyes of the two men grew wide, and a dark stain spread across the crotch of Braden’s khakis. This was usually the moment before Remo would send a man’s nose up to meet his brain, or give his trachea a flick so that it would pop loose and topple into a lung or out the back of the neck. But Remo had special plans for these three stooges.
“I’m only allowed to disarm you,” he said grimly, plucking what was left of each gun from their numb fingers.
Marcus reached for the gun in his boot, but Remo grasped his wrist so quickly that none of the men even saw his hand move. One moment Marcus’s hand was moving down, and the next moment it was stopped, secure in Remo’s grip. Before Marcus could say anything, the fingertips of Remo’s other hand shot out, striking and penetrating the man’s shoulder right at the glenohumeral joint, popping the ball from its socket as diamond-hard nails sliced through the skin and deltoid muscle. Remo let go of the man’s wrist, and the arm fell to the ground, an arterial spray of blood painting the concrete.
At the elevator, Braden desperately stabbed at the call button. Nausea overtook him when he saw Marcus’s arm separate from his body. He vomited as the bulletproof man grabbed Marcus’s other arm and twisted it like licorice until it ripped away from his torso.
Marcus Bodeker went into shock and fell to the ground between the arms that used to be his. As Marcus doubled over, the gun in his waistband discharged, eliminating all future generations of potential Bodekers.
Under the best of circumstances, Brody Mallott’s synapses never fired with rapidity. Now was no exception. He was still frozen, flat-footed, when Remo turned to face him. Suddenly, every cell in his brain found a vigor they never knew they possessed and, working together as one, managed to communicate to Brody’s legs the urgent need to run away.
Brody turned to obey this sudden impulse, only to be abruptly yanked backward by both arms. They crisscrossed his back, then popped from his shoulder sockets with a sound like deboning chicken. Brody’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell face-forward onto the concrete, breaking his nose and his four front teeth.
Remo turned his attention to the final man, who had sunk to his knees in front of the elevator doors, sobbing. At that moment, with a cheery little chime, the elevator arrived and the doors slid open to expose its brightly lit empty interior. Braden Mallott did not even look to it, resigned to his fate, and as Remo stepped purposefully toward him, the doors slid closed.
“Please,” Braden sputtered. “Please, just kill me quickly.”
Remo clucked, and looked at the discarded weapon, the one that had never been fired, the one that had never been successfully loaded.
“What’s your name?”
Braden told him.
“You didn’t want to do this, Braden.”
It was not a question, so Braden did not bother with a response.
“Stand up, Braden.” Remo took the man’s wrist, and Braden found himself yanked to attention. “You ever killed a man before?”
Braden whimpered. “No, sir.”
“That’s good, Braden,” Remo said. “I’m very glad to hear that. Now, whose idea was it to murder cops? Not yours. Certainly neither of those two skinsacks.”
“No,” Braden said, shaking his head. “It was her. She paid them. Paid us,” he added. “She needed us to prove her point.”
“Her who?”
“Sparks,” Braden nodded. “Cheryl Sparks. She said it would make people see the truth about guns, about how they gotta be restricted.”
“I see,” Remo said. “Take off your shirt.”
Braden halted. “My shirt?” A bit of pressure applied to his wrist had him pulling the white tee off without further consideration. Remo took it from him and wadded it up, compressing it between his powerful palms until it was about the size of a baseball.
“So here’s how this is going to happen,” Remo said. “You didn’t kill anybody. You didn’t fire your gun. And most importantly, you didn’t lie to me. That goes a long way with me.”
Braden’s breathing quickened. “Are you still going to kill me?” he asked.
Remo gave Braden a grim look. “I’ll tell you what. I don’t normally do this, but I’ll let you off with a warning. Catch.” He lobbed the balled-up shirt lightly at Braden.
“What?” Instinctively, he reached out with both hands and caught the shirt.
“Good catch,” Remo said warmly. “Let’s see how you throw.” Remo held up a hand. “Go on, give me your best fastball.”
Confused, Braden did as he was told. He reached back with his right arm and gave the balled-up shirt a meager overhand throw that Remo snagged out of the air easily.
“Okay, so obviously not a pitcher,” Remo said, as he stepped in close to Braden. He took Braden by the right wrist and forced him to close his fingers around the ball of cloth. “You get to keep that one,” Remo said. He dropped his arms to his sides and began to rotate his wrists.
Braden looked up at Remo, dumbfounded. “The shirt?”
“The arm.”
Faster than any bullet, Remo’s hands shot out. Braden’s left arm spiraled away behind him like a discarded baseball bat.
Braden Mallott howled in agony, and Remo took Braden’s right hand, the one holding the balled-up t-shirt, and brought it over to the bloody socket that once housed Braden’s left arm. “You’ll want to hold that there tightly. Apply pressure to staunch the bleeding. The police will be here soon. You keep holding it tight there like that and you’ll live.”
Braden Mallott clasped the t-shirt, quickly turning red with absorbed blood, tightly to his shoulder. Tears streaked down his cheeks. Remo cupped his chin and forced him to look up. “I was never here, capisce?”
The one-armed man nodded vigorously, as the sound of boots from the SWAT team storming the garage echoed from the third floor below. He looked to the entrance ramp, then back to Remo.
But the man who had disarmed them was already gone.