Union Bust td-7

by Warren Murphy

  "Because a scheduled flight is like an elevator. In something like this it functions like a stationary room that keeps you locked in. Take my word. This is best."

  "I'm not afraid of Gene, darling."

  "I am. Move." Remo kissed Chris on the cheek and nodded to the cab driver. He made obvious a check of the cabbie's identification, not that he would remember it. He just wanted the man to believe that he would be remembered and vulnerable if anything should happen to the girl.

  April 17 was a hot day in Chicago, the muggy, skin-soaking kind of morning that makes you feel you've worked a full day when you get up. Remo hadn't slept. He could make do with twenty minutes rather easily, and with this intention he headed back to his hotel.

  He did not get rest. As he entered the marble-floored lobby, he saw a man ease a rifle barrel in his direction. Automatically he did not respond to this man who had taken the rifle out of a golf bag leaning against a lobby sofa. As he had been trained to do, he first checked—in an instant—the entire pattern he was in. Other guns came out. From suitcases, from a carton, from behind the registration clerk's desk. Ambush.

  Remo would work it left to right. Not bothering to feint, he was into a rugged man who was squeezing the trigger on a Mauser. The Mauser did not fire. It was jammed up into the solar plexus, taking part of a lung with it. The man vomited his lungs, and Remo continued to work right so that his being in the right firing pattern prevented the center and left from getting him without shooting into their own men.

  A woman screamed. A porter jumped for cover, catching a wayward bullet in the throat. Two young children huddled against a sofa. Remo would have to work the line of fire away from the children. But if he could not, whoever might have fired the shots that injured the youngsters would not die quickly.

  The right side was too bunched. Amateurs. Remo thumbed a side of a head, and interior-attacked a thin man with a .357 Magnum. It was held too close to the body, as though the man were working a snub-nose at close quarters. The trigger finger was squeezing off a shot so the gun went first. With a wrist. Then the head caved in and Remo was moving towards the center, going under a rifle line to come up under it when a shot cracked passed his head. He felt it in his hair.

  Double layer. Remo finished the driver through the rifleman, taking off his testicles. The man would be stunned until dead. He spun back to where the second level of fire came from, another bullet narrowly missing him from the center. He was now in cross fire. Very stupid move on his part.

  He quickly put a post between him and center left, taking that line into the dining room, whence the second-level fire came.

  They were using tables here as cover. One man got a table top, tablecloth and all, in his mouth. Down through a vertebra. A nervous, wildly chattering machine gun ended its chirp with the barrel in its user's mouth, still firing from a trigger finger that could no longer receive messages to stop. The bullets took skull fragments and brain into the ceiling.

  Remo's body wove and jerk-ran into a free space that suddenly had a bullet in it, taking flesh from Remo's right side. Minor wound.

  Without thinking, Remo reacted. His body reacted as it had been taught to react in the painful, pressing hours of training, reacted as Chiun had taught it despite Remo's protests, despite Remo's conscious begging for surcease, despite the long hours and high temperatures.

  As it had been taught and no other way. Scarlet Ribbon for the three times three times three. It was not only the only defence, but against this combination it was invincible. Back toward the center he moved, keeping lines of fire within the ambush itself. He did not attack men anymore because that would remove them, and the Ribbon depended upon the men to destroy themselves, like using the greater mass of a body against itself.

  He brushed the center and spun back, careful not to let any close shots, which were the easiest to avoid, get him. The distant, more dangerous, shots were now no worry because there would be other men in their line.

  With incredible, balanced speed, Remo, like a darting flash of light brought down from the heavens, spun his ribbon in the three-layered defence. Guns silenced when the speeding body disappeared among other men of the ambush, then resumed in the fleeting second he was visible. Wild shots. Hesitant shots. The target was no longer the center of the ambush. The target was part of it.

  Through the registration desk, back up through the triple layer left, over the staircase, keeping close and unhittable to the confused and now panicked men, Remo worked to third layer center, second layer center, picked off a first layer center only for the rebound back to third layer right.

  Bullets cracked into light fixtures spraying the lobby with a shower of glass. Mindless screaming and yelling whipped the panic still further. An elevator door opened and a maid was cut in two by a shotgun blast. On the final spin of the ribbon, Remo took care of the man who fired the shotgun. He creased the man's eyes with his fingernails, leaving two blood-gushing sockets in the skull.

  Then fast up the middle, picking up the two children from the couch, then a reverse into the dining room, out again and behind the third layer that did not know he had penetrated up the steps, and wait. Standing on the steps, waiting. The gunfire continued. The two children stared at him, confused.

  What had happened was natural. Instead of acting like professionals, the men in the parts of the ambush catching fire, returned it. The men were fighting for their lives against each other. The Scarlet Ribbon had woven the blood curse of fear and confusion into the ambush. It would never recover. If Remo wished, he could wait to the last spurts of firing, and move in for the final kill. But that was not his purpose. The only thing he wanted from the ambush was to get through it alive.

  The little girl looked stunned. The boy was smiling.

  "Bang, bang," said the boy. "Bang, bang."

  "Your mommy and daddy around here?" asked Remo.

  "They're on the third floor. They told us to play in the lobby."

  "Well you go back up to your parents' room."

  "They said we shouldn't come back until 9.30," said the girl.

  "Bang, bang," said the boy.

  "You can't go downstairs again."

  Rifle fire cracked sporadically in the hallway. Sounds of far-off sirens could be heard filtering into the stairway where Remo stood with the two children.

  "All right. But would you come with us?" said the girl.

  "I'll come with you."

  "And tell my mommy and daddy that we can't play in the lobby."

  "I'll do that.'"

  "And tell them we didn't do the trouble downstairs."

  "I'll do that."

  "And give us a dollar."

  "Why give you a dollar?"

  "Well, a dollar would be nice, too."

  "I'll give you a quarter," said Remo. "A nice shiny quarter."

  "I'd rather have a dirty old dollar."

  Remo brought the two youngsters to their parents' room. His shirt was bloody and his pants were beginning to darken. It was uncomfortable, but not serious.

  The father opened the door. He was bleary-eyed, a face of anguish, a face of alcohol-damaged brain cells, the damaging process of which was pleasant, and the results painful.

  "What trouble did you kids cause now?"

  "They didn't cause any trouble, sir. Some madmen went amok with guns downstairs, and your children might have been killed."

  "I didn't know," said the man. He tied the terrycloth belt around his terrycloth robe. "Are they all right? Are you all right?"

  "Yes. I got nicked. You know us innocent passersby. Always getting hurt."

  "Terrible what's happening to America these days. Is it safe to go downstairs?"

  Remo listened. The gunfire had stopped. The police were probably flooding the lobby now. The sirens were about that much time away when he first heard them.

  "Yes. But I'd advise you to go back to sleep. It's not a pretty sight."

  "Yeah, thanks. C'mon in, kids."

  "Bang, bang
," said the little boy.

  "Shut up," said the father.

  "What is it dear?" came a woman's voice.

  "Some trouble in the lobby'.

  "Those kids are gonna get it," yelled the woman.

  "Not their fault," said the father shutting the door.

  Remo walked up the flights to his floor. The blood flow was stemming now, coagulating as it should. The shirt became sticky. When he entered the suite, Chiun was asleep by the window, lying on his floor mat, curled like a fetus in peaceful repose, his face to the window.

  "You're wounded," he said without turning around, without the twitch of body to indicate awakeness. He was sleeping and his mind registered sounds, and he was quietly awake in an instant, trained since childhood to awake immediately upon the entrance of a strange sound and trained to awake in such a manner as to avoid giving any indications that he was awake. It was many of the little advantages that made up the Master of Sinanju, supreme teacher of the martial arts, respected leader of the small Korean village that depended on his rented services for its financial survival.

  "Not serious," said Remo.

  "Every wound is serious. A sneeze is serious. Wash it clean and rest."

  "Yes, little father."

  "How did it go?"

  "Not too well."

  "It went well enough. I felt vibrations of rifle fire through the floor."

  "Oh that. Yeah it was a three, three, three that took a Scarlet Ribbon."

  "Why are you wounded?"

  "I started the Ribbon late."

  "Never before," said Chiun, "has so much been given to so few who used it so little. I might as well give my instructions to walls as to a white man."

  "All right. All right. I'm wounded. Lay off."

  "Wounded. A minor flesh wound, and we make it into the great tragedy. We have more important problems. You must rest. We will flee soon."

  "Run?"

  "That is the usual word in the English language tor run, is it not?"

  "I can't go, Chiun. I have work. We can't run."

  "You are talking silliness and I am trying to rest."

  "What happened at the building, Chiun?" Remo asked.

  "What happened at the building is why we must run."

  Dr. Harold Smith got the report late in the morning, at 10.12. The phone line was activated ever hour at twelve minutes past the hour. From 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time until 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, this was done with direct link to Smith. If he were not in his office, a tape recording would be accepted. Into this tape recording Remo would read the message as best he could in medical terms. Thus, if the message were discovered by others, it would only be a doctor reading in an odd hour report.

  At 10.12 when the buzzer on his phone rang, Smith knew from the very first words that the plan would be the extreme one.

  "My alternate plan didn't work," came Remo's voice.

  "All right," said Dr. Smith. "You know what to do."

  "Yeah."

  And that was it. The phone was dead, and four of the nation's leading labour leaders were going to die.

  "Damn," said Dr. Smith. "Damn."

  If the system could not tolerate collective bargaining, then maybe the American system was just false. Maybe the patch-up work CURE did only delayed the final outcome. Maybe business and labour were supposed to function as warring, hostile giants, with the public whipsawed in between. After all, Dr. Smith knew, business had a history of doing just what the unions were trying to do now. It was called cornering the market, and that was considered the height of business acumen. Why should the unions not be allowed to do the same?

  Dr. Smith spun to view Long Island Sound, deep and green and going far out into the Atlantic. Perhaps there should be a sign, "You are leaving the Sound. Now entering the Atlantic." But there were no signs, either on the Sound or in life. It was wrong for the unions to blackmail the nation like this, just as it was wrong for businessmen to corner the market in a certain commodity and drive up its prices. He must begin to work the agency towards stopping that sort of crime. And so, staring at Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold Smith planned to enact a piece of American legislation. Without votes. Without writing. Without immediate public knowledge. But he would enact it somehow, someday: it would be illegal for corporations to corner the market and drive up the price of food. And he would not stop at using 'The Destroyer," just as he had not hesitated to use him today.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Remo slipped the wrapped crowbar with Bludner's fingerprints on it into the back of his pants. Then he put his shirt over it, and a jacket over that. He surrounded the crowbar with muscle, cushioning it between his shoulder blades, keeping the metal rod positioned on top and hidden behind the jacket. The forked end of the crowbar nestled right behind his reproductive organs, following the curve of his body. An X-ray would have shown a man sitting on a curved bar.

  A good tap on his back would, Remo knew, cause him great pain. He walked somewhat stiffly to the door of his hotel suite.

  "I'll be back."

  "You are going to that building?" Chiun said in caution.

  "No," said Remo.

  "Good. When you return I will tell you why we must run. If I did not have to stay here and watch over an impetuous youth," said Chiun. 'I would leave now. It is no matter, however. We will leave later, after you expend your wasted energy."

  "It will not be wasted, little father."

  "It will be wasted, but feel free to indulge yourself. Amuse yourself."

  "This is not amusement, little father."

  "It is not work, Remo. It is not productive, mature work."

  "I am going to set things right which must be set right."

  "You are going to indulge yourself in wasted effort. Goodnight."

  Remo exhaled his frustration. One did not reason with Chiun. For all his wisdom he could not know the threat of four unions joining into one. For all his wisdom he was wrong this morning.

  The lobby was aswarm with police, newspapermen, photographers, TV cameras. The ambulance drivers had left, most of them headed for morgues.

  Rocco 'the Pig' Pigarello was perspiring under the television lights. His arm was bandaged, undoubtedly the result of a bullet from one of his own men.

  "Yeah. These crazy men were shooting at us for no reason. It was an assault against organized labour by gangsters."

  "Mr. Pigarello, police say all the injured and dead were union men." The newscaster held a microphone to Pigarello's face.

  "Dat's right. We had no way to defend ourselves. There must have been twenty, maybe thirty wid guns."

  "Thank you, Mr. Pigarello," said the television newscaster. He turned to his cameraman.

  "That was Rocco Pigarello, a delegate to the International Brotherhood of Drivers' convention here in Chicago, a union that has been severely hurt today in an outburst of senseless violence."

  Remo watched Pigarello's eyes. They spotted him. The Pig went to a police captain. He shot Remo a furtive glance. Remo smiled at the Pig. The Pig suddenly forgot what he was going to say to the captain, and Remo walked from the hotel out into the busy morning street through a corridor of police barricades. People gawked over the barricades, they leaned from windows across the street, they stood on tiptoes on the opposite sidewalk.

  A bright blue Illinois sky covered it all—with, of course, a layer of air pollution sandwiched in between. Remo hailed a cab to the convention hall.

  The driver talked about the horrible killings in the hotel, how Chicago wasn't safe anymore, and how everything would be fine if only the Blacks left Chicago.

  "Blacks weren't involved," said Remo.

  "So in this one incident," said the driver, "they weren't involved. Don't tell me that if we didn't have coloureds the crime rate wouldn't drop."

  "It would drop even faster if we didn't have people," said Remo.

  The convention hall was, strangely, all but deserted. No uniformed guards to take delegates' tickets, no vendors preparing for
special bars with the early tubs of ice, no last-minute scurrying of workers giving the microphone system a last-minute check. No one was even placing the day's agenda on the seats as they had done every day since Monday.

  Even the gates were locked. At the third gate, Remo decided to stop looking for someone to let him in. He walked in, right through the crowd-proof, locked gate. His footsteps echoed down the dark, deserted corridors that smelled freshly cleaned. The stands exuded a faint yesterday's-beer odour. The air was cool yet without freshness. A lone worker stood on a ladder installing a light bulb. Remo stayed in the shadows enough not to be recognized but not enough to appear suspicious.

  "Hi," Remo said, walking on as though he belonged in the deserted corridor.

  "Hi," said the workman.

  Remo scampered up to the top tier and paused. He was two aisles away. The banner was still and flat.

  "Welcome, International Brotherhood of Drivers." Not a ripple. The crowds would change that. The body heat would change that. Yet even with no one inside the huge structure, it should get some air currents. Perhaps too many doors and windows were closed on the outside. Remo ducked back into the corridor and came out perfect. Fifty feet above him was the joint of the beam that stretched across the huge dome of the hall. He eased the crowbar from the back of his pants with the protective paper still on it. An edge of the paper was smeared with his blood. The wound had coagulated, but apparently not fast enough to keep the paper dry. He checked the crowbar, looking for the glistening hint of his own blood. He did not want blood on the crowbar to complicate things. It should be a very simple crime. Abe 'Crowbar' Bludner had somehow un-riveted the beam and was stupid enough to leave the crowbar. The police, desperately in need of a suspect for the murder of four union officials, would gratefully and rapidly pick Bludner. Blood would be a minor complication that might set their minds to working on other angles. Not that he would be implicated, but as Chiun had said, fools and children take chances.

  "It is the height of arrogance to fling your chances of survival into the lap of the goddess of fate, demanding that she perform what you will not. This arrogance is always punished."

  Remo eased out of his shoes. He rewrapped the crowbar. There was no blood. He leaped to a small overhang and held with one hand. Working with feet forward and one hand behind it, he slithered up the curved wall. His free hand was used as a foot now because two feet were better for grabbing than one free hand. In the other hand was the evidence against Bludner.