Shooting Schedule td-79

by Warren Murphy

"The Japanese have pulled back into town," an older man said excitedly. "There's heavy fighting, but no one knows who they're mixing it up with."

  "Rangers?"

  "Your guess is as good as anyone's. We're all wondering what to do."

  "Why don't you fight? It's your city."

  "With what?" the man demanded. "They took all our guns."

  "So? This is Arizona. The wild west. Take 'em back."

  The man peered closer. "Say, now, aren't you that actor fella? Bronzini."

  "I'm not exactly proud of it right now, but yeah."

  "Didn't recognize you without your headband."

  Bronzini cracked a pained grin. "This wasn't supposed to be a Grundy movie. Know where I can find some guns?"

  "Why?"

  "Back where I come from, if you make a mess, you clean it up."

  "Now, that's right smart reasoning. They're supposed to have weapons cached at the Shilo Inn," Bronzini was told. "Maybe you could sort of spread 'em around."

  "If I do, will you and your friends fight?"

  "Shucks, Bart. I seen every one of your movies. I'd fight with you any day."

  "Tell your friends, I'll be back."

  Bronzini took off. He floored the pickup until he got to the Shilo Inn. As he pulled into the parking lot, he spotted uniformed Japanese troops in the lobby. Bronzini wheeled the pickup into a parking space, and there, leaning between two cars, was his Harley. He slipped over to it and kicked the starter.

  The Harley gave a full-throated roar that brought a smile to Bronzini's sleepy-eyed face. He backed it up and sent it rocketing toward the lobby entrance.

  Attracted by the noise, two Japanese came out shouting. The Japanese had AK-47's. But Bronzini had the element of surprise. He went through them like a hurricane. They threw themselves to the ground. The bike hit the curb and vaulted through the glass doors. It wasn't special-effects candy-glass, however. Bronzini sustained a gash that opened up one cheek, and a shard embedded itself in his right thigh.

  Undeterred, Bronzini danced off the careening bike and landed on the plush lobby seats. He yanked the triangle of glass from his thigh and used it to slash open the jugular of the Japanese who jumped from behind the front desk.

  Bronzini pried the AK-47 from the guard's fingers. He pulled off the bayonet and sheathed it down his boot. Then he stepped outside and sprayed the two guards while they were picking themselves off the ground.

  That accomplished, Bronzini raced through the firstfloor rooms. He found the guns behind a door marked with the Red Christmas Productions symbol-a Christmas tree silhouetted against a mushroom cloud. This was the film's in-town production office. Bronzini carried the rifles out to the pickup under both arms. He filled up the bed with rifles and crated hand grenades and then lifted his Harley into the back by main strength.

  Before he drove off, he tore one of the sleeves off his combat suit and used it to dress his leg wound. There was some cloth left over and Bronzini tied it over his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

  "What the fuck," he said as he climbed behind the wheel. "Maybe we'll retitle this Grundy's Last Stand." Bronzini returned to the knot of men. It had doubled in size. He distributed the guns from the back of the pickup. While the men checked their weapons, he raised his voice.

  "Yo! Listen up, everybody. There's more guns back at the hotel. Form teams and go get them. After that, it's up to you. It's your city."

  Bronzini mounted the Harley and started her up. "Hey, where are you going?" a man asked.

  "It's your city, but it's my problem," he said, shoving stick grenades into his belt. "I got a score to settle." And with that, Bartholomew Bronzini roared off, his ponytail dancing after him like a fugitive spirit.

  Jiro Isuzu no longer had to rely on radio reports confirming that his crack units were being decimated. He had only to look out the window where the tanks formed a bristling line of cannon muzzles.

  As he watched, one smoothbore coughed a shell. The recoil made the tank roll back. The shell reduced an already-shattered storefront to further ruin.

  "It" walked in under the shell, which overshot him by no more than a hand span. Now that he had penetrated the outer perimeter, by all accounts destroying men and tanks with his bare hands, the burning-eyed man had come to Isuzu's last line of defense.

  Isuzu shoved open the window. "Crush him!" he shouted. "Crush him in the name of the emperor. Banzai!"

  The tanks started up. It was a calculated risk, breaking the last bulwark that separated him from that creature that walked like a man, but they had no choice.

  Isuzu was alone. Nemuro Nishitsu lay unconscious on the couch. He was crying out in his fevered sleep. Isuzu tried to block out the words. "Death comes," Nemuro Nishitsu warned over and over. "Death that leaves no footprints in the sand."

  Nishitsu was obviously delirious. Isuzu turned his attention to the conflict.

  The once-supreme New Japanese Imperial Army had been reduced to a small band of defenders. All night long the battle had raged. Tanks, men, and heavy guns against a lone man who walked unarmed and unafraid.

  They would surround him and he would render the tanks helpless with his bare hands, breaking the tracks and snapping off gun barrels with openhanded blows.

  He had progressed to city hall, remorseless, unstoppable. At first it was reported that he moved with impunity, as if the mere soldiers who got in his way were insignificant fleas to be swatted and thrown aside. But as more tank units were thrown up against him, the unknown man had shaken off his zombielike demeanor as if coming out of a trance. He moved with increasing grace and speed, until, as one frightened assistant director cried over a walkie-talkie, "We cannot halt his advance. He dances out of the way of our bullets. He crushes everything under his feet. We must pull back."

  The weird picture that had been conjured up over scores of frantic radio reports was of a mad dance of death and destruction. And Isuzu was forced to withdraw his units into a smaller and smaller circle around city hall until those tanks that had not fled in blind panic remained. With growing dread he awaited the approach of the unstoppable one.

  Finally Jiro Isuzu got a clear look at "it." The sight froze the breath in his lungs. "It" looked like death walking. No, like death dancing.

  It was beautiful, yet ghastly. A squad of fresh Japanese troops rushed up to confront the aggressor. He spun like a dervish from the bullet tracks of their chattering rifles. He weaved around them, limbs flung with abandon, feet leaping, turning, kicking. One stiff index finger entered many skulls, creating dead Japanese.

  A soldier charged him with fixed bayonet. Suddenly the soldier was flailing, impaled on his own bayonet, which the creature held up like a triumphant banner.

  It was a dance of death, yes, but only Japanese died. The tanks fared no better. Two circled him. A foot flashed left. A hand, open and stiff of finger, knifed right. Tracks whipped free and the tanks careened helplessly into the smoking ruins of the street.

  Foot by foot, the thing advanced. Stick grenades flung toward it. The creature caught each one with unerring reflexes and hurled them back in the faces of those who threw them. Some exploded; others did not. Isuzu cursed the unreliable Chinese-made weapons. It had been easier to buy them on the Hong Kong black market than to make Nishitsu versions. A mistake. The entire operation had been a mistake, he now knew.

  Jiro Isuzu was prepared for death. His loyalty to Nemuro Nishitsu required it. His feelings for Nippon demanded it. Death, he could face. Defeat, he could not.

  Jiro Isuzu took up an assault rifle and knelt before the open window. He attempted to sight on the oncoming fury. He emptied one clip. The only reaction was that the fire-eyed creature turned its gruesome sunburned visage, inhuman in the cold ferocity of its baleful gaze, toward him. The gash of a crack-lipped mouth broke into a cunning grin. The grin seemed to say, "When I am done with these puny ones, you will be next."

  Jiro Isuzu gave it up. "Who are you?" he cried, lowering the weapon. "What
do you want?"

  And a voice like thunder answered him with one word. The word was: "You."

  "Why? What have I done to you, demon?"

  "You have roused me from my ancient slumber. I cannot sleep again until I crush your bones into powder, Japanese."

  Jiro Isuzu slammed the window closed. He shrank from the glass. He couldn't bear to look at the carnage anymore. His only hope, lay in escape.

  Without a glance toward his mentor and superior, now shaking with chills and fever, Jiro Isuzu ran to the back room. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

  For over his head he heard a dreaded sound. A heavy bomber. And he knew that all was lost.

  Woodenly he returned to the office and squatted on the rug. He unsheathed the sword that had belonged to his samurai ancestors. He tore the front of his shirt to expose his belly. There was no time for introspection, regrets or ceremony. He placed the point of the sword against his side and steeled himself to deliver the quick sideways ripping slash that would spill his bowels onto his lap. He prayed that he would die before atomic retribution obliterated him. Better to die by one's own hand than at the hands of the hated enemy.

  Outside the window, the sounds of conflict died with the trailing scream of a Japanese warrior. And then a voice that cried, "I am coming for you, Japanese."

  And Jiro Isuzu broke down sobbing. For his arms trembled so much he could not wield the sword properly. He fumbled a stick grenade from his waistband and pulled the cap with this teeth.

  He waited. The grenade sat inert in his hand. A dud. And outside the office walls Isuzu heard the front door shatter under the approach of a demon in human form.

  "You are too late," Jiro Isuzu spoke softly when the demon entered the room. "For in another instant we will both be obliterated in nuclear fire."

  "A man may die a thousand times in one instant," the demon mocked.

  "What name do you go by, demon?"

  "I?" The creature advanced. Through the cords of its face, it was possible to make out the hint of an Occidental man. It looked almost familiar, as if Jiro had seen it during the early stages of the operation, before the fighting began. It was not Bronzini. Nor the one known as Sunny Joe. And then the demon spoke its name and Jiro Isuzu was no longer troubled by the face it wore, but by the spirit it represented.

  "I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds."

  The dance of the dead, Isuzu thought with a shock of recognition. Shiva. The Eastern god who danced the cycles of creation and destruction.

  Jiro Isuzu knew not what he had done to rouse a god of the Hindus, but he had. He lowered his head and spoke words he thought would never pass his lips.

  "I surrender," said Jiro Isuzu as a palpably cold shadow fell over him.

  Chapter 22

  Bill "Sunny Joe" Roam was astonished by the lack of roadblocks leading into Yuma. No tanks prowled the streets, although cannon fire continued without respite somewhere in the heart of the city.

  "Something's happened," he said as they cut up and down the streets of Yuma. "Hey, those are Americans over there, and they're armed."

  Suddenly the knot of Americans broke into a run. They were firing as they ran between houses. Out from behind a white stucco home, a lone Japanese skulked. He was spotted, and ducked back into the trellis-bordered courtyard. He got as far as an onyx spa, when a crossfire chopped him up like so much celery.

  "We have no time for this," Chiun said quickly. "We must reach the television station."

  "Look," Sheryl broke in, "even if by some miracle we get there alive, it's probably got a passel of guards."

  "I will deal with the guards," Chiun said unconcernedly.

  "Then what?" Sheryl said, looking around at the fires. "Suppose I go on the air. What do I say? We were filming a movie and it got out of hand?"

  "If you do not go on the air, the bombs will fall."

  "I can't believe our government would bomb one of its own cities. It's too farfetched."

  "Believe it," Bill Roam said, taking a corner on two wheels. He fought to keep the Ninja on the road. "Worse things happen in wartime."

  "I still can't accept this. It was only a movie."

  "Helen of Troy was only a woman," Chiun told her. "Yet many died because of her, and an entire city fell."

  "Are we getting closer?" Roam asked. They passed a disabled tank. Here and there bodies hung from the lightpost. They were Japanese bodies.

  "Yes. The next right. That's South Pacific. Just follow it until I tell you to stop."

  They took the corner at high speed. This time the Ninja didn't go up on two wheels, but it did fishtail wildly.

  "I don't know why they went to all this trouble," Roam growled.

  "What do you mean?" Chiun asked.

  "They'd have killed more Americans by selling these rolling hunks of junk at cost."

  "Concentrate on your driving. On our survival depends the fate of this city, and all who dwell in it."

  "I think we're past that point," Sheryl said in a sick voice. "Listen."

  "Pay no attention." Chiun told Roam. "Drive faster."

  "What?" Roam asked. Then he heard it.

  Far in the distance came the low sound of jet engines. It was a deeper, throatier roar than that of a commercial passenger jet.

  "You don't suppose that's-" Roam began.

  "Drive," Chiun admonished.

  Roam floored the jeep. He took a sharp left and almost caused Bartholomew Bronzini, coming in the opposite direction, to wipe out.

  "Bart!" Bill Roam called out as Bartholomew Bronzini extracted himself from the tangle that had been a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. "We could use a hand."

  "Ignore him," Chiun snapped.

  "No, wait," Sheryl said quickly. "Don't you see? Everyone knows Bronzini. If we put him on the air, he'd be believed."

  "You are right," Chiun admitted.

  "Bart!" Roam shouted. "No time to explain. Hop in." Bronzini leapt into the back of the jeep, his AK-47 in hand.

  "Where are we going?" he demanded, looking about wildly.

  "To the TV station," Sheryl explained. "They're going to bomb the city."

  "Those fucking Japs," Bronzini spat.

  "No, the Americans. That was the plan all along. We may be able to stop it if we can get you on the air."

  "Go go go!" Bronzini shouted as the drone of the approaching B-52 filled the crystalline morning sky. Television station KYMA was only lightly defended. Bronzini went in the front door spraying bullets. When the clip ran empty, he used his bayonet.

  The Japanese, although trained soldiers, were demoralized by the sight of the greatest warrior in cinema history coming at them in full cry. It was too much for them. They dropped their weapons and ran.

  None of them escaped. The Master of Sinanju met them at the exit door. His fingernails flashed in the orange light. He stepped over the bodies he made.

  Sheryl led them to the main studio.

  "I was just a cue-card girl," she said, "but I've seen this done a thousand times." She took one of the cameras in hand. "Sunny Joe, check the monitors. See if this is going out."

  Roam hurried into the booth and ran his dark eyes along the screens while Sheryl dollied the camera in to frame Bartholomew Bronzini, sweaty and bloodied.

  "My left side is my best," Bronzini quipped.

  "I got Bart on one of the screens," Roam called out. "Okay, we're on the air."

  Bronzini faced the camera squarely. In his husky flat voice he spoke. "This is Bartholomew Bronzini. First of all, I want to apologize to the American people for-"

  "There is no time for that," Chiun snapped harshly. "Tell them the danger is over."

  "Everybody wants to be a fucking director," Bronzini growled. He continued in his stage voice: "I'm broadcasting from station KYMA in Yuma, Arizona. The emergency is over. The Japanese are falling back. I'm calling on the American government to send in the Rangers, the Marines, hell, send the Cub Scouts too. We got the Japs on t
he run. Repeat, the emergency is over."

  The drone of the bomber grew in intensity.

  "Are you sure this thing is hooked up?" Bronzini asked fearfully.

  "Keep talking!" Sheryl shouted.

  "I am not speaking under duress," Bronzini continued. "The emergency is over. We need troops to finish mopping up down here, but the citizens of Yuma are fighting back. The city is in American hands. It's over. Just don't do anything rash, okay?"

  The bomber sound made the walls tremble and the trio looked up as if clear sky and not a soundproofed ceiling stood between them and the sight of one of the mightiest bombers in the U.S. Air Force.

  "What do you think?" Bronzini said. "Maybe we should do a duck and cover, like when I was a kid." No one laughed. But no one ducked either.

  When it seemed as if the bomber drone could get no louder, it did.

  "I don't think it worked," Sheryl said, biting her lips.

  "They say if you're on ground zero," Bill Roam said in a faraway voice, "you don't feel a thing."

  The sound swelled and then began to recede.

  "It's going away," Sheryl said, her words more prayer than hope.

  "Don't get your hopes up," Bronzini said. "It takes a long time for one of those mothers to fall."

  An anxious minute crawled past. After five minutes, Bronzini let out a pent-up breath. "I think we did it," he said, in disbelief.

  Bill Roam stepped out of the control booth.

  "What do you think, chief?" The question was addressed to the Master of Sinanju.

  In the distance, the sound of tank cannon resumed with renewed ferocity.

  "I think our job is not yet done. Come!"

  They followed the Master of Sinanju out of the studio, their knees shaking in nervous reaction.

  Jiro Isuzu walked backward, his eyes locked with those of the demon who called itself Shiva. He felt like a mouse withering under the cold glare of a viper.

  Shiva came closer, his stark stripped-of-flesh shadow falling across the unconscious form of Nemuro Nishitsu. And so great was Isuzu's panic that he did something that mere hours ago would have been unthinkable.

  "There!" he cried out. "He is the one you want. It was his plan. His. Not mine. I am only a soldier." Shiva stopped. His head swiveled, displaying the corded side of his blue-bruised throat.