The Last Monarch td-120

by Warren Murphy

  The world had been turned on its ear following the events in the Middle East.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The sound came from Smith's computer. More raw data.

  Scanning it quickly, he filed it. It was like spooning out the ocean. Another bulletin raced in to fill the space.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The CURE director was looking at one of the greatest crises he had ever faced.

  The range of the neutrino bomb's magnetizing wave was far greater than even the wildest guesses of the scientists at Los Alamos. Even though the small plutonium bomb had been set off in the north of the West Bank, it had caused a technological catastrophe nearly eight hundred miles away in some instances.

  Due to the effects of the bomb, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Cyprus were totally cut off from the outside world. Nothing technological appeared to be working in any of the small nations nearest the blast site. Much of Iraq was similarly affected.

  Saudi Arabia, Egypt as far as Aswan, Izmir, Turkey, on the Aegean, Syria-all had experienced the devastating sweep of the magnetic neutrino wave. The invisible wall of heavy atoms had even reached as far as Abadan, Iran-some 780 miles from the blast zone.

  It was a cataclysm of incalculable proportions. The only information coming out of the region was that available via satellite.

  Smith had shifted his focus almost immediately. At that point, the neutrino bomb was the old news. What was happening in the rest of the world as a result of the blast was what worried the CURE director now.

  The situation was grim.

  As he had secretly feared, other nations viewed the incident as an opportunity.

  Smith was in the process of reading the latest report, this one from Cuba.

  Castro had acted on the news out of the Mideast with surprising speed. The head of the former Soviet client state was in the process of rounding up weapons to ship to Arab sympathizers. A fleet of three banana boats had been assembled to sail the arms to the Mediterranean. For Castro, it was both a moneymaking scheme and an attempt by the forgotten dictator to gain a toehold in the region.

  While Castro's eagerness to take advantage of the situation was almost laughable, the actions of other nations were far more serious.

  Smith dumped the terse Cuban report back into the growing file of international opportunists. He pulled out an update of one of the more troubling cases.

  Russia was involved in a massive collection of arms. Even as Smith read the report, he knew that crates of guns and ammunition were being airlifted to ships in the Black Sea.

  The former superpower clearly saw the events in the Mideast as an opportunity to regain some of its past glory. Smith had even intercepted a private memo to the United Nations that had originated somewhere high up in the Russian Duma. Before the end of the day, there would be official condemnation from the Russian government for the actions of the United States in the West Bank. At the same time, the vessels would already be on their way to the Middle East.

  America would be helpless to stop them.

  The Sixth Fleet was in disarray. The aircraft carrier that had brought Remo into Lebanon was out of commission. At present, it was unknown whether it was damaged beyond repair. Smaller battleships in the vicinity had been similarly affected.

  The Russians would have no interference entering the region. There would be no objection from the helpless U.S. ships nor from their impotent crews. They would be forced to watch in silence as the Russian flotilla sailed with its deadly cargo into the silent ports of terrorist nations.

  And the United States would not be alone in silence. The navies of virtually every nation in the area had been crippled by the neutrino wave. At the moment, hundreds of vessels were floating helpless in the sea, targets to be boarded or blown out of the water by hostile forces. The crews did not even have arms to resist.

  While the Russians presented the greatest threat, they were by no means alone. Libya and Iran were involved in an air war-limited at present to see who would have the pleasure of annexing the entire affected region.

  The French saw an opportunity to retake some of their former possessions.

  China was thrilled with the chance to spread its military influence into a new region and, if anyone attempted to stop them, perhaps employ some of the American technology they had obtained with Dr. Ree Hop Doe's aid.

  Even the British-worried that others would get there first-were preparing arms shipments. A force was already on its way from those western areas of the Mediterranean not overcome by the neutrino blast. More were heading in from the Atlantic. America was also responding.

  Worried that some hostile nation would be first to lay claim to the wide-open oil fields of several of the countries in the magnetized zone, task forces from the Second Fleet were already being pulled out of the western Atlantic and sent into the Mediterranean. Ships from the Pacific were being spread thin into both oceans to compensate. But the repositioning would take two days at best.

  Fortunately, it seemed that, at least for now, everyone was experiencing the same disarray. Smith dreaded the moment that someone realized the real opportunity was not in the Mideast, but elsewhere in the world. Many nations were so eager to race for the pot of gold they saw in the Mediterranean they were leaving their own territorial waters nearly undefended. It was a blind feeding frenzy, the likes of which the modern world had never before seen.

  Smith watched it all from his Folcroft office, helpless to do anything about it.

  Hopefully, Remo was nowhere near the bomb when it went off. If he had survived the blast, he was somewhere in the area. Even though he had failed to stop the bomb, there was still the matter of retrieving the former President.

  At this point, Smith would have liked more than anything to send CURE's enforcement arm after whoever had set off the neutrino bomb. It appeared to be Nossur Aruch and his PIO. Bryce Babcock was not alone in this; that much was certain. But there was no way to contact Remo in the field. If he found the President, Remo might just bring the former chief executive back without going after the PIO leader.

  In the end, the villain in this might get away. Smith would have to satisfy himself with the fact that having the former commander in chief returned to American soil might be the only resolution to this dire situation.

  And the tinderbox that was the Middle East would have to decide its own fate.

  As he worried over this inescapable conclusion, Smith's computer emitted a sudden electronic beep. Typing rapidly, he brought up the latest information the CURE mainframes had culled for him.

  Behind his rimless glasses, his gray eyes scanned the newest lines of text.

  Spain was now in on the act. The European country was sending several naval vessels to the Mideast. At present, the data on the latest nation to join the growing tide of warships was incomplete. Intelligence sources had yet to determine how much weaponry the Spanish State was shipping to the region.

  Smith dumped this latest report in with the others and backed out of the system. Before shutting off his computer, he disabled the automated beep that alerted him to incoming information concerning the region. It had been sounding almost nonstop since the detonation of the neutrino bomb.

  Smith was only one man. There was nothing he could do from his Folcroft office that would remedy this crisis.

  Even Remo and Chiun, with all their abilities, would be unable to stop the situation from playing out in whatever manner was destined.

  One way or another, it was already over.

  With this thought in mind, Smith got up from his computer and climbed wearily from behind his desk. With both hands, he rubbed his aching lower back.

  The Folcroft cafeteria had received a shipment an hour before. He had heard the truck back in behind the building.

  The cafeteria director was supposed to have gotten in some of the prune-whip yogurt he enjoyed. Smith left his office in search of his guilty little pleasure. The only one in his dour life.

  Chapter 34


  The army had grown from a handful of ragtag PIO soldiers to a mighty force of shouting, triumphant Palestinians. By the time they passed through the Ghor depression through which the Jordan River flowed to the north of the Dead Sea, they were five hundred strong.

  Horses panted and frothed, propelled by frantic kicks from jubilant Arabs. They screamed the war whoops of their ancestors as they passed the border of Israel into Jordan. Two meaningless names. Both nations would soon be one. Along with many others.

  At the front of the army, Bryce Babcock struggled to stay in his saddle. The horse between his legs pounded forward in spite of its rider's limited equestrian skills.

  Beside the interior secretary, the former President of the United States rode into the encroaching night, his body moving in perfect rhythm with the animal beneath him.

  And, on his magnificent sleek black steed at the head of the victorious pack-sweat glistening off its muscled rump, hoofs digging half moons in the clayish earth-Nossur Aruch was a conquering god. They had sensed his purpose, these sons of Palestine who followed him. Gone were the feelings of mistrust from the past few dark years. Gone, too, was the anger. The hatred. He was power; he was the future. And they were his.

  To lead.

  To govern over.

  To send to their deaths if he so commanded. He was their caliph. Their sultan. Their king. Nossur Aruch was finally, at this late point in his life, the monarch he had always hoped to be.

  He had tossed away his pathetic disguise in Hebron. There was no longer a need. He wore his white-and-black-checkered kaffiyeh proudly once more. Many others in his band wore the same headdress. The new mane of power in the Mideast. Symbol of a dynasty that would last longer than the pyramids themselves.

  Although he had declared himself president-in-exile of Palestine years before, he was not actually of the region. He was Jordanian, born to Palestinian parents. The land of his forebears was east of the Jordan. It was to this spot this haven-that Aruch and his army now rode.

  The day was growing short. Night was sweeping in upon them, brushing the last of the white-hot desert day from the sky by the time they reached the oasis of the Aruch family.

  In his youth, he had always thought of it as a place of coolness and shade. A sanctuary in the fire that was the desert. In his adulthood, he saw it for what it was. A pitiful lump of washed-out green in the Jordanian desert between As Salt and Madaba.

  The sun was gone. Melted into fat blobs of orange as they rode into the oasis. Long shadows cast from ill-watered trees became specters of black across the sand.

  The army pounded to a thundering halt.

  They had no sooner stopped when the ragged tents that were speckled between the trees began to disgorge hordes of pitifully filthy men and women. Inhabitants of the oasis. The family of Nossur Aruch. They crowded around the army, pawing at boots and trouser legs, all the while wailing pathetically.

  Aruch kicked at the faces of any who came near him. There were at least a dozen of his sisters jostling them. Even more nieces and nephews.

  "Leave me, wanton trulls and whoresons!" Aruch shouted, viciously booting his older sister, Shaboobatez, in her fuzzy jaw. It would have knocked out her teeth had she had any left.

  Hands raised in supplication, his family backed away.

  Aruch slid off his horse.

  The women of his clan were notoriously ugly, snagging as mates men who floundered at the stagnant end of the gene pool. The homely children they produced wouldn't have surprised anyone with a passing knowledge of genetics. The world would have been shocked to discover that Nossur Aruch had gotten the looks in his family.

  The PIO head was like a movie star at his high-school reunion as he pushed his way through the sea of grabbing hands.

  A filthy nylon tent checkered in white and black to match his kaffiyeh stood out in front of the rest. Aruch made it to the rear of the crowd, slipping through the closed tent flaps.

  Inside was bare. It was no surprise. Years ago, on his first trip to the outside world, he had returned to find his tent completely stripped. His family had a tendency to steal anything that wasn't nailed down. Fortunately, their avarice was matched only by their laziness.

  Dropping to his knees in the center of the tent, Aruch used his palms to push away the powdery sand that was the floor. A few short sweeps revealed a trapdoor. At one end was a wrought-iron loop.

  Clawing for the handle, he pulled. At first it was a struggle, but soon the fused trapdoor hinges popped. He lifted the door.

  At once a generator hummed to life. Fluorescent lights flickered on a moment afterward, revealing a steep staircase that ran down into an unseen chamber.

  Aruch hurried down the stone steps.

  Another metal door was at the bottom-a necessary precaution just in case his family found the heavy lead trapdoor above. A key hung in perpetuity around his neck. Aruch stuck it in the lock, saying a quick prayer to Allah that the neutrino wave hadn't somehow damaged the bolt.

  With a satisfying click, the door rattled open. Aruch exhaled relief.

  The lead construction of the upper door had shielded down below. And if things in the stairwell worked, that meant everything beyond did, as well. Including his radio. His conduit to the outside world. The thing that would make him king of all the Mideast.

  Heart pounding a thrilling chorus in his ears, Nossur Aruch pushed open the door that led to his great destiny. With a devilish smile, he slipped inside the dimly lit chamber.

  IF REMO WAS NOT POSSESSED Of the ability to unerringly judge direction by attuning himself to the gravitational force of the Earth, he would have been convinced they were riding in circles.

  Every inch of desert they passed since riding across the Jordan looked exactly the same.

  They were stopped now. Their horses whinnied, kicking up clouds of dust.

  The sun had fled. The world around them had taken on shades of pale blue. Above them, the burning stars were close enough to touch off spot fires in the desert sand.

  A cold night wind blew across their backs, sending up minicyclones of dust in the vast tracts of empty space before them.

  As Remo and their PIO guide sat waiting on their mounts, the Master of Sinanju walked a few yards ahead. He was bent at the waist, staring thoughtfully at the ground.

  "This sand is shifting so much you can't tell anything," Remo called to him. His horse gave an angry snort.

  Chiun did not respond.

  "It'd help if you knew where we were going," Remo accused the PIO soldier.

  The Palestinian shook his head in apology. "I am from Hebron. I do not know the desert."

  When Remo again looked to the Master of Sinanju, Chiun was kicking lightly at the sand. Puffs of dust swirled away from the toes of his sandals.

  Turning back to the PIO man, Remo shook his head. "You're a sorry excuse for a guide, you know that?" he said. "Hit the road. But leave the horse."

  He nodded to a second, riderless mount next to the Palestinian's.

  The man eagerly unlooped the reins from his saddle, handing them over. Before Remo could change his mind, the soldier gave the ribs of his own horse a sharp kick. The animal began to beat a hasty retreat back toward Israel.

  As the PIO soldier rode off in one direction, the Master of Sinanju came padding back from the other.

  "Any luck?" Remo asked.

  "They rode this way several hours ago," Chiun said as he pulled himself up into his saddle.

  "How many?"

  "It is difficult to tell. The tracks have degraded. Perhaps twenty-five score." His wrinkled face was troubled.

  "Old Nosehair has pulled together quite a little army for himself," Remo said with a thin frown. "Whatever he's got planned, I say we nip it in the bud."

  There was no disagreement from the Master of Sinanju. Nudging their horses with their heels, they rode off side by side into the silvery desert night.

  THE STATICKY VOICE on the radio spoke English, but with a distinctly Russian
accent.

  "It will be our delight to aid the Palestinian people in this time of difficulty," the Russian colonel said.

  "How soon?" Nossur Aruch asked furtively into the radio microphone. For some reason, he felt compelled to whisper.

  It was cold in his bunker. He shivered in his artificial cavern far beneath the sand.

  "The Pa-Roosski is off the coast of Lebanon now. We can airdrop you a shipment within four hours."

  "What of the Americans?"

  The Russian's smile was nearly visible across the empty miles that separated them.

  "Their Sixth Fleet is drifting helpless at sea," the colonel said. "Some of their vessels have run aground. They are of no consequence to either of us."

  Relieved that his one concern had been allayed, Aruch gave the Russian his coordinates in the Jordanian desert.

  "Several packages will be arriving at your location shortly," the colonel said. "I know that you will use their contents wisely. Russia intends to enjoy a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Palestinian people and their president. Good night, sir." With that, the Russian was gone.

  The deal was struck. Just like that.

  Aruch slipped the receiver into the hook on the side of the large square box.

  He had not even had to offer the former American President as payment. Money wasn't necessary now. The Russians only wanted to establish a new client state. Their first in years.

  For Nossur Aruch, it was all too good to be true. He would get his guns and he would receive payment. After all, the ex-President was of no use to him. He would auction off the old one to the highest bidder.

  Aruch lifted the phone once more. With a single, stubby digit, he began dialing the long code that would connect him to Tripoli.

  Chapter 35

  Remo heard the dull hum of the plane engine before the Master of Sinanju. It was coming from the north. Chiun's ears pricked up a microsecond after his pupil's. As they rode through the desert, they turned their faces to the sound.

  The fat shape of a low-flying transport plane appeared as a dark shadow above the desert expanse. It was a Russian Antonov An-26 Curl. A popular light tactical transport craft. The drone of its twin turboprops grew to an earthshaking bellow as the plane roared over the desert only a few miles from where Remo and Chiun were following Aruch's tracks. Falling in line far ahead of them, the aircraft began to track the same course as the two Masters of Sinanju.