He turned back to the riverbank and had gotten halfway there when he knew there was someone behind him. He took his gun from its holder and dropped to the ground in one fluid motion, a motion surprisingly quick and graceful for a man so big and bulky.

Brack looked down the barrel of the weapon at a little red-haired girl standing on the path behind him, her dress torn, her face smudged with dirt, and her thumb firmly implanted in her mouth, as if it were her only means of getting oxygen in the Brazilian jungle.

She stared at him levelly for several moments, dropped her arm to her side, then ran toward him, crying all the way.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and the air was cold.

But what bothered him was that he felt the cold and he shouldn't have. Feeling cold or feeling hot was simply a matter of letting your body and senses control you, instead of you controlling your body and senses.

And as the heir apparent to the House of Sinanju, Remo was closer than any other Westerner to achieving control. For more than ten years, he had studied and trained until his body was no longer just a shell that housed the man; instead, it had become the man, and the man had become his body. Ten years. Ever since that day they had put him in the electric chair and turned the juice on, then brought hún back to life to be trained as the official enforcement arm of CURE. A professional assassin for a secret agency of the United States government. The Destroyer who destroyed 'to save the Constitution of the United States when no other method would work.

Ten years of training, and still he was cold.

His concentration was faltering. And that was bad, because when one thing went, everything was in danger of going.