An Old Fashioned War td-68 Page 9

  Before they reached the carrier, they had to fly over the entire Sixth Fleet, which sent up planes to look them over. The American pilots flew nerve-shatteringly close.

  "Don't think about them. Don't let them bother you."

  "How can I not think about them?"

  "I'll teach you a trick. I'll teach you how to land the aircraft also."

  "But you've never flown one, you said."

  "Never," said Remo.

  "You are crazy."

  "I'm alive and I intend to stay alive. Now, the first thing you have to do is notice the sky."

  "It's filled with American planes flown by pilots who not only know how to fly by themselves but are considered the best in the world, if the Israeli pilots aren't. We are cursed with skilled enemies."

  "You're not doing what I said. Look at the sky. See the sky. Feel the clouds, feel the moisture, be the moisture, be the clouds, be the sky."

  "Yes, I can almost do that."

  "Breathe. Think about your breath. Think about breathing in and breathing out."

  "I do. It is good. Oh, it is good."

  "Of course. Now, don't think about the planes."

  "I just did."

  "Of course," said Remo.

  "I don't understand."

  "I dare you not to think about a yellow elephant. You'll think yellow elephant. But when I tell you to think about your breath, you automatically don't think about the other planes."

  "Yes, that's so."

  "Your breath is vital," said Remo. "Be with your breath," and he saw the man's shoulders slump ever so slightly, indicating the muscles were relaxing, and now the man's skills could begin to take over. Remo brought him out to the sky, out to the clouds, and when they saw the pitching, bobbing little stamp of a carrier deck beneath them, he carefully avoided talking about landing and made the deck a friend, not an object of terror.

  One of the most difficult feats in all aviation is landing on a pitching carrier deck, but the pilot was down before he knew it. Precisely before he knew it. If he had known he was landing the aircraft instead of joining the plane strapped around him to a friend whose motions he understood and felt, he would have either crashed or pulled up in panic.

  Their plane was immediately surrounded by armed Idran soldiers, but they were not hiding behind their weapons like the guards at the palace. There was something different about these men. They were anxious to grapple with anyone who dared cause trouble.

  That was what Remo had noticed about the Ojupa at Little Big Horn. It was Arieson's handiwork. He was sure of it.

  And the beauty of an aircraft carrier was that there were no dust storms. This was a manmade thing of steel corners and traps. Arieson and his strange body would not be able to escape in dust this time.

  "Ariseon. Arieson. I'm looking for Arieson," said Remo.

  "Ah, the general," said one of the soldiers.

  "Where is he?"

  "Wherever he wants to be. We never know where he is," said the soldier.

  Because he had landed in an Idran plane, Remo was accepted as one of the Idran Russian advisers. No one believed the pilot had landed it himself, being a brother Idran. They told him they had found a new way of fighting, using their courage and not machines.

  Remo searched the hangars beneath decks. He found the American captain a prisoner in his own cabin. He found marines disarmed but treated well. He found American fliers and servicemen under guard, but nowhere was Arieson.

  Finally he took the ldran soldier who had been guiding him around and said:

  "I got bad news for you. I'm an American."

  "Then die, enemy," said the Idran, and brought up his short-nosed automatic weapon, firing well and accurately right at Remo's midsection. And he was rather quick about it too, for a soldier.

  But he was still a soldier. Remo blended him into the bulkhead.

  "We're taking over this ship," he said to the marines watching.

  "These guys are tough," said the marine.

  "So are you," said Remo.

  "Damned right," said the marine.

  Remo freed the sailors the same way and then the pilots. The battle started in the main hangars and spread up to the control tower. Bodies littered the passageways. Gunfire ricocheted off the metal walls, spinning sparks and death at every level. The two sides fought from midday until midnight, when the last Idran, with his last bullet, charged at a marine with a hand grenade. The hand grenade won.

  From the loudspeaker system came a voice:

  "I love it. I love all you wonderful guys. You're my kind of men. Here's to you, valiant warriors."

  It was Arieson. Moving along the deck was like skating on oil, so thick was the blood. Most of the living could hardly stand. Remo squished up a gory stairwell. It had been carnage. This is what Chiun had meant when he referred to the butchery of war. None of the men were really in control of themselves, rather fighting their own terror and forcing themselves to function as soldiers. It was like a butcher shop.

  Arieson was laughing. Remo found him in the captain's control room.

  "Now, this is war," he said with a grin as wide as a parade.

  "And this is good-bye," said Remo.

  He didn't wait for Arieson to commit, he didn't explore, he got Arieson with the steel cabin wall behind him and put two clean blows right into his midsection, the second to catch whatever lightning move Arieson had made to escape in the dust back at Little Big Horn.

  Both blows struck.

  They met iron. But not the steel of the captain's control room. Remo found himself with his hands piercing a helmet with a red plume on top and a burnished steel chest protector.

  In Jerusalem, an archaeologist identified them for him as a helmet and cuirass prevalent in the Mediterranean for centuries before Christ. What puzzled the archaeologist was why anyone would make them new today.

  "These are brand new. Look at the forge marks. Look, some of the wax from the lost wax method is still in some of the finer scrollwork."

  "I saw that."

  "I would say these are fakes. But they use a method of manufacture that has been lost for centuries. How did you make them?"

  "I didn't," said Remo.

  "Where did you get them?"

  "A friend gave them to me."

  "What could have made these holes in them?" asked the archaeologist, examining the implosions in the burnished steel.

  "That was done by hand," said Remo.

  Back at the Hotel David, precious Poo had learned two more words in English.

  "Condominium, Bloomingdale's," said Poo. She had just met some lovely New York women who felt sorry for her that she had no Western clothes. They had bought a few rags in Jerusalem. There was a small bill for Remo. Eighteen thousand dollars.

  "How do you spend eighteen thousand dollars on clothes in a country whose main product is a submachine gun?" asked Remo.

  "I had nothing," said Poo. "I didn't even have my husband for the blessed bridal night."

  "Spend," said Remo.

  "Money can't make up for love," said Poo.

  "Since when?" said Remo.

  "Since I don't have a condominium and a charge account at Bloomingdale's," said Poo.

  Downstairs there was a message at the desk for Remo. It had come from Ireland.

  The message was:

  "I'm waiting for you, boyo."

  Remo got the American embassy to use a special line to reach Sinanju through submarines in the West Korea Bay. This with the help of Smith of course.

  "Little Father," said Remo. "Did you leave a message for me at the King David Hotel?"

  "King David was a terrible ruler. The Jews are well rid of him. Fought wars. When he could have used an assassin in the Battrsheba affair, he chose war instead. Got her husband killed in battle. And what happened? Ended up in the Bible. That's what happens when you use war instead of an assassin."

  "I take it you didn't leave the message."

  "Every moment you are not searching f
or the lost treasure, you're wasting your time. Why should I waste time with you?"

  "That's all I wanted to know. Thanks," said Remo.

  "Has Poo conceived yet?"

  "Not unless she's made it with a Hasid."

  "You're not living up to your end of the bargain," said Chiun.

  "I didn't say when I would consummate the marriage. I just said I would."

  In Belfast, as the British armored cars rolled by, keeping Catholics and Protestants from killing themselves, and as some of the heavier participants waited in jail for the British to leave so that they could get on with the murderous religious strife that had boiled along for centuries, a man in a loose gray jacket and a worn stevedore's cap sauntered into a pub, bought everyone a round of drinks, and said:

  "Here's to Hazel Thurston, long may the beloved Prime Minister of England rule over all. To your health, boys."

  Glasses flew across the bar. Some men cursed. Others drew revolvers. But the stranger just smiled. He downed his stout in a gulp and boomed a belch that could extinguish a thousand war fires on a thousand murky heaths.

  "Boyos," he said. "Would you be cursin' our beloved Prime Minister what's been hated here by both Protestant and Catholic alive to these many years? Is that what I'm hearing?"

  There was a gunshot in the Pig's Harp pub. It missed the target.

  The stranger raised a hand.

  "What are you shooting at me for if you hate her so much? Why don't you shoot her?"

  "Yer daft, man. The bitch is better protected than the bloody crown jewels, I'm sayin'."

  "So what do you do? Fire a random shot at some bobby in a soldier's uniform?"

  "We do what we want, jocko," said one of the larger men at the bar.

  "No. You don't," said the stranger. "Beggin' your pardon, me lad. You don't. Not a whit. Not a hair. Not a follicle on that pale British puss do you do harm to."

  "Do you want to step outside and say that?" the stranger was asked.

  "What for? I'm sayin' it in here."

  "Then maybe, jocko, you'll just end up with a big hole in your head right here."

  "Why not, boyo? Certainly keep you from doin' harm to Her Excellency the Prime Minister, Hazel Thurston. You can add another number to the deaths in Northern Ireland, and then go to the Maze Prison and conduct the latest in great Irish tactics. Starvin' yourself to death. Now ain't that a thing for a brave Irishman to be doin' with his body, peelin' his own flesh down to the bone so's all that's left is gauntness lookin' back at that English bitch who couldn't care less if every boyeen in Belfast gave up the ghost the same way."

  "Who are you, stranger?"

  "I'm someone who remembers the great Irish wars, when you fought with ax and sword and shield like the honorable men you always were. I'm talkin' of the blessed battle of the Boyne, where English and Irishmen fought like men. What do you do today? You invade a neighbor's living room and shoot up his dinner, along with his guests and family. What's wrong with you, boyo? Are you an Irishman or a Swede?"

  "Why are you talking about Swedes?"

  "You can't get a war out of them today if you stand on your head."

  "We don't want a war with them. We got enough war already in Belfast."

  "No. That's just the trouble, boyo. You don't," said the stranger. "If you had a war, a real war, an old-fashioned war, you'd march out to the grandest music you ever heard, and face your enemy square on one day, not three hundred and sixty-five including Christmas and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. You'd have it out. Over and done with. Winner take all and blessings to the loser. But what do you have now?"

  "We got unemployment," said one.

  "We got streets filled with glass," said another.

  "We got all the garbage of war and none of its fruits. We're left out again," said a third.

  "Right," said the stranger. "What you got to do now is get Britain out of Northern Ireland so both sides can kill each other in peace."

  "Never happen," said one.

  "We been tryin' for four hundred years."

  "You been doin' it wrong," said the stranger. "You been shootin' here and shootin' there, when you only need to get one lady."

  "Miss Hazel Thurston," yelled one of the men at the end of the bar.

  "Exactly," said the stranger.

  "You can't get near her."

  "Who'd want to?" said another.

  "I not only know how you can get to her, but where you could put her until the bloody British get their bloody arses off true Irish soil."

  "You make a lot of talk, stranger. Let's see you do it."

  "Well, come with me and I will," said the stranger.

  "One last drink."

  "You've had your last drink. Now you're going to have yourselves a British prime minister," said the stranger. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name's Arieson."

  "That's hardly a McGillicuddy or an O'Dowd."

  "It's a fine old name," said the stranger. "You'll learn to love me. Most men do, but they won't admit it nowadays."

  Protecting the Prime Minister of England were not only Scotland Yard and several branches of British intelligence, but a group of terrorist experts who surrounded this great lady with a shield that had never been broken. It was they who, in the last minute, moved her from a hotel room downstairs to the dining room just before her bedroom blew up. What they had, and what the terrorists did not know, was a simple little code that three times out of five could pick up a terrorist target.

  It had come from the same great minds that had cracked the German codes in the first days of the Second World War.

  It had come from the simple and brilliant British logic that had produced so much good reason in the world. While the terrorist acts might appear random, most were brutally logical and planned from a central source: a KGB office in Moscow.

  Despite all the various grievances on different continents in different civilizations, if one simply stepped back from the local complaints and looked at the broad picture, every international terrorist organization was directed against Western interests. None was directed against Communist-bloc countries, where grievances were often greater.

  It was a war directed against the populations of the West.

  Given that one office in the KGB directed this worldwide network, or at least trained its leaders, then certain techniques had to be standard. There had to be an operational fingerprint. What would appear to be random acts were not.

  Knowing there had to be a pattern, the men of British special intelligence formed a broad picture of every incident and put it on a graph, and almost like a production chart did they see a pattern emerge, especially for the IRA, since it was taken over by ostensibly radical Marxists not aligned with Russia.

  While they could not protect every target without giving their knowledge away, this special group could most certainly protect the royal family and the Prime Minister.

  Thus, when Prime Minister Hazel Thurston's bedroom was about to be blown up, they could move her out of it.

  Thus, this day while the Prime Minister was taking a short vacation near Bath and its supposedly curative waters, they detoured her party off a main road.

  "Another attack?" asked Prime Minister Thurston. She was pale, with a proud, almost aristocratic face, despite the fact she had been born of middle-class merchants in the shires.

  Her special aide looked at his watch.

  "I would estimate within two minutes on the normal route," he said.

  "You have it down that well?" she asked.

  "Sometimes," he said with classic British calm. Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, while the Prime Minister's little protected caravan cruised a narrow back road between golden fields, under a rare and blessed British sun, a muffled boom was heard far off on the main highway.

  "I suppose that's them," she said.

  "Should be," said her intelligence aide.

  "I do hope no one was hurt," she said, and went back to her papers. This was sheep country, and
on the back roads, as they had for centuries, the British herders moved their flocks and slowed traffic. The sheep took priority over Rolls-Royces-even government Rolls-Royces.

  A herder, his tweed cap weathered by sun and rain, saw who was being delayed, and with his crook in hand came over to the large black car to apologize.

  Hazel Thurston smiled. This was the salt of England. The good farmer stock. Did their work. Kept their peace, and when called on, always filled the ranks of Britain's armies. She had known this sort of men from her father's store. Not a one of them was not good for what he owed.

  She knew her people and they knew her. The Prime Minister lowered her window. As the herder bent down, so did his staff. It had an opening in the top, rather curious when one looked at it, because this staff happened to have rifling. The herder cleared up the puzzle by explaining that if the British bitch didn't do exactly as he said, a more than wee little bullet was going to come out of the barrel of that staff and blow her bloody British brains all over her intelligence chaps and her official Rolls-Royce.

  Chapter 7

  "You'll never get away with it," said the Prime Minister. "You simply can't hide a British prime minister on English soil. There aren't places to hide. Now, if you surrender this moment, I will be lenient."

  Hazel Thurston looked around the spacious room. It was forty feet by forty feet, with clean stone walls on every side. It had once had windows, but these were sealed by something dark. In fact, the only light came from a single light bulb powered by a generator. It was dank, but the whole country was dank at this time of year. She knew generally where they were, just outside Bath. She had clocked it. They hadn't traveled more than fifteen minutes. And people at the old stone Roman aqueduct nearby had waved to her just before the herder had stuck that gun in her face and blindfolded her.

  There was absolutely no way they could hide her within fifteen minutes of a British city. It could not be done.

  Already, she and her intelligence aide knew, all traffic in the area was being stopped and searched. Anyone who was not certain to belong in the area was being brought in for questioning.

  The intelligence people would search every room, closet, alley, ash can, cellar, attic, belfry, and pew within fifty miles.

  "It's probably only minutes before our chaps get here," said the Prime Minister. "So I am giving you a last chance to be easy on yourself."