Remo The Adventure Begins

by Warren Murphy

  He kept Major Fleming from stumbling as they moved down the mountainside. He spotted some edible berries as they ran. They were not as perfect as rice but he had not eaten that day. Major Fleming didn’t want any berries. She just wanted to keep her balance. She told him her first name. It was Rayner.

  The berries were good.

  “Haven’t eaten this good for weeks,” said Remo.

  Rayner Fleming ran with her legs breaking the downward run. Remo told her to allow her body to move, not to worry about the legs. She tried it. She fell into his arms. The legs had gone. Funny, it seemed so easy to Remo.

  “Better use your legs to run,” said Remo. “Do what you can. We should hit the lake and the road pretty soon, then we can get you . . ."

  Remo halted. He listened. Rayner Fleming heard nothing. But then her lungs were gasping for air so hard that she couldn’t hear anything but her breath. But this man knew something was around. He signaled for her to remain still, and then with the silent move of a cat, feet like slow, careful paws, Remo moved toward a large pine tree. He began to circle it. Rayner saw him move a hand forward as if to touch something on the far side of the tree. Suddenly Remo was in the air, flying up twice the height of a man and then landing on his back.

  He had been thrown in such a way that he lost his center. Only one man knew that it was just the thing he needed to land on his feet. And only one man could have done that to him.

  A delicate oriental figure came from behind the pine. It was Chiun. Remo knew the Master of Sinanju had come to kill him.

  15

  “Are you deaf?” asked Chiun. “I have been stomping around for ten minutes while you talk nonsense with this woman.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” said Major Fleming.

  “Even worse,” said Chiun, ignoring her. “You and this woman gorged yourself on sweets.”

  “Excuse me, but I do have a name,” said Rayner Fleming.

  “Women should make babies, not talk,” said Chiun, still angered at the clumsy way Remo had moved through the forest. He had never taught him to move that way. Who had taught him to move that way?

  Rayner Fleming had never been treated like this.

  “I see you two went to the same charm school,” she said.

  “He always talks like that,” said Remo. “He’s Korean.”

  “I see. And I suppose that explains why he lives in a forest,” she said.

  “Actually, he came here for a special purpose. To kill me,” said Remo.

  “Kill you?” said Chiun. “You kill yourself. You eat sweets while you run. You take up with women for their looks. I do not have to kill you.”

  “Then why did you come?” said Remo.

  “I am here to see that you do not bring shame to the House of Sinanju.”

  “And if I do, you’ll kill me,” said Remo.

  What could Chiun say? That Remo was too good to be allowed to die just for a single emperor? After all, the world was full of kings and presidents and tyrants, but at most, there were only two real assassins alive at the same time. Chiun had already put in a lot of work. Where would he get another Remo?

  This of course could not be uttered. Who knew what Remo would tell the devious and cunning Smith? Whites were too free with the truth and the truth was the last thing one told an emperor under any circumstances. So Chiun could not yet trust Remo with the fact that he would never kill him for a mere leader. No matter how his feelings were hurt.

  “Yes, I would kill you,” said Chiun. “Reluctantly, of course, because you have been a good pupil . . . for a white man.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, don’t think that makes everything okay,” said Remo. “Because it doesn’t. Not here. Not with me.”

  “You’re skinny,” Chiun said to Rayner Fleming. If Remo were going to breed, he should have considered correct womb size.

  “You’re not square with me,” said Remo, getting up from the ground.

  “You’re mad,” said Chiun. “How typical. You don’t ask me who you should breed with, or whether you should reproduce at this time, or whether there is a nice Korean girl available to you from a family we know something about. You dwell on your own private little injustice.”

  Chiun waved a hand. He didn’t want to hear any more about it. He had already heard once today that Remo was unhappy about the possibility of Chiun killing him, and he didn’t want to hear it again. There were things to do. Properly.

  All three moved down the mountain, Remo staying close to Rayner, Chiun making sure Remo’s hands helping her were being used for balance only.

  Rayner didn’t even see it until it was too late, until actually she was safe. She was busy trying to keep up when suddenly there was a clanging scream of metal, and a giant bear trap closed beneath her knee. But there was no pain. Was that the first numb reaction? She saw her leg behind her, the heel up. Her knee hurt. But it was because Remo was holding it firmly behind her. The bear trap had closed on a log and she hadn’t even seen Remo’s hand move.

  “Correct,” said Chiun.

  “That was fantastic,” said Rayner. “Who are you guys?”

  “Fantastic is not another word for correct,” said Chiun. “Remo, you must stop hanging around with your own kind.”

  Rayner noticed that Remo seemed pleased with the old man’s simple comment, “correct.” Were they crazy?

  Just beyond one of the test ranges, they saw a logging truck. Chiun turned to Remo.

  “She doesn’t run well,” he said with a nod toward the major. “We’ll have to drive her.”

  “I qualified for my physical,” snapped Rayner Fleming. “I passed every obstacle course.”

  “For whom?”

  “For the Green Berets, the toughest fighting men in the world,” said Rayner.

  “They’re soldiers, about twice as good as the average soldier,” Remo explained to Chiun as they helped Rayner run. “Twice as tough. Twice as smart. Twice as well-conditioned.”

  “Twice?” asked Chiun.

  “Right,” said Remo. “I’ll get the truck.”

  A logger was on his back trying to fix it when he saw the whole caboodle take off above his head down the road. Remo kept his foot on the floor. Chiun watched from the passenger’s side, curious at how these machines moved. Rayner sat between them waiting for the whole rig to go crashing off the side of the road. Remo drove like a madman.

  He drove them right toward a logging conveyor, right toward the logs.

  His solution for that was jumping for their lives.

  He made it, taking Rayner with him. Chiun, however, went down with the cab of the truck. It crushed trees underneath like twigs as it gathered momentum down the mountainside, spinning like a toy but landing, finally, like a truck, on its side, with a heavy crash.

  Remo called down to the twisted metal and smoke, “You okay?”

  There was no answer. He put Rayner Fleming down so that she could stand, and ran down to the truck.

  “Oh, God. Chiun. Chiun. Are you okay?” yelled Remo.

  Slowly, a twisted door moved, and Chiun emerged, somewhat shaken, a door handle in his palm.

  “Chiun, are you all right?”

  “In Korea, door handles do not break,” said Chiun.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Of course not, my son,” said Chiun.

  “What did you call me?” asked Remo. He heard the words. He had been called a son by the Master of Sinanju.

  “I called you a clumsy oaf. You drive like a monkey in heat.”

  But Remo had heard the right words first. Chiun could not erase them. The world was good. The sun was above them, and all the trees and water of the lakes were in their gloriously right places. Remo threw back his head and laughed. He would have hugged Chiun, but he doubted he could get a grip on him.

  “You have a job to finish,” snapped Chiun.

  “I’ll leave you the girl, the skinny one,” said Remo.

  “What are we going to do now?” asked Rayn
er.

  “You’re going to stay with Chiun. He’ll probably teach you to breathe. I have a job to finish.”

  “I am not skinny,” said Rayner Fleming.

  “Don’t embarrass us,” said Chiun.

  “I won’t, little father,” said Remo.

  Rayner Fleming saw only a few fast movements before Remo disappeared into the trees. The oriental called Chiun was still watching him. There was a sense of pleasure on his face. She had seen that before, that joyous inner pleasure of mothers outside schoolyards watching their children learn to play for themselves.

  • • •

  The command center had the target triangulated. They notified General Watson in his staff car.

  Grove and Wilson were with him.

  “They have triangulation on him,” said Grove.

  Wilson nodded. A vast array of weaponry was trained on the target even though that target was within Mount Promise’s own technological sites. But their nuisance was a dead man. That was guaranteed. All General Watson had to do now was say fire. But General Watson hesitated.

  George Grove explained almost with the tiredness of talking to a not-too-alert child:

  “Scott, it’s your ass, too. We go. You go. Jail, Scott, can be a real career problem.”

  “Swat him,” said General Watson.

  “Good for you, Scott,” said George Grove.

  Remo was alone in the woods when the first ugly whine of a devastator shell reverberated through the forest. Remo did not know what the shell could do. But he knew where it was going to land, and that spot was very close to him.

  There were no caves or rocks to hide behind. A blanket of shrapnel could not be dodged. Even worse, shells landing in woods made the very trees into pieces of shrapnel. There was nothing on this desolate piece of ground but Remo and an anthill and neither of them had much prospect of making it to the next second.

  But an anthill meant earth. They didn’t build in rock. Remo gathered himself, took two smooth steps, and moved down into the mound, deep into the darkness of the earth, as though it were sand, as though this were training, as though his only purpose in life was correct. The earth was dark and rich to the senses, and when the shell landed, it was as though someone had jumped on him while he was curled under a blanket.

  Above ground the devastator cleared the trees, cleared the grass and removed the anthill. It had made Mother Nature ready for a parking lot. All one needed was the asphalt.

  Command center registered the perfect hit. They also registered something else, something one of the officers said had to be impossible, but it had to be reported to General Wason anyhow.

  “Target hit, sir, and target resumes locomotion, sir. Target proceeding to red four. Red four, sir.”

  Watson, Grove, and Wilson were quiet. Grove inhaled deeply. Wilson cleaned an imaginary speck off his perfect lapel. The devastator had hit and somehow missed. The target was still moving.

  Remo brushed the dirt off him as he ran on the surface. The strange thing about the earth was how incredibly fresh it smelled underneath, as though it was rich with air when, of course, there wasn’t enough air to breathe.

  He did not know he was in target area red four or that this time an entire pattern was going to be used on him, and the pattern was in his last hiding place. He was running through a minefield and he discovered it as the charges started to go off, turning trees into shards of rockets, burning the grass, making pebbles into bullets whizzing by his head.

  The earth had been turned against him but Remo ran ahead of it, and from it, right to the edge of a gully and into space. Where and how he would land he would figure out when he got there.

  He fell. He did not judge the fall by height, but it was too high. The landing was hard, even in the trees. He went down, snapping branches, until the last one creaked and caught him. He felt his bones. All there. But there was blood on his hands. He had been cut.

  And the tree was moving. It was moving upward. It wasn’t a tree, it was a log. Other logs were moving upward. They were all moving under a long cable, over a deeper gorge.

  Remo looked up. Behind him there were logs bobbing and dancing along this metal line. It was an eagle cable. He had read about them once when he was a youngster. They were used for clearing whole forests, a movable assembly line that took trees from where they were cut and ran them to where they could be finished.

  Unfortunately they were not designed for passengers. Remo struggled up the breaking branches, trying to get to the top of the log.

  He saw a good place to jump but that good place vanished as the logs moved downward. And beneath him was a deep canyon. Heights again.

  Grove, Wilson and Watson heard the army track the target. It had escaped again.

  “What is the matter? I am not asking you to commit genocide. Kill one man, for heaven’s sake,” said Grove.

  “He’s heading for the lake,” said General Watson. “He’s outside the compound in a logging operation. He’s riding a log. We’re near there.”

  “Then let’s go. This should not be that hard, Scott,” said Grove. He looked to Wilson, shaking his head. “The man is on a log. Logs are not the fastest, most elusive target in the world, General.”

  “Right,” said General Watson. He nodded to his driver to step on it. The car pulled away with such speed that the armed soldier next to the driver almost fell out.

  They arrived at the line of logs with plenty of time for the armed soldier to steady his rifle and aim, then wait for the right log to come down. The one with the man clinging to it.

  It was like a shooting gallery, with one exception. When the soldier saw the man clinging to the log, he thought it seemed more like murder than target practice. He hesitated.

  The important manufacturer grabbed the rifle himself, commenting acidly about the quality of the modern American soldier. He fired as the log went by, and missed the man who kept himself on its opposite side, much the same way American Plains Indians rode with their bodies hidden by the horse itself.

  But Grove knew men, and Wilson had smelled the final blood. Wilson himself got behind the wheel of the car, and Grove joined him, cradling the rifle in his lap. General Watson, as he had been all along, was just along for the ride, going where Grove and Wilson decided to take him. They were going to finish what General Watson had failed to do.

  They arrived where the cable let go of the logs, almost getting hit themselves. One log dropped. Then another. And another. Finally Grove saw him. He unloaded an entire clip into the log, watching chips fly, watching the man crawl like a bug, then he unloaded another clip.

  General Watson warned him about the falling logs.

  Grove continued to fire. Kill the bug, he thought. Kill the bug.

  He thought he had him when the first log crashed into the command car. Remo heard the last bullet whistle by his head, and then looked down. It was safe to jump.

  He heard the car crash above him on the mountain, heard the logs roll into steel siding. They were there. The man who had been firing at him was George Grove. Remo moved toward the car. Bodies had been thrown out. A general and a well-dressed civilian lay in that putty-strange way of dead bodies. Grove might be already dead.

  And then Remo made a mistake. He had allowed his mind to think too much, and he had shut off his senses. They came back only when he heard the voice.

  “Okay, that’s far enough.”

  Remo looked above him. There was George Grove with a service revolver.

  “I used to be interested in who you worked for. Now I don’t give a shit.”

  Grove stepped closer. He felt the strong blood joy of death. And then, of course, the irony of it all.

  “You know, they are going to give me a medal for killing you. I am saving America from a saboteur.”

  And for the sheer pleasure of it, he decided to shoot off the testicles first.

  He fired twice. The man jerked twice. But the man was still there. More important, the two bullets hadn’t even
unzipped his fly.

  And the man was closing on him. George Grove was a marksman. He didn’t miss. He aimed two more bullets right into the man’s chest, only to penetrate the trees behind the chest.

  He fired again, and the man came closer. And then the target had the gun and was casually dispensing the last bullet harmlessly on the ground.

  “Who are you?”

  Remo would have answered George Grove, but he was busy. There was work to do. George Grove felt himself lifted to the overturned command car. He could have sworn this man was whistling a tune from a children’s movie. A pleasant joyful little tune that had been sung by the dwarfs in Snow White. It was “Whistle While You Work.”

  The man held George Grove like a basket of goodies. Grove could not move. He felt the man bend down. He saw the man gather two twigs in one hand. He saw the twigs turn in that hand, turn so fast they began to smoke, and then, with a puff, there was a flame.

  Remo put George Grove into the back seat of the command car, broke his kneecaps with two quick taps of a finger and then touched the burning twigs to the gasoline that had spilled from the tank.

  George Grove went up like a marshmallow.

  It was not, of course, an accidental death. But it would look like an accident. It would be good enough for Smith.

  Rayner Fleming was waiting at lakeside, but Chiun was not there.

  “He went to look for you, Remo,” she said.

  “I didn’t need him. I did it. I didn’t need him,” said Remo. He jumped into a speedboat tied to the dock. “Now I have to look for him. I didn’t need him at all and now he’s gone.”

  Then they saw Chiun, saw him almost at the same time as they saw the soldiers, truckloads of them, disgorging onto the jetty, coming between them and Chiun.

  “He blew it, not me,” said Remo. The soldiers aimed their rifles, and then they all saw it. No one missed it, especially not Remo, whose mouth fell open for a moment.

  Chiun, Master of Sinanju, raised up his chin and, with delicate precision, ran, his sandals moving with the lightness of eagle down, across the shortest distance from shore to jetty, not even making a single splash on the waves.