The Final Reel td-116 Read online

  The Final Reel

  ( The Destroyer - 116 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  LIGHTS!

  CAMERA!

  ARMAGEDDON!

  Sultan Oman of Ebla is dying - and he plans to take the Great Satan with him by hitting America right in its nerve center: Hollywood.

  So he buys a failing movie studio and dispatches the Mideast's top lethal terrorist to hire Tinseltown's most clueless producers to create the greatest battle epic ever. Thing is, the army of extras are real, the guns are loaded and the California freeway is jammed with camels and tanks.

  On the other side of the world, Omay is poised to light the powder keg that will spell disaster.

  The Destroyer races to save Hollywood, not for the sake of the free world, but because Chiun has just penned his screenplaym and nothing - especially not a madman - is about to keep him from the glory of an Oscar.

  Destroyer 116: The Final Reel

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  PROLOGUE

  "What does it mean 'does not fit our needs at the present time'?" This did Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, the sun source of all the lesser martial arts, ask of his pupil one sunny spring afternoon.

  Chiun was an old Asian with walnut skin. His youthful hazel eyes were crimped in concentration at their leather vellum edges. A frown creased the parchment skin of his brow, casting an unhappy shadow across his weathered countenance as he examined the sheet of paper held in his aged hand.

  "Give it here," said his pupil, Remo Williams. Taking the paper from Chiun, the much younger man scanned the few lines on the crisp sheet. He chewed languidly at his bowl of cold steamed rice as he read.

  "It's a form letter," Remo said finally. "You've been rejected for something called Trials of an Assassin. Have you been writing novels behind my back again?"

  Chiun snatched the paper back, face angry. "None of your business," he sniffed hotly. And, turning on a sandaled heel, he skulked off to a dark corner of their home.

  "I HAVE A FRIEND," the Master said later that evening.

  "No, you don't," Remo pointed out absently. He was trying to watch Nick at Nite.

  "Silence, insolent one!" Chiun snapped. "This friend of mine is a budding writer."

  "Sounds familiar."

  "What would his best route be to seeing his words brought to life?"

  "You mean aside from the Dr. Frankenstein route of throwing his manuscript out in the middle of a lightning storm?"

  "Visigoth! I do not know why my friend would waste breath-nay, the best years of his life-on a vicious-tongued ingrate like you!"

  Remo held up his hands. "I'm sorry," he apologized quickly. "This isn't exactly my field, Little Father."

  "My friend is desperate. He would beg assistance from a lowly ox or ass if one could be found. With no farms in the area, you were his only alternative."

  "I'm flattered," Remo said dryly. "So, what kind of a book did this friend of yours write?"

  Chiun stood more erect, pushing back his bony shoulders. His crimson silk kimono responded to the motion, puffing out proudly at the chest. With a bright orange beak he could have been mistaken for an oversize cardinal.

  "It is not a novel. This, my friend has tried in the past to no avail. He has written a screenplay detailing the travails of his life. It is an epic."

  "I'm sure," Remo said thinly. "Is this the same friend who dabbled in movies a couple of times years ago?"

  "I do not know the friend to which you refer," the old Korean answered vaguely. "I have so many. In any case the past ignorance of Hollywood is irrelevant. I need to know what my friend can do now."

  Remo sighed. He had an assignment tonight and had planned on relaxing for a little while first. Turning away from the television, Remo stood and stretched out his hands as wide as they could go. He resembled a human T.

  "This is wit, humor, originality and intelligence," he explained. He wiggled the tips of his index and middle fingers on his left hand. "This is complete, absolute, utter crap." He wiggled the corresponding fingers on the opposite hand. "Everything in between this and this," he said, wiggling the fingers on both hands, "gets produced in Hollywood. Nine times out of ten this stuff will get produced, too." He waved his right hand at Chiun before sitting back down.

  Chiun's frown deepened. "So you are saying that my screenplay is too good for the idiots in Hollywood."

  "I thought we were talking about a friend of yours," Remo said slyly.

  "Oh, grow up, Remo," Chiun retorted. "I would be embarrassed to bring friends home with you always hanging around."

  Chiun produced a feathered quill and a sheet of parchment from the voluminous sleeves of his kimono. Scissoring his legs beneath him, he sank to the floor in a delicate lotus position. He began jotting down hasty notes.

  "How do I see to it that my movie is no longer too good for Hollywood?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

  Remo gave up completely any hope of seeing the end of the I Love Lucy rerun he'd been watching. He shut off the television with the remote control before sinking down before his teacher.

  "With most movies these days they come up with a few large effects sequences and then tailor a sort of story around them," Remo explained.

  Chiun scribbled a few more notes. The feathered end of his quill danced merrily. He looked up from his parchment.

  "Effects?" he asked.

  "Explosions, helicopter chases, radioactive dinosaurs stomping around Midtown Manhattan. That sort of thing."

  "But do not those things descend from the story?"

  "You'd think that, wouldn't you?" Remo said. "But as far as I can tell, you'd be wrong. No. Effects first, story second. If the effects are big and loud enough, you can sometimes get away with no story at all. Like Armageddon."

  "Amazing." Chiun shook his head. He scratched a few more lines on his parchment.

  "Michelle Pfeiffer in a cat suit," Remo said suddenly.

  "What?" the Master of Sinanju asked, looking up.

  "Batman Returns," Remo explained. "The only thing it had going for it was Michelle Pfeiffer in a skintight cat suit."

  "Pornography," Chiun insisted.

  "Great box office," Remo replied. "At least until people found out that there was nothing else there."

  "But were there not explosions?" Chiun asked, confused.

  "Yeah, but the movie was dark and unpleasant. People like their violence to be uplifting."

  "Uplifting," Chiun echoed, jotting down the word. "So in order for my screenplay to be successful, I need explosions, dinosaurs and half-naked white women?"

  "And a happy ending," Remo added.

  "Yes, yes, yes." Chiun waved a dismissive hand. "Uplifting pabulum. You have said this already." Gathering up his things, he rose to go.

  Remo hesitated an instant before speaking once more. "That's assuming your movie was too good to begin with," he offered to Chiun's departing back. "It might have been something else." He added this last thought vaguely.

  Chiun paused in the doorway. He turned very slowly.

  "What else could it be?" he demanded.

  Remo delayed answering for a moment. He didn't want to come right out and accuse Chiun of writing a bad screenplay.

  "I dunno," Remo hedged with a tiny shrug. "Something I didn't think of."

  "What you do not think of could fill volumes," the Master of Sinanju responded in a deeply superior tone. With that he flounced from the room.

  "See if I come to your premiere," Remo grumbled.

  And, rising with silent fluidity from the carpet, he left for his assignment.

  Chapter 1

  Everyone was armed.
r />   A forest of slender black barrels aimed skyward-rigid testaments to proud Islamic defiance. The choppy fire of old Russian AK-47s rattled occasionally through the hot desert air. Bursts of bright orange fire erupted in angry spurts, followed immediately by exuberant cheers from the teeming, sweating, jubilant mass of humanity.

  Far above Rebellion Square, on the balcony of the Great Sultan's Palace, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam watched the activity far below through weary eyes.

  Catching sight of the sultan, a few men raised their weapons in a frenzied, sloppy salute. A whole section of the crowd turned to their leader as the ripple traveled outward. Guns were lifted in salute before the exuberance of the crowd finally collapsed into gunfire and whooping shouts. Even as the sudden frenzy of celebration was dying down in one part of the crowd, the cry was being taken up by another.

  Omay watched it all, his gaunt face impassive. It was hot in his Fishbowl.

  That was what he called the sheets of impenetrable Plexiglas that had been constructed out of necessity around his balcony--the Fishbowl. The bulletproof glass had been added during the 1980s as a security precaution made necessary because of his overtures to the West. And to Israel.

  As he stood there, absorbing the heat of his personal tomb, the crowd seemed to fade from the landscape.

  This was supposed to be a day of great celebration for both Ebla and its leader. However, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam's thoughts were not on this day, but on another. Long ago...

  MAY 7, 1984. THAT WAS the date everything had changed. It was then that he had discovered the lump.

  The small nation of Ebla, which was nestled in the desert north of Lebanon, did not have many doctors. The best in the country resided in the Great Sultan's Palace itself. But even though they were the best doctors in Ebla, the sad fact was they were still not very good.

  Perhaps at one time the sultan's doctors had been good. But Sultan Omay sin-Khalam had been as healthy as a horse all his life. Even at sixty years of age, he'd had no need for doctors.

  Years before, the sultan's advisers had hired several of the finest Eblan-born and Western-educated physicians money could buy. A staff of ten was kept on duty full-time in case of emergency. But aside from the handful of scrapes and bruises that had resulted from a few riding accidents, they went unused for decades. Over the years the doctors-who were all older than the sultan at the time they were engaged in service-passed away. As the men had died off, they were not replaced. By the time Omar discovered the lump in his armpit, there were only two doctors left.

  That fateful day the sultan sat in the airconditioned coolness of his private infirmary. Although it was the 1980s, the room seemed to have been locked in time somewhere just after the Second World War.

  Neither of the two remaining doctors seemed certain how to run the antiquated X-ray machine. They fussed around it like a pair of elderly sisters who had been asked to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the entire family and had forgotten how to start up the gas oven.

  Eventually the sultan lost his temper. "Enough!" Sultan Omay barked.

  Though startled, the men seemed relieved to abandon the old device. The sultan was sitting on a lovingly preserved black-leather examining table. It looked like a museum piece. The doctors approached their nation's ruler.

  Omay was stripped down to the waist. His skin was dark, his chest broad and coated with a thick blanket of coarse black hair. Only lately had some gray begun to emerge.

  "Could you raise your arm again, please, O Sultan?" one doctor asked.

  The sultan did as he was instructed, although he released an impatient sigh.

  The doctor probed the lump with his fingers. He frowned gravely as he turned to his colleague. The second doctor was frowning, as well.

  "How long has this been here?" the first doctor asked.

  "I only just noticed it," the sultan said.

  "Hmm," said the doctor. His frown grew even deeper. It seemed to extend down onto his wattled neck.

  "It is not normal?" the sultan had queried. "Normal?" asked the doctor, surprised.

  "No. No, it is not normal." He probed the armpit some more. The sultan winced. The area was growing tender to the touch. It had not been so that morning.

  "It is not right," said the first doctor.

  "No, it is not," agreed the second.

  "What must I do?" asked Omay.

  "Go to England," the first doctor instructed firmly.

  "America is better," reminded the second.

  "America is best," agreed the first. "But Ebla is not on good terms with America."

  The sultan listened to them with increasing agitation. These two were already sending him off to treatment in the hated West and neither one of them had yet told him his suspicions.

  Omay slapped his hand loudly on the examining table. The two old men stopped chattering, turning their wide, rheumy eyes on the leader of Ebla. There was a look of sad fear in their bloodshot depths. "What is it?" Omay sin-Khalam demanded. The answer they gave shocked him. Lymphatic cancer.

  Younger doctors were immediately brought in from abroad. They echoed the prognosis of the older physicians. It was cancer. The sultan, who had never been sick a day in his life, was suddenly faced with the grim specter of the most frightening of diseases.

  Since the time of the revolution against Great Britain almost twenty years before, Ebla had been involved in the shadow campaign of terrorism against the nations of the West. It had joined Iran, Libya, Iraq and Syria in condemning the imperialism of America in particular. This secret war had claimed many victims over the years-nearly all of them innocent civilians. But with his diagnosis came the dawning of a new reality for Sultan Omay. To the shock of all outside observers, he publicly denounced the use of terror to achieve political ends. In particular he condemned state-sponsored terrorism, singling out countries he had once called allies. In a move that shocked the Arab world, he even announced that Ebla would now recognize the sovereign state of Israel.

  It was a conversion unlike any since Saint Paul on the road to Damascus.

  The change was heralded as a breakthrough in relations between the Mideast and the West. Sultan Omay was lauded for his new ideals. Gone were the condemnations of the now repentant advocate of terror. Banished forever. Laurels took the place of denunciation.

  Of course, the hospitals of the West were opened to him. His cancer was treated in New York. Further proof of his spiritual rebirth was the fact he used Jewish doctors almost exclusively.

  The worst of the cancer was removed surgically. Directed-radiation treatments were followed by months of chemotherapy. Even more radiation followed. At first the team of doctors who now ministered to the ailing monarch was not optimistic. But the doctors weren't familiar with the indomitable spirit of the leader of Ebla.

  Despite all expectations save his own, Omay fought the cancer. And won. The particularly vicious form of the disease he had been suffering from went into complete remission. Yet another rebirth for the charmed sultan of Ebla.

  Some skeptics thought that with his clean bill of health would come a resurgence of the sultan's former self. They were pleasantly surprised that they were wrong. Over the next decade of his life Omay fought harder than anyone else for the Mideast peace process.

  It was easy to fall into the role of Great Peacemaker. After all, he was an international celebrity. Omay was applauded in newspapers. He was an honored guest at signing ceremonies at the White House. He spoke regularly at the United Nations.

  There were times when he almost fooled himself into thinking that he had changed.

  During this phase of the sultan's life, Ebla became increasingly isolated from its Mideast neighbors. The land that had once been an ally was now looked upon with deep suspicion.

  Radical fundamentalists at home blamed Ebla's decline in the Arab community on Sultan Omay. Threats both internal and external multiplied at a rate nearly rivaled by the cancer he had battled. As a result it was no longer safe for the sultan to go out
in the streets without armed escort. The Fishbowl was the most obvious example of the perilous world Omay had created in his own backyard....

  STANDING BEHIND his sheets of bulletproof glass, Omay looked out across the low concrete buildings of Akkadad, the Eblan capital. The squat structures baked in the orange fire of the setting sun.

  The chanting had begun anew. "Omay! Omay! Omay!"

  He didn't respond. A speaker system had been installed when the Fishbowl was first built so that his voice could carry out across the square. He rarely used it. An address by the sultan generally brought a more hostile reaction from a crowd than his security people liked.

  Below, the people were packed into Rebellion Square like cigars in a humidor. They looked up at him, eyes alight with patriotic fervor. Guns were raised defiantly. A few shots rattled in the distance.

  They chanted not for him, he knew, but for the glorious revolution against the West, now thirty years gone. The recent anniversary was cause for national celebration. But if given half a chance they would gladly turn their weapons on him.

  In spite of the threat they represented, Omay longed to go down among his people. But his was a life of imminent danger. More so since his latest doctor's report.

  In spite of the healthy life-style he had been living, the cancer had recently returned more than a decade after he had been assured it was gone for good. And this time it was far more virulent than before. This time there was no hope. He had only a few months to live. Perhaps as much as a year. But this, he had been assured, was unlikely.

  When the reality of his physical situation had sunk in, a fresh realization dawned on Sultan Omay sinKhalam. He finally saw the truth. He had sold his nation's soul for a few more years of life. The sultan himself had betrayed his beloved Ebla.

  This thought had occupied much of his time of late. It clung to his consciousness now as he stared out over the rowdy throng of revelers.

  People screamed. More guns rattled in triumph. A new wave of raised assault rifles rippled through the crowd, a sign of obeisance to their ruler high above them.