Spoils Of War td-45

by Warren Murphy

  The sergeant noticed that his new group of inductees was staring at the aged Oriental, who was marching and chanting the strange words.

  "At ease," he called. Chiun continued marching. "I said cut it out, Grampa," the sergeant bellowed.

  "I'd leave off the grampa stuff if I were you," Remo advised.

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  T

  "Who asked you?"

  Remo shrugged. "Just trying to do my bit. If you don't care about hanging onto your arms and legs, then be my guest." He made way for the sergeant to approach Chiun.

  "I'll take care of you later, punk," the sergeant said, placing his hands on his hips. "What in the hell do you think you're doing here?" he demanded of Chiun.

  "Is this not a training camp?"

  "That's just what it is, old man."

  "Very well. Remo is here to join your army, and I am his trainer."

  "We got no room for nursemaids around here, Papa-san." The sergeant took another step forward so that his beefy head hovered a full two feet over Chiun's, casting a menacing shadow.

  "Step back, cow-eater," Chiun warned. "You are obstructing my view."

  "Obstrue—look, mister," the sergeant began, poking a stubby finger toward the old man's shoulder.

  "Shouldn't have done that," Remo said as the sergeant spiraled skyward and came to rest in the branches of a cottonwood tree.

  "Did you see that?" one of the recruits asked.

  "Naw. Must be the heat." Remo directed" the group toward another officer. "We need uniforms and supplies, Major," he said.

  The major looked surprised. "What happened to your instructor?" he asked.

  Remo glanced back to the tree where Sergeant Hayes was just beginning to show small signs of life. "Dunno," Remo said. "I guess he got hung up."

  "Well, the supplies are in that building over

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  there. I'll have a sergeant meet you and take you to your quarters. Meanwhile, you're in charge. " He patted Remo on the back. "You're going to make a fine soldier," he said, and walked away.

  "You!" Chiun sputtered. "How can he say that you will make a fine soldier? Did you know the Third Dynasty War March? Did you engage in deadly combat with the piglet in the tree?"

  "No, Little Father," Remo said, leading the group toward the supply building.

  "Your army is racist and ungrateful. Never will I teach these worthless things the Wing Ho formation."

  "Serves 'em right," Remo said. Another sergeant met them at the supply office and escorted the men to their barracks, where he taught them how to make a bunk. He seemed to believe that an army traveled on its bed, and tight beds good armies made.

  "Now, I want these here corners tight, y'hear?" the sergeant drawled, crisply tucking in the last corner of blanket. "That's tight, and I mean so tight a quarter bounces off it." He pronounced the word • "corder." Flipping a coin from his pocket, he demonstrated. The quarter bounced a good three inches upward, after hitting the blanket.

  "Now you do it," he said to Remo. With one hand he lifted the sheets and blanket off the bunk so that they lay in a crumbled heap.

  "Ah, very interesting," Chiun said. "In your army, you make the bed, then you unmake it. Then you make it again. Very Zen. Also I see now what you do to be designated a fine soldier, Remo. I knew you must be extraordinarily talented in some area, since you do not march or engage in combat.

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  Now I see that your worthy event is bedmaking. Highly appropriate, Remo."

  "Lay off," Remo said.

  "What was that?" the sergeant roared.

  "Nothing. And I can hear you, so stop yelling." He began to smooth the bedding over the bunk.

  "Oh, wise guy, huh?"

  Remo sighed. The scenario was becoming more and more reminiscent of the early days of his two-year stint in the army. Maybe sergeants never changed. The.thought occurred to him that it would take a lot of self-control to make it through even one day of boot camp.

  "Tuck in that corner, dogface," the sergeant demanded.

  "Dogface?" Chiun brightened at the word. "What an apt description." He tittered, repeating the word dogface over and over, as though it were the most hilarious thing he'd heard all day. "Dogface Remo. Hah. Dogface. Heh, heh."

  "And if I want any lip from you, old timer, I'll ask for it."

  Chiun's mirth vanished.

  "Just go along, Chiun," Remo said. "If we're going to find anything out, we can't kill everybody here."

  "What's that you're mumbling, smartass?"

  "Nothing."

  "Nothing, sir" the sergeant corrected.

  "Don't stand on formality, Sarge," Remo said.

  The sergeant glared at Remo with eyes as cold as

  the teats of a 50-year-old WAC. "Something tells

  me you ain't going to work out, mister," he said

  threateningly. Then his face broke into a malevolent

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  grin. "But I'm a fair man. Tell you what I'm going to do. If you make this bunk right, we'll start off with a clean slate. But if a quarter don't bounce one foot off the bed, you and the old Jap are going to the hotbox." He laughed. He had witnessed too many barracks bets not to know that a quarter would not bounce more than five inches.

  "Jap?" Chiun gasped. "Now, this is too much. Calling you a dogface is one thing, but referring to the Master of Sinanju as a Japanese—"

  "Shhh. Just go along."

  "Go along, he says. Always go along. No matter that the glory of Sinanju has been tarnished. No matter that my weary being has been encircled with shame."

  "Here's the quarter," the sergeant said, smiling cruelly. "And if it don't bounce twelve inches off this bunk, you get the hotbox. Got it?"

  "Yup," Remo said. He took the quarter and tossed it on the bed, where the coin made a small dent before flying upward with a whoosh and embedding itself in the ceiling.

  The eyes of every man in the barracks were fixed on the metal disk. "How'd you do that?" the sergeant asked.

  "Just lucky, I guess. Looks like the hotbox'11 have to wait."

  The sergeant's face reddened. "Like hell, you cheatin' Yankee," he said. He reached out to grab Remo's arm.

  "Just go along," Chiun said sagely. But Remo's reflexes were trained to respond automatically to assault, and to Remo's nervous system, the sergeant's sweaty grip constituted assault. Before the stubby

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  fingers completed their circle around Remo's wrist, they were numb, and the sergeant was gripping his forearm where Remo's thumb had bruised it.

  Then one of the recruits clapped Remo on the shoulder and said, "Attaboy, bro. Time somebody hit that sucker," and Remo knew he had made a mistake.

  "Which way to the hotbox?" he asked the sergeant, who was writhing in pain beside Remo's bunk. "I'm going to turn myself in."

  "Huh?" the recruit asked. "What you doing that for? You just showed that mother who's running things around here."

  "America is running things around here," Remo said. "And when you join the army, you do things the army way. I was wrong, and I'm going to pay the penalty. C'mon, Chiun."

  "Chickenshit," the recruit called to Remo's back. Remo flicked out his hand toward the recruit's nose, grabbed it, and squeezed. The recruit quickly changed his mind. "Over there," he began to sing, twanging nasally and tapping his foot.

  "That*s better." Remo led Chiun in silence to the small corrugated metal building on the edge of the camp. He told the guard that he had been told to report to the hotbox. The guard shrugged and waved him inside.

  Chiun wrinkled his nose at the scent of the sweating inmates who lined the walls. "Why, may I ask, did you volunteer us for incarceration in this pit?" he asked.

  "We were setting a bad example, Chiun. Nobody likes being at boot camp, but if every recruit just wasted whoever was in charge of making a soldier

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  out of him, we wouldn't have an army. We'd have what happened back at Fort Wheeler."

  "I see. And by imprisonin
g ourselves, we will make better soldiers out of the others."

  "Something like that." He turned to address one of the soldiers in the hotbox. "Say,-do you know anything about some religious group coming around here?"

  "Whaddya want, jerk?" the soldier snarled. "I don't know nothing about no religious crap, so how's about shutting your face. Unless you got some smoke."

  "Then again, we could break out of this stinkhole whenever we wanted," Remo said to Chiun.

  "That is reassuring," Chiun said, and sent the soldier crashing through the wall, over the fence, and deep into the woods beyond. Chiun hurried the other prisoners along the same route until he and Remo were alone in the cell. "This room was badly in need of proper ventilation," Chiun said, positioning himself lotus-style near the hole, which extended the length and breadth of the entire far wall. "Tell me when you are prepared to leave."

  Remo leaned against the metal wall of the chamber. "Say, Chiun," he said, "did you notice anything odd about this place?"

  "Nothing. It is filled with obnoxious white men who live down to their heritage with appalling accuracy. A perfectly ordinary community of your people."

  Remo stood in silence for a moment, his brow furrowed. Finally he said, "He hasn't come here yet."

  "Who? Be articulate, Remo, at least in your own

  language."

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  "The traveling preacher. Randy Nooner mentioned him, and there was blood in the place where his tent was. The guy you just threw out of here didn't know anything about any religious fanatics, and nobody at this base looks like a zombie. This is a normal army camp. It hasn't been touched by the craziness we saw at Wheeler."

  "Preachers? Tents? Zombies?"

  "We're in the wrong place, Chiun. The preacher's who we want. It's the preacher. We've got to find him."

  "I am reasonably certain he is not in this jail," Chiun said. "If you feel you have adequately incarcerated us both to serve your country, perhaps we should seek after him elsewhere."

  Just then, the door opened, and four officers entered with a crisp stamping of feet. They formed two lines to allow a man wearing a three-piece gray suit and an expression of lemony rectitude to enter. "That's the man," Harold W. Smith said, indicating Remo.

  "O mighty emperor," Chiun said, according Smith a small bow. "You have heard of our plight and are come to rescue us." He leaned close to Remo and whispered, "Do not tell Emperor Smith that we could have escaped. It would lessen the kindness of his gesture."

  "How'd you know we were here?" Remo asked.

  "I followed your trail," Smith said blandly. From his pocket he produced a set of handcuffs. "Just go along with it," he said in a low voice, snapping the cuffs over Remo's wrists.

  "I wish you'd put that another way," Remo said.

  "They think you're an escaped patient from Fol-

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  croft, and that Chiun is your custodian." He cleared his throat. "Ah, the other inmates seem to have escaped, Colonel," Smith said, nodding toward the hole in the far wall.

  "I see, Dr. Smith." The colonel motioned for the guard to investigate. "Is this your man's work?"

  "Folcroft will pay for all damages, Colonel," Smith said. "Meanwhile, I'd better take him back. Thank you for all your help."

  "Thank you, Doctor. That man would have been a serious danger here. You've wasted no time tracking him down." The colonel nodded to Smith, then to Chiun. "And your courage in trying to keep this lunatic under control is commendable."

  "It is difficult, but I do what I must," Chiun said, his pride tinged with suffering. He elbowed Remo in the ribs. "Struggle," he whispered. "Act as though you are trying to free yourself from these metal bracelets." He raised his voice. "Back, beast," he shouted, slapping Remo's face. "Clear away," Chiun ordered the officers. "I will subdue the madman. Back, dogfaced one." He made a show of striking Remo again. "Go on, Remo, fight," he whispered. Reluctantly, Remo raised his hands to cover his face. In doing so, he snapped the handcuffs in two. He tried to tie the chain together, but the metal crumbled into shards. "Where'd you get these, Smitty, Toy City?" Remo asked.

  Smith escorted him wordlessly out of the compound while Chiun spun around them both, flailing at Remo and shrieking, "Back, mad white lunatic!" for the benefit of passersby.

  Outside the gate, Remo let the scraps of metal remaining from the handcuffs drop to the ground.

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  "Submit, wildman," Chiun yelled.

  "Er—thank you, Chiun," Smith said, "but we needn't continue the ruse."

  The old Oriental shrugged. "The Master of Sin-anju respects his emperor's wishes," he said. He turned to Remo. "But do not forget your place, dogface. Heh, heh. Dogface."

  "I'll keep it in mind," said Remo. "What are you doing here, Smitty? Aren't you going out on a limb by coming after us?"

  "Yes, but we haven't got any time to lose. One of our operatives at the New York Times came through with some information you'd better investigate right away." He told Remo about the press conference scheduled for noon at Fort Vadassar. "The Times checked everything out with the Pentagon files. Apparently, Vadassar's been operating since 1979." /

  Remo looked disgusted. "Thanks a lot, Smitty. You said you couldn't find a trace of Fort Vadassar on your computers. You could have saved me this, whole trip if your information was correct."

  "My information is always correct," Smith said, his face expressionless.

  "Is that so. Then how do you explain an army base thaf s been around since 1979?"

  "Given the reliability of the Folcroft information terminals, there is only one explanation possible. Vadassar does not exist."

  "What about the Pentagon files?"

  "They must be wrong."

  Remo looked at Smith sideways. "But Smitty," he said, trying to sound reasonable, "the army's holding the conference. They ought to know if their fort exists or not."

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  Smith's calm remained unruffled. "I don't care if the man in the moon is holding the press conference, Remo. Fort Vadassar is not a base for the United States Army. Now you find out what it is."

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  Nine

  Artemis Thwill awoke to the taste of bitter black coffee burning his tonsils.

  "Up and at 'em, Art," Randy Nooner said. "Two hours to showtime."

  Thwill tried to shake himself out of his drugged stupor. "My back," he murmured, touching the sore spot where the needle had entered. "What did you do to me?"

  "Only a mild sedative. It worked wonders. The troops think the government is out to kill you. Seeing you alive will give their morale a real shot in the arm."

  "Samantha," he moaned.

  'Tin right here, honey," Samantha called from the floor, where she was counting a stack of greenbacks. She licked her lips in appreciation. "Golly, Artemis, that fainting spell of yours pulled in almost fifty thousand dollars. And we didn't even have a service. Maybe we should make it a regular part of the routine."

  "No," Artemis said, feeling the headache throb in his skull.

  Randy Nooner smiled. "No," she repeated.

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  "That's only for special occasions. Like when Artemis doesn't feel like reading his speeches the way they were written. You won't make that mistake again, will you, Artemis?" Her eyes grew cold ás she spoke ever more softly. "Because if you do, the next shot won't be a tranquilizer. And coffee won't wake you up. Do you understand?"

  The very air in the room seemed to chill with her words. For an endless moment Üíé three figures remained motionless in the room: Thwill lying on the bed, his face blank with fear; Randy Nooner standing above him, her freezing stare radiating the truth of her words; and Samantha, sitting stock still on . the rug, the money sifting through her fingers like

  sand.

  Samantha was first to speak. "Hey, guys, how about if I brew a fresh pot of coffee?" she offered

  brightly.

  "There isn't time," Randy Nooner said. She pulled a piece of paper from her jacket. "H
ere's your speech, Mr. God. Read it exactly as it's written." She walked slowly to the door, opened it, and turned around to face Artemis. "Or else be prepared to meet your co-maker." She laughed humorlessly and was gone.

  The stadium at Fort Vadassar buzzed with the preparations of newsmen, camera crews, and sound technicians, interspersed with the teams of under-, cover FBL CIA, and army intelligence agents sent to investigate the press conference. A cluster of reporters gathered around Senator Osgood Nooner, who had arrived a few minutes before via helicopter. Remo spotted him and joined the group.

  "How are you involved in all this, Senator?" a

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  young man with a microphone asked, careful to keep his most photogenic side toward the television cameras.

  "Son, every American interested in uncovering the heinous developments leading to the government's atrocities at Forts Antwerth, Beson, Tanne-hill, and Wheeler is involved. That's why you boys in the press are so vital to our country. Without you, the truth might never be known, the perpetrators of these massacres never uncovered."

  "Senator, how do you know the government ordered the killings?"

  Nooner looked thoughtful, posing carefully in front of each of the network cameras. "Fellow human beings," he said, "all I know is that four U.S. Army bases were attacked simultaneously and without provocation. Each of these bases was located in a remote area. There were no traces of invasion by foreign powers or domestic elements, and no aerial bombing. These are the facts. I leave it to you."

  "Ladies and gentlemen," the young reporter said, stepping in front of Nooner to permit a full close-up shot of himself, "the senator has indicated that all facts point to the Pentagon's direct participation in the mystery massacres at the four army bases struck yesterday, leaving thousands dead. If the Senator's theory is true, the 'Pentagon Slaughters,' as insiders are calling yesterday's event, may prove to be the biggest and most bizarre atrocity ever perpetrated by the United States in its long history of oppression and murder. Details tonight on a special hour-long edition of 'Up the Americas.' "

  "Hey," a voice called from the group.

  The senator looked down distastefully at the thin man dressed in a black T-shirt and chinos. The man