The Final Reel td-116

by Warren Murphy

  Reggio's reward was that he never saw coming the blow that severed his brain from his spinal column.

  WHEN REMO STEPPED outside a moment later, a frantic Hank Bindle met him at the door.

  "The monkeys!" Bindle cried. "They're not monkeys! They're people!"

  "So's Soylent Green," Remo said, heading for the jeep.

  Bindle leaped before him, eyes pleading. "You've got to do something!"

  "What is your problem?" Remo asked, annoyed.

  "I have to have my hands," Bruce Marmelstein groaned from the nearby jeep, unmindful of the others. He sat with the rear door open, his fingers gripping the damp remnants of paperwork. "People without hands don't get invited to the Oscars. I'll never be on ET. again. How will I floss?"

  Bindle and Remo ignored him.

  "Tom Roberts and Susan Saranrap are in the monkey house!" Bindle explained rapidly.

  "Good. They'll be happier with their own kind," Remo said with an indifferent shrug. He turned to the jeep.

  "You don't understand," Bindle pleaded, grabbing his arm. "Without Mr. Koala's signature on those papers, we're trapped." He pointed to the scraps of paper in Marmelstein's hands. "We have to make The Movie. And we can't make a movie without our stars."

  "Tell me why I should even care about you or your dippy movie." Remo challenged.

  "Chiun's script," Marmelstein ventured softly from the back seat of the car.

  "What?" Bindle said, wheeling on his partner. Remo merely closed his eyes. He knew already where this was heading.

  Marmelstein's eyes slowly came back into focus. Like a patient suddenly waking from a long coma. "His friend's script," Marmelstein explained to Bindle.

  "Yeah," Hank Bindle said to Bruce Marmelstein. "Yeah!" he repeated, spinning back to Remo. "If you can save our stars, I promise you we'll give serious consideration to Mr. Chiun's screenplay."

  "I thought you were already doing that," Remo said, peeved.

  "We tell that to everybody." Marmelstein waved dismissively, rising from the back seat. He was alert now, his eyes full of cunning.

  "To everybody," Bindle echoed.

  "But we'll really look at his screenplay," Marmelstein promised.

  "Really, really," Bindle agreed.

  Remo's shoulders slumped. He knew without owning a timepiece precisely what time it was. His internal watch was more accurate than an atomic clock. It was not yet too late.

  Omay's plan was finished. They now had an edge. Remo knew exactly what he was up against in California. And Chiun would not have even arrived in Greece yet, let alone Ebla. There was still time.

  "You better appreciate this, Chiun," he muttered. Without another word he ran down the path toward the monkey house.

  Chapter 30

  When the order came down the chain of command at Pearl Harbor that Captain Stewart Sanger's U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat was to be stripped of its 20mm M-61 cannon and attendant rounds of ammunition, as well as the four recessed Sidewinder missiles in its wing pallets, Sanger thought that it was a bizarre joke. When he found out that he would be flying into Israel in his newly unarmed aircraft, the joke that had not been very funny to begin with lost every last trace of humor.

  "That's a damn war zone," he sputtered to his commanding officer.

  "I'm aware of that, Captain. Good luck."

  That was it. His load had been lightened. Speed was his only priority. He had his orders and he was expected to carry them out.

  When the black government car screeched onto the dock next to the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan carrying the special passenger for whom speed was a priority over defense, the idea that this was all a joke reasserted itself.

  "Are you shittin' me?" Captain Sanger asked no one in particular.

  The man who was hustled up the gangplank was old enough to be Methuselah's grandfather. Hell, his great-great-grandfather. The walnut-hued skin stretched across his bald head was so thin that Captain Sanger swore he could see skull. His eyes were impenetrable slits. He wore a bright purple kimono and an unhappy scowl. The old man hurried up to the waiting F-14.

  "You are the pilot?" the old man asked in a squeaky voice.

  "Yes, sir," Sanger replied, not sure whether or not he should smile at the G-men who accompanied the old Asian. They seemed as confused as the Navy captain.

  "I will consider you for a role in an upcoming major motion picture if you get me to our destination and back as quickly as possible," the old man said.

  Without another word he scampered up the plane and settled into the rear cockpit. The government agents merely shook their heads apologetically.

  Amazed once more that this was not indeed some colossal joke, Captain Sanger climbed dutifully if reluctantly up into the front cockpit.

  NEARLY NINE THOUSAND MILES and three midair refuelings later, the Tomcat roared out of the sky over Israel.

  Sanger was aware of the hands-off order that had been given to all U.S. military personnel in the region. America was giving Israel a wide berth during the conflict with Ebla. He was surprised, therefore, when his U.S. Navy aircraft was given clearance to land at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion International Airport. Whoever his passenger was, he had friends in high places.

  The plane had not taxied to a full stop before the old Asian popped the shield over his cockpit. As the tiny man was climbing out of the plane, Captain Sanger called to him over his shoulder.

  "Sir, if you'll beg pardon, does this have something to do with the conflict?"

  "Of course," the old man replied. He did not sound pleased. "As all good screenwriters know, conflict drives every story. Be ready for my return."

  And with that the old man jumped to the tarmac. The last Captain Sanger saw of him, he was loping across the airport toward the main terminal, kimono arms flapping like the wings on some insane purple bird.

  ARYEH SARID WAS DOZING behind the wheel of his taxicab outside the Tel Aviv airport when he thought he heard the door behind him click shut. There hadn't been a shift in weight to indicate that anyone had even gotten in the car.

  He blinked the sleep out of his eyes and glanced up in the rearview mirror.

  There was no one there.

  Imagination. That's what it must have been. Sighing, Aryeh crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes once again. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a high-pitched voice admonished him from the back seat.

  "I did not mount this conveyance to watch you sleep."

  Eyes springing open in shock, Aryeh grabbed at the rearview, shifting it lower.

  He caught sight of the old man sitting calmly in the middle of the back seat.

  "I am so sorry," Aryeh apologized, clearing the sleep from his throat. "I did not see you."

  "When one wishes to see, it helps to keep one's eyes open." The fare settled back in the seat. "Now, coachman, take me to Golan," he ordered.

  "Golan?" Aryeh said, surprised. He turned around, placing an arm on the back of the front seat. "Do you not know what is happening there, old one?"

  "Yes," Chiun spit. "Idiocy that keeps me from my true calling. And woe to me I have left my son in charge." The Asian tapped a finger on the seat. "Hasten, lest in my absence the callow mooncalf ruins all that I have worked for."

  Aryeh shrugged apologetically. "I am sorry, but I cannot take you there. The farthest I can go is perhaps Tiberias. It is south of the Golan Heights."

  "Oh, very well," the Master of Sinanju snapped. "Just be quick about it. I must kill Sultan Omay of Ebla and return to Hollywood before my son allows the buffoons who run my studio to cast one of the insipid Sheen offspring in my production. Or worse, a Baldwin." He pitched his voice low, leaning forward. "Those boys are box-office poison." He sat back knowingly in his seat.

  The cabdriver's eyes narrowed. "You are going to kill Omay?"

  "If this infernal machine ever moves," Chiun said with growing impatience.

  Aryeh started the engine.

  "For that I would drive you all the way to Akkadad."r />
  Tires leaving a smoking trail of rubber, the car squealed away from the curb.

  THEY DIDN'T GET as far as Akkadad. The cab did, however, manage to travel a good distance up around the northern edge of Lake Tiberias. It was stopped by a military blockade manned by members of the Israel Defense Force.

  "Don't you know what is going on up here?" a young soldier asked of Aryeh when the cab had stopped.

  "Of course," the driver said. "But I was taking this nice gentleman on a special mission. He is a famous screenwriter who also works as an assassin. He is here to kill Sultan Omay."

  The soldier raised a skeptical eyebrow. Together with another Defense Force soldier, he went to the rear of the cab. When they looked in the windows on either side of the back seat, they found it empty.

  Aryeh was surprised when the door of his taxi was opened and the soldiers began helping him out. They talked to him in soothing tones.

  "But he was here," Aryeh insisted. "He told me how his son would probably ruin his one chance for success. I agreed with him and told him how the one time I trusted my boy with my taxi while I was in the hospital he almost-"

  The story was cut short when one of the Israel Defense Force jeeps that had blocked the road into the mountains roared to life.

  As the soldiers around it scattered, the jeep flew away at full speed, bouncing its way up the rugged road into the Golan Heights. So shocked were they at the sight of the figure behind the wheel none of them thought to fire a shot.

  The wizened old man with the eggshell head and the purple kimono drove like a madman away from the knot of soldiers. Up into the thick of the raging battle.

  Chapter 31

  The explosions came at such a constant rate that they blurred into a single, endless, deafening roar. The sky was fire. Acrid smoke blew up all around the region, choking sight and filling lungs with dust and sand.

  Israeli aircraft swooped down over the field of battle, skimming lines of advancing Eblan soldiers and unleashing wave after lethal wave of bullets and rockets.

  The F-16s had just completed their latest devastating assault. An attack squadron of AH-1 helicopters soared through a moment after the airplanes had rocketed out, rattling endless rounds into the pride of the Ebla Arab Army.

  The earth shook beneath the mighty treads of Israeli tanks-far more sophisticated than those of tiny Ebla. Across the battlefield lay the remains of countless Eblan heavy military vehicles, thick clouds of billowy black smoke curling up from their twisted metal hulks.

  As he stood at the mouth of his tent, which had been propped up at the edge of the battle line, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam scowled. It seemed at once to be both a grimace of pain and one of intense displeasure.

  This was not the glorious contest he had imagined. He had allowed himself the conceit that his men would be able to repel the Jewish infestation from the Golan Heights and retake the region for Islam. But that vain self-image had collapsed beneath the inexorable force of reality.

  Ebla would lose this battle. Badly. But in so losing, it would ultimately win the war.

  This thought was but a minor comfort as Sultan Omay watched the Israeli army slice through his poorly trained soldiers like a thresher through autumn wheat.

  Omay was sitting now. A stool had been brought to the shaded canopy that stretched on poles beyond the closed flaps of his tent. He could no longer stand. In the past few hours walking had become almost impossible without assistance. Death gripped his soul. Yet he willed his body to live. Just a little longer.

  His breath came in softly gurgling wheezes. Each time he filled his lungs, they burned with the intensity of the fires raging in the rocky desert plain before him.

  The colonel who was his aide had left to lead units of the Eblan cavalry. Another soldier had been conscripted into service for the sultan. This young Arab held a pair of binoculars to the eyes of his ruler, so that Omay could get a better view of the great carnage spread across that part of the mountainous battlefield visible from his encampment.

  As he was peering out at the line of advancing Israeli soldiers, the scene suddenly wavered. The field of combat blurred and vanished. Omay blinked at the sudden change in his vision.

  The spyglasses were gone. An anxious face stood before him. His communications man. The young soldier held a cellular phone in his hand.

  "O Sultan, I have received two urgent calls for you," the man said hastily. "One has broken in on the other."

  Omay's eyes were watery. They seemed much farther away than even the nearby conflict.

  "Who wishes to speak to me at so momentous a time?" he asked, his voice supremely tired.

  "The first was Minister Hamza. He insisted that he speak to you on a matter of utmost urgency." Hamza? Omay's eyes were dragged back into focus. His thoughts turned to the Great Plan. His legacy.

  "Give me that," he insisted.

  The soldier hesitated. "It is no longer Minister Hamza, Sultan," he explained nervously. "This is now the one who broke in on the connection. It is the Saudi. Al Khobar."

  Omay became even more animated. All thoughts of Minister Hamza vanished.

  "Now!" he commanded. A hand wrapped in wrinkled, gray-tinged flesh shook impatiently.

  The soldier dutifully handed him the telephone.

  "Assola, you live?" Omay rasped anxiously, his words sounding far off.

  "Yes, Omay sin-Khalam," the terrorist replied. It was almost as if it pained him to speak. His voice sounded oddly muffled.

  "You have succeeded." It was a statement. The old man was so excited, he began to stand.

  "No. Not yet," al Khobar replied.

  Omay fell back onto his stool. "What has happened?"

  "Something that could not be planned for," Assola explained quickly. "It is of no consequence. You have begun the attack already?"

  "Yes, Assola," Omay responded, the life draining from his voice. "I had assumed you dead."

  "The Americans have yet to invade here," al Khobar mused. "Yet it can only be a matter of time now that the war has begun there." The terrorist was thinking. "Though I have been put behind schedule, there are but a few trifling details to attend to here." His muffled voice steeled. "This I vow-we will this day claim victory for all of Islam against the hated American desecrators."

  The connection was severed.

  Omay returned the phone to his subordinate. He did not think to return Minister Hamza's call. "You will celebrate alone," the sultan said ominously.

  As the young soldier near him held the binoculars up to his tired eyes, Omay returned his gaze to the field of battle.

  Chapter 32

  Even as the Eblan soldiers prepared to rape his common-law wife, Tom Roberts tried to understand their motivation.

  "Are there socioeconomic roots in what you're doing?" he asked earnestly. His eyes were nearly swollen shut from the beating they had given him. Capped teeth jangled in his bloody mouth.

  A soldier grunted something in the Eblan Arab dialect and brought a pointy-toed boot sharply into Roberts's side.

  Roberts gasped, clutching at the soft area beneath his rib cage. "Reaganomics!" he wheezed. "This is all because of the greed of the eighties, isn't it?"

  "For Christ's sake, shut up and do something!" Susan Saranrap screamed at Roberts.

  She was lying on her back just inside the monkey house.

  Two of the men held her arms above her head. A third wrapped a leather belt around her narrow wrists, lashing them to the bars of the chimpanzee cage.

  "I tried reasoning with them," Roberts explained from his spot on the floor. Blood dribbled from his mouth. "But I'm really limited when dealing with them. Damn my school system for not having ethnic studies while I was growing up!"

  Another boot silenced any further self-recrimination from the actor. Roberts collapsed into a heap on the floor, groaning in agony.

  The five leering Eblans turned their attention solely on Susan Saranrap. One of them tore at the black robe she was wearing. While he did
this, the rest began pulling at their own clothing.

  Helpless to prevent what was about to happen, Susan Saranrap did the only thing she could.

  She screamed.

  REMO HEARD THE SCREAM as he raced down the zoo path. He hopped a fence and raced across a strip of grass.

  As he loped onto the next path nearer the monkey house, Remo saw the carcass of a half-eaten zebra lying in the bushes next to the strip of asphalt. There were the remains of several more animals around it.

  The Eblan soldiers who were occupying this part of California had apparently spent part of the past two days consuming the exhibits. Remo remembered the same thing happening at the zoo in Kuwait. Everyone assumed then that it was a matter of starvation that propelled the Iraqi soldiers to participate in something so nauseating. Remo now suspected otherwise.

  Leaping at a full, outstretched hurdle, Remo cleared another low fence. He bounded into the fetid, gloomy interior of the monkey house.

  Susan Saranrap was in the process of issuing a final caution to her assailants. Her eyes bugged crazily.

  "Watch it, buster," the actress threatened the Eblan who was climbing atop her. "You don't know what I do to men. Didn't you ever see Zelma and Patrice?"

  The man hadn't. And in another second he would never have the chance. The Arab was in the process of running his rough hands up the actress's pale, wrinkled thighs when he abruptly found that his hands were no longer his to rub anywhere.

  The soldier screamed, struggling to his knees. Blood pumped from wrist stumps where his hands had been.

  He turned in time to see Remo throwing a pair of very familiar objects into the chimp house. There were fingers attached to them.

  A moment of shock gave way to an eternity of oblivion. Remo pivoted on one foot, the other braced against his calf. A kneecap crushed the forehead of the Eblan soldier.

  The other men didn't have time to react to the initial assault before Remo was among them. Hands and feet lashed out in a furious concert of death. Four pelvises were mashed to damp powder. As the men collapsed one after another, toes took out throats. All were dead before they hit the floor. Remo waded through the pile of Eblan debris. He used the sharpened edge of a single fingernail to slice the cords around Susan Saranrap's wrists. She was shaken but unharmed. He helped the actress to her feet.