The Last Dragon td-92

by Warren Murphy

"That's right," King agreed. "They're fiends. The idea is to sell Bronto Burgers at rare-art prices. The board expects to clean up. They must have moved the timetable up without telling me."

  "What do you think, Chiun?"

  "I think there is no limit to the barbarism of this land, where Vietnamese are allowed to live in the finer provinces and people would eat dragons."

  "As opposed to skinning them for the magic bones?"

  "One buries a dragon after it has breathed its last. It is the only proper thing to do."

  "Why?"

  "So a new dragon will grow from the organs, of course."

  "I give up," said Remo, hauling King back into the room. King staggered over to the wastepaper basket and, getting down on hands and knees, began heaving into it.

  "Let us hie to this board of evil, Remo, and remove their scheming heads."

  "Not without checking in first."

  The Master of Sinanju indicated Skip King, his head in the steel basket.

  "That one has ears."

  "I'll fix that," said Remo as he reached into the basket and squeezed a place near King's spine. He went limp and the bubbling sound of him exhaling into his own vomit came.

  Remo got Smith on the phone.

  "Smith, forget everything you heard about African environmentalists. This is a Burger Triumph scam all the way."

  "What?"

  "They have it all worked out. A promo tour, an accidental death. Guess what happens next?"

  "I cannot imagine."

  "Every yuppie in the universe getting in line for a once-in-a-lifetime taste sensation."

  Smith's gasp was a dry, shocked sound. "You don't mean-"

  "It'll be bigger than cabbage patch dolls, except you can eat Bronto Burgers."

  "Have you traced the animal?"

  "No. But we scared the truth out of King. He says the board has moved up the timetable."

  "Interrogate the board."

  "Just wanted you to know before we did it."

  "Try to do this delicately. Burger Triumph represents a significant slice of the American economy."

  "They don't lie, they don't die. How's that?"

  "Satisfactory," said Smith.

  Skip King was still bubbling away when Remo hung up. On the way out the door, the Master of Sinanju kicked the basket over. King fell with it and began breathing normally.

  The board of directors of the Burger Triumph corporation wasn't sure what to make of the thick-wristed man and his colorful companion.

  They tried to bluff their way through the intrusion on their emergency board meeting.

  "Are you employed here?" asked the CEO.

  "No. We're dissatisfied customers."

  "Dissatisfied?"

  "We like our Brontosaurs on the hoof and not between slices of stale bun."

  "I do not follow."

  "They are temporizing, Remo," the old one warned the other.

  "Must be expecting help," said the one called Remo.

  He walked around the table, running his fingers along the polished cherrywood top. He stopped when he came to the right-hand corner at the CEO's elbow, reached under, and yanked a push button out by its wiring.

  He dangled it in the CEO's face. "Who'd you call?"

  "Security. And I suggest you two plan to leave quietly or charges will be filed. Federal charges."

  "Lordy me," said Remo.

  The Burger Berets burst in a moment later. There were four of them and they toted AR-15 assault rifles. Captain Mustard led them. He paled at the sight of Remo and Chiun. He started to back out of the room, but his team was in the way.

  "Nice guns," said Remo.

  "Please put your hands up," Mustard ordered in a quaking voice.

  Remo's confident smile didn't involve his eyes. "Remember to load them this time around?"

  Captain Mustard and his Berets hesitated, looked momentarily blank, and various uncomfortable expressions crawled over their faces.

  Remo looked to the CEO and said, "You know, I think they forgot their bullets again."

  The CEO stood up and shook an angry fist. "Shoot them! They've threatened the board and by implication all your jobs!"

  The Burger Berets made a valiant attempt. Their lack of ammunition was a serious handicap, but it probably saved their lives. As the weapons filled the boardroom with noise and flame and gunsmoke and not much else, Remo and Chiun moved among them, using their jaunty purple berets to gag them-after first relieving them of the weapons and all limb volition with hard fingerstrokes to shoulder and hip joints.

  They made a pile in one corner, and Remo addressed the board. The Master of Sinanju stood behind him like an emerald-and-gold genie, his hands tucked in his sleeves.

  "The scam is out in the open," said Remo, his voice clipped. "So tell us where the bronto is and maybe you won't have to end up like Skip King."

  "How-how did Skip King end up?" a man quavered.

  "Breathing his own puke."

  The board of directors looked queasy and the CEO said, "We have no idea what has happened to the poor animal. We agreed to allow Dr. Nancy Derringer to transport it to a secure place, and the hauler did not arrive. We were just discussing what it could mean when you two barged in."

  "You aren't trying to tell me this hasn't anything to do with Bronto Burgers?" Remo said skeptically.

  "Obviously Dr. Derringer has tricked us."

  Remo started to scoff when the Master of Sinanju said thinly, "He is speaking the truth, Remo."

  "I can smell their sweat," said Remo.

  "As can I. But it smells of truth."

  Remo looked dubious. He lowered his tone. "Their pulses are racing. That means they're lying, right?"

  Chiun shook his head coldly. "It means that they are frightened. If they lied, their pulses would jitter."

  Remo looked from the Master of Sinanju to the board and back again. "So who hijacked the Bronto? It sure wasn't Nancy."

  "There is only one person left," Chiun intoned.

  "Can't be Colonel Mustard. He's in a pile with his beret in his mouth." Then it hit him. Remo snapped his fingers. "King?"

  Chiun nodded firmly. "King."

  "Damn." Remo slipped from the room, calling back, "Anyone who interferes is hamburger. Literally."

  Chiun hung back a moment. "I have spared you your miserable lives," he told the trembling board. "I will expect your gratitude to be without measure."

  Then he was gone.

  "I move we all submit our resignations," the CEO said stonily.

  When no one answered right away, he added, "On the condition that the severance packages are commensurate with our contributions."

  The motion was seconded, voted on, and passed unanimously. That left only the dicey question of to whom to tender their resignations.

  Skip King was gone when Remo and Chiun reached his former office. They followed the trail of partial footprints to the elevator bank. King had stepped in his own vomit and tracked it along the carpet.

  The head of security in the lobby confirmed that King had left the building.

  "What kind of car does he drive?" asked Remo.

  "Why should I answer that question?" the guard wanted to know. "Did you two sign in? I don't remember buzzing you in."

  "We do our own buzzing. Watch."

  The man had a computer terminal at his station and Remo laid a hand on it. He described a quick circle and reversed it.

  The guard noticed that the data on his screen was breaking up. An electronic beeping came from the system. It sounded panicky. "How are you doing that?" he gulped.

  "This?" Remo said. "This is nothing. Watch this." And Remo ran his hand back and forth along the side. The glass cracked and the broken screen hissed in the guard's face like an upset alley cat.

  The guard spat out information in quick bursts. "Red. Infiniti. License plate says KING 1."

  "Let's go, Little Father. It's time to crown the king."

  They floated out of the building.
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br />   Chapter 23

  Skip King had climbed the corporate ladder the hard way.

  He had started working the drive-in window of a Burger Triumph in Timonium, Maryland, was soon catapulted to store manager, then regional supervisor, and by the tender age of twenty-eight he was working out of the corporate headquarters.

  There was one and only one reason for his success. He saw himself as a cog in the corporate machinery. On the franchise level, that meant maximizing the profit even if it meant returning to work after hours and salvaging the unsold burger meat and stale fries and bringing them in the next morning before the day crew arrived.

  He saved the company twenty thousand dollars in his first six months as manager. As regional supervisor, he saved six figures by shuttling leftovers between stores. The board never questioned his methods. They only saw the bottom line and the bottom line was what they cared about.

  And what Burger Triumph, Inc. cared about, Skip King cared about. He had no social life, acquired no friends, and didn't care.

  When he had been promoted into the heady, button-down atmosphere of the main office, at first Skip King didn't think he could make it. There was no spoilage to salvage. He wasn't going anywhere as a junior product researcher until he requested what was thought to be the dead end of all dead ends. A transfer to the company cafeteria. As manager.

  Within three months, the subsidized cafeteria actually showed an unheard-of profit. The board didn't care that the plastic utensils were being cleaned in Skip King's apartment sink every night for reuse and only the cheapest army surplus food was being served to lower echelon staff. The board ate in their private clubs and fine restaurants, so they didn't hear the complaints of staff. They only saw the bottom line. And they only cared about the bottom line.

  One gleaming rung at a time, Skip King scaled the shiny ladder of success. It had not been easy. His lack of business education had caused many doors to slam shut in his glowering face. Middle management looked more and more like Skip King's destiny.

  Until the night he slipped an updated resume into his employee file, listing himself as a graduate of Wharton Business School. Magna cum laude. Because he had never heard of summa cum laude.

  It was a potentially dangerous move, but King, noticing the high turnover in Burger Triumph personnel-even at its corporate headquarters-figured he was even money to get away with it.

  The next time he put in for a vacant position higher up in the company, he talked up his degree in business administration-and found himself in the marketing division. From that day on, Skip King was a Wharton man. And he made sure everyone-from the secretaries to the janitorial staff-knew it.

  His fellow employees found him insufferable about it, but not one called him on it. They preferred to change the subject, or duck into a men's room stall when they saw him coming.

  Five years after first entering the building, Skip King was made VP of marketing and found himself sitting with the big boys in marketing meetings.

  He adapted well. He learned to read the board. To sense when it was safe to agree or disagree. He was one of them. A comer. The organization man. There was no limit to the heights he might reach.

  Until the Bronto Burger project unraveled.

  It had been a bitter pill to swallow. Demoted overnight. And on the verge of his greatest fame. It had been Skip King's idea from start to finish. It had been Skip King who had stood before the board and vowed to fall on his sword if anything went wrong. With an agreed-upon golden parachute in place if he was forced to resign to preserve the company's good name.

  Demotion wasn't honorable. Demotion was not something Skip King had bargained for. And working for a woman who'd never seen the inside of Wharton was intolerable.

  Briefly, Skip King had contemplated suicide. For what was life without the reassuring steel rungs of the corporate ladder under one's climbing feet?

  Then he got angry. Angry at the board of directors who would humiliate him, Skip King, who dared go into the heart of deepest Africa to make their bottom line the greatest in fast-food history.

  It was in that cauldron of righteous anger that Skip King decided to get even. And as long as he was in the getting-even business, he thought, no sense in not getting rich in the process.

  It had been the easiest thing in the world to set up. Everyone was in place. Like chess pieces. It was just a matter of getting them to jump in a new direction, and not just diagonally. Skip King had never been good at chess. There were too many rules, too many invisible barriers to victory.

  As he drove through the Delaware night, wiping his own vomit off his lean wolfish face, Skip King knew there would be no more rules for him.

  Not after tonight.

  Nancy Derringer awoke with a start.

  Her eyes were slow to focus. Her head hurt. There was a funny smell in her nose and a bitter taste in her mouth. The taste was from the dry sponge someone had jammed between her teeth before gagging her with a length of cloth.

  Then she remembered the Burger Berets' faces turning to raw meat and the men in the ski masks pulling the bodies from the hauler and taking their place.

  They took the bloodied seats and one got the hauler moving while the other pushed Nancy's face to the floorboards and pressed a cold, wet cloth to her face, holding it there until she had passed out. Ether. That was the smell clogging her nostrils.

  Nancy looked around. It was dark. The air smelled stale. She was lying in dead, musty hay. There was a nimbus of white light ahead of her. She crawled to it. Boards creaked under her weight.

  Gradually, a vista came into view.

  She was in an old barn. In the hayloft. The white light made the barnboards look like weathered old tombstones.

  In the center of the barn, parked in the hot glow of hanging trouble lights, was the hauler. And stretched out on its bed was the Apatosaur, looking like some prized mutant pumpkin awaiting judging. It looked dead. If it was breathing, Nancy couldn't see it.

  There were men moving around the hauler. They wore camouflage utilities, but their faces were bare. Black men. She watched their faces carefully. Five minutes of study confirmed what Nancy had suspected. None matched the faces of the African members of the Congress for a Green Africa.

  One of them was speaking now.

  "This is one big mother, ain't it?"

  "I wouldn't get too close. It might wake up and snap off your fool head."

  "It eats heads?"

  "Relax," a third voice put in. "It's a vegetarian. A few groats and he's happy."

  The accents were American. All of them. They were Americans. But what did it mean?

  Nancy crept back from the edge of the loft so she wouldn't be seen. She tried breathing steadily to clear the ether stink from her nostrils. Maybe it would clear her head, too. None of this made any sense and she desperately wanted it to make sense.

  Most of all she wanted Old Jack to survive the night.

  The honking of a car horn brought her crawling back to the edge. She watched the black men go to a side door, weapons at the ready. They looked nervous.

  "Who is it?" one hissed.

  A man was looking through a knothole in the barnboard.

  "It's King!"

  "King?" Nancy murmured.

  "Let him in," a man said.

  And Skip King, looking nervous and flustered, stepped in through the unlocked door.

  "Everything okay?" he asked.

  "It just be growling in its sleep, is all."

  King went the Apatosaur. He walked around the hauler. "I think it's starting to come around."

  "Are we in trouble?"

  "You got it cabled down tight?"

  "Yeah. But how tight does it need to be? That's the question."

  King said, "That bossy blonde knows the answer to that question. I'd better ask her. Where is she?"

  One of the hijackers used his thumb to indicate the hayloft. "We stuck her up in the loft."

  Nancy wriggled back out of sight before King
's gaze could lift in her direction. He was talking again.

  "Get ready to make the call. We may have to put the arm on the board sooner than I thought."

  "This had better work, King," another voice growled. "If this gets out, we're top of the list of perps."

  "Don't sweat it. I know how business works. The board will pay the ransom just to hush things up. The last thing they want is for it to get out that they were planning to sell ground Brontosaurus to the American public."

  In the musty gloom, Nancy Derringer blinked her eyes rapidly. She heard the words, but they rang in her ears like some discordant gonging. What did he mean?

  Then King was climbing a creaky ladder and his fox face was silhouetted against the back glow of lights.

  There was no point in pretending, so Nancy sat up and glared at his approaching figure.

  "I see you're awake," King said smugly.

  Nancy made an angry noise in her throat. It came out of her nose, buzzing.

  "Simmer down," King spat. "Let me get this thing off you." He untied the gag, and reached cold fingers into her mouth for the gag. Nancy spat out the bitter sponge taste then followed it with sharp words.

  "You bastard! What are you up to?"

  "Call it a sting."

  "Sting?"

  "The board stung me. I'm stinging them back. If they want Old Jack in one piece, they have to pay me. A cool five million. That's enough to retire on."

  "But why?"

  "You saw how the board humiliated me. And you're asking why?"

  "Yes, I'm asking why. Two men are dead and the last Apatosaur on earth is at risk because your scrotum is as swelled as your head?"

  "Since when are you such a big board booster?"

  "Since you went off the deep end."

  King smiled in the twilight. More than ever, his smile struck Nancy as foxy. "You wouldn't think so much of those stiffs if you knew what I know," he said.

  "I'm listening."

  "They never intended to find a good home for Old Jack, you know. All along, they were planning to run his carcass through the grinder and make Bronto Burgers."

  "I don't believe it."

  "Too audacious, huh?"

  "Too stupid. Only a cretin like you could imagine such a thing."

  "As a matter of fact," King said in an injured voice. "It was my idea from the very beginning."