Air Raid td-126

by Warren Murphy

  The door to the greenhouse was open. Just a hair so far-and so far the seal was still secure-but these two had somehow managed to do something the engineer of the greenhouse had insisted would be impossible. And Hahn trusted this particular engineer's word, for it was Herr Hahn himself who had designed the room for the CCS.

  On the monitor Hahn saw that they'd pried the edge of the trunk between the doors. The old Asian attacked the inflating hermetic seal with his long fingernails.

  For the first time in his professional career, Herr Hahn felt his certainty in his inevitable success begin to fade.

  This couldn't be. They had to die.

  As Hahn watched, the Lifton woman suddenly pointed back out across the greenhouse.

  She obviously knew where the emergency switch was. Not that it mattered. Yes, he had gone out to get the log, but the young male would never go back out again.

  Hahn watched, stunned, as the young American darted back out into the greenhouse. He grew even more shocked when the thin man with the abnormally thick wrists threw an obscene gesture toward Herr Hahn's security camera.

  How could he possibly have known he was being watched?

  The American made it to the switch. The acid had to have chewed through the lock and chain, because he simply plucked them off and threw them to the floor.

  Others in his business thought Herr Hahn cautious in the extreme. Today, Hahn was grateful for his care and planning. He had disabled the emergency switch before his targets had even entered the greenhouse.

  He watched on the monitor as the young one yanked down the switch. When the doors remained closed, Hahn allowed a slip of air to pass his thick lips.

  Not that he really expected anything to happen. It was just that, given the strangeness of this situation-

  A green light suddenly winked on in the security panel.

  Hahn's eyes grew wide. His hands sought out control buttons even as he stuffed his feet back inside the open well beneath the desk. He swept the panel with his eyes.

  A breach in the doors. But that couldn't be. The emergency switch was dead. He was sure of it.

  The old Asian was still attacking the seal. But now plastic shards had begun to fly like string confetti in a homecoming parade.

  Impossible! He was using his fingernails to whittle away at the supposedly invulnerable polymer. Somewhere, somehow, a break had been made in the airtight seal.

  He glanced at the monitors. This couldn't be happening.

  Hahn was watching two screens at once. The young one was across the room while the old one and the girl stood under the door overhang. Through the murky air Hahn thought he saw something that gave him hope. He zoomed in on the roof.

  Yes. There it was. The acid was rotting away the securing bracket. No sooner had he focused the camera than the metal twisted and snapped. The roof lurched and collapsed.

  Two dead, one left. Hahn reached for the control panel.

  The overhang was no longer there. There was no protection, no way out. Hahn could cut off the sprinklers on half of the room, concentrating the downpour where the young one stood.

  Hahn flipped the last switch. Gripping tight the edge of the control panel, he threw his attention back to the monitors. To watch the younger man finally do as he was supposed to. Melt into a pile of steaming flesh and bone.

  THE DELUGE that would have turned a common man to sludge failed to kill Remo Williams for one simple reason. Remo Williams was not a common man.

  He was off at a sprint even as the acid was falling. It hadn't even touched ground before he was nearly out of range.

  The nozzles had been turned off to the right of the greenhouse. That was where Remo ran.

  Remo was running full-out even as he felt the first drops of acid kiss the back of his T-shirt.

  As he ran, he rolled the skin of his back, flexing and twisting the muscles. His skin became a life-form independent of the rest of his body, rippling in undulating waves. The movement kept his shirt out of complete contact with his skin, preventing the acid that was bleeding into the disintegrating fabric from finding root in soft flesh.

  He was at a crouch once he reached the storm line. With a fall and a roll he was out of it. Acid that had pooled on the floor chewed away at the knees of his pants.

  The nozzles where he'd been standing clicked off with a drizzling hiss. In another moment he was sure the ones directly above him would switch on.

  He was out in the open now. Exposed. There was no longer any place for him to hide. His eyes strayed to the remnants of the door arch.

  Even if Chiun had survived under all that metal, it would only be a matter of time before-

  Remo blinked. The twin doors into the control room were no longer closed. The clear panes had been pried apart. A narrow gap opened into the room beyond.

  A weathered face appeared in the narrow opening. Chiun's worried expression changed to a look of agitation.

  "Remo, act your age," the Master of Sinanju admonished. "It is unseemly for the Transitional Reigning Master of Sinanju to be stomping around in rain puddles."

  With that, Chiun disappeared.

  Above Remo, the nozzles switched on. It no longer mattered. Remo was already gone.

  He took a running leap over the collapsed roof. "Banzai!" he yelled as he dove over the twisted debris and through the open door. His palms hit the floor in the small control room and he flipped up and over, landing on the soles of his smoking loafers. "Tah-da!" he announced, throwing his arms out wide.

  Amanda was standing next to the Master of Sinanju. Rather than be impressed, she wore a frightened expression.

  The instant Remo hit the floor, the Master of Sinanju jumped forward, tapered fingernails flashing out like deadly knife blades.

  "What are you doing?" Remo asked, twisting away.

  "Stay still, imbecile!" Chiun barked.

  Like a demented tailor, the old man attacked Remo's steaming T-shirt. The cotton sheered away in long strips. As it fell to the floor, the acid continued to chew at the material.

  Once the shirt was gone, Chiun sliced off the growing holes at Remo's knees. He came away with two circles of cloth with widening holes at the center. He threw them to the floor with the steaming T-shirt strips.

  When Chiun at last stood back, Remo looked down on his tattered outfit. He was shirtless with two holes in his knees and a pair of smoking loafers. He glanced sheepishly at the Master of Sinanju.

  "You think maybe you could skip over this part in the Sinanju Scrolls?" he asked.

  "If not for the ever vigilant eyes of my dead ancestors, I would be tempted to throw out the entire chronicle of your apprenticeship and claim the records were lost when you burned down my house," Chiun replied thinly.

  "That sounds like a no," Remo sighed. "And I didn't burn down our house."

  Scuffing his soles on the concrete floor to remove the excess acid, he turned his attention to Amanda.

  She stood panting near the door. Beyond, the storm still raged in the greenhouse.

  "I-I can't believe this," Amanda stammered.

  "Yeah, my boss has tried to kill me a couple of times, too," Remo commiserated. "If he's thinking of making it a regular thing, I'd ask for a raise and a better parking space. Say, you wouldn't have a spare shirt around here?"

  Amanda glanced at him. "Oh," she said. "There might be some clothes in the offices."

  She pressed a button on the control panel and the outer doors hissed open. In a daze, she headed into the hallway. Chiun followed her out.

  Remo cast a final glance into the greenhouse.

  The storm was powering down. The electricity had been cut to the lightning and the fans. Only a little liquid still drizzled from the overhead nozzles. The ground steamed. The acrid air burned Remo's nostrils.

  Whoever was operating the environmental controls was admitting failure and shutting off the systems. Remo left the small control room, his face as dark and doom-filled as the dissipating clouds in the big glass greenhou
se.

  IN THE SECURITY Room on the other side of the CCS complex, Herr Hahn switched off the monitors one by one.

  For a long moment he sat alone in the silent room, staring at the dead black screens.

  This simple killing was apparently going to be more difficult than he had originally thought. Without realizing it, a smile slowly spread across his broad face. In the pit of his stomach, a new emotion.

  Excitement.

  It had been a long time since Herr Hahn had faced a real challenge. These two promised to give him something his professional life was sorely lacking.

  Like a man with renewed purpose, Herr Hahn got to his feet and waddled out into the dimly lit corridor.

  Chapter 7

  The sunrise was new.

  He had been in this place many times now and it was always night. But there it was. Or nearly was. Although the sun had not yet actually peeked over the horizon, Mark Howard knew on some instinctive level that it was coming even as he walked along the empty Folcroft corridor.

  Through the closed and barred windows he could see the sanitarium grounds bathed in the purple of predawn. The same color streaked the sallow sky.

  It was always winter in this place. It remained the same even as the rest of the world enjoyed the change of seasons. Dark shadows painted the land. The tree trunks were arms, their dead branches fingers. Grasping, clawing for the dawn that had been so long coming. Finally, almost here.

  Mark was used to the dream by now. It had started the first week he'd come to work at Folcroft. For months it was a nightmare, but he'd had it so frequently now that he had built up a callus in his mind.

  When he passed the same window at the end of the hall, the same owl sat in the same branch of the same tree. Its eyes glowed the same color as the sky and the land. He saw for the first time that the swollen moon was gone.

  Mark was looking out the window when, with a loud hoot, the owl suddenly flapped its big wings. His heart tripped when the night bird took flight. It vanished in the pale darkness of early morning.

  That was new, too. He had gotten used to everything being the same. The changes in the dream this time were bringing back some of the earliest feelings of dread.

  He pulled his gaze from the window.

  Mark could see now that the hallway was not as misshapen as it usually was. The angles were normal, not twisted. The lines of ceiling and floor led straight to a single door at the far end of the dusty corridor.

  It was like any other hospital door at Folcroft. Wires crisscrossed the off-center Plexiglas window. The Beast lived beyond that door. For a year now Mark had almost glimpsed it in his dreams. It was a thing that lived on fear and in shadow. It played at the fringes of his unconscious mind, never stepping into the light, never taking a form that Mark Howard could fully understand.

  He was only happy that the Beast was trapped. The door was a prison that kept it locked away.

  As Mark approached the heavy door, he expected to feel the chill that always came at this point in his dream. Along with it, the same inhuman rasping voice he always heard.

  They never came.

  More changes. A corruption of the familiar that made all of the old terrors seem as fresh as that very first dream all those months ago. His steps growing more cautious, Mark approached the door.

  Before he even reached it, he saw that it was ajar. Another first. A small security chain hung slack in the space between door and frame. So fragile. Not enough to hold the monster within.

  His heart thudding, Mark reached the door. Hands framing the small window, he leaned in close. Most of the familiar shadows had fled. He saw now that the room was tidy, like the rooms of all Folcroft patients. A thin sheet draped a plain hospital bed. And on the bed was an emaciated figure with a face as pale as the crisp white linens under which it lay. Mark blinked. There was no sign of the Beast. And when the voice spoke, it came not from the figure in the bed but from Mark Howard's own mind. The time is nearly here....

  Something stabbed into Mark's shoulder. He jumped, grabbing for whatever had touched him. His fingers wrapped around something cold and dry.

  Nearly here... nearly here. .. nearly here...

  "MARK, WAKE UP. "

  The voice spoke with crisp irritation. The dream fled and Mark Howard's tired eyes blinked open. He was sitting in the office of Dr. Harold W. Smith. The CURE director stood over him, shaking Mark with one arthritic hand. Smith's lemony face was drawn tight with annoyance.

  "Dr. Smith," Mark said, embarrassed. He suddenly realized that the thing he had grabbed on to in his dream was Smith's gnarled hand. He released it, his face flushing.

  Smith straightened. "We were in the middle of our morning meeting," he said. "I had taken a moment to retrieve something from the mainframes. When I looked up, you were asleep."

  "Oh." Mark cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I've been having a problem with..." His voice trailed off. "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith," he repeated.

  A notch formed on Smith's gray brow. "Is there something that you wish to tell me?" he asked. When Mark looked up, he found Smith peering intently down at him. The look of accusation of a moment before had begun to change to one of concern. There was almost a paternal glint in those cold eyes.

  "It's something-" Mark shook his head. "I can't really describe it right now. It's something strange."

  "I see," Smith said slowly. "Does it have anything to do with your, er-" he hesitated "-ability?" Although the CURE director chose not to discuss it much, he was aware that his assistant was possessed of a unique intuitive sense. In the past Howard's gift had given them foresight into some CURE-related matters.

  "I don't think so," Mark said. "If it is, it's not in any way I'm familiar with."

  Smith nodded. "Very well," he said. He began to turn away when he abruptly paused. "Mark, you've been working nonstop since you started here. Perhaps it might be a good idea for you to take a few days off."

  Howard seemed surprised at the offer. Before he could respond, they were both interrupted by the jangling of one of Smith's desktop telephones. The CURE director noted that it was the blue contact phone.

  "That will be all for now, Mark," Smith said. Howard was grateful to be dismissed. As he hurried from the room, Smith rounded the desk. Howard was shutting the door as Smith settled into his cracked leather chair.

  "Smith," the CURE director announced into the phone.

  "Hey, Smitty," Remo said. "I'll give you three guesses who just escaped certain death by the skin of his teeth, and the first two don't count."

  Smith leaned forward in his chair. "Did something go wrong?" he asked.

  "Depends on your perspective," Remo said. "Since I'm not a French fry right now, that Humbert Humbert guy who runs the show around here probably thinks so."

  Smith raised an eyebrow. "Remo, are you saying Hubert St. Clair tried to kill you?" he asked.

  In the Geneva headquarters of the Congress of Concerned Scientists, Remo leaned back against Amanda Lifton's desk. Chiun and Amanda had left him alone while he placed the call. He looked down at his tattered clothes.

  "Technically, kill," Remo said. "Specifically, acid dip. Six of one, half dozen of the other. I think he was just going after that dingbat lady scientist, and me and Chiun got caught in the cross fire. And speaking of her, the Ivy League must have started passing out diplomas with every bikini wax."

  "Dr. Lifton is supposed to be quite gifted," Smith said.

  "She's a flaky debutante with boobs till Tuesday," Remo replied. "I doubt she could invent her way out of a bra with both hands." He tipped his head, reconsidering. "Actually, that's probably how she got the job here."

  Remo quickly briefed Smith on the events in the CCS greenhouse, including the destruction of all the C. dioxas.

  "You said St. Clair was on the phone before the attack against you began?" Smith asked once Remo was finished.

  "Yeah, but I wasn't listening to what he was saying," Remo said. "Could have been calling his bookie. It
sure as hell wasn't his dry cleaner."

  As he spoke, he picked up a framed photograph from Amanda's desk. Dr. Lifton was posing with Hubert St. Clair and a half-dozen others. Although he could have picked her chests out of a lineup blindfolded, in this picture it wasn't hard to tell which one was Amanda. The rest of them were all dressed like St. Clair. They all wore bell-bottoms and corduroy jackets. Remo frowned at the picture.

  "Must be the office Halloween party," he muttered.

  "What?"

  "Nothing, Smitty," Remo said, putting the photo down. "I don't know what the what is here right now, but I searched the place and came up empty. That Dilbert guy flew the coop. I need you to track him down."

  He heard the sound of Smith typing rapidly at his computer. "There is an executive committee that oversees the CCS," the CURE director explained as he worked. "While the current director is Dr. St. Clair, he is answerable to the rest of the leadership. They could be involved." The typing stopped. "The CCS owns a home for St. Clair's use when he is in Geneva," Smith said. He gave Remo the address.

  "Thanks, Smitty." He started to hang up.

  "Remo," the CURE director said. "Are you certain all the trees were destroyed?"

  Remo snapped his fingers. "Thanks for reminding me," he said. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a tiny object.

  It was as big as a pea. This was what had caught his eye in the greenhouse when the lightning struck. Remo held up the blue seed for inspection.

  "Is something else wrong?" Smith asked after the dead air had gone on between them too long.

  "Maybe," Remo said. "Although it could just be the end of the world. I'll get back to you." Slipping the lone C. dioxa seed back into his pocket, he hung up the phone.

  Chapter 8

  "Where are all the seeds?" Remo announced when he rejoined Amanda and Chiun in one of the CCS labs.

  He had brought a framed photograph with him from Amanda's office.

  The Master of Sinanju was sitting cross-legged near a big picture window that offered a breathtaking view of the snowcapped Alps. He had removed a handful of his special gold-and-silver envelopes and a stack of writing paper from his kimono folds. The old man was ignoring the scenic view, concentrating on composing another of his mysterious letters.