Chained Reaction td-34 Page 2

  Bleech saw the terrified young men below him waiting on his words. It was good to hang them out like this, make each one think, if possible, that he was the one going to be executed. Bleech knew full well that you executed people, not so

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  much of because of what they had done, but because of what you didn't want the survivors to do.

  What the young recruits did not know was that for every nose broken, every groin shattered, there had been a plan.

  Those with permanent damage were scheduled for inside work, after the "great day" came. But Colonel Bleech never broke a limb or caused permanent damage to anyone on his combat squads. He disguised this cunning with feigned rage. Nothing like being angry to hide the fact that you were a thinking man.

  "Treason," boomed Bleech, taking a buttery bite from the muffin. His orderly was on the ground and a drop of melted butter landed on his forehead. Bleech dismissed the man who crawled back down the far side of the hill. Bleech let the word "treason" hang out above the valley below as he finished the muffin, licking the sweet red jam from his lips. It was a British jam and he didn't like British jams. Not enough sugar or tartness. The whole thing tasted like dental cement.

  Bleech slipped his notes from his neatly pressed shirt pocket. "We have all been betrayed. And not just to the Russians or the Chinese. No ... worse. We were betrayed to those who can do us the most damage, who can destroy everything we have worked and trained for. Treason."

  Bleech sensed he wasn't reaching the men and from many years of correctly judging these things, he knew his senses could be trusted. They should have been looking nervously at each other, but instead all were staring now at one recruit,

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  the one recruit who could not possibly have violated the code of honor of the unit.

  They were looking at Walker Teasdale and Bleech could not understand why. Teasdale had only one fault-he wasn't mean enough. But other than that, he would be the last person to violate an oath of secrecy.

  Colonel Bleech did not like things happening by accident and down there, among his seven hundred men, something was happening that he had not planned. He had planned his training and perfected it and now he had a unit he would take into the bowels of hell and would not lose a single man needlessly. He knew what they thought and what they did and their staring at Teasdale annoyed him.

  Bleech continued his harangue but watched the men spread out in the valley below.

  "Here is the treason. Here is a letter we intercepted. It reads like this:

  " 'Dear Sir. More than a year ago I signed up with a special unit of the army. It offered extra pay, extra benefits, and a cash bonus of three thousand dollars for my enlistment. Instead of the usual basic training, we have been in training for ten months. The officers strike us at will. We cannot communicate with our families. Half the training is teaching us how to whip people and chain people. Now, I know this is not the regular army. For one thing, there's no paperwork, hardly. And another thing is there are no negroes in the outfit and we watch movies about how bad they are and how wonderful the old South used to be. What I want to know is this army regulation and how can I get out of it. I hate it.'"

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  Bleech paused. And then he knew what he would do. He would seize the surprise and make it his own. If they thought Walker Teasdale was the culprit, let them. It would be more of a surprise. But this time it would be his surprise.

  "Teasdale, come up the hill," he bellowed.

  The young raw-boned boy moved slowly, his feet leaden with a sudden tiredness of a body unwilling to go to its end.

  "Move. Double time, Teasdale," said Bleech into the microphone.

  When he was close, Colonel Bleech switched off the microphone and said in a hushed voice, "Teasdale, come here. I'm behind the tree."

  "I know, sir. I saw you."

  "Walker, it's not you. Don't look so ashen-faced, son. You did not write this letter. You never would. I know that."

  "It's my day to die, Colonel."

  "Nonsense. You're going to be the one doing the executing. We'll play a little joke on the boys, eh?"

  "It's my day to die, sir."

  "Have you told them that?" asked Bleech, his fat crewcutted head nodding down toward the little valley.

  "Yessir."

  "That explains it. Don't worry. You're going to live. You're one of my best men and my best men live because I want them to live. We need good men."

  "Yessir," said Teasdale, but his voice was still heavy.

  Colonel Bleech switched on the microphone.

  "Now, there is a trooper sitting on a rock, by

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  the stream, hiding himself away from me. Come up here. No, not you. The one looking- away from me. Drake. You, Drake. Trooper Anderson Drake. Get up here."

  Walker Teasdale knew Drake. He had complained a lot, said he was going to do something about it, and a few weeks ago stopped complaining. Drake had been saying he had never heard of an outfit like this. Drake had been saying the outfit must be illegal. Teasdale thought he was lucky to be in an outfit that was unlike any other because that meant it was special. Teasdale was proud to be part of a special unit. That's why he had joined.

  And the bonus also paid for another four acres of rich bottom land, which was cheap back home in Jefferson County because the roads w.ere so bad you couldn't get your harvest to market. Teasdale gave the money to the family, all but five dollars of it, with which he bought a shiny red box of chocolate candies at the big store in Nawl's Hollow and gave that to his girl who put it away for later, although Walker was sort of hoping she would open it then, but he rightly couldn't blame her because when they had become engaged and he had gotten her a similar box, he had eaten most of them, and all the cream-filled ones.

  He watched Drake make it up the hill stumbling more than ordinarily, and Teasdale, knowing Drake was clumsy on obstacle courses, came to the conclusion that those who did badly at their soldiering were also most likely to be those who violated the rules the most. Walker lumped this together as some sort of contagious badness

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  within the person, spilling over from bad work to bad conduct.

  Drake, a red-haired boy from Altoona, Pennsylvania, who tended to sunburn easily, had a crimson face by the time he got close.

  "Trooper Drake reporting, sir," he said when he saw Colonel Bleech step out from behind the tree. "Sir, I'm innocent, sir."

  "I have the letter, Drake."

  "Sir, may I explain ?"

  "Shhhh," said Colonel Bleech. "About face. Look at the men."

  "Sir, I had help from other troopers. I'll give you their names."

  "I don't want their names. I know everyone involved. I know everything in this unit. We have people everywhere and they all look out for us. Know this. Your commanding officer knows everything."

  And Bleech winked to Teasdale as Drake turned around. Walker Teasdale heard something rustling behind him and there, crawling up from a jeep with a long curved sword, was the colonel's orderly. He held the sword curved in his hands as his elbows dug into the loamy pine-needled earth, and Teasdale realized that those down below would only see Drake and him, and would not see the colonel and the aide.

  Walker Teasdale had seen the colonel behind the tree only because he had recognized the place he was going to die.

  Bleech motioned Teasdale behind the tree. He winked and put a friendly arm around Teasdale's shoulders. Walker didn't know whether to be more surprised by the friendly arm or the sword.

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  They had practiced twice against melons but everyone thought it was a joke. Nobody used swords nowadays.

  "Give me a nice clean cut, Walker," whispered Bleech, pointing to Drake's neck. "I want the head to roll. If it doesn't roll, son, kick it down the hill."

  Walker stared at Drake's neck and saw the little hairs growing over the edge of his collar. He felt the hard wood handle of the sword and noticed that the blade had burnished edges. It had b
een sharpened recently. It was heavy in his hands and his palms became moist and he did not want to lift the sword.

  "At the neck," said Bleech. "A nice even stroke. Come on, boy."

  Teasdale felt the air become hot in his lungs and leadenness draped his body, like chains holding him down. His stomach became watery like a cheap pancake syrup and he did not move.

  "Walker, do it," said Bleech, loud enough for the tone of the order to get through.

  Drake turned his head and, seeing the sword in Teasdale's hands, covered his face. His body trembled like a spring on the end of a jerking string and a dark brown spot spread on his pants, as he released his bladder out of fear.

  "Teasdale," shouted Bleech and, losing his temper, he depressed the switch on the microphone in his hand and the entire unit heard their commanding officer yell, "Trooper Walker Teasdale, you cut off that head now. Clean and fast. Now."

  Down in the valley, it sounded like the voice of the heavens and then the whole unit noticed who

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  was up there with Drake and Teasdale. It was the colonel and he was giving an order and ol' Walker Teasdale wasn't doing anything about it. Why, he wanted Walker to cut off Drake's head, for treason. It wasn't Teasdale's time to die at all, but Trooper Drake's.

  Bleech caught all this in an instant.

  "I am giving you a direct order," said Bleech and then, flipping off the microphone, added, "They've all seen and heard my order. It's, too late now, son. You've got to take Drake's head. Now, c'mon. You'll be happy afterwards."

  Walker tightened his grip on the sword. The aide crawled away. Walker raised the sword high as he had been taught because you could not take a head swinging just any which-way; you took it level because the blade had to cleave through the vertebrae level or it got jammed in bone. That's what the instructor had said.

  He pulled back the sword. He planted his left foot and then Drake looked around. He looked at Teasdale's eyes and stared, and Teasdale prayed that Drake would just turn away. It was hard enough knowing the man, but killing him when he was looking in Teasdale's eyes? Walker couldn't do it. He had sworn to kill enemies, not people he knew.

  "Please," said Teasdale. "Please turn your head away."

  "Okay," said Drake, softly, as if Walker had asked him to remove his hat or something.

  And the way he said it, so pleasant and meek, Teasdale knew it was all over. He let the sword drop from his hand.

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  "I'm sorry, Colonel. I'll kill an enemy but I can't kill one of our own men."

  "I can't allow the unit to trust each other against my orders, Teasdale. This is my last warning. You've got to do it."

  And then the microphone was on again as though the trees down below were breathing static and Colonel Bleech gave his last order to Trooper Walker Teasdale.

  "Cut off his head."

  "No," said Teasdale.

  "Drake," said Bleech. "Do you follow orders?"

  "Yessir."

  "If I let you live, will you follow orders?"

  "Oh, yessir. Yessir. Yessir. Anything. Special unit all the way."

  "I'm going to get a head one way or another. Drake. Give me Teasdale's head."

  Trooper Drake, still trembling with fear, dove for the sword, lest Teasdale change his mind. He snapped it from the rawboned young man's hands and was up and swinging wildly in an instant. He took a slash at the head and the blade cut through flesh and bounced back off the skull, stunning Teasdale. He felt the blade crack at his head again and then he heard his colonel talking about a level blow from behind and there was a stinging at the back of his head and then a deep dark numbness.

  The eyes did not see as his head bounced down the hill rolling crazily in bumps and bounces like a punted football making its way toward an end zone.

  The eyes did not see, nor did the ears hear. The

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  body was back up on the hill spurting red rivers from the neck.

  But a last thought was held somewhere out in the vastness of a universe that went on forever.

  And that thought was that Colonel Bleech, for all his talk of soldiering and killing, was but a clumsy amateur at best. And by this evil deed he had offended a power in the center of the universe, a power so vast it would unleash the ultimate force of man.

  And when that force was unleashed, Bleech would be but a pitiful popped pumpkin, splattered like the melons the men had practiced their sword thrusts on.

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  CHAPTER TWO

  His name was Eemo and it was his last assignment. He did not know the man, but he never knew the men. He knew their names and what they looked like and where he could find them.

  But he no longer cared about what they had done or why they had done it. He cared only that when he finished them it was neat and clean and with an economy of motion.

  This last man lived in the penthouse of a hotel in Miami Beach. There were only three entrances to it, all guarded, all locked with triple keys that three men had to agree to use simultaneously, and since a former security advisor to the Central Intelligence Agency had designed this little hotel fortress and guaranteed it impenetrable from above or below, the man slept that morning with ease and contentment, until Remo grabbed his fleshy pink face in his hands and said into the stunned eyes that he would squeeze the man's cheeks off unless he explained some things very quickly.

  Remo knew the man's shock was not at his appearance. Remo was a moderately handsome man with high cheekbones and a dark stare that tended to liquefy the resolve of women when he

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  turned it on them, if he cared about that anymore, which he didn't. He was thin, lean to perfection, and only his thick wrists might indicate that this man might be anything different from normal.

  The assignment certainly wasn't. Remo had seen this sort of penthouse arrangement fourteen times. He called it "the sandwich." They put a nice piece of bread on top with perhaps a machine gun or two, several men and a metal shield reinforcing the roof, and they locked all the entrances below, probably adding devices there, and so the top and bottom were nice and cozy and safe. But the middle was as open as a French bikini.

  The attack on it was not new with Remo; it had not been new fifty years ago or fifteen hundred, for that matter.

  Remo had been told about the first successful assault on the fortress defense.

  To protect themselves against assassins, ancient kings would take the highest floors for their sleeping quarters, put their most trusted men below and above and go to sleep in the illusion of safety.

  This problem occurred to a Master of Sinanju in A.D. 427 (by western dating) when a Himalayan prince put his brothers as guards above and below him, and arranged it so that his son hated the prince's brothers, so that the brothers knew that if the prince died, his son would become prince and slaughter them all. This was known to the Master of Sinanju, the reigning assassin in an ages-old house of assassins whose labors went to support a tiny village in cold bleak North Korea.

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  The Master knew that people worked with their fears instead of their minds. Because they were afraid of heights, they thought others would be. Because they slipped on smooth stone walls, they thought others would. Because they moved with noise, they thought others did and their ears would be protection.

  The fortress sandwich was always open in the middle and that Master of Sinanju had taken less than a minute to realize he had only to move up the wall and enter at the level of the prince's room to complete his duty, and thus win that year, as it was written in the records of Sinanju, food and grain for ten years from a grateful enemy prince. Also a bust of that king, which Remo had once seen stored in that peculiar domicile in the village of Sinanju, a town he did not intend to return to ever again no matter how many generations of master assassins it had produced, none of whom had ever given one more minute of thought to wondering about how to penetrate the fortress defense.

  And Remo didn't either.

  He found t
he hotel and didn't even bother to look up.

  Hastings Vining, one of the major commodities brokers, owned the hotel and lived in the top two floors. Remo didn't even bother to figure out whether he was sleeping in the twenty-third or twenty-fourth floor. It was the twenty-fourth. It was always the highest floor.

  People always equated height with safety and assumed that people would first try to enter from below or then from above. They worried about helicopters and parachutes and even balloons, but

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  they never gave a thought to somebody who could just climb up the smooth walls of a building.

  Remo didn't feel like working that hard that morning so he took an elevator to the twenty-second floor and knocked on a door.

  "Who is it ?" called out a woman's voice.

  "Gas man. Problem with hotel gas. Got to fix it."

  "Problem with gas? This hotel doesn't have gas. I don't have gas. Try the kitchen."

  "You've got gas now, lady, and it might be dangerous. I've got to go outside and check your gas."

  "Are you from the hotel?"

  "Check the desk, lady," said Remo with that sort of bored surliness that for some .peculiar reason bred trust in most people.

  "Oh, all right," said the woman and the door opened. She was in her early fifties and her face glistened with creams fighting their losing battle in a retreating action from youth, whose only victory was not getting worse for another day. She wore a floppy pink muumuu and had her hair in some sort of plastic device.

  "Anything you want," she said with a lewd grin when she saw Remo.

  She was suddenly awake and happy. She adjusted one pink device in her reddish hair and smiled again. This time she licked her lips invitingly. Remo wondered how much creamy gook got attached to her tongue when she did that.

  "Just the gas, lady."

  "I want you and I'll pay you for it," she said.

  "All right," said Remo, who knew never to argue with someone obsessed. "Tonight."