Time Trial td-53

by Warren Murphy

  "We could be in U-Haul," Chiun said loftily.

  "That's Utah, and we're not there."

  "How do you know?"

  Just then a sound like an atomic blast roared behind them and spread to crack the air all around them.

  "Because of that," Remo said. He searched the sky. After a moment, he pointed upward, squinting. "Look there." High overhead, standing out against the blue sky, was a small black object. It rose in a wake of deafening noise until it disappeared. "We're near Edwards Air Force Base," Remo said. "They test experimental aircraft here. See? That must be one of them."

  "One of many unsuccessful experiments, I imagine," Chiun sniffed. He had ridden in experimental government aircraft. As far as he was concerned, no vehicle that did not offer feature-length movies was worth its tailwind.

  "You don't mean unsuccessful, Little Father. You mean unenjoyable."

  "I do not mean unsuccessful?"

  "No," Remo said.

  "Then why is that machine falling?"

  The black speck appeared to be growing larger. There was no sound.

  "Maybe they turned the engines off," Remo offered. As the object tumbled downward, it began to take on a shape— angular, with projectiles, and two flat, triangular wings spinning in a corkscrew as the craft raced toward earth.

  Another object, much smaller, popped out of the plummeting aircraft and continued its own descent parallel to the plane's.

  "The pilot," Remo said. "He's bailing out." A thin stream of what looked like fluid snaked out of the pilot's back and streamed above him for long seconds as the man fell.

  "Open it," Remo shouted. "Open the parachute!"

  "He may have thought of that himself," Chiun said dryly.

  "He's got a streamer," Remo whispered. Then, in a flash of light and sound, the plane exploded in midair, the shock waves sending the falling pilot hurtling through the sky, his suit in flames.

  Remo ran instinctively with the man, following his crazy trajectory. The pilot was close enough to hear now. He had removed his helmet and was screaming. He was falling end over end, the flames lapping at his legs, his hands shielding his face from the fire he was unable to control.

  "Find your center," Chiun said quietly, stepping aside. His criticism of Remo was for practice, for the endless exercises Remo was expected to perform. If he did them perfectly, Chiun still found something to criticize because perfection did not grow from praise. And perfection one time was not enough. Through the years of Remo's arduous training, the old man had made him repeat the exercises again and again, until they were perfect, after they were perfect, and after they had been perfect every time, because he knew that when it became necessary for Remo to use his skills, perfection was required. The first time.

  Remo was balanced on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight as his eyes followed the falling body. Then, when the burning pilot was a hundred feet above ground, Remo closed his eyes.

  Chiun had taught him that the way of Sinanju was to make one's body one with its surroundings, to feel the space around objects rather than see those objects. It was how the Masters of Sinanju had been able to move, silently, through the ages of man's civilization, without disturbing even the dry leaves beneath their feet, and how they controlled their senses and involuntary functions. They were their environment.

  And now Remo, behind his eyes, became the air parting for the panicked figure that fell through it, became the fire on the man's clothes, became the man himself, with his jerking muscles and the terror that tore through him, making his balance erratic. Remo was all of these things, and so when he began his slow, crouching spin upward, preparing for the spring that would propel him off the ground and bring him back again, his eyes were closed, his muscles relaxed, his mind unthinking, fully concentrating, open yet filled. He sprang out of the coil in perfect balance, seeming to lift off the ground. Then, just before the pilot would have smashed to earth, Remo encircled him with both arms and carried him in the spin downward with him, breaking the momentum of the fall. He settled softly on the sandy ground, leaving only two circles where his feet had touched.

  Chiun was with him at the moment when he set the pilot down, tearing off the man's burning clothes with one swift incision from the fingernail of his index finger. In less than a second the fire was out and the man lay on the ground. His skin was reddened but not charred, and no bones were broken.

  "I— I can't believe it," the pilot said.

  "Don't. You never saw us, okay? Let's get out of here," Remo said to Chiun.

  "But you saved my life."

  "Okay. So now you can save mine. Just keep quiet about this."

  The pilot looked over the two strange men. One was an Oriental in full regalia. He was less than five feet tall and looked a hundred years old. The other was a good-looking young white man in a T-shirt. Nothing exceptional about him except for his wrists, which were unusually thick. "You two on the run from the law or something?"

  Remo winked and made a show of picking his teeth.

  The pilot smiled. "Well, I don't know what your secret is, but it's safe with me. Thanks a million. My wife's in the hospital having a kid today. I don't know what she would do if I bought the old farm now. She promised me a boy."

  In the distance, they heard the approaching sirens of a rescue squad. "Good for you, champ," Remo said, patting the pilot gently on the shoulder. "Have a good life."

  "Hey, wait..." The pilot pressed himself onto his elbows to see behind him. The old man and the guy with the thick wrists were already nearly out of sight.

  * * *

  "I suppose you know where you're going?" Chiun asked.

  Remo nodded. "Following my nose."

  "My nose senses nothing but the repugnant odor of chickens boiled in oil," Chiun said distastefully.

  "Bingo. A fried chicken joint. That means a town. Motels are in towns. That's where we're going."

  "We were progressing toward the jungle," Chiun said.

  "I've been in a jungle. You know what they say about jungles. You see one, you seen 'em all. Besides, I've got to call Smitty. I haven't talked to him in four days."

  "Surely the Emperor Smith understands that his assassins must practice their art."

  "The Emperor Smith understands that I work for him. C'mon, Chiun. We could use a night in a motel. This Boy Scout stuff is getting old fast."

  "It is you who are getting old. Old white flesh, as toneless as the underside of an octopus. This is the legacy of your race."

  "You can have the vibrating bed."

  The old man's almond eyes turned into shrewd little slits. "And cable television."

  "You've got it."

  "Also the bathtub. I will use the bathtub first."

  Remo sighed. "All right."

  "And room service. It is too much to ask one of my years to walk to his food."

  "I thought you were planning to walk us both to the jungle."

  "This is different. The stench of fried animals saps my strength."

  "I don't think motels have room service."

  Chiun stopped short. "I will not go unless I can have room service."

  "All right, already," Remo said. "We'll get room service."

  Twenty minutes later, Chiun was lying on the vibrating bed, chuckling and singing tuneless Korean songs as the television blared at full volume and the motel reservations clerk plopped down two paper containers of plain rice and two glasses of water, for which Remo had paid him fifty dollars.

  "That it, mister?" the clerk said.

  Remo nodded, sticking his finger in his ear to block out the noise. He had dialed Smith's number at Folcroft directly, without going through the obscure telephone routings that Remo couldn't remember, and that meant he would have to speak to Smith in code, which he also couldn't remember. Something about Aunt Mildred. Aunt Mildred always figured into Smith's calls. Aunt Mildred doing something meant that Smith was to return the call within three minutes, to California. That would be the right one, bu
t what she was doing was the code. "Washing" meant Remo needed money; no point in that one. "Aunt Mildred is gone" meant the mission was accomplished. But California...

  "Yes?" Smith's lemony voice twanged on the other end of the line.

  "Uh..."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Aunt Mildred picks her nose," Remo said winsomely. "In California."

  Smith sighed. "I've been waiting for you. Keep the line open for three minutes so I can trace this call, then wait. I'll come to you."

  He arrived within twenty minutes.

  "That was fast," Remo said.

  "I wasn't at Folcroft." Smith settled down his straw fedora. He wore a three-piece suit, even though it was ninety degrees outside. "I was at an investigation that you should have been conducting." He looked testily to Remo. "Since you couldn't be reached, I had to make the preliminary inquiries myself."

  "I'm sure you made a fine assassin, Emperor," Chiun said fawningly.

  Smith gave an exasperated snort. "I an not an emperor, Chiun," he explained for the hundredth time. "This is a free country. A democracy. In a democracy—"

  Chiun was nodding and smiling broadly. "Never mind," Smith said, directing his attention back to Remo. "As a matter of fact, I was quite nearby, at the UCLA Medical Center. Your call was routed automatically to the telephone in my briefcase. While you've been vacationing, the university and the federal government have been in an uproar."

  "Some vacation," Remo said glumly. "Feeling up rocks."

  "Well, whatever you've been doing, I'm afraid I've got to cut it short. There's something you have to attend to." He fumbled in his briefcase.

  "What a shame," Remo said, smiling. "Just when I was beginning to look forward to seeing the jungle." Chiun stared at him blackly.

  "You were?" Smith looked up from his briefcase. He held a sheet of white paper in his hand.

  "Sure. I love the jungle. All those neat flies and poisonous snakes. Nothing like it. But duty calls, right, Smitty?"

  "Er— yes." He handed Remo the paper. On it was a hand-drawn map.

  Remo looked at it from several different angles. "Where's this?"

  Smith smiled faintly, the expression looking peculiar and uncomfortable on his face. "The Peten jungle of Guatemala. Quite a coincidence. You won't be disappointed, after all."

  "Thrilled," Remo said, ignoring Chiun's smug look. "Thrilled to death."

  "It marks the location of an archaeological dig begun several months ago, sponsored by the University of California. There it is," he said, pointing to the map. "About fifty miles west of Progresso, south of the Ucimacita River. The archaelogists believed they'd found the remains of an ancient Mayan temple, which the locals call the Temple of Magic.

  "Shortly after they excavated the site, though, a series of small earthquakes began disturbing the region. This, I understand, is part of the normal twenty-year cycle. The quakes weren't serious, but the archaeologists were afraid that some of the material they found in the temple would be damaged unless they could catalog it and clear it out quickly. Also, of course, the possibility of a big earthquake made them nervous. They wrote to the university requesting a second relief team to assist them, and sent along some samples of what they'd already excavated."

  "What'd they find?"

  "The usual. Pottery, that sort of thing. But quite old. The material was carbon tested at the university. It seems the samples they sent were made more than five thousand years ago."

  "An upstart temple," Chiun said, yawning. "Probably a hippo cult."

  "Hippo?" said Smith.

  "He means hippie," Remo said.

  "Oh. Listen to this," Smith said. He pulled out another sheet of paper from his briefcase. "It's a copy of the letter the archaeologists sent to the university." Holding the letter at arm's length, he read: "There is something else here— something that is without doubt the greatest find of this or any other century. I dare reveal no more until our evidence can be documented properly. But the possibility that this discovery may be destroyed utterly by earthquake or other natural causes cannot be borne. We urge you to relay our request for assistance to Doctors Diehl and Drake immediately."

  "So who's Diehl and Drake?"

  "Richard Diehl and Elizabeth Drake, the two most prominent archaeologists at the university. Both have written seminal works about the Mayan civilization. When they saw the material the expedition team sent, they left for the site right away."

  "Think you could get to the point?" Remo asked wearily.

  "The point is, when Diehl and Drake arrived, every member of the first archaeological team had been murdered."

  "By rival archaeologists?"

  "That was Diehl's first guess. From the mysterious letter the first team sent, he figured that they'd discovered something really rare— rare enough that someone else would kill them for it. But then, shortly after they arrived, Diehl and Drake themselves were ambushed." He paused, looking embarrassed.

  "And?"

  "I should explain first that I've just come from seeing Diehl. He's in the hospital, being treated for shock and exhaustion, and not quite coherent. He was the only one to survive the expedition."

  "What's he sayng? That he was attacked by little men from Mars?"

  "Not far from it, actually. He claims that the men who attacked the second expedition were definitely Indians of the variety found in Central America. Where his story gets hard to swallow is in the matter of weapons."

  "Some Indian weapons are quite unusual," Chiun offered helpfully. "Curare-tipped spears, ropes weighted by knotted stones..."

  "He claims they were carrying laser weapons," Smith said, flushing slightly.

  Remo's eyebrows arched amusement. "Lasers? What were these guys carrying in their canteens?"

  "If Dr. Diehl weren't the respected scholar he is, his observations would be dismissed out of hand," Smith said. "But he seems to be lucid on every point. He says that during the ambush, an earthquake of some magnitude occurred, trapping his associate, Dr. Drake, and some of the attackers. He used the opportunity to escape. He claims to be the only member of the team who wasn't killed.

  "At Progresso, the town nearest the site, he notified the Red Cross. They sent a rescue helicopter. The helicopter sent one transmission, acknowledging that the rescue team had located the site, and then the transmission became garbled. The radio man on duty thinks the transmission included something about "exotic weapons." At any rate, Diehl swears that the Indians used lasers. His descriptions of the sound and sight of the weapons in operation vaguely resemble test data gathered by the military on laser weaponry, although we don't have the technology for individual laser guns. Also, the descriptions he gave of the type of wounds inflicted by the weapons match top-secret test data, too."

  "You mean he may not be lying?"

  "The CIA has been with him at the hospital for two days, and I saw him for several hours. He won't change his story."

  "Well, if what he says is true..."

  "Then he's talking about a buildup of extremely advanced weaponry in an isolated area dangerously close to the U.S. mainland," Smith said grimly.

  "A secret army?" Remo asked.

  Smith held out his hands. "An army, a military base, an espionage station... It could be anything."

  "What does the Guatemalan government say?"

  "They categorically deny the presence of any foreign military power on their territory," Smith said. "Under the circumstances, the President of the United States can't risk sending in armed troops to investigate. That's where you come in."

  "To check things out."

  "To confirm or deny Diehl's allegations. If there are laser weapons in use, we want one of them. And of course you'll do what you can to stop any possible encroachment of enemy troops toward the United States."

  Remo said, "Does it have to be a jungle?"

  "You were looking forward to going a few minutes ago," Smith said, standing up. "You'll leave tomorrow morning on a commercial flight to
Guatemala City. After that, you'll have to make your own way. A large part of your journey will be on foot, I'm afraid."

  "Excellent," Chiun said. "He can use the exercise."

  ?Chapter Three

  There was something about the jacaranda tree that looked familiar. Possibly because the Peten jungle was full of jacaranda trees. Possibly because the greenery in the region of Guatemala where Remo and Chiun were walking had been growing, steadily and uninterrupted, for the past 20 million years and offered barely enough light at four o'clock in the afternoon to see two feet in front of them. Possibly because Remo and Chiun walked without leaving tracks.

  If they had been ordinary men, the damp, overgrown earth beneath their feet would have been crumpled and squashed, and their every move would have left marks. But the teachings of Sinanju had ingrained in both the old Oriental and the young American an instinct for balance that permitted them to move without a trace.

  So it took Remo several hours to realize that they had been traveling in a continuous circle around the familiar looking jacaranda.

  "Balls," said Remo, who was unwise in the ways of philosophical thought.

  "At last," said Chiun, who was not.

  Remo looked, stony faced, to the old man. "You knew we were walking in a circle?"

  "Please," Chiun said wearily. "How often must one fall from the hump of a horse to realize he is riding a camel?"

  "Huh?"

  "The scent of the river. It grows weaker and stronger as one walks toward and away from it. The shadows on the leaves move with direction as well as time. There were a hundred signs pointing the way to our destination. A thousand clues..."

  "And one map," Remo added, "which you gave to the stewardess on the plane."

  "It was not the map I gave the lovely lady who recognized the Master of Sinanju and was concerned for his privacy."

  The Pan Am stew's concern for Chiun's privacy centered around a Barbra Streisand movie being shown in the cabin, for which several other passengers refused to sit in reverent silence. One of those passengers decided to maintain an appropriate attitude after discovering that his head had been stuffed in one of the plane's toilets. Another found the pleasures of silence when he was packed neatly into the seat cushion of the passenger immediately in front of him.