The Last Dragon td-92

by Warren Murphy

  "You drive worse than I remember," Remo was shouting.

  The Master of Sinanju scooted up an alley to avoid two East German-built Trabants trying to beat one another through the same intersection.

  "But I drive better than the inhabitants of this backward place," he countered.

  Remo started to express his doubts when the trash compactor sound of the two Trabants colliding drowned out his words.

  "Yes?" Chiun prompted.

  "Never mind," Remo grumbled. He looked around. The city still had much the colonial look of Gondwanaland when it was known as Bamba del Oro. The stucco buildings were peeling and had not been kept up. A traffic cop in tropical ducks blew a whistle at them.

  Chiun sailed past him without concern.

  The whistle turned shrill and angry.

  Remo looked back. "Now you did it."

  "Do not concern yourself, Remo. He can do nothing. For the policemen in this land are too poor to own automobiles."

  "I hope you're right." Remo looked ahead. "Aren't those railroad tracks up ahead?"

  "Yes."

  "Shouldn't you be slowing down?"

  "No." And the Master of Sinanju pressed the accelerator flat to the floorboards, simultaneously turning the wheel hard to the left.

  Remo Williams had reflexes and nerves far superior to ordinary people. But even he blinked his eyes at sudden sounds. The Land Rover ran over a stone, and the wheels left the ground. It hurtled toward the hard steel rails. That was when Remo blinked.

  When his eyes flew open, somehow the Land Rover was rattling along the crossties between the rusty rails, its tires a hair from scraping the rails on either side.

  Despite the bumpiness of the ride, the tires held a true course.

  "Mind telling me what you think you are doing?" Remo chattered.

  "I think I am seeking a dragon," replied Chiun blandly.

  "What makes you think the train the dinosaur is on runs on this track?"

  "Because there is only one track. This land is too poor to have more than one. Therefore it is too poor to have more than one railroad line."

  "I'll buy that," said Remo, trying to keep his teeth from chipping. "So how do we know we're going in the right direction?"

  "We do not."

  "Huh?"

  Chiun lifted a bony finger. The other held the wheel rock-steady. "But I do. For the track runs in only two directions. And the other goes into the sea. Therefore we are going in the proper direction."

  Remo couldn't argue with that logic, so he said, "I see plenty of road on either side of the railbed."

  "Which is true now, but may not be true when the tracks enter jungle," Chiun pointed out, unperturbed.

  It was dark. The headlights were bobbing and bucking like flashlights attached to a milkshake machine.

  Soon, the city was left behind and all was darkness except for the two funnels of light bouncing ahead of them.

  Abruptly, the Master of Sinanju stopped the Land Rover.

  "It is your turn," he told Remo.

  "It is?"

  "I have done the hard part. No thinking will be needed until we reach the dragon." He stepped from the vehicle.

  "Thanks a lot," said Remo, sliding behind the wheel. He waited for the Master of Sinanju to step around and settle into the passenger seat.

  Remo got the Land Rover going. It bumped along clumsily until he shook off inertia; then it was like running a stick along a picket fence, only a hundred times worse.

  After a while, he had the rhythm and decided he had better start letting Chiun down gently, or this was going to be a very long night.

  "Little Father, I hate to be a wet blanket, but this thing we're after, if it's real, is no dragon."

  "You have said that."

  "It's a dinosaur."

  "Which is a Greek word, greatly corrupted by whites."

  "Right. Right. It means . . . uh. It'll come back to me."

  "Awful lizard," supplied Chiun.

  "Close enough. It means terrible lizard. Dinosaurs were terrible lizards."

  "And dragon is a corrupt Greek word, drakon. Which also means a great lizard."

  "I didn't know that."

  "That is why I am the Reigning Master and you are driving an automobile along a railroad track. Heh heh heft."

  Remo let Chiun's self-satisfied cackling roll over him without a comeback.

  "Chiun," he said, his voice quiet, "I just don't want you to be disappointed."

  The Master of Sinanju arranged his kimono skirts into a more pleasing fall. "Never fear," he said. "I will not be. For I know that the dragon that will prolong my life lies waiting for me in the night before us."

  Remo fell silent. Suddenly, he didn't want to reach the end of the tracks. What if Chiun insisted upon slaughtering the Brontosaur? How could Remo stop him? Would he stop him? For if there was one wish Remo could have granted, it was to prolong the life of the person in all the world who mattered most to him-a person who had already lived a full century and could not go on forever ....

  Chapter 11

  Nancy Derringer couldn't sleep.

  Under the circumstances, sleep would have been difficult at best. She was lying on the hard ground and there were fire ants crawling in and out of her clothing. It was night. Pitch dark. But it was not cool. The night air clung to her skin like clammy cotton, heavy and warm, and leeching perspiration from her open pores.

  Then there was Skip King.

  "I want everybody to know that I haven't given up," he was saying. The other members of the Burger Triumph team, the camera crew and the dispirited Berets, breathed back hushed support.

  "We're with you, Mr. King."

  "Just say the word."

  "Yeah. We can take these third world clowns."

  "The first person to try some fool stunt that could only get us or Jack slaughtered," Nancy warned, "I'll kick in the head with both feet and all my might."

  King recoiled. "Nancy, what's got into you? We have a chance to escape here."

  "We have a chance to bleed all over the ground, too. I vote we wait until morning, and then try to use our brains." She gave King a withering look. "Those of us so blessed."

  King squinted at her in the darkness. "This isn't penis envy, is it?"

  "How would you know?" Nancy said and rolled over so she wouldn't have to look at him. The man was impossible. And he had an ego bigger than Old Jack himself. Not to mention a whole lot uglier.

  Over by the campfire, Commander Malu of the Congress for a Green Africa was singeing the hair off a dead monkey.

  It was a white-nosed monkey. Malu had caught it in a liana snare and strangled it with his bare hands. Nancy had shut her eyes to drown out the pitiful creature's cries of distress, and she jammed one ear against the dirt. But the other ear heard every shriek clearly.

  Now the dead monkey was suspended, humanlike hands and feet hanging grotesquely over the fire. Malu had tied its tail around its own neck so it was like an anthropomorphic purse. He swung the dead thing in and out of the flames until the skin was singed crisp and brown and as hairless as a human baby.

  "Tonight," Commander Malu said exuberantly, "we will feast on white-nosed monkey stew. M-m-m-m-m."

  Nancy looked away.

  And she saw the white man.

  He was a shadow, a manlike moth in the darkness.

  He wore black. Nancy would have missed him entirely, except that below the short sleeves of his black T-shirt, his arms were bare. They showed faintly, like long disembodied moth wings.

  She noticed that he had incredibly thick wrists connecting his lean forearms to his strong-looking hands.

  As Nancy watched, he slipped into a bush and it didn't even rustle.

  "No one should lose heart," Skip King was whispering to the others. "We are representatives of one of the greatest multinational corporations in the entire world. If we don't let the board down, I guarantee they won't let us down. Count on it."

  It had been like this half t
he night. King couldn't stop talking. Some people, Nancy knew, became motormouths under nervous strain. King was obviously that way. But did he really believe that B.S. about being corporately untouchable? Nancy decided he was just whistling in the dark.

  Then there was a hand at her mouth.

  The hand was cool and dry, despite the evening heat.

  A calm male voice whispered in her ear. "I'm a friend."

  Nancy tried to struggle against the hand, but it held too tight. She felt fingers pluck at her bonds and she almost laughed into the man's fingers. She had been tied with wire and pliers. There was no way the man could undo her fetters without a bolt cutter.

  She heard a series of pinging sounds, but no accompanying click of bolt cutters.

  Then the blood flowed into her hands and the pain of returning circulation came.

  Nancy was lifted bodily and deposited into a prickly clump of nettles. "Just keep your head down and everything will be all right," the voice told her.

  "Who-"

  The man faded into the hot darkness. She got a glimpse of a strong, masculine face dominated by high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that became skull holes in a bone-hard face as it withdrew from sight.

  He made absolutely no sound among the thorn bushes.

  Nancy struggled to her knees and crawled to the thicket, parting branches so she could see.

  There were two of them out there. The other one was shorter, frail, and very, very old. His face in the half-light was Asian. He wore a skirted black garment that resembled a Japanese kimono, but cut somewhat looser.

  For all his advanced age, the old Oriental moved like a butterfly. They both did. They fluttered from man to man, seeming only to touch their bonds, and they fell loose. Nancy squinted and saw the older one did not untie the wire-but sliced it with long, curved fingernails that should have broken under contact with the bonds.

  Skip King noticed the pair suddenly. "Hey!" he yelled. "Who are you two!"

  "That idiot!" Nancy muttered. "That colossal fool."

  From the campfire, the action unit of the Congress for a Green Africa leapt to their feet and stared through the sparks and fragrant monkey smoke with incredulous faces.

  "What is this!" Malu demanded.

  "This," cried the old Oriental in a high, squeaky voice, "is the House of Sinanju come to scatter you to the winds."

  "I don't know what he's talking about," King wailed. "Don't shoot us!"

  The blacks scrambled for their weapons. They brought them up, and unleashed an incredible amount of noise, fire, smoke, and fury toward the crouching prisoners.

  Horrified, Nancy was forced to look away. The Skorpions chattered percussively. She heard screams, and visions of a blood massacre transpired before her mind's eye.

  Then came a scream so loud and anguished she was forced to look.

  It was Skip King. He was trying to get to his feet but his legs were asleep. He was hitting his knees with both fists as if to wake them up.

  King was looking toward the campfire.

  Commander Malu and his adherents were walking backward as they fired. Incredibly, their weapons were having no effect.

  The pair-the thick-wristed Caucasian and the flitting Asian-had separated and were running at right angles to one another, trying to draw the fire.

  Behind them, Old Jack slumbered like a great slowbeating orange heart. Nancy's eyes fixed on his mottled hide, fearing to see eruptions. Again, it was a miracle. There were none. Yet.

  Then the tiny Oriental disappeared. The terrorists turned their fire on the thick-wristed man. He bobbed, seemingly in two directions at once, and was suddenly gone.

  There was a short interval of silence. Then a high scream. It sounded like a lion or a monkey.

  Sailing down from the high branches of a tree like black bats pouncing on prey, they came. The white man who reminded Nancy of a black moth and the delicate butterflylike Asian.

  They landed in the middle of the paralyzed Congress for a Green Africa.

  Stiff fingers lashed out. The crack of breaking vertebrae was distinct and unmistakable in the night.

  Two green-bereted men fell like dominos, and the rest ran, spraying their backtrail with automatic weapons fire.

  "Don't chase them!" Nancy screamed. "Let them go! They could hurt the dinosaur."

  The thick-wristed man froze, as if hesitating. The expression on his high-cheekboned face said that he wanted to chase the others down more than anything else in the world.

  The butterfly of an Asian spoke up then.

  "Remo, she speaks wisdom," he said, his voice a grim squeak. "Let those worthless ones flee like the dogs that they are."

  "If you say so," the other said in a reluctant tone.

  And as they turned back, Skip King pounced on a dropped machine pistol and pointed it in the direction of the fleeing hijackers.

  Before anyone could stop him, he emptied the clip, saying, "And don't come back, you disenfranchised rabble!"

  Everyone looked toward the departing Congress for a Green Africa, expecting to see some fall wounded. They ran until the bush swallowed them.

  "You," the man named Remo told King, "have got to be the world's worst shot."

  "What do you want? It's dark out."

  "You're welcome," Remo said.

  Nancy stumbled out of the thorn brush and said,

  "You'll have to excuse him. He watched too many Tarzan pictures as a boy."

  "Big talk from someone who hid in the bushes while the men were doing all the fighting," King sneered, plucking out a clip and trying to jam in a second.

  "I put her there," Remo said. "I should have stashed you and kept her."

  King struggled with the stubborn clip. Not realizing he had been attempting to insert it backward, he threw it into the dirt. "Who asked you to butt in, anyway?" he snapped.

  "Uncle Sam."

  "The United States?"

  "You're American citizens, aren't you? Who did you expect? The Royal Canadian Mounted Police?"

  "Actually, I was hoping the Burger Berets would have shown up by now," said King, looking up into the fabulous starfield of the Gondwanaland night sky.

  "The who?"

  The sound of helicopters in the distance was like the rubbing together of horny wings, busy and insectlike. It grew to a clatter then swelled to a louder, fuller locust sound.

  And suddenly the night sky above them was full of helicopters which sent down roving beams of lights.

  In the moving patterns of light, snaky lines were dropped and men in midnight blue uniforms began rappeling down.

  "Everyone stand clear!" an authoritative voice bellowed. "We're the Burger Berets!"

  The man named Remo undertoned to Nancy, "The what Berets?"

  "Burger."

  "As in hamburger?"

  Nancy sighed. "I'm afraid so."

  She watched as men in midnight blue nylon jumpsuits hit the ground on ivory white boots. Disengaging themselves from the lines, they brought up AR-15 assault rifles.

  King was storming about. "What took you so long!"

  A man in a purple beret with a gold crown stitched in the front stepped up and executed a crisp salute. He was a colonel. The gold eagles that constituted his uniform insignia told that-although eagles didn't normally clutch a cheeseburger and a bag of french fries in each talon, Nancy realized.

  The man in the purple beret executed a brisk salute. "Mr. King, sir. Colonel Mustard reporting."

  "Mustard?" Remo said blankly.

  "Code name. We're operating on foreign soil, as you know."

  "That's no excuse for blowing the mission," King said bitterly.

  The colonel looked at a wrist chronometer whose hands resembled french fries. "It's exactly 0400 hours. According to the timetable, we're mission positive."

  "Well, you're too late anyway. They got away."

  "Is the animal safe?"

  "Yeah. No thanks to you." King looked up. The helicopters held their overhead positions.
"Are they filming this?"

  "Of course, sir."

  "Tell them to stop. It's a debacle. The bastards got away. We were rescued by damn civilians."

  "The Gondwanaland president gave us personal assurances that he'd keep his people on stand down, Mr. King," Colonel Mustard said stiffly.

  Skip King stabbed an accusatory finger at Remo and Chiun. "Look, tell that to them. I'm just an exhostage." He took hold of his black hair as if to tear it out in chunks, but it was too short and greasy. It slipped through his fingers. "This is a mess. A total mess."

  "What's he complaining about?" Remo wondered. "He's free, isn't he?"

  "A major PR extravaganza went south when you two showed up," Nancy explained.

  Remo shrugged. "That's the biz."

  "Believe me, I couldn't be happier. If those corporate clowns had gotten here first, none of us would have survived." Nancy noticed the old Oriental. He was examining the Apatosaur, his head going from side to side like a curious cat's.

  King also noticed. He stopped trying to uproot his scalp, and screamed, "Hey! You get away from there. That dinosaur is corporate property!"

  The old Oriental ignored King's heated words.

  "Didn't you hear me?" King howled.

  "I see trouble coming," Nancy warned. "You better tell your friend to step away from old Old Jack."

  "He has a name?" Remo said.

  "You sound surprised."

  The man named Remo shrugged. "It beats Wing Wang Wo."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Skip it."

  King was shouting now, "Colonel Mustard. You remove that man right now."

  "Yes, sir."

  Nancy looked to Remo, who with a bored expression watched his friend about to be surrounded by four bulky mercenaries.

  "Don't you think you should step in?" she asked.

  "I don't care what happens to a bunch of guys in funny berets."

  Nancy blinked. Her attention went back to the old Oriental. He was walking toward the small serpentine head now, his hands tucked in his voluminous sleeves.

  Colonel Mustard of the Burger Berets attempted to restrain him with a firm hand on his frail shoulder. The hand descended. The colonel must have had an incredibly tenacious grip, because although he failed to arrest the old Oriental one whit, he was dragged along with him.