Terror Squad td-10

by Warren Murphy

  "How?" Smith asked drily. "When you don't even know what way an attack might come?"

  "I'll tell you how," Remo said. "I'm going back after Joan Hacker this afternoon, and I'm going to squeeze her like a lemon until she talks. I should have done that before. And then we're going to wrap up this whole thing."

  "Absolutely not," Smith exploded. "You are going to do precisely what I say and what I say is do not, repeat do not, go blundering around. You might force the terrorists into some unpredictable action that we will not be able to control."

  "And you'll be able to control anything else, I suppose?" Remo said. "How? With those goddam computers?"

  "If you must know, I expect that those goddam computers, as you call them, will have enough information for us tonight, to absolutely guarantee the safety of tomorrow's formal conference. We are questioning every one who was at the PUFF meeting at The Bard. Scraps of information, names, dates, relatives and friends. Our computer will decipher it for us."

  Chiun, who had sat quietly through the argument, looked at Smith and shook his bead sadly.

  "A typhoon does not register on a computer," he said softly.

  "Oh yes," Smith said. "You and all this nonsense. What is this business about a typhoon? What is this business about dead animals? I'm tired of hearing about them."

  "They are legends, Dr. Smith, and that means they are true."

  "Then what do they mean?"

  "They mean that two typhoons may yet confront each other. They mean that the danger will come in the place of the dead animals."

  "Typhoons? What two typhoons?" Smith snarled.

  "Don't look to me for help," Remo said. "He won't tell me either." Chiun turned his back, indicating the lecture was over. Smith's face grew red with rage.

  "Remo. You're off this case. I'm taking full control from now on in."

  Remo shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said. He flopped back on the sofa, kicked off his loafers and began to leaf through a copy of Gallery, looking at the pictures. "Just be sure you do as good a job as you did today in protecting those three colonels," Remo said.

  Angrily, Smith turned and left, slamming the door shut behind him.

  "Poor Smith," Remo said aloud to himself. "He's gone off the deep end. Worrying about those paper clips and the cost of pencils and my expense account -it's finally all numbed his brain."

  "No," Chiun corrected. "He is on the edge, but I see signs that he will be soon well again."

  "Now how can you see that?"

  "Never mind. I can see it," Chiun said. "Soon he will resume his life as if this period had never existed."

  "Can't come too soon for me," Remo said. "He's nasty enough when he's well."

  "In the meantime, however," Chiun said, "he has relieved you of duty. May we not now just depart from this place to a place of clean air? Perhaps Brooklyn?"

  "You don't really think, do you, Chiun, that I'd walk away from this assignment?"

  "No," Chiun sighed. "I did not suppose you would. Loyalty often transcends common sense."

  Some day, this loyalty would be given where it belonged, to the House of Sinanju, which made this white man into a pupil of Sinauju. Some day, there would be a new Master of Sinanju, if misplaced loyalty did not get him killed first.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The waitress at The Bard remembered Remo. No, the girl who had conked out at his table had not been back. But the waitress would keep an eye out for her and if she could have Remo's phone number at home, why, she would be sure to call in case the girl showed up.

  Next on the list was a phone call to Patton College to Millicent Van Dervander. Why, certainly, she remembered Remo.

  "Are you coming back to Patton?"

  "Why? Is your room dirty again?" he asked.

  "No. But you and I could mess it up some."

  Then followed the announcement that the bitch had not come back, but she had called. No, she didn't even apologize. All she had wanted was an address from the desk phone book she had left behind.

  Whose address?

  Let me look it up. It was the phone number of a dentist. She had lost a cap from her tooth. Millicent hoped the dentist would sew her mouth shut.

  "Yes. Here it is. Dr. Max Kronkeits," and she gave Remo an address on the upper West Side.

  Dr. Kronkeits' nurse was forty-two years old, had a tendency to weight, and liked to be home on time. She was just getting ready to leave when the young man showed up. He made it very clear that while the foolish world might have one opinion, his own personal opinion was that women should be substantial, not frail wispy things that threatened to evaporate when touched. Because, of course, women were made to be touched. Strangely enough, he conveyed all this information to her without saying a word, just by him look.

  When he got around to saying a word, it was to ask about Joan Hacker. Miss Hacker, the nurse informed Remo, had called and was now on her way. Dr. Kronkeits was going to recap an upper right frontal bicuspid.

  Remo explained to the nurse that he was from the FBI, that it was important that Joan Hacker not know that he had been asking for her, that when the case was over, Remo would come back and explain to the nurses perhaps over a drink or two, just how it had worked out and how helpful the nurse had been. Of course, secrecy now was essential.

  And so it was that Remo was waiting near the front door of the West Side apartment building in which Kronkeits had him office when Joan Hacker arrived. An hour later she came out, and Remo began following her on the other side of the street. She wore tight jeans and a thin, white, floppy blouse, and she smiled as she walked down the street. Remo noted this was the most common reaction of people who are putting distance between themselves and a dentist's office.

  She walked along Central Park West for three blocks, Remo casually strolling along with her, pace for pace, then she turned into a street in the high eighties. She sauntered down the street, happily swinging her red shoulder bag, and then turned into a small coffee shop in mid-block.

  When Remo entered the shop, Joan Hacker was sitting at a table in the back, anxiously drumming her fingertips on the red formica table top, glancing over her shoulder at a door in the rear.

  She hardly noticed Remo when he sat down across from her.

  "Back again," he said. "This time for some answers."

  "Oh, you," she said. "Why don't you just leave me alone? I've got things to do."

  "And I'm not going to let you do any of them," he said.

  She stopped drumming on the table and met his eyes. "You are really a ridiculous reactionary," she said. "Do you actually think you can stop our glorious revolution?"

  "If your glorious revolution means rape and baby killing, then I can try."

  "You can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs," she said.

  "Particularly when your brain is scrambled to begin with. Now some answers. What's going to happen tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow?" She laughed. "Tomorrow every one of those delegates to the antiterrorist convention is going to be killed. Every one." She seemed almost pleased to tell him. "Isn't that glorious?" she asked.

  "Murder glorious?" he said.

  "You know what you are?" she asked. "You're a dinosaur. A dinosaur." She giggled. "Plodding around in the past, trying to stop tomorrow. I just saw one. You're a dinosaur."

  She was interrupted by a voice from the back of the room.

  "You can come in now."

  Remo looked up. The speaker was a young Puerto Rican. He wore the uniform of The Gauchos, a street group that had been set up as the Boriqueno equivalent of the Black Panthers, but which had pretty well died out when the TV networks stopped covering their antics. He wore a brown beret, a brown shirt with military patches and emblems, brown slacks tucked into highly polished paratrooper boots. The youth was small and slim, perhaps twenty, and he crooked an imperious finger at Joan, beckoning her to follow him.

  She got up and turned to Remo again. "A dinosaur," she said. "And just like all the dinos
aurs that couldn't accept change, you're going to be dead." Her voice was an angry hiss.

  "I'm going to wait for you," Remo said. "Right here. We're not done talking yet."

  She stomped away from him and went into the backroom. Remo went to the counter at the front of the shop, sat on the stool nearest the door, and ordered coffee.

  But all hopes he had of hearing what went on behind the door were shattered as one of the customers put a quarter in the jukebox, and it began to blare out the music of a Latin band that sounded as if it had one hundred men on first trumpet

  Behind the door, Joan Hacker looked around the room, into the nut-brown faces of twenty-five young Puerto Ricans, swallowed and explained what she wanted.

  "Why you come to us?", one young man, with more medals and insignia than the others asked.

  "Because we're told that you are tough and smart."

  "Oh, yes," he said, with a toothy grin, "we are toughs girl. That is because we are men. The men of the streets. And we are smart too. We understand that is why you did not get Negritos for this work."

  She nodded, even though she felt it was not proper for them to feel that way about blacks. After all, they were part of the same Third World. Perhaps if she had more time, she could have made them see that they and the black men were brothers. But she did not have the time.

  Others around the room now were nodding, babbling. "Right We smart Not like the others." Another said, "Damn right, we men. Lady, you want us to show you how much man we are?" Many of them chuckled; Joan felt their eyes on her thinly clad bosom and wished she had worn a jacket

  The leader said: "Do you have the money?"

  "I have half the money. The other half comes after," she said.

  "And for this, we are to demonstrate at the United Nations tomorrow?"

  "Yes," she said. "But no violence."

  "That is much money, just to hold a parade," he said cautiously.

  "There will be more, if your demonstration is big enough." Joan Hacker thought of Remo sitting outside. "There is one other thing," she said.

  "What is this one other thing?" the leader asked.

  When the door opened, Remo turned, expecting to see Joan Hacker. But again, the slim Puerto Rican was there. He looked around the room, his eyes lighted on Remo, and he said: "The girl wants you."

  Remo hopped off the stool and followed the youth into the backroom. But inside, he saw that Joan Hacker had gone. There was a back door leading from the large meeting room. That door was now blockaded by ten youths. Remo felt a hand press between his shoulder blades and push. He allowed himself to be propelled forward into the middle of the floor. Behind him now were another dozen young men.

  "Where's the girl?" Remo said, trying to sound inoffensive. "I thought you said she wanted to see me."

  "When we are done with you," the young leader said, "no one will ever again want to see you."

  He looked around the room. "Who wants him?"

  There were shouts from both sides.

  "You, Carlo," the leader said, and another youth, taller and huskier than the rest, stepped away from the rear door, his face split wide in a grin.

  He reached into a back pocket and brought out a black-handled knife, then pressed the button and a six-inch blade snapped forward into place, glinting white and shiny under the overhead fluorescent lights.

  He held the knife in front of him, holding it correctly, like the right hand on a golf club, and began to wave it back and forth in front of him.

  "You want him in big pieces or little pieces, El Jefe?" he asked.

  The leader laughed and while the others chuckled, he said: "Bite size chunks."

  "Hold on a minute," Remo said. "Don't I get a knife too?"

  "No."

  "I thought you guys believed in fair fights. How fair a fight is it if I don't have a knife?"

  "You want a knife?" said the youth known as El Jefe "You shall have a knife." He snapped him fingers. "Juan. Your knife." A tiny youth, no older than sixteen, handed him a knife from his pocket. El Jefe snapped it open, looked at its long blade, then turned and slipped the blade in the crack between the door and the jamb. Then he wrenched the handle to the left, snapping off the blade and leaving only the handle.

  He beamed with a grin and tossed it to Remo. "Here, gringo. Here is your knife."

  Remo plucked the handle out of the air. "Thanks," he said. "That'll do." He curled the knife into his right fist

  "Go get him, Carlo!" shouted El Jefe. "Cut the marichon,"

  Carlo jumped Into the attack like a fencer. Remo stood his ground. Only three feet separated them now. Carlo waved his knife back and forth in the slow hypnotic movements of a cobra, following the snake charmer's flute.

  Then he lunged. He aimed the knife point at Remo's solar plexus, and moved forward, knife, hand and arm. Remo moved aside, and as Carlo turned to cover, Remo's left hand darted out and flicked off the bottom of Carlo's right ear lobe.

  "Lesson number one," Remo said. "Don't lunge. Slash."

  There was a collective sip of air around the room. Carlo felt the blood trickle down his neck. He went wild, jumping forward toward Remo, his knife slashing air back and forth. But then Remo was behind him, and as Carlo turned to him, Remo put his left thumb into Carlo's cheekbone. The loud crack as the bone popped resounded through the room.

  "Lesson number two," Remo said. "Don't take your eyes off the target."

  Carlo now was frantic, rage fighting with fear for possession of his body. With a scream, he raised his knife over head and ran at Remo, planning to plunge it down into Remo's body.

  Remo stood his ground, but then as Carlo reached him, Remo went up into the air. his right arm, which he had not thus far used, went up over his head, and then the hand came down on the top of Carlo's skull. The un-bladed knife crashed against the top of Carlo's head, and then the pressure carried the handle through the bone, and the knife was imbedded deep in his brain. Carlo staggered once, then fell to the floor.

  "Lesson number three," Remo said. "Don't screw around with me. I'm El Exigente, and I won't buy your beans."

  He walked to the front door, and the twelve Puerto Ricans scattered to let him pass through. As he walked out, Remo grabbed El Jefe by the windpipe and dragged him along behind him.

  In the street outside the coffee shop, El Jefe decided to tell Remo everything. The girl was obviously an idiot; she had agreed to pay two thousand dollars for The Gauchos to picket the United Nations tomorrow. No, they would not commit any violence. And no, if Senor did not want them to show up, they would not even show up, because maintaining the social order was more important than money to them.

  "Show up," Remo said, gave El Jefe's windpipe a squeeze of remembrance, and walked off down the street

  No point in looking for the girl; she had gotten away by now. But the main line tomorrow was to be an attack on the delegates; he and Chiun would be there to stop it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The streets were already speckled black with dots of people as the sun rose over the East River.

  The United Nations building loomed cold and foreboding over the crowd, an architectural cigarette pack, but then the crowd warmed and came alive as the building's black wedge of shadow raced backwards along the streets to rejoin the base of the building.

  The demonstrators were young-many blacks, many Puerto Ricans, but mostly white-all mindlessly carrying placards and signs.

  You can't outlaw liberty.

  We'll fight for freedom.

  And yes, Remo saw one marked, people united to fight fascism, and he recognized the sign wielder as one of The Gauchos he had played with yesterday.

  The antiterrorist conference was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. The few people who would get the seats in the gallery had already been herded behind ropes near the building's main entrance. Still the mob of demonstrators continued to swell and surge out in front of the building in which men tried usually to keep peace in an unbalanced world, but today were t
o attempt the just as-difficult task of outlawing hoodlumism on an international scale.

  Remo turned from the television set in disgust as the demonstrators spotted a camera on them and broke into an organized chant:

  Hey, hey, hey, hey.

  People's wars won't go away.

  Chiun smiled. "Something intrudes upon your sense of order?" he said.

  "Sometimes it seems we spend all our time trying to protect our country...."

  "Your country," Chiun interjected.

  "My country from nit-nats. The politicians won't let us build new jails, but how about one big asylum? That'd end most of our social problems."

  "It would only start them," Chiun said. "I remember once, many years ago...."

  "No, Chiun, not again," Remo said. "I'm filled up to here with typhoons, and with fat, and thin and dead animals, and dogs that bark and dogs that bite, and I just don't need anymore."

  "Have it your own way," Chiun said mildly, returning his gaze to the television. "I suppose we must go out there today In the midst of all those lowlifes."

  "Yes," Remo said, "and we've got to leave soon. Somebody's going to make an assassination try on the delegates; we've got to stop it"

  "I see you have not reconsidered your dismissal by Dr. Smith."

  "We both know, Chiun, that that doesn't work. I'm in this for life, whether Smith likes it or not."

  "A strange kind of loyalty in which one disobeys him employer?"

  "My employer is the United States," Remo said, "not Dr. Harold W. Smith."

  Chiun shrugged. "I must have slept through the referendum in which two hundred million people expressed their confidence in you."

  "It wasn't necessary."

  "Those two hundred million people do not even know you exist," Chiun said. "Dr. Smith does; he pays your salary; you report to him; therefore he is your employer."