The Color of Fear td-99
Page 4
All the agent knew was that a thick-wristed hand reached for his face, and while his eyes were fixed on that looming hand, a thumb came out of his left peripheral field of vision and did something sudden and unpleasant to his Adam's apple.
After that, all he could do was hum. And glumly surrender the car keys to the outstretched hand.
Remo drove south. It seemed pleasant country, very green and picturesque. Farms predominated, but there were lowlying swamps, too. Every mile or so signs dotted the land proclaiming this colonial site or that preserved attraction. At first it was interesting. After a while the signs blurred past in unending and mindnumbing numbers.
The surviving chimneys of homes that had been burned flat by the Federal Army of the Potomac during the Siege of Petersburg were carefully maintained like precious scars in the lush countryside. Wherever a Confederate officer, horse or camp dog had fallen, the site was commemorated by a carefully painted and maintained sign or marker. There were Confederate cemeteries galore. Once, the highway actually cut through a large burial ground whose flagdecorated tombstones lined the shoulder of the road.
"Why do these people flaunt the shame of their many defeats?" Chiun asked.
"Search me," said Remo, paying attention to his driving. "Maybe they like to complain, like some other people we both know," he added.
Chiun maintained an injured silence.
After a while Remo remembered something. "I thought Paris was killed during the Trojan War, before he could run off with Helen of Troy."
"Gossip," Chiun said dismissively.
"So what's the real poop?"
"Paris feigned his death and they eloped to Egypt in secret. Some claim that King Proteus slew Paris to win fair Helen, but in truth Paris, driven to distraction by his bride's unendurable snores, committed suicide. Any anti-Korean slander to the contrary is baseless and untrue."
"Wait a minute! Did the House ever work for King Proteus?"
Chiun gazed out the window, his face a parchment mask. "I do not recall," he said thinly.
"My butt!" Remo was silent a moment. "At least we didn't do Helen of Troy."
"Not that there were not offers," said Chiun. "Low ones."
They skirted Petersburg without incident, and all seemed calm, except for the helicopters overhead. Remo spotted state-police helicopters, a few Marine and Army ships, as well as those belonging to various news organizations, all headed in the same direction they were.
"So much for our going in unsuspected," complained Remo.
"What do you mean, we?" sniffed Chiun. "You are a guide and badger only."
"You mean gofer, don't you?"
"Just remember your place, burrowing one."
A mile before the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield off Interstate 95, there was a roadblock. Virginia State Troopers were stopping traffic. They were respectful to vehicles bearing Virginia license plates, as well as those belonging to North Carolina and adjacent Southern states. Vehicles with Northern plates were being turned back and in some instances detained.
At first they were polite when it was Remo's turn to pull up to the checkpoint. A solitary trooper in a gray Stetson sauntered up to Remo's side of the car.
"From around here?" he asked Remo. His uniform, Remo wasn't surprised to see, was Confederate gray with black trim.
Remo decided to bluff his way through.
"Why, shore," he said, hoping Virginians sounded like Andy Griffith, the first Southern voice that popped into his head.
"That's good to hear. We're conducting a little roadside eye test. Take but a minute." He held up a flash card. It read Portsmouth.
"Now, what's that say?" the trooper asked Remo.
"Portsmouth," said Remo.
"Nope. It's Porch Mouth," said the trooper.
"It says Portsmouth, not Porch Mouth."
"Try this next one, won't yew?"
"Isle of Wight," said Remo, reading the next card.
"Nope. It's Isle of White."
"It says Wight."
"It's pronounced white," said the trooper without humor.
"I don't see any h," Remo said.
"It's a Virginia h. Only Virginians can see it."
"Ah'm from Tennessee," said Remo, guessing at Andy Griffith's home state.
"Let's try one more, shall we?"
The trooper held up a card that clearly said Roanoke.
"Roan-oke," said Remo, pronouncing it the way it was spelled because that was the way Sister Mary Margaret used to pronounce it during American-history lessons back at the orphanage.
"Nope. Ro-noke."
"There's an a after the o, " Remo pointed out.
"And there's a bluebelly in the woodpile," the trooper retorted. He gestured to a nearby trooper. "Hey, Earl, we got us another carpetbagger come to make trouble here."
Two more troopers came up to join him, hands on side arms.
In the passenger seat the Master of Sinanju said, "Remo, I must not be delayed if I am to bind this nation together once more."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Remo asked out of the side of his mouth.
"I must save my strength, for I have a great task before me."
Remo sighed. "Oh, all right."
"Kindly step out of that car," the trooper with the flash cards said before the pain signals from his knees informed his brain that they had been ambushed by a suddenly opening car door.
The trooper let out a creditable rebel yell and doubled over to grab his throbbing kneecaps. While he was bent over, Remo removed his Stetson and threw it at the approaching Virginia troopers like a Frisbee.
It whizzed over their heads, spun in place and came back like a boomerang to slap the running troopers about their faces with the whipping chin strap.
Momentarily distracted, they failed to see Remo descend upon them. By the time they realized there was a problem, their fingers had been squeezed together in groups of five and expertly dislocated.
Remo stepped back as the troopers stood about shaking their numb but limp digits, which hung like fat, dead worms off their unfeeling hands.
"What'd yew do to us?" asked the flash-card trooper in a stupefied voice.
"It's called the Sinanju handshake," said Remo pleasantly. "It goes away if you hurry home and make love to your wife."
"What if we don't?"
"Your peckers fall off by sunset at the latest."
"Ah don't believe that for a goldurn moment."
"It's your pecker," said Remo, climbing back into his rental car and driving around the roadblock.
In the rearview mirror the stunned state troopers could be seen imploring motorists to drive them back to the city.
"I have never heard of this Sinanju handshake," sniffed Chiun, rearranging his kimono skirts.
"It's a new wrinkle. Invented it myself."
"I do not like these new wrinkles of yours."
"Then don't use them," said Remo.
"Rest assured, I will not."
WHEN THEY REACHED the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield, a bus came rolling up from the other direction. It veered off the road and came to a stop blocking Crater Road. When the doors opened, out poured two dozen fighting men wearing red fezzes, short blue jackets, baggy red pantaloons and carrying antique muskets.
They set themselves in a skirmish line, and a color banner went up.
"Which side are they on?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know," admitted the Master of Sinanju. "Let us inquire."
They approached with open faces and empty hands, the better to put a potential enemy off guard.
A group of muskets swung in their direction, fixing them in their sights.
"Halt!" a man shouted. He might have been an officer. Then again, he might not. His colorful costume was no more or less ornate than anyone else's.
Remo and Chiun kept coming.
"We're unarmed," Remo called out.
"Which army?"
"Neither."
Remo and Chiun kept walking. Remo read the legend on the banner. It said Louisiana Costume Zouaves.
"Louisiana sided with the South," Remo undertoned to Chiun. "But what a Zouave is, I don't know."
"It is a French word," hissed Chiun.
"Big deal. So is souffle. Maybe they're the Louisiana Souffle Brigade, come up to feed the Confederate troops."
"It is French for clown soldier, " said Chiun.
"Guess that makes them the Bozo Brigade."
"I say again, halt and identify yourself," one of the Louisiana Zouaves ordered.
"Press," said Remo, reaching for his wallet, where he kept cover ID cards for all occasions.
"Then ya'll are spies!" a harsh voice snarled. "Shoot the damn Yank spies!"
And six muskets boomed forth lead balls and clouds of black-powder smoke.
Remo had been trained and trained by the Master of Sinanju until he had unlocked every cell in his brain. Modern science had always claimed that twentieth-century man had never learned to access his whole brain, only about ten percent of it. Scientists speculated that within that untapped ninety percent lay vast potential, powers man might command should he ever fully evolve, as well as skills he had long ago lost when he dropped down from the trees to walk upright and forage the savanna for food.
Centuries ago the Masters of Sinanju began to harness these powers. Their first halting steps planted the seeds for all the Eastern martial arts from defensive kung fu to paralyzing jujitsu. It fell to Wang the Greater, in the darkest hour in the history of the House of Sinanju--which served the thrones of antiquity-to achieve full perfection in mind and body. The Sinanju Master who had trained Wang died before Wang could be taught the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of those who had come before.
It should have been the end of the House of Sinanju. But Wang went out into the wilderness to fast, subsisting on rice hulls and grass, meditating on the fate of the village of Sinanju on the rock-bound coast of West Korea Bay, which for generations had survived only because the cream of its manhood went out into a hostile world to ply the trade of assassin and protector of thrones.
One night a ring of fire appeared in the sky before Wang and spoke in a clear voice.
"Men do not use their minds and their bodies as they should," said the voice of the ring of fire to the Great Wang. "They waste their spirit and their strength."
And in a single burst a flame, the ring off fire imparted the ultimate knowledge that came to be known as the art of Sinanju, then vanished forever.
What Wang had learned he passed down to Ung, and Ung to Gi and on until in the midtwentieth century the last pure Master of Sinanju, Chiun, passed it on to Remo Williams. Remo dismissed ninety percent of the colorful stories and legends that accompanied the teaching of Chiun-especially the ring of fire, which sounded like a medieval UFO sighting-but emerged from his training breathing with his entire body, which in turn awakened his entire brain and unlocked the limitless potential of his body.
Among these abilities were increased reflexes, heightened senses and near-absolute control over his body. It had long ago ceased to be a conscious thing. It had become ingrained. Second nature. Remo no longer had to think about the simple tricks like climbing sheer walls, sensing enemies and dodging what the first Master who encountered them had called "flying teeth" and today are known as bullets. Remo's body performed those maneuvers automatically.
Remo heard the sound of the black-powder explosions before the first lead musket balls whistled toward him. That much was unexpected, because modern rounds fly at supersonic speed and usually reached his vicinity before his ears heard the shot.
Remo had been trained to never wait for gunfire. Instead, the click of a falling hammer or the jacking of a round into a chamber was the trigger for the bullet-dodging reflexes to come into play. There were many techniques. Remo liked to let the bullets come at him, tracking their trajectories until the last possible moment and then casually sidestepping out of their deadly path and back into place so it seemed to a gunman that the bullet had passed harmlessly through his target.
It was easy. Remo's ears might not be able to hear the shot because even supersensitive ears had to await the arrival of the sound, but the eyes read threatening motion as fast as light. So Remo tracked bullets as they came and got out of their way.
These lead balls were to a modern round what a Ping-Pong ball was to an arrow. There was no comparison. His reflexes, accustomed to the supersonic speed of approaching death, hardly stirred.
One ball came toward his side. Remo didn't even have to dodge it. He just leaned to the right slightly, placing his left hand on his hip.
The musket ball obligingly whistled through the open space between his rib cage and his bent left elbow.
Another ball arced toward his head.
Remo bent his knees. The ball grazed the top of his dark hair. Normally that would have been bad form and cause for a severe rebuke from Chiun, but the big lead ball was so clumsy and unthreatening that Remo experienced a playful urge, as if someone had tossed a big blue beach ball in his direction. It was more fun to let it touch hair than do a full evade.
A third ball, probably because it hadn't been rammed down the musket barrel with enough force, dropped desultorily toward his shoe. Remo kicked it back like a golf ball, and it dropped a Zouave, who went down clutching his crotch.
Grinning, Remo turned toward Chiun, and his jaw dropped-
A second volley had been fired at the Master of Sinanju. Remo hadn't been aware of the fate of the first. Only that if he could so easily dodge lead musket balls, so could Chiun.
Four balls came at the Master of Sinanju so slowly they all but announced their arrival.
The Master of Sinanju simply stood there. Remo's grin widened. Chiun was playing, too. But as the balls converged on his frail black-clad form, the old Korean did not move.
Remo's smile froze.
Then Remo was moving in on an interior line-an attack line. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong. The Master of Sinanju was not defending himself.
Remo would have to intercept those suddenly deadly spheres himself. Intercept and deflect-even if it cost him his hands.
Chapter 5
Remo Williams had both arms extended, with hands open to their fullest, to capture the hurtling lead balls before they could impact upon the sweetly wrinkled features of the unmoving Master of Sinanju. Then Remo felt a stinging sensation in the center of his chest that knocked his legs out from under him, along with the wind from his powerful lungs.
I'm hit, he thought wildly, even as his brain told him that was impossible. No slow-moving lead ball could strike a full Master of Sinanju without warning.
But his body told him he was in great pain.
Flat on his back, through the pain, Remo stared up in surprise.
And beheld the Master of Sinanju withdraw the extended arm that had struck Remo in the chest to calmly bat the musket balls back at those who had the effrontery to hurl them at his awesome presence.
Chiun used the heels of his palms. He had formed the kind of half fists most often used for striking short blows, fingers curled high and tight against themselves so that the palm flesh lay exposed.
With quick, sharp motions, Chiun struck glancing blows at the unmoving balls. Two blows per hand, four balls in all.
Caroming off his palms with meaty smacks, they careered back toward the muskets that had loosed them. Not with quite the velocity of the black powder explosions that had sent them winging out of their musket barrels, but still with enough energy to sting mightily when they struck flesh.
A smoking musket shattered along its barrel. A man was thrown back from the bone-breaking impact of a lead ball hitting his shoulder. Another went down with a shattered kneecap. The fourth received his ball back square in the breastbone and flew backward as if mule-kicked.
"That was how Kang fended off the flying teeth when boom-sticks were
first inflicted on civilization," said Chiun as Remo climbed to his feet.
"Fine," Remo said tightly. "But that doesn't mean you had to knock me flat."
"You were about to throw away your thick fingered hands for nothing, thick one. Observe and you, too, will be able to duplicate a feat infant masters in training achieve in their first week. Korean masters in training, of course."
"Bull," said Remo, who nevertheless watched closely as a third volley came whistling toward the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun pressed his hands together before his face in an attitude of prayer. Two balls made for his face. Remo had to hold himself back, because Chiun stood completely immobile, with no body vibration warning that he was prepared to dodge or strike back.
Instead, when the lead balls were a scant three inches before his unblinking eyes, the Master of Sinanju made his hands fly apart, knocking the balls away at right angles with dull smacks. They flew toward two other musketeers who were aiming their weapons at them.
The pair yelped and stumbled to the ground, severely chastised.
"Let me try it," said Remo as another small volley was loosed.
He had to restrain himself from moving in to meet the spinning balls. They were just too slow in coming. But when they did arrive, Remo used the heels of his hands to redirect them.
Technically, flesh never touched hot ball. Instead, Remo drove a cushion of compressed air ahead of his fast-moving hands. The balls struck the air pillows, made hard as steel by the blinding speed of his hands, and rebounded off so that he felt their heat but not their impact.
Remo's redirection technique was good, but the return arc was off. Both attackers went down after each took a ball in the top of his head. They might not wake up for another day or three. But they would wake up.
Until he had a handle on what the hell was really going on, Remo didn't feel like taking anyone out permanently.
"Let's address the troops," he told Chiun.
As they approached, the still-standing Louisiana Costume Zouaves were busily ramming lead balls down their musket barrels. It looked like hard work. Most were sweating.
One soldier had the ramrod jammed down the gun barrel and set the muzzle against an oak tree. He kept trying to force the musket into the tree so the ramrod would go in. Instead, the ramrod snapped clean in two.