Spoils Of War td-45 Page 14

  The man pulled and writhed his way past the grisly load bearing down on him. He was in great

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  pain. Nearly all his ribs were broken. Occasionally his lungs would fill up, and he coughed and spat blood. He was dying.

  Still, he wrestled with the remains of his fellow officers, trying not to look at their bizarre positions and blank stares.

  For the first time in his life, he missed Quat.

  An eternity beneath the bodies. Then air. The man passed out for seconds at a time. But between the blackouts, he crawled.

  He crawled to the door and scratched at it like a dog until it opened from his feeble efforts. He crawled outside, where he could still see the small outlines of the two strange men, the American and the old Oriental, who had come from nowhere to kill the Quati at Fort Vadassar. They were heading for the parade grounds. They wanted the rest of the officers. They were professional killers, of that he was sure. But the younger one had been sloppy with him. He had made a mistake, a tiny mistake, a fraction of an inch, but enough to spare the officer's life for a few minutes. He would use those minutes now to see that the assassins paid for their mistake.

  He crawled to a small building the size of-an outhouse and fumbled in his pocket for a key. Vomiting blood, the officer placed the key in the door and turned it. The door opened to a narrow stairway.

  He wouldn't be able to crawl down the steps. He wouldn't last long enough. So he held his breath and propelled himself forward, bouncing down the wooden stairs like a withered, bleeding beachball. If he lived for five more minutes, the strangers would be dead. Five more minutes.

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  "They'll listen to anybody," Remo said. "If we knock out one unit at a time, I think we can control them without a lot of casualties." He looked at his watch. "Smitty said he'd have troops here in twenty minutes. If the officers are gone by then, the recruits ought to go peacefully."

  "Where will Emperor Smith send a hundred thousand men?"

  "Who knows. But he wants them deprogrammed, not dead. We take out only the officers, right, Chiun?" Remo asked apprehensively.

  "He is a very generous emperor, but none too intelligent, I fear. A hundred thousand enemy soldiers may not take to captivity with docility."

  "The country will be up in arms if we kill the recruits," Remo said, trying to sound persuasive. "It's not really their fault they're in this place. They got suckered into it. They are Americans, after all."

  "No one forced them to come here," Chiun said drily.

  "Look, Smitty says don't kill the recruits. That's the assignment, like it or not."

  Chiun shrugged. "It is obvious that the emperor is quite mad," he said. "But a contract is a contract."

  The officer blacked out at the foot of the steps. He spat, but his lungs were weakening fast, and he couldn't remove all the blood that was building up in his throat. He was strangling.

  An inch at a time he wormed toward a square on the wall. The entire building had been constructed around the contents of that square, and the officer would reach it. It would be his final act of vengeance against the two intruders.

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  At the base of the wall, he curled his fingers and edged them up the wall. He had lost his sense of pain. He felt as if he were inside a vacuum as his blood streamed down the front of his shirt. He hated the American stranger now more than ever. He hated him for killing his countrymen, but more than that, he hated him for the wound he carried, which was so painful that it was beyond pain. It would have been better by far to have died with the rest.

  The square. He had reached it. With a bitter smile, the officer stuck a fingernail into the edge of the square, and the small door opened easily. They would die now, the intruders.

  With his last trembling effort, the officer pulled the red lever inside the square on the wall, and the wail of 40 sirens screamed in alarm throughout the base.

  Overhead, the stampeding of a thousand feet thundered out of the barracks. On the parade grounds, the officers looked about them, their weapons drawn. Remo and Chiun stood in the midst of an army of well-trained, well-armed soldiers, who turned to face them, one platoon at a time, in eerie synchronization, as the first of their commanders shouted the order: "Kill."

  The officer at the alarm switch let his hand fall heavily to the floor. With the last of his breath, he laughed.

  "Kill." The command seemed to echo from flank to flank. "Kill." "Kill." "Kill."

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  Moving as a unit, the blank-faced soldiers raised their M-16's to shoulder level.

  "Halt!" Remo said confidently. In an aside to Chiun, he whispered, "I told you, they listen to anybody."

  A bullet whizzed past Remo's head.

  "Hey, what happened? You guys are supposed to stop."

  The commander of the platoon sneered. "Now they listen only to us," he said. "My apologies." He raised his right arm. "Fire!" he called.

  Chiun leaped into the middle of the nearest platoon, his long robes billowing. Remo followed. He didn't know what Chiun was doing, but this was no time to ask questions.

  The old man was running through the platoon at nerve-shattering speed in a strange elliptical spiral pattern. As Remo followed in his wake, the soldiers in the platoon lost aim and turned, confused, upon one another, each blank stare confronting another expressionless face, their rifles clanking together as Chiun wound the formation of recruits into a dense, ever-tightening mass.

  "Not with me," Chiun hissed. "Opposite. Reflect me. The ellipse within the ellipse."

  What in the hell is that, Remo wondered, although he obeyed unhesitatingly. He swerved into a curve exactly mirroring Chain's movements, creating along with him a complex, orbiting double helix within the flank of soldiers. When the platoon was crushed into a chaotic group of men struggling to move like fish in a net, a strange thing happened. The mass began to move.

  Suddenly Remo saw the impenetrable logic of

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  China's words: The ellipse within the ellipse. For slowly, with each orbit Remo and Chiun made in opposite directions, they were moving the bewildered soldiers toward another platoon without ever exposing themselves to bullets outside the cramped mass of recruits. Inexorably, the platoon meshed, amoebalike, into the next, creating a rampaging confusion that made it impossible for the soldiers to fire.

  "Kill them," a Quati officer screamed as he was spun helplessly into the teeming fray. Chiun made a tour near the officer and flicked a fingernail at his chest. The officer dropped. When the growing mass of recruits moved in its perfect ellipse toward the third platoon, the officer remained, trampled, on the spot where he fell.

  The mass grew to cover nearly two acres, a beehive of restless, pulsating activity, as Remo and Chiun pushed the mindless unit toward another, their weapons at the ready.

  They were on the verge of absorbing the fourth platoon when the commanding officer, a colonel, shouted an order and the platoon scattered to form a circle around the huge, bumbling entity Remo and Chiun had created.

  "Fire!" the colonel commanded. The soldiers surrounding the group fired randomly into the mass. The recruits on the periphery dropped instantly.

  "They're killing their own men to get to us," Remo yelled. But Chiun did not respond. Instead, Remo noticed a change in the pattern. On Chain's side, the unit bulged and receded like a bubble, absorbing each soldier within firing range one at a time. Remo repeated the pattern on his side, keeping the mass tight while he formed the tentacles that

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  reached out to pull the soldiers on the outside into

  it.

  There were two platoons left. As Remo moved, he saw the two commanding officers signal one another, and the platoons turned to face one another.

  At a second command, they marched resolutely together, forming one large unit that came at the beehive group of four captured platoons in a slow, deliberate offensive.

  "They're going to sacrifice all
of them, Chiun," Remo panted as he made what seemed like his ten-thousandth round inside the group. He was tiring, and running on reserve.

  "Take one of the officers," Chiun said, passing by in a flurry of motion.

  Remo looked at Chain's back unbelievingly.

  The two platoons had marched into firing range, and the front line was kneeling. The rain of bullets

  began.

  "Are you kidding?" Remo yelled. "There's nothing between us and them but a million units of

  ammo."

  "Go," Chiun said, bis thin voice straining. "I will hold the formation. But I cannot move it forward alone. And I am growing weary."

  A sliver of alarm streaked up Remo's spine. If he himself was bone-tired, Chiun would be exhausted. The Korean had passed the 80-year mark long before, and holding the formation meant traveling in double-time. Even before Remo left the group, Chiun's pace had quickened to a speed that made him nearly impossible to see.

  Swallowing hard, Remo darted out of the mass and into the smoky field dotted with flying bullets. As he did, the two platoons 500 feet in the distance

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  shifted their target from the unwieldy, stagnant group of soldiers held by the old Oriental to the single man in a black T-shirt, armed only with his hands. Remo saw the barrels of 16,000 M-16's more slowly toward him with terrifying accuracy.

  Almost immediately a bullet grazed Remo's thigh. It helped. Inside his body, he felt his adrenalin pump to overload level, and he needed that for the pattern he would use.

  Chiun had taught him the pattern—if it could be called a pattern at all—long ago, but he had never had to use it in actual combat before. It was an extension of the movement that allowed him to dodge a single bullet fired at him from point-blank range, a quick shifting of balance entirely without rhythm.

  Chiun had explained that the exercise was difficult because in all of nature, as in all of the training of Sinanju, rhythm played a crucial role in the scheme of survival.

  Rhythm and balance. Without them, chaos, and nature would not abide chaos for long—not in the planets, nor in the human organism. Chaotic gene patterns created mutants that died early and could not reproduce. Rhythm and balance were everything. Remo's breathing was rhythm. Chiun's formation around his mass of recruits was rhythm. The bullets that were fired at Remo resulted from pure, mechanical rhythm with the triggers that fired them. It was as though each molecule ever created, as Chiun had once explained, had made a pact with nature before its existence not to disturb the rhythm of the universe.

  But the secret of avoiding bullets was anti-rhythm, balance without rhythm, movement so fast and formless that it defied rhythm without throwing

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  the balance of the body into chaos and the inevitable outcome of chaos, self-destruction.

  Avoiding one bullet was easy. The loss of rhythm and the amazing speed required for it lasted only a fraction of a second. The damage wreaked on Remo's body was no greater than that inflicted by an insect bite. But to dodge—how many bullets? A million? Two million? He would have to create a pattern of anti-rhythm at perhaps 100 times the speed of a champion Olympic sprinter.

  Remo appeared to be moving slowly and in a blur. It was easy for the soldiers to get a bead on the young T-shirted man but, inexplicably, impossible to hit hirnt

  "Fire," the officers commanded.

  "Fools, kill him!" Both officers took out their pistols and emptied their barrels at the weird, slow-moving target with fuzzy outlines. As he moved closer, one commander rubbed his eyes. The other squeezed his shut and shook his head. Neither could believe what he was seeing, for the young man appeared to have no face.

  He was within ten feet of the front Ene, and still they could not hit Mm. At eight feet, one of the commanders reached an inescapable conclusion and related it shakily to the other: the man was unkül-able.

  "He is of the undead," the officer said, his voice heavy with dread.

  "There are legendsin Quat. . . ." the other replied slowly.

  At five feet, the two of them ran screaming for cover.

  Remo was losing his focus from the strain of the anti-rhythm pattern, but the two figures were large

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  enough to tackle without perfect vision. Not waiting to regain his rhythm, he sprang on one foot toward the two officers, spiraling in the air like a football. He fell on them both, killed one immediately, and held the other in front of him by the collar.

  "No," the man quavered. "My God, my merciful God—"

  "Tell them," Remo whispered, his speech thick and slurred from the ordeal he had put his body through. As he spoke, the rifles of the two platoons turned automatically on Remo and the officer he held squirming in front of him.

  "Hold your fire!" the commander screamed. 'In the name of all that is sacred on this earth, hold your fire!"

  "Tell them not to try to harm us," Remo said. "Under any circumstances. And make them get rid of their rifles." He felt his eyes rolling back into his head.

  "Maneuvers completed," the officer shouted. "Destroy your weapons. Repeat. Destroy your weapons."

  In the distance, Chiun's group vibrated to a halt. The old man staggered outside the group, holding a hand to his forehead.

  The sound of splintering rifles filled the air for minutes, then stillness settled over the parade grounds. The only noise was the whimpering of the Quati officer dangling in Remo's hands. Remo wound his hand slowly around the officer's neck and strangled him. Ahead, the troops observed the scene with faces as impassive as statues.

  Remo dropped the man and walked over to Chiun, who had replaced his hands inside the

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  sleeves of his robe. "Are you all right, Little Father?" he asked.

  "Yes," Chiun said, nodding. "Are you?" He was dizzy. He was nauseated. He was cold. And the wound in his shoulder from the Quati archers still hurt. "Yes," Remo said, just before, he fainted.

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  Seventeen

  Remo came to at the sound of approaching tanks. "Here comes the cavalry, just after we need them," he said groggily.

  "It is a trademark of all armies to be only in places where they are not wanted," Chiun said.

  The tanks burst through the barbed-wire fence as if it were made of cobwebs, and ringed the parade grounds, trapping the recruits inside their circle. After the tanks came over 100 closed vans to remove the recruits from Fort Vadassar. The men entered the vans without resistance.

  "I wonder if they will ever behave as normal men," Chiun said.

  Remo shrugged. "Randy Nooner said something about 'Samantha's brew.' They're probably drugged. A couple of days in isolation, and it ought to wear off."

  "Get moving," a voice from behind them said. Remo turned to see a burly American sergeant prodding recruits into a nearby van. "Hey, youse guys too. Get in here."

  "Suck wind," Remo advised the sergeant

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  "Leave those two alone," a one-star general ordered from a jeep moving toward them.

  "Yes, sir," the sergeant said, snapping in salute.

  The general's driver brought the jeep to a halt and scrambled out. "They fit the description, sir," he said.

  The general rose. "Gentlemen, I've been instructed personally by the president to escort you to your destination," he said.

  "And where's that?"

  The general paused as a film of red rose from his neck to his cheeks. "To the No-Tell Motel," he said with as much dignity as he could muster.

  "Smitty," Remo muttered under his breath. "Always looking for the cheapest rates."

  Remo and Chiun climbed into the jeep. It rumbled past the convoy of tanks and vans to a rundown string of cabins 15 miles away, where they were dropped off with a salute from the general.

  There was a reservation for them in cabin 5 of the No-Tell. The woman at the desk got the key for Remo. "Oh, just a second, there's a message for you, too," she said, unfolding a piece of paper stuck in the slot f
or cabin 5. "It says call Aunt Mildred."

  "Great," Remo said disgustedly, taking the key from her. He let Chiun in the dingy room and slammed the door. "What a hole," he said.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number that would route the call through on a safe une to Folcroft Sanitarium. Smith picked up the phone on the first ring.

  "What do you want now?" Remo said.

  Tm glad you're alive."

  "No thanks to you. Setting us against an army is

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  your idea of fair play, I suppose. Not to mention holing us up in this rat's nest."

  "The motel room was only so you could make this call," Smith said. "There was no point in wasting money on fancy accommodations just for a phone call."

  "Suppose we'd like to rest. We almost got killed out there, you know."

  "I'd rather you didn't," Smith said flatly. "The general the president sent for you knows your whereabouts."

  «So what?"

  "It doesn't hurt to be cautious."

  "Why bother? You're going to see to it that the guy gets transferred to some obscure combat unit out in the Indian Ocean anyway."

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "That was unnecessary, Remo," Smith said finally.

  "But true."

  Smith cleared his throat. "You'll be pleased to know that the investigation of Senator Nooner began today," he said, changing the subject. "It seems he got the Assistant to the Chief Clerk of Records at the Pentagon to switch the Vadassar files around, and then had the man killed. If s all coming out in the wash. The senator is going to face at least five hundred counts of murder. The case will make history."

  "Happy as a clam, aren't you?" Remo said. ' "And Samantha Thwill is in custody in Texas on accessory charges. The army convoy picked up samples of everything in the kitchen at Vadassar, and if any of that stuff is drugged—as it probably is—the finger will point to her."

  "Well, friend, my finger is pointing in a different

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  direction," Remo said testily. "What you did to us was unjust and unfair."