An Old Fashioned War td-68

by Warren Murphy

  And Chiun never stopped tiring of telling him that if he did not learn Sinanju whole he did not know Sinanju. And this meant reverence for the lost treasures as well as the histories. But this admonition was useless after Remo had made the last passage and become himself a Master of Smanju.

  For Chiun it meant he could no longer threaten Remo by telling him that if he did not do something, he would never become a Master.

  Because now he was. And thus on that hot summer day, Remo and Chiun, two Masters of Sinanju, walked along the prairieland toward the Little Big Horn, ready to stop the second battle there between the U.S. Army and American Indians.

  And no one noticed that the two men strolling along under the sun did not sweat, nor did they kick up dust under their feet. And no one noticed that they seemed remarkably unaffected by warnings from braves with guns.

  They did not notice these things until it was too late to notice, and then they noticed nothing. A platoon of machine-gunners from an eastern tribe lay forever in the land that once belonged to the Sioux. Cannoneers from Minnesota reservations lay draped over the barrels of the guns they had learned to use only that morning.

  Right up the organization created by the military genius of Little Elk moved Remo and Chiun, until they found a long flatbed truck with many antennae sticking out of it, and several men squatting over maps nearby. Only one was out of uniform. He wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase, and every once in a while the men in the new Ojupa uniform, deerskins, would turn to him with a question. And he would answer it.

  They called him Mr. Arieson.

  "That's our man," said Remo. There were only a few guards protecting the command group. But even if there were many, it wouldn't matter.

  It would not be too hard to move in, take out the leader, perhaps keep the subordinates for a while in some safe place like a locked truck or one of the manned vehicles preparing for this war, and let the army disintegrate into an aimless mob.

  Then the remnants could be handled by social workers and sheriffs.

  Remo ambled toward the group whistling a tune from a Walt Disney film he liked, the words to which he remembered only randomly, but it was a cheery little thing about going off to work.

  He noticed Chiun was not with him, and assumed this was because of Chiun's distaste for fighting soldiers. But then he heard Chiun's voice calling after him, saying what Remo had never heard before.

  "It won't work. Come back. Let us return to Sinanju. The time to wait is at hand. Let the world go crazy."

  "What're you talking about?" laughed Remo.

  "You won't be able to do what you want," said Chiun. Remo did not even turn around.

  "See you when I'm done."

  "You won't be," said Chiun.

  Remo whistled ". . . it's off to work we go" as the first guards threw up their hands, warning him to halt, and lowered the automatic weapons as a sign of what would happen to him if he didn't.

  He spun them backward, sweeping his palms upward, bowling them into the dust, and walking on. He took a bayonet charge and kept moving. The last two guards protecting headquarters got off a few shots, and Remo slapped their guns away from them, catching the weapons as they fell and never breaking stride until he walked into the command council of the new Indian army, headed by the men now known as the fearless Ojupa.

  He dropped the guns on the map. That gave the kneeling men something to do. Then he went for the man with the thick neck in the three-piece suit. Remo noticed there was no perspiration on the man's forehead, although he was out in the sun.

  Was that what Chiun meant by his work being useless, that he had spotted something in this man that showed he knew Sinanju?

  But why wouldn't Remo spot it?

  Remo did not lunge with a simple stroke. He approached as though offering his own body as a target, but in reality he wanted to make the man commit to a thrust so Remo would see how he moved.

  But the man didn't move. He didn't even exhale properly. His eyes seemed to burn, and he was laughing.

  To Little Elk and Running Deere and the rest of the commanders of the new Indian army, it looked like some weirdo had startled them by throwing guns on their maps and then walked over to Mr. Arieson and leaned backward.

  They looked up to see how he had gotten through their defenses. Where were their guards? A quick glance at the strewn bodies on the dusty grasslands told them.

  Running Deere, now always ready for action, always ready to charge, took his own sidearm and got off a shot to the stranger's head. Apparently the weapon misfired, because while there was noise and smoke, the bullet didn't strike anything. He fixed again. And missed again.

  The stranger moved as though segments of time disappeared. Now he was leaning backward and now he was between Running Deere and Mr. Arieson. And before he could think, Running Deere got off two more rounds. And they missed the stranger and they missed Mr. Arieson.

  Only Remo and Mr. Arieson knew they hadn't missed. Remo had lured the shot to see what effect a bullet would have on the man who did not sweat or move in to deliver a sucker punch. The sidearm was a big, slow weapon. There was the pulling of the trigger, the aim of the barrel, the explosion, Remo dropping beneath the line of the bullet and then watching it go past. Both of the bullets landed in a hillock three-quarters of a mile away, shattering a rock. Both of them went through the third button of the vest of Mr. Arieson.

  Mr. Arieson had not even bothered to dodge.

  He did not wear armor plating. And he was not affected by missiles. Remo fanned the ground, first with little motions of his flat palm against the dry dust, then faster, feeling the air as hard as wood paddles, compressing it with a swooshing sound until in brown fury the dust exploded into a dry storm.

  Grass was blown out of the dirt. And still Mr. Arieson did not move.

  Running Deere went at the stranger with his hands. Running Deere kept going, but Remo kept the hands. "I think I know who you are," said Mr. Arieson, "but you're white. I've never seen moves like that from a white man."

  "Who are you?"

  "I believe I am your enemy," said Mr. Arieson. Just on the chance that it might work, having tried several things that didn't, Remo threw a stiff finger into the right eye of Mr. Arieson.

  And this time the dust came back at him in the form of smoke, like a campfire with strange, sweet smells.

  And Mr. Arieson was gone.

  So it had worked. What had worked, Remo was not sure. But something had worked. Mr. Arieson, the leader of this army, was gone. And now Remo could turn to the rest of the command.

  "Well, fellas, who's for dying today?"

  Little Elk went for one of the guns Remo had dropped on the map. Remo snapped it between his fingers like a twig.

  Three of the other leaders went for their weapons, but Little Elk, always one step ahead of everyone else, ordered them to stop.

  "It's over," he said. "Mr. Arieson is gone."

  And then from nowhere, from the dust and from the lingering sweet-smelling smoke, came Mr. Arieson's voice. And it was laughing.

  "Only the dead have seen the last of me," he said. On that day, Running Deere died from his wounds. General William Tecumseh Buel lost his chance to fight the second battle of the Little Big Horn, and Remo Williams notified Harold W. Smith, head of CURE, that after more than two decades, he was quitting the organization.

  "Why? Where are you going? What are you going to do? Has something happened?"

  "Yeah. Something has happened," said Remo. "Something bad."

  "What?"

  "I finally discovered that I'm useless. I've got to do something first."

  "What?"

  "I'm not sure. But I met something today that I should have known. I'm helpless. For the first time since training, I am absolutely helpless."

  "But you put down the revolt."

  "I've got a mystery here, little Smitty, and until I unravel it I won't be any good to you, myself, or anyone else."

  "The mystery is wh
at you're talking about."

  "It wouldn't do any good to explain it, Smitty."

  "Why not?" asked Smith.

  "Because you're not from Sinanju and you've never read the scrolls."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To Sinanju."

  "Why?"

  "Because Chiun is there."

  "Has he quit?"

  "I think so. And so have I. So long, Smitty."

  The line went out in the secured offices of Harold W. Smith, in the gigantic cover installation known as Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound.

  Quitting? thought Smith. So that's what Chiun's message was about. The way Chiun had explained it, it sounded like he was going to give an even greater service to Smith, but was just taking some time to improve himself.

  But hearing from Remo, Smith now understood that the flowery tributes to Smith's wisdom and genius, the promise of a return with stronger and better service, were really Chiun's way of saying good-bye.

  What was frightening now was not any Indian rebellion, but the great question of how it could get started so easily, and why the normal protective measures of society seemed so pathetically useless.

  The United States Army report was alarming. The Ojupa were just a simple group of men who, in a flash, turned into one of the great little armies of mankind, with a fighting spirit rarely seen on earth.

  They had developed tactics on the spot that could rival Hannibal or Napoleon. They showed a fighting elan that the finest troops would envy.

  But army analysts could not discover why this seemingly normal group of men could become so good, so quickly. The conclusion of this report was that if the same sort of situation turned up elsewhere in the world, neither the U.S. Army nor any other army could handle it. The report also went to the President of the United States, who told his Secretary of Defense not to worry because he had something special that could take care of it like it did at Little Big Horn.

  He didn't know he not only didn't have those services, but the world was going to see those same tactics again very soon. Only the dead had seen the last of Mr. Arieson.

  Chapter 4

  General Mohammed Moomas, first Democratic People's Leader for Life, inventor of People's Democratic Islamic Revolutionary Social Justice-by which the nation Idra sought not only to live the perfect social and religious life but also to bring compassion, love, and justice to the rest of the world-had a problem.

  General Moomas always had a problem. His tiny North African country floating on a sea of oil had spent over forty-two billion dollars fighting imperialism, Zionism, capitalist oppression, atheism, and man's general inhumanity to man, and all he had to show for it were thirteen thousand random murders, a half-dozen plane hijackings, four poisonings, fifty-seven kidnappings, twelve hundred tortures, and the unflagging support of several American columnists, especially when America tried to do something about it.

  General Moomas had operated freely for years, financing any revolutionary group willing to throw a hand grenade into a hospital and then claim a victory for social justice. There were always comrade citizens unwilling to accept the total freedom, total joy, total growth and liberty of the Islamic Democratic People's Socialist Revolutionary Nation of Idra. This was understandable. Satan, Zionism, imperialism, capitalism, and oppression could reach the hearts of the innocent and foolish, and the General had to face the evil. But given a chance, and with the help of whips, chains, electric shocks, and the old-fashioned holy sword cutting pieces off their persons, many people renounced their evil ways.

  The truly obstinate, of course, had to be killed. Thus no one spoke a word of unhappiness in General Mohammed Moomas' country:

  All this changed when American bombers flew in low over the Mediterranean, outflew the General's latest Soviet planes, penetrated his latest Soviet missiles, and nearly destroyed his home.

  For the first time, the people of Idra learned they might have to pay for their leadership in the revolutionary world. Someone out there was shooting back, and shooting at them.

  Several colonels debated overthrowing the General. After all, oil prices were falling, and like so many third-world nations, they produced nothing else of benefit to anyone else on the planet. There was no industry in Idra. There was a steel mill once. They had brought it from Czechoslovakia. The steel would build homes and hospitals, tanks and guns. But when the Czechs left, it just rusted away, like all the weapons the Idrans bought from outside.

  Thus, while there were demonstrations in London and Europe over the American bombing, and while several American columnists were screaming daily that bombing Idra did no good-it could not stop terrorism, they said-the General was almost overthrown.

  A group of colonels stormed to his desert sanctuary. They all drove in their Mercedes-Benz sedans. There were fifteen thousand colonels in the Idra Islamic Revolutionary Socialist Defense Forces, roughly a third of all the military. The rest were mostly generals. But if one was a general he didn't have to leave his French-built air-conditioned home. Therefore the colonels did all the dirty work, like driving out to the desert to discuss the basic issue of Idra-what had they gotten for their oil money but American bombs?

  General Moomas, a handsome man with curly hair and dark penetrating eyes, had not become a revolutionary leader without being able to handle a mob. He invited the entire fifteen thousand colonels to a traditional bedouin feast of lamb, so that from his hand to their mouths would only be sustenance.

  General Moomas knew he could provide this traditional feast. A ship from New Zealand had docked just three weeks before and that meant plenty of lamb. Considering Korean stevedores had just arrived to offload, and an army of French cooks had just signed on for the Idra marines, and Italian mechanics were always on hand for the trucks, this traditional feast was now possible.

  In years past, Idra women could outcook an army of Paris chefs, using only the meager fare of the Idra desert. But their skills had been lost during modernization, when they were assigned to learn computers and physics and all the things the Idra men found to be beyond them and assigned elsewhere to another gender. Since there was only one other gender in Idra, cooking fell, like all the dirty work for thousands of years, on the women, some of whom actually did become proficient in those subjects and promptly left for London, where they could find work other than posing for news cameras to show how modern Idra was.

  Now, as the fragrant aroma of lamb roasting in a thousand imported ovens filled the cold night desert air, General Moomas confronted his brethren to offer an accounting of where all the billions had gone.

  "I know I promised you the best air defense money could buy, and look now, American navy air has penetrated those defenses. But I ask you, who would have thought the Russians would flee their posts in our hour of need?"

  "I would," said one colonel.

  "Then would you have operated the missiles?" asked the General.

  There was silence in the desert. Only the mutterings of the French cooks preparing the traditional sweet desserts could be heard.

  The desserts were never as good as their wives and mothers used to make, but the French came as close to Idran cooking as Moroccans or Syrians.

  Another colonel rose, and this one held a submachine gun. He did not blanch at the guards who outnumbered him and obviously had him in their sights.

  "I am a Moslem," he said. "I obey. I obey the teachings of the Koran. I believe there is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet. I do not believe in killing innocents. I do believe in fighting evil and I do not consider a bomb in a car that will kill any passerby a heroic act of virtue. I thought throwing a man in a wheelchair off a ship was cowardly and disgraceful. If that helps the Palestinian cause, to hell with the Palestinian cause."

  There was grumbling like a low volcano from the fifteen thousand that night. Fingers on the triggers of guns aimed at his head closed ever so slightly. If the General hiccuped, the colonel would be dead. General Moomas raised a hand to silence his offi
cers.

  "What is bad about killing a crippled Jew who was a Zionist anyway because he was headed for Israel? It is no crime to kill Zionists."

  "It is a dishonor to kill the defenseless," said the colonel.

  And here the General laughed. He ordered his aides to bring him American newspapers, and taking one from Washington and one from Boston, read the words of columnists who, every time a pregnant woman was put on board a plane with a bomb to blow herself and the passengers out of the sky, every time a crippled man was thrown off a liner along with his wheelchair, every time someone set off a bomb in a nightclub, or hospital, or nursery in honor of the Palestinian cause, these columnists blamed Israel.

  "Only when the root cause of terrorism is erased will terrorism end, and the root cause is the lack of a Palestinian homeland."

  There was applause that night in the desert encampment, but the lone colonel continued to speak out.

  "There was killing of innocents and kidnapping of innocents long before there was talk of a Palestinian state. Who here thinks it is really honorable to kill women and children and old men to achieve your ends? I am for obliterating Israel. But not for any Palestinians-for us. They have humiliated us in battle. I say we should humiliate them the same way. Not kill old men in wheelchairs and women pregnant with our babies."

  "But in the great universities there are many teaching that we are in the right, that the West is decadent and must be overthrown by revolution," said the General. "We are winning the war of propaganda."

  "Which is what? What others think of us?"

  "Soon, America will turn against Israel, and without American arms, Israel will be weak, and then we shall destroy the Zionist entity."

  "They survived all our armies at their birth. They were weak then."

  "And so were we. But when we destroy Israel, we shall ride into Jerusalem in glory."

  "Who here believes that?" yelled out the young colonel. "Who here really believes we are going to do that? Who here believes we will even fight another war against Israel? I do not care about Israel. Let it burn in hell. I do not care about the Palestinians, as I know you, my brothers, care not also. What I do care about is us. We were once a proud and great people. Our armies fought with honor. We won great victories. We could show mercy because we were strong. We were a haven for people because we were tolerant of those who followed the Book. What have we become now, killers of old men? We think it is all right because some Americans who hate their own country and their allies think any abomination is acceptable.