Last Rites td-100 Read online

  Last Rites

  ( The Destroyer - 100 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Initiation

  The Sinanju Rite of Attainment sounds like a nightmare for Remo Williams. But as the desciple of the last Korean Master, he can't play hooky.

  Bounced around the world to perform the Labors of Hercules, Remo finds the days no joy and the nights sheer hell that stretch his warriors skills to the limit.

  And when the final challenge comes, Remo realizes that somebody's dying is the only prize to be won...

  Destroyer #100: Last Rites

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  PROLOGUE

  They had laid her out in the narrow oaken bed to die. Everyone knew she was to die. She was old. Very old. She had lived a useful and productive life as a bride of Christ, but now that life had ceased to be useful, and her senses were shutting down.

  A priest had given her the last rites of the Catholic church, sprinkling holy water over her thin frame with an aspergillum. He had spoken the words in the familiar Latin, commending her immortal soul to her savior. Incense candles were lit.

  But she refused to die. The windows were curtained to keep out the harsh sunlight that tormented her even through the milky cataracts that had robbed her of almost all sight. She could hardly hear. She had not strength to walk. Food seemed not to nourish her.

  There was no quality to her life, and although no disease ravaged her work worn body, there was no hope for recovery. Her vitality had been used up. Some say she had begun to fail many years ago, after the fire.

  Yet she lay in her deathbed, shrouded in white linen, blind eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling of Our Lady of Perpetual Care Home for the Infirm, fingering the black beads of her rosary. Her thin lips writhed soundlessly.

  The sisters who took care of her in lieu of nurses thought she was saying her Hail Mary's. She was not. She was counting her charges, reflecting on their destinies. A virgin, she had no sons or daughters to call her own, and so the lost and abandoned offspring of others became hers.

  Each bead groped between her fingers brought to mind a name. Most she had lost touch of. Some had visited her often in days gone by. Many were lost. In France, in Korea, in Vietnam and more obscure places whose names no longer mattered, their bright promise had been spent like so many precious coins.

  No one visited her now. She had retired long ago-so long ago that even the youngest boy had grown old enough to have adult children and adult cares and no time in a busy life for an old woman who had taught him the best she could.

  She had never imagined growing this old. The infirmities were almost unendurable. She wore her skin like shellacked paper stretched almost to the breaking point. The slightest bump to the backs of her hands where the skin was especially shiny created a black bruise that seemed never to heal.

  Another bead crawled between her fingers. And another. There was no order to the boyish faces that came to her mind's eye. They came unbidden, spoke in their authentic voices and seemed to be saying goodbye.

  Then came a face that brought a clutching twinge to her heart and a wave of inexpressible sadness filled her breast.

  She remembered him as a boy. Not even ten. She preferred to remember him as a boy. She had known him as a man, but she always thought of him as a boy. Just as when she dreamed, she did not dream of the rectory where she had dwelt for most of her adult life, but of her childhood home. Many people dreamed that way, she had read.

  The boy had sad eyes the color of tree bark. He had not been the smiling kind. A serious boy. "The Window Boy," they used to call him. For hours on end, he would press his face to the orphanage window, looking out into the wide world he did not know, waiting, ever waiting.

  He was waiting for the parents he never knew. The parents no one knew. The parents who might or might not be alive. She had told him that. Still, he waited.

  But no one ever came for him. No one ever cared. My failure, she thought bitterly. My one failure. Some children are placed and some are not. That is a truth as hard as concrete and as eternal as the promise of resurrection.

  Perhaps if a proper home had been found, things might have turned out differently for that one sad-faced boy. But they had not. It was the boy's own fault, in a way. He had resisted all efforts to place him in a good, loving home. He stubbornly waited for his true parents, who never came.

  When he had matured, he was full of such promise. A policeman. It was a surprising choice. Perhaps not so surprising upon reflection. A wronged boy who wanted to set the whole world right. He had been an honest boy, too.

  It was such a shock when they had convicted him of that murder.

  The boy she had known would never have slain. But he had been a Marine. Had served in Vietnam. Vietnam had changed so many of them. They came back lean and hollow cheeked and with a spiritual emptiness deep in their eyes. It was, she had long ago concluded, Vietnam that must have changed him so. Although he returned to exchange his green uniform of war for his blue one of peace, no doubt he had been changed by the green.

  It had been such a bitter day when the state executed him. To Sister Mary Margaret Morrow, it had felt like losing flesh and blood.

  Now, with her body failing and her senses all but shut down, Sister Mary Margaret lay in expectation of death, refusing to die and wondering why.

  She had no unfinished business on this earth. None whatsoever.

  But the good Lord refused to take her, and all she could think of was an orphan boy who had gone bad many many years ago.

  A boy named Remo Williams.

  She wondered if she should ask for him at the gateway to Heaven. She was certain he had died in Christ, in the end.

  Chapter 1

  By the time he took the last turn on the trail from Yuma and Red Ghost Butte hove into view, William S. Roam began to feel as if he were riding across the dying planet Mars.

  Red Ghost Butte was the color of raw brick. Everything around it was red. The sun burned overhead like a red, resentful orb. The sandstone hills were red. But Red Ghost Butte was reddest of all.

  Although he had grown up in these rusty hills among the blowing sands of this low corner of Arizona, he had been away long enough that the red receptors of his eyes were overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity of the color of desolation.

  All at once he felt ill, weaving on his hand-tooled saddle as he piloted his horse through the low desert toward Red Ghost Butte and what lay beyond.

  Even his horse seemed red. It was chestnut colored, more brown than red, but under the blazing Arizona sun, it seemed to absorb the infernal redness all around till its hair smoldered.

  Though sick, Bill Roam pushed on. His people needed him. He had nothing to bring but the white man's money and an empty fame that had come too late in life. But they were his people, and he had a duty to them.

  He looked like a cowboy in his pink shirt and denims. His boots were hand-tooled Spanish leather, bought in Mexico City with a Visa Gold credit card. His white Stetson was pure Hollywood. The silver points of his turquoise-studded bola tie clinked together with each gritting hoof fall. His legs were long, and his muscles under his denim jacket were like lean, knotted ropes. Seven feet would catch his height. Only God could calculate his age.

  He was no cowboy. His face was as red as the land that had formed him, as eroded as the sandstone mesas that dotted the endless red desolation. His eyes wore a permanent sun-squint, and their color was the color of the red-brown clay that lay under the red sand to nourish the corn that was life.

  After three more miles, his red receptors shut down. The red of the sand and the sun faded, washed out, and he felt twenty times better.

  T
he corral-style fence came into view, its gate as wide open as all outdoors.

  "Pick it up, Sanshin," he told his horse, urging it along.

  The horse began cantering. The red never bothered him. Horses don't see color. Horses don't know heartsick. Horses are lucky, he thought.

  Bill Roam rode through the gate, past a weathered sign. There were two words that had been burnt into the sign with a heated poker. The first word began with an S. That was the only letter still visible. The second word was Reservation.

  The first hogans began appearing. Every door faced east as tradition demanded. Every dome roof sported a stovepipe. And every third roof had a satellite dish pointed to the vaulting blue sky.

  "I can see where my money went," he muttered without bitterness.

  An Indian in a red-checker shirt and ragged Levi's stepped out of the first hogan, took one look and came back with a pump shotgun. He squinted up the long barrel.

  "This is reservation land, white man."

  "You wouldn't know it from the sky dishes, Tomi." The pump gun all but fell from the brave's sunburned hands.

  "Sunny Joe. That you?"

  "I come back."

  "We thought you'd deserted us forever."

  "You got no call saying that. I been sending money right along."

  "Hell, you know we got millions in that bank account we don't ever touch because it came from Washington."

  "My money still good around here?"

  "You know it is, Sunny Joe."

  "Swap you a silver dollar for a cold one."

  "Coming right up, Sunny Joe."

  Bill "Sunny Joe" Roam kept riding. Tomi caught up on foot. Walking backward to keep pace with the chestnut horse, the spurs on his Reeboks jingling, Tomi handed up a cool Tecate, saying, "Keep your silver dollars, Sunny Joe."

  "Sounds like you got plenty of these firewater cans," said Bill Roam, popping the tab.

  "I like to keep the dust from my mouth these days."

  "How is the dust these days?"

  "It's killing us off, Sunny Joe. You know that, else you wouldn't have come all the way from that opulence you enjoy."

  "I know," said Bill Roam gravely. "That's why I come back."

  And he knocked back the entire can without pausing for breath.

  "It's the death-hogan dust. It's powerful strong now."

  "I hear they call it something else now," said Sunny Joe.

  Tomi spat. "White man's words. White man's science."

  "I hear they call it the Sun On Jo Disease."

  "What do whites know?"

  "How many dead, Tomi?"

  Tomi grunted. "How many living is a shorter answer. Just a few of us left. We're dying, Sunny Joe. Not all at once. But it's catching up. The death-hogan dust is bound to devour us all before too long."

  "That's why I come back."

  "To save us, Sunny Joe?"

  "If I can."

  "Can you?"

  "Doubt it. All I got is money and fame. What do the death spirits care about either?"

  "Then why'd you leave all that to risk inhaling the dust of death, Sunny Joe?"

  "If my people are going to perish, I aim to die with them. After all, I'm the last Sunny Joe. And what have I got left at my age? Just too much money and useless damn fame."

  Sullen Indians began collecting behind the horse with every hogan they passed. Some were drunk. Most were skeptical. A few jeered.

  "Show us some magic, Sunny Joe."

  "I'm fresh out of magic, Happy Bear."

  "Did you meet any famous white guys in the white lands, Sunny Joe?"

  "Yeah. Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Any of those?"

  "Any and all. But I wouldn't trade a one for the least of you ornery redskins," Roam answered.

  "People say you turned apple."

  "Do I look like an apple to you, Gus Jong?" The Indians fell silent.

  When they passed a hogan and no one emerged, Bill Roam would ask, "Who died there?"

  And as he heard the names, he hung his head and squeezed his dry eyes.

  "Ko Jong Oh gather up his red soul," he said softly.

  "You look tired, Sunny Joe."

  Old Bill Roam's eyes sought Red Ghost Butte standing in the shadow of the great Chocolate Mountains. "I am tired. Damn tired. I'm an old man now. I have come home forever." And lowering his voice to a dust-dry whisper, he added, "Forever to dwell with the spirits of my honored ancestors, whom I revere more than life."

  Chapter 2

  His name was Remo and he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or not.

  He knew he had been asleep. In the quiet darkness of the summer night with the faint salt tang of the Atlantic Ocean coming in through the open window of his unfurnished bedroom, he wondered if he was still asleep and only dreaming.

  Remo was a Master of Sinanju, and so did not sleep like other men. A part of his brain was always awake, eternally aware. He slept deeper than other men, woke up more refreshed than other men, but still his sleep was deeper. Rarely now did he dream. Of course he did dream. All men dreamed. Even men who had been elevated by the discipline of Sinanju-the first and ultimate of the martial arts-dreamed. But Remo rarely remembered his dreams upon waking.

  If this was a dream, Remo knew he would never forget it. If this was a dream, Remo understood it was important.

  For in the fitful darkness of his room, where moonlight showed on and off through rifts in the summertime clouds, a woman appeared in the room.

  The portion of Remo's brain that never slept, which monitored his surroundings even in the deepest part of sleep, became aware of the woman the instant she appeared at the foot of the tatami mat on which Remo slept.

  That the woman did not enter the room through the door or a window startled the never-dormant portion of Remo's brain, and he snapped awake like a mousetrap tripping.

  Remo sat up, dark eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room.

  At this point he wasn't certain he was really awake. The ever-vigilant part of his brain-which had warned him of the presence in his room-went dormant as his other senses kicked in.

  They told him he was alone in the room. His hearing detected no heartbeat, no faint, elastic wheeze of lungs, no gurgle or hum of blood coursing through miles of veins and blood vessels. His sense of smell trapped the airborne scent molecules tumbling around the still air, separated sea salt, car exhaust and mown grass and told him there were no danger smells present.

  Almost every sense told him he was alone. Except sight. He could see the woman. She was looking down at him with a calm face that was an oval framed in long dark hair. It was a cameo face. Young but ageless, beautiful but not breathtaking.

  Her eyes were very sad.

  She stood barefoot at the foot of the reed mat, and while her face was clear, her form was something even Remo's powerful eyes could not read. She did not appear to be clothed. Yet there was no impression of nudity. She might have been some cosmic angel beyond the concept of skin or cloth.

  Remo reached out with a bare toe to touch the woman.

  His foot disappeared into a darkness so absolute he had to yank it back.

  Then the woman spoke.

  "I was only watching you sleep." And she smiled faintly. For all its hesitation, it was a warm and generous smile. "You are so handsome as a man."

  "Are you really my-mother?" Remo asked in a voice that cracked on the last word.

  Her sad eyes shone. "Yes. I am your mother."

  "I recognize your eyes."

  "Do you remember me?"

  "No. But I have a daughter. Your eyes are like hers."

  "There is shadow around your daughter."

  "What!"

  "That is not for you to worry about now. One day you will face this shadow. You will face many things you do not understand." She closed her eyes. "We have been apart nearly all of your life. But that too will change. When you die, my only son, you will die unknown. But they will see fit to bury you in Arlington National Cemetery under the name
that belongs to you, but which you have never heard."

  "'Remo Williams' isn't my real name?" She shook her head slowly.

  "What is my name?"

  "You must discover that for yourself."

  "Tell me your name, then."

  "He will tell you."

  "My father?"

  "You have not yet found him."

  "I've been trying, but-"

  "I have told you that I lie buried by Laughing Brook."

  "I can't find any Laughing Brook. It's not on any map or in any atlas or guide books."

  "Laughing Brook is a sacred place. It does not belong on any map. And I have told you that your father is known to you."

  "I don't know who that is. I've racked my brain-"

  "You must not stop searching in your mind, in your heart or in the world of flesh and earth."

  "Just tell me his name," Remo pleaded.

  "I am sorry."

  "Look, if it's so freaking important for me to find him," Remo said hotly, "just tell me his name."

  "I would not be a fit mother if I led you by the hand long after you have learned to walk."

  "Then give me another hint. Please."

  "Sometimes he dwells in the land where the Great Star fell. Other times he dwells among the stars."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Search for him south of Great Star Crater or among the other earthly stars."

  "I don't know what an earthly star is."

  The woman closed her dark eyes. "I am permitted to show you a vision."

  And in the formless space between her face and her bare feet, the darkness congealed. Dim shadows darkened, took form. Patches of moonlight bent themselves into artful, impossible shapes.

  Gradually a picture resolved. There was no color, just blacks and grays. A night image.

  "What do you see, my son who is not known to me?"

  "A cave..."

  "Look deeper. What do you see in the cave?" Remo peered into the vision. The cave was dark, but his eyes took in the ambient light, amplifying it.

  He saw at first a pitiful thing wrapped in a blanket. The blanket had color once. But now it was faded and tattered. In the blanket was a bundle of desiccated sticks and patches of dried brown hide, and above the bundle, tilted to one side, lolled a human head, shriveled, wizened, eyes withered shut above a sunken nose and a mouth that appeared to have been stitched shut.