An Old Fashioned War td-68

by Warren Murphy

  Remo took the crushed brass mass at the end of the socket between his two fingers, and slowly, more slowly than more people could perceive, he let his fingers understand the brass, sense the soft yellowish metal, moving its parts ever so slowly, building the heat within it, rubbing, and then faster, so that his fingers could hardly be seen rubbing the yellow metal into a sticky goo, which he flattened and molded and remade into brass prongs as it hardened just so.

  "There," muttered Remo, and with a flourish pushed it right into the real socket and there were no sparks. It was in. He had done it. By himself.

  Hard leather scuffed on concrete floors. The guard's hand was on the trigger behind Remo, and while Remo wanted to stay and admire his work-he was sure the connection was correct, and so proud he'd gotten it right-if he let the guard get off a shot, one of the bullets could land in the machinery, leaving his connection useless. Also, he was supposed to make sure he was never known to have been in there.

  He didn't jump backward but let his body fall backward, so that it didn't look as though he were jumping from his feet but actually pulled into the guard. The motion was deceptive. The guard saw the man with his back to him, leveled the gun before ordering the intruder to throw up his hands.

  And then the intruder was on him with the guard's gun flung up above his head, and something apparently slow but fast enough to cause incredible pain, landing hard in the guard's midsection and cutting through his spinal column, and the world went black.

  Remo trundled the guard and his gun out of the room toward the next guard post, where, holding the guard's wrists, he started a fight with another guard, keeping himself behind the corpse's body. Slap, punch. The old way of fighting. Remo moved the dead guard's hands in front of the living one, keeping that guard confused, getting that guard to fight, and then he pulled the trigger once, and threw the body at the living struggling guard, knocking him down, and letting him fight his way free of the corpse. They would report the dead one had gone berserk and the living one had fought him off and killed him. The shot, of course, would attract others and there would be confusion, and no one would ever think that the monitor room with the perfect, beautiful plug placed exactly in the socket was ever entered by an American.

  What people wanted when they investigated something was an answer. It didn't have to be the correct answer. In large organizations like armies it only had to be an acceptable answer. No one was going to believe that someone in the people's-liberation-monitoring station had started a fight using a corpse, and then escaped without being seen. It was far simpler to believe one guard was forced to subdue another and in the process killed him. That the loser suffered a displaced spinal disk would be glossed over.

  That would raise questions. And armies never even answered questions, much less asked them.

  Thus Remo remembered from his lessons the wisdom about armies as he moved into the night, out of the monitoring station as though he had never been around. Armies, as it was written in the history of Sinanju, never changed. Only the names and flags were different.

  It had been a long time since he had read the histories of' Sinanju, Remo thought, coming back through American lines and appearing at a helicopter pad where Smith said transportation would be arranged for him. It had been a long time since his death had been faked so the organization could have a killer arm without fingerprints in any file, a man who would not be missed, an orphan, a dead man for an organization that was not supposed to exist, one man serving as its killer arm. And because there was only one man, he had to be trained in a special way, a way surpassing anything any white man had ever known before.

  In that training, he had become something else. He had become Sinanju, the sun source of all understanding of human power, the home of the Masters of Sinanju. In his spirit he was as much that small fishing village on the West Korea Bay as he was Remo Williams, ex-cop, American.

  He thought about that as the special helicopter, camouflaged for night, landed at the base helipad. The pilot could be heard telling the commander of the pad that he was to pick someone up, and the commander was arguing back that he had not been told of any such person.

  "We're at the tip of Cuba, buddy. No one gets in or out of here without identification," said the commander.

  "I'm told he's going to be here."

  "By whom?"

  "Can't say."

  "Yeah, well, you take those CIA or NSA or whatever letters you want to disguise your spies by and stuff 'em somewhere. This place is guarded by U.S. marines. No one gets through."

  "Excuse me," said Remo, moving from behind the helipad commander and up into the chopper.

  "Are you blue angel zebra?"

  "Maybe. Something like that," said Remo. "I don't know."

  "You're the one. They said you wouldn't know your code."

  "Who's they?" screamed the helipad commander.

  "They never say," yelled back the helicopter pilot, taking off into the night. Above, the lights of the fighters keeping protective cover over the fleet and the base competed weakly with the stars.

  Remo edged back in his seat and folded his arms and his legs, and went into that quiet place that was his sleep now. He could smell the burning fuel, and even the new rivets in the helicopter, but he focused on the stars and the patches of clean air, and his own blood system. And they were good, all good.

  When the helicopter landed, a blood-red dawn was breaking over the Caribbean, exposing the little stucco villas of the Puerto Rican resort Flora del Mar. Remo could make out the golf courses and tennis courts and swimming pools. He guided the pilot toward one small villa set on a canal. Sportfishing boats with their high captain's nests bobbed along the canal like large white fat gulls grounded in the water.

  Remo was out of the helicopter before it fully landed. He walked toward what sounded like a wounded bird squealing softly in a pitch so high that some of the local dogs, dogs looking more like large rodents than canines, were wandering around in a quiet frenzy looking for the source.

  Remo knew where it was coming from. He even knew the words. The call was a greeting to the sun, and as he entered the villa, the sounds became louder and then stopped.

  "Did you bring the rice?" came the squeaky voice.

  "I forgot, Little Father," said Remo. "I was working out this electronics problem."

  "Better you should learn Sinanju than wires and bulbs. Leave that for whites and Japanese."

  "I am white. Besides, Koreans are getting into electronics now too."

  In the living room a wisp of a man with patches of white hair hanging over his ears sadly shook his head. He sat facing the sun in a glorious golden kimono of the dawn, with the precious yellow threads creating designs of splendid mornings over the Korean hills around Sinanju.

  "To do one thing well makes a man special. To do one thing better than all others makes one Sinanju. But to be Sinanju means to be in a constant state of becoming, for that which is not moving toward something moves away from it." Thus spoke Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, to Remo, who had once been his pupil but was now a Master too.

  "I'm not going to read the histories of Sinanju again," said Remo.

  "And why not, may I ask?"

  "Because I have made the last passage. I'm a Master now. I love you, Little Father. You are the greatest teacher in the world, but I am not reading that nonsense about how Sinanju saved the world from one aeon to the next just because we were paid killers."

  "Not killers. Assassins. A bad virus is a killer. An auto accident is a killer. A soldier firing a gun is a killer. But an assassin to a monach is a force for peace and justice."

  "How are we a force for justice, Little Father?"

  "We get paid and we support the village of Sinanju, full of base ingrates to be sure, but those are our people."

  "How is that justice? We go to the higher bidder."

  "Would going to the lower bidder be more just?" asked Chiun with a delicious cackle.

  "That's what I said.
Killers for hire."

  "That," said Chiun, "is a dirty lie. If you would read the histories of Sinanju you would see that. But no. You learn the ways of things, but you don't learn the reason of things."

  "You think Ivan the Terrible of Russia did justice? He killed people for wearing the wrong clothes."

  "Slanderers of his name in your West destroyed his beautiful reputation. He was a most just czar."

  "Yeah? How?"

  "He paid on time, and paid in good gold. No one in Sinanju ever starved because Ivan the just failed to pay his Sinanju assassin."

  "No one ever starved anyhow. You never used the tributes. They just piled up in that big funny-looking building on the hill. That was just an excuse to hoard more wealth."

  "The treasure of Sinanju, hoarding?" Chiun let out a pained cry to the very heavens above this new-world sky. A Master of Sinanju, the white man he had trained, had called the sacred treasure of Sinanju, the earnings of four millennia, a hoard. "Besides," said Chiun, "it has all been stolen."

  "Don't bring up that again. America has more than tripled its gold tribute just to make it up to you."

  "It can never be made up to me or the House of Sinanju. While you were out saving the world, a world which has never done anything for you, you let me search alone for the treasure."

  "Yeah, well, where would Sinanju be if the world went?" said Remo.

  "The world is always coming to an end from one thing or another, so you say. But it always goes on," said Chiun.

  "And so does Sinanju," snapped Remo.

  "Because we do things right. We honor the treasure. Lost were coins and jewels from Alexander-a white man but definitely great-statues of such fine porcelain, such exquisite craftsmanship that the Ming emperors only gave them to their sons, and of course to us, Sinanju, their house of assassins; gems from the great pharaoh worth entire countries; tributes from all the ages. Gone."

  "And what about the American gold that pays for my services to my country?" said Remo.

  "Yes. Gold. That is all America can offer. More. Never better. That is all it knows. More, and more, but never that which makes a civilization wonderful."

  "It gave me to Sinanju, Little Father."

  "I gave you to Sinanju," said Chiun.

  In that point, Chiun was largely correct. They had both given Remo to Sinanju, but to admit to truths in an argument was like fighting while holding one's breath. One lost all power. So Remo ignored the remark, and went out to get the rice, and when he returned he found Harold W. Smith was waiting for him with Chiun.

  "I could have sworn I got it right down in Cuba," said Remo.

  "No problem there," said Smith. He sat on a couch in the small living room as Remo prepared the rice in the open kitchen near the entrance of the apartment. The doors were shut, but Remo knew that Smith carried enough modern sophisticated electronics to tell them if anyone were listening in. As Remo once said, Smith could probably tell if someone were thinking of listening in. Chiun remained in a lotus position, his long fingernails delicately resting on his lap, his back straight, his body at one with itself, so that he looked more in place in the air-conditioned living room than any of the furniture.

  "Koreans are very good with electronics," said Chiun. "I trained him."

  Remo ignored the remark.

  "We have a strange situation developing in Oklahoma. Well, actually throughout America," said Smith. "A band of Ojupa Indians has gone on the warpath."

  "I believe they're outnumbered," said Remo. "You do have an army."

  "Army," scoffed Chiun. "An army is a collection of human faults and poor discipline multiplied by thousands."

  "An army would be useless in this situation," said Smith.

  "Aha," said Chiun. "If but your wisdom could be transferred to Remo."

  "The President doesn't want to see Americans killing Americans," said Smith.

  "Then he should stay out of our cities," said Remo. Chiun remarked in Korean how true that was, but cautioned Remo against speaking honestly to Smith, who, because he paid the tribute to Sinanju, Chiun insisted on calling "Emperor Smith."

  The saying from the eightieth scroll of the fifth Masterhood of Gi the Major, taken in commentary from Gi the Minor, was:

  "Honesty to an emperor from his assassin is like holding the sword by the blade instead of the handle. It can only hurt the assassin."

  Remo answered in Korean that he knew that passage, and that speaking honestly to Smith made working easier, not harder.

  Chiun answered that what might appear easier was always harder in the long run.

  Smith sat in the chilled living room of the resort villa with his briefcase on his lap, listening to Remo and Chiun babble on in Korean as though he weren't there. Voices rose and Smith realized that he was hearing an argument.

  He tried to interrupt, and both Chiun and Remo told him to wait a minute. When Remo and Chiun finally turned their heads away from each other in disgust, Smith said:

  "We have a problem. This little band of Indians has first defeated the sheriff's office, then the state police, and now the Oklahoma National Guard."

  "The Oklahoma National Guard is kind of the army, Little Father," Remo explained.

  "What would one expect from an army but to lose a battle?" said Chiun. "After all, Ferris wheels never lose battles."

  "They would if they were made in Korea," said Remo.

  "Don't argue in front of the emperor," said Chiun, resorting to Korean.

  "I'm not arguing," said Remo in English.

  "I think you are, Remo," said Smith.

  "When I want your opinion I'll ask for it, Smitty. This is personal."

  "How can you speak to a fool of an emperor like that?" asked Chiun in Korean. "You're a bigger fool. You're acting white. Whatever crosses your mind comes out your lips."

  "It's called honesty, Little Father," said Remo in English.

  "It's awfully confusing to hear only one side of an argument," said Smith.

  "The confusion is ours, O gracious Emperor, that we should bring any unpleasantness before you who are serenity in yourself."

  "Well, thank you. I certainly wouldn't want to get involved in anything personal between you two. But we have a problem. The Indian band has become an army. It has moved all the way up into the Dakotas and now is camped at the Little Big Horn, the site of the great Indian victory over George Armstrong Custer."

  "The massacre," said Remo.

  "Armies always massacre. Do you think they could assassinate?" asked Chiun, vindicated. "It takes an assassin to assassinate."

  "Precisely," said Smith. "Therefore we'd like this army to be immobilized by the removal of its leader, who obviously is the guiding force behind this. It's like an army out of nowhere, a powerful, well-trained army with a spirit for battle rarely seen nowadays."

  "You have decided well, O Emperor Smith. For a kingdom with a good assassin needs a small army, and a kingdom with great assassins may need no army at all."

  At this point Chiun suggested that perhaps the new tribute for Sinanju should be based on a percentage of America's defense budget. He had heard it was over one trillion a year, and that was outrageous when one considered that for, say, four hundred billion dollars a year, a mere four hundred billion, Smith could be talking about a serious and major upgrade of assassin services-not that Smith and America weren't getting the absolute best as it was now.

  "He's not going to shell out four hundred billion dollars, Little Father; besides, what would you do with it?"

  "Replace the empty coffers that so disgrace my Masterhood. No other Master of Sinanju has lost so much as a copper coin, while I, because of my negligence with my pupil, because I have taken it upon myself to bring a white into the House of Sinanju, now am left like a pauper with bare treasury."

  "Hey, stop this 'white' stuff. I know how the treasure was lost. The North Korean intelligence agency tried to trick you into killing for it, and stole the treasure so they could feed it back to you as th
ough they were discovering a trail from a thief. I know what happened. It was Koreans, not whites, who stole it."

  "A single misguided fool. One rotten apple does not a barrel make."

  "He killed himself so you'd never find it. Talk of rotten," said Remo. They were both talking in Korean now and Smith threw up his hands and asked them to excuse him. The last words he heard were in English, with Chiun promising to take apart the Indian army in a way that would glorify Smith, and Remo promising that the leaders would be out of the way in no time.

  Which was what Smith had come for.

  * * *

  Miles and miles of trucks and guns waited outside the Little Big Horn for the attack to begin. Only this time it was the American army that had the Indians surrounded instead of vice versa, and General William Tecumseh Buel waited for his orders from Washington.

  It was ironic, he thought, that at this new battle of the Little Big Horn there would be no horses. His father was an old cavalrvman-though even in his father's time cavalry had meant tanks, not horses-and his grandfather and great-grandfathers were also. In fact, the first Buel to ride in blue for the USA was killed at the Little Big Horn. And while General Buel publicly affirmed he wished no injury to the innocents, in his heart he could not help thinking: Now we even the score.

  He set up his heavy artillery behind his half-tracks, which were behind his tanks. The tanks would lead. The infantry would foilow. And if the Ojupa wanted to fight it out, well then, there was nothing he could do about it. They would fight. And they would die. Just the night before he had left two roads open so that young Indians, anticipating the glory of finally defeating the white armies, could join the Ojupa.

  He had heard their drums and chants all night. He had heard rumors that they had a great new force with them, that finally the great spirits were with them and they could crush the white man once and for all.