Bay City Blast td-38

by Warren Murphy

  And missed.

  Remo went down below the fragmenting slugs as if he had slipped down an open elevator shaft. Then he was on his feet again and before Tolan could squeeze off another round, he felt the gun slapped from his hand and heard its metallic clink on the pavement.

  As Remo raised his hands toward Tolan, the burly man lifted his left hand and fired his .357 Magnum at Remo but even as he pressed the trigger, he knew it would miss, because Remo was no longer in front of him. The bullet fired with a loud crack. Tolan could see instantly crazed glass where the slug splintered its way through the windows of three parked automobiles.

  Tolan felt a tap on his shoulder and, as he turned, the Magnum was knocked from his hand. And the crazy ping pong player was behind him and Tolan thought, yeah, well, he's good at dodging bullets but I'm fifty pounds heavier than he is and I'm going to tear his throat out with my hands and, yeah, if I like it, maybe I'll switch to using my hands from now on and he reached up and put his two big ham fists around the thin man's throat.

  "Destroyer, huh? Try this destroyer," Tolan said. He began to squeeze with all the power in his bulky muscles. Remo did not stop smiling.

  If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Sam Gregory would never have believed it.

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  He stopped the tank in the middle of the street near the parking lot. He saw Tolan inside the lot with his hands around the neck of a thin dark-haired man. It was the man he'd seen the night before at the Bay City Improvement Association.

  The thin man slowly raised his hands and pressed his thumbs into Tolan's wrists and Tolan's hands separated and dropped from the man's throat.

  The thin man was talking to Tolan but Gregory couldn't hear what he said. ...

  ". . . You kill those little girls at headquarters last night?" Remo asked.

  Tolan did not answer. He was trying desperately to make his hands move but they felt as if they had been dipped into plaster of Paris and left to dry for six days.

  "I asked you a question," Remo said. He punched an index finger softly into Tolan's ear lobe.

  "Yes, yes," Tolan shrieked. He had never known an ear lobe could hurt like that.

  "And that poor Chinese family?"

  "Drug dealers," Tolan gasped. "Yes. I did it."

  "You're The Exterminator," Remo said. "When I'm done with you, there won't be enough left for roach paste."

  Gregory put his eyes closer to the narrow slit through which a tank commander could see the battlefield in front of him. As he watched, he saw the bulky muscular Tolan being lifted in the air, above the head of the thin man. The thin man whirled gently, not with any obvious muscular effort as with a shot putter or discus thrower, but as if he were doing a gentle dance step, and then

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  Tolan was slamming through the air. His body traveled twenty feet and then, like a spear, it went headfirst through the front windshield of the car owned by the city's deputy director of community improvement.

  Tolan hit with a shudder, like a javelin sticking into the ground, and then the lower part of his body buckled and his knees banged down on the hood of the new Mercedes.

  Gregory shuddered inside the safe confines of his tank. He hadn't thought making war on the Mafia was going to be easy, but this was ridiculous. It was time to retire to reconsider his situation.

  Then he saw something else. There was an old Oriental standing in front of a car on the far side of the parking lot and as the Oriental moved away, behind him Gregory cosld see Mayor Rocco Nobile crawling out of the car.

  He could not pass up the opportunity. Gregory wheeled the tank turret around. Here was his chance. He could put a shell into the Mafia mayor's midsection.

  But as he lowered the barrel of the cannon into position, his eyes met those of the Oriental. And while their eyes locked, the ancient yellow man began walking across the parking lot toward the tank and Gregory realized what he was looking at. He was looking into the eyes of death and at that moment, he decided that from here on, it would be live and let live between himself and the Mafia and all these strange people they had working for him.

  He put the tank in drive gear again and began rumbling down the street toward the city's piers. Behind him, straggled out, was a crowd of city

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  ¦I

  policemen, ineffectively firing pistol bullets at the huge olive drab machine.

  Nobile ran up behind Remo and Chiun.

  "Is that The Eraser?" he asked.

  "I guess so," Remo said. "I can't keep track of all these ninnies and their names." He turned to Chiun. "We'd better go after him." He nodded to the mayor. "You stay here."

  "Not on your life."

  "No. On yours. And tell those cops to stop shooting. They're liable to hit something. Like us," Remo said. He and Chiun hurdled the low fence and ran off after the speeding tank.

  "Stop that goddamn shooting," Nobile yelled at a police captain.

  The captain nodded as if that was the sensible command he had been waiting for since the start of this incident and shouted for his men to holster their guns. The firing stopped and the captain looked back toward Nobile for approval, but the mayor had already darted back into his car, started it up, and was driving down the street after the tank and Remo and Chiun.

  He wondered what kind of men they were and where in the government they had come from. What they did, he had never seen done before, and it made him feel a little better to know that they were on his country's side.

  Behind him, the police captain was confused. He had not done all that well in leadership class and now he did not know what to do. Should he follow the mayor or wait for further orders? He decided to follow at a safe distance. No one could fault him for that. He hoped.

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  The tank got to the waterfront before Remo and Chiun did. Sam Gregory stuck his head out of the turret and saw the white man and the Oriental following him. They were only half a block away. Behind them came speeding Rocco Nobile's car.

  It was a good thing he had thought of everything, Gregory realized as he clambered up out of the turret, jumped to the ground and ran down the concrete pier.

  An eighteen-foot power boat was tied up to one of the large pilings and Gregory untied the line, then dropped down into the boat. The motor started up instantly, as he turned the key and pressed the automatic starter.

  He pulled away from the pier twenty feet, then let the motor idle.

  Remo and Chiun stood on the edge of the pier, looking down at him. Rocco Nobile's car screeched to a stop, and the mayor ran up between the other two men. All looked out at Sam Gregory.

  He shook his fist at them.

  "Maybe you win this round," he called. "But I'll be back. I'm coming after you. The Eraser will get you all."

  "Oh, no," said Remo. He moved toward the edge of the pier to dive in and swim after the boat, but Chiun restrained him with a hand on his arm.

  Gregory saw Remo poised at the edge and threw the boat into high speed and surged away toward the open waters of the Hudson River.

  Remo looked at Chiun with surprise. "Why not?" he said. "I don't want to have to deal with him again later."

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  "Never send a boy to do a boom's job," Chiun said.

  He scurried back toward the tank, hopped up on its side and vanished inside. As Remo and Nobile watched, the turret began to swing around. Then the cannon lowered until it was pointing out at the fleeing power boat.

  The roar as the cannon exploded crackled in their ears. They looked out into the river and saw the boat of Sam Gregory explode. Wood and metal and body flew high into the air, as the tank shell ripped into it. As they kept watching, the waters slowly subsided into their normal thick stillness. All that was left visible were a few chunks of heavy wood.

  Nobile looked at Remo as Chiun returned to their side.

  "It looks like The Eraser's been erased," Nobile said.

  There was only one thing left to do.

  They had done
a pretty good job of covering up the earlier incidents but there was no covering this one up, Remo knew. Bay City was zero as far as a safe city was concerned.

  While Rocco Nobile began telling the late-arriving policemen what to do, Remo went to a pay telephone on the end of the pier, and dialed Harold W. Smith's number.

  When the CURE director came on the telephone, Remo said, "Move now. We blew it."

  "What happened?"

  "We got The Eraser and that whole gang of clowns. But they had a tank and they bombed City

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  Hall, and I think every goon in this city is probably packing now. If you want to get any of them, you'd better move fast."

  "Sounds like your usual neat job," Smith said.

  "Smitty, I don't have time for your sarcasm. Are you going to move or not?"

  "I already have," Smith said. "A federal task force is already in town, picking up everybody in sight." He paused. "What about Nobile?"

  "He's okay, Smitty."

  "Did he find out anything about you? About us?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "Good. Then why don't you just get him out of town safely? He'll know where to hide and what to do."

  Remo knew the alternative. If Rocco Nobile had found out about CURE, Remo's assignment would have been quite different. It would have been simply to kill Rocco Nobile, lest he ever say anything about CURE.

  "Sounds good to me, Smitty. See ya."

  When he hung up and turned around, Rocco Nobile was standing there.

  He nodded toward the telephone.

  "Checking in?" he asked.

  "Yeah. They already started picking up the! mobbies in town."

  "Good," said Nobile. "I guess it's time for Rocco Nobile to vanish."

  "Yeah, it is," Remo said. They walked together toward the mayor's car. Chiun already sat in the back seat, doing his finger tapping exercise for digital dexterity.

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  At the door of the car, Nobile looked up at the taller Remo.

  "I couldn't help but overhear," he said. "Did you say 'Srmtty' on the telephone?"

  "'Smitty?'" Remo said. "Why would I say 'Smitty?' " He pretended to think for a moment. "Oh, I know what you heard. I said this was a shitty deal. You misheard me."

  He looked hard at Rocco Nobile who stared back, and then let his face relax into a smile.

  "I guess you're right," he said.

  "Good," said Remo. "I'm glad you feel that way." And he was.

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