Time Trial td-53

by Warren Murphy

  At the same time he tensed the muscles in his calves so that the ropes over his ankles frayed and broke. With a pop, both ropes fell away from him at precisely the same moment, landing on the stone floor like discarded snakeskins.

  "How'd you do that?" Lizzie asked incredulously.

  "Never mind." Effortlessly he snapped the ropes around Lizzie's wrists and legs. "Get dressed."

  His strength was back. Escaping would be no problem, not with a half-inch-wide crack in the rock. He explored the fissure with his fingers.

  He could break through the rock easily, but it would make a lot of noise, alerting the Olmec warriors. He didn't want a fight now, with Lizzie around. Also, the Olmec didn't fight to the last man. Even the small group of warriors sent for the surprise attack on Yaxbenhaltun had retreated when they were getting beaten. As soon as Remo started fighting, he knew, the priest in charge of the Olmec would send as many of his men off to Yaxbenhaltun, willing to sacrifice a few soldiers in order to keep Remo away from the people who needed him to defend them.

  No, the escape would have to be silent. Lizzie would have to be taken back to safety. Then Remo would return with Chiun to dispose of the Olmec— all of them— in their own camp.

  He ran his fingernails over the crack in the rock, familiarizing his hands with the natural curve of the break. The rock would have to be cleaved according to its fault in order to break it silently.

  Feeling the weakened area of stone, he set up a vibration in his hands. Slowly, with a sound that only Remo could hear, a sound like metal on a chalkboard, his fingernails cut through the rock, forming a circle. When the work was finished, he raised the stone disc above him like a manhole cover and moved it.

  A stream of moonlight flooded into the cave. Lizzie stood, awestruck, watching him.

  "Come on," Remo whispered, motioning her toward the exit he had carved out of the rock. "We don't have much—"

  The words froze in his mouth. Something was behind Lizzie, illuminated now by the moonlight, something low and long and immobile and ghastly.

  He spoke softly. "Liz, I'm going to ask you a favor, okay?"

  She nodded.

  "Just listen to what I tell you. You can't make any noise now, not for any reason. The Olmec aren't far away. They can't see us, but they'll come running if you scream. So whatever happens, keep your mouth shut. Got it?"

  She started to tremble. "There's something behind me, isn't there?" she whispered.

  "Nothing that'll hurt you."

  She turned slowly. Her eyes widened for a moment, then closed tightly, trying to block out the sight. Her hands flew, shaking, to her face.

  On a low stone slab lay the body of a man dressed in an astronaut's protective clothing. On his shoulder was an American flag. His helmet was missing. All that remained of his face was an exposed skull. In the center of his forehead was a sharp, ragged hole.

  Remo climbed down to look at the body. As Lizzie watched, he unzipped the plastic closure on the front of the man's protective coveralls. Inside, on the shirt covering the skeleton, was a plastic tag with "Col. K. Cooligan" inscribed on it.

  They had found the final resting place of the white god Kukulcan.

  ?Chapter Fourteen

  Lizzie stood rooted in her tracks, trembling, her hands covering her face. "Get going," Remo said, grabbing her by both shoulders and propelling her toward the exit he had made. She climbed out of the hole and scrambled blindly toward the dark forest behind the Olmec's cave dwellings.

  "Where are you going?" Remo whispered.

  "The trees," she said, bewildered. "That's how we came, isn't it?"

  "The trees?" Of course. The Olmec had taken Lizzie through the forest, bypassing the Forbidden Fields, with their strange evil blossoms. They could make it through the jungle tangle, following the sound of the river, as far as the marsh. Then they would walk toward Bocatan, the volcano, to Yaxbenhaltun.

  "Good girl," Remo said. "I mean—"

  "That's okay," Lizzie answered, clasping his hand as they entered the black jungle. "Names don't matter. You came back to get me. That makes two times that you've saved my life. Thanks, Remo. You deserve an apology from me."

  He laughed. "I never thought I'd hear that."

  "It's the truth, and the truth ought to be spoken. While there's still time."

  "You're thinking about that Diehl guy back home, aren't you?"

  She looked up, startled. "No. No, really—"

  "Don't start lying to me now," Remo said, smiling. "I'm just beginning to get used to you the way you are." A macaw shrieked overhead. "What happened at the waterfall between us was great, but I wasn't who you were thinking about," he said.

  She looked into his eyes for a long moment. "You still surprise me," she said.

  "How'd you wind up on top of a waterfall, anyway?"

  She thought. "I came to somewhere in this forest," she said. "One of the Olmec showed up with the garland of flowers and put it around my neck. From then on, I don't remember much, except standing on top of the waterfall. I was trying to keep from falling asleep. I thought that's what the Olmec had planned for me— to fall asleep and then go crashing on the rocks at the foot of the fall. They'd taken my clothes....And then you were there." She stopped and pulled him to her. "I'd never been so happy to see anyone in my life."

  He pulled away from her. "Not as happy as you'll be to see Dick Diehl again."

  She sighed. "It's too late for that," she said, breathing in the clean, damp air of the rain forest with its thousand birds calling in the night. "I thought that if I could impress him with my brilliance, he'd want me. Now I only wish I had told him that I cared about him." She chuckled. "Not that Dick would have noticed, anyway. Anything that's not made of stone and over a thousand years old has no interest for him."

  "Don't wait that long," Remo said.

  "Now, don't you start lying to me," she said gently. "We're not going anywhere. Even if you get rid of the Olmec, we'll still be here. Cooligan couldn't get out, and his crew knew the machinery of that time module better than we do." She squeezed his hand. "So no false hopes between us, okay?"

  "Okay," Remo said.

  As they came closer to the volcano, Remo spotted a dot of red glowing at its peak. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

  "Lava. It's swollen, too."

  "What, the volcano?"

  "Look at the shape of it." She pointed to the black outline of Bocatan in the moonlit sky.

  "It almost looks as if the volcano's pregnant."

  "So she is," Lizzie said. "They get that way when they're about to erupt."

  "Erupt when?"

  "Can't say. Tonight, a month— it varies."

  "Hey, that thing can't erupt," Remo protested. "It's been dead for years. At least not since the beginning of the town. As close as Yaxbenhaltun is, it'd get wiped out if the volcano blew."

  "Sometimes volcanoes wait hundreds of years between eruptions. Bocatan may have last gone off before Yaxbenhaltun was built. Cooligan got things moving pretty fast, remember?"

  Remo stood staring at the red glow for a moment. "I've got an idea," he said.

  They climbed to the top of the volcano, feeling the mountain gurgle and swim beneath their feet.

  "Look, if I've got a choice, I'd rather be zapped by a laser beam than drowned in lava," Lizzie said.

  "Nothing's going to happen. Especially now." With a large rock he picked and pulled at the lip of the volcano until the eastern portion of it was two feet lower than the rest, exactly on a level with the bubbling lava inside.

  "What's that for?" Lizzie asked.

  "You'll see."

  Back in Yaxbenhaltun, he announced the plan. "Po, I want you to get every available man to get to the volcano as fast as possible and collect all the stones they can, enough to make the lava overflow."

  "You will start an eruption?" Po asked.

  "Nah. You can't make a volcano blow with a few stones. I just want it to spill over a little onto the Olmec's si
de. I've fixed it so that it will."

  He turned to Chiun. "Meanwhile, you and I will go back to the Olmec camp and take back the lasers. By the time the volcano begins to overflow, we'll have the guns, and the Olmec'll be scared out of their pants. That'll be where you come in with one of your Master of Sinanju speeches."

  "I do not speak their language," Chiun said curtly.

  "That doesn't matter. You point to the overflowing volcano, say 'Kukulcan' a couple of times, and they'll keep away from this place for the rest of their lives. And no lives lost, no interruption of history. It's worth a shot, isn't it?"

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. "The boy is right. What if the volcano erupts?"

  "I tell you, it's not going to erupt."

  "Oh, yes it will," Lizzie said. "It shows all the signs."

  "Well, it's not going to erupt tonight. Let's go through with this plan and worry about the volcano later."

  Reluctantly they agreed. Po went out to gather all the able-bodied men of the city. Chiun and Remo stole out through the jungle toward the caves of the Olmec.

  They stayed close to the river, keeping an eye on the glowing rim of Bocatan. The sky changed from black to blue to slate gray; the crisp crescent moon grew fuzzy and small overhead. By the first red streaks of dawn, the silhouettes of a hundred Mayan warriors stood around the volcano's red mouth.

  "Oh, balls," Remo said. "They're not supposed to be there yet."

  "It is a beautiful sight," Chiun said. "Worthy even of a stanza of Ung poetry."

  "Poetic, maybe. But too soon. The idea was for us to get to the Olmec caves before the Mayans showed themselves."

  "No plan works perfectly," Chiun said philosophically.

  The Mayans remained on the mountaintop, bending and straightening as they placed their stones carefully inside the brimming volcano.

  "Too early, too early," Remo muttered, skittering as quickly as he could through the slimy mud of the river's edge. At Bocatan, a thin stream of red lava poured down the side of the sacred fire mountain.

  "Will you look at that," Remo said, disgusted. "The whole plan's ruined."

  "It was a stupid plan," Chiun agreed. "But what can one expect of a white man?"

  "Now the whole effect will be..." He stopped. "Hey, there hasn't been any effect. No yelling, no stampede from the caves, nothing."

  "Perhaps the Olmec are not the dunderheads you assumed them to be," Chiun said.

  "What does that mean?"

  The old Oriental shrugged. "Only that your escape may have been detected. Did you think of that?"

  "Well—"

  "Of course not. At your age, one considers only action, never reaction. You never gave any thought to what the Olmec would do if they discovered your absence, did you?"

  "What would you do if you were an Olmec?" Remo asked.

  "Just what they have done. I would wait."

  "Where?"

  "Here."

  The old man shoved Remo to the ground. In that moment, the sky lit up with six shafts of white lightning, causing the dark jungle brush to burst into flames and the water of the river to shimmer like silver. On the peak of Bocatan, no less than twenty men fell, their silhouetted postures those of men dying in agony.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "It was only now that I became certain of it. Find the men with the guns. They must go first."

  They fought their way through the onrush of Olmec warriors, seeking the laser bearers in the rear flanks.

  Accustomed to jungle fighting, the Olmec splintered and fled, scattering in all directions so that they could not be taken in a single assault. Remo worked his way through the ranks of warriors, but not a single laser blast was seen again.

  "Where'd they go?" Remo said as he launched two Olmec into a double air spin to collide with the soldiers behind them.

  Then they came again, the dazzling spears of light that bored holes into the sides of Bocatan. The origin of the beams was high overhead, and considerably closer to the Mayan camp than Remo and Chiun were.

  "They're in the trees," Remo said despairingly. "We've been fighting down here, and those guys with the lasers have been moving ahead through the frigging trees." Without waiting for Chiun to speak, he climbed up a tall jujube tree and scrambled over its branches to the next.

  They were dangerously close to Bocatan. The Mayans, with no leader, were no match for the warring Olmec with their weapons from the twenty-first century. There was only one way to stop them from swarming over the volcano into the city of Yaxbenhaltun: Remo would have to create a distraction that would give Chiun enough time to work his way through the foot soldiers and then take out the laser bearers.

  When he reached the marsh, past the Forbidden Fields, he ran at double time toward the volcano. Earlier, when he had climbed the eastern slope of Bocatan with Lizzie, they had made their way up a narrow pass. If he could collect the Olmec there, Chiun would have an easier time of getting rid of them.

  He approached the pass minutes before the six Olmec.

  "Hey, you fruits, hubba hubba," he shouted to the oncoming warriors. A laser shimmered in the air toward him. It struck the exact location where he stood, but in the split second it took the beam to travel, Remo was gone. The shaft dug a deep crater into the side of the volcano.

  "That's good, fellas. Just what I wanted." He stuck his thumbs into his ears and blurted a rasberry at the confused soldiers. "Come on, creeps, it's target practice."

  Another laser lit up the sky, striking the hillside. And another.

  "Chiun, get a move on, will you?"

  "Watch your tone of voice," Chiun said indignantly from the shadows. He leaped high in the air, taking off the top of a man's head in his descent.

  "Good work, Little Father."

  "Mind your own affairs."

  Remo was ready. One of the warriors, aiming his weapon directly at him, stood in firing position, open from every angle.

  "The problem with guns," Remo said as the man's finger moved back imperceptibly on the trigger, "is that your body is wasted." He spun out of the way of the fiery charge. The soldier tried to get a bead on him again, but he was gone.

  "The only part of your body you use with a gun is your finger, see," Remo said from behind him. The warrior spun around. No one was there.

  "The rest of you is completely vulnerable." The soldier turned again, firing without looking. The beam tore into the side of the mountain.

  "See what I mean?" Remo said, delivering a kick to the man's kidneys that turned them to brown jelly. The corpse's fingers twitched spasmodically on the sensitive trigger. A burst of fire sliced into Bocatan's worn and pitted slope. Remo reached the weapon and crushed it to gravel in his hands.

  "Okay, who's next?" he shouted. Chiun was in the process of splintering someone's neck into a thousand pieces with a rapid drum of his fingers. The man's weapon soared upward. The other laser bearers were fleeing back toward the caves. "Oh, no you don't," Remo said. "You're not getting another chance, Bonzo." He took off after the man, caught him, and smashed his weapon to shards in front of his face.

  The man's mouth dropped open.

  Remo said, "You were willing to fight me when you had the laser. Now I insist we go on."

  But the man only sputtered, his eyes staring straight ahead of him. He raised a violently shaking finger and pointed behind Remo's back.

  "Come on," Remo said in disgust. "That's old. I look behind me and you get a chance to break my nose. Well, it doesn't work that way, chum." He tossed the man to the ground, looked behind him, and within a half a second picked the man up again. "See? Oh, God."

  Bocatan was cracking open before his eyes.

  The probes made by the lasers had torn her surface to shreds. Now the swollen volcano glowed red from its gurgling mouth to its base, streaked with deep fissures where pulsating red liquid oozed out.

  "Remo!" Chiun shouted from the far rim of the volcano's peak. "Leave the warriors."

  "Gotcha," Remo said, suddenly re
membering the Olmec soldier supported in his hands. Almost absently he tapped the man's solar plexus. The man slumped to the ground.

  And the fire mountain exploded.

  Its entire eastern side blew in a stream of lava shooting from its base. The red mouth of the volcano darkened and receded as the lava spewed out of its collapsing side.

  The heat and force of the molten rock blew Remo aside like a weightless feather as it tumbled onto the valley, swallowing rocks whole and burning a blinding path past the marsh and into the Forbidden Fields, where the burning miles of white flowers gave off a stench of sweet decay.

  Above the din of the collapsing volcano could be heard the wails of the Olmec trapped in the inexorable flow of molten death, their screams sounding like the chattering of small birds, insignificant in the roaring eruption.

  A man, his face burned horribly, ran toward Remo carrying a long-bladed knife in his hands. The entire top half of his body was blackened. On his shoulders were huge bubbling blisters, sprouting from deep within the muscle tissue. Remo could tell the man wouldn't last for ten minutes.

  "Don't put yourself through the trouble," Remo said, taking the knife. The man covered his face with his charred hands.

  "I'll help you to die," Remo said quietly, placing his arms around the man's body so that he would feel as little pain as possible. Then, with two fingers, Remo prepared to touch a cluster of nerves at the base of the man's throat that would put him to sleep painlessly and forever.

  As if he could read Remo's thoughts, his eyes widened. In a burst of strength he pushed himself away.

  "You're him, aren't you?" Remo said. "Quintanodan."

  At the sound of his name, the priest painfully pulled himself erect. Even through his burned flesh and obvious agony, Quintanodan's expression retained all of its arrogance and cruel authority. He pointed to the rim of Bocatan, where the Mayans watched the inferno below in awed silence.

  "You want me to take you there, huh?" Remo said, gesturing.

  The priest nodded curtly.

  "Why should I? You didn't exactly treat me like your long lost brother. Not to mention your hospitality toward Cooligan."