Cold Warrior td-91

by Warren Murphy

  "Bulldookey," said Remo, sending the car shooting ahead. "There's gotta be at least one white guy in Miami. Somewhere."

  They found one after another ten minutes of circling what seemed to be a very large Spanish area.

  The white man was definitely white. He was also definitely scared. He was outrunning the pack pursuing him, even though he was carrying a middle-aged paunch and his pursuers all wore Reebok Pumps and the tight flesh of teenagers.

  Remo cut in front of the pursuers and got out.

  "Habla espanol?" he demanded.

  "Tu madre!" someone snarled, drawing a switchblade. It snicked into the extended position and the wielder brought it down to the level of his belt, driving in for Remo's stomach.

  Remo smiled. He grabbed the attacker's wrist and made a sudden complicated motion with his other hand. His wrist drove the knife into the stomach of the one attacking him.

  The attacker felt the dull pain that he knew was associated with being stabbed. It was not the first time. His bare brown arms were scarred and scatched from previous encounters with assorted blades and straight razors.

  But this time was different. This time, he was holding the hilt of the blade that had been pushed into his vitals. Pushed deep, he saw with widening eyes.

  "Dios mio!" he moaned. "Compadres! Come to my aid!"

  His compadres backed off and withdrew assorted ordnance. Safeties clicked off. It was about to get serious.

  Seeing this, Remo released the man's wrist.

  The erstwhile attacker did not release the knife stuck in his own stomach. He was streetwise, and knew that to extract the blade would be to bleed profusely. So he held on to the knife for dear life-even when he found himself suddenly airborne in the direction of his amigos.

  A few upward-pointing gun muzzles went pop-pop-pop! before they fell from surprised hands and Remo stepped into their midst.

  He didn't waste time. He used the heel of his shoe to crush the weapons flat, driving his handmade sole home so fast and so hard the metal barrels went flat. His shoe leather didn't pick up so much as a nick.

  Technique.

  Remo tapped the toe of his right shoe against jaws, and the squirming pile of Hispanics became a slumbering pile of Hispanics. When the last one had gone quiet, the man who had stabbed himself lost his grip. The switchblade fell loose from his stomach-showing that it was in the folded position after all.

  When the man woke up he would think it was a miracle, and that God had spared him for reasons unclear.

  It would never occur to him, nor would he have believed it if it had, that his mysterious attacker had simultaneously folded the blade shut while driving the blunt hilt into his stomach. The pain had been identical to being stabbed.

  Whistling, Remo returned to the car.

  The Master of Sinanju was comforting the panting middle-aged man.

  "What happened, pal?" Remo asked, as he slid behind the wheel.

  "I . . . I had a flat. I got out to fix it. Those hoods tried to jump me."

  "Next time, try not to get a flat in Little Havana."

  "Little Havana? What are you talking about? This is Little Managua."

  "Little Managua? I never heard of Little Managua."

  "It's new," the man said.

  "Okay. It's new. So where's Little Havana?"

  "Give me a ride to a safe part of town and I'll tell you."

  "Sounds fair enough," said Remo. "Hop in."

  The man got in back. Remo drove off, asking, "Any place in particular you want to go?"

  "The airport. I've had enough of this town."

  "I know that feeling."

  They drove to the airport, and as Remo dropped the man off at the terminal he asked, "So where's Little Havana?"

  "It used to be all around Southwest 8th Street."

  "So where is it now?"

  "Now," the man said, as he turned into the terminal, "it's practically all of Miami."

  "He was very helpful," Chiun said smugly after the man had gone.

  "Don't rub it in," growled Remo, putting the airport behind them.

  They took the Palmetto Expressway back to town and turned off on the Tamiami Trail. Soon, they were cruising along Southwest 8th Street. It looked amazingly like Little Managua. Remo couldn't tell the difference.

  He tried asking passersby the question that he had been asking half the night.

  "Is this Little Havana?"

  People shrugged and said "Que?" or sometimes "Quien?" And Remo fumed.

  "You could lend a hand, you know," Remo said pointedly to the passive Master of Sinanju.

  "Of course. Que means 'what' and quien means 'who.' "

  "Har de bar har har," muttered Remo.

  His dark eyes alighted on a neon bar sign: PEPE'S. "When in doubt, ask a barman," he said jauntily.

  Remo parked, got out, and went into the bar. Chiun followed silently.

  It was a brightly lit saloon. Jukebox salsa music filled the air. Remo sauntered up to the bar, ignoring the hard stares at his white skin.

  "I'm looking for Little Havana," he said.

  "Por que?"

  "He means 'why,' not 'what,' " Chiun whispered.

  "Because," Remo answered, "I'm looking for Leopoldo Zorilla."

  "I have not heard of this man," said the bartender, elaborately polishing his countertop. Too elaborately, Remo thought.

  "I hear he lives around here," Remo said, laying down a twenty.

  Disdainfully, the bartender swiped it away with his rag. "Senor, you perhaps hear wrong."

  Remo looked around. Dark, liquid eyes glowered at him. He felt like Chuck Connors in a Rifleman rerun.

  "Why do I get the feeling that we're being snowed?" he undertoned to the Master of Sinanju.

  "Because we are," said Chiun.

  "It would be good advice if you were to leave, senor," the bartender said pointedly.

  "That is good advice," Remo returned lightly. "Guess I'll just keep asking around until I find my man," he added in a loud voice.

  As they walked from the smoky bar, Remo and Chiun felt eyes on their backs. No one followed them out.

  "Where do we ask next?" asked Chiun, looking around suspiciously.

  "Nowhere," Remo said. "We just walk around." He started walking. Chiun followed.

  "What will that accomplish?"

  "Right now, that bartender is probably calling Zorilla or someone connected with Zorilla. We won't have to find him. His people will find us."

  It took less than fifteen minutes.

  They were about to cross a busy intersection when a large white Cadillac pulled in front of them. A black Buick slid in behind them.

  "Jackpot," Remo whispered.

  Doors popped open and bulky-shouldered men emerged, wielding short-barreled Uzis and other easily concealable automatic weapons.

  "Jou seek Zorilla?" one demanded. He wore a plain gold hoop in one ear, making him resemble a well-tanned buccaneer.

  "Word gets around," Remo said casually.

  "Why jou seek Zorilla?"

  "Only Zorilla gets to ask me that question."

  Hard eyes looked them over carefully. Remo folded his arms. In his T-shirt and tight chinos, it was obvious that he carried no weapon larger than a concealed blade or flat .22 pistol.

  The Master of Sinanju had been walking with his hands tucked out of sight in the joined sleeves of his ebony kimono. He was invited to bring his hands into plain view.

  Chiun replied with a single pungent Spanish word that stung the faces of the men aiming at him.

  Harsh Spanish spilled out. Chiun lashed back with short, declarative sentences.

  Uneasily, the men looked to one another. Finally, in English, one said, "Jou will come with us."

  "Suits us," Remo said easily.

  They were herded into the back of the Cadillac. A man took the wheel and another, the front passenger seat. The latter turned in his seat and pointed his Uzi so that Remo and Chiun were covered.

  "No f
onny business," he warned. "Or pop-pop-pop-pop. "

  Remo smiled back at him. "Sounds pretty brave, coming from a guy who took the death seat."

  The Cadillac peeled off. The black Buick followed. Remo settled down for the ride.

  "What did you tell them, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju as the ride lengthened. "I called them motherless sons of worthless fathers." "I've heard wore." "But they have not," Chiun said smugly.

  Chapter 8

  When Leopoldo Zorilla received the warning telephone call, he was drilling his soldiers in a remote corner of the Big Cypress Swamp. They were excellent soldiers-young, strong and fiercely willed. Destined to be liberators. They would form the nucleus of the New Cuban Army, and he was proud of them.

  Yet they also reminded Zorilla that, sadly, he was no longer the young man he once was.

  Not that Leopoldo Zorilla was old. He was, in truth, barely forty. But forty years of living on Castro-held Cuba had taken their toll on his erect body. There was not enough flesh on his bones, from improper diet, and his eyes were sunken. Even his mustache appeared sunken-the result of too much sugar and not enough meat and vegetables. The teeth he had retained were black with metal.

  He let the soldiers exhaust their weapons against the targets-staked dummies, each dressed in olivedrab that bulged at the belt line and each with a Castro beard adorning its blank, chubby face.

  "Fire above the beard!" he commanded. "Between the beard and the hat. That is your target. The flabby flesh between."

  The men reloaded their Belgian-made FAL rifles and fired again. Instantly, the blank white areas collected sprinklings of holes that, had any of the dummies been the true Maximum Leader, would have splashed his brains back out of his head and into the eternal night.

  An orderly came huffing up.

  "A telephone call, Comandante."

  Leopoldo Zorilla turned smartly, ever the military man. He had been a deputy air commander in the Cuban Air Force, and now he was a full commander in the army-in-training that would replace the Cuban Revolutionary Army.

  "Who is it?" he demanded.

  "It is Pepe. He says that two men seek you in Miami."

  "What men?"

  "I do not know, Comandante."

  "Carry on," he told the orderly, and stormed into the barracks building, a converted tobacco-drying shack in the sprawling tangle of swamp called Big Cypress.

  The cellular phone lay off the hook in his makeshift office.

  "Pepe," he said gruffly. "What is this about two men?"

  "They just left, Comandante. They ask for jou by name, but I tell them nothin'."

  "Who were they?"

  "An Anglo. The other was Asian. They were not dressed like FBI or any other government person I could name."

  Zorilla frowned. "Hmmm. Who might they be?"

  "They said they would comb Miami for jou, Comandante."

  "There is no need for them to go to that trouble," said Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla. "Have them brought here."

  "Is that wise?"

  "We are too close to B-Day to allow the authorities to interfere with us."

  "They did not look like authorities," Pepe pointed out.

  "All the better. Have them brought here. Now."

  "Si, Comandante."

  After Leopoldo Zorilla hung up, he unbuttoned the back pocket of his camouflage pants. He took out a sealed pack of chewing gum. It was decorated with the cartoon head of a mouse. The mouse reminded Zorilla of home. Even though it was an American mouse, TeleRebelde regularly showed his famous cartoons to all of Cuba. First by means of old preRevolution films, and later, as the technology changed, by downlinking transmissions from U.S. TV satellites. Fidel had boasted of his ability to pirate U.S. TV without subjecting Cubans to annoying commercials, but never mentioned that the people were forced to watch Soviet TV sets that often exploded without warning.

  He could remember how unhappy the copyright owners of the cartoon mouse had been. They explored every avenue of legal recourse open to them. But American lawyers were not welcome in the Cuban Revolutionary courts and they were reduced to sending impatient letters demanding payment, and warning of the accumulating charges that would be presented to the Cuban government if it ever rejoined the free world.

  Zorilla smiled at the memory. Now that the time approached, the copyright owners would finally collect. With interest.

  For now, he placed the pack of chicle in his blouse pocket where it would be handy. It promised to be a long night, and filled with uncertainties. With unknown snoopers coming, he might well need it.

  Leopoldo checked his watch. It was near eleven. Time for his injection.

  He cursed the business of the needle and what it contained, but there was no help for it. Years of living in Cuba had brought his once invincible body to this sad state of affairs.

  He opened a drawer and charged the needle from a stoppered bottle. He used a rubber band to block his arm veins. They bulged up blue and thick, and he discharged the contents of the needle into the most wormlike of them. He swabbed the pinprick wound with a bit of cotton dipped in alcohol.

  It stung. With the stinging, he lavishly cursed the Leader of the Revolution, who had made him so dependent on the needle.

  The prisoners arrived after midnight.

  Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla went out to greet them. He clasped his hands behind his back and addressed the pair.

  "You have sought me, and I stand before you now," he said simply.

  Then he got a close look at them. The Anglo appeared quite ordinary, except for the exceptional thickness of his wrists. He had a lean, hard look about him. His nationality was difficult to ascertain. The Mediterranean was stamped on his moderately handsome features and lurked in his dark eyes. But his skin was pale.

  There was, as he had been told, an Asian. He had not been told the Asian's age. He looked .. . advanced. Surely, Zorilla thought, these were not agents of any government who disagreed with what had been planned.

  "Who are you two men?" he demanded, as they stood before him.

  Weapons were trained on them. The pair seemed oblivious to their dark-mawed threat.

  The Anglo looked around. He saw the dummies on the posts, with their blank white faces spilling cotton stuffing like bleached brain matter.

  "Looks like we've found our Cuban invasion force," he remarked to his Asian companion.

  "For once," the other murmured, "you have hatched a plan that has worked." Then, looking at the uniform Zorilla wore, he asked, "What are you supposed to be?"

  Zorilla drew himself erect. "I am a soldier of the Americas!"

  The Anglo asked the Asian a foolish question. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  The Asian said, "He is a Spaniard. They are very proud. In the days of the Spanish kings, the soldiers boasted that they were soldiers of Spain. This one has fallen from that lofty perch, like a haughty eagle that has grown too fat for the branch, so now he is a mere soldier of this mongrel continent."

  "You insult me?" Zorilla demanded.

  "The uniform does that," the Asian sniffed.

  "Who sent you to seek me?" Zorilla asked tightly.

  "Uncle Sam," replied the Anglo with cool insolence.

  Leopoldo Zorilla blinked. "Truly?" he asked.

  "Definitely," the Anglo said.

  "Por que?"

  "That means, 'Why?' " interjected the Asian.

  "Because he's not happy with the way things are going down Havana way, that's why," said the Anglo.

  Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla then lost command of himself.

  "It was unforeseen, what happened!" he said quickly. "Our scouts landed with the dawn, when the sentries are less alert. Nevertheless, they were captured. It was regrettable. We did not know that Fidel would respond so harshly. But that is the nature of the man. Please tell Uncle Sam for me that Ultima Hora remains firmly on the agreed-upon timetable."

  The Anglo took this with less grace than Comandante Zorilla expected.<
br />
  He and the Asian exchanged blank looks, and then the Anglo said, "You telling me that Uncle Sam put you up to this?"

  "You know this. For he sent you."

  "Yeah, but the Uncle Sam who sent me didn't know anything about any Cuban operation," the Anglo insisted.

  "He did not?"

  "In fact, he specifically asked me to find out who was behind the operation."

  "Uncle Sam asked this of you?" asked Zorilla.

  "Maybe it was a different Uncle Sam," the Anglo offered.

  "What other Uncle Sam is there?" Zorilla shot back.

  "Good point," said the Anglo, frowning. "I know of just the one."

  Comandante Zorilla grew concerned.

  "What is your name?" he demanded.

  "Call me Remo."

  "Ah, Remo. A good Spanish name."

  "It is?" the one called Remo said, surprised.

  "It means 'oar,' " the Asian whispered.

  "It does?" Remo said, astonished.

  The Asian nodded sagely. "In Italian, as well."

  "Who would name his son 'Oar'?" Remo wanted to know.

  "A parent who would then leave his son on a doorstep," Chiun countered.

  "You leave my parents out of this!"

  "Why not? They left you out of their lives."

  Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla looked to his men, who held their FAL rifles on the bickering pair. They shrugged, as if to say, "We do not understand these strange ones, either."

  Zorilla shrugged in reply. He listened as the argument grew loud. Loud and harsh on the Anglo's side, and loud and squeaky on the Asian's. Zorilla studied them carefully. These men had said they had been sent by Uncle Sam, but they were not dressed in the business suits of the agents of Uncle Sam. They were cool, nearly oblivious to the threat of the weapons arrayed around them. Perhaps they were stupid, Zorilla thought.

  Then, as the argument lapsed into a tongue Zorilla neither recognized nor understood, he began to wonder if it was possible they were not who they claimed to be.

  "You will cease this noise!" he thundered.

  The argument went on.

  "Hombres! Quiet them!"

  The rifle barrels were poked between the men, as if to separate them. The pair argued on, unconcerned.

  Then the rifles were used to prod the two arguing ones.