Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

  Konrad Blutsturz wrapped himself up in the flag he no longer believed in and settled into the wheelchair. It squealed under his weight, the spoked wheels bending into useless ovals. He arranged the red flag until his entire body was shrouded like a mummy on an ancient throne.

  He waited. Soon Ilsa's announcement would come. Soon the White Aryan League of America and Alabama would be assembled before him. And soon they would all fall like grass before a mower.

  They filed into the auditorium slowly at first, then in a hurried rush. He regarded them with black eyes that were so glazed with pain they barely saw. But soon the pain would be a thing of the past. Soon he would have his two greatest desires, Ilsa's supple body and Harold Smith's limp corpse.

  The assembled Aryan League stood before him, muttering under their breath. They had heard that their Fuhrer was to undergo a miraculous operation. But there he was, gray-faced and sickly, wrapped in a red blanket, in his wheelchair. What had happened?

  Konrad Blutsturz' eyes came to life when Ilsa stepped into the standing-room-only crowd. With her were the two dangers to his life, the man called Remo and the other one, the Oriental. They saw him, and started through the crowd toward him. But the crowd was thick.

  He saw Ilsa lock the great double doors behind them. Good. She understood. He had already locked the side door. Now there was no exit from the windowless room. No exit for any of them.

  This is how it was to be with the Harold Smiths, thought Konrad Blutsturz. He would invite them all to this room with some ruse. A giveaway or sweepstakes lure. Every Harold Smith who could be the Harold Smith. And after the doors were locked . . .

  The two men were halfway through the crowd already. They seemed to find the paths of least resistance in the mass which pressed closer to the stage in anticipation.

  Konrad Blutsturz raised his voice.

  "I have summoned you, men and women of the White Aryan League of America and Alabama, because a grave danger threatens our purity. Infiltrators, enemies of the White Arvan League."

  The crowd tensed. They looked at one another fearfully. They remembered what had happened the last time their Fuhrer had said such words. One of them had died.

  "These enemies are among us now," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They are in this room. One of them is white, the other is not."

  "I think he means us, Remo," said Chiun, in the crowd.

  All heads turned toward the squeaky sound of Chiun's voice.

  "Now you did it, Little Father," said Remo.

  "You see them," called Konrad Blutsturz. "Now deal with them!"

  The crowd exploded. Remo and Chiun were inside a boiling tangle of humanity that was clawing, squeezing, groping for them.

  Chiun whirled in place like a miniature dervish, and the people in his immediate vicinity flew away frorn him like gravel off a flywheel.

  Remo took the opposite tactic. He grabbed the reaching hands and pulled them toward him. Bodies followed Remo's yanking motions, colliding into other bodies.

  Konrad Blutsturz watched in amazement touched with admiration. Two men against hundreds. Two unarmed men against a disciplined mob. And not only did they remain untouched, but they continued to advance on the stage, effortlessly, inexorably.

  It was at that moment, unnoticed by the furious mob, that Konrad Blutsturz rose from the crushed wheelchair to his full height.

  Towering on the stage, he sucked in a triumphant breath. He could smell the sweat of humans in conflict, see their frenzy, almost taste their bodies. Even in this elemental state, they were but masses of organs and tissue and bone. He was all that and more. He was titanium and servo motors and over six feet tall. And as he willed it, his artificial knee joints whirred, and like a telescope stretching out, he rose from six feet to six and a half and then to a figure of flesh and blue metal that stood over eight feet tall.

  He held out his left arm, and at a thought, there was a loud snick and a shining blade of metal clicked out from his forearm and into place.

  At a signal, Ilsa switched off the lights.

  In that first hush of darkness, Konrad Blutsturz stepped off the stage like a silent juggernaut.

  The darkness meant little to Remo and Chiun. Actually, it helped. Their eyes, trained in Sinanju, knew how to turn the dimness into clarity. But the eyes of their opponents saw only blackness. People milled about them in confusion.

  That made it easier to pick them off. A chop here, a pressure on the neck nerves there. Every hand that reached for them was turned into a handle to use against the attacker.

  Grunts and groans and panicky screams started to fill the room.

  Remo's ears picked out a different kind of sound in the noisy confusion, a heavy tread, not human, not flesh. Remo looked toward the stage. He saw the dim outlines of a wheelchair, but it was empty.

  Then there was a loud, thunking sound, simple, harsh, final, like an ax digging into a tree trunk. Into a spongy tree trunk.

  Someone screamed shrilly. "My arm! My arm!" The tart scent of blood floated to Remo's nostrils. "Chiun! There's something loose in this room," Remo warned.

  "Yes," said Chiun, kicking the legs out from under two assailants. "I am!"

  "No, something different."

  The hazy shadows of milling bodies blocked Remo's vision. He had a brief glimpse of an arm rising and falling, and at the end of that arm there was a swordlike blade.

  Every time the arm fell, someone screamed and another body thudded to the floor.

  The screaming turned into wholesale panic. Remo moved, sighting on the flashing blade.

  "Chiun, get these people out of here! They're being massacred."

  "I am massacring them," said Chiun, knocking two heads together.

  "Chiun! Do it!" yelled Remo. He moved toward the electrical field he sensed just ahead.

  The thing towered over Remo, its movements strange. He circled behind the man or thing or whatever it was. Remo had learned one thing years ago, a great truth that Chiun had impressed upon him. When facing an unknown threat, never attack first. Observe. Understand. Only when an enemy revealed his weakness to you was it safe to go on the offensive.

  Remo did not know what he faced in the blackness of the auditorium. His feet grazed fallen bodies, dismembered limbs. The floor was slick with blood, and the scent of it stung his nostrils with the sickness of wasted life. The thing was too tall for a man, yet it had a manlike heartbeat. Lungs, tired, laboring, respirated with difficulty.

  At the same time, the thing carried an electrical field, low but powerful. Remo poised for a first feint. Suddenly light spilled through the opened double doors. Chiun had broken them down.

  Remo saw the thing clearly then. It was Konrad Blutsturz, no longer a withered old husk in a wheelchair, but a thing half-man and half-machine, his face terrible with rage and wrinkles.

  "Ilsa," Konrad Blutsturz shouted. "Do not let them escape! Any of them."

  "Nobody's escaping," said Remo. "Especially you." Konrad Blutsturz turned at the sound of Remo's voice, his face contorting wordlessly.

  He raised his titanium arm. It descended toward Remo, the curved blade snapping out from the forearm. Remo dodged the blade easily. It retracted, ready to slice again.

  Remo slipped behind him. The blade mechanism appeared to be a spring-loaded sickle that retracted into the artificial forearm like a gigantic switchblade.

  Remo poked with a steel-hard finger and broke the spring. The blade dropped, swinging uselessly on its hinge.

  "I'd take that back," Remo said lightly. "It's defective."

  "I will not be stopped now. Not by you."

  "How about by me,'" Chiun said.

  "By neither of you," said Konrad Blutsturz, his face wild and twisted.

  "Be careful, Little Father," warned Remo.

  "What is it?" asked Chiun in Korean as they circled Blutsturz warily.

  "Bloodsucker. They've turned him into some kind of robot." said Remo.

  "I can see that." snapped Chiun. "What I wi
sh to know is what are its capabilities."

  "Let's find out," said Remo.

  "Let's wait." said Chum.

  "He killed Ferris. We owe him for that." Remo moved in.

  Bhatsturz' titanium hand clicked into a fist. He sent it sweeping before him, back and forth, back and forth, like a mace.

  Remo ducked under his weaving arm and let go with an exploring kick.

  Blutsturz' leg gave with the blow. The eight-foot figure wobbled on one leg until the off-balance limb found its footing.

  "It is strong," said Chiun. "And nimble for a machine."

  "It's only metal."

  "Titanium," said Chiun worriedly. He slashed at the metal hand with his fingernails, which scored the metal, but the arm did not paralyze with pain, the way flesh would.

  "It does not feel pain," said Chiun.

  Konrad Blutsturz lunged for the Master of Sinanju. Chiun spun in a double-reverse movement that took him clear of the lumbering man-machine. He swept out an arm and took Remo by one wrist.

  "Hey!" said Remo.

  "Come," said Chiun. "We will fight this one another time. His techniques are unfamiliar."

  "Nothing doing," said Remo, slipping loose.

  Konrad Blutsturz bore down on him. Remo met him halfway. This time Remo went for the flesh-and-blood arm. He sent a two-fingered nerve thrust to the elbow joint.

  "Arrh!" howled Konrad Blutsturz. He felt the shuddering bone-shock of Remo's blow. He clutched his elbow with his other hand, not thinking. His titanium fingers grabbed too hard and he screamed again at the pain he inflicted on himself.

  "Ilsa," he called in his anguish.

  Remo got behind the shuddering form. He kicked at the back of the knee joint or where the knee joint should be. Konrad Blutsturz went down on one metal knee. But almost as rapidly, he rose to his full height again.

  "Come, Remo," said Chiun nervously.

  And when Remo did not come, the Master of Sinanju intervened.

  Chiun came up behind his pupil, while Remo's full concentration was on the awkward man-machine. While Remo was distracted, while Remo could not defend himself.

  Chiun, his face warped with the pain of what he was about to do, struck Remo at the back of the neck-a short, clean chopping blow.

  Remo tottered, and Chiun snapped him up, taking him under one leg and by the neck. Carrying his fallen pupil across his shoulders, the Master of Sinanju bounded for the doors.

  On the threshold, he stopped and called a challenge to the weaving thing that was Konrad Blutsturz.

  "You win for now, inhuman creature," he said, "but we will meet again. The Master of Sinanju promises it." Konrad Blutsturz barely heard the taunting challenge. The pain in his stumps was now too great to endure. His legs refused to move. His good arm hung limp at his side. The other one raised and lowered uncontrollably, like a child having a tantrum.

  "Ilsa!" he called.

  Ilsa Gans sent the van careening through the night, away from the hell that had been Fortress Purity. Fear rode her soft features. She bit her lower lip. It bled.

  In the van's dark interior, lying on the floor, was the thing that was Konrad Blutsturz. He slept now. But it had taken all her strength to get him into the van when the carnage was over.

  She had been forced out of the auditorium when the doors burst open. The crowd had nearly trampled her. She had stumped to the ordnance room and had gotten a machine pistol.

  She shot her way back into the auditorium, shot without discrimination, without mercy. All that mattered was reaching the side of Konrad Blutsturz.

  When she found him, he was sinking to the floor. There was no sign of the two enemies, Remo and Chiun. They weren't among the butchered bodies that lay everywhere in macabre profusion. But they no longer mattered. Getting her Fuhrer to safety did.

  She talked Konrad Blutsturz to his feet, because he was too heavy to lug. But he could not stand. He was barelv conscious. There had been only one thing to do. She dismantled the limbs of which he had been so proud. She had uncoupled them from the titanium knobs implanted in each stump.

  And carrying him in her arms, Ilsa had deposited him in the back of the van, on the floor, because there was no time to make him comfortable.

  She would never have gone back for the blue arm and the insectlike legs, but in his delirium, Konrad Blutsturz had insisted. Just as he had insisted she bring the nebulizer.

  Now she was speeding into the night. She did not know where she was going. She did not care where. All she wanted was to escape.

  Chapter 26

  Dr. Harold W. Smith was thinking of going home. He believed the immediate danger to himself was past, perhaps even averted. For over a week now no one named Harold Smith had been murdered or reported missing anywhere in the continental United States.

  Smith sat at his administrator's desk at Folcroft Sanitarium. The killer should have found him by now, but he had not. There'd been no disturbances at Folcroft since Remo's sudden appearance. Smith had explained away Remo's attack to his guard staff as a former patient who had tried to readmit himself the hard way. The guards-none of whom was seriously injured-had accepted Smith's explanation that the patient had been turned over to the local police, and the matter was resolved.

  Smith knew that if he were to be attacked, it would happen at his listed address-Folcroft. But to ensure his wife's safety, he was having his house watched. Two FBI agents were staked out at Smith's house to watch for what Smith's anonymous directive called "suspected terrorist activities." If anything happened there, his wife would be protected.

  Smith wondered if it was now safe to call off those agents and return to a normal life. He wasn't sure. The killer had struck in a logical state-by-state itinerary. Folcroft should have been next. Perhaps it still was, Smith thought. Perhaps the killer didn't dare try to penetrate the security of Folcroft. Perhaps he was waiting for Smith to leave the grounds before striking. Could he have been arrested or intercepted?

  Finally Smith decided he would stay put, at least for another day.

  The secure phone rang. The CURE phone that Remo reported through.

  Smith picked it up. "Yes?"

  "Smitty?" It was Remo's voice. He sounded upset. "Bad news."

  "What?"

  "Ferris is dead. We were too late."

  "The nebulizer?"

  "Gone."

  "Find it." Smith's voice was harsh. He didn't want to report failure to the President.

  "Hey, I'm just making a courtesy call here," Remo said. "I don't work for you."

  "I'm sorry," said Smith, thinking that if he upset Remo he would have to deal directly with Chiun. Smith preferred to deal with Remo. "Please tell me what happened down there."

  "That's better," Remo said, mollified. He liked Smith better when he was polite. "We're at Fortress Purity. This place is a cesspool. Run by this old Nazi, Konrad something. I can't pronounce it. It's German."

  "Go on," Smith said. Remo never could handle details. "This old fart is some kind of cripple, One arm, no legs. But he's the guy who kidnapped Ferris. You'll never guess why."

  "You're right," said Smith, who was picked to head CURE because he had no imagination. "I won't. Tell me, please."

  "He needed the nebulizer to rebuild himself. You heard me right. When we caught up with him, he had artificial legs and an arm rigged with a meat cleaver. He's some kind of bionic half-man, half-machine."

  "Cyborg."

  "Huh?"

  "The technical term for what you just described is a cyborg, a human being reconstituted with artificial parts."

  "If you say so," Remo said. "He was supposed to be the leader of this freaking place, but when we caught up to him, he was slaughtering every one of these neo-Nazis. I can't figure why."

  "I ran a background check on the White Aryan League," said Smith. "It was founded by a Boyce Barlow. A few days ago his body, and the bodies of his two cousins, were discovered in a Maryland dump. Obviously this Konrad person got them out of the way."
/>
  "But why? To take over? He ended up killing almost everyone."

  "I can't explain that part. Where is this person now?"

  "Got away."

  "How?"

  "I was zeroing in on him when Chiun jumped me. He was afraid I'd get hurt. You know how he is when he has to deal with something outside of his experience. If it's not in the Sinanju histories, you don't mess with it. Run now, fight later."

  "Where is Chiun now?"

  "Teaching what's left of the survivors why Koreans are the true master race. Look out, Smitty. When he's done, the first Korean-supremacy group in world history will set up in Alalnma."

  "Remo, it's very important that we recover the nebulizer."

  "To you and me both. I could have strangled Chiun when I woke up from that nerve chop. The sooner I end this thing, the sooner Chiun and I can have it out about going back to Sinanju."

  "Have you any leads?"

  "When Chiun is finished, I'm going to work these people over myself I'll come up with something."

  "Keep me informed."

  "Say the magic word," Remo said airily.

  "Please."

  "Thank you." And Remo hung up.

  Smith's thoughts were more troubled than ever. The death of Ferris D'Orr would not be easy to explain to the President, but if the nebulizer were recovered, it would salvage the situation.

  Unfortunately, Smith could not report the nebulizer's recovery just yet. Another man in his position might have been tempted to wait a day or two to report in the hopes of giving his superior more positive news. Not Smith. Even if it meant his removal from CURE-a possibility, given the failure to protect Ferris D'Orr-Smith would not shirk his immediate duty.

  Without hesitation, he picked up the red phone. Almost as rapidly, he replaced it.

  The CURE computer terminal had beeped twice, a signal of urgent incoming data.