Air Raid td-126

by Warren Murphy

  Prick didn't look at his natives. He was still staring out the window. The lush green jungle spread out like rumpled carpet as far as the eye could see.

  Prick's frazzled manager hurried up the aisle, stopping next to his client.

  "We're landing in ten minutes," he said.

  Prick didn't even raise his eyes to the man. "Did those idiots send the helicopter like they said they would?"

  "It's ready and waiting," his manager said.

  "It bloody well better be," Prick growled. "I've had enough disasters for the rest of my life. Another screwup like New York, and you're all in the dole queue. You're just lucky I don't have you speared through the head for that."

  He waved a thin pale hand at his two natives. "Yes, Prick. Thank you, Prick," said his manager, eyeing the two natives uncomfortably.

  The men made the manager nervous. They'd been even creepier ever since their single lost the bullet and their album tanked. A record company exec had vanished at around the same time. No one was speculating out loud what had happened to him, but after the disappearance the manager had seen one of the natives wearing the man's very expensive Rolex as an ankle bracelet. And he swore the natives looked a little fatter.

  "What the hell are you staring at?" Prick snapped.

  The manager jumped. "Nothing," he said.

  "I'm not paying you to do nothing. Leave me the hell alone."

  The grateful manager almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to leave.

  "And about that rattle," Prick called after him. "It's more like a hum. I want it found and I want it dehummed before we land."

  "Yes, Prick," his manager said with a sharp nod. As Prick continued to stare out the window at his jungle, the cabin exploded in a flurry of fresh activity. The crew began searching frantically for a hum that didn't exist.

  Chapter 15

  Remo called Smith from the airport in Rio de Janeiro. The CURE director had already arranged for a flight on a turboprop to Macapa.

  "Who were you talking to?" Amanda demanded once Remo hung up the phone and they were heading across the tarmac to the smaller plane. The air was hot and sticky. She was directing the skycaps who were hauling her luggage. The dainty pink bags were showing signs of wear.

  "I've got an idea for a game we can play," Remo said. "It's called none of your business."

  "Heh-heh-heh," said the Master of Sinanju as he padded along beside them. "None of your business."

  Amanda shot the old man an evil look. "I'm starting to think you're not so nice, either," she accused. To Remo she said, "It was Daddy, wasn't it?"

  "Wasn't who?"

  "On the phone. You were just talking to Daddy. He wanted to check up on you, make sure I was okay. Only, it's just he won't give me the unlisted numbers. They changed them after I was-" the words were hard to get out "-cut off. Mother has a card sent to me on Christmas. Although not last year. Or this year. Yet. I thought I was gone for good. This is so unlike him to take the time to look after me like this."

  Remo could see the flood waters rising in her eyes again. They were at the air stairs. He stopped. "He's a regular Robert Young," Remo agreed. "Now can we change the subject from Daddy Warbucks? Speaking for the orphans of the world, if I have to hear one more story about your childhood of ponies on the patio and hot and cold running wet nurses, I'm gonna heave all over this Mary Kay luggage of yours."

  Her tears dried up. "Don't you dare," she snapped. She shooed the men with her luggage off to the cargo hold. "You made a big enough mess back in my apartment. And don't think I'm not keeping a running total of what you owe me. By the time we're through, Daddy will be writing a check to me, not you." Pushing past him, she mounted the stairs.

  The plane was nearly empty. Chiun sat alone on the left side of the aisle while Remo and Amanda sat in the two seats across from him.

  Once they were back in the air and Amanda got her first good glimpse of jungle, her expression softened.

  "It's amazing, isn't it?" she said quietly as she looked out the window.

  Remo leaned over her, peering out at the sea of green. Clouds of burned-off mist rose into the early-morning sky.

  "Glad I don't have to mow it," he shrugged, flopping back in his seat.

  "It's not only jungle down here," Amanda insisted. "A lot of Brazil is covered by savanna. It's like Africa in a lot of ways. Have you ever been to equatorial Africa?"

  Remo was doing his best to ignore her. Chiun wouldn't let him.

  "She is talking to you," the old man said blandly. He was staring out at the left wing.

  "I know. But can't we pretend she isn't?" Remo asked. "I've had to put up with it the last six thousand miles."

  "No," Chiun replied. "Because then she might try talking to me."

  "Now, now," Amanda admonished, wagging a finger at the Master of Sinanju. "I know you're not the grumpy Gus you pretend to be."

  There was a flash of silk, so fast Amanda didn't see it. Remo barely managed to snatch her hand out of the way of Chiun's razor-sharp fingernails.

  "Oh," Amanda said softly. "Oh, my."

  Remo's hands as they held hers were strong, but not coarse. They were the hands of a real man and not those of the perfumed sons of privilege she had dated all her life. She felt a shudder of electricity shoot through her as Remo held tight for a few lingering moments. For an instant in her tripping heart she wondered if he felt it, too.

  "Hey, headlights, if you don't want a stump where your rings used to go, you'll refrain from cheesing off the pissy old Korean guy." He let her go. Amanda wasn't sure what to think. She'd definitely felt something. And while this Remo was a barbarian and, worse, an employee, there was something raw and primal about him.

  "I thought we were getting a little better acquainted," she ventured hesitantly.

  "Nope," Remo said. "Just didn't want your blood squishing up my new shoes."

  She pouted her perfect lips. "Afraid of commitment, I see," she complained.

  Remo gave her a baleful look. "Is this you coming on to me? 'Cause if it is, I wish you'd go back to yelling."

  Across the aisle, the Master of Sinanju huffed angrily. "And I wish this craft would crash and spare me from having to listen to either of you," he groused, getting to his feet.

  Amanda was sending a hectoring finger back his way when Remo intercepted it. With a disapproving harrumph, Chiun glided up the aisle and sank into an empty seat.

  "Can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?" Amanda said, doe-eyed optimism returning.

  "Put it back in your pants, Amanda," Remo said as he let go of her hand. "Besides, I'm just the help, remember?"

  He got up and moved across the aisle to the seat Chiun had vacated. Amanda followed him.

  "I've dated the help before," Amanda confided.

  "The pool boy, some gardeners. About a dozen drivers."

  "Beats a cash bonus, I guess," Remo said. "Assuming you keep your yap shut during. Which I doubt."

  He got up and sat in his original seat. Getting up once more to follow, Amanda settled back into hers. "Why are you running away, Remo?" she asked. "What are you men so afraid of?"

  "The usual stuff. Commitment leading to long-term relationship leading to me not being able to watch The Three Stooges in peace because you're harping at me to trim the hedges and take the cat to the vet. You want a window into a guy's mind? That's it."

  Amanda's face darkened and she folded her arms. "It wasn't like I was proposing or anything," she grumbled.

  "You certainly were not," a squeaky voice chimed in from farther up the cabin. "I am having a difficult enough time explaining you, Remo. When you finally do wed, it will be to a Korean maiden, not some melon-dugged ghost face. Besides, this one is damaged goods."

  Amanda was embarrassed enough already. When Remo responded she felt like melting into her seat. "How you figure that, Little Father?" he called.

  "She was left at the-altar," Chiun called back. "Do you not listen? She keeps going on about it."
<
br />   Amanda's face grew horrified. "I was not," she insisted to the nearest person, a passing Brazilian stewardess who had no idea what was being said.

  "He was probably marrying her for those millions she keeps going on about," Remo said to Chiun.

  "I was not left at the altar," Amanda hissed. "There was some ...unpleasantness at my sister Abigail's wedding. That's all I said. You two are the ones who don't listen."

  "I listen perfectly," Chiun said. "You talk wrong."

  Remo shrugged. "Sue me for only listening to every fourth word," he said. "I'm taking a nap." Reclining his seat, he closed his eyes.

  Amanda couldn't believe his nerve. The way both of these men acted it was as if she was their servant and not the other way around. She hoped that by hiring them to protect her, Daddy was signaling a thawing in his attitude toward her. The quality of help he was employing had obviously taken a dramatic downturn since she'd been frozen out of family affairs. She wanted to give him an earful before the inheritance she was counting on was completely frittered away.

  Casting a last, longing look at Remo's slumbering form, she turned her eyes back to the window and the lush majesty of the Brazilian rain forest.

  THEIR PLANE TOUCHED down in Macapa early in the afternoon. Remo and Chiun waited until the few other passengers on board had deplaned before gliding down the retractable stairs and out into the eighty-degree heat.

  The air in Macapa was like a hot shower in July. The humidity was already soaking Amanda's blouse by the time she stepped off the plane.

  "There's no one here to carry my bags," she said.

  "Yeah, how 'bout that," Remo said.

  Frowning at Remo, she looked to Chiun.

  "The Master of Sinanju does not lift," he sniffed. "I can vouch for him on that one. No luggage, no bodies, no nothing. But don't worry. We'll wait." Scowling, Amanda collected her suitcases alongside the other passengers.

  "A gentleman would help me carry these," she growled as she struggled under the pile of pink Gucci.

  "I think I saw one over there," Remo said. "Lemme see if we can catch him."

  He and Chiun struck off for the small terminal. Amanda puffed to catch up.

  "If you're my bodyguards, you should stay with me," she complained. She adjusted a suitcase strap that was biting into her shoulder. "I've got half a mind to- Hey."

  Remo heard the sound of luggage thudding to pavement. When he turned, Amanda was standing stock-still up to her ankles in suitcases. She pointed to the private hangars beyond the terminal.

  "That's the CCS jet," she said. She blew a clump of damp stringy brown hair from her face.

  Remo looked back to where a sleek white jet peeked out from a shadowed hangar door.

  "You sure?" he asked. One jet looked like the rest to him.

  Even standing on a South American airport runway in sweat-stained, off-the-rack clothes and amid a pile of ragged seven-year-old luggage, the girl who had grown up on jets still managed a look of supreme Lifton condescension.

  "Okay, so you're sure," Remo said. "Stay put."

  "I'm standing out in the open in broad daylight, you idiot," Amanda snapped.

  "So what do you want from me? Weave a little. Come on, Little Father."

  Amanda was hauling her luggage straps back up over her shoulders and cursing under her breath as the two Masters of Sinanju headed over to the long, flat building.

  The big hangar door was rolled open wide. When they paused near the corrugated steel wall, they sensed no one inside.

  "I smell oil," Remo said. "Not more than normal, though."

  Chiun was peering in at the shadowed ceiling of the hangar. "There are none of those devices for spraying acid," he observed. His hands sought refuge in the voluminous sleeves of his kimono.

  Remo glanced across the tarmac. Amanda was halfway toward them, lugging her heavy bags.

  "Let's hope it just doesn't mean there's a whole new surprise inside," Remo muttered.

  Without another word, the two men slipped around the wall of the hangar and disappeared inside.

  FROM THE MACAPA airport security shed, Herr Hahn watched the two Masters of Sinanju duck inside the hangar.

  He was sweating and panting as he sat in his chair. It wasn't fear, but exertion. He almost hadn't gotten here before them. Even now his own private jet was cooling down on the other side of the airport.

  He was himself again. Back in full control.

  Oh, there was a moment or two back in Geneva when he had allowed fear to take control from reason. But even that had been exciting in a bizarre way.

  Other men in his profession had walked that uncertain path before-between success and failure, life and death. Possibly even Benson Dilkes himself, although Herr Hahn had his doubts about that. Since Hahn had known only success, his failure back in Switzerland had given him a certain twisted thrill. But that was gone now.

  These two celebrated assassins had become the challenge of a lifetime. Herr Hahn would meet that challenge with greater caution than he had ever exercised before. And in the end, the victory would be savored as none other.

  Hahn wasn't sure what they were able to sense. He knew to his marrow that they'd felt his binoculars trained on them back in Geneva. Did whatever sense they possessed extend to electronic surveillance equipment?

  He had no way of knowing if they'd noticed the heat-sensing equipment at Hubert St. Clair's chalet and had simply chosen to ignore it. If so, with luck, they might do the same thing here.

  There were only a few cameras at the small airport. Two at the main terminal, the rest positioned around the private hangars. Herr Hahn chose not to focus all cameras on the two men. Rather, he let the devices pan back and forth in their normal automated cycles.

  He saw them deplane, then missed them for a full minute as the woman got her luggage. The cameras rotated, and he caught just a glimpse of them on their way into the hangar.

  The woman was alone. She was heading in the direction of the Masters of Sinanju, but right at this one moment she was completely vulnerable.

  How easy it would be to slip out of the security shed unseen. A single bullet would put an end to her. Just as it had to the dead security officer who lay on his back on the floor near Herr Hahn's briefcase.

  But a gunshot would bring the two men running. This wasn't about the simple way out. This was all about tactics and victory. And maybe just maybe-one last single moment of delicious fear before Herr Hahn achieved the greatest triumph in his professional career.

  DENSE JUNGLE FOLIAGE around the back and sides cooled the hangar by ten degrees. Alert now to the unexpected, Remo and Chiun made their cautious way around the CCS jet.

  The door behind the cockpit was down, the attached stairs almost welcoming them inside.

  "If it's a trap, I'm not getting anything from it," Remo said cautiously.

  The Master of Sinanju's face was impassive. "I sense no danger, either," he admitted.

  "Good," Remo said. "If it starts shaking us like a paint mixer or launches us into space, we can both take equal blame."

  "Very well," Chiun agreed. "But if something goes wrong, the Sacred Scrolls will show your equal blame to be greater than mine." He nudged Remo up the stairs at the point of a long nail.

  The recycled air inside the jet had grown foul the instant it was exposed to Macapa air. Remo noted another smell lingering along with the stale air. It was the same odor they'd picked up back in Switzerland.

  "I smell German," Remo said. "Think it's our guy?"

  The Master of Sinanju nodded. "It is too weak for whoever it is to have flown here on board this craft. The German who boarded this plane did so long after it landed."

  Remo nodded. "Thought so," he said. "He must have gotten here ahead of us."

  They stepped more cautiously as they continued deeper into the plane.

  There was a conference area halfway down the jet. A big map of the Amazon had been left unfolded on a low table. Remo saw that a large circle had been m
ade in blue ink around an area of jungle miles inland.

  "Well, they don't think very highly of us," Remo complained. "Why didn't they draw a bunch of arrows and write 'This is not a trap' at the bottom?"

  Disgusted, he tried folding the map. It was like those from the gas station. He could never fold them back up right, either.

  "Chiun?" he asked after his third try.

  Frowning with his entire face, the old Korean snatched the map from Remo's hands. It folded quickly before vanishing up a wide kimono sleeve. He twirled away in a flurry of robes.

  There was nothing else for them inside. When they went back into the hangar, Remo popped the door to the cargo hold. A vague whiff of ammonia told them where the seeds had been stored. The hold was empty.

  "We know for sure where he brought them now," Remo said. "They just better be at that hotel, because I don't feel like schlepping off into the jungle."

  He was interrupted by Amanda Lifton, who chose that moment to stick her head in through the main hangar door.

  "Remo, Chiun, come quick!" she cried. "Hurry!" Fearing the worst as she ducked back outside, the two Sinanju Masters flew for the door. When they emerged into the sunlight, they found Amanda standing a few yards from the hangar, surrounded by her pastel pink luggage. She was staring across the tarmac, a look of near rapturous bliss on her sweating face.

  A new private jet had landed and taxied to a stop. People milled around the plane.

  "You're not going to believe it," Amanda said. "I just saw him." She was craning her neck for a better look.

  "Who?" Remo asked. "St. Clair?" He looked hopefully at the small crowd.

  He didn't see the head of the CCS. All attention seemed to be focused around the thin, balding man in sunglasses who had just stepped into view.

  When she saw the man reappear, Amanda grabbed Remo by the arm. Her digging nails pressed white finger marks in his skin.

  "Geez, lady, lay off," Remo snarled.

  A single tap on the back of her wrist and her hand sprang back open. Amanda hardly noticed.

  "Don't you recognize Prick?" she asked.

  Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "Did she just insult me again?" he said, assuming this was some new slang phrase he'd missed.