Date with Death

Wally Donner recruits the Madera family in a Mexican village with false promises of jobs and U.S. papers. He drugs them and drives north with the young women. On the route he also abducts hitchhiker Karen Lockwood and drugs her; at an arroyo he puts her in the van, drags out Miguel and the older Maderas, and shoots the three before continuing with the women. They awaken imprisoned with the other captives in an abandoned mountain monastery run by Deke Bauer for tycoon Miles Quantril. Quantril plans to control the United States through 242 male middle managers whom he will blackmail after drugged women are placed in their homes.

Remo and Chiun are sent by Harold W. Smith to investigate more than 300 unidentified bodies found in New Mexico and missing-person reports from Mexico. They recruit Sam Wolfshy as an unreliable guide. Karen works with Consuela to escape and seeks police help; Remo and Chiun kill Bauer’s eight-man team when it tries to recapture her. Bauer sets off an avalanche that buries the group, but Chiun protects Sam under a boulder and Remo frees them. Bauer’s men recapture the monastery women; Quantril claims Consuela, orders Kains thrown from a roof for refusing to stone her, and then joins the stoning himself. Remo and Chiun assault the monastery and rescue the women, but Bauer escapes by helicopter and shoots at them.

Sam is gravely wounded shielding Remo and Consuela; police arrive with Karen, and Chiun keeps himself and Remo anonymous. Following the link to Quantril, Remo and Chiun enter Dream Date headquarters, where a computer-triggered fire traps them; they escape down an adjacent building and rescue Donner from a flagpole. Donner trades Bayersville’s location for $800 and a promise of safety, then admits he had worked for Quantril moving women across the border. At Bayersville, Remo kills Bauer after overcoming his Vietnam-triggered loss of focus. Quantril reveals Chiun was pretending to be bound and tries to flee by helicopter; Remo drops him into the saloon and escapes before the explosives destroy the town.

Donner later dies in an automobile collision in Mexico City. Smith reports that Donner’s Ruger Blackhawk matches bullets from the desert bodies. Sam recovers, marries Consuela and wins about $1.9 million after borrowing a casino quarter; he plans a Kanton Savings and Loan. Chiun’s hoped-for meeting with Mona Madrigal ends in rejection, which he explains as a conspiracy.