Ground Zero td-84 Read online

  "Look," Swindell said, grinning sickly, "I can see that you're hurtin'. But you gotta put this into perspective. He was old, an empty nester. If they don't go when they get ripe, property would never change hands. And then where would the world be?"

  Remo Williams looked at Connors Swindell's sweating face as if not believing the evidence of his ears.

  "You know what you are?" he asked evenly.

  "Under arrest?" Swindell ventured weakly.

  "No, landfill," Remo replied, giving Connors Swindell's neck a sudden squeeze. His head shot up twenty feet in the air. It landed at the base of a palm like a ripe coconut. Remo threw the body on top with a savagely careless fling.

  Then he turned his attention to Barry Kranish.

  "You love trees?" he asked in a too-even tone.

  "I love life even more," Kranish said, sick-voiced.

  "Fine, let's feed a few trees."

  "I didn't bring any tree food."

  "You are the tree food," Remo explained.

  Remo escorted Barry Kranish behind a stately date palm and carefully converted him into mulch. When he returned a moment later, he was washing the blood off his hands with sand.

  Sky Bluel didn't stick around to find out what had happened to the late Barry Kranish. She jumped behind the wheel and drove into town without a backward glance.

  Remo let her go. She wasn't important anymore.

  He turned to face the desert. The smoke cloud now hung low against the horizon. A hot wind tore at it like fingers plucking at an old rag.

  Remo sat down on the edge of the road and with sunken eyes watched the too-hot wind tear the clouds to shreds and carry the faint fragments away.

  He refused to move until the sun came up to turn its accusing red eye on him.

  Chapter 23

  Three months later, the high corn was tasseling outside of La Plomo, Missouri.

  Heirs had been arriving all summer in a steady stream to reclaim the homes of their dead relatives. Farms were taken over. Plans were made to plow under the Lewisite-tainted crops. It was a sad event. But next year there would be another, better crop.

  La Plomo was coming back to life.

  By this time the sun had entered Leo, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had declared a blasted area of desert four miles outside of Palm Springs, California, to be radiation-free. FEMA also promised to release a two-million-dollar study by Christmas explaining how a nuclear accident had occurred in an area where nuclear tests were not authorized.

  The official report would be a tissue of vague lies cloaked under the umbrella of national security, but only a handful of people knew that, including one Sky Bluel, who had dyed her hair green and flown off to finish her education in Paris.

  On the day after the desert had been declared free of radiation, wearing a black T-shirt and matching chinos, Remo Williams walked out into the shifting sands.

  His face was set and devoid of readable emotion as he reached the flat blob of fused glass that marked the core blast area. It was less than a dozen feet in diameter. Black in the center, shading to bubble-pocked brown, the ragged outer edges were clear and streaked with tadpolelike air pockets. The tadpoles seemed frozen in the act of fleeing the blast.

  Remo stepped onto the fused sand. He had left no footprints arriving, and the glass barely gave under his weight.

  He walked to the exact center, an upthrust crater of obsidian shards, where critical mass had fused the fine sand. The ground was littered with discarded Styrofoam coffee cups and cigarette butts left by FEMA crisis managers. Remo's eyes tuned out these artifacts. He was scanning for a single color. Royal purple-the color of the kimono Chiun had last worn. All he wanted was a tiny bit of purple silk. Something-anything-to take back to Sinanju for burial.

  He had accepted the Master of Sinanju's death weeks ago. What he couldn't accept was the absence of a body. He understood that Chiun must have been holding the neutron bomb when it went critical. He understood how the blast could have obliterated an ordinary human being.

  But not Chiun. Not the Master of Sinanju. Something would have survived. Something had to have survived.

  But nothing had. Nothing tangible.

  Remo walked east. The Plexiglas dome of Connors Swindell's last grandiose scheme, the Condome, had been dismantled. All that remained was a huge plug of concrete poured to seal off the buried tower for all time. The sand had already drifted over the ugly gray cap. In a few generations it would be something for archaeologists to ponder. Now it was only a monument to one greedy man's folly.

  Remo walked the desert half the night. The moon rose and its clear silver light provided enough illumination for his Sinanju-trained eyes to see by.

  He found no evidence to prove that here in this desert-so remote that the scrolls of Sinanju did not record its name--on the threshold of the venerated age, the greatest Master of Sinanju, Chiun the Great, had sacrificed himself so that the line could continue in the body of an unworthy white man.

  Standing alone in the desert, Remo felt an emotion sweep over him. It was one he had not experienced in a very long time. He felt inadequate.

  Remo lifted his voice to the morning star, which had just appeared low in the east.

  "Oh, Little Father," he said sorrowfully, "where are you now? I feel lost without you. I'm not ready for this."

  He felt a presence suddenly. Behind him. Remo whirled.

  "Chiun!"

  Standing there, hands tucked into the folds of a simple kimono, stood the Master of Sinanju, his head bowed. He was a dim figure, his kimono two shades darker than purple, his face pale like a birchwood bust decorated with cotton streamers for hair and beard.

  Chiun's half-shadowed mouth moved as if in prayer, but no sounds were reaching Remo's ears.

  "Little Father, is that really you?" Remo asked. But his ears told him it was not. Not really. He detected no biological sounds. He sensed the presence before him as a cold force, but it was not living. Not anymore.

  Chiun lifted his eyes. They were a deeper gray than hazel, and infinitely sad.

  One claw of a hand came out of its sleeve. It pointed toward Remo, slanting downward.

  Remo looked down at his feet. He frowned.

  "What about my shoes?"

  The hand recoiled and pointed again, like an accusing specter.

  "I don't understand," Remo said, his voice anxious. "What are you trying to tell me?"

  The claw of a hand shifted. The Master of Sinanju pointed to the ground at his own feet. His eyes were imploring.

  A gleam came into Remo's dark eyes. Remo nodded. "I get it. I'm head of the House of Sinanju now. From this day on, I walk in your sandals."

  Remo bowed from the waist, saying, "I understand. I will honor you by carrying on the work. Farewell, Little Father."

  When Remo straightened, he beheld the Master of Sinanju lift his face and hands to the stars in a gesture of despair. His mouth made a silent, anguished shape.

  Then, like a star dying, he faded from sight.

  And Remo Williams, feeling the immense burden of five thousand years of responsibility, sank to his knees in the sand and wept without shame.

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