Chained Reaction td-34

by Warren Murphy

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  He reached down, grabbed Ruby by the hair, and yanked her up to her feet.

  "But first you." He turned her head and shouted to his men. "Memorize this. It is the face of the enemy." As he spoke, droplets of blood splashed out from his mouth and spattered Ruby's shirt.

  No one saw them. No one heard them. A pair of sentries was posted at each of the four corners of the field, their sole duty to insure that no one sneaked into the main area of the camp.

  But none of them saw Remo and Chiun.

  The two men moved into the compound and then went silently through the back wall of Bleech's tent. Hidden by the darkness from the hundreds of pairs of eyes outside, they saw Bleech pull Ruby up to her feet by her hair. She let herself be dragged up. When her face was level with Bleech's she hacked and spat into his bloodied face.

  Chiun nodded. "She is courageous, that one. She will give me a very good son. Through you, of course," he added quickly.

  "Forget it," said Remo. He stopped talking as the enraged Bleech pulled his lead riding crop back in his right hand to smash into Ruby's temple. As he extended it behind him, Remo's hand flashed out of the doorway opening of the tent and yanked the crop from Bleech's hand.

  The colonel let go of Ruby and spun toward the tent. Remo stepped out into the bright sunshine.

  "Hi, guys," he said.

  He waved lightly to the five-hundred troops sit-

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  ting on the ground. They buzzed among themselves, unable to keep still any longer.

  "What's this all about?"

  "Who's this guy?"

  "Bleech'll do a number on him."

  "He can't be all there, coming here like this."

  Bleech stared at Remo, then reached for the automatic bolstered at his side. Remo's hand moved again, and Bleech heard the rip of leather as his holster was neatly excised from his belt and went flying twenty feet away.

  "That any way to say hello ?" asked Remo.

  The sergeant and three soldiers behind Smith had their guns out now. The sergeant had an ugly .45 aimed at Remo's belly; the three privates had their automatic rifles aimed at Remo.

  "That's enough," the sergeant said.

  Ruby looked around at Remo imploringly. Remo winked.

  He turned to the four soldiers. "You're next," he said.

  The sergeant extended his gun arm, taking dead aim on Remo's belt buckle.

  And then, like the earth ripping open during an earthquake, there was a loud high screeching. The soldiers turned their eyes toward the sound. A small yellow hand with long fingernails protruded through the wall of Bleech's tent. Like a knife, it slashed down toward the ground, and then through the ripped and fluttering canvas came Chiun, Master of Sinanju.

  The sergeant wheeled with his gun, but Chiun's yellow robes swirled around him as he moved from the tent. The sergeant's finger squeezed on the gun, but before it fired, Chiun's hand covered

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  the gun. The sergeant could feel the trigger guard being squeezed up behind his index finger, stopping the trigger from being depressed. He felt the crunching of bones, as the tiny yellow hand squeezed, and realized that his bones were being mashed, melted into the automatic as the pressure of Chiun's hand welded the cold steel into his warm living flesh. And there was the pain. The sergeant gave an ear-piercing scream and fell in a crumpled heap, the automatic stuck in his hand as if it had been nailed to it.

  The three soldiers alongside him were barefaced, pimply boys. They watched in terror as the sergeant fell.

  They looked at Chiun.

  "Fire, you bastards," yelled Bleech.

  "Up yours," said one of the soldiers. He dropped his weapon and ran. The other two looked confused.

  "I said fire," Bleech hollered.

  The two men made the last mistakes of their young lives. They lowered their rifles to their waists, wheeled toward Chiun, and squeezed the . triggers. The automatic weapons fired a loud rat-tat-tat that tore through the canvas of the tent. Then they fired no more, as their rifles went through their bellies and out their backs, not even slowing down at the spinal column.

  They went down, slowly, like jello molds melting away under a heat lamp.

  Next to them, the sergeant lay blubbering, trying to disentangle the steel of his automatic from the flesh of his hand.

  Bleech looked at the carnage, turned, and tried to run. But Remo slipped his hand into the back

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  of the colonel's Sam Browne belt and held him tight. Bleech's legs moved to run, but he made no progress and, to the five-hundred soldiers, he looked like a cartoon character trying to run over an ice patch and expending heavy labor to no result.

  They laughed.

  Bleech heard them. Laughing. At a soldier, a career man, a man who had stood for his country when the commies and the pinkos and the lefties and the radicals were trying to destroy it.

  "Don't laugh," he screamed.

  They laughed harder with that sure young man's sense of knowing when the gang has a new leader.

  "All right," Remo said. "Playtime's over. Who runs this operation?"

  Bleech gathered his breath as Remo pulled him close by his belt. "Men," he shouted. "You'll see now how a soldier dies when he must." To Remo he said "You'll find out nothing from me."

  But nothing in Bleech's experience or training had prepared him for this pain. Remo pinched his left ear lobe between his thumb and index finger and squeezed.

  "Who's the leader?" Remo said again.

  "Baisley DePauw," Bleech said instantly. And Remo released his ear and the pain gave way to shame that he had cracked so quickly, talked so easily, and his soldiers were laughing aloud now at him, and the shame and anger filled Colonel Bleech's head like a hot red liquid and he scrambled across the ground, found his holster, and pulled out the automatic weapon from it. As he turned to fire, Ruby dove toward the ground,

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  came up with an automatic rifle and squeezed one round neatly into Colonel Bleech's forehead.

  He dropped like wet dirty socks.

  The troops stopped laughing.

  Ruby walked over and nudged Bleech with her toe. Like a cotton packed medicine ball, he rolled over smoothly, dead.

  Ruby looked at Remo. "I been wanting to hit that sucker since we got here."

  Remo looked at the seated soldiers who just stared at him, frightened, confused, not knowing what to do.

  He pointed to Colonel Bleech. "That's it, boys. Your master race. Now get on your buses and go home. This army's been discharged."

  The sunlight glinted off the hard planes of Remo's face and the shadows made his deepset dark eyes look like pools of death.

  "Go home," he repeated.

  None of the soldiers moved; none stirred. It had all happened too fast and they had trouble digesting it.

  Remo picked up Bleech's heavy Sam Browne belt, two and a half inches of thick grain leather. He held it in his two hands then, without seeming effort, pulled his hands apart, slowly, almost casually.

  As the soldiers watched, the leather ripped apart, the two halves trailing dry stringy strands.

  "Go home," Remo said again. "Now!"

  One recruit stood at the end of the first row.

  "Men. Ah think we better haul ass out of heah."

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  It turned into a rout, the young soldiers struggling to see who would be first on the bus.

  Remo nudged the groaning sergeant with his toe.

  "And take your garbage with you," he called.

  He looked at Smith, who was holding his right shoulder.

  "What's wrong with your arm, Smitty?" he asked.

  "Nothing. I fell," Smith said.

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  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Look at this, Remo."

  A complimentary copy of the Southern Pennsylvania Dispatch had been left in the motel room Smith had rented for access to a telephone. Smith had the paper open on the bed, opened to a double-page adverti
sement over the center fold.

  He pointed at the pages and Remo looked at them.

  AT LAST,

  WE KNOW THE CAUSE

  OP AMERICA'S PROBLEMS.

  "So do I," said Remo. "Americans."

  "Read it," Smith said.

  Remo read the copy on the left-hand page. It was brief and direct.

  America's blacks, it said, suffered from longstanding problems: high unemployment, poor educational facilities, narrow job opportunities, absorption in a culture that did not recognize their rich cultural heritage.

  America's whites, the advertisement said, suffered from a growing inability to walk the streets of their towns and cities safely and a growing

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  sense that the government in Washington was no longer interested.

  "Hear, hear," said Remo.

  "Bead it," said Smith.

  Whites felt that the products of their labor and their work was being drained from them in higher taxes, higher prices, and more government programs from which they could see no benefit.

  This caused increased irritation and conflict between the races.

  But now, the advertisement said, there was an answer.

  Blacks wanted primarily economic and cultural security. Guaranteed jobs, shelter, food, and the opportunity to learn of their rich background, while being with people who shared that background.

  Whites wanted to know that their streets were again safe and that the government's hand was not always in their wallet, taking their tax money and using it to support the same people who made the streets unsafe.

  "That's right," Remo said. "We pay too much taxes."

  "You haven't paid any tax in ten years," Smith said. "Except sales tax on all the junk you buy and charge to me."

  "Don't knock it," said Remo. "That should be enough to run the northeast for six months."

  "Read," said Smith.

  A new association had been formed, the advertisement said. It was going to bring to the American public new and specific proposals to end the racial tensions and the economic problems that had racked America for the last generation.

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  "But to get it done, you have to stand up for us. A nationwide movement is now being formed, headquartered in the historic town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and we will soon be marching on Washington.

  "We hope that fifty million of you Americans will make that march with us so the government will know we mean business. This is a caravan for a new America."

  It went on like that, a political call to arms.

  The right-hand page was filled with signatures of people endorsing the ad.

  Remo finished reading it and looked at Smith.

  "So? What's it all about?"

  Smith pointed at the slogan across the bottom of the page:

  SAVE LIVES. AVERT VIOLENCE. ENERGIZE.

  "Look at that," Smith said. "S-L-A-V-E. These people want to bring back slavery."

  "And that's what's behind Bleech and his army," Remo said.

  Smith was thumping a fist into a palm. As ever, his face showed no emotion, but he knew that Smith felt the emotion, the revulsion against what was planned. The notion of slavery hit at the heart of his rock-ribbed New England traditions and ancestry and background.

  The right-hand page of the advertisement was small type. It included column after column of people who endorsed the ad. There were forty-seven congressmen and senators, twelve governors, and hundreds of mayors. A former Republican candidate for President. Ministers, lecturers, and writ-

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  ers. Three quarters of the staffs of the Village Voice, Ring Magazine, and Better Homes and Gardens.

  "If this thing is so bad," Remo asked, "why the hell are all these names on it ?"

  "What do they know?" Smith said. "Most people sign these advertisements without even knowing what they say. Because someone asked them to. By the time they find out it's a call to re-institute slavery, their names will have done their work. Maybe fifty million people will march on Washington."

  "It's your problem," Remo said. "I'm not in this kind of work anymore."

  Ruby and Chiun came in from outside where they had been in deep conversation.

  Ruby pointed a finger at Remo. "It's your problem, too. You promised you help me find Lucius? Did you help me find Lucius? No, you ain't helped me find Lucius. Now, you ain't done until you do. You hear?" Her voice had steadily risen in pitch, and, because it cut through Remo like a knife, he raised his hands in surrender.

  "Okay, okay, okay," he said. "I'll do it. I'll do anything. Just stop yelling at me."

  "Anything?" asked Chiun.

  "Not that anything," said Remo. "Do you really think I could take that screeching for the rest of my life?"

  "Not for the rest of your life. Just a minute or two," Chiun said. "Then it will be over and I will manage the results of it."

  "What are you talking about now?" Ruby asked.

  "He's talking about breeding you and me so he can have a kid to teach."

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  "Not on your life," said Ruby.

  "But think," said Chiun. "Remo is white and you are brown, so a child would be tan. Now tan is not yellow, but it is closer than white or brown. That would be a start."

  "You want yellow, hire yourself a Chinaman," Ruby said.

  Chiun spat. "I want yellow, but not at the price of sloth or disease or treachery. I would rather have a Russian than a Chinaman."

  "Then get yourself a Russian," said Ruby. "I ain't gonna do the do with him, just to make you happy."

  Smith shushed them. He was on the telephone, talking slowly and smoothly into the mouthpiece.

  "That's right, Chiun," said Remo. "That's the way I feel, too."

  "The two of you are hopeless," said Chiun. "Anyone with half a brain could see the merits of my suggestion."

  Remo fell onto the bed. "No, thank you," he said with disgust.

  Ruby looked at him with curiosity.

  "What you mean, talking like that?" she said.

  "I'm rejecting you," Remo said.

  "You not rejecting me. I rejecting you."

  "We're rejecting each other," said Remo.

  "No, we're not. You got nothing to say about it," Ruby said. "If I wanted you, I'd get you."

  "Never."

  Chiun was nodding at Ruby, patting her on the shoulder in encouragement.

  "You think you're special?" she asked Remo. "I get turkeys like you any time I want."

  "Not this turkey," Remo said.

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  "We'll see about that," Ruby said. "You willing to pay for this? You was talking about thousands of gold pieces."

  "The wealth of ages," Chiun said.

  "That means two bags of sea shells and fourteen dollars worth of junk jewelry," Remo said. "And twenty-two Cinzano ashtrays that he's stolen from different hotels."

  "Silence," said Chiun. "This does not concern you."

  "That's right, dodo. It doesn't concern you," Ruby said.

  "Funny," said Remo, putting his hands behind his head. "I would've sworn it concerned me most of all."

  "Ignore him, child," Chiun said.

  "We'll talk about this later when he's not around," Ruby said.

  Smith hung up the telephone.

  "Despite all your attempts to make it impossible," he said, "I've checked it all out."

  Remo looked at the ceiling tiles and began to count them.

  "I was just talking to the computers at . . ." Smith paused and glanced at Ruby. "My offices," he said.

  "And are they having a nice day?" Remo asked. "How's the weather up there? I hope it's not chilling their little solenoids."

  Smith ignored him. He raised his left hand to rub his right shoulder where the gun butt had smashed.

  "The land in the piney woods is owned by a corporation controlled by Baisley DePauw."

  Remo sat up in the bed. "That's what that

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  make-believe colonel said, too, an
d I still don't believe it. Baisley DePauw is the left wing ding-dong liberal hoople of all time. Your computers are all wet."

  "And this advertising," Smith said, "appeared in most of the daily newspapers today. It was placed by an organization funded by a foundation. The foundation is controlled by Baisley DePauw."

  Remo lay back on the bed. "I don't believe it," he said.

  "And Baisley DePauw has bought up three hours of television time on all the networks seven days from today."

  "Not him," Remo said. "I don't believe it."

  "The buses we saw today are owned by one of the DePauw companies," Smith said.

  "I don't believe it."

  "And last week, the day after the raid on Norfolk, two buses like that were seen driving into DePauw's West Palm Beach mansion," Smith said.

  "I don't believe it," Remo said. "Not Baisley DePauw."

  "The combined payroll costs of DePauw's companies is close to one billion dollars," Smith said. "Annually. Slavery will save him at least five-hundred million dollars a year."

  "I believe it," Remo said. "A buck's a buck. Speaking of which, where is Lucius?"

  "He be at the West Palm Beach house," said Ruby.

  Smith nodded. "It seems that way."

  "Then let's go," said Ruby.

  "You go," said Remo. "I can't. My heart is broken. Dear, sweet Baisley DePauw. Slavery. From

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  the man who gave us such great stage hits as Kill the Honkey and Up Against the Wall, Mother and who's personally gone bail for every maniacal killer in this country if they're the right color. . . ."

  "None of them are the right color," Chiun said. "The right color is yellow."

  "I just don't believe it. You go," Remo said.

  He looked at Euby. Slowly her mouth opened. She was working herself up to screech at him. He could see it in her eyes. He clapped his hands over his ears.

  But it wasn't good enough. Ruby let loose a string of curses that would have bubbled wallpaper.

  "All right, all right," said Remo. "Enough. I'll go."

  " 'Cause you promised," Ruby said.

  Remo surrendered. "Because I promised." He looked around and his eyes fixed on Smith. "All right," Remo told Ruby. "I'll go with you, but I don't have to take him along. I don't think I could take that trip. We'll park him someplace so he can get that shoulder fixed up."

  "Mama'll take care of his shoulder," Ruby promised.