Air Raid td-126

by Warren Murphy

  It was the same parchment the tiny Asian had been staring at for the past week. Sitting on the floor of Amanda's apartment, he was still struggling with how exactly to enter his confession about Remo's whiteness into the Sinanju Scrolls without making it sound like a confession.

  Even though Remo knew that he was the one being blamed for something that he obviously had no control over, this particular distraction of Chiun's was better than those maddeningly secretive letters the old man had been writing. At least here Remo knew what he was in for.

  "I don't know why you think it's such a crime for a Master to train a white pupil," Remo grumbled. "You know as well as me that I'm not the only one to learn Sinanju."

  Chiun knew to whom Remo was referring. One of the greatest foes they had ever faced was a white trained in Sinanju. Jeremiah Purcell was now in a perpetually medicated state in the security wing of Folcroft, a threat to no one.

  "It is not the same," Chiun said. "He was the disciple of my wicked nephew. I am responsible for you, not him."

  As Chiun continued to not write, Remo cast a depressed eye around Amanda Lifton's apartment. "Maybe the nice thing I'm supposed to do is set fire to this place," he said suddenly. "Probably not. I guess her neighbors could choke from inhaling all this saccharin."

  He knocked most of the stuffed toys off the couch as he spread his grimy arms across the back.

  "Are you gonna be through in there sometime this week?" he yelled into the bathroom.

  "Almost finished!" Amanda called out over the spray of the shower. "Be careful of my petsywetsies!"

  "You betsy-wetsie," Remo called back as he used a stuffed kitty to wipe the oily soot off his shoes. When he was done, he threw cat and shoes into the rubbish and pulled a brand-new pair of eight-hundred-dollar loafers from a plastic bag.

  Chapter 13

  The big, sprawling plantation was a throwback to the long gone days of bright and shining British colonialism.

  The clapboard house and its wraparound porch were painted a clean and tidy white. Although the African sun burned down hot all year, the boards never warped, were not allowed to get too dry.

  Mosquito screens enclosed the neat little gazebo that sat to one side of the front yard. When the days stretched long into twilight and night drew in like a lazy fog, the orange glow from a lone pipe bowl could often be seen through those screens. Swinging lazily with the back-and-forth motion of the old porch swing.

  The sun had set on the British Empire, but some small vestige of it lived on in that big old house. Odd that the neighboring farmers would think that, since the sole occupant of the house was not English, but American. But he had that cool confidence, the superior mannerly attitude of the velvet-gloved conquerors their ancestors had come to know, then fear and, finally, to hate.

  A few years before, attackers had targeted the whites who lived in Zimbabwe. Gentleman farmers who had inherited the land they lived on from their fathers, who in turn had inherited it from their fathers before them, were being slaughtered in their homes. No one lifted a hand to stop the bloodshed. In fact, it was encouraged. But even when the president had given his approval to the murder of whites and the seizing of their land, the gangs of killers who roamed the wilderness cut a wide swath around that clean little house with the neatly trimmed rosebushes and the American owner who liked to sit out in the gazebo on warm summer nights to smoke his pipe and watch the stars.

  They left the man and his house alone for one simple reason. Fear. The occupant of the house had a reputation in this part of Africa. Yes, he was quiet and genteel. And, when properly provoked, he was more deadly than any workaday mob that might assault his little bit of paradise.

  Fear kept them away and kept the little farmhouse safe.

  As he spread manure and mulch around his rosebushes, Benson Dilkes didn't look like a figure to provoke fear. He was flicking an aphid off a leaf and tsking in annoyance when he heard the telephone ring in the house.

  Brushing the dirt from his hands, he climbed to his feet.

  Dilkes was a handsome man, with a tan, rugged face and laugh lines that crimped the corners of his eyes. Although his dark hair was peppered gray and the calendar of his life had recently slipped past his sixtieth year, he still retained the vigor of youth.

  He mounted the porch, grabbing a sweating glass from a metal table before going inside.

  The phone was old and clunky. A good solid number from the days when a phone could be used to club a man to death or strangle him with the cord. With the new phones these days, the best a person could do was call a target a thousand times and hope he got head cancer.

  Thankful once more for uncomplicated retirement, Dilkes scooped up the phone. "Hello." He took a sip of his drink.

  "I think I might have a problem, Benson."

  The voice surprised Dilkes. The man on the other end of the line rarely spoke and never, ever called. "Is that you, Olivier?" Dilkes asked slowly. The answer caused him to put his drink down. Carefully.

  "Yes." Even that one word was difficult to get out. "Benson, I just left an event. There were two targets of interest that were not acquired as I had hoped."

  "You failed?" Dilkes asked. At this point he doubted he could mask his surprise even if he tried. He sat on the edge of a chair, concern etched in his deep tan lines.

  "These men are special, Benson. Different than what I am used to. I was hoping you could offer some insight. Perhaps you know something about them."

  Could it be? Was that actual fear in that accented voice? The younger man had always had ice for blood.

  "I'll help if I can, Olivier," Dilkes said. "What information do you have on them?"

  "Very little, I am afraid. One is an elderly Asian. Perhaps Korean or Japanese. I was too far to see clearly. The other was just an ordinary Caucasian."

  Benson Dilkes felt the floor go out from underneath his feet. For an awful moment, the room swirled. "My God, it's them," Dilkes croaked.

  The voice on the phone grew excited. "You know them? Who are they?"

  Dilkes picked up his drink, draining it in one gulp. "I know of them. Run, Olivier," he insisted. "Get far away from those two. My God-you're lucky to be alive. Run as far as you can and don't look back."

  "Why? What are they?"

  Dilkes closed his eyes wearily, sinking back in his chair. "You never listened; Olivier," he said, shaking his head. "You were an exceptional student, but you were always only interested in your gadgets and toys. You loved those Rube Goldberg contraptions of yours, but you never bothered to learn the history of what we are."

  "I am listening now. Tell me who they are."

  Dilkes sighed, opening his eyes. "Sinanju, Olivier. Those men were Sinanju."

  A pause on the line. "I thought they were mythical."

  "They are absolutely real," Dilkes insisted. "The old one was the reason I left America twenty-five years ago. He is the Master. I've since learned that he's taken a pupil. An American, if the stories I've heard are accurate."

  "The younger one acted like an American." There was a growling contempt in the voice.

  "It was them. It's amazing you met them and got out alive," Dilkes said. "Olivier, do you have any idea how rare a thing that is? In all of recorded history, there are only a handful of men who've done what you have."

  It was the wrong thing to say. The fear that had been there at the start of the conversation was slowly overcome by arrogance.

  "I almost had them, Benson."

  Dilkes sat up rigid in his chair. "No," he insisted. "No, you didn't. And don't even think about going back after them. You live in isolation, Olivier. You've never appreciated that there are forces out there that you and I will never understand. You've achieved a well-deserved reputation, but it's only the reputation of an individual. Sinanju is the reputation of our entire career."

  "Thank you, Benson. I will try to come down for a visit in the spring."

  "You're a dead man if you try to engage them," Dilkes said in fi
nal warning.

  The phone buzzed loud in his ear. With a hot exhale of air, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. So few men in his line of work lived to enjoy retirement. He had just spoken to another that would not.

  Getting up from his comfortable living-room chair, Benson Dilkes went back out to his yard and his prize roses.

  Chapter 14

  He sent back the ice because it wasn't cold enough. His lunch was too hot. Then it was too cold. Then it wasn't lunch at all anymore because he'd thrown it on the waiter's tidy uniform.

  The bulbs in the overhead lights were too bright. Someone was sent for replacements.

  While he waited, some marauder with mallets for hands improperly fluffed his pillow. Since everyone knew a pillow once improperly fluffed could never be fluffed properly again, both pillow and fluffer would be thrown off the plane the minute they landed in Brazil.

  In the back of the jet, people searched for a persistent rattle that only he could hear. Agents and record company executives, promoters and accountants, the flight crew and various personal staff scurried around the cabin, chasing after a sound that wasn't there. They'd been looking, straining their ears, since the jet took off from London.

  "I want it found by the time we touch down or there'll be sackings all around," Albert Snowden snapped over his shoulder. He was chewing on an ice cube as he talked. "Still not cold enough," he snarled, spitting the too-warm ice into the forehead of the lentil-covered waiter.

  As the terrified man scurried around the floor of the plane in search of the wayward chunk of ice, Albert settled angrily back in his seat.

  He was always angry. Even an entire private planeload of people-his people, his employees-bending over backward to service his every whim couldn't soothe the perpetual state of agitation that was, for Albert Snowden, the very stamp of miserable life itself.

  He had always been peevish. Even back when he was a nobody working a starvation-wages job as an English teacher at a boys' school in Saint Albans, twenty miles outside of London.

  Albert Snowden. He hadn't gone by that name in years.

  The last time he'd used it was that long ago winter when he'd taken a sabbatical from teaching. He went to London to indulge in his avocation. Rock and roll music.

  Everyone thought Albert was insane for even thinking he might have a career in music. Crazier still for thinking he could front a band.

  "You're tone-deaf, Albert," his voice coach had told him. "When you sing, it sounds as if your genitals are being pressed between two very large flat rocks. That is not a pleasing sound to hear, Albert. I would demonstrate to you on an animal, but the RSPCA would stop me for inflicting pain on that animal. Which they will do to you if you subject an audience to that voice of yours. Go back to teaching. Go back now. If not for me, man, do it for queen and country."

  But in spite of such negative encouragement, he had persisted in his dream.

  A few days after firing his voice coach-who had taken to wadding cotton in his ears during their sessions-Albert was at an open-mike night at a London club. As luck would have it, he met up with a young American who was looking for a lead singer for his band. Called Fuzz Patrol, the band would consist of only three main members. In those heady days of joyful masochism, Albert and his voice just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He quit teaching altogether and joined the band on the spot.

  They started out in small venues, eventually graduating to bigger clubs.

  From the moment he began with Fuzz Patrol, Albert was on the lookout for a suitable stage name. As fate would have it, he happened to be pricked by a bee before a small gig in Los Angeles one night. After he threw a forty-five-minute temper tantrum backstage, someone suggested he call himself Prick. They claimed they'd come up with it from the bee. A lot of people who had known Albert thought otherwise.

  That night for the first time, Albert introduced himself to an audience as Prick. The name just felt right. From that moment on, Albert Snowden was dead. It was Prick who stepped off that stage and into a new life.

  The name change seemed to work like a lucky talisman. It was during that small L.A. booking that Fuzz Patrol was spotted by a scout from a major record label. That very night they were signed to a multirecord deal.

  After that, the sky was the limit. Fuzz Patrol got national exposure on the late-night talk shows. Hit song followed hit song as their albums all went multiplatinum. They became a powerhouse in rock, both in the U.S. and internationally.

  Success should have brought great happiness. But like so many people who finally achieved precisely what they set out to, Prick was unsatisfied.

  It came as a shock to the rock world when Prick announced he would be leaving Fuzz Patrol. After much soul searching, he had decided that going solo was the only way he could do the sort of music he wanted to. The truth of the matter was, in the few short years they'd been together, Prick had become Fuzz Patrol. Few people outside the music industry even knew the names of the other band members.

  "Why split the money three ways when I only have to split it once?" he reasoned privately to his wife at their rural English estate.

  "You're so right, luv," his wife had replied. "By the way, have you met my new boyfriend? You've had his wife up for a few weekends here and there." As Prick's wife led the handsome stranger over to their very liberated bed, Prick merely sat and watched. He had important business on his mind. Some had their doubts about a solo Prick. After all, he was neither the brains of nor the talent behind Fuzz Patrol. In truth, he was just a shrieking English teacher whose incredible luck had already defied all odds.

  Once more the former Albert Snowden proved his critics wrong. Prick went on to establish a solo career every bit as successful as his time with Fuzz Patrol. For fifteen years he reigned supreme at the top of the adult contemporary charts.

  But satisfaction still proved elusive.

  He had all the money in the world and the coveted life of a rock star. He had limos, jets, drugs and mansions.

  But in a strange way, Prick missed his old life. He missed his days as a schoolmaster, standing in front of a classroom full of eager little dullards hanging on his every word. Like most small men, Prick longed to tell people what to do. That was where his political activism came in. His love of wagging his finger at people as if they were nuisance children thrust him to the front of every cause celebre.

  He screamed along with the glitterati of rock on "We Are the World," the theory being that really bad music ends hunger.

  He helped Famine Relief send bundles of grain to rot on Ethiopian docks.

  He held hands with William Hurt and some smelly stranger with sweaty palms in Hands across America, for what reason he had no idea. He thought it had something to do with homeless red Indians or helping the endangered something-or-other.

  In the arena of celebrity do-goodism, Prick was king. He could always be counted on to toe the Russian, Castro or just plain Commie line on all the right issues, provided his stance didn't negatively impact his own personal bankbook.

  And above all other causes, Prick loved the rain forest.

  The jungle had a primal pull on him. It was distant, huge, tropical and as alien as hell. He could say all kinds of outrageous things about it, and reporters who'd only ever seen pictures would ooh and aah with serious faces. One had to wear a serious face when discussing globally serious issues.

  Prick claimed an area of rain forest the size of Alaska was stripped bare every minute of every day. Even though this would have cleared the entire continent of all vegetation in just over eleven minutes, no one challenged him. He insisted the pharmaceutical companies were in league with the lumber companies to systematically obliterate the plant that cured cancer. He decried the forced extinction of species in numbers that had never existed in the entire history of the planet. He carted natives around with him like sideshow freaks, turning their genuine plight into a sanctimonious exercise in self-promotion.

  The rallying cry
to save the rain forest had been adopted as his mission in life. The rain forest was therefore considered by Prick to be like his Sussex estate. His own personal property.

  Like a supreme overlord returned from battle, Prick watched his vast jungle property from the window as his private jet roared up the snaking Amazon toward Macapa, Brazil.

  This was a necessary homecoming.

  His recent benefit concert for the Primeval Society in New York had been a disaster. The big moment that was supposed to come with But Me No Butz and Glory Whole had turned into a sissy-girl slapfest. The audience had left before Prick's closing number. Even his wife, who so loved the sound of her own voice as emcee that she sometimes continued to drone on while the acts performed, had fled the scene. At the moment she was shacked up in their Manhattan penthouse with a pile of Kleenex. and the least fey member of Glory Whole.

  It had been such a bad time back there that Prick was looking forward to this special time in his jungle. He was slated to perform at the Pan Brazil Eco-Fest, a concert organized to raise awareness of rain forest devastation. With no wife and no acts bigger than himself, this was the perfect chance to recharge his precious bruised ego.

  Men scurried all around him, searching under seats and in cupboards for the nonexistent rattle Prick insisted he could hear. A flight attendant was taping down bottles and glasses in the bar to keep them from shaking.

  The only men not engaged in the vain search were sitting across from Prick.

  The two barefoot men carried spears. They were nude except for matching red loincloths and beads of bone around their necks. Their black eyes were flat, their faces impassive as they stared blankly ahead.

  Prick had found the natives on one of his many trips to South America.

  Rich white men plucking natives from the jungle for their own purposes was by and large frowned upon in the modern age. In fact, America had fought a civil war over this very practice. But it was apparently still okay to do so just as long as the motives of those doing the plucking were judged pure.

  Prick had even cut a record with his natives. It was mostly him screeching while they beat on hollow logs. For some reason, it didn't catch on with the listening public.