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  Spoils Of War

  ( The Destroyer - 45 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  The entire U.S. army is being forced to wage war on its own people by a pontificating ten-preacher and the blonde Venus traveling as his wife. But, saints be praised, Remo and Chiun are of a different persuasion, and their unorthodox tactics leave many a zombie-eyed Christian soldier prostrate on the ground. Chaplains are dying left and right . . . an army base appears out of nowhere those answers to a higher authority than even the Pentagon. Agents of CURE postulate that a Mideast power may have created these apocalyptic events, but the facts are cloistered in secrecy. When Remo and Chiun look for answers, there's no room for sacred cows - and that's the gospel truth!

  DESTROYER #45: SPOILS OF WAR

  Warren Murphy

  For Margaret Richardson McBride, with love and appreciation, and for the Glorious House of Sinanju, P.O. Box 1454, Secaucus, NJ 07094

  One

  On the day he pushed the man off the Pontusket Bridge, Artemis Thwill knew he was free. More than free. He was launched. He hadn't expected to kill the man, or even start to push, even though he had often thought such things. He would be standing near a curb watching a woman balance two heavy packages and wonder what it would look like if he threw a body block into her lower spine. Artemis weighed 228 pounds. He was six feet, two inches tall and had played linebacker for Iowa State.

  He was a senior vice-president for Inter-Agro-Chem. So Artemis Thwill did not go around throwing blocks into ladies with packages. He went around offering to help carry packages, joining the Congregational Church, and coaching in the Pee Wee League.

  But he would see the little boys with their big expensive shoulder pads and their little twigs of neck between the two and imagine himself roaring onto the field yelling, "Let's have some real hitting, you little spoiled-ass bastards!"

  Then he would see himself smash a fist into one

  of the wobbly helmets on the twig necks and collapse a kid with a satisfying thwump. Then he would take a pair of little ankles with his fingers and use his 67-pound offensive tackle as a swinging club and go through his lineup screaming that this was where he was separating the men from the boys, as he separated a birdlike ten-year-old arm from its shoulder joint.

  All this he imagined. He even imagined the parents staring horrified at the crushed bodies lying around the Pee Wee League field. And he would say, "They never would have made real football players. Get this shit off my field."

  That was the scene that played in his head as he wrote a lengthy report on how football was physically and emotionally unhealthy for the children, . and formed a parents' league for sane athletics.

  He was called on often to talk around the country, and he had a very good speech to do it. He would even choke and sometimes cry when he would tell parents in Duluth or Yonkers, "You take these twigs of necks between those bulky plastic helmets and those shoulder pads, and my God, I can see them snap. What would happen—just imagine what would happen—if you slammed your own fist into one of those helmets. It would be like a pinball game."

  It was also good business for Inter-Agro-Chem. It made publicity. And since Inter-Agro-Chem had been accused of poisoning more river beds than Hitler did minds, it wanted to appear sensitive to people's needs. Coming out against tackle football for tykes made Inter-Agro-Chem look good. Especially when this was done by one of their senior vice-

  presidents—Iowa State '60, Harvard Business School '62, Artemis Thwill.

  That's what Artemis Thwill had done with his desire to pulverize little necks. At one of his community talks, a man rose who had remembered Artemis Thwill from Pontusket High School. He remembered that Artemis hadn't had a pair of pants without a patch on them until he started playing football. He remembered that no Thwill in Pontusket had ever even owned a house larger than a used mobile home, until Artemis started playing football. He pointed out that Artemis had earned an education through football and enough money playing second string for a professional club to go to graduate school and that without football, Artemis might presently be spreading fertilizer instead of directing people who manufactured it, directing people from a big desk in a big office with a pretty secretary and a traveling expense account of $22,800.

  To this man Artemis Thwill answered softly, breathing into his voice the outrage of most of the people whom he knew were on his side. Like most meetings anywhere, people came to hear what they wanted to hear from people who wanted them to believe what they already believed. This was called by various names: consciousness raising, proseletyzing, or telling it like it is. Artemis had the crowd.

  "It's true I was poor," said Artemis. And the people, his people, growled slightly, their outrage fueled.

  "It's true I didn't have a pair of pants without a patch," said Artemis. "But I ask you, what sort of a system makes young boys hit other boys in order to get an education."

  Applause. He knew this crowd thought all the ills

  of the world were brought on by this recent civilization, which had in reality made more progress in the last half-century than all mankind did in its first million centuries. The pro football crowd, on the other hand, thought all the ills of the world were brought on by these people.

  In other words, everyone was talking cow droppings, and six foot, two inches tall Artemis Thwill, with the blond hair receding just slightly, and the soft blue eyes and massive shoulders and stern chin, knew how to out-drop any Guernsey this side of a Pontusket pasture.

  "Maybe if we taught with kindness and enlightenment instead of fear, maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have people who felt a need to kill other people," Artemis said softly, with full knowledge that his nation's streets had become unsafe in direct proportion to all the understanding and kindness forced on its police departments.

  That was what Artemis had said. What he imagined doing was punching the man in the penis with a 228-pound uppercut. He imagined saying, "You're right. I am white trash and this is how I settle things."

  That was what Artemis wanted to do.

  But not until Artemis threw the man off the bridge did he ever do what he wanted to do.

  That day was March and bitter, and the fields were wet with melted ice and snow and the rivers beginning to gorge. The man was watching the ice break and flow.

  "Don't jump," yelled Artemis, running from his car.

  "Don't jump," yelled Artemis, pushing the man up the railing.

  "Don't jump," yelled Artemis, smashing the man's clinging hands until they let go.

  "Oh, my God, help," yelled the man.

  "Crazy fool," yelled Artemis. "You had so much to live for."

  The man hit ice below like a garbage bag full of gravel. You could hear the head crack solid against the ice floe, and then the body went splash and the man went flowing downriver, wedged beneath the ice.

  Only for a moment did Artemis Thwill regret what he had done. This was not a high enough bridge to be absolutely sure the man was dead. Next time it would have to be a certain death. For Artemis Thwill knew, even before the man hit the water, that he would do this again.

  Thwill knew what made him such a good football player back in college. He liked to hurt. But most of all, he discovered on this chill delicious March day, he loved to kill.

  There was of course an investigation. Artemis told the police he really didn't want too much recognition for trying to save the man's life. He thought it might disturb an already disturbed widow. "If only we had more psychiatric counseling," said Artemis Thwill.

  "The wife says he didn't commit suicide," said the Pontusket chief of police, who did not believe in psychiatric counseling, and felt himself a hypocrite for
not announcing that the police department ought only to protect people from other people, not people from themselves.

  "Poor thing," said Artemis.

  "She says he always went to that bridge to walk," said the chief.

  "Poor thing," said Artemis.

  "She says she thinks you threw him over, Mr. Thwill."

  "Poof thing," said Artemis.

  "Did you?"

  "Of course," said Artemis with the chill cutting edge of one of the town leaders to one of the town servants.

  "Sorry, I had to ask, Mr. Thwill."

  "That's all right," said Artemis, with deep understanding in his voice. Artemis knew understanding properly used could be more insulting and humiliating than spit in the face. "Perhaps I ought to speak to the woman."

  "She's pretty upset, Mr. Thwill. She don't think he rightly did do himself in, considering he ordered a new pickup truck for tomorrow."

  "I understand," said Artemis. The man owned a small farm, which he helped support with his full-time job at the feed grain store. He had been 35. His wife was 22. They were childless.

  She sat in the kitchen of their small house, her hands cracked and red from kneading. Her lips were drawn tight and white. She had melon breasts. She stared hatred at Artemis Thwill as he entered. She did not get up. The police chief introduced Artemis.

  Artemis said how truly sorrowful he was. Artemis thought how he'd like to put his hands on the rose print dress, specifically around the breasts.

  "You killed him, you son of a bitch, you bastard," screamed the woman.

  The police chief, embarrassed, turned his head away. Artemis quickly grabbed a breast. The woman said nothing. Artemis removed the hand before the chief turned back.

  "You poor thing," said Artemis. "Killed him, you bastard. Thoughtless son of a bitch. Thoughtless."

  "I'm sorry you feel that way," rumbled Artemis, his eyes fixated on her heaving bosom.

  "How the hell am I supposed to feel? Insurance policies never pay off for suicides."

  It was then, in that small farmhouse, that Artemis Thwill fell in love. Here was a woman raised in the country, probably not even a graduate of high school, with all the wisdom and understanding of a Harvard Graduate School of Business alumna.

  Her name was Samantha, and Artemis stayed for dinner when the chief left. He learned you didn't need a master's degree to learn reason. You didn't have to run a country to show understanding. Truly and for the first time, Artemis Thwill had found a woman with whom he could share his life.

  "You could have hit him on the head, simple as í that, and left him there. Why'd you have to throw him over to make it look like a suicide? Sheesh."

  "I didn't think," Artemis said, filled with remorse. His cashmere coat seemed out of place in the rustic kitchen. He knew he had to give Samantha better than this.

  "Well, you should have." "I can't change my story now." "Why'd you do it in the first place?" Artemis thought. He pondered the atavistic rage that prompted people to kill, and the warped social structure that took normal, home-loving persons and drove them to snuff out the lives of innocents. "I felt like it," Artemis said.

  "Best damned reason for doing anything," said Samantha.

  They made love that instant, and the next day Artemis did not return to his home. In the ensuing week he learned much wisdom from the young farm girl.

  "Look, our only chance long range is if God does not exist," Samantha said. " 'Cause if he does, we've had it. And don't give me this repentance crap, cause God don't take too many and even if we did repent, we'd be liars."

  "How can you say that, Samantha?" Artemis crooned.

  "Bejeezus, I love it when you're hypocritical. Just love it. You're so good at it. With your hypocrisy and my brains, we can do anything." And for the next few days, Samantha thought, deeply, carefully. The only words she uttered during those days were, "I think I've got it. I think I've got it."

  On the third day, with the sun setting red over the straw and mud fields of Iowa, Samantha shrieked to wake the dead. "That's it!" yelled Samantha.

  "What? What?" Artemis asked.

  Tve got it. It's the only business that lasts. In it, you can do anything you want. Hell, your victims will have to figure out what they did wrong to deserve it."

  "What is it?"

  "And hypocrisy?" She laughed, high and clear as a bell. "You can cripple your victims and then tell them you're the purest soul ever walked the earth, and make 'em believe it. Make them feel like dilly poo if they don't."

  "Whaaat?" yelled Artemis, shaking Samantha's shoulders.

  "Artemis. You're perfect for it." She planted a big

  8

  wet kiss on his lips. "Artie, honey, you're going into the God business."

  Artemis Thwill's hand rose involuntarily to his throat. "You mean be a preacher?" he said, aghast. "Me? Give up my senior vice-presidency to become a fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year Holy Roller?"

  "No," Samantha said sweetly. "To become God."

  Two

  His name was Remo and he was flying like a captive god.

  The dragon's skin felt pebbled under his fingertips. Remo held on tight as the giant fire-breathing beast soared through the air, trailing Remo behind like some other-worldly water skier. The clouds below him billowed plump and white.

  Remo coiled himself into a tight ball to bring his body closer to the dragon's. Once near enough, he would work a multiple attack in a fast inside une on the beast's underside, turning as he worked to cover space while still maintaining a grip on the tether. It was a modification of an attack taught to him years before by the Master of Sinanju.

  But the Master had taught him only the secrets for assassinating men, not dragons. Chiun, the Master, had explained to Remo that man was the only species capable of producing specimens dangerous enough to require extermination. Any animal, Chiun claimed, would lose its desire to kill if offered food, or the return of its young, or its proper territory where it could live in peace, or the cessation of physical torment. Not man. Man would kill

  10

  for greed, for power, or for fun. Man could kill and destroy and pervert and return to do it all again. Of all the life forms on earth, Chiun said, only man could wreak destruction on life itself.

  Only man, if you didn't count the monster that was carrying Remo toward certain death.

  Remo's attack hadn't even altered the course of the dragon's flight. Its skin was heavier than tank armor. The beast was the size of three square city blocks. It headed with deafening speed toward the blackness of space, where even Remo, with a nervous system developed far beyond the capacity of normal men, would die helpless and gasping.

  He made one last attempt. Grateful for the years of exercises under Chiun's tutelage, he spun in a rapid series of six somersaults, which propelled Mm more than 20 stories high—high enough to land on the dragon's back. If he could land safely on the beast, he could crawl up to the animal's slender neck and find a vulnerable spot. . . .

  He did not land. While he was still in midair on the crest of his last somersault, the dragon turned sharply and faced Remo with its glowing eyes. The sight was paralyzing. Remo's hands fell from the thin tether, his only connection to life. And as he began to fall, the beast opened its maw and spewed fire onto Remo's plummeting form, setting it aflame and speaking in a voice that came from another universe:

  "It is the legend, come now to fruition."

  "Chiun!" Remo screamed. "Master, my father!"

  And suddenly the flames that charred his body were extinguished, and his fall had been gently broken, and his forehead felt cool and damp. "Awake, my son," said a high, squeaky, familiar voice.

  11

  Remo sat up abruptly in bed. "I was dreaming, Chiun."

  The old Oriental nodded. He was wearing a shimmering purple robe pulled loosely across his tiny, frail-looking frame. His white beard and mustache rested like snow against the vibrant purple of the robe. On his head he wore a squat coolie's hat.
>
  "What are you dressed like that for?" Remo asked, trying to force his senses to clarity. He wasn't used to sleeping. He felt drugged.

  "The Master of Sinanju clothes himself as he wishes," Chiun said.

  Remo stood up, wobbling, and rubbed his face with his hands, feeling the thin line of sweat at his hairline and on his upper lip. Incredulously, he stared at his hands.

  Remo did not sweat. The years of training in the ways of Sinanju had given him the tools of the finest assassin on earth, but they had exacted their price in other ways. The body-wracking discipline of Sinanju had gradually evolved his nervous system into that of another being, far more highly developed than even the strongest or fastest normal man, so that, for all the things Remo could do, he did not sweat. And he did not sleep, not the sprawled-out, dream-laden sleep of regular human beings. Yet he had slept, and he had dreamed, and he was sweating.

  "How long was I out?" he asked.

  "Seven hours."

  Remo panicked. He hadn't slept seven hours straight in more than ten years. He felt sweat trickling down his chest and back. His head throbbed with a dull pain. "What's happening to me?" he asked quietly. "What's wrong?"

  12

  "Nothing is wrong, my son." The aged Oriental tucked his long-nailed hands into the sleeves of his kimono. "The Dream of Death is a natural process for those trained in the mysteries of Sinanju. It is a coming of age. Now is your time."

  Chiun floated to the tatami mat on the floor, where he arranged himself in the elaborate folds of his robe. His face broke into a broad grin. "To cheer you, I will share with you a legend of the glory that is Sinanju," he said magnanimously. "It is known throughout Korea."

  "Oh, no," Remo said, trying to blink back the pain in his head. "Not the one about how a thousand years ago the people of your village were so poor and hungry that they had to drown their children in the ocean, so the Master of Sinanju had to hire himself out as an assassin to support the village."

  Chiun glared. "Not drowned. They were forced to send their babies back to the sea. That is how it is stated: 'Sent back to the sea.' And that was not the legend I was about to relate to you, hoping ever optimistically that I would not be casting my pearls before pale pieces of pigs' ears."