Ghost in the Machine td-90

by Warren Murphy

  Assorted rounds pierced his brain, his lungs, and other major organs with no effect, other than to cause him to blink when the stray bullet crossed his retina.

  Otherwise, it was quite peaceful up here under the ceiling. Much like the bathhouses of his homeland.

  He faced an interesting dilemma. He knew that he could not float here forever. Yet to deactivate the vibration suit would be to become vulnerable to the angry bullets.

  On the other hand, he seemed to be floating toward an outer wall. This was not good, Brashnikov knew. To float into a outer wall in this bodiless state would be to float out the other side. Depending on how high this particular floor was, he might find himself floating high enough off the ground that to turn off the suit would be to risk a broken neck or a completely pulverized skeletal system.

  The third option, no less terrifying, would be to wait until the suit's battery power died. There was no telling how long that might be. He had been trapped in the American telephone system for a very long time-much longer than his reserve supply.

  Somehow, the power had not been drained in all that time. This was good. What was not good was that he had no idea how long he had until the power went dead.

  Then, in the tight-fitting confines of his white protective helmet, he heard an angry wasp's buzz. Looking down toward his midriff, he saw the red warning light illuminate the core of his belt control rheostat.

  Rair Brashnikov knew two things then.

  One, that he had only twenty minutes of power left.

  The second thing he spoke aloud in a thick voice.

  "I am dead man."

  Even if Remo Williams had not followed one of the Russians to his hotel room, there would have been no question which door they were behind.

  It was the one full of punch holes, from which the occasional bullet snarled out.

  Remo dodged a stray round and dropped to one knee.

  A step behind him, the Master of Sinanju hugged a wall, his eyes like steel.

  "Game to crash the party?" Remo asked.

  "Make haste. Cheeta awaits me."

  "Never keep a hungry shark waiting."

  Remo moved on the door. He drove a half fist ahead of him. It connected with the lock, which surrendered with a metallic clank. Remo brought his other palm around and spanked the door in its exact center, sending shock waves through the thick wood.

  The heavy panel flew off its ornate hinges and became a wonderfully efficient room-clearer.

  It flew true, unimpeded by the natural resistance of the air, and pinned at least three unwary Russians against the far wall. Remo figured it was three because, in the instant he paused to assess the situation, that was the number of left hands he counted sticking out from the door edges.

  Then Chiun bounded in.

  The Master of Sinanju selected the nearest man, a Tokarev-weilding ox, and relieved him of his pistol with a high kick that shattered every bone of his gun hand, creating a kind of limp bag of bone-and-blood pudding at the end of the man's wrist.

  His scream refocused the attention of every Russian in the room. Away from the floating target, and toward the two intruders.

  It was exactly what Remo and Chiun wanted.

  They harvested their foes with methodical precision.

  A strangling scarf descended on Chiun's frail neck. One long-nailed finger snapped up, struck, and the heavy silk parted with a short snarl.

  Two others tried to use Remo for target practice. He gave them a few seconds of his time, twisting and arching out of the way of their precise shots.

  They were good. That is, they were skilled marksmen. But to Remo, they might as well have been cavemen attempting to brain a man on a motorcycle with stone hatchets.

  Remo eluded each shot by sight alone. He could actually see the bullets emerge from each muzzle, compute the trajectory, and easily slide out of the bullet track.

  Two shots from each man equaled two steps closer to each man. Remo didn't need three. He took one out with a two-fingered strike to his rotator cup that sent shoulder bone spears ripping through his major organs, and dislocated the neck of the second with a light tap to the point of his chin. His head snapped back so far on his suddenly elongated neck it was crushed under his broad back when he hit the rug.

  The survivors took note of the carnage and, dropping their weapons, took man-to-man fighting stances.

  "Guess these guys' taste in fighting styles matches their taste in clothes," Remo grunted.

  "We will educate them," Chiun sniffed.

  It took less than two minutes. But they cleared the room.

  All except for a stark-white figure floating over their heads and another cowering behind the big television.

  Chiun got under the Krahseevah and began leaping up at it, like a pit bull after a treed cat. His clawlike hands swiped futilely, and he hissed his anger.

  "Nothing we can do about that one," Remo muttered, stepping over to collect the other. He dragged the shivering form of Major Yuli Batenin out by the collar of his shirt.

  "At least this one is in fashion," said Remo, noticing his suit, "So who are you, pal?"

  "I cannot say."

  Face angry, Chiun stepped up and pinched a dangling earlobe.

  "You can."

  Suddenly, the man could say. In fact, he could sing. He began singing out a stream of information, evidently convinced, in his pain, that singing was faster than speaking.

  "I am Major Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, come to America to capture Captain Rair Brashnikov, also formerly with KGB, and reclaim vibration suit for motherland before nuclear event occurs and we all die."

  Remo turned to Chiun. "You make any sense of that?"

  "He is off-key." Chiun squeezed harder.

  Batenin screamed louder. He pointed toward the ceiling. "Brashnikov! Is Brashnikov! Vibration suit is running out of power. If he rematerializes inside wall, atoms will mingle and there will be nuclear event."

  "He is making no more sense," Chiun warned.

  Remo looked to the floating Krahseevah edging toward the wall and the burning red light at his belt buckle. "Wait! I think I get it. The suit is about to shut down. If the guy is touching anything, it'll be like the old atom bombs, only worse."

  "More machine talk," sniffed Chiun.

  "Maybe. But we gotta keep him from entering that wall."

  "How?" asked Batenin.

  "Like this," said Remo, going up to the wall. He made one hand into a spear point, and using it like a jackhammer, began chipping out a section of the wall. He cut a long horizontal line just under the floating figure, stepping onto an end table to continue cutting. Plaster dust and old lathe cracked and showered down in a dusty storm.

  Remo swiftly completed a rectangle and pulled it inward. A square chunk of horsehair plaster came loose and hit the carpet, with a billow of dry white dust.

  "Problem solved," Remo said, stepping down. "If he floats out, he won't hurt anything."

  "But we still have not captured that fiend!" Chiun said harshly.

  "The day's young yet," Remo said, returning to the shivering Major Batenin. "I recognize you," he said.

  Batenin looked incredulous. "You do?"

  "Yeah. Our boss once had us intercept you when you were trying to smuggle stealth technology out of the country in a diplomatic bag."

  "I was never intercepted by you."

  "Sure you were. Remember at Dulles International, we made you put your case through the X-ray machine?"

  Major Batenin's suspicious eyes lost their narrowness. "That was you?"

  "In disguise," said Remo.

  "I was inside the machine," sniffed Chiun.

  "We switched bags," Remo added. "You got one filled with junk."

  "It was not Brashnikov's fault?" Batenin said bleakly.

  "It was us. But enough ancient history. You said you were with the KGB. Everybody knows they went the way of the Berlin Wall. Who are you with now?"

  "I will not say."

 
; The fingernails bit into his earlobe again, and Major Yuli Batenin screamed, "I am Shchit! I am Shchit!"

  "You got that right," said Remo, killing the Russian by the simplest means at hand. By killing his brain. Remo's steelhard right index finger went in through the forehead bone and came out clean.

  "Not bad, huh?"

  Chiun made a disgusted face. "Check under your fingernail for brain."

  Remo looked injured. "There's no brain under my nail."

  "Did you check?"

  "I don't have to check. That was a perfect stroke."

  "Your elbow was not aligned perfectly."

  "Are you saying it was bent? It was not bent!"

  "I did not say bent," Chiun sniffed. "I said not perfectly aligned. It is not the same."

  "It wasn't bent," Remo insisted.

  "It was not perfect, either."

  "Never mind. Let's finish up our business here."

  The eyes of the two Masters of Sinanju looked up toward the helplessly floating figure of the thing Remo had years ago dubbed "the Krahseevah," and which they now knew was a Russian named Captain Rair Brashnikov.

  Behind his expanding and contracting face membrane, Rair Brashnikov looked down at the pair of deadly eyes and came to a bitter conclusion.

  "I am not dead. I am worse than dead."

  His choice was as simple as it was stark. Turn off the vibration suit and be delivered into the hands of the same American agents that had tricked him into a purgatory of fiber-optic cables and American telephone cross-talk, or hope that the suit stayed powered long enough for him to float out into the clear air and drop to his certain death.

  Rair Brashnikov was not a brave man. He was, in his heart of hearts, a common thief. It was his kleptomania that had gotten him cashiered from the old KGB in the first place, and the same uncontrollable urge that had compelled his old KGB superiors to reinstate him and unleash him, virtually untraceable in the vibration suit, upon the technological candy shop that was America.

  He reached for the buzzing rheostat and gave it a twist. The buzz cut out.

  His teeth suddenly hurt, and his vision went blurry.

  Gravity took hold and Rair Brashnikov crashed to the carpet, taking a chunk of wall with him.

  "I am surrendering peacably to you," he said, as swift hands more strong than Soviet leg irons took hold of his wrists. He was hauled to his feet unceremoniously.

  "Gotcha!" said the Caucasian American agent.

  "Your ugly head will be set before my emperor by sundown," threatened the Oriental American agent.

  "I would like to be keeping head," Rair said thickly.

  "That'll be up to our boss," the Caucasian said. "I'd better call him. Here, Chiun, hold both hands so he doesn't pull a fast one."

  The Oriental took the wrist the Caucasian surrendered. Rair Brashnikov looked down at the old man through the transparent inner lining of the permeable face membrane, which enabled him to breath in dematerialized oxygen when he was in his bodiless state.

  The old man looked impossibly ancient. His arms were like twigs coated by animal hide. He looked frail enough to snap under a kneecap's pressure.

  But the strength in his long-nailed hands was anything but frail. And so Rair Brashnikov remained very, very calm. He had seen these two destroy whole buildings with their bare hands when attempting to seize him, and perform other dazzling feats. They were very dangerous.

  And it was always better to lull a dangerous foe in the hours before one vanquished him.

  The Caucasian was speaking into the telephone.

  "That's right, Smitty. We just captured the Krahseevah."

  Brashnikov cocked his featureless head in surprise. "Krahseevah?"

  "You are misnamed, ugly one," spat the Oriental, tightening his grip. Brashnikov bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from crying out in pain. His shoulder was on fire, and he remembered the single blow that landed on him during their last encounter had struck there.

  The Caucasian was asking, "What do you want us to do with him?"

  Rair Brashnikov attempted to listen, but he could not hear the other side of the conversation. The conversation that was no doubt deciding his very fate.

  "It's what?"

  The Caucasian clapped a hand over the telephone mouthpiece and called over to his comrade.

  "Smitty says there's new trouble over at the Rumpp Tower. It's sinking."

  "Sinking?" asked Rair Brashnikov. "My tower?"

  "Yours?"

  "Randal Rumpp gave it to me."

  "I think Randal Rumpp pulled the wool over your eyes, buddy. You do have eyes under that blob of a face, don't you?"

  "Yes. Would you like to see my eyes?" Rair Brashnikov asked hopefully.

  Chapter 30

  Randal Rumpp learned that he was riding the largest elevator ever built straight to the center of the earth, as he was happily channel-hopping in the security of his Rumpp Tower office.

  The electricity was back on. Lights shone, computers hummed, faxes spooled out unimportant transmissions, and the telephones rang and jangled insistently.

  Everybody, it seemed, wanted to talk to Randal Rumpp. Just like in the long-ago eighties.

  Best of all, the TV sets were working.

  The early reports indicated that the Rumpp Regis had become "spectralized." Every channel was using the word, another source of pride.

  "Gotta have it trademarked," Rumpp chuckled, "and charge those chumps for using it. This is great! I'm getting ink again. By Christmas, I should be a Barney's display."

  It was so great, in fact, that he didn't pay any attention to the furious pounding on the creditor-control doors throughout the twenty-fourth floor.

  What the hell are they using? Rumpp wondered. Their thick heads?

  An American Networking Conglomerate news report answered the question, when Rumpp paused to check out the local ANC affiliate broadcast.

  "At this hour," a reporter was saying, "the Rumpp Tower has been completely evacuated, except for the bankrupted developer himself, whom authorities believe is holed up on the twenty-fourth floor. Police spokesmen tell us that attempts are being made to batter down the doors. Meanwhile, a grand jury has handed down a seventeen-count indictment against Randal Tiberius Rumpp for criminal fraud."

  Randal Rumpp jumped up from his chair, shouting.

  "Fraud? Is that the best those jerks can come up with? Fraud! I can beat that crummy rap without my law firm. I didn't defraud anyone. I just exaggerated my involvement here and there. The worst they can nail me with is malicious mischief."

  The reporter went on. "Adding to the sense of urgency is the bizarre fact that the Rumpp Tower appears to be settling."

  "Settling!"

  A live shot of the Rumpp Tower facade replaced the reporter's stern face. The brass lintel on which Randal Rumpp's name had been cast in gleaming letters was now at sidewalk level. The lower edges of the bold brass letters were bent and mangled from contact with the too-solid sidewalk.

  Rumpp's astonished mouth imploded in an uncomprehending pucker.

  "Settling?" he exploded. "I'm sinking! I'm headed straight for China!"

  A voice-over added, "Scientists are unable to account for this latest phenomenon, but estimate that if it continues to settle at this present speed, the Rumpp Tower may be entirely underground by Thursday."

  Randal Rumpp sat stupefied.

  The pounding continued throughout the twenty-fourth floor.

  The phone rang. Woodenly, Randal Rumpp picked it up.

  "Yeah?" he said dully.

  "Dahling . . ."

  "Igoria?"

  "Dahling, I am watching the news, and I see you are about to be arrested. How droll. Be sure to pack your toothbrush, and an extra set of those snug little monogrammed shorts."

  "Igoria!" Rumpp bit out. "What do you want?"

  "I was calling because I have a wonderful business opportunity for you, my pet."

  Randal Rumpp blinked. Momentarily, he was caught off-g
uard. His better judgment invariably shut down when he smelled a deal in the air.

  He made his voice sound disinterested. "Yeah. What?"

  "Well, it seems there are these unhappy little S ou could pick up for a song."

  "Yeah?"

  "You could buy them all up and weld them into a superbank all your own."

  Randal Rumpp perked up. "I could be my own bank. Make loans to myself. Interest-free loans. Duck payments when it suits me."

  "Yes. And you could call them all BankRumpps. Because that's what you are, dahling." Tinkling laughter broke through the earpiece.

  "Igoria," Randal Rumpp hissed, "you were only a trophy wife. You hear me? Just a trophy wife. I should have had you stuffed and mounted after the honeymoon!"

  "Ta-ta, dahling. Give my best to Leona."

  Rumpp hung up angrily. Down the hall, the pounding went on and on.

  He stood up. Outside the window, a few blocks away, the ornate mass of masonry that was the Rumpp Regis looked the same as it always did. On the other hand the silvery skyscraper across the street, only a day before a single floor shorter than the Rumpp Tower, was now at least a head taller.

  For the man who prided himself on being the biggest, boldest, and best at everything he did, it was a crushing blow to the outsized ego of Randal T. Rumpp.

  "I'm ruined! I'm not only ruined, I'm sunk! Literally sunk!"

  Rair Brashnikov listened to the American with the dead eyes. The American was not interested in seeing his Georgian face. This was unfortunate. It represented an opportunity for escape lost. For in order to remove the velcroseals of his helmet, they would have to release his hands. Long enough to reengage the vibration suit.

  "Listen, you know how to stop the Rumpp Tower from sinking?" the American asked.

  "I am not sure," Brashnikov said carefully, thinking perhaps a new opportunity was presenting itself.

  "Then we have no further use for you," snapped the Oriental.

  Brashnikov brightened. "Sinking? Of course I can help. But I must speak with Randal Rumpp first."

  "Got a number for him?"

  Brashnikov indicated the phone with an eager nod of his head. "Yes. Give me phone. I will happily make call."

  "No chance. Call it out."

  Rair Brashnikov's cabled shoulders deflated. "It is 555-9460," he murmured.