"You know. You cheated. You are too happy for having paid the proper effort in this morning's training. But I say to you, whoever robs from his own efforts robs himself. And in our craft, the robber's price can well be death."
The telephone rang, interrupting the aged Oriental. Chiun, casting a baleful eye upon the ringing instrument, became quiet, as if unwilling to compete with a machine so insolent it would dare interrupt him. Remo picked up the receiver.
"This is Western Union," came the voice. "Your Aunt Alice is coming to visit you and wants you to prepare the guest room."
"Right," Remo said. "But what colour guest room?"
"Just the guest room."
"Are you sure?"
"That's what it says, sir," said the Western Union operator, with the smug arrogance of one observing another's discomfort.
"Just guest room. Not blue guest room or red guest room?"
"Correct, sir. I will read...."
Remo hung up on the Western Union operator, waited the few moments necessary for a dial tone, then dialled again, an 800 area-code number that he was ordered to call because the telegram did not mention the guest room's colour.
The phone barely rang once and was answered.
"Remo, we're in luck. We got them 2,000 feet over Utah. Remo, this is you, right?"
"Well, yes it is. It would help to have you verify before you start vomiting over an open line. What the hell is the matter with you, Smitty?" Remo, was shocked. Smith's external composure was usually perfect, almost Korean.
"We got a whole crew of them over Utah. They want ransom money. Federal agencies are negotiating now. The money delivery will be at Los Angeles Airport. See an FBI field representative, Peterson. He's a black man. You will be the negotiator. Jump the line to the top. This is the first lead we've had. Repeat for verify."
"See Peterson at Los Angeles Airport. Board the plane and try to find out who the leaders are of this whole thing. I assume this is an airline hijacking," Remo said drily.
"Beautiful. Get going now. You may not have time to lose."
Remo hung up.
"What is the matter?" asked Chiun.
"Dr. Harold Smith, our employer, has taken a mental leap off a cliff. I don't know what's the matter," said Remo, his face twisted in concern.
"You'll be working tonight, then?" Chiun said.
"Ummmm," said Remo,, signifying assent. "Gotta go now."
"Wait. I might go with you. It might be a nice evening."
"Barbra Streisand's on tonight, Chiun."
"This thing you do cannot be done tomorrow night?"
"No."
"Good luck. And remember when you are tempted to take risks, think of all the hours I have invested in you. Think of the nothing you were and the level to which I have raised you."
"I'm pretty good, huh, little father?" said Remo, regretting the comment as soon as he made it.
"For a white man," Chiun said happily.
"Your mother is a Wasoo," yelled Remo, dashing out 'the door. He was across the yard and into the garage before he realized the Master of Sinanju was not chasing him. He did not know what a Wasoo was, but Chiun had used the word once in a very rare moment of anger.
The Rolls Royce Silver Cloud was the car parked closest to the garage door. It didn't really matter which car Remo drove or even owned. He didn't own anything. He only used things. He didn't even own his face which, every so often, especially if anyone should accidentally get a photograph, was changed by plastic surgery. He owned nothing and had the use of practically anything he wanted. Like the Rolls Royce, he thought, backing up the Silver Cloud, its magnificently honed motor humming quietly, moving effortlessly, a paramount achievement in its field-like Remo, the Destroyer, a testimonial to manufacturing skills.
As usual, the airport traffic was insufferable, but that was America and there were some things even training couldn't overcome. Unless, of course, he wanted to run over car roofs to get to the airport. He watched the sun set bloody red through its filter of pollution and knew that somewhere above him an airplane was heading for Los Angeles Airport with terrified people on board, being held as hostages by the hijackers. To some people it was a moment of terror. To the professional, it was only a link in a chain, and Remo was a professional. him assignment was to jump the line to the top. That meant, move into the terrorists' system and kill his way to the top, destroying the system. And his way into the system might be circling the airport at this very moment.
Remo honked the horn of the Rolls, a clear, resonant sound that did absolutely nothing to the clog of cars except instigate more horn honking. America. Remo wasn't sure sometimes why Smith was so gung ho to save it. What was even more puzzling was Smith's current strange excitement about the terrorists, even to the point of babbling on an open line. If they were as much a danger as Smith obviously thought, then it was even more important that CURE be careful. More reason to be calm. But then, something had felt wrong with this terrorist business right from the beginning.
CHAPTER THREE
FBI agent Donald Peterson was worried. He was harassed, tormented and worried. Now someone who claimed official connections had talked his way through the local police, airport police, and FBI cordon, and wanted to see him. All this, while a planeload of passengers was speeding toward the airport under control of machine-gun-wielding members of the Black Liberation Front.
It was not bad enough that the reporters and the television cameramen had to be kept at bay or that the legions of the curious were growing and threatening to almost guarantee casualties if shooting broke out. But some man without any identification was tagging at Peterson's sleeve and the guards seemed unable to budge him. Three guards, one man, and he stood right in the control tower as if his feet were cemented to the floor-and he had the awesome nerve to tell agent Peterson to phone him own headquarters.
"Mister," said Peterson, spinning angrily around, "you get out of this control tower right now or you're under arrest for obstructing justice."
"And you'll be stationed in Anchorage," answered the man coldly. "That plane was rerouted to this airport so that I, personally, could go on board and deliver the ransom."
Well, didn't that beat it all? That was the capper. Peterson had been called suddenly from Chicago to take command of the airport in a Situation Blue-hijacking, political-and now this stranger knew more about it than he did. Peterson was sure of that. The airplane actually had no business in Los Angeles. It had been an East Coast flight and there had been dozens of airports where it could have landed.
So just before starting from Chicago, he had asked headquarters why Los Angeles had been chosen as the payoff site, and indeed, why they were paying off at all when the latest national policy was not to pay off. "I thought the policy was to hang tough," Peterson had told his superior's telephone voice.
"The policy is for you to go to the airport. The money will be ready there."
Orders, as always, had been orders. A military fighter had sped Peterson to L.A. and as soon as he had started setting up his men and arranging the airport for emergency action, the crowds began to form. The reporters, with that special news sense, began breaking police lines and before he knew it, the radio was announcing that the plane was headed for Los Angeles.
"Call headquarters," said the man without identification.
Peterson looked at the man, estimating him. him eyes were cold and still, with a strange, vague Oriental quality, a deadly coldness Peterson had seen only once, long before, when he had witnessed an execution in Korea. But this man was white.
"What's your name?" Peterson asked.
"Remo."
"Mr. Remo, who are you with and what's your business here?"
"Remo's my first name and you have instructions concerning me. I'm sorry they haven't gotten through yet."
"All right," said Peterson. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to phone my headquarters. And if there is no instruction concerning you, you are under arrest. And i
f you resist arrest, I'm going to shoot you dead."
"Make the phone call. And when you're through, get those snipers out of the hangar entrance. They're too obvious. They may get someone killed and I don't want any stray bullets flying. I don't like sloppiness."
The snipers were four hundred yards away and hidden by tarpaulin. Remo had seen the tarpaulin flap but in a direction against the wind. He saw the surprise on Peterson's face that anyone had noticed his concealed snipers from such a distance.
Peterson signalled for a telephone. He stood before the banks of darkened radar screens and dialled, looking at Remo, then glancing down at the screen on the far left. He was a handsome man, with a strong, black face that was now taut with frustration.
"That our blip?" asked Remo.
Peterson refused to answer.
Remo felt a guard tighten his grip on a bicep. While looking at Peterson, Remo expanded the muscle, filling it with constant pressure as he had been taught, then suddenly, like a balloon being punctured, releasing the pressure. He didn't look at the guard but he felt the hand searching around warily for the muscle, and for a few moments as he watched Peterson's face tighten, he played hide and seek with the guard, weaving the bicep full, then relaxing it, then expanding the tricep, then contracting it, so the guard felt as if he had a sleeveful of hard hamsters in his grip.
"Are you sure?" said Peterson into the phone. "Would you repeat that? Yes. Yes. Yes. But with what department... ? Yes, sir." Peterson hung up the phone and sighed. He turned to Remo.
"All right. Do you have any suggestions? Or orders?"
The guards, knowing whence power flowed, released their hold on Remo.
"No," Remo said. "Nothing much. Keep everyone out of the way. Give me the money in sacks and I'll go on board and talk to the hijackers."
"But how about the passengers? We should negotiate for their release."
"Worry, worry, worry. Why are you worried?" Remo said.
"A lot of people could get killed," said Peterson angrily.
"So," said Remo.
"That would be a disaster," said Peterson. "If a lot of people get killed. That is a bad thing. That is a very bad thing whether you know it or not."
"Could be worse," said Remo.
"Yeah? How?"
"We could be incompetent, that's worse. You have no control over fate, but you do have control over your competence."
"Jeezus. They really send them all to me," growled Peterson, shaking his head.
Peterson was instructed to get all snipers away from the runways. Remo, the money and Peterson would wait at the end of the runway the hijacked plane was to land on. Remo would deliver the cash. It was waiting for them in two white canvas sacks in the back of an armoured car.
"Did you want to keep the incident from the press for the time being?" Remo asked.
Peterson nodded.
"Having an armoured car come to the airport isn't the way to do it."
"So that's how the newsboys found out. Well, we'll know better next time."
"You planning on institutionalizing hijacking?" Remo said.
As they waited on the runway, Peterson and Remo in a closed car with the two sacks on the hood of the car so the hijackers could see it from the plane windows, Peterson outlined the problems.
"This is no ordinary group of hijackers. We don't know their destination yet And, get a load of this, they have a .50 calibre machine gun aboard. We believe it is mounted at the entrance to the cockpit, controlling the seats. A .50 calibre machine gun."
"It will make a nice earring," said Remo, gazing out into the darkening sky, watching the flight of a gull dip and pivot and then make its way off toward the Pacific, where gulls belonged.
"They got that gun through our latest detection devices. Our latest. The goddam thing will find gold fillings in your teeth, and they got it past that. That's like moving an elephant through a turnstile with no one seeing you do it."
"Elephant?" said Remo.
"Yes. A comparison," said Peterson.
"Oh," said Remo.
"I don't think you're going to get out of this thing alive," said Peterson.
"I'll get out alive," said Remo. He looked for the gull, but it had disappeared into the vast nothing that was the sky.
"Pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?" said Peterson.
"When you tie your shoelaces, do you worry about breaking your thumbs?"
"You're that confident."
"Pretty much," said Remo. "Tell me about this machine gun. Is it really so extraordinary to get it through your detection gadget?"
"Up till now, I would have said impossible. This is a whole new bag of worms."
Remo nodded. So that was why Smith had begun to pull out all the CURE stops, use all the CURE influence, and get him here to meet the plane. Smith was sure that this group was part of the new terrorist wave he was worked up about
Smith had lectured for a full afternoon, explaining how these terrorists with their new techniques could make international sanctions look like so much wallpaper. Instant competence, he had called it.
"You know something I don't know?" Peterson asked.
Remo nodded.
"You with the CIA?"
"No," said Remo.
"Aeronautics?"
"No."
"Pentagon?"
Remo shook his head.
"Who are you with?"
"The Insurance Association of America. Do you know that if 800,000 people were killed instantly, insurance stocks would drop almost a point on the Dow Jones? Horrifying, isn't it?"
"You're a wise sonofabitch," said Peterson, "and I hope they get you."
Remo squinted into the horizon.
"That's our baby, I think."
"Where?"
Remo pointed northward.
"I don't see anything."
"Wait."
Five minutes elapsed before Peterson could make out a faint dot in the sky.
"Do you have binoculars in your skull?"
"We in the insurance industry have to...."
"Oh, shut up."
The plane came in on a single line approach. No circling. There was no need. Traffic had been cleared hi the area. Remo watched the giant silver machine set down like a house being lowered, slowly, and then it was on the runway far away and coming toward them. He could see the twirl of propellers. The plane halted in a cough of dying engines. Remo heard fumbling and banging at the main plane door. The hijackers could commandeer a plane but they didn't know how to open a door. Yet, they knew how to smuggle a machine gun on board. They were also, undoubtedly, weapons wise. No matter.
The door flew open and a large man in dashiki and Afro stood in the doorway, a Kalashnikov cradled hi his right hand, a megaphone in his left. Add personal weapons to the .50 calibre. All of them past the new perfect security system. Maybe they even had an elephant on board.
"You there in the car. Come out with your hands In front of you. Open the doors and trunk so we can see inside," came the booming voice from the megaphone.
Not bad, thought Remo. They were careful. He nodded to Peterson, who opened the doors.
"I don't have a key to the trunks" Peterson yelled up to the plane.
"Shoot it open," said the man in the plane doorway. Very clever. A check to see if Peterson was armed.
"I don't have a gun," Peterson said.
"Well, throw up the money."
Remo hopped out of the car and grabbed the two satchels of cash sitting on the hood. He held them in front of him.
"I will bring up the money. But I want the passengers released. Now, I don't expect you to release the passengers before I give you the money but I do expect the passengers to walk out. So let my friend here drive the car away and get a boarding platform to the plane so the people can walk off after I give you the money."
"No. The money now or we kill a hostage."
"If you kill a hostage, not one of you will leave that plane alive," yelled Remo. "Think about it.
You open fire on one hostage and we go for broke."
"We are ready to die and live in Paradise for Allah."
"Feel free," said Remo.
"Ah could shoot, you know."
"If I go, everyone goes."
"You lying."
"Try me."
"Ah knows your evil ways."
"Feel free to try me."
"Jess a minute."
The black head disappeared into the plane. All right, he wasn't the leader. him head returned and it said:
"Okay, but if you try any funny stuff, a hostage will die and the death will be on your hands."
"That's mighty white of you," Remo said. He watched his opponent blanch. Good. A little unnerving never did an opponent any good. He held the Kalashnikov with skill, finger ready at the trigger, but not on it.
Peterson looked to Remo.
"Get the car out and a platform in," said Remo, keeping his back to the air terminal. The photographers must be blazing away and who knew who had a telephoto lens. Maybe they had a good shot of his face already.
As the boarding platform made its slow way to the plane, Remo chatted with the man at the plane door.
"Have a nice flight?" he asked.
"Our flight to freedom will be the greatest flight."
"I mean the food. First class or tourist?"
"When you pack weapons, you always travel first class," said the man with the Afro.
"How true," Remo said. "How true."
As the ramp eased to the plane door, Remo watched the trigger finger move closer to the trigger. The barrel raised to just about the line where men might be hidden on the steps. The ramp touched, the black man stepped out onto the platform, Kalashnikov at the ready, and peered down. He nodded then for Remo to come on board. Like a passenger bound for a week's vacation, Remo gingerly boarded the plane with the two sacks of money.
"I brought a little something as a plane-warming gift," Remo said.
"Cool, man," said the gunman. "'Just carry those sacks to the front of the plane."
Heads turned to look at Remo, frightened faces, men and women, black and white, children and grownups, joined now by their common fear. At the pilot's cockpit was what Agent Peterson had predicted. A mounted .50 calibre machine gun.
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