Cold Warrior td-91

by Warren Murphy

  Harold Smith stared at these a long time without speaking a word.

  "You okay, Smitty?" Remo asked, noticing Smith's uncharacteristic stillness.

  When Harold Smith turned around, his light-washed face was ghastly, his eyes sunken. "Remo," he croaked. "At any time during this operation, did you happen to encounter an individual who in any way resembled Sam Beasley?"

  "Sure," Remo said brightly. "But I wouldn't call him an 'individual.' He was a marionette."

  Smith asked in a dead voice, "A what?"

  "A robot. You know, one of those animatronic things."

  Smith let out a leaky sigh of relief, closing his eyes as if he had narrowly avoided walking off a cliff.

  "It was no machine," Chiun inserted testily. "It was Uncle Sam himself."

  At that, Harold W. Smith fainted dead away.

  Chapter 22

  Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta was nervous. He did not understand what was happening. All he knew was that he was being whisked into the pages of history. To his destiny.

  It had begun with a phone call. From the man known as "Maus," to whom he had reported his strange encounter with the thick-wristed Anglo and the elderly North Korean less than a day before.

  "Be ready to move," Maus had said.

  "Move?"

  "Today is Beasley Day."

  "I do not understand. What is this 'Beasley Day'?"

  "You have loaned us your Ultima Hora."

  "I loaned my soldados to Zorilla, the patriot."

  "Zorilla is dead."

  "It is sad. He was muy Cubismo, much Cuban."

  "But you are more Cuban," the flattering voice had said. "You are Cubissimo, the most Cuban."

  At that, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta knew he was speaking to a comrade-in-arms.

  The car whisked him to a pier, where a great cruise ship waited. The name on the stern was a well-known one. It read: BEASLEY ADVENTURE.

  They took him up the gangplank, and two men in uniform escorted him to a stateroom. Their uniforms were white. Not army. Not navy. They bore simple insignia: three black circles in a white badge.

  Somehow the men looked familiar.

  "Do I not know jou?" he asked them.

  "Si, " said one. And then Revuelta knew. They were Ultima Hora. His Ultima Hora. But they acted as if they no longer served him, but another.

  "To whom are jou taking me?" he asked.

  "To the Director."

  "Director who?" he demanded, thinking that the CIA was run by a director. Perhaps they were secretly on his side, after all.

  To that, they made no reply. Stone-faced, they escorted him to a cabin amidships and remained outside as he entered. It was incredibly hot in the cabin.

  There was a figure seated behind a modest desk. He sat with his back to Revuelta, staring out a porthole at the blue sky. He wore some kind of a top hat. It looked black in silhouette.

  "You are Osvaldo Revuelta?" the voice asked in a gravelly tone.

  "Si."

  "Soon to be President of Cuba?"

  "Who says this?" Revuelta snapped.

  The figure turned in the creaky chair. His whitemustached face came into the light. The man was old, his face a fist of kindly wrinkles. Osvaldo Revuelta noticed that he wore a white eye patch. He also wore a tall hat of red and white vertical stripes.

  It was not a face Revuelta immediately would have recognized. Except that in the center of the eye patch was a black insignia. Three joined circles. The same as on the crew's uniforms.

  That was all that was needed. "Jou are el Senor Uncle Sam!" Revuelta exploded. "But, Madre de Dios-jou are dead!"

  The man stood up and assumed a grandfatherly pose. He wore a long frock coat. The cut of the coat seemed ancient. It, too, partook of the style of the American flag, Revuelta saw.

  "You know," he said, in a chuckling tone that was at once professorial and folksy, "some people laughed when I broke ground for Beasleyland. But I knew what I was doing. I saw the future clearly. I knew what people want. They want escape. They want fantasy. And I gave it to them." He chuckled inwardly. "Simple as that. No secret to it."

  "I do not understand how jou cannot be dead," Revuelta said, dull-voiced.

  The old man went on, as if unhearing. "Vision. That's what it's all about. Vision. Take my work on radio-animatronics. Robots. An old idea. But I made it come to life. People thought I was cracked. 'Why spend the money?' they asked. 'Stick with rides,' they said. 'That's where the money is.' "

  The caricature of Uncle Sam paused, and fixed Osvaldo Revuelta with his single good eye.

  "You know who Paul Winchell is?" he asked.

  Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta shook his head no.

  "Ventriloquist. Used to be on TV. Had a dummy named Jerry something-or-other. Not the point. Winchell perfected a valve that to this day is used in artificial hearts. Not many people know this. Not many would believe it. But it's true."

  "Si, I have heard of this. But what does this mean?"

  The weird old man smiled under his frosty mustache. "I'm a futurist. Always have been. The problem with being a futurist is that you never live to see all your works bear fruit. So when they told me I had a bum ticker back in '65, I thought it was the end. But I wasn't about to give up. Not me. So I went to my Concepteers-that's what I call the people who work up my ideas-and put the problem to them. They're good people. At first, they wouldn't touch it. Out of our depth, they said. But when I fired the first few, the others got hopping. That was when I first heard the word 'cryogenics.' That's from the Latin. Means 'the science of super-cold applications.' They explained that if I was willing to be frozen alive in a liquid nitrogen bath, some day a cure for heart disease might be found, and I could be defrosted like a mackerel and fixed up good as new."

  The old man chuckled reflectively. "At first I told them they were crazy. I'd rather be dead. Then one of them happened to use the phrase 'suspended animation.' Well, that rang a bell with me, as you might expect. So I said, 'Tell me more.' The more I listened, the more it made sense. I liked the idea. It had vision. But I'm not a man to wait. I said, 'I'll go along, but you people have to pitch in. Do your part. I can't wait for science. I have plans.' Good thing, too, because I keeled over a year later. Massive coronary. I never knew what hit me."

  "Jou have been frozen all these jears?" Revuelta gasped.

  "You got it."

  "But-but there has been no cure for heart disease that I have ever heard of," Revuelta pointed out.

  The figure in the Uncle Sam outfit opened his coat and shirt with a single gesture, exposing a wrinkled, hairless chest and a long purple scar over his sternum. He clumped out from behind the desk and stood on an ornate silver peg leg that ended in a rubber cap.

  "Transplant?" Revuelta croaked.

  "Have a listen," said the old man. Revuelta made a face. "Come on, I don't bite!"

  Reluctantly, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta approached the odd figure. He placed one ear to the scarred chest.

  "I hear no beating," he said in a strange voice.

  "Animatronics," said the old man in a proud voice. "I own the world's first completely portable artificial ticker. They say it'll keep me going long past my hundredth birthday."

  Dr. Revuelta straightened.

  "Jou have an animatronic heart?" he gasped.

  "When Winchell finds out, he's going to hemorrhage through that stupid dummy's mouth."

  And Uncle Sam Beasley laughed his familiar grandfatherly laugh. But to Revuelta's ears, it sounded cracked.

  Chapter 23

  Harold Smith's eyes snapped awake. They looked stark as they flicked from the open face of Remo Williams to Chiun's stern visage.

  "You saw Sam Beasley?" he croaked.

  Remo shook his head. "A pirate. It only looked like Beasley. He had a peg leg, for crying out loud!"

  "No," Chiun insisted. "It was Beasley."

  "Bulldookey," Remo said.

  Smith said dully, "I fear Master Chiun is correct."

  "What?"
/>   "Help me to my feet," said Smith.

  Remo obliged. Smith wobbled unsteadily on his feet. He leaned against the stainless-steel cryogenic capsule uncertainly.

  "Are you okay, Smitty?" Remo asked worriedly.

  "Do you recall a popular story about Sam Beasley?" Smith asked in a dry croak.

  "That he drew all his own cartoons?"

  "He did," Chiun inserted. "Everyone knows this."

  "No. That upon his death the company had his body frozen in ice and preserved against the day a cure could be found for his failing heart."

  "Boy, I haven't heard that in a long time. That was a myth, wasn't it? People said he was entombed under Star Mountain."

  Smith looked upward. "Unless I miss my guess, we are under what remains of Star Mountain."

  Remo folded his lean arms. "So?"

  "Remo, I am leaning against a cryogenic chamber designed to store a single human body in suspended animation," Smith said.

  Remo's face acquired a strange expression. "Animation?"

  Smith nodded. "The sign on the door says 'Reanimation,' " he pointed out.

  Remo's eyes took on a look of deep horror. "You're not serious!"

  "Remo, how many trucks did you see evacuating this installation?"

  "For crying out loud!" Remo said plaintively. "This is Uncle Sam Beasley we're talking about!"

  "How many?" Smith repeated.

  "Six or seven."

  "Hmmm. How many Ultima Hora soldiers were killed in Big Cypress?"

  "Oh, twenty or so. Not a lot."

  Smith frowned. He returned to the Animation Room, Remo and Chiun in tow, and splashed the drawings with his fading penlight.

  "According to these," he said slowly, "a force of at least company strength is to be involved in the Zapata assault."

  "That's what, a hundred men?"

  "Exactly," said Smith, setting his briefcase on the tabletop model of Cuba. He flipped it open and lifted the receiver.

  "Mr. President," he said after a brief pause. "This is Smith. I am afraid I have some bad news."

  "Bad," groaned Remo in a sick voice. "This is terrible."

  "I told you so," said the Master of Sinanju tartly.

  But Remo Williams paid no heed. He was thinking that this wasn't over yet. He had wanted the guy who gave the orders to have Ultima Hora slaughtered. If Harold Smith was right, Remo was going to get his wish.

  Smith completed his call and faced them stonily.

  "The President agrees with my assessment of the situation."

  Remo swallowed. "Which is?"

  "You are to go to Guantanamo Naval Air Station. Immediately."

  "Where's that?" Remo wanted to know.

  "Cuba."

  "You're sending us to a Cuban air base?"

  "No, an American one."

  "Since when do we have an air base on Cuba?" Remo demanded.

  "Since 1903," Harold Smith said flatly.

  Guantanamo Naval Air Station sprawled on the tail of the alligator shape that was the island of Cuba. It was surrounded by anti-submarine nets on the Guantanamo Bay side, and electrified fences, guard towers, and the largest mine field ever laid on the landward perimeters.

  Hostile forces of the elite Cuban Frontier Brigade were picketed beyond the fence, always watching. Cuban aircraft buzzed this vast acreage daily. Other than by air or sea, the only way in or out was through a fenced-off corridor between the approximately fifty thousand antipersonnel mines.

  On this, the second day of the Cuban crisis, no one was walking the narrow enclosure.

  Navy Captain Bob Brown was explaining the crisis to his visitors as they stepped out of the C-130 cargo plane.

  "Fidel's gone too far this time," he said bitterly. "I've skippered this place ten years now. It's never been this bad. Never!"

  Remo looked past the airfield. "Gitmo"-as the captain had called it-was bigger than he'd imagined. It also looked pretty peaceful for a base that was, after all, in the middle of an enemy nation. He spotted a church steeple, nice homes-even the golden arches of a McDonald's.

  "I don't see any trouble," said Remo, as they climbed into a waiting jeep. The captain drove.

  "They blockaded our front gate!" he said savagely. "Nobody can go in or out. And we're on Water Condition Bravo."

  "How bad is that?"

  "How bad? I'll tell you how bad. The desalinization plant it on the fritz. There's been no water for the fairway for three weeks straight, and we're down to doing the wash on alternate days."

  "Fairway?"

  "We're blessed with an eighteen-holer. How do they expect us to defend democracy, if we can't break the monotony with a few rounds now and then?"

  "Listen Captain-"

  "Skipper. Call me Skipper. Everybody calls me Skipper."

  "Let's get back to the security problem," Remo said.

  "Problem? It's an unmitigated disaster! They've always allowed our Cuban help to pass through the front gate freely. The wash is not only backed up for lack of water, but we don't have anybody to do it." He plucked at his uniform. "Look at this. Wrinkled worse than my granny's face. And the fairway! The shade trees are dying. Ever try to play through eighteen holes without benefit of shade? It'll throw you off your game quicker than dysentery."

  Remo was sitting beside the captain. He used his foot to press the captain's boot onto the brake. The jeep lurched to a halt. Remo grabbed the captain by the throat and squeezed.

  "Listen," he bit out. "I'm only going to say this once. Never mind who we are. We represent the highest authorities. Got that? They sent us here to do a job. Out beyond the fence. Are you with me so far?"

  Remo allowed the man a sip of air. It went whistling in past his larynx and came out a strangled grunt.

  "I'll take that as a glimmer of understanding," said Remo. "Now, we don't have a lot of time. Take us to the entrance gate, and we'll leave you to your miserable existence."

  Navy Captain Bob Brown went pale. His eyes seemed to retreat into his head. Remo encouraged him with a squeeze, then released him.

  The captain got the jeep going. It went racing past a crushed-coral golf course dotted with wilting mango trees, toward a line of guard towers manned by sharpshooters. Beyond were purple mountains and scooting fluffy clouds.

  Moments later, the jeep pulled up at the inner-perimeter fence. There were triangular red signs that warned:

  DANGER/PELIGRO MINES/MINAS

  "I take it this is the famous minefield," Remo said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Don't 'sir' me. I'm a civilian." Remo spied a long thin dirt path through the field. Hurricane fences paralleled it.

  "That the way out?" he asked.

  "They've threatened to shoot anyone who sets foot on it," Captain Brown offered.

  "They say anything about walking through the minefield?"

  "No. But that's certain death."

  "Only if you step on a mine," said Remo. He turned in his seat and said, "Coming, Little Father?"

  The Master of Sinanju stepped from the vehicle. His face was tight.

  "I do not like this assignment."

  "You've been saying that all through the plane ride. Give it a rest."

  Captain Brown looked interested. "You guys here to smoke Castro by any chance?"

  "Hear hear," Chiun said.

  "He wishes," Remo grumbled. "But orders are different this time out. We gotta protect him."

  "From who?"

  "Believe me, you'll sleep better if you don't know."

  They started toward the minefield.

  The captain called after them, "Hey, good luck! This base may have its down side, but there's no drugs, no guns, no juvenile delinquency, and no crime. I'd hate to be evaced to the States. It's not safe up there."

  Chiun frowned. "I do not understand this lunacy." "What lunacy?" asked Remo, as they approached the minefield fence. "The lunacy of being sent to protect Castro, or the lunacy of the skipper back there?"

  "Both lunacies. If this
bearded tyrant rules this island, why does he suffer the presence of his enemies? And if he is so weak as to allow this, why does Emperor Smith not simply have us dispatch him?"

  "Politics are complicated."

  "But death is the great toppler of dynasties."

  They went to a gate in the minefield fence, and Remo sheared the padlock off with a sweep of his hand. He threw open the gate.

  "Ready?" Remo asked.

  Chiun nodded.

  They walked into the minefield.

  It was not as dangerous as it looked. For mines to be planted, soil has to be removed and repacked. No one who digs a hole and puts something in it ever gets all the soil back into the hole. That was certainly the case here. Rains had tamped down the loose soil around the mines. This wasn't noticeable to the naked eye, but as Remo and Chiun's feet inched through the minefield, their toes could feel the slight sponginess of the softer earth. Each time they encountered a spot of less resistance, they stepped around it.

  By meandering through the hard-packed ground surrounding the mines, they reached the outer fence. It hummed. Electrified.

  This presented a problem. Until Remo, using a spade-shaped hand, excavated a buried mine. He blew crumbs of moist soil off the top and placed it in a small depression the Master of Sinanju had cleared under the fence edge.

  Then they retreated to a safe distance and threw a rock.

  It struck the plunger. The mine made a surprisingly muffled boomlet . . . and there was a hole in the fence, like a torn sheet of paper.

  They slipped through this hole easily.

  Then the snipers of the Frontier Brigade, who had been watching in wide-eyed fascination, began to open fire.

  It was lucky they did so. The first bullets missed Remo and Chiun completely. But they triggered mines placed on the other side of the perimeter fence.

  "That idiot never said anything about another minefield!" Remo burst out.

  "Perhaps these are Cuban mines," said Chiun.

  A mine erupted a few yards in front of them, showering them with clods of dirt.

  "Great," muttered Remo. "We're sitting ducks."

  "Not if we keep our wits about us," said Chiun, bending down to scoop out a long-buried mine. It was gray, and shaped like a soup can with antennae.