By Eminent Domain td-124 Read online

  So was it to be trained in Sinanju. Even in the dead heart of winter, the world was still a vibrant living thing.

  Although Remo was aware of all that was going on around him, he did not allow it to distract him from his thoughts.

  He was trying to sort through something. Just what exactly, he had no idea. He thought it might have something to do with his last assignment.

  A few days ago, Remo had been sent to California to pull the plug on an old Soviet superweapon that had somehow fallen into the hands of a group of radical peaceniks. That the first thing they had done upon acquiring such a device was blow the hell out of everything they aimed it at was an irony completely lost on these aging pacifists.

  While on this assignment Remo had been stunned to encounter an old flame, a beautiful Russian agent who had also been sent to defuse the situation. Bumping into Anna Chutesov after more than ten years would not have been so shocking had Remo not thought her dead. She wasn't. And as was the case with most things in Remo's life these days, complications had ensued.

  Sitting alone in Wildwood Cemetery, pale white moonlight shining down across his shoulders, the cold wind snaking around his lean frame like the tendrils of some invisible beast, Remo pictured Anna Chutesov.

  The real Anna had looked pretty much the same as he remembered her, yet it was her younger face he now summoned.

  She came to him in his mind's eye. Icy blue eyes, blond hair, strong cheekbones. An ageless beauty. There was a time when he thought he loved her. Now she was just another face.

  Nope. The something he was after didn't have anything to do with the Russian agent.

  He placed her mental image carefully aside.

  It was a frustrating process. There was something he felt he should know, something he should do. Yet the more he tried the more certain he was that he was just forcing it further and further away. But it was important.

  The feeling that there was something big looming on the horizon had first come to him in California. It was a moment come and gone. Now it was like trying to remember a dream.

  After leaving California two days ago, there had been a brief side trip to Russia in order to take care of some unfinished business. He had only returned to U.S. soil late the previous afternoon.

  Once he'd landed in New York, Remo had sent his teacher back to Folcroft while he came out to the cemetery alone. To think.

  Afternoon had long since bled into the postmidnight hours, yet Remo felt no closer to an answer.

  Maybe it was nothing. His life hadn't exactly been a piece of cake lately. And according to a source he didn't really care to think about at the moment, it was only going to get worse. Maybe that's all this was. An unconscious concern for what might be.

  After a few more minutes of trying to chase an inchoate thought around his brain, he finally threw up his hands.

  "Ah, hell," Remo grumbled.

  With a feeling of deep frustration he unscissored his legs and rose to his feet.

  Even though he had sat in the same position for more than ten hours, there was no crack of bone or strain of tired muscle. With just a simple fluid motion he was up.

  Dark eyes read the name etched on his headstone one last time before he turned abruptly away.

  He had taken not a single step before he heard a sound.

  The creaking of a gate. Hurried footfalls scuffed a gravel path. Hushed, nervous voices carried to his ears.

  Remo's internal clock told him that it was 2:37 in the morning. Not a likely time for anyone to be paying a visit to the grave of a departed loved one.

  Curiosity piqued, he took to the path. On silent feet he followed the sounds of the voices.

  The path led through a knot of sighing pines and up a short incline. By the time Remo came to the top of the hill, a fresh sound had reached his ears. It was a grinding of stone on stone followed by a heavy muted thud.

  Dodging moonlight, Remo came up beside a granite angel. The statue's wings were folded back, and the fingertips of its delicate hands brushed together in eternal prayer.

  Ahead, more headstones dotted the landscape. Remo saw three figures slipping between the distant headstones.

  Although it was dark, Remo's eyes took in enough ambient light to make it seem as bright as midday. The three intruders were older boys. Probably no further along than sophomores in high school. Breaking away from his companions, one of the boys crouched and vanished from sight. Remo heard a sharp rattling noise, followed by a faint hissing. Remo recognized the sounds.

  As he watched, the other two walked up to a big grave marker. Giggling nervously, they planted their shoulders against its rough side. Grunting at the effort, they shoved the stone off its base. It thumped heavily back to the cold ground. Panting happily, they moved on to the next grave.

  The dark lines of Remo's angular face grew hard. Leaving his stone angel to her private supplications, he darted across the frozen ground.

  Delicate crusts of ice had formed on the surface of the few patches of snow that yet clung to the ground. Where Remo came in contact with them, the soles of his loafers didn't even crack the crystalline veneer.

  The boys failed to notice his approach. He halted a few yards from the trio of vandals, a shadow among shadows.

  As he'd suspected, the crouching boy held a can of spray paint in his hand. He was in the process of painting a dripping swastika on the front of a big stone marker.

  While the first boy worked, the other two laughed anxiously as they put their backs against another headstone.

  Unseen by the trio of youths, Remo's face grew cold.

  Increasingly this kind of desecration was becoming common. In years gone by it would have been big news if a cemetery was vandalized. Certainly statewide. Maybe even nationally. Now it barely rated a blurb on the local news.

  Remo decided that it was high time someone spoke up for all the voiceless dead out there.

  His expression more fixed than any name carved in granite, Remo slipped through the shadows toward the boys.

  "Hurry up," one of the youths urged, laughing. He already had his shoulder braced against the next stone in line. His companion quickly joined him. As before, the two boys pushed in unison.

  Although they put all their weight against it, this time something was different. This time when they shoved, the headstone seemed to shove back.

  With a pair of startled grunts, the two boys toppled over onto their backs. The wind rushed from their lungs.

  "What're you doing?" the kid with the spray can asked when he saw the others rolling on the ground. Not terribly imaginative, he was painting yet another swastika.

  "Something pushed us," one of the others said, getting to his knees. There was a slight quaver in his voice.

  With a frown the first boy stopped spraying. He looked to the headstone the others had been working on.

  It was just an ordinary hunk of rock. All around was nothing but shadows and wind and swaying pines. They were the only living things at Wildwood Cemetery.

  "Don't pussy out," the first youth growled at the others. He returned to his spraying.

  The two kneeling boys glanced at each another. "You must've pushed me," one accused.

  "What the hell do you mean?" challenged the other, his nerve returning. "You pushed me."

  They scurried back to the headstone.

  The frozen ground at the base of the stone seemed suddenly to have gone all brittle. One of the boys felt the ground crack beneath his right foot. With a jolt, he sank ankle deep in the earth. When he tried to pull his foot out, it wouldn't budge. It was only then that the honor set in.

  "C'mon, hurry up," his companion groused. He had his back braced against the stone.

  The second youth refused to move. He just stood there, his foot stuck up to the ankle in a gopher hole. When the boy at the grave marker glanced up, he found that every last drop of blood had drained from his friend's face. A look of fear like none he had ever before seen in his young life had flooded the
boy's features.

  The silent youth's lower lip stuttered in place. It was as if he were trying to speak but couldn't.

  With an angry expression the second boy straightened. "What's the-" He sniffed the air. "Dammit, did you piss your pants?" he demanded.

  Before his friend could manage to respond, the angry youth felt the earth grow brittle beneath him. His own foot abruptly cracked through the frozen surface. The first hint of concern had barely brushed his soft features when he felt something cold and unseen wrap around his ankle.

  It felt like a hand.

  His face grew ashen. He tried to scream but no sound came. And suddenly the world turned upside down and the two boys were flipping backward onto the frozen ground.

  The boy with the spray can glanced over once more. "What the hell's wrong with you fag-"

  The words died in his throat.

  As the three boys watched, frozen with fear, the ground before the haunted headstone cracked and split apart. Clods of hard-packed dirt fell away. And with an unearthly silence that seemed to dull the beating of their very hearts, a dark figure rose slowly up into the chill night air.

  The ghost was dressed all in black. His T-shirt and chinos were shadows that enveloped his lean frame. The face was like an accusing skull, with eyes set so deep in their sockets they seemed little more than empty hollows into an angry soul. A bare arm extended, finger unfurled. The specter pointed accusingly at the three terrified youths.

  "Boo," said Remo Williams.

  That single spoken syllable was the key that unlocked three frozen larynxes. In horrified unison the three boys let out a chorus of bloodcurdling screams.

  Hearts thudding, synchronized by fear, they tried to run. The ghost appeared before them.

  "Keep it down," Remo said. "You wanna wake the dead?" As he spoke he tapped a spot in the center of two foreheads. Two of the vandals promptly went as rigid as any stone angel.

  The third boy suddenly felt the spray can pop from his fingers. So panicked was he, he hadn't even realized he was still holding it. His mouth was wide in shock. Remo took it as an invitation.

  "Dead people have simple wishes," Remo instructed as he stuffed the spray can into the youth's mouth. "Really, all we want is to be left alone."

  He jammed the can so far back that the little plastic button compressed against the soft tissue at the back of the boy's throat. With a muffled hiss, clouds of black paint began discharging from both of the boy's nostrils.

  As the can hissed, Remo considered. "Maybe some flowers once in a while. A wreath at Christmas. That'd be nice. After all, corpses have feelings, too. But it's guys like you that take all the fun out of being dead. I mean, how would you like it if me and my friends zombied our way into your houses in the middle of the night and started knocking over your Nintendos and spray painting crap on your personal computers?"

  "Fffsssss!" said the boy with the paint can in his mouth. With plumes of black paint coming from his nose, he looked like a snorting cartoon bull.

  "That's right, you wouldn't," Remo nodded. "Well, we dead people aren't any different than you, except we waste less space."

  The can fizzled empty. Remo pulled it out of the kid's mouth, tossing it in some bushes. Wet paint drizzled black from the boy's slack mouth.

  "Now, here's what you're gonna do," Remo said. "When you leave the cemetery, you're going to flag down the first cop car you see and you're going to confess to what you did here tonight. Then you're going to pay for every last bit of damage. If your parents are like all the others these days, they're gonna try to blame your actions on your buddies, your schools or the NRA. You are not going to let them do that. You are going to stand up for what you did, and you are going to make it right. If not, the next time I grab one of you jerks by the ankle, I won't stop pulling until you've got the room next to mine in the Motel Hell. Got it?"

  His darting finger tapped the foreheads of the two paralyzed youths. As one, the three boys nodded numbly. Three sets of knees knocked audibly.

  "Good," Remo said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go knock over some furniture and rattle some chains at Dan Aykroyd's house. It's all pretty childish stuff really, but if it keeps him from making Ghostbusters 3 it's worth it."

  With that he slipped into the shadows and was gone. It was as if the night had swallowed him whole. For a moment the three boys just stood there. Eyes wide, burning from the cold. Their panting breath curls of white in the chill winter air.

  All at once they seemed to reach some inner decision.

  Wheeling around, they ran for all they were worth. Screaming in fear, they stumbled out of the cemetery gates and raced down the cracked sidewalk. Feet pounding, they quickly disappeared from sight.

  Once they were gone, Remo slid out from behind a concealing knot of pines. He turned in satisfaction at the grave from which he'd appeared.

  There was a man-size hole in the ground behind the headstone. Remo had only had to burrow a few inches below the surface to come up on the far side of the stone.

  He knocked the clods of overturned earth back in the hole, tapping them down with the sole of his loafer.

  "It might not be what I was after, but it still felt good," he said in satisfaction. He turned from the grave.

  Out of respect for the dead, he didn't start whistling until he reached the street.

  Chapter 3

  The ancient Bell UH-I Huey raced along the jagged length of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Swirls of snow flew up in its frenzied wake.

  Eleven nervous men lined the rear of the helicopter. Although they all wore bulky headsets, the radios in most of them didn't work. The headphones were to dull the eardrum-rattling noise of the screaming rotor blades.

  Anxious eyes stared out the scratched windows. Below the belly of the racing Huey stretched the pipeline. It ran eight hundred miles down from the wastes of the north. Most people thought it followed a perfectly straight line from point A to point B. Not so. The huge pipe had been built in staggered sections to allow for certain elasticity during earthquake shocks. From the back of the Huey, it looked as if some giant vandal had taken great strides south, twisting the pipe as he went.

  Right now, most of the men in the chopper would have preferred a giant. At least it would be something they could see from a distance. What they were actually after was unknown.

  Something had happened somewhere down there in the Alaskan wilds. Something that warranted pulling a group of trainees from their exercises.

  One of the men pressed a gloved hand to his headset. He'd found that he could get it to work sometimes if he pushed the loose wire trailing into his right earpiece.

  "Sir, do you know what this is all about?"

  Most of the men couldn't hear the question. The ones who could strained to listen to the reply. "Some kind of problem with some pipeline workers," Major Race H. Fordell replied over the scratchy headset. Their commanding officer was staring down at the pipeline.

  "Couldn't the Guard check it out?"

  The Major shook his head. "We were closest."

  "Lucky us," another man mumbled.

  Since his microphone was broken, the words were swallowed up by the howl of the rotor blades.

  The First Civil Support Battalion had been conducting training exercises near the Chandalar River 150 miles north of Fairbanks when the call came. They were scrambled and soaring east in ten minutes.

  The pilot was ordered to give it all he had. The vibrations were so great some feared the Huey might start rattling apart around their heads.

  The men in the helicopter weren't true soldiers. Some in the Alaska State Defense Force had some service training, but many did not. Even though the ASDF was considered a military force-to be deployed during state emergencies-the civil servants of the ASDF really existed as backup to the Alaska National Guard.

  In the back of the chopper, shaking hands wiped sweat from nervous brows.

  A matching patch on each man's sleeve depicted a swimming wol
f. Above was the legend 1st Bn, and below were the letters ASDF.

  The Seawolves were based in Juneau. Only sheer dumb luck had plunked them down in the middle of nowhere this day. At the moment none of the men was feeling terribly lucky. A few of them jumped when the pilot's urgent voice crackled over the headphones.

  "I think you'll want to see this, Major."

  Major Fordell hopped from his seat and swept to the cockpit.

  "What have we got?" Fordell asked tightly. He was already scanning the forward terrain.

  "Down there, sir," the pilot said, pointing. "Dead ahead."

  Squinting, Major Fordell spotted a cluster of trucks. They looked like toys. Bunched together, they sat cold and alone on the pipeline access road. A fat hose ran from the back of the last truck, vanishing over the hill that ran parallel to the road.

  "Vacuum truck," Fordell said. "Those are the guys who radioed in." He pointed to the hill. "Let's see where they went."

  Nodding, the pilot swept across the abandoned trucks and up the face of the hill. The instant they'd crested the top, the pilot felt his fingers tense on the stick.

  "Sir," he whispered, his voice low with sudden shock.

  Beside him, Major Race Fordell's mouth thinned. His unblinking eyes showed not a flicker of emotion. In the valley below them the pipeline stretched like a metallic serpent. Underneath its massive support members, dozens of bodies lay scattered like abandoned dolls.

  Hovering over the hill, the pilot cast a frightened eye at the Major. In the back of the Huey the men had taken sudden sick interest in the gruesome scene below.

  "What happened, Major?" the young pilot asked. Race Fordell's expression never wavered.

  "That's what we're here to find out," he said flatly. "Take us down."

  Nodding numbly, the pilot aimed the chopper for the valley floor. At Fordell's orders, he touched down just long enough for the eleven men in the back to spill out. Skids had barely pressed to frozen ground before the Huey was once more airborne. Buzzing like an angry insect, it soared off down the valley in the direction opposite the one from which it had come.

  The hum of the rotor blades faded to silence. Alone on the ground, the eleven ASDF men picked their careful way around the dead.