"Put on the lights," Colonel al-Rasul ordered. His driver fumbled at the switch for the headlights. The men winced in the glare of the yellow light. Below them lay a body. At least, it looked as if it might have been a body. When the colonel examined it, he thought he saw fingers. And teeth. The rest was a pulverized pile of goo in a Republican Guard uniform.
"What happened here?" Colonel al-Rasul barked.
"There are more, Colonel," a soldier informed him, a sickly expression on his face. "All over the grounds. We have not yet found anyone alive."
There was fear in the young man's voice. The colonel ignored him. Something had caught his eye. This road was supposed to lead into a tunnel in the mountain behind the palace. But in the wash of headlights he didn't see the opening to the underground weapons laboratory.
Colonel Mundhir al-Rasul went to the rock wall. Where the road ended, he found a wall of collapsed stone.
The newly formed rock face was solid, except for a single dark spot.
Crouching, the colonel peered into the hole.
It looked like an animal burrow. But no animal he knew of could cut its way through solid stone. The headlights from his Jeep cut a ways down the tunnel. The crushed stones at his feet indicated that something had dug its way out. His thoughts went to the handprint in the tower stone.
Colonel Mundhir al-Rasul was beginning to get the distinct feeling that Baghdad had not told him everything.
Fear tickling his belly, he tore his gaze from the eerie dark depths of the hole.
"We are returning to the airport," the colonel announced as he got up, slapping dust from his hands. "I will have Baghdad send reinforcements and we will come back in the morning."
As al-Rasul turned, he saw something move sharply across the bright Jeep headlights. A twisted shadow fell over Colonel al-Rasul, blanketing black the stone behind him. For a moment the shadow seemed to dance, things like human hands upraised. By the time the sharp light returned an instant later, blinding the colonel, the screams had already begun.
He heard cracks of bone, tearing of limbs. Arms and legs flew out of the light, twitching across the ground.
There was a gunshot. Only one. Useless. The screams grew in pitch. Steadier now.
Men cried for help. More shadows converged on the Jeep. The soldiers from Colonel Mundhir al-Rasul's entourage were racing in from all around the palace grounds.
More screams.
The colonel fumbled his side arm from its holster and ran forward. With shaking hands he took aim at the shadows beyond the light.
He stumbled over an arm that was no longer attached to a body. The colonel fell over the ragged appendage, landing spread-eagled on the ground. Sliding in the dirt, he came to a stop nose-to-nose with an Iraqi soldier. He recognized the face of his young driver. The man's mouth was open wide. Colonel al-Rasul saw the soldier's body. It was lying ten feet away from the man's head.
Mundhir al-Rasul scampered to his feet.
The bodies were everywhere. He saw them now, beyond the wash of the Jeep's headlights. All the soldiers he had brought with him from Baghdad. All dead.
It had started seconds-no more than ten seconds before.
Something moved out of the shadows. It was the thing. The terrible demon with the long spidery arms that had tunneled through solid stone, knocked over towers with bare hands and dismembered twenty-nine heavily armed soldiers in the time it took a man to scream.
When the colonel saw the creature's eyes, the old soldier felt the contents of his bladder drain down the front of his trousers.
The eyes of the monster glowed like twin red coals in the cold Iraqi night.
The instant he saw those devil eyes, the colonel threw away his gun and dropped to his knees in supplication.
"Spare me!" he cried out in fear, arms outstretched, face buried in the sand.
A hand grabbed him roughly by the scruff of the neck. He felt himself being yanked violently from the ground. Boots dangling off the ground, he spun in air, coming face-to-face with the nightmare-spawned demon.
It was not the face of a monster, but a man. He was white, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. But, oh, the eyes. They burned red with ancient fury. When the demon who had taken on the form of a man opened its mouth to speak, an otherworldly voice boomed up from the lowest depths of Na'ar, Islam's Hell.
"You!" the demon bellowed. "Insect! You will take me where I need to go."
And his fear of the creature was such that Colonel Mundhir al-Rasul would have led a charge through the very gates of Na'ar itself rather than bear the horrible demon's terrible wrath.
WITH A DELICACY BELIED by his girth, the Great Wang sank cross-legged to the ground. He seemed to forget Chiun for a moment, content to breathe the air and gaze up at the sky.
Chiun was still on his knees, his hazel eyes locked on the spirit who stood wrapped in flesh before him. The old man slowly pulled himself from the ground. Confused, he sat at the feet of the greatest of all the Masters of Sinanju.
"It happened right about here," the first Master of the New Age announced all at once. "I don't know why I never recorded that. I guess it's just as well. There'd be pilgrims coming out here day and night. No sense desecrating a sacred place with tourists."
"What happened here, O Great Wang?" Chiun asked.
"You know," Wang said. "That thing. The thing that changed everything for us. This is the spot." All at once Chiun realized what the Great Wang meant.
It was as Remo had recited back in London's Hyde Park. Was it only days ago? It seemed like months. In Wang's time one Master ruled the village with many trained in Sinanju to serve under him. This was back in the days before the Sun Source. The Master of the time had died without an heir. While the night tigers fought one another to see who would become head of the village, Wang left to meditate. While he was alone in the wilderness, a ring of fire descended from the heavens, revealing to young Wang a new way. Wang returned to the village and slew the squabbling night tigers, taking up the mantle of Reigning Master. It took him a lifetime to understand all the vision in the wilderness had imparted to him in that instant.
While this was the oldest legend in the modern age of Sinanju, history had never recorded the spot. Chiun looked around the barren region with new eyes.
For his part Wang continued to watch the sky. He seemed fascinated by a distant bird. As dusk settled, the bird swooped and dived on currents of invisible air.
"That's what I miss the most," Wang said wistfully. "The realness of reality. There is a miraculousness to every insignificant little moment on Earth. You just have to be looking in the right direction."
He smiled once more as the bird flew away. Its beating wings seemed to draw up the cloak of night. Cold stars winked on in the heavens.
Chiun watched Wang watch the bird disappear. The old man could contain himself no longer.
"O Wang, Greatest of all the Masters of Sinanju-"
"None of that," Wang interrupted, attention snapping sharp from the suddenly eerie night sky. "I didn't come all the way here from my eternal rest in the Void to hear you polish my apples."
"Forgive me," Chiun said. "I only wish to know, you are here to take me home, are you not?"
"If you mean am I here to watch you die, no. Unless that's what you decide to do. If so, I'll send you on your journey on wings of doves. When we reach the land of your fathers, we will place rings on your fingers and give you a seat of honor for all you have accomplished." The chubby man leaned in close. "But you'll be missing out on the best half of the story." He offered a broad wink.
Chiun could only shake his head.
"I do not understand. I have finished my work on Earth. I have taken my pupil to the pinnacle of perfection. There is no more I can teach him."
"There's always more," Wang said. "And who knows? Maybe he can teach you a thing or two." He saw the look of utter bafflement on Chiun's face. "Haven't you figured it out yet? Why do you think you were entrusted with training Rem
o? You know his destiny. Yours and his are intertwined. You're a Master of Sinanju unlike any that have come before, including me. Your destiny is not to die out here in the middle of nowhere. Your songs will be sung in our village long after my name has been forgotten." At this, Chiun hung his head in shame.
"I fear not. I am disgraced, for thanks to my failure, the lips that would sing such songs have all been silenced. The frozen curses of the dead are my herald's song."
"You mean what you saw back in Sinanju?" Wang waved an easy dismissal. "A vision of what might be."
Chiun's face showed deep confusion. "I have seen it with my own eyes," he insisted.
"And even if your eyes tell you the truth, Sinanju lives in you and in your pupil. Assuming, that is, you choose not to die and he manages to get out of this mess alive."
"Remo will be fine," Chiun said. "He is back with his American emperor by now."
"Are you sure about that?" Wang asked.
His tone sent a worried warning flash across the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face.
"Why?" the old man asked. "What of Remo?"
"Nothing," Wang said absently. He was back to studying the sky. This time his gaze was directed straight up. "Maybe everything. We'll just have to wait and see with that boy. By the way, I like him, Chiun. You two work well together. A few too many bodies for my taste, but you can't have everything. But whatever is or isn't wrong with our Remo will have to wait." He was still looking skyward. A smile touched his broad lips. "Your ride is here."
Chiun did not understand what the Great Wang meant.
Before he could ask, he felt his senses suddenly go haywire. All around he felt the prickly sensation of eyes winking on, one after another. The invisible gaze of hundreds directed on his wizened form.
Though old, it remained a familiar sensation, one not easily forgotten. For the year before his ascendancy to Reigning Masterhood, Chiun had endured the Masters' Tribunal, feeling in every moment the invisible stares of all the former Masters of Sinanju. The Hour of Judgment. But that was many years ago, when the world was young and every day held the promise of adventure. This was not Chiun's time. The past Masters should have been with Remo, not Chiun. There had to have been some cosmic mistake.
But there was Wang. If Wang was present, it had to be right.
The greatest Master of Sinanju was still standing there, staring up into the heavens. Chiun followed his gaze.
And then he saw it. Coalescing from the swirl of countless galaxies. A fog of mystic energy churning round and round, burning brighter as it swirled and flashed.
A spark in the mist. A flash to fire. The light more blinding and brilliant than anything touched by hard flint to mere earthly tinder. The ring of fire descended.
The glow from the supernatural light burned hot on the barren wastes of rock and scrub.
Small on the ground, the Master of Sinanju felt his heart catch. With utter incomprehension, he looked to Wang.
The smile had returned to the fat man's face. Wang's broad face was angelic in the warm radiant glow of the slowly descending light.
"Show time," the Great Wang announced.
And when the ring of fire touched ground, the brilliance of the light consumed them utterly.
Chapter 32
Captain Ralph Chauncy didn't like his orders one damn bit. Ordinarily he would have blamed it on just the locale. This special route always made him uneasy. Not that anyone in his right mind would blame him. It wasn't easy sneaking into North Korean territorial waters. Especially since the Navy had seen fit to give him command of an old rust bucket of a submarine like the USS Darter.
Every November 12 for the past seven years, Captain Chauncy was given delivery duty. He would sneak into the West Korean Bay in the dead of night so his men could paddle some special cargo ashore. Crates of something. Captain Chauncy never looked to see what was inside. For all he knew, they could have been crammed full of weapons for anti-Commie agitators or goddamn Watchtower pamphlets. It wasn't his job to ask. What was his job was keeping the leaky bucket that was the Darter from splitting apart at the seams.
That first trip Captain Chauncy had no idea why the Navy had given him the Darter-a boat that by all rights should have seen a complete refit or been sold for scrap. He found the reason at the bottom of the West Korean Bay.
Another U.S. sub was already there. Nestled in the silt. Gaping holes where the hull had been blown apart.
It was a chilling moment.
Captain Chauncy had heard about a sub being sunk in the West Korean Bay years before. He assumed it had been salvaged. Never thought he was being sent to the exact same spot. The rusting sub appeared to have been left as warning. On that first visit he realized he was looking at his own future, should fate so choose it for him. A forgotten watery grave for the USS Darter.
But the Darter was more than just a replacement for the ill-fated USS Harlequin. Chauncy learned afterward from Admiral Lee Enright Leahy, who had commanded the Darter for years, that the Darter had been the first sub to haul cargo on this route. In a way it was a homecoming for the creaky old sub. Captain Chauncy could not wax nostalgic.
It was bad enough to have to risk sneaking into enemy waters, bad enough to do so in a rust bucket, bad enough that he'd just done this whole dance three weeks ago with the regular cargo crates. But now his boat had been turned into a goddamn shuttle service.
Captain Chauncy was looking out the periscope. The weird rock formations that looked like a pair of blunt devil's horns told him he was back in the right place.
"Go get them," Chauncy ordered his executive officer. "Tell them we're here."
"Aye, sir."
As the exec hurried off, Captain Chauncy grunted unhappily to himself. He would have preferred crates. He had picked up his two passengers in the Pacific.
The men had been flown out to an aircraft carrier that had rendezvoused with the Darter.
One was an old man, the other a kid only about ten years older than the sailors aboard the sub. Oddly enough, it was the old man who seemed more comfortable on the sub. He sat on his bunk for most of the trip as if waiting for the next downtown bus. The young one looked queasier every time Captain Chauncy checked in on them.
The exec returned less than a minute later, the two men in tow. As usual the young one looked a little green.
"This is your stop, gentlemen," the captain said. "My men can have you on shore in fifteen minutes."
"That is not necessary," said the older of the two passengers. He had a clipped, lemony voice and wore a three-piece gray suit. "When you surface, lower a raft over the side. We will row ourselves ashore."
Captain Chauncy looked the two men up and down. The old one was dressed for a business meeting and the young one looked as if he was about to upchuck.
"Your funeral," Captain Ralph Chauncy shrugged. Hoping that it would not be his, as well, he gave his men the order to surface.
TEN MINUTES LATER Harold W. Smith and Mark Howard were in a black rubber raft paddling across choppy waves.
Smith had donned his overcoat and scarf. The collar of his coat was turned up against the cold. Howard wore a turtleneck sweater and water-repellent down jacket. The assistant CURE director did most of the paddling on the way in to shore.
"I know this place," Howard commented darkly as he paddled. Cold water splashed over the knees of his Levi's.
Even in the bleak starlight he could see the CURE director's puzzled frown.
"In those visions I had before I-" Mark hesitated. "Before Purcell escaped from Folcroft." He pointed at the strange twin rock formation. "I saw that."
Smith nodded. "The Horns of Welcome," the older man explained. "Constructed by one of Chiun's ancestors."
His gray eyes were studying the night cliffs, trying to glimpse a silhouette of movement. He saw none. There was no ambient glow from beyond the rocks. Sinanju seemed dead.
On the shore Smith helped Howard drag the raft from the water's edge. Once it was secure,
the two men made their way up the winding bay path to the village.
"Have you ever been here before?" Howard whispered, a worried edge in his voice.
"Yes."
"Was it -I don't know-livelier back then?" Smith understood his assistant's meaning. Even in a village as small as Sinanju, there should have been sounds of life, the collective din of people going about their daily lives. No sound whatsoever emanated from the village ahead.
Smith had brought his .45-caliber automatic from Folcroft. He slipped the handgun from its holster. Before they even reached the village proper, Smith feared they were too late.
He smelled the smoke first. It was a little too acrid in the frigid air. It burned his nostrils.
He saw the buildings when they crested the hill.
Burned husks of the simple wood-framed homes and shops that had comprised the central core around the main square of Sinanju.
And all around were bodies.
The dead lay everywhere. End to end. Across the square, up alleys, on wooden sidewalks. The streets of Sinanju were choked with corpses.
"Good God," Smith breathed, his gun lowering in shock.
Beside him on the road, Mark Howard seemed strangely unbothered by the destruction all around them. There was an odd look on his youthful face. With careful eyes he studied the nearest building, as if he had never before witnessed up close the destruction wrought by fire.
Away from his assistant, Smith was staring at bodies on the ground. One face after another. So many dead. It looked as if the entire village of Sinanju had been-
What little color he possessed drained from his gray face. "Chiun," the CURE director whispered in soft horror.
Stumbling over the nearest bodies, he crouched beside a frail corpse.
The Master of Sinanju was peaceful in eternal repose. The care lines of his weathered face were relaxed.
Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Smith reached out a shaking hand, touching the old Korean's cheek. The flesh was cold. Chiun had been dead for hours. "No," Smith breathed, the word a mournful plea within a puff of white steam. His gun arm went slack and he fell to his backside in the dirt.
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