The Last Temple td-27 Read online

  As Remo pondered the situation, Chiun sat back beyond the first perimeter, watching his trainee's progress. He saw that Remo was preparing to leap over the mystifying obstacle. A wise choice, he thought. For the scene looked different in the Master's older, sharper eyes. Not only did Chiun see the uprights three meters apart from one another, but he also saw the criss-crossing light patterns of infrared laser light. Not only did he see trucks and workers, but he also saw the small arms weapons stacked in shadow under the truck's bodies, and the laced military boots that stuck out of the bottoms of their mechanic's overalls.

  Remo did not think to check for the infrared light beams that bounced from pole to pole all along the line of the second perimeter, as he brought his right foot off the ground. With a simple flex of his left leg muscles, he was off the sand and floating through the air.

  But the jump was incorrect. Chiun saw that. Instead of a simple upward leap, Remo had moved forward slightly, causing his left foot to push a small cloud of sand across the beams of dim red light just before he left the ground.

  The only sound was of a bird chirping. The only movement, besides Remo's soundless landing, was Chiun's silent take-off.

  The refinery exploded into life. The recorded signal of the chirping bird sent the workmen scattering. Suddenly, four high-powered, infrared searchlights beamed on from high atop the refinery towers, splashing the entire area with an eerie, bloody glow. Remo was picked out of the landscape like an ant in a bowl of vanilla pudding.

  But only for a second. Then he was off and moving, so all the spotlights saw before six hydraulic lifts raised their mounted fifty-caliber submachine guns to a height of one-half meter above the sand, was a tiny Oriental in a golden kimono appearing to float across the sand toward them.

  The guns began firing according to their automated, pre-fed systems. As the fifties sent crossfire patterns whistling over the sand, Remo heard Chiun's voice roar above the sound, "Dove's wings," and suddenly he was airborne.

  "Dove's wings" was based on the conceit that the white bird of peace could always fly above any conflict, thereby avoiding injury. For Remo the technique was different, but the outcome was the same. As the first bullets were fired, Remo's brain registered the fire power and pattern, then he moved in perfect synchronization with the guns so that his legs were always above where any lead sped at any given moment.

  At the end of one running "L" circuit, Remo heard his Master's voice instruct, "Down." Remo slid to the ground as easily as a feather floating to earth.

  Beside him lay Chiun.

  "Hi," said Remo, "What's a nice person like you doing in a place like this?"

  "Doing all your seeing for you," replied Chiun, "although I do not see why I bother. Not only are you blind, but you jump badly. Even the lowly animals of the field can jump. From you, I merely expect competence. I see now that is too much."

  Remo pushed his face into the sand as a bullet whined past, a quarter of an inch above his head.

  "How was I to know it was an infrared fence?" he asked.

  "You have eyes, do you not? To mistake material surroundings for true reality is to mistake a buffoon for your son. We have both made mistakes."

  As the two chatted flat on their faces, a crew of men pulled canvas covers off the dump truck holds. The drivers raised the trailer mechanisms for a higher point of view. Inside the hold of each truck was a machine that looked like a rocket launcher attached to a television camera. All twelve trucks lifted their payloads to maximum height, then the men left the cabs and canvas covers and ran to the slit-trench.

  The machine gun stopped firing, and suddenly there was silence.

  "Uh-oh," said Remo as the machine gun's harsh echoes died away. "What now?"

  "Do not ask me," said Chiun, "for I am petty. Merely secondary to your own wondrous abilities. Wondrous one, why not stand up and find out? Simply ignore my ignoble, shallow, trivial self, and leap badly to your feet again."

  "Okay, okay, I'm sorry," said Remo. "See? I've apologized. Now if you don't mind, I'm getting out of here."

  "Why should I mind?" said Chiun. "I am only of secondary significance."

  "I said I was sorry," said Remo, who was up and running.

  Suddenly the dump truck closest to the American's running figure boomed and a four-foot, roaring projectile was following Remo. Back at the truck, the television camera picked up and focused on him with its sensitive heat-seeking equipment.

  Remo started to zigzag, but the camera followed him, and the missile began to zigzag as well, lighting up the area with orange flame.

  Aha, Remo thought, picking up speed and turning around, so this is a TOW device. Smith had told him of the American-made Television Operated Weapon during a debriefing a few years back. Only he had not mentioned that they were now being put to use by the Israelis. Remo considered racing the missile back to Sodom, but he did not want any suburbs exploding, so he doubled back again, this time heading straight at the first dump truck.

  But he had to make it across the third perimeter's barbed-wire fence. As Remo jumped over the first row of curled, pointed metal, the projectile was twenty-five feet behind him.

  As he took the second row, Remo could hear only the roaring of the rocket and was hoping that these leaps were not cutting down his speed too much.

  As he went over the third, the cone of air that had accumulated in front of the missile's tip pressed against Remo's back.

  With a final shot of speed, Remo ran directly at the TOW launcher. To any Israeli looking, it seemed as if he were about to be sandwiched between the truck and the explosive charge.

  At the last moment, Remo lowered his body temperature to the point that he did not exist for any heat-seeking device, and fell to the sand.

  The first dump truck exploded in a ball of orange-black flame, hurling metal, plastic, and garbage across the plant and into the desert for miles around.

  The sulphur plant soldiers, who were very busy keeping the fire from spreading to the other weapons, called it a miracle. The Israeli military, who combed the desert for any sign of enemy commandos or charred bodies, called it crazy. Yoel Zabari and Tochala Delit, who were roused from sleep and were that close to calling a full military alert, had a few very choice words for it. And Chiun, who had been waiting amid rubble outside the first perimeter fence when Remo trotted up with a smug grin on his face just seconds after the explosion, had a word for it, too.

  The word was "litterbug."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The dark shape moved silently across the Israeli night sky. From Jordan it came, low and deadly. Not like a jet, which sent out sound warnings even before it crossed the border. Not like a Phantom fighter, which would be shot down immediately by the Israeli border defense.

  No, it came like the silent wind, because it was a transport glider. Soundless, flying too low for radar, painted black to merge with the night desert sky, it moved invisibly into the Negev.

  Abulicta Moroka Bashmar paced before his men, dressed in an antiradar plasticene scuba suit with specially made antiradar plasticene medals affixed on his chest.

  "This is the moment," he said in English to the three men lined up by the door of the glider in their scuba suits and parachutes. "So far the Israeli patrols have not detected us. We will parachute into their Dead Sea, kill as many of them as possible, then swim back into Jordan and return to our own lands."

  The three men smiled, secure in the knowledge of Bashmar's reputation for bravery, a reputation that he had acquired after leading fifty Libyan terrorists into an unguarded Israeli schoolhouse and massacring the eighty-three students and thirty-seven teachers Within. The men were sure that this mission would be as satisfying. One of the men was black, a special commando recruited from Uganda.

  Bashmar raised his hand. "Drop our equipment… now." His hand chopped the air, and the black commando, nearest the open door, nudged the plasticene carrier with its underwater gear out.

  "Now, we go," cried Bashmar as he
fell out of the glider door, clutching a plastic-enclosed machine gun to his plastic-enclosed chest. The three others followed, and soon four dark figures and one dark thing were plummeting through the Israeli night sky.

  First, the dark silk parachute for the equipment opened, and then each man pulled his rip cord. Each man's mind was filled with the visions of the violence they would create and the rewards they would receive on returning home to Libya and to Uganda.

  Bashmar's brain thought of the honoring military welcome and promotion he would receive. The hard part was over. They had infiltrated Jordan, crossed into Israel, now all they had to do was massacre and leave.

  Zhava Fifer was dozing in the jeep when she heard the explosion coming from the Dead Sea.

  The commandos' underwater equipment hit the highest-density water in the world from a height of three thousand feet, and the resulting sound clap rivaled that of a grenade.

  The first explosion woke her. The next four sent her scrambling for the car keys and wheeling the jeep in the direction of the shore.

  Bashmar and his troops were bobbing like corks on the surface of the salt-thickened water.

  When Zhava arrived at the Dead Sea, a dark figure was slapping two other dark figures with a dark rubber flipper.

  "Idiots! Fools!" the figure was saying in accented English. "You are useless. Why did you not tell me that we could not swim in this? We will have to float back to Jordan."

  "I thought he knew," said one figure, pointing at the other.

  "I thought he knew," said the other, pointing back.

  As soon as she heard the Arab accents, Zhava, reached for the Mauser automatic pistol she kept under the dashboard in a specially disguised holster. But just as she touched it, a hard, round, metal rod dug into the back of her neck, accompanied by a low laugh.

  "Commander," said a high-pitched voice behind her, "I got us a woman."

  Bashmar dropped the scuba fin and tried to peer through the darkness for the Uganda soldier. He came forward, trailed by the two other Libyans, until he was beside the gray jeep.

  "I kill this bitch in your name," said the voice behind Zhava. "She will know she dies at the hands of…"

  "Wait," said Bashmar.

  All this time Zhava had remained motionless, her sitting torso arched, her breasts jutting forward. Bashmar took in the full view of her deep cleft and the swelling sides of her round breasts.

  "Oh, ho," he said, leaning down to caress one dark, smooth leg.

  Zhava tried to move back, but the hard metal on the back of her neck would not yield. "Move or scream and I will cut off your head," Bashmar said.

  Bashmar moved his other hand across Zhava's shoulder. "This will be our first victim of the night," he said, pulling off his rubber head cover. The two behind him followed suit. Zhava's breathing became deeper, making the view down her shirt even more enticing. She felt the gun barrel move away from her neck and then heard the soldier behind her disrobing.

  "But first," said Bashmar, eyeing her bosom, "you will feel the strength of the Arab body and the might of the Arab mind. You will witness the superiority of our culture."

  "Ours, too. Africa," said the voice behind her. "I a colonel."

  Bashmar ripped Zhava's shirt off.

  His men looked like they were on the verge of applause. The man behind Zhava's neck leaned over her shoulder for a look. Zhava closed her eyes and tried to squeeze the tears back.

  Bashmar pulled a silenced automatic pistol out of a plastic bag, then stuck it under Zhava's left breast, pushing her backward across the two front seats. The standard shift stick dug into the small of her back. Zhava bit her lip, her mind filling with humiliation and hatred.

  Suddenly the gun that had been on her neck was under her chin, and two pairs of hands gripped her legs. She tried to scream but a rubber head piece was stuffed into her open mouth.

  "To the greater glory of the Arab world's fight for freedom. And Africa's," said Bashmar, who then unzipped the pants of his scuba suit. Zhava felt a gun barrel pry at the buttons of her skirt. The only sounds she could then hear were the squeaking of rubber as she ground her teeth, the roaring in her head, and the unsnapping of buttons.

  Yellow haze drifted across her vision as the gun barrel was jammed tighter against her throat. She felt the warm night air flow across her exposed crotch. She tried to kick out, but her legs were still tightly held. The last thing she heard before the scream was her panties being ripped off.

  At first she thought the scream was her own, but then she felt the stinking rubber of the head cover still in her mouth. Suddenly the pressure under her chin was gone and she heard a short chatter of silenced submachine-gun fire. She found she could sit up, so she sat up and saw a terrorist on his knees staring at the place where his hands should have been. Instead, on the end of his arms were two gushing streams of blood that were messing up Zhava's right leg.

  Zhava found that her left leg was free as well, since the other terrorist had his hands full trying to keep the inside of his neck from pouring out.

  She saw the yellow blur slide between the two men, then circle past a confused Abulicta Moroka Bashmar, who stood with his rubber pants down.

  Zhava quickly reached under the jeep's dashboard, grabbed her Mauser and shot between Bashmar's legs. The Arab commander's lower middle exploded, spinning out his front and back. Bashmar's face held a dawning awareness of his own mortality as he crumbled over onto the wet sand.

  There was silence. Zhava turned unsteadily around and saw the fourth terrorist, or what was left of him, since the Ugandan colonel had somehow managed to stick his machine gun up his own nose and fire.

  She pulled the rubber gag from her mouth and looked over the windshield. Remo and Chiun stood in front of the jeep. Chiun had his arms crossed, his hands deep in the sleeves of his golden kimono. Remo leaned casually on the hood, blowing on the fingernails of his left hand.

  Zhava Fifer wrapped her torn skirt around her, then fell back into the driver's seat and whistled.

  "Welcome back," she said.

  Zhava remained silent for quite a long while as Remo drove back to Tel Aviv. Finally, she stirred from her huddled position in the back and said, "You are right."

  "Of course," said Chiun.

  "I have been thinking about what you said before," continued Zhava, not hearing Chiun's statement, "and you are right."

  They had disposed of the bodies themselves, that operation consisting of a shovel, a few rocks, and a large mound of sand, and they were many miles from the Dead Sea.

  "I've been thinking about what you said, too, Chiun," pitched in Remo, "And you are right. No one should fill their universe with hamburger or else the Starship Enterprise would have to run on ketchup."

  "Ignore the litterbug, young lady," said Chiun, turning in his seat to where Zhava nestled in a blanket in the back. "He is not wise enough to respond to the wisdom of Sinanju."

  "The shuttlecraft on onions and pickles," said Remo.

  "However," continued Chiun, "your realization of the truth is not sufficient. And an apology does no good."

  "Why?" said Zhava. "What have I done?"

  "The awful thing you did to that man back there. Disgraceful."

  Zhava sat up, her eyes gleaming, her attack of moments before unimportant. "What! You are surprised I killed him? That I shot his disgusting Arab body?"

  "No," Chiun replied calmly. "But to shoot him? There is a wrong way of killing, and then, there is Sinanju. I am disappointed. You have shown great promise. Why ruin it with a gun?"

  Zhava fell back. "And he talks to me of common sense," she said quietly. She looked out at the desert for a moment, then continued, "You know, you are still right. Why not kill him with my hands? A gun only cheapens what we have achieved in this land with our hands."

  Chiun nodded, and Remo leaned over to him.

  "Not now, Chiun," he whispered. "Let her be. It's not the time."

  "Now is exactly the time," replied Chiun. "Go on.
"

  Zhava still stared out to the sands. "This is my home," she said. "This is my father's land. He worked this land and fought for this land and built this land. And it killed him. First inside by fighting a way that became a five-day-a-week job. You do not know what it is like to say goodbye to your family every week for the last time."

  Remo turned the wheel to stop by the side of the road. "Keep driving," instructed Chiun.

  "That was what destroyed my mother. My mother," Zhava remembered for a moment, "she was a very strong woman. Her only mistake was to love my father more than she loved Israel. When he was blown apart by a Russian-built tank, it left her an empty husk. They could not even find enough of him to fill an envelope. She died three months later."

  Zhava laughed suddenly, high-pitched, almost hysterically. "I do not even know why I am telling you this. This is all classified information, you know."

  Neither Chiun nor Remo answered.

  Zhava lost her smile and stared up at the ceiling of the jeep, "My fiance, as but a child, worked in the cellar, making bombs. I lost him last month when a terrorist bomb went off. My family and I have always been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone I have ever loved was destroyed by a bomb, and I dedicate my life to protecting…" Zhava stopped, without completing the sentence. "I-I am sorry. I have been talking too much."

  Remo looked into the rear-view mirror. He saw Zhava's eyes. Empty eyes. Empty of tears, empty of hurt, empty of ghosts. They were the eyes of a professional. No expectations, no dreams, no hopes. They were his own eyes.

  "You needn't worry about the bombs," Remo said, trying to reassure her. "They're secure."

  "What do you Americans know?" Zhava suddenly flared. "You have a war every twenty years, you fight it on someone else's soil, and then you sit in your easy chairs, and talk about how terrible it was. But war is our way of life. Not just existence. Life. Survival. We are outnumbered three to one, the battles are fought here, on our land, and it is our brothers who are dying. I would kill everyone if it would just end."