Air Raid td-126

by Warren Murphy

  The whites were gone. What they'd left behind intrigued Sor'acha and troubled Chim'bor.

  A small forest of trees had been planted atop the wide flattened hill. The plants were of an unnatural blue. It was as if the color had bled from the sky to stain the trees.

  The small trees were all roughly the same height-twice as tall as Chim'bor and his brother. In the bright moonlight the forest stretched off as far as the night eye could see.

  Sor'acha laughed. "Only whites would cut down trees to plant trees," he said. He took hold of one of the saplings. It was warm to the touch.

  "This is a place of evil," Chim'bor warned. "The whites have stolen the sky for their trees."

  Sor'acha lingered at the edge of the new forest for a time, but there was nothing more to see. Eventually, Chim'bor convinced his brother to leave.

  They returned for the harvest six months later. Again, Sor'acha let his curiosity get the better of him. Although Chim'bor was reluctant to visit the Sky Forest of the whites, his brother insisted. The two traveled back through the jungle to the valley and the hilltop forest.

  They crossed the wide stretch of parched land that separated jungle from hill. The earth was hard-packed as they scampered up the side of the valley's central hill. When they reached the top, Chim'bor couldn't believe his fearful eyes.

  The trees were now as tall as the ones in the jungle far behind them. A dense forest of blue stretched across the flat hill at the valley's center.

  "White sorcery!" Chim'bor hissed.

  Sor'acha wasn't listening. From where they hid at the edge of the hill, he spied what looked like blue fruit clinging sparsely to the undersides of some of the branches.

  Although the whites were nowhere to be seen, there was still activity at the forest's edge.

  Dozens of squirrel monkeys jumped and screeched at the periphery of the blue forest. They had come out of the jungle to venture across the clear-cut plain and climb the hill. Pounding the ground and hissing at air, the monkeys looked possessed by demons. None dared enter the field.

  All he saw filled Chim'bor with dread.

  "Please, Sor'acha," Chim'bor implored. "Let us leave this place."

  But his brother wouldn't budge. "For all the work they have done, the fruit of these trees must be even more sweet than the gualla," Sor'acha insisted.

  He thought they should pick some of the fruit, but Chim'bor would not be persuaded. The younger native stayed back while his older brother crept over the hill's edge to the forest of blue trees.

  Shrieking, the monkeys scampered away from his feet, clearing a path to the woods. They flooded back in behind him. To Chim'bor, it looked almost as if the monkeys were trapping his brother in the white man's forest.

  Sor'acha made it to the trees.

  As Chim'bor watched, his brother took the bark in his strong hands and began climbing. He cupped his feet to the rough surface, pushing off. With quick, even strokes, Sor'acha scampered quickly up.

  He was halfway to the top when Chim'bor realized something was wrong.

  Sor'acha was moving too slowly. As though he was having a hard time climbing. It looked as if he was forcing himself to go higher and higher. As he went on, the struggle to climb became more obvious. It was with great difficulty that he finally made it to the top of the tree. One hand snaked out to a piece of blue fruit.

  As his brother climbed, Chim'bor had slowly climbed up over the edge of the hill.

  Something was very wrong.

  Before he even knew it, Chim'bor was running. He was halfway to the Sky Forest when Sor'acha looked his way.

  His brother was still stretching determinedly for the blue fruit. But on his dark brown face was a look of deep confusion. His cheeks bulged as if he was holding his breath.

  When Sor'acha finally plucked a single piece of fruit from the rest of the cluster, he held it in triumph for only a second. The breath exploded from his lungs, and he let go of the trunk.

  He dropped twenty feet from the treetop, hitting the hard-packed ground below with a bone-crushing thud. Chim'bor ran through the pack of screeching monkeys. The animals parted in fear, scattering as he kicked at them with his bare feet. When he slid to his knees next to his brother's lifeless body, a lone monkey was plucking the blue fruit which Chim'bor now saw was a small cluster of several seeds-from Sor'acha's dead hand.

  The other monkeys immediately attacked the one with the seeds, clawing and biting at it. Shrieking, the monkey raced down the hill and across the plain. The other animals chased it back into the jungle.

  Chim'bor didn't care about the monkeys. Sor'acha lay flat on his back, his dead eyes staring glassily up at the cluster of blue seeds in the tree high above. He had taunted the demons of the Sky Forest, and they had exacted the ultimate price.

  Had he only listened to Chim'bor. Had he only left the blue seeds to the demons of the Sky Forest.

  As the tears burned hot in his eyes, Chim'bor looked up. The instant he did, his anguish turned to terror. For, as he knelt over the body of his dead brother, a demon appeared in the Sky Forest.

  The screeching monkeys might have drawn it out. More likely it was Sor'acha's theft. Either way, he saw a white shape slowly coming toward him.

  It vanished amid the blue tree trunks. Frozen in fear, Chim'bor heard a ragged, heavy breathing coming from among the trees.

  The demon reappeared. Closer now.

  Chim'bor's heart pounded. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move.

  The demon emerged into the light.

  It was taller than a Rsual native. It had the limbs and body of a man but no face. The demon was wrapped from head to toe in a strange white garment.

  The faceless demon loomed above Chim'bor. It struggled to breathe through an invisible mouth. When it spoke, the demon's language sound almost like that of the whites, who had summoned it to Rsual land.

  "Sweet Georgia Brown," the demon rasped, "what do you termite eaters think you're doing here?"

  With the words, Chim'bor finally found his feet. More demons were coming out from the depths of the Sky Forest. Some had faces. Tanks were strapped to their backs, clear plastic covering their mouths. It no longer mattered. Sor'acha's body was nothing. The whites and their demons could have the jungle. As more of the creatures emerged from the Sky Forest, Chim'bor ran screaming from them. When the Amazon jungle swallowed him and the Sky Forest and the faceless demons were long behind him, he still ran. He ran all the way back to his village.

  After that day, he couldn't stay in the land of the Rsual. Chim'bor left his tribe. He fled the forest to the white man's city, hoping distance would extinguish the flame of constant fear.

  He stayed there for five years, working at a boat-rental shop at the mouth of the Amazon. Sometimes he would pilot a charter boat himself.

  Every now and then he would hear stories out of the jungle. How the Sky Forest had claimed a few other Rsual lives. How the valley became choked with smoke for a full year, so that no one could see for miles around. And how it had been decreed that the entire region was to be avoided by all future generations of Rsual for the dark magic that had been performed there.

  Chim' bor heard it all. And stayed away.

  For a long time he and his fears lived a life of self-imposed exile. Then one day the Sky Forest came to him.

  A group of whites arrived at the docks in Macapa. They brought with them many provisions stored in bags and crates.

  He assumed they were tourists, since these were the only ones still fascinated by the Amazon jungle. If they were tourists, they were part of some strange white adventurers' club, for all the men wore the same strange outfit. They perspired heavily in their corduroy jackets.

  Brazilian natives struggled to load their cargo into three rented boats. The last items aboard were three dozen large burlap sacks.

  Chim'bor was carrying the last of the sacks to the final boat when it slipped off his shoulder and dropped to the rotted wharf. When it hit, one stitch in a corner seam popped op
en and a single small object launched free. It rolled across the dock, tapping against the side of a big crate.

  The skipper of one of the Amazon tour ships had a small squirrel monkey as a pet. Before Chim'bor had even seen what came out of the sack, the monkey had scooped it up. After devouring it, the animal scurried up to the bag Chim'bor had dropped.

  Chim'bor was hefting the bag back into the air when the monkey reached out and clawed at the corner seam of the sack. The bag split open, and dozens of seeds spilled onto the warped dock.

  Blue seeds.

  When he saw them, Chim'bor dropped the sack in shock. The seam split wider. Hundreds of small seeds scattered across the ancient dock.

  "What are you doing!" one of the whites yelled. The monkey threw itself into the pile of seeds. As Chim'bor backed away, the animal was shoveling them into its mouth. It took the boot of a sailor to get the animal to stop.

  "Sweet Georgia Brown, what's wrong with you?" the leader of the whites demanded.

  He and the others began desperately shoving the seeds back into the torn burlap sack.

  That voice. Chim'bor knew that voice. Although he hadn't been able to see a face at the time, the man on the Macapa dock had the same voice as the demon from the Sky Forest.

  "I know we're supposed to embrace the simplicity of the native, but I just don't see it," the demon said to his companions as they picked up every last seed. "Give them half a chance, and they'd be just like everyone else on this planet. With air conditioners and chlorofluorocarbon fridges in their mud huts. They're not fooling anyone. You're not fooling anyone," he repeated to Chim'bor.

  Chim'bor just stood there as the demons-who now resembled ordinary men-finished gathering up the seeds into the torn sack: Pinching the corner, they pulled it carefully off the dock. They put it in the last boat, balancing it on some of the other sacks.

  Through it all, Chim'bor said nothing.

  The boats were all loaded. The head demon put the others dressed like him onto the boats. He then returned to a waiting car and drove off into the city.

  The monkey had been in hiding until now. It joined Chim'bor on the dock, jumping and screeching as the three boats pulled away into the river.

  As they chugged out into the current to begin the journey that would take them into the dark heart of the rain forest, Chim' bor looked numbly at all the provisions lashed to their decks. Tools and supplies. Food, medicine. Enough for a long, long time.

  And in the rear of each boat, burlap sacks filled with enough blue seeds to remove breath from the land of the Rsual forever. Perhaps even all of Brazil.

  Despite the oppressive heat, as he stood on the Macapa dock, alone save the company of a single shrieking monkey, Chim'bor of the Rsual could not stop himself from shivering.

  Chapter 12

  In the privacy of his office, Dr. Harold Smith was reading the latest news reports out of Geneva. A mug of chicken broth from the Folcroft cafeteria sat on a tray at his elbow, along with a plastic-wrapped packet of four small crackers. Smith was frowning at his monitor when the contact phone rang.

  He quickly put down the spoon with which he'd been stirring the hot broth and scooped up the phone. "Report," he ordered.

  "St. Clair flew the coop," Remo announced. "And if you thought his last method of attempted murder was kinky, you'll love what he had for an encore."

  "I have just seen a report about some kind of explosion that leveled his home," Smith said cautiously. "Authorities are saying it's some sort of gas line, although there are none in the region."

  "Not gas-oil," Remo said. "By the sounds of it, this gaggle of mad scientists buried tanks in the mountain to force-feed the fire. I'd say it was crazy, but everything about this cracker factory is nuts. Did you know the guys here are all running around dressed up like Sage Carlin?"

  Smith's face grew disturbed. "I had uncovered that in my research of the CCS," he said seriously. "Apparently, since his death a cult of personality has developed around Dr. Carlin."

  "I'd say that's a twist," Remo muttered, "seeing as how Carlin didn't have one of his own."

  "Hmm," Smith mused. "This could be instructive, Remo. The two methods of attack they have used thus far are suggestive of dire ecological predictions made by Carlin and the CCS through the years. It could be a pattern."

  "Maybe," Remo said. "But I don't know if you can read too much into it, Smitty. It could be that they were gonna do this cockamamy stuff anyway and we were just tossed on the barbecue at the last minute. I think they were in the market to trash St. Clair's house. And they burned up those trees of theirs with the acid. They might just be covering their tracks. And speaking of the trees, it looks like St. Clair picked them clean of seeds before he took off."

  A thin intake of air passed Smith's bloodless lips. "You are saying Hubert St. Clair is in possession of the C. dioxa seeds?" the CURE director croaked.

  "Looks that way, Smitty," Remo said.

  Smith's gnarled hand clenched tighter around the receiver. For a silent moment he tried to comprehend the consequences of St. Clair's actions. His silence spoke volumes about his gravest fear.

  He forced calm into his voice. "Do you have any idea where he has gone?" Smith asked finally.

  "Nope. That's what I'm calling you for," Remo said. "My guess would be a tree farm in some psycho version of Hooterville where he can plant his little seeds in the ground and watch them shoosht up to the sun and the sky."

  Smith jammed the phone between shoulder and ear. Dropping his hands to the edge of his desk, he began typing rapidly at his hidden capacitor keyboard. Trails of light followed in the wake of his drumming fingertips-When he was through, Smith frowned. "I don't have a record of St. Clair leaving Geneva on any commercial flights," he said. "One moment, please, Remo."

  After another quick search, his gray face grew more animated.

  "Here it is," Smith resumed. "The CCS jet left Cointrin International Airport a few hours ago. It is en route to Brazil."

  "I guess he's going for something bigger than just some dinky little tree farm," Remo said, concerned. "How are we supposed to find him if he heads into the jungle?"

  "With luck you can head him off before then," Smith said. He continued to type quickly away at his keyboard. "According to the records I have accessed, the CCS keeps a few suites year-round in a Macapa hotel. They are reserved for members of the organization when on trips to the rain forest. The hotel staff has been alerted to the arrival of St. Clair and his CCS group."

  "Okay, get us there fast and we can maybe pull the plug on Mr. Greenjeans before he gets started."

  "My thinking exactly," Smith said. "There is an Air Brazil flight to Rio de Janeiro leaving from Heathrow this evening." He issued a few commands from his computer. "I have arranged for the three of you to catch a connecting flight to London from Geneva in one hour."

  "There's only two of us, Smitty," Remo said slowly.

  "I want you to take Dr. Liftor with you," Smith said.

  "Aw, c'mon," Remo complained. "Do I have to?"

  "We can't afford to risk her life. Once you leave, whoever has twice attempted to kill her could return at any time. Presumably, they are working on the order of Dr. St. Clair. We cannot allow them to succeed. She has full knowledge of the C. dioza and is apparently the only one left from the CCS who wishes to stop it from being introduced into the wild. You and Chiun will be the best bet for her survival. And she, perhaps, of ours."

  In the Geneva apartment of Amanda Lifton, Remo cast a hooded glance around the living room.

  The place was all fuzzy pinks and fluffy whites. Most of it looked like the FAO Schwarz version of the elephants' graveyard. Heaps of stuffed toys were arranged in corners, lined on tables and parading snout to tail across shelves.

  They'd stopped at a store on their way there to get him a change of clothes. Since he hadn't yet changed, Amanda had spread newspapers on the sofa for him to sit on before she went in to take a shower. It was fifteen minutes later, and t
he water was still running.

  As soon as she was out of the room, he'd wadded up the papers and threw them on the floor. The white sofa was smeared black where he was sitting. The back of the couch was lined with stuffed animals. Amanda apparently had great affection for them. Remo saw that each one had a pretty little pink bow with a tiny silver name tag.

  "If civilization has to rely on her, we'd all better start practicing holding our breath," Remo grumbled. "And speaking of the guy who made the chalet go poof, we almost caught him but he got away. I don't know how deep he is in this, but maybe he could help us track St. Clair if it becomes necessary."

  "Do you have a description of the assassin?" The Master of Sinanju was sitting on the floor near Remo, a blank sheet of parchment spread out before him. He clucked his tongue disapprovingly.

  "He was not an assassin, Emperor Smith," Chiun called in annoyance. "An assassin is an individual skilled in the art of precision location and removal services, not some boom-flinging Hun. And most important, an assassin is only an assassin who succeeds in eliminating his target." Shaking his head, he dropped his voice. "I can tell him until I am blue in the face, but no matter how long we work for the lunatic he will never get it right."

  He returned to his blank parchment.

  "Did Chiun say that this man was German?" Smith asked.

  "Yeah," Remo said. "He stunk German, anyway. Fat and fortyish. Got away on a boat."

  "Nothing more to go on?" Smith asked.

  "Sorry," Remo said. "We were pretty far away, not to mention doing the vertical plummet at the time."

  "I will check the marinas on Lake Geneva," Smith said. "Perhaps the employee records of the CCS will prove helpful. In any event, your tickets will be waiting at Cointrin when you arrive. Stay in touch." Smith broke the connection.

  With a sigh, Remo hung up the phone. "We just got saddled indefinitely with the nutty heiress," he said.

  Chiun didn't look up. "Consider yourself fortunate if that is your greatest worry this week, Remo Williams," the old man intoned. He seemed to be trying to burn words into the parchment with the act of thought alone.