Created, the Destroyer Read online

  “You can stop it anytime,” the Texan responded.

  “That one man they’ve got must be pretty good. The one who goes on the assignments, I mean.”

  “I don’t know for sure. But from what that little feller told me that day, they don’t just use him for wrapping up garbage.”

  “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t like this whole business.”

  “We didn’t ask you to take office,” said the Texan with a smile.

  So Remo Williams stood silently in the gymnasium feeling his conditioning leave him. He breathed deeply, then slid through the dark, in almost imperceptible movements, and was in the balcony. He wore black tennis shoes so that he could not see his feet, a tee shirt dyed black so that the white of the shirt in the dark would not throw off unbalancing brightness. His shorts were black. Night moving in night.

  He moved from the balcony rail to the top of the basketball backboard. He seated himself carefully, with his right hand between his legs and his legs stretched out over the hoop below. Funny, he thought. When he was a policeman in his twenties, he would have been puffing if he ran a block, and probably would have had to engineer a desk job by thirty-five or face a heart attack. It was nice then. Just walk into any bar you wanted when off duty. Have a pizza for supper if you wished. Get laid when you had a chance.

  But that was when he was alive. And when he was officially alive, there were no such things as peak periods with rice and fish and abstinence. Actually, he didn’t really have to follow the regimen. He thought about that often. He could probably do very well at less than full capacity. But a wise Korean had told him that deterioration of the body is like a stone rolling down a mountain. So easy to start, so hard to stop. And if Remo Williams couldn’t stop, he would be very dead.

  He lowered his shoes to the rim, getting the feel of its grip into the backboard. If you know the feel of objects, the feel of their mass, their movement and their strength, you could use that as your strength. That was the secret of force. To not fight it. And to not fight it was the best way to fight people when you had to.

  Remo stood up on the rim and gathered the where of the floor into his balance. He should have changed the height of the hoop, because sooner or later he would be performing muscle memory instead of proper use of balance and judgment. When he had first learned the exercise, he watched a cat for a day and a half. He had been told to become the cat. He had answered that he would prefer to become a rabbit so he could get laid, and how long was this dingaling training going to go on?

  “Until you are dead,” he was told.

  “You mean fifty years.”

  “It might be fifty seconds, if you are not good enough,” said the Korean instructor. “Watch the cat.”

  And Remo had watched the cat and for a few moments thought, really thought, he could become the cat.

  Now Remo Williams indulged his own private little joke which signalled the start of the exercise.

  “Meow,” he whispered in the silent, dark gym.

  He stood on the rim, straight up, and then his body fell forward, shoes gripping the rim by pressure, head going forward, shoes flipping up, rim adding force, body heading straight down, hair and head aiming straight at the floor, like a dark knife dropping into a dark sea.

  His hair touched the varnish of the floor and triggered a body trunk flip, the dark form in the blackened gym spinning in space, the sneakers coming around quick, rocket fast, arching and down steady standing on the wooden floor.

  Blat. The sound echoed in the gymnasium. He had held for the last hair-touching instant and then let the muscles take over, the muscles of a cat which shifted the body in air and put the feet on the floor. An exercise the body could do only when the mind was trained, trained to steal the balance of another animal.

  Remo Williams had heard the blat in the gym, the sound of his sneakers hitting the floor. He was not purring.

  “Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “The next time it’ll be my head. That dumb bastard is gonna get me killed yet, with his goddam peak period.”

  And he returned to the balcony and the backboard, this time to do it right. Without a sound when his sneakers hit the floor.

  About the Authors

  WARREN MURPHY was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He worked in journalism, editing, and politics. After many of his political colleagues were arrested, Murphy took it as a sign that he needed to find a new career and The Destroyer series was born. Murphy has five children Deirdre, Megan, Brian, Ardath, and Devin, and a few grandchildren. He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, and has also run workshops and lectured at many other schools and universities. His hobbies are golf, mathematics, opera, and investing. He has served on the board of the Mystery Writers of America and has been a member of the Private Eye Writers of America, the International Association of Crime Writers, the American Crime Writers League, and the Screenwriters Guild.

  RICHARD BEN SAPIR was a New York native who worked as an editor and in public relations, before creating The Destroyer series with Warren Murphy. Before his untimely death in 1987, Sapir had also penned a number of thriller and historical mainstream novels, best known of which were The Far Arena, Quest and The Body, the last of which was made recently into a film. The New York Times book review section called him “a brilliant professional.”

  Also by Warren Murphy

  The Destroyer Series (#1-25)

  Created The Destroyer

  Death Check

  Chinese Puzzle

  Mafia Fix

  Dr. Quake

  Death Therapy

  Union Bust

  Summit Chase

  Murder Shield

  Terror Squad

  Kill or Cure

  Slave Safari

  Acid Rock

  Judgment Day

  Murder Ward

  Oil Slick

  Last War Dance

  Funny Money

  Holy Terror

  Assassin’s Playoff

  Deadly Seeds

  Brain Drain

  Child’s Play

  King’s Curse

  Sweet Dreams

  The Trace Series

  Trace

  And 47 Miles of Rope

  When Elephants Forget

  Pigs Get Fat

  Once a Mutt

  Too Old a Cat

  Getting up with Fleas

  Copyright

  This digital edition of Created, the Destroyer (v1.0) was published in 2012 by Gere Donovan Press.

  If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy—they are reasonably priced, and available from all major outlets. And if you enjoy it, leave a positive review. Your author thanks you.

  Copyright © 2012 by Warren Murphy

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Errata

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