Killer Chromosomes td-32

by Warren Murphy

  As Remo slept, the boat started and Sheila sped away, leaving behind the big boat she had used to escape from Folcroft, leaving it to drift aimlessly with the current through Long Island Sound.

  She turned due east and gave the boat full throttle. She roared through the night for the ninety-minute run to Bridgeport.

  Remo woke again when the boat stopped. He felt Sheila Feinberg's hands reach through the bars of the cage and clamp around his throat.

  She hissed. "Now, we can do this easy or we can do it hard. Easy is, you just be quiet and you can stay awake. Hard is, you make a sound and I put you back to sleep. But if I have to do it again, I'm going to leave you with some new scars."

  Remo opted for easy. Maybe if he caused her no trouble, she'd give him what he really wanted in life.

  A cigarette.

  Then a steak. Rare, with juice running out, the kind called black-and-blue he had once gotten in a restaurant in Weehawken, New Jersey.

  Remo remembered that steak for a moment, savoring its taste in his mind. Then he remembered where he was and who he was with and the idea of rare meat made him shudder.

  Chiun supervised as Smith removed the bodies from the hallway outside Remo's room, then went to his own room, refusing to talk to Smith. Smith was too busy to talk anyway. He went directly to his office.

  Smith's name was unknown in any government circle. In no Washington office did a picture of him hang on the wall, a photographic offering to protect the owner from lightning, flood and firing.

  But in his anonymous way, he commanded more powerful armies than any other man in America. More of the levers that turned the wheels of government were brought together in his office than anywhere else. Thousands of people were on his direct payroll. Thousands of others worked for other agencies, but their reports came to CURE, even though not one of them knew it and none would have obeyed a direct order from Smith if it had been hand-delivered by a marine regiment.

  The young president who had chosen Smith to head the secret organization, CURE, had selected wisely. He had picked a man to whom personal prestige and power meant nothing. He was interested only in enough power to do his job well. His character was constructed in such a way that he would never abuse that power. Now Smith was using that power. In minutes, military helicopters were crisscrossing Long Island Sound looking for a twenty-seven-foot Silverton with a Bimini bridge.

  Federal agents were soon watching bridges, runnels and toll booths between Rye, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. They had been told they were looking for a diplomat who had been abducted after being granted asylum in the United States. His name was secret but he had dark hair and eyes, high cheekbones, and very thick wrists. The rest was very hush-hush.

  Airport security forces and maritime inspectors at seaports all over the East were put on the alert for the same kind of man. All they knew was that it was important to find him.

  After putting all those forces to work, Smith sat in his office to wait He spun his chair around, looking out at the waters of Long Island Sound. He was not too confident because government was like the water at which he stared. The water's action could be predicted, because its ebb and flow was on its own schedule and its own clock. But control it?

  It was that way with government. Sometimes you could predict its flow but only a fool believed he could control it. Just as the waters of the Sound. They had come and gone for hundreds and thousands of years. Hundreds and thousands of years from now, someone else would be sitting in Smith's chair, looking out at the waters. They would still be moving in their own rhythm, in their own time.

  The telephone rang. It was the wrong phone and wasn't the call for which Smith had hoped. "Yes, Mr President," he said

  "I didn't think I'd be making any more calls to you," the President said, "but just what the hell is going on?"

  "What do you mean, sir?" Smith asked.

  "I'm getting reports. It seems like this whole peckerheaded government has gone on some kind of alert. Are you responsible for that?"

  "Yes, sir, I am."

  "Why, when you're supposed to be doing something about that Boston mess?"

  "This is part of that Boston mess, as you put it," said Smith.

  "I thought your secret weapon would have resolved all that by now anyway." There was sarcasm in the President's soft, honey-coated voice.

  "That secret weapon has been injured and captured, sir," Smith said. "It is important that he be found before-"

  "Before he talks?" the President interrupted.

  "Yes. Or before he is killed."

  The President sighed. "If he talks, he brings down the government. Not just my administration, but the entire concept of constitutional government. I guess you know that."

  "I know that, sir."

  "How can we stop him from talking?"

  "By locating him."

  "And then what?"

  "If there is any danger of his revealing what he should not, I will handle it," Smith said.

  "How?" asked the President.

  "I don't think you'd want to know the answer to that, Mr. President," said Smith.

  The President, who understood full well that he had just heard a man promise to kill another if it became necessary for the country's best interests, said softly, "Oh. I'll leave it with you."

  "That would be best. We have destroyed some of the Boston creatures. That should reduce the death toll there."

  "Cutting back is small consolation. I don't think the American people are going to be comforted if I tell them we've managed to cut the murder rate from mutated people by sixty-seven percent. From six a day to two a day."

  "No, sir, I guess not. We are continuing to work on it," Smith said.

  "Good night," the President said, "When this is all over, assuming we survive, I think I would like to meet you."

  "Good night, sir," Smith said noncommittally.

  The next call was the one Smith wanted. A Coast Guard official, who thought he was talking to an FBI agent for Westchester County, reported a helicopter had found a twenty-nine-foot Silverton. It was empty and drifting through the Sound without lights. There was no one aboard.

  The owner was a New Jersey dentist who said he had sold the boat only eight hours earlier for twenty-seven thousand dollars. Cash. The buyer was a young man who wore a gold sunburst medallion around his neck.

  Smith thanked the man and hung up.

  That was that. A dead end. The man with the sunburst medallion had been one of the tiger people. Smith had shot him in the upstairs hallway outside Remo's room. That trail was cold and dead.

  Smith waited at his telephone for the rest of the night but it did not ring again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was still night when the small jet landed on a bumpy runway. After the plane had come to a full stop, Remo felt his cage being dragged to the cargo door, then dumped five feet to the ground.

  "Hey, goddammit, that hurt," Remo yelled. His voice echoed inside the cage, rebounding off the heavy black drapes.

  Then all was still until he heard the plane's motors start up again. The sound seemed to be right above his ears. At one time he had been able to block out noises, closing his ears the way other persons could close their eyes, but he could not do it now.

  The screeching wail of the engines continued, reverberating over his head, setting his teeth on edge, growing ever louder. Then, mercifully, he could hear the plane move away, lurching along the runway, its motors burned to full power. Remo could hear the plane taking off, vanishing in the distance.

  The night was still, except for the creaking of insects, who sounded as if they were holding a quorum call of all the bugs that ever lived.

  Remo wished he had a cigarette. The side curtain was lifted and tossed on top of the cage. Sheila Feinberg stood there, outside the bars, wearing shorts that barely covered her crotch and a matching khaki top stretched taut over her enormous breasts.

  "How are you doing?" she asked.

  "Fi
ne," Remo said through the bars. "Time really flies when you're having fun."

  "Do you want to get out of there?"

  "Either that or send me maid service. Whatever makes you happy."

  Sheila leaned on the bars of the cage.

  "Look. I think you know by now I can take you. If you remember that and don't mess around trying to escape, I'll let you out. But if you're going to be difficult you can stay in the cage. Your choice."

  "Let me out," Remo said.

  "All right. That's better all around," Sheila said.

  She fished a key from the pocket of her shorts, which Remo thought were too tight to allow the intromission of anything, and unlocked the padlock on the cage.

  Remo crawled onto the chipped and broken blacktop of the runway, rose to his feet, and stretched. "That feels good," he said.

  "All right. Let's go," Sheila said. She led the way to a jeep that was parked alongside the runway. Remo got into the passenger's side as she started the motor.

  "One thing," Remo said. "You are Sheila Feinberg, aren't you?"

  "That's right."

  "Your photographs don't do you justice," he said.

  "My pictures are of what I used to look like. That was a long time ago."

  Remo nodded. "And where are we?"

  "Dominican Republic. Eighteen miles outside of Santo Domingo."

  "You've brought me a long way just to kill me."

  "Who's going to kill you?" asked Sheila. I've got other plans for you." She turned to Remo and smiled, a smile full of teeth that did not make Remo feel at all good.

  "What plans?" Remo asked.

  "You're going into stud service," she said, and laughed aloud as she drove away from the runway onto a narrow dirt road, leading toward rolling hills a half-dozen miles away.

  Remo sat back to enjoy the ride, if he could. He still wished he had a cigarette.

  They stopped at a white farmhouse on the edge of a sugar cane field, the size of four, square, city blocks. The sugar had long ago been harvested. Most of the cane was cut and gone.

  Only little patches remained, sitting in the field like random tufts of hair on a bald man. The cut husks were dry. When Remo stepped on one, it crackled under his foot as if he had jumped into a pail of cellophane.

  The house was clean and well provisioned. A noisy gasoline generator outside provided electricity to run the lights and the refrigerator. The first thing Remo looked for and found were cigarettes in a cupboard in the kitchen. He lit one quickly and savored the taste of smoke rolling over his tongue, depositing droplets of tar onto his teeth, gums, and tongue on its poisonous way into his lungs.

  The second thing he looked for and found was a package of Twinkies in the refrigerator. He ripped open the cellophane with his teeth and shoved the cake into his mouth. Two of life's great pleasures, he thought. A cigarette and a chocolate-flavored lump of refined sugar.

  It hadn't been long ago that his diet was rice, fish, duck, and occasionally vegetables. How long had it been since he'd had something sweet? How had he gone without for all those years?

  Remo had a second Twinkie in his mouth when Sheila appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. She had changed into a gauzy white robe that left none of her body to the imagination but instead offered it to Remo as a gift. She opened .her mouth to say something, then clamped it tight, brushed past Remo and violently stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

  "Hey, I was smoking that," he said.

  "It's about time you learned smoking is bad for your health," she said. She turned to him again and brushed her breasts against his chest. "On the other hand, I might be very good for your health."

  Remo, Twinkie in hand, felt something else he hadn't felt in many years-desire, burning, sexual desire for a woman. The art of Sinanju had made him a user of women's bodies when he wanted to be; it had taught him techniques to send women up walls in frenzy. But in making it an art and a science, Sinanju had made it dull. Remo couldn't remember the last time he had been aroused.

  Till now.

  He stuffed the rest of the Twinkie in his mouth and put his arms around Sheila Feinberg. His bodily urges made his mind not care that the woman had ripped open his stomach and throat only a few weeks before. He ran his hands down her slick back, feeling the tightness of smooth flesh through the flimsy nylon. Then he placed his hands on the rounded globes of her behind, pulling her to him and feeling, with pleasure, his body responding.

  She raised her mouth to his and he covered it with his lips.

  Then Sheila Feinberg lifted and carried him into the bedroom where she placed him gently on the bed.

  "Does this mean we're going together?" Remo asked.

  Sheila took off her wrap and lay on the bed next to him. "You're here to provide stud services," she said. "Now provide."

  Remo did. For a full thirty seconds.

  The same art that had killed desire was itself killed when desire returned. It was over before he realized it. He felt embarrassed at his lack of control.

  "You're not much," Sheila said with a thin pursing of her lips.

  "I'll get better," he said.

  "You'll have plenty of practice," she said. Coldly, with no afterglow from the sex act, she rose from the bed and walked out the door. Remo heard it lock behind her.

  "Go to sleep," she called through the door. "You'll need your rest."

  Remo did not mind. He had put the pack of cigarettes in his trouser pocket before leaving the kitchen. Now he fished them out, lit one and lay back on the bed smoking, flicking ashes on the floor and considering that life was all a matter of timing.

  Ten, thirteen years ago, before he joined CURE, he could think of few things better than being the captive love slave of a voluptuous blonde whose only demand was that he screw well and often. Now here he was, and all he felt was uncomfortable.

  He smoked three cigarettes, stubbed them out on the floor, kicked the butts under the bed, and fell asleep. He slept hard and loglike. When he woke in the morning the bedroom door had been unlocked and left ajar.

  Sheila stood naked at the kitchen sink, her body glowing with health and strength, an X-rated display of centerfold perfection.

  "Do you want to make it before or after you eat?" she asked when Remo came in.

  "After."

  Remo saw the food on his plate. Uncooked bacon and a bowl of raw eggs.

  "Before," he amended.

  "After," she said.

  "This stuff isn't cooked," Remo said.-

  "I didn't want to fool with that stove," Sheila said.

  "Who can eat this?" Remo asked, but saw that Sheila had sat down at the table and was eating it, dropping the strips of fatted, slick, white bacon down her throat like a finalist in a goldfish swallowing exhibition.

  "I've done the best I can," Sheila said sharply. "If you don't like my breakfast, too bad. Eat cereal."

  "I'll cook this," Remo said, lifting up his plate and bowl.

  "You'll leave that stove alone. Eat cereal," Sheila said.

  Remo had a Twinkie. When he was done, Sheila put a strong hand on his shoulder and led him into the bedroom.

  "Come on, Ace," she said. "We'll see if we can get you up to the full minute mark today."

  Remo followed, wondering dully what it was all about, but deciding not to worry. At least not until the cigarettes were gone.

  It was the third day at Folcroft. Autopsies had been performed on the three tiger people killed and the results confirmed Smith's worst fears. The three had undergone chromosomal change. They were, in point of fact, no longer human beings. They were something else, something between man and beast. Smith worried that the thing they had become might turn out to be stronger and smarter, even more bloodthirsty than man.

  The deaths in Boston continued but their number declined. It might have been the presence of the National Guard patrolling the streets. More likely, Smith felt, it was that he had decimated the tiger people's forces with the three deaths. That meant Sheila Feinbe
rg-Smith was now convinced it was she who had carried Remo off-had not gone back to Boston. If she had, she would have by now created more man-eaters. The toll would have begun climbing again.

  There was another thought gnawing at Smith, a thought at once so frightening and painful that he consciously tried to put it out of his mind. Yet it persisted. Suppose Sheila Feinberg had taken Remo to make him one of them? Remo, with all his skills, but coupled with brainless, animal savagery? He had been unstoppable before and now would be worse, therefore must be stopped. In those circumstances, there was only one man in the world who could stop him.

  But how could Smith raise the subject?

  Smith tapped lightly on the door of the second floor room. There was no answer. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Chiun wore a white purification robe and sat on a grass mat in the center of the floor. The room's two windows were heavily draped. Candles flickered at the four corners of the darkened room, which was bare of furniture. In front of Chiun, incense burned in a small porcelain bowl.

  "Chiun?" Smith said softly.

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry. There's been no word on Remo. He and that woman seem to have vanished off the face of the earth."

  "He is dead," Chiun intoned dully.

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Because I wish it so," Chiun said after a pause.

  "You? Wish it so? Why, for God's sake?"

  "Because if Remo is not dead, he will become one of them. If he becomes one of them, one hundred generations of Masters of Sinanju will demand I send him home to the sea. Even if he is my son. Because I have taught and given him Sinanju I may never permit it to be misused. So, because I do not wish to..." Chiun could not bring himself to say the word "kill."

  "... because I do not wish to remove him, I wish him to be already dead."

  "I understand," Smith said. His question had already been answered. If Remo was changed, Chiun would dispose of him. He began to say "thank you" to Chiun but caught himself.

  The old man's head had sunk low again on his chest. Smith knew there was no conversation left in him. He wondered how many more days the death rites of Sinanju must continue.