Feast or Famine td-107

by Warren Murphy

  "I have him."

  "Get him out of my freaking hair."

  Chiun's fists knocked the bee around the cabin. He was on Remo's right. Then his left. Finally, Remo called out, "You're worse than the freaking bee! Leave it alone!"

  "It is trying to kill you."

  "I gotta save the plane," said Remo as the rear tires unexpectedly made contact with the blacktop. They barked like stung dogs. The plane bounced, settled, and the barking came again.

  Steadily, Remo lowered the nose. It touched down. Then the plane was rolling into the patch of waiting foam.

  I did it, Remo thought. I saved the plane!

  And he felt a tiny sting over his left carotid artery, and a very cold sensation began to well up inside him.

  Chapter 17

  At first, it sounded like a tornado.

  Gordon Garret heard it as he walked between the corn rows.

  The corn was coming up. Last week, there had been a goose-drowner of a rainstorm in this fertile corner of Iowa. That helped some. Not like it was down in the Southwest, where they were suffering from drought. In Texas and those parts, the winter wheat hadn't come up at all. There was a lot of suffering.

  Gordon Garret understood suffering. His patch of earth, Garret Farms, had been in Garret hands going clear past the forgotten depression of the 1850s to before the Civil War. There had been a lot of hard times since then. It was a constant battle with corn borers and funguses and the like.

  And, of course, there was the weather. Some years, it didn't rain, but it poured. Others, the fertile earth fell apart under the broiling sun. The Great Flood of '93 was still fresh in Iowa minds.

  Tornados weren't that common. They happened, sure. But the last thing Gordon Garret expected to hear was the dull roar of an approaching twister.

  For a moment, he froze, his boots sinking into the heavy soil. He felt no wind. That was peculiar. There was that dull, distant, freight-train roar, but no breeze.

  On either side of him the rows of the new Super Yellow Dent corn-guaranteed to resist corn borers by fooling them into thinking corn smelled like uninteresting soybeans-three months from tasseling, just stood there like so many dull students with their long green-turbaned heads held up off the earth.

  But the roar was the roar of a twister. So Gordon shook the fear out of his coveralls and made a dash for the barn.

  He ran like the wind, boots crunching dirt. But the roar was moving faster. It was the wind.

  The roar swelled. Weirdly, it didn't become that full, big-train roar he associated with twisters. It stayed low. Had a metallic kind of sound in it, like heat bees in summer. But this was April.

  Flinging a glance over his shoulder, Gordon expected to see a funnel cloud. But there was no funnel. It was a cloud.

  What he saw made him stop, stand stock-still and scrunch his seed cap in his uneasy hands.

  The low sky was a mass of gray, hazy blackness. It hummed. Weird, that hum. Spooky. Not loud. Just insistent. Angry, maybe. But all hell-winds sound angry.

  It looked like a dust cloud, but there was still no wind.

  Then it hit.

  Like a fury, it hit. The noise was the worst of it. It came churning in, all rage and viciousness. The fury of it dropped Gordon to his knees. He threw his arms across his flinching face and pushed the front part of himself into the dirt.

  A whining buzz roared over and across him. The sound of it assaulted his ears. The sound changed as he cowered for protection in the good earth that supported him.

  It chewed and ripped and tore, and it seemed to go on forever in its voracious frenzy.

  Then, like a miracle, it passed.

  Like a train moving down its assigned track, it had passed on by.

  Fearfully, Gordon Garret uncrossed his arms and lifted his body.

  The air was settling down. There was no dust, no grit-none of the airborne debris the natural wind stirred up.

  Yet green things were falling from the sky. Green, and the smell was the smell of corn-shucking time. A fall smell. Here it was April and the air smelled of autumn.

  Gordon looked to his left and to his right. And that deep, cold fear that comes to every farmer in his lifetime settled in his empty stomach.

  The corn. The young corn was falling from the sky in tatters. Cornsilk drifted down like thin golden tinsel. The baby kernels were scattered like yellow hail. The green protective leaves were only now coming down on the quieting air. The stalks were gone. Chewed to ribbons as if by buzz saws.

  That was what Gordon thought of right off. A million tiny buzz saws. Hungry, vicious buzz saws. They had sickled the new corn into so much fragrant trash.

  Climbing to his weak-kneed legs, Gordon turned around on dull, heavy feet like a wooden Indian.

  The dust cloud was moving on, having eaten him into bankruptcy.

  That was when total understanding took hold of Gordon, and he threw himself to the useless soil and bawled his brains out.

  Chapter 18

  Remo Williams had been schooled by the Master of Sinanju to dodge bullets, arrows, spears and even thrown rocks. It was not enough, Chiun had told him, on that day many years before when the elderly Korean sullied his pristine hands with an old Police Positive revolver and emptied its chambers at Remo, who successfully-if clumsily-evaded every snarling slug.

  "You must learn to evade the flying teeth you cannot see coming," he added after Remo caught his breath.

  "How is that possible?" Remo asked, already full of himself because up until that time in his life, only Superman could dodge bullets-and he wasn't real.

  "You must learn to feel the breeze the flying tooth pushes before it as it seeks your life," said Chiun.

  "Let me get this straight," Remo asked incredulously. "I gotta feel the shock wave coming?"

  "Yes."

  "Im-freaking-possible!"

  But he had learned. Week by week. Month by month. Year after year, Remo had learned how to slow time in his brain and speed up his supercharged reflexes so that a bullet fired at his back, moving ahead of the sound wave of the exploded gunpowder, couldn't catch him off guard.

  He learned to feel the approaching shock wave on the exposed surfaces of his skin. The delicate hairs on his forearm became like sensitive antennae. Remo had always thought they were just hairs-remnants of mankind's primitive, hairy ancestry. But he understood they served a sensory function, too.

  Later, after he had become attuned to his body hairs, Remo learned to sense the presence of a threatening mind. And to anticipate the firing of the shot or the throwing of the blade before even the attacker had made the decision to kill.

  Nothing could touch Remo after that. Not guns, not exploding shrapnel, not anything other than Chiun's own remonstrating fingernail. Remo never learned to evade Chiun's blows.

  As the lumbering 727 skidded to a sloppy stop, its wheels awash in fire-dampening foam, Remo experienced a moment of combined fear and shock.

  I should have felt the little bastard's legs on my neck, he thought.

  I should have felt the stinger pressing into my skin.

  And, I'm dead.

  Eyes sick, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju and voiced the fear that was in his mind. "I'm dead, Chiun."

  Chiun had stepped in, and his angry eyes were fixed upon the buzzing bee, once more aloft. Remo could hear its tiny, annoying ziii sound.

  The Master of Sinanju made two claws of his hands and lifted them. His wrinkled features were extremely intent. His concentration was ferocious.

  "It's too late," Remo said.

  "Never fear. I will capture the dastard!" Chiun hissed.

  "That's not what-"

  And Chiun brought his palms together in a short blur. His nails intersected. Fingers nested. Palms met with a meaty slap.

  The ziii stopped abruptly.

  Chiun squeezed his hands, grinding them together. A crackly sound came from the thin plane where his palms met.

  With a flourish, the hands separa
ted, and what was left of the bee fell to the floor. A black sandal snapped down, grinding the remains into the rubber floor mat.

  "You are defeated, bee-who-is-not," Chiun intoned.

  "You're too late, Little Father," Remo said thickly.

  Chiun shook his aged head firmly. "No. It was too slow. Although it was exceedingly swift for a bee."

  Remo stood up. "I got stung."

  Chiun flinched. "Where?"

  Remo had his hand over the carotid. "Here."

  Reaching up, Chiun slapped Remo's hand away and pulled his neck into view by the harsh expedient of dragging down on his pupil's dark hair.

  "Let me see."

  "Ouch!"

  Chiun scrutinized Remo's pulsing carotid artery. "I see a tiny wound. How do you feel?"

  "Cold."

  "You should feel stupid. To let a mere bumblebee sting you."

  "You saw what it did. You saw how fast it was. Even you had trouble catching it."

  "I did not allow it to sting me," Chiun spat.

  "What do I do?" asked Remo.

  "Try standing on your head. If the poisoned blood is drawn from your brain, little will be harmed." Remo's eyes went into hurt shock. "How can you say that?"

  "It is easy," snapped Chiun. "For you are not poisoned."

  "I'm not?"

  "No. There is no redness. Your eyes are clear."

  "Maybe I'm immune ...."

  "Perhaps the bee had already exhausted its venom."

  "Guess that's possible, too, but I still feel kinda cold."

  "Stupidity. It will pass." Chiun turned about, coaxing Remo to follow with a crooking finger. "Now come. We must leave this wounded bird that you so clumsily wrecked, lest we are discovered by prying eyes."

  "Yeah. Okay. We can't afford to answer too many questions anyway."

  Passing the first-class cabin, Chiun announced in a loud voice, "Hearken well, for you have been saved by the House of Sinanju. These are your tax dollars at work. Pay your taxes promptly and often. Lest your nation lose our services, and your empire succumb to foreign emperors."

  The passengers looked too dazed to respond. Many were still fumbling with their seat belts or lifting their heads from the between-knees crash-survival position. Nobody appeared injured.

  "What happened to avoiding problems?" Remo asked Chiun.

  Chiun dismissed his pupil's objection with a careless wave. "That was advertising. It always pays."

  Remo tried to open the hatch by hand, but the mechanism was too complicated, so he just kicked it open. The thick hatch jumped outward with a dull sound like a flat bell being rung. It went splat in the foam. That seemed to rouse the flight crew.

  At the emergency exits, inflatable escape chutes were deploying, and the first passengers began sliding down the big yellow chutes, under the direction of the flight attendants.

  In a very short time, passengers were milling around the tarmac as paramedics and other emergency professionals came and got them.

  When the big silver bus came to load the most able aboard, Remo and Chiun were already calmly seated in back.

  It was easier to go this way than trying to walk along the wide-open runway system under the sweep and blaze of emergency lights.

  At the terminal, an airline representative was waving sheafs of official-looking forms and began trying to get the walking wounded to sign away their rights to sue or receive compensation for their injuries.

  Remo took an offered Bic pen and jammed it halfway up the airline rep's left sinus cavity. The man stumbled off, muttering nasally that he was going to sue somebody. That was the end of airline damage control.

  From a pay phone, Remo called Harold Smith.

  "Smitty, get set for the unbelievable."

  Smith sighed. "I deal with the unbelievable on an almost daily basis."

  "We were tailed from the coroner's office," Remo said.

  "Yes?"

  "The tail sneaked aboard our flight. We saw him go through the food-service door. Once the plane was in the air, it murdered the pilot and copilot. We would have crashed, but I took the controls and landed the plane."

  Remo's voice lifted on a note of pride toward the last. Smith brought it crashing down with his incredulous "You? Flew a jet plane?"

  "The tower kinda helped out," Remo admitted.

  "The plane crashed," Smith said.

  "Crash-landed," said Remo. "It was a crash landing, not a crash. Nobody died."

  "Except the pilots," Smith corrected.

  "Yeah."

  "And, of course, the man who murdered the pilots."

  "Yeah. Chiun got him."

  "I assume you interrogated this person?" Smith said.

  "You assume wrong."

  "How is that?"

  "Because you're assuming a person, and not what tried to kill us," Remo said.

  "What tried to kill you?" Smith parried.

  Remo handed the receiver to Chiun, who was hovering nearby.

  "It was a not-bee," Chiun explained.

  "A bee brought down the plane!" Smith said, his lemony voice skittering high into the stratosphere of the musical register.

  "No, a not-bee."

  "Talk sense," snapped Smith.

  "I am," said the Master of Sinanju in an injured voice. "It had the form of a bee, but it was not a bee.

  "Put Remo back on," Smith directed.

  "Why?"

  "Because I need to speak with him," explained Smith tightly.

  Face quirking up, Chiun surrendered the receiver to his pupil, sniffing, "The conversation has taken an unimportant turn, Remo. Emperor Smith wishes to speak with you."

  "Not-bee theory didn't exactly go over well?"

  "That man is old. No doubt his faculties are failing. It is the burden of the kingly. Nero was much like this in his snowy years."

  Remo took the phone and said, "I can't tell what he's talking about, either."

  "Remo, start at the beginning."

  "Which beginning?"

  "From the time you left the morgue."

  Remo did. He told about the bumblebee that had followed him from the parking lot and all that had transpired at the airport.

  "And he had the same death's-head markings as the morgue bee," Remo finished. "The outside morgue bee. Not the inside one."

  "It could not be the same bee," Smith stated flatly.

  "Why not?"

  "Bees do not fly that fast."

  "This one was pretty light on his wings. Speaking of which, we mailed you a wing from the first bee."

  "I will be very interested to see that."

  "That was the good news. The bad is that the second bee looked like it read your address when we mailed the package."

  "Preposterous!"

  "This bee was out to get us," Remo said heatedly. "I'm just letting you know what it knows."

  "It knows nothing. It is dead. And I want the body."

  "Well, that's going to be kinda hard," said Remo, looking out through a plate-glass window to where the 727 was awash in fire-retardant foam. "Chiun mashed it flat as a wafer, and the plane is crawling with airport personnel. The NTSB should be along at any moment."

  "Then I will have the bee's remains requisitioned on my end," said Smith.

  "Good luck," said Remo. "So what do we do now? Risk flying again or what?"

  Smith was silent for a long space. "I want that bee's wing."

  "It's on the way via Federal Express."

  "Not soon enough. I want it today. Recover the package and bring it here. Wurmlinger can wait."

  "If you say so."

  "I say so," said Smith, terminating the connection.

  Hanging up himself, Remo addressed the Master of Sinanju. "He sounds pretty P.O.'ed."

  "I heard. We will bring him the wing of the not-bee."

  They had their first stroke of luck that day when they went to the Federal Express pickup box. A driver showed up. He was in the act of unlocking the deposit box-which saved Remo the bother of rip
ping it apart with his bare hands in front of witnesses-when Remo tapped him on the shoulder.

  "I need to get back a package I sent."

  "Sorry. Once it's in the box, it's ours. Company rules."

  Remo smiled pleasantly. "Sure. I understand."

  And he and Chiun followed the man to his awaiting orange-and-purple-splashed white van. They were not at all secretive about it. In fact, they carried on a loud running conversation.

  "Don't you hate it when big companies take your money and blow you off when you have a problem?" Remo told Chiun.

  "Customer satisfaction is the soul of the professional assassin," Chiun replied. "So said Wang the Great, who understood such things."

  The driver, knowing he was being followed, cast several nervous glances over his shoulder. He looked more worried each time. Just as he inserted his key into the door, he looked back again.

  He saw no sign of the thick-wristed white guy or the old Oriental who had been following him.

  Still looking back over his shoulder, he rolled the rear van door up.

  Then he climbed aboard, threw his satchel in the back and lowered the door. It locked with a resounding chink of steel latching.

  He drove out of LAX at a good clip, pausing only at the main entrance.

  That was when the rear door unexpectedly rattled up, and he saw California sunlight beaming in from the back.

  Braking and swearing, he ran back.

  The cargo door was fully up, but there was no sign of whoever had opened it. He ran it down again and decided not to report any of what had happened.

  But as he eased onto the freeway, he had the uneasy feeling that at least one of those two had been hiding in back of the van.

  How was another matter. The only way into the van was through a locked side or rear door. And the rear door had been unlocked only long enough for him to check to see that the coast was clear and climb aboard.

  Surely that was too short a time for a grown person to slip on board. Surely.

  BACK AT THE TERMINAL, Remo was saying to Chiun, "That guy was looking everywhere except where we were."

  "No," corrected Chiun. "We were everywhere his gaze did not fall."

  Remo shrugged. "Same difference. Okay, let's get this thing to Folcroft."

  "What of the bug man, Earwig Wormfood?"

  "Smitty said he can wait."

  "Thus, he waits."