Arabian Nightmare td-86

by Warren Murphy

  "A gift," said the Master of Sinanju, stepping up to the creature as it pawed slime from its matted hair and face. The sounds coming forth were confused and muffled. "The Supreme Lord has offered Sinanju an opportunity to extract full vengeance."

  "Hold it!" Remo warned, trying to get to his feet. "She's more dangerous than you think." His legs, locked in a lotus position, were unresponsive, as if nerve-dead.

  "Do you hear me, O Kali?" Chiun demanded, ignoring his pupil.

  "I will eat you!" Kali roared, trying to see through the dripping slime.

  "Perhaps. But first I have a riddle for you."

  "What?"

  "What has three arms and screams?"

  "I do not know, foolish old man. Nor do I care."

  "Little Father!" Remo shouted, uncrossing his legs by hand. "Don't take her on alone!" His eyes were wide with worry.

  The Master of Sinanju lashed out with a stiff-fingered strike, knocking the maimed arm of Kali loose from its socket. It fell with a plop.

  Kali screamed. Her three, surviving arms waved.

  "Since you did not solve that one, I have another," Chiun went on calmly. "What has but two arms and screams?"

  Kali obviously guessed the answer to that one, because her upper arms-the unimpaired ones-reached for the Master of Sinanju's face.

  Chiun knocked her legs out from under her and grasped the swinging broken arm as she fell. The arm tore free like cloth ripping.

  "I got one," Remo said, finally finding his feet. He strode over Kali's almost-normal form and asked, "What has no arms and flies?"

  "And sprouts feathers in flight?" added Chiun.

  Remo blinked. "Feathers?"

  "Feathers," said Chiun, nodding.

  His brow wrinkling around his closed third eye, Remo Williams set one foot on Kali's bloated stomach. He grabbed her wrists and exerted pressure.

  They came loose like cooked turkey drumsticks and, flinging them one way, Remo drop-kicked the maimed armless shell that was Kali in another.

  Howling unimaginable curses, Kali described a shallow parabola over the Palace of Sorrows.

  At the apex of her flight, she acquired a sudden halo of feathered shafts. They seemed to spring from her body like porcupine quills. But in fact, several plainly impaled her head and vitals, entering from one direction and emerging from the other.

  Kali plummeted like a stricken bird. Her howl followed her down. When she hit the ground, she splintered. She didn't move until a group of men carrying great war bows descended upon her. And then she moved only because they flung her dead corpse into the nearby banks of the Tigris River, which was already running red with the blood of Iraiti soldiers.

  Remo watched this from the palace parapet.

  "We're in Abominadad, right?" he asked Chiun.

  "Correct."

  "Then why do I see Mongols down below?"

  "Because you do."

  Remo was silent a long moment. "Are those your Mongols or mine?" he asked at last.

  "They are our Mongols," said Chiun, suppressing a smile as his proud eyes searched his son's face.

  Boldbator Khan rode up to the Master of Sinanju and his pupil, his broad countenance beaming and bloodspattered. He dismounted his white pony, which dropped excrement with Herculean abandon. Boldbator wore a long del of blue brocade.

  "Sain Baina," Master of Sinanju," he said gruffly.

  Chiun acknowledged the hail with a formal, "Sain Baino."

  "What're you guys doing here?" asked Remo, ever the informal.

  "We followed the Seven Giants as our Master bade us."

  "Seven Giants?"

  Boldbator Khan of the New Golden Horde pointed a stubby finger into the night sky, where the Big Dipper shone. Remo counted seven stars and said, "Oh. We call it the Big Dipper."

  "Everyone knows that it is really the Seven Giants." Boldbator addressed the Master of Sinanju. "We searched in vain for the Ishtar Gate, O friend of the old days."

  "The barbarians never rebuilt it since you last visited their land," Chiun supplied. "Laziness, no doubt."

  Another Mongol came running up, dragging something long and limp in one hand. He wore a black leather vest and his face resembled a weather-beaten brass gong.

  "Remo! It is good to see you again, White Tiger."

  "Hyah, Kula. What's with the freaking bag?"

  Kula the thief lifted a long canvas bag. "It is for the freaking caliph," he said proudly.

  "Not much of a present," Remo noted. "Looks empty."

  Kula smiled happily, saying, "Soon it will not be."

  "Where is the evil one?" asked Boldbator.

  "Dead," said Chiun. "I have dispatched him."

  The moon faces of the two Mongols collapsed into expressions so tragic they were almost comical.

  "The horses will be disappointed," said Bolbator. Kula threw away the bag with a muttered curse.

  "Am I missing something here?" Remo wondered.

  "It is a fine Mongol tradition," Chiun explained. "One sews up the offending monarch in a bag and tramples out his life under the hooves of wild horses."

  "If we're talking about Maddas Hinsein, it sounds good to me," Remo allowed. "Except I got him." He frowned. "Didn't I?"

  "That he has been dealt with is all that matters, not proper credit," Chiun sniffed.

  "If you say so," said Remo, tearing a length of scarlet silk from his disheveled harem pants and using it to wipe his brow. To his surprise, he encountered a round bump like a pigeon's egg.

  "What the heck is this?" he demanded.

  "Do not touch it!" Chiun said, slapping Remo's hands away like those of a child. "We will deal with that later."

  "Hey, is that any way to act during a family reunion?"

  "There would not have been need of a reunion had you not been so reckless in your ways," Chiun scolded. "Your obtuseness has caused me much suffering. How could you not comprehend the gesture my essence made as it appeared before you? Even Smith understood this."

  "Bully for Smith. Where the hell were you the last three months-hiding? I thought you were dead."

  "You only wished I was dead. You coveted my Mastership. "

  "Bulldooky!"

  "And you never informed the village of my demise."

  Remo folded his arms. "What demise? You aren't dead."

  "We will discuss this later," Chiun flared, one eye darting to the interested Mongol faces. "After the company has left."

  "If this is a party," Remo said, looking down at the ruins of Abominadad, "I'd hate to see these guys at a riot. No offense."

  "None taken." Kula beamed, nocking an arrow and letting it fly in Remo's direction. It whizzed by Remo's ear.

  A Renaissance Guardsman, picking his way through some rubble, caught the shaft square in the eye. He screamed like a piano wire snapping. It was that short.

  "This is good sport," said Kula, grinning.

  "Looks like war to me," Remo muttered, checking his ear. It was still there.

  "Yes, good sport. If you do not mind, we have many Arabs to massacre." They started off.

  "Spare the women and children," warned Chiun.

  "Of course. If we kill them too, then our descendants will have no sport in the centuries to come. They will curse our memories. Better that the Arabs curse us while we live. We will not have to listen to them after we are with our ancestors."

  Laughing, they slipped away into the night.

  "Nice guys," Remo said dryly.

  "They are true friends of Sinanju." Chiun turned. "Have you no questions to ask of me?"

  Remo pretended to think. "Yeah, just one."

  "And that is?"

  "Did they ever explain who killed Laura Palmer?"

  Chapter 45

  "It was an owl named Bob," said Harold W. Smith with a straight face.

  Remo laughed with surprise. "That's pretty funny," he said. "I didn't know you had a sense of humor."

  It was the next morning. They were in the Royal Emiri Palac
e in liberated Kuran City. Remo had been briefed by Smith, who had flown to Hamidi Arabia to take charge of Reverend Juniper Jackman and Don Cooder, both of whom had been discovered hiding in a closet of the Palace of Sorrows.

  As vice-president of Irait and the highest-ranking survivor of the Revolting Command Council, Reverend Jackman had formally surrendered the nation to the Master of Sinanju.

  Immediately Don Cooder had begun pestering him for an interview. Jackman had refused on the grounds that he had too much on his mind. With an actual elected office under his belt and the presidential sweepstakes only a year away, he would make a formal announcement later. After the war-crimes tribunal.

  Remo had slipped up behind them and, applying pressure to nerve centers, made them limp enough to be carried out of Irait.

  That had been the day before. This was now.

  "I am speaking the truth," Smith said flatly.

  A decurion in a pink gasproof suit, his swinish gas mask hanging from his web belt, entered the throne room.

  "The transport has arrived, sir."

  "I don't suppose anyone wants to explain why the U.S. Army is tricked out like Porky Pig these days?" Remo wanted to know.

  No one did, so Remo wrote it off to the vagaries of the all-volunteer army. He had been a marine. Remo did understand that Kuran had been taken without a shot being fired. Sheik Fareem and Prince Imperator Bazzaz were in the capital, Nemad, claiming the lion's share of credit. Officially, Washington had decided not to contradict this boast. The truth would have been impossible to support.

  "Did you bring my ice?" Remo asked the orderly, for some inexplicable reason called a decurion.

  "Here, sir."

  Remo accepted the cube in a handkerchief and applied it to the lump of flesh on his forehead.

  "You know," he murmured unhappily, "I don't think this swelling is going down at all."

  "We will deal with that back in America," Chiun said.

  "They don't have ice back in America?" Remo asked.

  "Hush!" Chiun snapped.

  "Why do I get the impression everyone is holding something back from me?" Remo said suspiciously.

  "Because we are," said Chiun flatly.

  Praetor Winfield Scott Hornworks barged in at that point, and when he saw Chiun, a bearlike grin broke over his broad face.

  "Imperator Chiun!" he bellowed.

  Remo almost dropped his ice pack. "Imperator?"

  "You should hear what's going on up in Irait! The Kuranis have grabbed a hunk of their southern frontier. The Syrians have swept in to the Euphrates. The Iranians grabbed a slice of the east, and the Turks are taking back all the land they lost back when the Ottoman Empire broke apart. The way it's going, all that's gonna be left of Irait will be Abominadad and some suburbs, and the Kurds are sure to lay claim to that once the Mongols get through picking it over. I gotta hand it to you, using the Kurds and Mongols means we ain't ever gonna hear a squawk outta Irait again."

  "What did the Kurds do?" Remo asked.

  "They wrote their names on the Spuds," Chiun supplied.

  "Potatoes?"

  "No, he means Maddas' Scud missiles. Here . . ." Praetor Hornworks pulled an LME tube out of a slash pocket and tossed it to Remo.

  Remo looked it over and said, "A Magic Marker, right?"

  "Naw, it's an LME. Stands for liquid-metal-embrittlement agent. You smear some of it on any metal or alloy, and faster than corn through a cow, it breaks it down like invisible rust. Metal fatigue equals catastrophic failure. When of Maddas launched his rockets and planes, they up and discombobulated." He paused. "There's only one downside."

  "And what is that?" asked Harold Smith.

  "We not only chased all the Iraitis out of Kuran, but the Kuranis too. They all lit out for Bahrain. And nobody can find the emir to give the country back to. There's rumors he's off buying up half of Canada."

  Hornworks suddenly noticed Smith's three-piece suit. "Are you CIA?" he asked.

  "No." Smith pretended to adjust his glasses. He kept his hand over his face in a suspicious manner.

  "You sure? You got 'spook' written all over you. I dealt with you CIA types all during the Nam thing."

  "I think it is time that we depart," said Smith uncomfortably.

  "Before you do," Hornworks said, turning to Chiun and coming to attention, "I just want to say that you are the finest officer I ever served under. And that includes my dear departed daddy."

  "Officer?" Remo said.

  Praetor Hornworks saluted smartly. The Master of Sinanju returned the salute with a deep formal bow.

  Remo watched all this in growing confusion.

  "Maybe this will start to make sense after the swelling has gone down," he grumbled.

  The strange looks on the faces of Harold W. Smith and Chiun caused him to doubt that statement, but he shoved the doubt into the back of his mind. The nightmare was over. Everyone who mattered to him had gotten through it alive. Everyone who deserved to die, had.

  Remo Williams felt a nervous exultation quivering in his solar plexus like butterflies of promise.

  His good mood carried him through the fifteen-hour flight in a C-5 Galaxy.

  "When we get home," Remo said, lying in a webbing net, his hands clasped behind his head in contentment, "I'm going to bake you a rice cake, Little Father. With a hundred candles."

  "Why?"

  "For your birthday. You're a hundred now."

  "I am not!" Chiun snapped.

  Remo sat up. "Then what was all that phony crap you dished out last spring?"

  "That was true crap," Chiun retorted. "But I have missed my kohi, therefore I have not properly achieved the venerated age. Since Masters of Sinanju celebrate no birthdays between the ages of eighty and one hundred, I must remain forever young."

  "Bull. You're a hundred."

  "I am only eighty," said the Master of Sinanju firmly. "Remember this. Any assertion to the contrary is a canard."

  They argued this point for the remainder of the flight. Remo Williams didn't care. Smiling contentedly, he let Chiun's carping and complaining wash over him like a reviving surf. All was right with the world. Nothing this bad could ever happen to them again, he was certain.

  Epilogue

  Miss Lapon of the Hutchison Elementary School in suburban Toronto watched the six-year-olds file into the room.

  "Welcome to kindergarten," Miss Lapon said brightly.

  The children laughed and giggled. It would take a while to settle them down at their miniature tables, so she went to a cabinet, returning with colorful cardboard cans heavy with Play-Doh.

  "For our first day, we're going to work in clay," she announced, setting a can on each table.

  "Yay!" the children cried. A little blond girl with sparkling cornflower-blue eyes put her hands over her mouth, suppressing bubbling laughter.

  After Miss Lapon had finished passing out the Play-Doh and the children had settled down to kneading and shaping the pastel claylike matter, she went among them to see what their young imaginations were producing.

  Not much that an adult mind could recognize, Miss Lapon was not surprised to see. But that was not the purpose of this first-day exercise. Miss Lapon was looking for students having difficulty with motor coordination. It was important to spot the troubled ones early.

  One little girl-it was the one who had been giggling earlier-had found a corner all to herself and was industriously pushing and pulling a sickly green lump of PlayDoh into a surprising anthropomorphic shape.

  It looked to Miss Lapon's practiced eye like a squatting earth-mother figure, similar to those found in ancient Sumerian archaeological sites.

  Except that this earth mother had six spidery arms.

  Miss Lapon bent over her. "And how are you coming?"

  The serious little girl didn't react at first.

  "I asked," repeated Miss Lapon, thinking she had found a hearing-impairment problem, "how are you doing, little girl?"

  The girl started. Her ey
es focused. Miss Lapon made a mental note: strong powers of concentration.

  "I'm almost done finishing her," the little girl said.

  Miss Lapon smiled encouragement. "Very nice. Does she have a name?"

  "Kali."

  "Cally. That's a nice name. And what is your name?"

  "Freya, daughter of Jilda," said the little blond girl with the cornflower-blue eyes.

  Miss Lapon's eyes shone with amusement. "Don't you have a last name, Freya?"

  A serious cloud passed over the childish features. "I don't think so," Freya admitted.

  "No? Don't you have a daddy?"

  The eye lit anew. "Oh, yes."

  "What is your daddy's name?"

  "His name," Freya said with childish pride, "is Remo."

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