Engines of Destruction td-103

by Warren Murphy

  Traffic flowed all around him. Lead-footed drivers jockeyed in and out of busy lanes in a violent rush. Strangely, most of the flow was sideways, not forward. Drivers struggled to get out of their lane and into another one. Then without bothering to signal, they slid back into lanes they had just slipped out of. It was very ritualistic. A space would open up, and everyone would make a dash for it. Bumpers clashed. Horns blared. Pungent curses lifted above the din. The winner hardly ever spent more than a quarter mile occupying the hard-won slot. As soon as he saw another, he had to have it. The concept of yielding to traffic was as alien as obeying the speed limit.

  Remo had a long time ago thought he'd figured out the Boston driving mentality. Every Bostonian firmly believed the common courtesies of the road applied to everyone except himself. So each driver ignored them, serene in the mistaken assumption that the other guy would dutifully observe the rules of the road. But hardly anyone ever did.

  Boston drivers were always running late, as well. They were perfectly willing to risk life and limb to shave six or seven seconds off a trip. And they changed lanes as fast and erratically as most people changed their minds.

  It had gotten so insane Remo had stopped driving in the city. Instead, he took cabs or the subway.

  Remo couldn't find the right car to handle Boston traffic so he had demanded his employer come up with something appropriate. After all, if Remo were to die in a car crash, his employer would be out millions of dollars in training expenses-not to mention one of the two greatest assassins on the market today.

  His employer had balked. At first.

  "Absolutely not."

  "Look, Smitty," Remo had told him. "They pour money into training fighter pilots, and when the jets go down they move heaven and earth until they rescue them even though the big loss is the plane. Right?"

  "That is true," Dr. Harold W Smith admitted slowly.

  "So, you've poured tons of money into my training, and since I'm stuck living in this madhouse-"

  "Boston is not a madhouse."

  "Boston traffic is like playing bumper cars in Sherman tanks against homicidal maniacs. These people are okay on foot, but put them behind the wheel of a car, and they fall right off the evolutionary ladder."

  Smith cleared his throat. "I am sure you are exaggerating."

  "Last time I tried driving from the airport, three people did their best to run over my car because I stopped for a pedestrian at a freaking crosswalk."

  "Unlikely."

  "Once I was head of the line at a red light when it turned green. I didn't start up instantly, and some idiot behind me leans on his horn and calls me every name in the book."

  "He must have been in a hurry."

  "He was-to get to the hospital after I dislocated his tongue."

  Smith made an uncomfortable noise in his throat.

  "Put it in my contract," Remo said. "I want a car that will stand up to Boston traffic. And it's gotta be red."

  "Why red?"

  "Why not?" countered Remo.

  And since good assassins were hard to find, Dr. Smith had done that. Eventually. It had taken longer than Remo expected. There were a few rejects. The first car was a Bonneville. Remo took it around the block for a test drive and was promptly sideswiped by a newspaper-delivery boy on a bicycle.

  Remo got out and asked the boy if he were all right. The boy threw the afternoon paper at him and threatened to sue.

  "You cut me off," Remo pointed out, relieved that the boy's pitching arm was unhurt.

  "You should look where you're going, asshole!" the boy screamed, his nose ring shaking under his dilated nostrils.

  "Does your mother know you talk that way?"

  "My mother taught me to talk this way when I talk to assholes. This is a brand-new bike. Now look at it."

  Remo looked. The bike had lost a fleck of electric green paint. Otherwise it was unscathed.

  "I just got this car," Remo had countered, pointing to his scratched front fender.

  "Will your mother beat the living crap out of you for scratching it up?"

  "I didn't scratch it up. You did. And watch what you say about my mother. I never knew her."

  "You're lucky. My mother's going to rip me a new cake-hole."

  "Remind her for me to wash out every other orifice with soap, too."

  "I could sue you, you know. My father sues people all the time."

  "He should start with your mother for dropping a blivot like you into the world," Remo screamed.

  "You can't talk to me like that," the newspaper boy screamed back.

  "If I were your father, I'd demand my sperm back," yelled Remo, warming to the subject.

  At that, the boy stalked over to Remo's new Bonneville and licked the wounded front fender with his tongue. Remo thought it was a new variation on, paint sniffing until the boy straightened and Remo saw the fresh scratch that exactly matched the one made by the collision. The boy then stuck out his tongue at Remo, revealing the silver stud bolted through it.

  Whereupon Remo dismantled the ten-speed with his bare hands, reassembling it into a vertical bird cage with the boy caught inside. Remo left him cawing like a crow.

  The Bonneville went back to the dealer.

  The second car was a Chevy Blazer. It survived the first trip around the block and even got as far as Route 128 and back when Remo happened to park it in front of a supermarket, where a Mercedes SL backed into it.

  The woman driver got out from behind the wheel, took one look at the Blazer's damaged front end, her nicked bumper, and turned on Remo.

  "You're supposed to watch where you're going!" she shrieked.

  "I was parked," Remo declared, reasonable of tone because by this time he suspected all Boston drivers were mentally unstable.

  "It's your word against mine," she flung back, flouncing past him.

  "You're supposed to exchange papers at the scene of an accident," Remo called after her. "State law."

  "I didn't have an accident. You did. Exchange them with yourself."

  Remo waited until the woman had entered the store and then kicked her tires. He did this casually, going from tire to tire. His leather loafers bounced off the hard rubber. Each time the tire gave a low pop, and air began hissing.

  When Remo reclaimed his battered Blazer, the woman's car had settled onto its rims.

  Remo sent the Blazer back, too.

  His employer had then complained that Remo was obviously driving in an unsafe manner.

  Remo suggested that the only safe way to operate a motor vehicle in greater Boston was to lash weather balloons to the chassis and float over traffic.

  "Try again," he told Smith.

  The latest vehicle had arrived just that morning. Remo took one look at it, rubbed his hands together and said, "I can hardly wait."

  And he had made a beeline for the Neponset River Bridge and the wild joys of Boston traffic.

  So far it was everything he had asked for. But mostly it was red. Red flake, to be precise. Remo didn't know they made red-flake auto-body paint anymore. He remembered seeing it on customized hot rods as a kid, when owning a bicycle was beyond his financial reach.

  Remo was tooling along the Southeast Expressway-better known as the Southeast Distressway during rush hour, or the Green Monster on good days-trying her out. It was a long, congested ribbon of elevated highway that ran through Boston proper like a torpid boa constrictor. They were going to be tearing it down soon to make way for the depressed Central Artery. Remo hoped they had the good sense to drive a stake through its heart, too.

  The July sun blazed down and made his vehicle burn like a hot coal. He could be seen for miles. That was a big plus. Boston drivers had trouble seeing anything smaller than the Hancock Tower.

  As he approached the Roxbury-Mass Ave. off ramp, a man in a black Ford Ranger Bigfoot tried to cut in front of him, horn blaring, oversize wheels clawing asphalt.

  In the past Remo would have gotten upset or angry. Instead, he grinned
from ear to ear.

  Remo fed the engine gas and accelerated, cutting him off.

  Recovering just in time, the man gave Remo the finger. So Remo gave his wheel a gentle nudge. His vehicle eased over into the other lane. The Bigfoot driver tried to crowd him back. It was no contest. The other driver only had a jacked-up sport utility vehicle with Bozo the Clown tires. Remo was driving a fourteen-ton armored personnel carrier.

  Remo ran him over into the breakdown lane and, not satisfied with that, crowded him against the guardrail.

  The Ranger shed sparks and paint for over a mile before the cursing driver finally stopped yanking the wheel toward Remo in a futile attempt to run him off the road. He just ground to a halt, one tire resembling blackened Shredded Wheat.

  "I like it," Remo said as he put the mauled Ranger behind him.

  "You are insane," said Dr. Harold W Smith, gray face turning white, from the passenger seat. He clutched his briefcase before his chest. His gray eyes were stark behind his rimless glasses. He had come to Boston to personally hand over the keys and special papers that made the APC street legal. Remo had talked him into coming along for the test drive. Smith obviously regretted it.

  "That was defensive driving," Remo protested. "You saw him cut me off. Don't deny it."

  Coming up on the Neponset-Quincy exit, Remo eased carefully into the exit lane.

  Two nuns in a metallic silver Honda hatchback suddenly overhauled him, cut over hard and almost sent him into the rail. Only Remo's superhuman reflexes avoided high-speed disaster.

  Dropping in behind the hatchback, Remo gave them a blast of his horn.

  The nun who wasn't driving leaned out of the open hatchback and threw her black rosary at him. It bounced off the red flake armor, scattering beads everywhere.

  "See!" Remo said. "This is what I'm talking about. Even the nuns go batty when they're on the road."

  "Incredible."

  "Boston drivers. They are the absolute worst."

  "And you have become one of them," Smith said tightly.

  "What!"

  "You are enjoying this, Remo."

  "I'm enjoying having the upper hand in traffic," Remo said heatedly. "I'm enjoying not taking my life into my hands when I pop down the street for a sack of rice. I'm enjoying the fact that no matter how crazy the other guy is, no matter what he's driving, I'm bigger, harder and more impervious than he is."

  "Then you will accept this vehicle?"

  "With bells on. It have a name, by any chance?"

  "It is called a Dragoon."

  "I can hardly wait to tell Chiun I am the proud owner of a fully loaded Dragoon."

  "Actually," Smith said, "I had the offensive weaponry removed."

  "Too bad. Around here they would make great scofflaw discouragers."

  "Less weight means better fuel economy," Smith said tightly.

  "Good thinking. How many miles to the gallon does this beast get anyway?"

  "Three," said Harold Smith, director of CURE, the supersecret government agency that had no official existence.

  WHEN THEY PULLED into the parking lot of his private apartment complex in the seaside city of Quincy, the Master of Sinanju was waiting for them.

  He stood only five feet tall, his wispy body tented in a teal silk kimono, but the wisdom of the ages seemed to have been inscribed on his parchment features. He was Korean. Bald. Hazel eyed. Long nailed. There was a little hair over each ear, and a windtroubled wisp that passed for a beard. His voice was a querulous squeak.

  "How fares the mighty dragon?" he called out.

  "Dragoon," Remo corrected.

  "I care not how the word is pronounced in this contentious province," said Chiun, who did not look remotely like one of the two most dangerous assassins of the twentieth century. "It is the official conveyance of the Master of Sinanju. Therefore, it will properly and respectfully be addressed as the Sinanju Dragon."

  "Dragoon," said Remo. "Tell him, Smitty."

  The Master of Sinanju looked up at the man he called Emperor. Smith was climbing out of the Dragoon. He was a thin, spare man past retirement age. Everything about him was gray. Hair, eyes, unhealthy skin color. A man like Smith could have benefited from careful color coordination of his wardrobe selection. Instead, Smith habitually dressed in gray three-piece suits that enabled him to blend into almost any situation like some colorless chameleon.

  "Call it what you will," he said. "I must be going."

  Chiun's sparse eyebrows lifted, making his hairless scalp wrinkle up. "So soon? But you have only this day arrived, Emperor. I had planned a feast in your honor."

  "I really must be going."

  Chiun inclined his aged head. "Great is our disappointment, but we will endure it heroically, swallowing our bitter tears, for we understand that we are but servants, mere tools to be employed at will and if necessary disposed of like a sword that has lost its edge. I do not blame you, O discerning one. For our dullness stands exposed before your all-seeing orbs."

  And the Master of Sinanju bestowed the withering regard of his hazel eyes upon Remo's hands.

  Smith followed Chiun's gaze.

  "He's still at it," Remo said, holding up his hands. They looked like ordinary hands. His wrists were freakishly thick, but the hands might have belonged to anyone. The fingers were on the long side, but no one would mistake them for the digits of a concert pianist. The nails were neat and carefully trimmed.

  Shying from the horrible sight, Chiun threw a teal sleeve across his eyes. "No, I cannot bear to look upon those maimed things. Look away, O Emperor. Remo, hide them, lest you offend Smith the Tolerant for all time."

  "Where do I hide my hands?" Remo asked, lifting his arms to show off his white T-shirt and tight tan chinos.

  "You have pockets."

  "There's nothing wrong with my hands."

  "You have the nails of a sloth, and you say that!" Chiun whirled. "Smith, a boon. Surgeons have changed Remo's face in the past. Can anything be done for his retarded fingernails?"

  "I have never heard of cuticle implants," Smith said with no humor whatsoever.

  Chiun's spare shoulders sagged. "Then it is hopeless. When I pass into the Void, I will be the last of my line with nails of the correct length."

  With that, the Master of Sinanju lifted his hands and stared at them, his parchment features a mask of regret. His nails curved out a good inch beyond his bony fingertips. They looked like ivory daggers and could slice a human throat open with a casual flick.

  "He's still trying to get me to grow Fu Manchu fingernails," Remo undertoned to Smith.

  "Resist," Smith whispered back.

  "Yes!" Chiun cried. "Resist these Western urges, Remo. Do as Smith commands. Let your fingers flower and grow. Unleash the deadliness that lurks within. There is nothing to fear. I will teach you proper nail cultivation. Do this one thing, and your training will be complete. I will ask nothing more of you."

  Remo shook his head firmly. "No soap, Chiun. Once I cave in on the nails, you'll be fitting me for a fighting kimono."

  "You should be on bended knee begging for a respectable kimono. You look like a scarecrow in those hideous pantaloons."

  "Trousers," said Remo.

  "Remo needs to blend in with our society," Smith said firmly.

  "Let your society know him for a Sinanju assassin! What is this mania for secrecy?"

  Remo and Smith exchanged glances. Neither man spoke, but their weary expressions all but said, You explain it to him this time.

  "I must go," Smith said in his lemoniest tone of voice.

  "Need a lift to the airport?" asked Remo.

  "No. I came by train."

  "Train?"

  "Yes, it was the most economical option. Also I wished to observe the Amtrak system firsthand."

  "Why's that?"

  Smith lowered his voice. "That is an operational matter."

  "Checking out Amtrak involves national security?"

  Chiun piped up, his wrinkled face s
uddenly stern, "Remo! Do you not read your newspapers? The insurgent Amtraks are at the forefront of the rebellions in the far western provinces. Even as we stand here, unsuspecting, they are sowing sedition and advocating the overthrow of the Eagle Throne, which we are pledged to protect."

  Smith adjusted his Dartmouth tie uncomfortably. "If you do not mind, I must be going," he muttered.

  Chiun inclined his head in a stiff semibow. "Though you take the very sun with you, we will press on, unbowed, living for the day that you call upon us to do your bidding, O generous one," he cried.

  "Er, yes," Smith said. He hurried up the street to the subway station as if being hectored by bullies.

  "Do you always have to do that?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "It is better than suffering that man's tiresome company all evening," Chiun sniffed.

  "Smitty's not so bad."

  "He eats his rice with a fork," Chiun spat, and then promptly kicked all four oversize tires on the Dragoon.

  "Why are you doing that?" Remo asked.

  "Because you neglected to."

  Remo patted the hull. "So how do you like it?"

  Chiun regarded the gleaming monster of steel plate critically and asked, "Why is it scarlet?"

  "So the maniacs will see me coming and get the hell out of my way," Remo explained. "And you haven't answered my question."

  Chiun wrinkled up his tiny nose. "It lacks dragons."

  "I like it the way it is. Without dragons."

  "It is half mine. There will be a dragon painted upon my half. See that it is finished by morning."

  "If it's your half, why do I have to paint it?"

  "Because if you do not, I will insist upon dual matching dragons, not to mention front and rear phoenixes."

  Remo sighed. "What color dragon?"

  "Gold and green are good dragon colors. But I leave this to you."

  "You know, I haven't painted anything since kindergarten."

  Chiun shrugged. "You are still young and have all night to learn your craft."

  With that, the Master of Sinanju bustled back into the fieldstone building they shared. In past times it had been a church, a Sikh temple and possibly had seen other, more secular incarnations. Now it was a nondenominational condominium. Converted back in the eighties, it had never been offered to the public. Instead, Harold Smith had bought it at auction, turning it over to the Master of Sinanju as part of a previous contract settlement. Chiun had promptly dubbed it Castle Sinanju, and they had moved in. Remo occupied one wing and Chiun the other. They shared the low, crenellated bell tower. It was to this tower Chiun had repaired, Remo knew. Ostensibly to meditate but in reality to watch as Remo once again did his bidding.