Troubled Waters td-133 Page 2

  "You want me to try to trip up the SEALs while they're wargaming one another?"

  "I want you to engage the SEALs. You'll be one of the teams."

  "You're right. One guy taking on a freakin' army will be much more low-profile than if I was going in as an observer," Remo said.

  "Specialists of this type exist, Remo, and they're being used in just this way to prepare our military for field scenarios they might not expect. Just don't let them see you do anything too, er, unusual."

  "Whatever," Remo said. Of all the cockamamy situations he had found himself in courtesy of Harold W. Smith, this one ranked way up near the top.

  So here he was, trying to hunt wolves while taking on the Navy SEALs. Single-handedly.

  Those SEALs had better not distract him from the wolf hunt.

  The SEALs were late. They had been air-dropped north of town, a HALO jump from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. They came loaded for war-or, in this case, for Remo-packing the usual assortment of firearms, knives, garrotes, explosives, night surveillance gear, whatever. It was certain that each member of the team would have a watch and compass of his own, and since there were no other "enemies" participating in the exercise who could have slowed them, Remo was forced to think of reasons for their tardiness.

  One possibility a casual observer might have raised was that the SEAL commandos were not late at all. They could have closed the gap between their LZ and the ghost town right on schedule, infiltrated silently, and were stalking Remo through the dusty shells of buildings even now. But a Master of Sinanju was difficult to sneak up on. He'd hear them coming. If they muffled their footsteps, he'd hear their breathing. If they held their breath all the way into town, he'd hear their heartbeats-two or three buildings away.

  Unless they had crashed or gotten lost, both highly unlikely, Remo assumed the SEAL team was trying to outfox him with an indirect approach, perhaps circling wide, north of town, to approach from the west or east.

  Oh, well, here they came now. It wasn't the noise of their approach that alerted him; he could smell them.

  You load some poor sap down with enough hardware to have his own gun show and put him out in the hundred-degree-plus heat, and he's gonna sweat a little. And that's the kind of smell that carried for miles, notably when the hunter came in with the wind at his back.

  The approaching perspirer made his way into town. Remo listened to the thumps of his boots as he took cover in the building at the west end of town. Remo had already been there and had swiped at the floorboards with his short but surgically sharp fingernails. They scored the wood in a thin, invisible line.

  The SEALs, who had conducted exercises in this ghost town before, would have no reason to doubt that the floors at Sundberg's Mercantile weren't sound. However...

  Remo heard the minute creak of the floorboards as the SEAL took a careless step. Then there was a crash-loud enough for everybody to hear-and while no startled cries or curses accompanied the noise, Remo was satisfied that he had bagged an "enemy." The Navy SEALs were too well trained to cry out in a combat situation if they suffered injury, but it was also possible that the commando, who had plunged twelve feet into the basement of the mercantile, was now unconscious from the fall. In either case, he would be in for more surprises if and when he tried the ancient wooden stairs.

  One down.

  Squads varied in their sizes, depending on the branch of service and the mission, but he had been told that he was up against a dozen Navy SEALs. Their guns were loaded with paint rounds, the seriousness of a "wound" determined by location of the splash, with any hit between the neck and groin considered a "kill." Before the game had started, Dr. Smith had cautioned Remo to remember that it was a game.

  Remo didn't even really care about the game. He'd like to herd every last one of the SEALs into some dusty basement for the duration so he could concentrate on his real purpose here-find those wolves.

  Remo left the old hotel through a side door, emerging in an alley where the pent-up heat of the afternoon still simmered wickedly. Long strides brought him to the main street-the ghost town's only street, in fact-and he stood waiting in the shadows, watching for his adversaries. He could hear them scampering around town like a bunch of parade marchers.

  A man-sized shadow dodged between two buildings on the far side of the street, immediately followed by a second, then a third. It made sense that the team would be divided, sweeping both sides of the street and working house to house until they found their prey.

  Or he found them.

  Another group was coming in behind him, to his left, advancing from the west. Remo fell back to meet them, barely conscious of the dusty, almost stifling air in the narrow alleyway.

  Using a hole in the wall as a stair, Remo ascended to the hotel roof quickly. The hotel was just one story. Remo felt the sagging roof with his feet and decided it was sound enough to support his weight, despite enduring the years of sun and wind and insects that had been working on all the town's predominantly wooden buildings. At the southwest corner of the roof he knelt and glanced below.

  Three men in desert camouflage, with dusty faces, were advancing toward him, proceeding in spurts of motion followed by statuesque stillness, ready for incoming fire each time they changed position. Apparently, they thought the "specialist" they were hunting would be armed as they were, but in fact his hands were empty as he casually watched them making progress on the ground. They didn't pause to enter any of the buildings that they passed, and Remo wondered what their plan was. Were they moving toward a rendezvous with other SEALs, somewhere behind him? Three on one side of the street and two on the other left five guns unaccounted for, but he would deal with those in front of him before he went in search of others.

  REMO WAITED UNTIL THEY were just below him, then stepped off into space. The drop was not a long one, no more than eleven feet, and he landed directly in their path.

  "Evening, boys."

  Just in front of him, the middle of the three SEALs gaped at him, but recovered from his surprise to swing his stubby CAR-15 toward Remo's chest. A burst of paint at point-blank range, and it was over, but he never even got the weapon aimed. Remo's hand flicked out and tapped him in the center of his forehead, just above the space between his eyes. It could have been a killing strike, but Remo imparted only force enough to slam the SEAL against the dusty clapboard wall, out cold before he slumped into a seated posture in the dirt.

  His companions were reacting to the unexpected threat. On Remo's left, an automatic carbine was leveled at his abdomen. Remo waited until the finger was pulling the trigger, then deflected it with his left hand wrapped around the barrel, tugging even as he changed the gun's target. Half a dozen rounds spit from the muzzle, spattering the SEAL on Remo's right with yellow paint.

  That should have been enough to take him out of play, according to the rules, but Remo wasn't taking any chances. Even as the paint rounds were still bursting on his adversary's camou shirt, he threw an open hand that struck behind the young commando's ear and took him down.

  The last man standing fired another burst, apparently in hopes that barrel heat would break the stranger's grip, but Remo twisted and turned the rifle in his "enemy's" hands, put the man's finger on the trigger and helped him pull. The SEAL gave himself four paintball rounds in the belly. Remo pinched the very surprised looking commando behind the neck.

  "Sweet dreams," he said as he lowered the unconscious man to the hot ground.

  And that left eight.

  Remo made his way to Sundberg's Mercantile and went in through the back. He found that his sabotaged wooden floor had collapsed under not one but two SEALs. A third was standing on the edge of the rough pit as Remo entered, lowering a rope to those below.

  "Come on," the commando said, keeping his voice down. "Snap it up, you guys!"

  Remo drifted up behind him, reaching for the CAR-15 slung across the young man's shoulder as he planted a foot on his backside and shoved. The SEAL plunged headfirst into
Remo's trap, an old root cellar with the stairs long since collapsed, and landed with a squawk ten feet below.

  Three faces craned to greet him as he stepped up to the edge. Before they could react and bring him under fire, he raised the captured CAR-15 and hosed them with a stream of paint rounds, watching them , recoil as they were spattered with bright baby-blue.

  "You're dead," he told them, dropped the CAR-15 into the hole and turned away. "Stay put."

  Six down, and that should leave him squared off with a pair of three-man teams. The CAR-15s were fitted with suppressors, part of any well-equipped commando's ensemble, and he had no reason to believe that the six remaining SEALs had picked up on the gunfire. They would still be searching for him, both teams more than likely on the north side of the street, and Remo needed to cross in the open.

  Remo left the mercantile establishment, stepped through the front door with its squeaky hinges as if he were going for a quiet evening's stroll. No movement greeted him from windows on the north side of the street, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that one or more of his opponents had already spotted him.

  He crossed the main street in a sprint that was so smooth and fast it would have looked unreal, had anyone seen it, and he barely left a dust trail in his wake. He drew no fire and reached the rotting wooden sidewalk on the north side of the street, ducking into the recessed doorway of what had once been a barbershop. Gilt lettering had long since faded from the windows, leaving ghostly outlines in its place, and the interior, as far as he could see, had been stripped bare, abandoned to rodents and insects. Remo listened, ears pricked, at the sounds of approaching SEALs on the wooden sidewalk. No matter how carefully you walked, you couldn't be too quiet walking on a wooden sidewalk.

  The SEAL appeared in Remo's doorway, glancing into darkness, seemingly alert. But when the darkness seized him, dragged him off the sidewalk and enfolded him, the soldier gave a yelp of complete surprise. He lashed out with the buttstock of his rifle but only succeeded in handing his weapon to the enemy, who plastered him collar to crotch with paint balls.

  "Oh, man, you're really dead," Remo said, then tapped him in the head, sending him into unconsciousness in the doorway.

  A couple more had been tagging along with the commando and they started rushing to the barbershop, boots clomping on the wooden sidewalk. Remo left the snoozing SEAL where he had fallen, slipping into the darkened barbershop and leaving the door ajar behind him as a lure. Bait for the trap.

  One of the SEALs checked out his fallen buddy, while the other kept them covered, edging toward the open doorway to the shop. "In here," he whispered, and the words reached Remo's ears as if the young man had been shouting down the silent street. "Jeff-"

  "Is he breathing?"

  "Yeah."

  "So, leave him," said the point man. "He's all right, and we've got work to do."

  It was a textbook entry, one SEAL close behind the other, breaking left and right, their weapons sweeping, covering the room. They didn't fire-wouldn't, without a target, or at least a noise to help them focus-but they were prepared for anything. Except what happened next.

  Remo had climbed the warped and weathered clapboard wall to cling there like a giant spider, perched above the doorway. He was thus above the two SEALs and behind them as they entered, swooping down to join them.

  Both young men heard Remo land behind them, knew the sound meant trouble even as they turned to face their "enemy," but they never even saw Remo's face. Their heads suddenly collided into each other as if they'd become magnetized, and they slumped to the ground. Remo extracted paint rounds from their weapons and shattered them on the floor, then quickly painted on blue clown faces.

  He went to find the last three SEALs, conscious of the deepening of the night. He wanted the fun and games to be over. He had canines to converse with.

  He found the trio of remaining SEALs in what used to be the mining town's saloon. No fancy pleasure palace this. Even before the furniture was stripped away and time began to gnaw around the building's edges, it had been a spartan place. He pictured sawdust on the floor to soak up booze and blood from gun and knife fights over cards or cut-rate women.

  One of the SEALs was on his way upstairs to check the rooms where two-bit whores had once serviced their clients in something less than total privacy. The other two were waiting for him below, near what had been the bar until some human scavengers had stripped most of the paneling and left it skeletal. Both eyed the shadows warily and held their weapons ready, anxious for a chance to fire.

  Remo circled the old saloon, finding a drain pipe fastened to the wall, descending from the roof's rain gutter, and he scrambled nimbly up it to the second floor. He chose a window with the glass long-ago broken out and made his entrance.

  The small room smelled of dust, rat droppings and age. The age aside, Remo guessed that it had smelled little different in the old days, when its clientele consisted of unwashed miners and the occasional trail hand. Waiting in the darkness now, errant moonbeams lighting the way, he listened to his adversary on the landing outside, making his way toward the room's open door.

  When the tall, young SEAL edged through the doorway, Remo snatched the automatic carbine from his grasp with ease, surprise doing half of the work.

  His free hand flicked toward the SEAL's temple, barely light enough to register as a caress, but it was still enough to do the job, the young man going slack in Remo's arms.

  Then Remo shot him with his own weapon. One dot for each eye, one for the nose and a few more for the mouth, and Remo had created a big sloppy paint-ball smiley face on the SEAL's chest.

  The last two SEALS still waited below. Remo went down to join them.

  He went down fast. So fast they could barely see the bounding black form that was suddenly in their midst. Before the last two SEALS knew what was happening, he was between them, striking left and right with his pinching fingers and putting them to sleep.

  He couldn't leave them undead, so he shot them, too.

  Now he had the place to himself and everything was quiet. It would stay that way until the exercise ended-when one of the teams called into the commander or 6:00 a.m., whichever came first.

  Remo decided the saloon was his best lookout. He went back upstairs and climbed to the roof, finding it gave him the best view of the desolate reservation terrain in all directions.

  He sat cross-legged, under the clear sky with more stars than he could count. But he didn't see the stars; he had other things to look at. The horizon. The land. And everything that prowled it.

  "Come along, little doggies," he said to the night.

  THE NIGHT WAS COOL, BY comparison to the day. The stillness was almost like a presence in the night desert. Sound carried far. Remo heard far. But he didn't hear the sounds he wanted to hear.

  There was a small crash at about midnight from Sundberg's Mercantile. Remo had left the SEALS in the cellar conscious because they were trapped. Trying to get out was against the rules. "If those kids make one more noise, I'll go over and put 'em to sleep," he muttered to himself. But the SEALS in the cellar were silent after that.

  At 2:15 a.m., by the clock in the sky, Remo heard a sound that stirred his blood. It was far off and coming closer. Four paws moving on the desert soil. Canine. And then there was another. And another. It was a pack.

  But what he heard warned him to be disappointed. The paws sounded too light.

  The pack appeared, and it was easy to make out the tail held low to the ground, not quite between the legs, and the small build.

  Coyotes.

  Six of them were approaching warily, sniffing everywhere, their bodies stiff with their awareness of danger. They marked their territory at every bush and rock, and gradually they relaxed and began yipping to one another. Remo cursed silently.

  He knew exactly what he was seeing.

  The coyote family had recently been frightened off this patch of territory by the arrival of the Mexican Grays. They were cautious
ly returning, sniffing out the terrain-and deciding that the interlopers had moved on.

  The coyotes were telling Remo that his wolves were gone.

  He felt angry. But mostly he felt defeated. He had picked up the trail of the wolf pack twice in the past three months as they made their bold, bloody migration across Texas and New Mexico. But these weren't ordinary wolves. They were intelligent. They were cunning. They knew they would be tracked. Time and again they had foiled the trail, mostly by stowing away on vehicles at gas stations and rest stops.

  It looked like Remo would be going after them again. On foot, if necessary. The people who ran this summer camp might have a problem with that, but he'd let Smitty pave the way.

  But now it was time to end the little game. He powered up a walkie-talkie appropriated from the SEALs and phoned their CO.

  "All finished. Come and get 'em."

  The coyotes fled when the sound of whining aircraft interrupted the night's natural noises. The officer in charge was red-faced, glaring hard at Remo as he walked through swirling dust, ducking below the helicopter's swirling rotor blades.

  "Where are they, dammit?" he demanded. "Here ya go," said Remo. He had gathered the unconscious SEALs and sat them in a long row on the wooden sidewalk. Each had a hand on his neighbor's right shoulder, just to make them look less menacing. "Here come the others."

  Two SEALs, paint splashed, had extricated themselves from Remo's pitfall in the old mercantile store with the ladder he tore off the side of a building and lowered to them. Their third companion was being dragged between them.

  "Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have believed it," the commander muttered.

  "Wonders never cease," said Remo.

  "Bullshit!" the older man snarled. "These children will be going back to school."

  "They're not all that bad, really," Remo said.

  "Not that bad? How do you explain this mess?" he demanded.

  "Oh, well, it's because I'm so damn good, ya see."

  "You're not that good!"