Date with Death td-57

by Warren Murphy

  The major scowled. "Did I hear you call these walking garbage heaps people, soldier? Get them back up there before I have you court-martialed."

  "They're civilians, sir," Remo said, tasting the bile in his mouth.

  "They're scum! You hear me? Scum. Like you, Williams. Now, you string those VC up, or a court-martial's going to be too good for you."

  A few soldiers had come around to see what was causing the commotion. With them was Conrad MacCleary, the CIA man.

  Remo set the boy down. "You go straight to hell," he muttered. "Sir."

  In a flash the major's knife was out and slashing toward Remo's throat. Remo turned. The blade sliced across the fleshy part of his back.

  The major's face hardened into a terrifying grin. "You're going to be sorry you ever said that, Private." His voice was soft as he backed Remo against the hanging bodies.

  "Hold it, Major." It was Conrad MacCleary. His hook was pressed into the soft flesh of the major's throat.

  "You've got no jurisdiction here."

  "No?" MacCleary said. "What do you call this hook?" He jabbed it deeper into the major's neck.

  The military man looked wildly to his troops. "Stop him," he croaked.

  None of the soldiers moved.

  After a long moment, MacCleary released him. The CIA man went to the two prisoners and looked them over. "The boy's already dead," he said. "The old man won't live out the day. Get your men to find him a place to die in peace."

  The major obeyed.

  The next day the corpses were taken down.

  The day after that, the food chopper arrived. MacCleary radioed a message and waited. By six o'clock that evening, the major received orders of transfer, and the men on the Hill were ordered to evacuate.

  "I thought you couldn't do anything," Remo told MacCleary.

  The big man shrugged. "What did I do? Sicced the fruitcake on some other outfit. I couldn't get him out. Guys like that are good for wars."

  "But you got us out of here."

  MacCleary grunted.

  "Why?"

  "Because I want to see you live through this mess. I've seen you before. I've seen you kill."

  It was years before Remo saw Conrad MacCleary again and found out that the man he was working for in the CIA was Harold W. Smith. And that MacCleary had come to the Hill looking for an orphan named Remo Williams, because Smith's computers had pegged him as a possible candidate for the enforcement arm of CURE.

  Remo never did find out what happened to the major. The episode on the Hill was one he tried not to think about. But sometimes the major's grinning, frighteningly clean face still haunted him, like the sound of helicopter blades.

  Major Deke Bauer. The name was etched into his memory as deeply as the image of bodies hanging on wire.

  ?CHAPTER EIGHT

  Deke Bauer had the patience that every good soldier required, but at the moment it was stretched to the limit. The major glanced at the clock on the mantel for the hundredth time that night.

  Where in the hell were Brickell and his men? They'd gone down the mountain hours ago. They should have returned by now, bringing along with them the bodies of the three intruders.

  The mantel clock chimed midnight. Bauer pushed back his chair, crossed the room to the dying fire, and then turned abruptly around, heading for the door. On his way out he scooped up his Uzi and a pair of infrared nightglasses.

  He would check out the situation himself. That was the only way he'd get any sleep.

  "I'm going out for a while," the major informed the sentry at the main door. "If Brickell and his team get back before I do, tell Brickell to wait in my office for me. I don't care how late it is."

  "Yes, sir," the sentry responded quickly. He would not, he thought silently, want to be in Brickell's size twelves for anything right now. The old man was pissed, and someone, probably Brickell, was going to pay the price. In spite of his heavy field jacket, the sentry felt a sudden chill. The money on this job was tops, and any mercenary in the country would jump at the chance to work here, but Bauer was no one to fuck with.

  It was cold and windy on the mountaintop. Wisps of fog eddied and swirled around the tall pines. The major kept to the overgrown path, the same one the monks had hacked out of the mountainside nearly a hundred years before. When they'd first taken over the monastery, Bauer considered clearing away all the underbrush that obscured the trail. But then he'd decided it was best left as they'd found it. The buckbrush and high grass were an effective camouflage. Why let anyone else know there was an easy way up and down the mountain?

  He smelled smoke. With his nightglasses, he could make out the embers of a campfire. Three figures were lying near it.

  Dead?

  He watched for another quarter-hour. One of the figures moved. So the intruders were still alive.

  Bauer slipped by the clearing where the fire was and then worked his way up from the downwind side. Two tours of duty in Nam had taught him that it was best to arrive from the direction from which you were least expected.

  When he found Brickell and the team, he resolved, he'd teach them a lesson they'd never forget. He'd told them to do the job and come straight back. The order had been clearly understood. There was no damn excuse for not carrying it out to the letter.

  Bauer clambered over a boulder and dropped softly down into a shallow arroyo. His boot sank into something firm but yielding. Overhead, the moon shook off a bank of ragged clouds. Now Bauer could see the path clearly. What he'd stepped on was someone's stomach.

  "Brickell," he whispered, looking down at the shattered remains of the man's face. It was the team leader…. No, goddammit, it was the whole team. The broken bodies were stacked in a pile like leftover sandwiches from a party to which no one had come.

  The major sank down on the rock. "Jesus," he said in a choked whisper as he spotted something a few yards away. He went over to examine it. It was a severed head wedged between two rocks, its blackening eyes wide and seeming to stare right at him. Bauer snaked his hand between the rocks to dislodge it, but it slipped away from him and rolled down the rocks to rest at Brickell's feet.

  What the hell happened here? Bauer recalled hearing a single burst of gunfire about a half-hour after he'd sent the team out. He'd assumed he'd heard the three intruders being finished off. But that wasn't what had happened. He kicked the pile of mangled and twisted bodies and realized with a shudder that his men hadn't been shot. Some kind of thing had literally torn them apart.

  He immediately ruled out the three civilians. If the team had been shot, he would have considered them, but he damn well knew that no three guys, no matter how good they were, could take out a party of well-armed, combat-trained men.

  There was nothing he could do here. He'd send a burial party out tomorrow at daybreak. With his automatic cradled in his arms, Bauer began to work his way slowly and cautiously toward the fire.

  After an hour, Bauer slowly lowered the nightglasses. His legs felt cramped from crouching so long in one position. His temples throbbed dully, the headache fueled by the rage that had been steadily building inside him. He didn't understand what was going on, and that was what he hated the most. Two guys and an old gook. How in the world could they possibly have slaughtered eight armed men without even using bullets?

  The strangest part of it was that he thought he recognized one of the men. The guy with the high cheekbones and the brown hair. There was something familiar about the set of his head and shoulders, as if Bauer should know him well. Still, he couldn't place the man.

  He pushed the annoying thought out of his mind. For over an hour now, his finger had been itching to squeeze the trigger, to finish off the interlopers with a couple of bursts of fire. But if it had been that simple, he reminded himself, that's what Brickell would have done. In wartime, you didn't make major by repeating somebody else's mistakes. Particularly when that somebody else was a dead man.

  Bauer moved silently back up the mountain, straying off the path f
or a while in order to give the campsite the widest possible berth. He needed time to think, to come up with some sort of plan. He knew instinctively that they'd head for the monastery tomorrow, maybe as early as first light. That didn't leave him a lot of time.

  Ambush?

  No. He'd already lost eight good men. He couldn't afford more casualties. He needed something more subtle, and yet with much greater force. He couldn't take any chances this time. He couldn't make the mistake again of underestimating the enemy.

  His mind began to play with an idea, vague at first, then suddenly defined in perfect clarity.

  It would work.

  There was no way that it couldn't.

  Slowly, Bauer's hard-set mouth began to relax. It was the kind of idea that made him smile.

  ?CHAPTER NINE

  The first rays of the morning sun burned off the ground fog and took the chill out of the air. Birds darted among the towering pines, swooping down to feast off clusters of chokecherry and buckbrush. There was a light breeze, sweet-scented and cool. All in all, it looked like a perfect morning for a climb.

  Chiun was the first to rise. He padded over to the fire, tossed a few sticks on the dying embers, and then waited for the fire to gather strength before heating a pot of water for tea. Some twenty minutes later Remo woke up.

  "Sleep well?" he asked as he squatted down beside the Oriental.

  "Sleep," Chiun drawled accusingly. "Even the dead could not slumber with all that noise. Ata-tata-tat."

  "It was a helicopter," Remo said quietly. "But I don't think it spotted us."

  With a series of groans, Sam Wolfshy got up and came to the fire, smacking his lips. "What time is it?" he yawned. He tilted back his straw hat and tucked his hair beneath it. "I know you guys wanted to get an early start," he groaned, "but this is ridiculous." The Indian squatted down beside the fire and poured himself a cup of Chiun's tea. "What is this stuff?" He eyed the steaming, greenish-tinted liquid with obvious distaste.

  Chiun slapped the cup out of his hands. "It's not for you," he said peevishly.

  "I was only going to borrow some."

  "Borrow some cloth and tie it around your mouth. We leave in ten minutes."

  "Is he always like this in the morning?" Wolfshy asked when Chiun was out of earshot.

  "Only on good days. Usually, he's worse."

  They started up the mountainside together, Remo taking the point while Chiun and the Indian trailed behind. Of all the times of day, Remo enjoyed the morning the most. There was something about the air and the sunlight, the quiet tranquility of the world before it was completely awake, before it had a chance to fill up with old scars and new memories. Remo smiled. From down below he could hear Chiun's voice reciting a long poem about a butterfly.

  "There's the path," Wolfshy exclaimed, clambering over a boulder. "See where the ground is all grown over with buckbrush?"

  Chiun hoisted himself up beside him. "Will miracles never cease," he said. "For once, you are right."

  Sam beamed.

  Then, as if the sky had been torn open, a thunderous explosion knocked them both to the ground. Above them the mountain rumbled and groaned. A second later, the sun was blocked out as a forty-foot wall of rock and earth hurtled down on them.

  The air was filled with choking, blinding dust. The terrible sound was everywhere, a deafening scream as the earth collapsed on the three travelers. Remo struggled to keep his footing, relaxing his body instead of tensing it, as Chiun had taught him. He pushed off, launching himself skyward, fighting his way through the onslaught of rocks and dirt.

  For a while, he thought this dark, breath-robbing rain would be endless, but he finally broke free above the swirling dust. He blinked to clear his eyes of debris and hung on to the branches of an uprooted pine. The ominous roar of rocks diminished, but he could still see only a few feet in front of his face.

  While he caught his breath, the air began to clear. The devastation caused by the landslide was freakish. It was as if some giant hand had torn a gaping hole in the mountain, scooping up a square quarter-mile of earth and then letting it fall on what was below. The campsite was buried under a hundred-foot mound of ashy dust. Towering pines had splintered like matchsticks, the severed trunks sticking out at bizarre angles. All the familiar landmarks had been obliterated. There was nothing below them but a grayish-brown pile of earth, as silent and dead as the day the world began.

  Only one thought came to Remo's mind.

  Chiun.

  The last time he'd seen the old Oriental and the Indian, they'd been crossing a gully, a long channel that snaked halfway up the mountainside. He knew that the hurtling wall of debris would have filled it in a matter of seconds. Chiun would have had considerably less time to leap free, especially since he was encumbered with Wolfshy.

  Remo felt himself sweating. He drew a slow breath to relax, but it wasn't working. He was thinking the unthinkable…. That Chiun and Wolfshy hadn't made it to safety. That because of their position, they were buried somewhere below, entombed beneath thousands of pounds of rock and earth.

  He started to dig, blindly, aimlessly, in the still-swirling clouds of dust.

  "Be still," Chiun hissed. He felt the giant boulder shift lightly where it rested on his outstretched fingertips. He could see nothing in the total darkness. He could hear nothing from above. The only sounds were his own carefully measured breathing and the panting and squirming of the Indian beneath him in the small pocket of space they occupied.

  "Cease all movement," Chiun whispered in warning. His words were barely audible, but their tone halted Wolfshy's thrashing. "Good. I did not wish to kill you. Imagine the embarrassment if I myself did not survive."

  The very thought of it made Chiun wince. Not death; that was merely the gateway to paradise. But to share a grave with a common red-skinned white man of dubious intelligence? Would he drag Chiun along to meet his ancestors? Such a thing would be horrendous.

  Therefore, Chiun concluded, he would not die.

  It was all the Indian's fault to begin with. Chiun could have carried them both clear if this cretin hadn't insisted on running in the wrong direction. So Chiun had lost the fraction of a second needed to transport them safely above the falling rocks. The old man could have saved himself. After all, he told himself, what was this trembling moron beneath him in comparison with a Master of Sinanju? But the moment had decreed it otherwise. And now Chiun knew that he had to live or die by that decree.

  "What's happening?" the Indian whispered.

  "Nothing is happening!" Chiun hissed. "When it does, you will surely know. Either the rocks will crush us, or we will be saved. There is little likelihood of any other alternative."

  "How come we're not already dead?"

  Chiun sighed. Maybe he ought to kill this idiot, after all. Who could blame him? "Because," he explained patiently, "I am holding aloft the rocks that threaten to flatten us. If this were not so, then I would not be able to answer all these stupid questions."

  "Sorry," Wolfshy mumbled. "Just curious."

  Chiun felt the awesome weight of his burden shift again slightly. Remo, he sensed, must be somewhere above. If the rocks were moved properly, then all would go well. On the other hand, if they were displaced incorrectly, there would be nothing that Chiun could do to save himself or the Indian. Black earth and rock would take the place of the air they breathed, gradually pushing their way into their mouths and nostrils. Even under those conditions Chiun would be able to stave off death for a few hours, but the Indian would be sent into the Void in a matter of seconds. All because the rocks had been moved one way instead of another.

  Chiun felt himself at one with the boulder in his hand. Would Remo be equal to the task? he wondered. He had taught the boy well. In spite of his pale skin, there had never been another, even a Korean, who had so quickly learned and mastered the ways of Sinanju. But as Chiun knew all too well, this learning was a process that would never be complete. Remo would go on learning all the ye
ars of his life, with perfection, the unattainable goal, always just out of reach. It was meant to be so. Otherwise, Sinanju would not be Sinanju.

  The old Oriental heard Remo's voice above him. "Chiun!" it called. "Can you hear me?" It sounded like little more than a whisper in the breeze.

  "Of course I can hear you," Chiun said softly. "Stop that caterwauling and get us out of this place."

  Above him, he felt rocks shifting purposefully. Remo was working well.

  The boulder in the old man's hand began to tremble. A thin trickle of dust swirled in the air. He could feel the gritty particles against his parchmentlike cheek.

  "Fast but slow," Chiun murmured to himself. Every breath and heartbeat must be properly executed. A handful of earth misplaced and the darkness would close in on them. But Remo would not fail. Chiun knew that, and the knowledge made the weight of the boulder lighter.

  "How'd Remo find us?" Wolfshy asked softly.

  "Because he is Remo," Chiun said.

  The Indian sat silently for a long time. Finally he said, "It must be a good feeling to know there's someone you can always count on."

  "That is what a son is, young man." Chiun's voice was gentle.

  Son. That was the way it would always be.

  "Son," the old man whispered to himself. Some words, he knew, were destined to be felt and yet never uttered.

  ?CHAPTER TEN

  Miles Quantril sat in the passenger seat of the helicopter as it passed over the southern slope of the mountain. "Turn around," he ordered the pilot. "And get down closer."

  Beside him, the pilot nodded as he eased the chopper around in a low, swooping circle around the desolate wreckage of the slope. His hands trembled slightly as he maneuvered the controls. Flying Mr. Quantril always made him nervous.

  "What the hell happened down there?" Quantril's face was pressed against the Plexiglas bubble as if he intended to gnaw his way through it.

  "Looks like a landslide, sir," the pilot said.

  "I can see that, you ass. How did it happen? Why?"

  The pilot chewed on his lower lip. "I don't know, sir."

  Quantril felt a rage building inside him as he took in the gigantic spill of rock and earth, with its twisted and broken trees and huge boulders jutting out unnaturally. It was a surprise, and Quantril hated surprises. Anything that he didn't plan himself, he believed, ought not to happen. When it did happen, the feeling of his own helplessness infuriated him. "Take me to the monastery."