Blood Lust

The narrative opens with missing thirteen-year-old Kimberly Baynes, her grandmother Allison’s account of a four-armed clay idol, and a series of yellow-scarf stranglings. Remo is assigned a Tacoma crack-house operation, then drawn into the Washington killings and the disappearance of Irait’s ambassador Turqi Abaatira. At a Washington hotel, Remo believes he breaks Kimberly’s neck; she later returns, speaks of Kali inhabiting her, and uses supernatural force. Smith pursues a rational explanation even as reports of Chiun’s apparitions accumulate. Kimberly travels through Hamidi Arabia and occupied Kuran, kills Army Reserve specialist Carla Shatter (later rendered “Shaner”), steals a Humvee, and manipulates Irait’s President Maddas Hinsein toward war.

Remo enters Irait under a feigned-defection plan to free Reverend Juniper Jackman and BCN anchor Don Cooder. Under Kimberly/Kali’s influence, he kills Abdul Fareem, Sheik Fareem’s disinherited son. Smith’s team fabricates a drowning account for Abaatira’s already-dead body, which Kimberly further stages to provoke Hinsein. As Hinsein orders Jackman and Cooder publicly executed, Smith locates Chiun’s body in the flooded Condome elevator cage and helps revive him. At the execution, Remo’s blow aimed at Cooder instead kills Hinsein’s double, Selim Fanek, after a figure removes Cooder; Kimberly is revealed and breaks Remo’s neck. Remo returns to awareness proclaiming himself Shiva, and he and Kimberly/Kali begin the destructive Tandava. The epilogue shows Hinsein fleeing as the square is destroyed, the fight still underway, and the printed continuation notice points to #86.