Blue Smoke and Mirrors td-78

by Warren Murphy

The car was a big one. A black Cadillac. Its tail-

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  lights flared; then it backed out of the shadows, stopped, and purred down the highway.

  It was heading for the fork in the road.

  "Damn!" Remo said, shifting direction. If it took the low road, it would pass Chiun. But if it took the high road, the Master of Sinanju might assume it was only a passing car.

  Remo decided to take the ridge. He sprinted harder. Let Chiun be pissed for missing out. There was no way to avoid it.

  Remo cut across the highway and hit the bottom of the ridge at full speed. Without pausing, he transferred his running motion into a four-limbed climb. He went up the rocks like a beetle fleeing a grass fire. Momentum took him halfway up before he needed to exert any effort. His hands and feet found plenty of handholds.

  Remo levered himself up to the road just in time to spot the Cadillac's taillights whisk by like retreating eyes. The car was accelerating rapidly. Remo took off after it. They hit the downhill slope, so gravity helped carry him along. Not that he needed gravity's help. Remo's toes dug into the heat-softened blacktop like climbing spikes. Dig, pause, and push. Left and right. Right and left. Loosened granules of tar kicked up behind him. And soon he was running as fast as the speeding Cadillac, which had to run with its brake drums touching the wheel rims to negotiate the steep slope. Remo caught up with the car. Then he was running with the Cadillac, as if the car were merely coasting.

  Rair Brashnikov was pleased with himself. He had successfully penetrated the high-security Northrop facility once again. It was easier this second time, for he had already explored the best approaches the first time. The RAM tiles were in the same storage area. It

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  was a simple matter to shut down the suit, scoop up an armful, and turn the belt rheostat so that his glowing body was once more impervious to bullets and obstacles.

  As he had last time, Brashnikov had left a parked car nearby. It was too far to walk to the nearest town, and although there was an added risk in removing his helmet and battery pack after shutting down the vibration suit in order to get behind the wheel and drive off, the risk was more than offset by the convenience.

  Now, hurtling through the still California desert night, Rair Brashnikov watched the road ahead as it flat-teried out and became a twisting blacksnake toward freedom. He only hoped that these tiles would be enough to satisfy Major Batenin and that the charge d'affaires would shortly return to Moscow. Brashnikov feared that he had pushed the KGB major too far the last time. The man now had blood in his eyes whenever he saw Brashnikov, although the embassy buzzed with the rumor that Batenin would start at even the slightest sound. Especially ringing telephones.

  Rair Brashnikov heard the sound before he realized he was being followed. There were no lights out here in the deserted highway, so the road ahead was a constantly changing splash of headlight glare. Behind him all was blackness and speeding telephone poles.

  The sound seemed far away at first. It sounded like the distant wail of a siren. He wondered if it was an alarm being sounded back at Plant Forty-two. But the sound seemed to be drawing closer, as if it were a pursuing police car. But his rearview mirror showed only a wall of night. No pursuing vehicles at all.

  Then Brashnikov happened to notice the man running alongside the car. He was all in black, so it was hard to make him out in the dim backglow of his headlights. But it was definitely a man.

  Brashnikov looked down at his speedometer. It registered sixty-one miles an hour. That could not be, he

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  thought to himself. There was a man keeping pace with his car. If the car was going sixty-one miles an hour, then it stood to reason that the man had to be going sixty-one miles an hour too. Maybe he was on skates.

  Brashnikov swerved away from the man and took a look. No, the man was not on skates. He was running.

  Then the man drifted-that was what it looked like, despite his speed-up to the driver's window. He knocked. Brashnikov looked up. He could not make out the runner's face. The man's mouth was wide open, yet he didn't seem to pant from exertion, as a man should who was running sixty-one miles an hour. The man's knuckles rapped on the driver's window again.

  Brashnikov cracked the window open and the siren sound was suddenly very loud. Holding the wheel steady, he twisted around, but saw no pursuing car. Then Brashnikov realized that the sound was much closer. Almost at his elbow. Almost . . .

  With a start he realized that it was coming from the running man. Crazily, insanely, he was making the noise with his mouth, like a child pretending to be a fire truck.

  This was proved beyond any doubt when the man said, "Pull over." The siren sound stopped when he gave the order. Then it resumed again, this time louder.

  "What is this?" Brashnikov demanded, reaching under the seat cushions carefully, one hand still on the wheel.

  "I said, 'Pull over,' " the man repeated. "You're supposed to pull over when you hear sirens. What are you-from Russia or something?" This last sounded like a joke, so Brashnikov didn't reply.

  Brashnikov felt the Tokarev pistol's cold butt under the cushions. He hated weapons, but Batenin had insisted he carry one when he was not in the suit. He

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  hoped he would not have to kill the man. Rair Brashnikov considered himself a thief, not a murderer.

  "Are you militsiya?" Brashnikov asked loudly. "Are you cop? Show me badge. I want proof."

  Then he got a good look at the running man's face. The dead flat eyes over high cheekbones. It was the one who had chased him from LCF-Fox. The one who had the old Asian with him. How was this possible?

  "Are you gonna stop or do I have to get rough?" the man growled.

  That was enough for Rair Brashnikov. He dared not stop the car. There would not be enough time to don the helmet and battery. The man's threat obviously meant that he was armed. Otherwise, how could he stop a speeding Cadillac?

  The Tokarev came up in Rair's hand, crossing his chest.

  "Please," Brashnikov said. "Go away. I do not wish to shoot you dead."

  "Naughty, naughty," the man said, grabbing for the half-open window. "Handguns are illegal in this state."

  Brashnikov steeled himself and pulled the trigger.

  The Tokarev did not fire. But it went off. It went off Brashnikov's trigger finger as if pulled by a magnet. It left a long streak of blood along Brashnikov's finger where the trigger guard had scraped the skin.

  Sucking on his stinging finger, Brashnikov tried to keep the wheel steady with his free hand. The road was beginning to twist and turn. Brashnikov cast frightened glances at the still-running man.

  He was busily taking the Tokarev to pieces. The ammo clip came out and was thrown away. Then the slide was yanked back in obviously strong fingers, because it fell away. The long barrel was then unscrewed like a light bulb. Finally the running man broke the handle and firing mechanism into fragments, and he dry-washed his hands clean of the metal filings

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  that were all that was left of the well-engineered Russian pistol.

  All the while, he kept up the childish police-siren sound.

  "Last chance to pull over," he warned.

  Brashnikov rolled up the window and floored the gas pedal. He left the man behind when the engine started redlining.

  But only for a moment. Because, incredibly, the running man in black began overhauling the Cadillac again, which was now skating up to the ninety-mile-an-hour mark.

  The man in black was a red-lit phantom in the rearview mirror. Brashnikov nervously watched him come on. His running motions were hypnotic. It didn't look as if he was really running. The coordinated actions of his arms and legs were slow, floating motions. There was a distinct rhythm to his running. Then, abruptly, he shifted left and drew up alongside the spinning right-rear tire.

  Craning to see, Brashnikov saw him pause in mid-step as if to kick out.

  Brashnikov sent the Cadillac swerving. The man swerved
with it, as if anticipating the car's every nervous move.

  That lunatic is trying to kick my tire, Brashnikov thought wildly. For some reason the absurdity of it was lost on him. He hugged the shoulder of the highway, fearing what would happen next.

  Rair heard the explosive sound of a blowout and then he was wrestling with the steering wheel as the hard rim of the wheel dug into the flattened rubber. It was incredible. The tire was flat. The Cadillac started to weave and lose speed.

  While Rair Brashnikov fought the wheel, his mind racing, a car roared in from the right. It was a small European job, and it sideswiped him viciously, send-

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  ing the Cadillac veering raggedly. Brashnikov turned around to see who was driving.

  It was the red-haired woman. The one who had tried to knock him down with a helicopter back in North Dakota.

  "Pull over," she was shouting. "Pull over, dammit, or I'll run you off the road." She flashed a photo-ID card, which was laughable. Did she think a KGB agent would be impressed by such a thing?

  Then the running man with the toes of steel appeared on his right. He was shouting too. Not at him, but at the woman.

  "Hey, cut it out," he told her.

  "Get out of the way, you fink," she shot back. "I'm going to run this sucker off the road."

  "Are you crazy?" the man yelled back. "His car is bigger than yours. You'll be killed. Let me handle this."

  Telephone poles flashed by on either side of them. The road was narrowing and the wobbling Cadillac dominated it. The man hugged the Cadillac's right while the woman's tiny car wove in and out on the left.

  "Don't tell me my job!" the redhead was insisting. "And get out of the way. How can I run him off the road with you there? How are you doing that, anyway? I'm pushing fifty."

  "If I tell you, will you get lost?" the man asked.

  "No," the redhead said flatly.

  "Then forget it."

  Rair Brashnikov could not accept the evidence of his ears anymore. They were fighting like children. Did Americans not take their national security seriously?

  But Brashnikov's wonder vanished when he realized that he had his own skin to think of. Seeing the road ahead veer into a sharp turn, he saw a way to rid himself of both pursuers.

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  As the two vehicles and one running man hit the curve at fifty-three miles an hour, Brashnikov turned sharply to crowd the redhead's car. She met his challenge, crowding him back. But the Cadillac's flat tire made Brashnikov's machine more difficult to push. It didn't give, and when he realized this, he muscled the wheel sharply to the left.

  Robin Green knew she wouldn't make the corner. She realized it too late. She hadn't been watching the road. She saw the telephone pole too late. It was framed in her windshield before her brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing and signaled "telephone pole in road." By then the windshield was already a splinterwork of cracks and the hood of the car was buckling like tinfoil and she could feel the seat pushing her forward and the wheel slamming into her chest.

  The last thing she felt was her breasts. They felt like water balloons about to burst from impact.

  Remo saw Robin Green's car pile into the telephone pole. It hit with so much force, it pushed the pole several feet beyond its pesthole. A tangle of transmission lines slapped the buckled hood.

  Remo forgot about the Cadillac and ran to the mangled wreck. Flames began licking up from under the hood like red fingers. The smell of roasting wood filled the air. As Remo thought of Robin trapped behind the wheel, the smell was a sickening premonition. He got to the driver's side. Robin was just there, her head slumped over the warped steering wheel. Her eyes were closed. There was a streak of blood across her forehead.

  Remo grabbed the door handle. It was one of those reach-under-and-pull-up types. Remo pulled straight out. The handle came away like an oversize staple.

  "Damn," Remo muttered. He looked for another

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  way in as the stench of flowing gasoline hit his nose like a chemical punch. He could see gas pooling under the rear bumper, away from the licking flames. But not for long. Already tendrils of gas were reaching out in all directions like feelers.

  The driver's-side window was intact. But Remo knew if he shattered it, glass would fly into the car interior with dangerous consequences. Feeling his way around the door edge, Remo fervently wished cars still had external hinges. It would have been simpler to shear them off and pluck the door away. But this door was jammed shut.

  Remo was about to hop across the hood to try the other side, when he noticed a hairline crack atop the window. It was not fully closed. He slipped his steel-hard fingers up under the rubber sealing strip and found the top of the glass. He levered down, and there came the grinding of an electric motor being forced into reverse as Remo pushed the window inexorably down against all manufacturers' recommendations.

  When he had it halfway down, Remo reached in and shattered the exposed glass with a hard inside punch, sending jagged chunks out into the dirt. He pulled the door free and snapped Robin's seat belt. She didn't move. Her legs were wedged under the bent steering wheel, and Remo wondered if they were broken. He was about to check when a sudden whoosh! told him the fire had found the fuel in the engine. Now he had no choice.

  Remo pulled Robin's limp body from behind the wheel as gently as he dared. Cradling her in his strong arms, he ran. He could feel the intensity of the flames building. The heat was on his back. When he knew the car was about to go, he dropped to his knees and shielded Robin's body with his own.

  The car exploded like a cardboard box filled with skyrockets. Fire burst out of the windows, melting the

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  tires and congealing glass. The upholstery burned with an acrid stink.

  After the shock wave had passed, Remo looked back at the blazing ruin. No explosion-borne pieces of metal had landed near them. He looked down at Robin's pale face. Touching her temple, he felt the throbbing of her pulse. She looked almost angelic in the crackling backglow of the flames. For a moment Remo forgot her abrasive personality and saw her only as a gorgeous, desirable woman. He instantly regretted leaving her in the lurch back in North Dakota. When she awoke, Remo decided, he would apologize.

  Robin Green's eyelids began fluttering and Remo tenderly wiped a thread of blood from her brow. It came from a minor cut near the hairline, he saw.

  "Take it easy, kid," he whispered. "You're in safe hands."

  The first words Robin spoke dispelled Remo's solicitous thoughts.

  "That was a stupid macho thing you just did," she snapped. "I almost had him! He would have spilled his guts after two minutes with me."

  "You tried to run him off the road, and you're calling me macho?" Remo said incredulously. "You were nearly killed, you know that?"

  "Another minute and I would have had him."

  "And I'm the Incredible Hulk," Remo said. "Here, give me your hand."

  Robin pushed the offered hand away. "I can stand without help, thank you," she said frostily. Then she got up on wobbly knees. She fell back immediately, landing on her rump.

  "I just need to catch my breath," she said in a weaker tone. "If only you hadn't interfered."

  "Right," Remo said bitterly, looking down the long stretch of deserted highway. "If only I hadn't interfered."

  "That guy would have pulled over in another minute," Robin Green insisted as she redid her buttons,

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  which had come loose in the excitement. "Damn. I wish I had been born flat-chested."

  "Be careful what you wish for," Remo said. "You might get it."

  "Just what's that supposed to mean?"

  Remo looked away.

  "You hit that pole head-on," he said distantly. "You should be dead. You probably would have been if you hadn't had all that natural cushioning."

  Robin followed the direction of Remo's gaze to the blazing tangle that was her car. She felt her breasts and winced. They hurt.


  "Oh," she said in a shaken voice.

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  Robin Green was still very shaky when Remo pulled up in his rented car. He pushed open the door, and Robin eased herself into the passenger seat in obvious pain.

  "Where's Charlie Chan?" Robin asked. "I thought you were going to fetch him."

  "He wasn't there," Remo told her as he sent the car speeding down onto the road. "Just the car."

  "Well, if you think I'm going to let you waste time chasing him down, you've got another think coming, buster," Robin snapped.

  "Chiun wouldn't leave the car unless he saw something important. I think he spotted the Krahseevah."

  "Fat lot of help he was," Robin said. "Where are you going?"

  "After the Krahseevah," Remo told her. His dark eyes were intent on the road ahead.

  "You can forget that too. He's long gone."

  "A minute ago you were all hot to chase him. By the way, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in the brig or the stockade or whatever they call it?"

  "The Air Force calls it corrective custody, and I have friends in high places. So I'm still on this case, no thanks to you."

  "Me?" Remo said innocently. "What did I do?"

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  "Do? You left me twisting in the wind, for one thing."

  "Sorry. But I had my orders."

  Remo spotted a fallen telephone pole and pulled over. He looked it over carefully, then started off again.

  A few hundred yards down the highway, there was another felled pole, this time on the opposite side of the road.

  "And that's another thing," Robin went on testily. "Who are you really? I've checked and the General Accounting Office never heard of you."

  "Here," Remo said, handing her a photocard from his wallet. Robin took it.

  "Remo Fleer, IRS," Robin read. Remo snatched the card away.

  "Oops! Wrong card. Try this one."

  "Remo Overn, OSI! Oh, give me a break."

  "Hey, I'm undercover. Just like you. Or are you still with the OSI?"

  "If you were OSI, you'd know that," Robin spat.

  "Actually I've been pretty busy lately," Remo said airily. "Haven't kept up. I just noticed you were out of uniform and I wondered."