Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

  There was some new kind of scrambler working and as he read from his notes, he realized his voice waves were being sucked into the receiver because it felt as if he was talking with earplugs on. He could only feel his voice inside his mouth. And it sounded different. When he moved his head away from the mouthpiece, he felt the earplug disappear. When close to the receiver, his voice was being sucked into it. Wonderful, he thought. Another piece of worthless junk, designed to make Japanese rich and Americans uncomfortable.

  He finished off his report with a request.

  "Smitty, can I get a reponse from you or do I have to talk to this computer?"

  "You must wait for a response on whether you will get a response," said the computer.

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  Remo made a raspberry into the phone. He noticed an iron skillet filled with yellow potatoes. His breath was unmoving in his lungs. His body rhythms were quiet. His heart kept a very low beat into the blood system. He was not breathing, but he could feel the grease in the air touch his skin. He wanted to scrape it off.

  "Okay," came the familiar lemony voice. "Go ahead."

  "Smitty, is there an 'a' in undersecretary?"

  "Remo, why are you bothering me with that? There are untold problems involving ..."

  "Does it have an 'a' or doesn't it?"

  "It does, now look, Remo, there's been some unusual activity concerning what might be a growing army and ..."

  "It does have an 'a', right?"

  "Yes. Now..."

  "Goodbye," said Remo. "Last mission." He hung up and got out into the street where there was breathable air, and inhaled for the first time since before entering the little restaurant. Farther away from the beach, he selected a parked car, slipped in, casually jumped the wires, and drove to Delray down the coast where he parked it several blocks from a marina and walked onto a white two-deck fishing boat, which had been moored there for a month.

  He was through. After more than a decade, he had done it. He was through with CURE.

  The air was good again and the sea bobbed pleasantly for a man who saw his whole future ahead of him. And he knew what he was going to do with it.

  Inside the boat, Remo saw sitting in a lotus

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  position a thin wisp of a man with a wisp of a beard, a wisp of hair over his temples, wrapped in a light blue morning kimono, looking quietly into forever. He did not turn around.

  "Little Father," Remo said. "I've quit Smith."

  "It is a good morning," said the aged Oriental, and his long fingernails flicked from the robes. "At last. Smith was an insane emperor and there is nothing more dangerous or unbecoming to a great assassin than an insane emperor. Yet, lo, these many years I have not been heard as I warned of this. And why?"

  "I don't want to know," said Remo who knew he was going to know whether he liked it or not, and also knew that not even an army could stop Chiun, Master of Sinanju, when he had a point to make. Especially one about Remo's ingratitude and unKorean-ness, or Smith's cheapness and insanity.

  Chiun could not understand an organization that wanted to protect a Constitution, and the accumulated history of hundreds of Masters of Sinanju, working for ambitious princes, made it impossible for Chiun to understand the head of an organization who did not want to be emperor. He was shocked early on when Smith refused his offers to assassinate the current President and make Smith emperor in his place. It was this misunderstanding that enabled CURE to hire Chiun's services without his being a danger to the secrecy of CURE.

  For, just as Smith would never know Sinanju, Chiun apparently could not know CURE. Only Remo understood most of both, like a man caught between universes, living in one, knowing another, and never finding a home,

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  "Why have I not been listened to, you may ask," said Chiun. He turned slowly, his legs still pointing forward, but his torso spinning completely around toward Remo.

  "I'm not asking," said Remo.

  "I must answer. Because I have given grace and wisdom and kindness at so little cost."

  "Smitty sends an American submarine every year with gold tribute. It risks World War Three by sneaking into North Korean waters to deliver gold to your village. More than Sinanju has ever had from anyone else," said the American part of Remo.

  "Not more than Cyrus the Great," said Chiun, referring to the ancient Persian emperor who had given an entire country for services rendered. Ever since, the House of Sinanju had felt highly about working for Persians, even after Persia became Iran. That Iran had billions of dollars of oil did not make it any less attractive to Chiun.

  "Too big a gift can be no gift at all," said the Sinanju part of Remo. For Cyrus had given a whole country but, taking command, the Master of Sinanju had learned governing but had lost some of his awesome physical skills. According to the history of Sinanju, he was almost killed before he could pass on to his successor the secrets that came, in diluted form, to be known as martial arts in the west.

  Skill lasted forever and was the only true wealth. Nations and gold disappeared but skill passed on would be eternal. This Remo knew. Chiun had taught him as Chiun himself had been taught.

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  "True," said Chiun, "but it was not the size but the nature of the gift. The gift I have given you is priceless and you have squandered it on an insane emperor. Yet have I ever complained ?"

  "Always," said Remo.

  "Never," said Chiun. "Yet I have borne ingratitude. I have forsaken my own kind, the heirs of Sinanju, for a white. Why have I done this?"

  "Because the only one in your whole village who was capable of learning was a traitor to Sinanju and everybody else was no good and when you found me, you found someone who could be a Master of Sinanju, who could pass it on."

  "I found a meat-eating pale piece of a pig's ear."

  "You found someone who could accept Sinanju, a white man who could learn where a yellow man couldn't. White. White," said Remo.

  "Racism," said Chiun angrily. "Blatant racism. And racism is most obnoxious from an inferior race."

  "You needed a white man, Chiun," said Remo. "Needed."

  "I have cast pearls before a swine," said Chiun. "And swine now claims I needed to throw the pearls away. I have disgraced my House. Lo, there is nothing worse that I can do, nothing worse that can happen."

  "I've found another way to make a living, Little Father," said Remo.

  And for the first time, Remo saw, on the yellow parchment of the face that had always

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  maintained control as normally as most lungs breathed, a reddish shock fill the cheeks.

  And Remo knew he had done wrong. Eeally wrong.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Colonel Wendell Bleech got his orders at 4:35 A.M. from the chief himself. They came in the form of a question.

  Could he, at this time, pull off one of the initial missions? It was important, because within a short period, the chief wanted to show a fully trained product.

  "Can do, sir," said Bleech. He hoisted his pumpkin body up in the bed and made a note of the time the call came in.

  "Colonel, it is imperative that you not fail. If you are not ready yet, I'd rather wait."

  "We are ready now, sir. Ahead of time." There was a long pause. Bleech waited with the pencil poised over the pad. He heard the even step of his personal guard outside his barracks door. His room was bare as a cell, with only a hard bed, one window, and a trunk for his clothes. Other than the toaster and the refrigerator to keep his English muffins at forty-three-degree temperature and the white enameled bread box holding twenty-two different kinds of jam, the room was without amenities. It was more stark even than his troopers' quarters.

  If Bleech needed justification for his harsh dis-

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  cipline, and in his own mind he did not, this room would have sufficed. But he had all the justification he needed in his mission itself. Every time he looked at the two lone pictures in his room beneath the stars and bars of th
e Confederacy, the old South defeated in the first Civil War, he knew he would do anything for his mission. It was not just another set of orders to him; it was a life's calling. It had led him from the regular army to this special unit, from which there was no recall.

  "Colonel, it would be bad if we could not move now, but it would be even worse if we moved and failed."

  "We will not fail."

  "Can you move tomorrow?"

  "Yes," said Bleech.

  "Against a city that can be closed off from every exit?"

  "Norfolk, Virginia?" guessed Bleech.

  "Yes. With the naval base there and lots and lots of hidden protection."

  "We can do it."

  "Enthusiasm has its limits, Colonel."

  "Sir, my enthusiasm ends where my reality begins. I would take this unit anywhere. They're mine and they're good and they aren't messed up with a lot of mollycoddling regular army regulations'. This is a fighting unit, sir."

  "Go," said the chief in the deep soft voice that the very rich often have because they never have to raise their voices to get anything.

  "When do we get the list of ... er, subjects?" asked Bleech.

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  "You have it in your Norfolk files. We would like fifteen out of twenty."

  "Yes sir. You'll have them within two days."

  "I don't want welts on them. No scars either. Welts and scars offend people."

  "Not a mark," Bleech promised. "Prime, sir."

  Colonel Bleech did not go back to bed but dressed in combat fatigues. He would return to bed in two days. He couldn't sleep now anyhow.

  He walked across the main camp compound under the dark misty sky of predawn morning. He smelled the moist heavy breezes of the nearby swamp and heard his solitary footsteps on the parade ground gravel, like crunching drums from an approaching one-man army.

  He headed for the intelligence security branch that was leakproof because it was unique. There was no piece of paper in it that could be stolen, that could be given to the FBI or CIA or Congress or anyone who could expose the special unit and what Colonel Bleech now considered his sacred mission.

  He had always hated paperwork anyhow. And now he would examine maps and reports and lists without ever touching one piece of paper.

  At the north side of the compound, two guards with submachine guns stood over a flat level square of khaki-painted steel.

  He nodded to the flat metal square beneath their feet, and thought that if one planted flowers in a cold frame above that door, it could become completely invisible.

  The two guards had asbestos gloves clipped to their belts in case Colonel Bleech wanted to enter

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  during- the day. The metal shield got awfully hot under the summer sun of South Carolina.

  It was comparatively cool now and the two men bent over and put their bare hands under the metal slab. With a grunting effort, they hoisted it, revealing a white concrete stairwell.

  Bleech's riding boots made sharp clicking sounds as he descended.

  "All right, put it back now," he said, impatiently holding a key at a lock. It would not enter the lock slot unless the heavy metal slab above was shut. The meager moonlight disappeared and the stairwell became dark as a grave as Colonel Bleech pressed his key into the lock, and the door opened and a soft light, increasing gradually, filled the room ahead.

  In the center of the room was a console with a screen, one chair, and a set of buttons. This room was simply access to the accumulated intelligence of the cause. When he had seen the room for the first time, when he was initiated into the cause, when the chief himself showed him this room, he knew it was possible to achieve the grand mission.

  For here was America at the push of a button, and he pushed Norfolk, Virginia, and he saw the map of the city connected by tunnel and bridge to mainland sections and what security was on each and what the city police did and the state police did and who, as of two days ago, was generally doing what to make the city operate.

  He pressed keys for an update and new data flashed onto the console screen. He pressed keys to get the names, locations, and pictures of the twenty. He asked for an update on their where-

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  abouts, no later than noon. He pressed in emergency. The beauty of a system like this, he thought, was that people at the other end of the computer did not have to have any knowledge of who or what they were gathering information for.

  Thousands could be working for the cause, and not one would have to know it. Which was why Colonel Bleech believed that it would be possible to achieve the grand mission.

  Here he was, looking at the innards of a city, and he was going to go in and neatly take what he wanted, then leave. There was no law or force that could stop him.

  Bleech worked out three plans for the raid. It was not like he was inventing them at the moment. He had worked on them for months. He ran them through the computer for an evaluation. And it wasn't that one or at best two would work. They would all work; it was a question of which would work best.

  He liked the answers the computer gave back. The assignment was easy, a piece of cake.

  The only real problem was the twenty targets. By their nature, they had no exact pattern. Sometimes this pool hall or that bar when the welfare checks arrived, sometimes just an abandoned building. Some would probably be in the hands of the police.

  Colonel Bleech refined his plans from the isolated intelligence room as he gave orders to the computer. He was thirsty and hungry and tired and his stomach groaned when he signaled the guards upstairs to open the heavy metal lid.

  When they did a light went on in the computer

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  room and a screen against the wall showed who was standing up there. Satisfied that it was the two guards who should be there, Bleech put his key back into the door and walked out. He checked his watch. He and his unit would reach Norfolk with hours to spare. His plan was to keep everyone out until the last possible moment, then make tight sweeps.

  He would raid in daylight, for 9 A.M. was the optimum hour, the time when the targets would most likely be asleep in their homes.

  When Bleech saw his selected units drive up in drab olive buses, his heart soared. He had planned this but seeing it made him know it would work.

  They looked so real in white hats and blue uniforms with white leggings and the SP bands on their arms. They looked like two busloads of Shore Patrol, quite common in a Navy base town. Only Colonel Bleech wore the khaki.

  He kept his men waiting in the hot summer sun while he went to sleeping quarters, changed, had four English muffins, and they were off.

  They were at the outskirts of Norfolk by dawn and his stomach was hopping with the tension of his first mission. He ordered the two buses into the outskirts of neighboring Virginia Beach, just so they could keep moving without entering the crucial target zones.

  He went through an equipment check again. Proper rounds of ammunition per man, proper weapons, the new nylon limb chains-which were far superior to the old heavy metal ones-hypodermic needles, intense sedatives. They were all there.

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  The buses moved through Oceana, Ocean-bridge, and then, at 8:37 A.M., were in Norfolk and then Granby Street. They drove to the designated check points and then, at this bright morning hour when those who were going to work were at or near work, his unit struck.

  The first spot was the Afro-Natural Wig Factory on Jefferson Street, R. Gonzalez, Proprietor. The crew was quickly through the plate glass, ramming it down with two sharp jabs of poles. A beautiful mulatto woman with cream brown skin but fiery black eyes stood inside the entrance of the small shop with a broom. She was brushed aside quickly.

  Four men were into the upstairs and the first bedroom on the right. They were down instantly with a groggy drunken young black man.

  "This is him. Positive indent, sir. Lucius Jackson."

  "That his sister you pushed?" asked Bleech. He looked around. "Where'd she go?"

  "T
hat was her."

  "Okay, let's go."

  The unit was working the street, some groups entering through doors, others through windows. Colonel Bleech knew he could not keep track of the targets because he was too busy making sure officers and men moved as part of one great invasion of this street.

  In ninety seconds they were gone, to another street for another raid. Eight seconds later, R. Gonzalez, Proprietor, appeared in the front door of the Afro-Natural Wig Factory, a .44 Magnum in her hand, and cursed when she saw the street

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  was empty. She had wanted to shoot herself somebody.

  Bleeeh was ecstatic. Not a single member of the unit had made a mistake. The intense sedatives worked perfectly. Practiced hands inserted the plastic tongue holders that prevented a drugged person from choking on his own tongue. The nylon chains bound wrists behind backs and feet up tight together at the chest. Like curled laundry bundles, the targets were slid into luggage compartments in the sides of the buses. Unlike the normal Greyhound or Trailways buses, these compartments had oxygen pumped into them.

  In four key blocks of this area, they had fourteen men and they had used twenty-two minutes. Bleeeh made a decision. He could keep looking for the fifteenth target they wanted and expose his group to danger, or leave now with fourteen safely in hand. He decided to leave. It was the right move. He had not been made commander of this special unit because he did not think for himself. He called in all his men.

  Trooper Drake, of course, was last. He had a purpose for Drake.

  The two Navy buses with their human cargo hidden in the special luggage compartments drove slowly and carefully back to the main street. Every trooper was aboard.

  Colonel Bleeeh gave the order. "Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel," he said to the trooper driving his bus and this order was radioed to the following bus.

  So they drove into the tunnel. But the buses that emerged were not Navy buses. They were

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  commercial buses with commercial signs and commercial plates. The panels that had blocked out the windows had been removed and visible inside now were a bunch of college students heading home to Maryland. The troopers had made the switch of clothes and hidden their weapons in eighteen seconds. And it had all been done in a tunnel where no one observed.