Failing Marks td-114

by Warren Murphy

  The blond man felt an unbelievable, blinding pressure at his eyes. Twin supernovas exploded, each bearing the distinctive swirl patterns of his attacker's fingerprints.

  And then the entire universe collapsed back into ethereal nothingness.

  REMO ALLOWED the body to fall from his extended fingers. There were no eyes visible in the blood-lined sockets, yet not a trace of ocular fluid or gore was visible on Remo's hand. It was as if the eyes had simply evaporated.

  Remo turned from the body.

  "I better go get the other one," he said.

  Before he had taken a single step toward the ridge down which Veit Rauch had slid, he heard a gunshot. Exchanging tight glances, both Masters of Sinanju raced over to the hill that looked down onto the lower half of the road.

  Veit Rauch's twisted body lay on the ground, Above him, gun in hand, stood Heidi Stolpe. When Remo and Chiun broke into view on the hill, Heidi twisted and crouched, aiming her gun up at them with cool professionalism. When she saw who was looking down at her, she relaxed.

  "Is it safe?" she called up.

  "That depends on who you plan to shoot next," Remo shouted down to her.

  Heidi took this as a yes. She ran back up the road, disappearing behind the cluster of trees. A moment later, her jeep pulled into view around the far turn and headed up the hill, stopping at the bodies of the three Numbers.

  As he and Chiun climbed into the vehicle, Remo said, "You must be putting your ammo dealer's kids through college."

  "Does he always feel compelled to talk even when it is not necessary?" she asked Chiun.

  In the back of the jeep, Chiun nodded somberly.

  "And he has no sense of humor," the old Korean confided. "I spend half my time shushing him and the other half explaining the punch lines to jokes. He is not a bad son, mind you, just dour. And a chatterbox. And he sometimes eats with his mouth open."

  "Look, can we just get going?" Remo begged from the passenger's seat.

  "He's your son?" Heidi asked, ignoring Remo. She suddenly seemed very interested.

  "That's it," Remo announced, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "I'm walking." He reached for the door handle.

  "Oh." Heidi glanced at Remo. "Oh, I'm sorry," she mumbled quickly, turning back to the wheel. She seemed upset with herself for becoming distracted.

  She slipped the jeep in gear. But even as she eased around the bodies of the failed neo-Nazi experiment for perfection, her eyes strayed to the rearview mirror and the wizened figure in the back seat. There was something infinitely sad in the depths of her azure eyes.

  The jeep continued up the winding mountain road.

  ADOLF KLUGE WATCHED the jeep proceed on one of the many video monitors that lined the curving wall in the special rear room of the ancient temple.

  The treetop surveillance camera tracked the vehicle as far as it could before the system automatically switched over to the next camera. The surveillance had been arranged so that once a vehicle entered the protected IV perimeter, it was never out of sight.

  The jeep was moving fast.

  This was it, Kluge thought. This was how IV would end.

  He still couldn't completely believe that it would happen. Even though he had seen what these men could do, it was impossible to conceive that these two unexceptional-appearing men would overwhelm IV's defenses.

  And yet Kluge would not have evacuated the village if he truly believed the village could survive otherwise.

  Many of the monitors displayed the empty homes of the abandoned village. In streets and near the mouth of the fortress, his army of men waited patiently.

  Kluge spun his chair around. Herman sat over near the radio equipment.

  "Tell them they are almost here," Kluge commanded.

  Herman obediently radioed the orders down to the troops.

  Kluge had turned his attention back to the intruders. "Let us see if we cannot stop them before they get here," he muttered. But his voice lacked conviction.

  Face somber, he flipped several silver toggle switches at a broad control panel before him. Once finished, his hand strayed to a single button, index finger hovering in place.

  Eyes alert, Adolf Kluge watched the progress of the jeep.

  "STOP THE JEEP," Remo ordered.

  They were racing along the steep mountain road. "What?" Heidi asked. "Why?"

  "Stop!" Remo snapped.

  Face registering her confusion, Heidi slowed to a stop. The mountain stretched up on their left. A wooded slope dropped off to their right, overshadowed by a nearby hill.

  "You feel them, Little Father?"

  "Of course," Chiun replied. "There are many of them."

  "Too many to go through?"

  "For us, no," the Master of Sinanju said flatly. Remo looked at Heidi. From the way they spoke, she felt as if she was holding them back somehow. Her expression made it clear she didn't enjoy being treated as a handicap.

  "What is it?" she asked, peeved.

  "Wait here."

  Remo got out of the jeep. Standing on the road, he felt around under his seat. Producing a tire iron, he held it out for Heidi's inspection.

  "So?" she said with a look of perplexed annoyance.

  "Watch."

  Remo flipped the tire iron up the road. It soared two dozen yards before it finally struck the ground. The instant it hit, a huge flash of white and orange belched from the earth. The accompanying violent explosion rattled the road beneath them. The jeep was rocked on its shocks as the windshield was pelted with dirt and gravel.

  Heidi sucked in a sharp breath as the unexpected flash of light flared and diminished.

  "Land mines," Heidi breathed, once the commotion had died down. A huge smoking crater filled the road.

  "The exploding kind," Remo agreed. "Looks like we'll have to hoof it after all."

  "It is a lovely day for a walk," the Master of Sinanju said. He stepped down from the jeep onto the debris-scattered road.

  Heidi shut off the engine. She was clearly confused. "How do we get through without setting them off?" she asked, trotting to catch up with the two departing figures.

  "... WITHOUT SETTING THEM OFF?"

  Heidi's voice sounded tinny on the small speakers.

  "Damn," Adolf Kluge snapped. "How did they know?" His hand withdrew from the minefield's remote arming system.

  Herman shook his head. "They could not possibly," he said. "We planted them only this morning."

  "They know, Herman," Kluge snarled. He peered at Heidi more closely. The image was not clear. "Does she look like anyone to you?" he asked.

  Herman shook his head. "Possibly the Numbers," he said.

  Kluge nodded. "Of course. A perfect Aryan woman," he said, "siding with our attackers. A fitting irony for those who write the final history of Four."

  He watched the three of them abandon the jeep and head away from the minefield. They went down the side of the hill, disappearing from the camera's range.

  Kluge felt a tingle of excitement.

  "Perhaps there is still hope," he said. He stood up, leaning over the board before him. With desperate hands, he remotely armed every mine in the road. When he was finished, he waited at the master control. "How long ago did they go down?" he demanded urgently.

  "Twenty seconds. Perhaps thirty," Herman answered.

  Kluge nodded. "They move quickly, but she will slow them up. Half a minute to the bottom, plus another minute to get in position..." Kluge was counting in his head. When he guessed a minute and a half had elapsed, he smiled nervously. "We will see if we can't surprise the men from Sinanju after all."

  With a sharp stab, he punched a single button. It was the one to detonate the entire field of mines.

  THE TREE-DOTTED HILL sloped down sharply to a narrow strip of level land. This minigorge, which ran parallel to both the road on one side and to the upward slope of the adjacent hill on the other, was packed with pine needles and rotting leaves. Some of the boulders that had been displaced when the
road was constructed had been rolled down into the ravine. There were many of these scattered like blocks after a child's tantrum. They stood in the way of Remo, Chiun and Heidi.

  Remo assumed he would have to help Heidi through the rough terrain, but he was pleasantly surprised to find she was much more agile than he expected.

  After abandoning the jeep, she had pulled a drab green coat on over her T-shirt, dragging her omnipresent knapsack over too. With her thumbs tucked into the backpack's shoulder straps, she was scaling the rocks like a professional mountaineer. Scampering up one side of a large rock, she would leap back down to the ravine floor.

  For their part, Remo and Chiun appeared to float effortlessly up one side of a rock before gliding back down to the ground.

  Chiun made the move look particularly graceful. The hem of his kimono billowed like a gaily colored parachute as the material caught the small air pockets in the cramped valley.

  "Are there any mines down here?" Heidi asked as she scampered up a rock face.

  Remo's hands were stuffed in his pockets as he hopped down from a large boulder. "Hard to tell," he said casually.

  Heidi, who until now had been in the lead, stopped abruptly. Remo stopped, as well.

  "Don't you know?" she asked.

  "It's a little trickier here," Remo admitted. "Given the terrain. Oddly enough, mines are much easier to detect in a car. I find that tires focus your senses."

  "It is their hollowness," Chiun explained, passing the two of them. He scurried up another rock face. When the stone had been rolled down here, a massive tree was uprooted in its path. Long dead, it remained pinned beneath the huge rock. Enormous, gnarled roots clawed at the air.

  "You think that's it?" Remo called up to him.

  Chiun nodded. "The compressed air within reacts to the surface of the road. The normal sensory range is thus extended greatly."

  "That's probably true," Remo admitted. "I never much thought of it."

  "Fortunately for all of our sakes, you are not paid to think," the Master of Sinanju called. He disappeared over the far side of the high rock.

  "Is he always so unpleasant?" Heidi asked.

  "Naw," Remo said. "He's just showing off because he likes you. Let me give you a hand."

  The rock Chiun had vanished over was the tallest so far. Remo was pleased to find that Heidi was not too proud to accept help when it was offered.

  Remo held his hands out in an interlocking cuplike formation. Heidi placed one boot inside the U-shape and allowed Remo to boost her up to the rock.

  He hopped up beside her.

  They were walking to the other side of the great flat rock when Remo felt something reverberate up from the rock-and-leaf strewed ground. To his highly trained senses, it was a sudden snap-like a sheet pulled taut.

  It came a split second before the explosion.

  The ground beneath began to shake as in an earthquake. Belches of flame were briefly visible between the trunks and branches of trees as a black mushroom cloud poured into the crisp mountain air.

  Heidi covered her face against the initial hail of pebbles. "The mines!" she shouted to Remo.

  A few boulders ahead of them, the Master of Sinanju stopped dead. He shot a concerned look back to Remo.

  "What the hell set them off?" Remo demanded. The question died in his throat.

  His senses had suddenly picked up something else. Even Heidi felt the new rumble through the rock. On the hill above them, she could see the tops of the farthest trees topple and vanish behind those closest to them. They were being flicked aside by some horrifying force.

  It was like a cliched movie scene in which some creature from a bygone age first makes its appearance. Except this terror was real.

  An avalanche.

  "Remo!" Chiun squeaked anxiously. Trees nearby rattled.

  "Go!" Remo shouted back.

  Chiun hesitated at first, too far away to offer assistance. All at once, he spun on a sandaled heel, his mouth a thin line. Rapidly he began bounding from rock to rock, distancing himself from the main area of collapse.

  The trees nearest them ripped away. Like pencils in some massive sharpener, they were flung beneath the great rolling boulders. The mighty trunks were split to kindling and thrust into the ravenous maw of the avalanche.

  When the mass of rock was nearly upon them, Remo snatched Heidi up around the waist. It would be difficult enough by himself. He didn't know if he could manage with extra baggage.

  Remo didn't follow the Master of Sinanju. He was too far back. If he attempted to follow, Remo would be swept under the collapsing mountain of debris. Instead, he spun on his heel and-Heidi in tow headed directly into the incoming rush of stone and earth.

  The first rock he encountered was only as large as a beach ball. It was rolling rapidly as Remo dropped one toe atop it. Using opposite force against the stone's forward momentum, Remo vaulted up and over. He landed on a larger, flatter stone that was being swept along at the fore of the advancing pile of churning rubble.

  Fortunately Heidi was not fighting him. She remained limp beneath his arm, not wishing to distract him from his life-or-death ballet.

  His next jump brought him to a toppled tree trunk. It was scraping down the hill at a terrifying speed. Remo ran to the far end of the log, then rode it like a surfboard back down into the growing pile of debris.

  Already in the valley, many of the rocks they had been climbing on earlier were covered by fresh stones.

  When the lower end of the log they were on struck the swelling pile of debris, Remo jumped again. Both feet barely touched the surface of a dangerously splintering boulder before he sprang again. He landed on yet another stone.

  The huge rock he had barely trodden on struck an even larger boulder at the bottom of the ravine and shattered. The pieces were instantly covered in a washing mass of dirt.

  Remo leapfrogged a few more times, but found the going increasingly easier.

  The avalanche was tapering off.

  With a sigh of settling earth and a cloud of choking dust, the last of the largest chunks of earth and sections of broken road rolled into the ravine. Long after, tiny stones still toppled along the devastated path of the avalanche.

  In all, it had taken no more than a minute.

  Remo set Heidi down to the still-reverberating earth. He glanced back at the damage.

  It looked as if the claw of a gigantic backhoe had swiped a huge chunk out of the side of the mountain. There was a single stripe of missing trees and rock running straight up to the road. The valley where they had been standing was buried.

  Panting, Heidi looked at Remo. For all his exertions, he had not broken a sweat. He wore a deep scowl.

  "Have I told you lately that I hate Nazis?" Remo grumbled.

  As he spoke, Chiun bounded into view far ahead of them. He stood at the nearest visible part of the valley that had not been overrun by the avalanche. For an instant when he first saw Remo, the Master of Sinanju was visibly relieved.

  "Remo, that was-" he suddenly considered his words, and his look of relief morphed into one of blase acceptance "-adequate."

  "Adequate, my ass," Remo griped. "That was perfect. And how the hell did they do that without us stepping on the damned things?"

  "They could be set to accept a radio signal."

  Remo turned away from Chiun, looking at Heidi. "Thank you, Professor Science," he said.

  "Do not ask if you do not wish to know," she said with a shrug. Readjusting the pack on her back, she struck off toward Chiun.

  "No wonder everyone loves Germans," he muttered to himself. "They're so damned cuddly." Following Heidi, he began hiking across the fresh pile of stone rubble toward the waiting Master of Sinanju.

  IT HAD BEEN forty-five minutes since Kluge had set off the field of land mines. The leader of IV had sat in front of the bank of video monitors the entire time, his anxiety level rising every minute.

  "Has everyone reported in?" he asked Herman. "Yes, sir."

/>   "Even Theodor? You were not able to raise him."

  "It was a communications problem," Herman explained. "It has been corrected."

  Kluge nodded. He glanced at the monitor on which he had last seen his stalkers. A ragged V-shape crater was visible on the road. Beyond it sat the girl's parked jeep.

  "They are dead, Adolf," Herman insisted.

  "Possibly," Kluge said. There was a touch more optimism in his voice than there had been of late.

  "I cannot imagine anyone surviving that," Herman said, indicating the minefield damage on the monitor.

  Kluge snorted derisively. "In that case; I have the greater imagination." He bit his lip. "Still..."

  Herman waited a moment before breaking the silence. "We could send the second unit down to sift the rubble," he suggested. Indeed, this was the third time he had floated the same idea in the past forty-five minutes.

  Kluge nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, all right." Herman wheeled around in his chair. He held his hand delicately over the slender microphone that was hooked around the back of his head and positioned it over his mouth.

  "Christoph, come in."

  Herman waited. There was no reply. He repeated the command. Again, his radio message was greeted by silence.

  "More equipment failure," Herman griped.

  He attempted to raise the IV soldier a third time. As he did so, Adolf Kluge switched his attention to the monitor screens.

  The second unit was the designation given to the IV villager and his attendant group of Numbers who were at the next checkpoint up from that of the late Veit Rauch, only a few yards outside the periphery of the village.

  When he called up the appropriate image on the nearest monitor, the tree-mounted camera panned the designated scene.

  Kluge's blood chilled to ice.

  "Never mind, Herman," Kluge said woodenly.

  Still trying to raise the second unit, Herman turned, confused. "Sir?" he said.

  Kluge pointed at the monitor above the second unit's small guard station. Herman gaped at what appeared to be bodies lying around the road. When he looked closer, he saw a face that was clearly that of the man he had been trying to raise on the radio. The man's head was several feet away from his body.