Terror Squad Read online

“Have I offended you?” asked Chiun.

  “Yeah. You’ve been bothering Joan Hacker. If you guys don’t stop this, I’ll…I’ll maybe use this thing.”

  “We promise to stop,” said the Master of Sinanju.

  “Oh,” said Rodney Pintwhistle. “I mean, really,”

  “Really,” said Chiun.

  “What about your buddy?”

  “He promises too,” said Chiun.

  “Well, then I guess it’s all settled,” said Rodney. “You two guys aren’t bad at all.”

  “Where is Miss Hacker?” asked Remo.

  “None of your business,” said Rodney, and then feeling sorry for the taller man, said: “I mean she’s on campus. But you won’t bother her, will you?”

  “Do I look like someone who’d go where he’s not wanted?”

  Rodney had to admit, the man didn’t. Rodney fairly glided back to campus. The new Rodney Pintwhistle—lover, strong man, a man before whom women melted and men grovelled. Joan was surprised to see him.

  “Oh, Rodney, what are you doing here?” she asked as he strolled into her room.

  “Came to tell you you’ll have no trouble from those two anymore.”

  “The Oriental and the good-looking guy?”

  “He wasn’t so good-looking.”

  “You’re sure you got the right two?”

  “I’m sure,” Rodney said. “They apologized.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited for gratitude. Joan Hacker rose from the bed with a roundhouse swing at the side of his head. It connected with a crack. Rodney hurtled back into and over a chair. He held the side of his head.

  “All right for you,” Rodney cried. “I’m telling. I’m telling. I’m telling that you gave me a knife and asked me to threaten someone.”

  “You lied to me, punk,” yelled Joan, kicking at the scrawny leg protecting his acne covered face.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t. They apologized.”

  “You never even saw them. Liar. Liar.”

  “Don’t hit,” yelled Rodney. “I have fragile bones.”

  “Hit? I’ll punch your heart out, you son of a bitch. I’ll punch your frigging heart out. You tell anyone, I’ll punch your heart out.”

  And Rodney promised. The lad who had backed down the Destroyer and the Master of Sinanju promised he would not tell a soul, but in return he, too, wanted a pledge.

  “Just don’t hit.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  JOAN HACKER WAS AFRAID. She dawdled down the street to the football stadium like a toddler forced to go to bed.

  First of all, it was not her fault. Rodney was the only thin, really thin, boy she knew. She couldn’t have expected to know right off that he would come back with a nonsense story. How could she know that? She did everything she could.

  And besides. Hadn’t the German done what he was supposed to do? Everyone was talking about how old Henry Pfeiffer had been attacked by some strange beast that had bitten off his finger and crushed his head. Everyone. Absolutely everyone, and she hadn’t said a word to anyone. She had done exactly as she was told. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried.

  Joan Hacker stopped in front of the rising concrete structure, so noisy on football Saturdays in autumn, and so quiet now. So…so imposing looking, she thought.

  She had done everything she was asked and now, because of that stinking Rodney Pintwhistle, she wouldn’t be allowed to take any more real part in the revolution. It was downright oppressive. And she had done everything right.

  Joan reached into her windbreaker pocket, carefully opened the metal container and pinched some of the powder between her right fingertips. She withdrew her hand, put the powder in her left palm, and raised the palm to her left nostril. She sniffed hard. A stinging sensation showed that she had inhaled one of the cocaine crystals instead of just the powder. Her eyes watered. After a few moments, the pain passed, and in its place came a new resolve and new courage. Joan Hacker marched through the deserted darkened arch of Patton Memorial Field. She would not be oppressed, even though she was dealing with the Third World. But the man wasn’t all that Third World, not into it really. He had said something nasty when she asked if he were Vietnamese. Very nasty.

  Joan entered the sunlight of the football field, her steps crunching on the cinder track. She looked along the Patton side of the stands. He wasn’t there. Glancing toward the visitors’ side, she saw him, standing right dab on the fifty-yard line. Now that wasn’t a very good place for a revolutionary meeting. The forest by the canal was better. A car in an alley was better. Almost any place would be better. After all, if he could make a mistake like this, then who was he to blame her for Rodney?

  “Hi. Uhh, I’ve got a bit of…well, not so nice news,” said Joan as she reached the man in midfield. He was slightly shorter than she, with smooth yellow skin and hazel eyes. He wore a black business suit with a white shirt and black tie, like one of those little Japanese computer salesmen, only she had better not call him a Japanese again, because he had gotten angry about that too. Not angry angry, but a cold quiet angry. The man nodded to her.

  “I, well, I tried. And it wasn’t my fault.”

  The Oriental face was stone.

  “Really, it wasn’t. I, well, I got the skinny one as you said, and the fat one worked well. Let me tell you. He did make an attempt on the two reactionaries, and they were there at the spot you told me to tell them about. You know, where the soul brothers trained and everything.”

  “They were coming from the path or going into it?” asked the Oriental, in a thin, cold voice.

  “Coming, because Gruenwald or Pfeiffer or whatever he was, left after they left.”

  “Good. They saw the rock.”

  Joan Hacker smiled.

  “I did well on that, then?”

  “Truly revolutionary,” said the Oriental and he smiled. It did not look like an approving smile to Joan, rather a contemptuous smile. But who could really tell with the Third World?

  “Well, after that I recruited the skinniest, absolutely the skinniest student on campus. He promised me he would threaten those two. He did. I swear it.”

  The Oriental nodded.

  “But then he came back without even a scratch on him and he lied to me. He told me they apologized.”

  “You did very well,” said the Oriental.

  “I did?” said Joan in amazement. “I thought he never even went near them. I mean, I could punch out Rodney myself. Why would they apologize?”

  “Why wouldn’t they, my child? I mean, my revolutionary heroine. The typhoon uproots trees and shatters boulders, but it does not harm the grass.”

  “That’s Mao?”

  “It is not the Chinaman. You have done well. There is more to do, and you must join me in doing it, because you are a great revolutionary heroine. You will come with me. But one thing. If the young American or the old man should seek you again, you must tell them the dead animals are next.”

  “The dead animals are next,” repeated Joan Hacker with a little nod. “I don’t understand it.”

  “It’s revolutionary,” the Oriental said. “A good revolutionary never asks questions, but strives to help the revolution.”

  “But why don’t we just off them?” asked Joan.

  “Because it is written that all must be quiet while the typhoon roars.”

  She looked puzzled. “I know I’m not supposed to ask questions, but what does that mean? About the typhoon?”

  “You have done well, so I will tell you. The typhoon that has now come is dangerous in any alley or room or building. That is why we stand here this sunny day in the middle of a football field. When one speaks to our typhoon, one does not send a telegram or write a letter or make a telephone call. He sends the message in the way it will be understood. A sign that another typhoon has passed. Perhaps a chip on a rock that could only be made by the same training. A fat man and a thin man to show that the extremes of weight are no problem. They are an offering, their lives are.”

&
nbsp; “And the dead animals?” Joan asked.

  “That is a secret,” said the Oriental with that same superior smile. “It is a revolutionary secret.”

  “And I’m sharing it. With a real revolutionary. Not just some talkers. I mean, I’m really in it.”

  “You are really in it,” said the quiet Oriental. There was that smile again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DR. HAROLD SMITH SAT BEFORE before the console of the computer outlet in Folcroft Sanitarium, a vast estate on the Long Island Sound, whose employees thought it to be a research center—all the employees but one. That employee—Dr. Smith—could, by pressing his computer keys, pull from its memory banks information on all types of crime, domestic and international, that could threaten the United States. With a telephone call, he could place into the field hundreds of agents to gather information for CURE, an organization they did not know existed.

  Now, as Smith sat before his console, he did not know what button to press or whom to call. He was bothered. Was he all right? Yesterday, he had thrown an ashtray at a secretary. And every call from Remo asked if he were all right. Today Remo had questioned him about the advisability of sending in other personnel to Patton.

  “Why the hell couldn’t you wait, Smitty? What’s wrong with you?”

  Well, he couldn’t wait. The world was ready to take another major step toward peace with the signing of the anti-terrorist pact, and any more terrorist action could shatter that peace. Dr. Smith had an obligation to everything he ever learned, everything he ever loved, to make sure that peace happened.

  “I’ll decide that, Remo,” he had said. “I am feeling perfectly fine.”

  And then Remo had told him the riddle. It came from Chiun, who often spoke in riddles, but did this riddle really have a meaning? A typhoon is silent when another typhoon passes? What did that mean?

  A buzzer sounded in Smith’s desk. Smith removed the special phone from the top drawer and slumped back into his soft rocking seat.

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  “Are congratulations in order?” the familiar voice asked,

  “For what, Mister President?”

  “Didn’t your special man get to the headquarters of those terrorists?”

  “Yes sir, he did. But we may not have eliminated the cause. We may just be in a dormant period with the terrorists.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am told there will be no terrorist activity because…because one typhoon is silent when another passes.”

  There was a pause on the end of the line, then: “I don’t understand that.”

  “Neither do I, sir. But it comes from one of our men familiar with this sort of thing.”

  “Hmmm. Well, at any rate, we have a hiatus?”

  “Yes sir. I believe so.”

  “Good. I’ll pass that on to our negotiator. Only four more days till the anti-terrorist conference at the U.N. With luck, it’ll be an in-and-out kind of thing. Sort of wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, and the world’s airways are safe again.”

  “Yes sir,” said Smith, annoyed at the allusion to sex. He had thought this President was above that sort of thing. Still, the President had great pressures on him in his quest for peace. Dr. Harold Smith must take a personal hand to make sure that nothing happened to foil that quest.

  · · ·

  On a United States destroyer off the Atlantic coast, Colonel Anderson was greeted with congratulations by Colonel Huang and Colonel Petrovich.

  Anderson dropped his briefcase on the green felt table in the ward room, and in a lackluster manner took the offered hands. “We’ll finish the agreements today,” he said, “then check the language with our governments and meet the day after tomorrow to finish up.”

  “There will be no problem,” said Petrovich, “now that this new terrorist mess has been cleared up.”

  “Yes,” said Huang.

  Anderson sighed and looked at both men, eye to eye, then asked: “What makes you think we’ve cleared it up?”

  Petrovich smiled. “Don’t be coy with us. You people stopped them dead. The hijacking last weekend must have been the first time you used your new system. We know it was the new wave of terrorists because they got that machine gun past your detection devices. We do have sources in your country, you know.”

  Huang nodded. “Now tell us how you did it?” he asked.

  “Would you believe me if I said I do not know how?” Anderson said.

  “No,” said Petrovich. “Not a word of it.”

  “I might suspect you were telling the truth,” said Huang, “but I wouldn’t believe a word of it.”

  Anderson shrugged. “Well, since you two aren’t going to believe me, let me tell you what you definitely won’t believe. I have been instructed by my superiors to tell you this so you will be aware of what we are facing. I get it from the highest authority that this terrorist force is dormant. Only dormant, because something similar to it is functioning. Now hold on. Don’t laugh so hard. This is what I was told. I was told that one typhoon is quiet when another typhoon passes.”

  Petrovich. guffawed and slapped the table. He looked to Huang for support, but there was none. Colonel Huang was not smiling.

  “The image you used was quiet typhoons?” he questioned softly.

  Anderson nodded and even he smiled. But Huang did not smile, not even when the last few technical points on the accords were reached, not even when all three shook hands and congratulated themselves on a job well done, and separated amidst promises to meet two days hence with approvals on the language for the anti-terrorist pact

  Huang remained glum, even onto the plane to Canada, where he was to meet with his government’s top political officer. On the flight he did some calculating, namely whether to risk his career by relaying a fairy tale, an old tool of the Chinese emperors to create fear in their armies. Colonel Huang was not so far beyond reproach that he could relay what he suspected with impunity.

  Huang gazed into the cloudless blue sky.

  One typhoon is silent when another typhoon passes, he thought. Yes, he remembered. He remembered very well. There was a village in Korea from which the greatest assassins in the world came. These assassins were employed by the emperors to keep the army in line. It was an old Chinese custom to have others do your fighting for you. The Revolution ended that. The Chinese did their own fighting now.

  But in the olden times, emperors played enemies off against each other, and hired their real fighting men. And the men they hired knew that there was another force that would destroy them, should they fail to serve faithfully.

  What was that village’s name? It was in the friendly part of Korea. On the water facing China. Sinanju. That was it. Sinanju. The assassins of Sinanju—and the greatest were the Masters of Sinanju, one master each lifetime.

  He had once visited the museum and gallery in the heart of what was once the Forbidden City. And there in a glass case was a seven-foot sword, and the legend read that it had been wielded by the Master of Sinanju. Not long ago, Peking had buzzed with the rumors that the Premier’s life had been saved by just such a Master, using that very sword.

  He had first heard of Sinanju from his grandfather, when Huang was a very small boy. He had asked what would happen if one assassin from Sinanju should take up arms in opposition to another assassin from Sinanju. His grandfather had told him that one typhoon is silent when another passes.

  Young Huang thought about that, then asked what would happen if the other typhoon was not silent.

  “Then stay away from the dead animals for no mortal can survive that holocaust,” his grandfather had said. And when Huang had complained that he did not understand the answer, his grandfather would only say: “Thus was it written.”

  Of course, his grandfather was an oppressor of the peasants and an enemy of the people and naturally he would have a vested interest in peddling reactionary myths.

  But today, the masses had exploded all the reactionary myths. This was a
new China and Colonel Huang was part of it. He would stay part of it. He would not repeat the silly reactionary fairy tale to the political officer he would meet in Canada.

  But as he looked into the blue sky, Colonel Huang wondered just now much mystery remained beyond the ken of Chairman Mao’s little red book.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “JUST LOOK AT THIS PLACE, will you? Just look at this place.”

  The buxom redhead, wearing only a gray Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, was near tears, so Remo looked at the place. It was a mess. The small dormitory room was strewn with torn papers. Pages ripped from books littered the desk and the bed. Broken covers of books were everywhere.

  “What happened?” Remo asked.

  “That Joan did it,” the girl said bitterly. “She comes back up here, as high and mighty as you please, and announces, mind you, announces, that she is joining the fucking revolutionary army, and leaving this fucking school, and I can go fuck myself, and then I went out of the room for a minute and when I came back, it looked like this and she was fucking marching out”

  “Where’d she go?” Remo asked.

  “She told me she was ripping off the pig college’s books so that they couldn’t poison anyone else’s mind with their Fascist lies,” the redhead said, ignoring Remo. She stood in the middle of the floor, stamping her feet like an angry child, and as her bare feet hit the uncarpeted floor, her breasts jiggled.

  “But where’d she go?”

  “And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were just her books, but they were mine too. And now I’m going to have to pay for them. The bitch.”

  “Oh, the bitch,” Remo agreed.

  “The dirty bitch.”

  “Oh, the dirty bitch,” Remo agreed.

  “She said she was going to New York City.”

  “Oh, the dirty bitch is going to New York City,” Remo said. “But where in New York City?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. Look what she did to my room. I hope that toothache of hers abscesses her whole fucking head.”

  “I’ll help you straighten up,” Remo said.

  “Would you? Say, that’s really nice of you. You wouldn’t want to ball, would you? I’ve got body paints we can play with.”