Bamboo Dragon td-108

by Warren Murphy

  It was ironic, when he thought about it, that he felt compelled to try to rescue these three men, when one of them was his enemy and Remo was pledged to kill another on behalf of CURE. The rub was that he didn't know which member of the party was the ringer, which one he should terminate.

  No problem, Remo thought. Just let the natives have all three.

  It was a way to go, of course, but there was more to it than that. If possible, he needed to find out what had become of Terrence Hopper's expedition—though he had a fair idea by now—and also dig up any leads he could discover on a new strike of uranium.

  Which meant that he would have to make his way inside the ancient city, check it out and go from there.

  He was just starting on a quick reconnaissance of the perimeter when Remo heard someone approaching through the jungle. Solo, by the sound of it, and trying hard to keep the noise down, even though it didn't help that much. He scanned the wall, saw nothing to suggest the living gargoyles stationed there heard anything to put them on alert and turned away to meet the new arrival.

  He chose his spot, a tree limb fifteen feet above the ground, well out of sight from sentries on the wall, and settled in to wait. Short moments later, Remo focused on a figure moving through the jungle, drawing closer to the ancient city, seemingly oblivious to its existence.

  Seconds later, Remo knew this was no tribesman. This one's clothes were torn and stained, but they would never be mistaken for a layer of mud. The face, turned up toward Remo once without detecting him, was neither Malay nor malformed.

  He chose his moment, dropped to earth behind the solitary hiker, pinning both arms while he clapped his free hand over Audrey Moreland's mouth.

  She struggled for a moment, with surprising strength, then ceased when Remo whispered in her ear. "Don't make me break your neck."

  The woman nodded, faced him as he cautiously released her.

  "You're alive!" she blurted, smart enough to whisper on the home turf of their enemies.

  "You, too, I see."

  "Of course. I mean, what made you think I wasn't?"

  "Our esteemed guide found your scarf in quicksand," Remo told her, leaving out his own discovery. "You never made it back to camp. It was assumed—"

  "That I was dead," she finished for him. "Wrong, as you can see. I'm right here, in the flesh."

  "So why the disappearing act?" he asked.

  "I was afraid, I heard all kinds of shooting and I got lost in the jungle. Spent the whole night up a tree, in fact, and never got a wink of sleep. What happened at the camp?"

  He fought the urge to smile. It was a variation on the same lie he had planned to use on Stockwell and the others, and it had the hollow ring of fabrication to it.

  "I got lucky," Remo said without elaborating.

  "What about the rebels?"

  Remo did smile then. He had a flash of Audrey as she stood by a jungle stream in moonlight, well beyond sight of their last night's camp. Where he had left her, moments prior to any gunfire or anything at all to give the enemy away. How could she know who the attackers were, their politics, unless… ?

  "Their leader asked about you," Remo said.

  "Excuse me?" Audrey looked confused, fearful and angry all at once.

  "Your contact," Remo said. "They must be disappointed in Beijing."

  She stared at Remo for a moment, finally heaved a weary sigh. "What tipped you off?"

  "It's not important. You were all right for a while, but in the long run, I'm afraid you don't have what it takes to pull it off."

  "Which means?"

  "The cloak-and-dagger business, Audrey. You're a lousy spy."

  "I haven't had much practice," she informed him.

  "That's apparent. Why the big career change?"

  "Money, plain and simple, Renton. Is it Renton, by the way?"

  "What difference does it make?"

  "Not much, I guess. If you were really a professor, any kind of academic type, you'd know how boring it can be. Sometimes I feel like I'm the fossil. Can you understand that?"

  "It's a lame excuse for treason," Remo said.

  "There's no such thing in peacetime, Renton. Honestly, I looked it up. The laws on spying don't apply, since I've done nothing in the States."

  "Except to meet with the Chinese."

  "A business meeting," Audrey said. "One million dollars was the going rate, with half up front. A bonus when they make arrangements to deliver the uranium."

  "You'll have to find it first."

  "No problem." Audrey raised her left arm, turned it so that he could see the wristwatch, featuring the time zones of the world and phases of the moon. As Remo studied it, the second hand lurched drunkenly from left to right.

  "A silent Geiger counter," Audrey said. "I'm getting closer."

  "You'll need help," he told her. "Your connection isn't with us anymore."

  "I'll manage, Renton. It's a seller's market."

  "When did you become an expert?"

  "I'm a damned quick study when I need to be."

  "I've gathered that."

  The pistol came from Audrey's pocket. Remo saw her telegraph the move but didn't try to stop her yet.

  "I wouldn't use that now if I were you," he said.

  "I'd rather not."

  "In case you missed it," Remo said, "the others have been taken prisoner. They're being held back there."

  He cocked a thumb in the direction of the ancient city, watching Audrey as her eyes and pistol wavered from the proper target.

  "Taken prisoner? By whom? Held where?"

  "You won't believe it till you see it," Remo told her. "Come with me."

  He turned, pretending to ignore the weapon, kept on turning with a spinning kick that broke her wrist and sent the pistol flying. Audrey's shock gave Remo time to finish it, a tap behind one ear to put her down and out.

  He tore the sleeves from Audrey's shirt, used one to bind her hands behind her back, the other as a makeshift gag. With some determination, she could free herself, but she would still be out for a while, and Remo meant to get his work inside the city done as rapidly as possible.

  It was a simple rescue mission now, except for pinning down the main lode of uranium. With Audrey's Geiger-counter watch around his own wrist, Remo felt as ready as he ever would.

  It wasn't quite an emerald city, and the road in front of him was mud, not yellow bricks, but he was off to see the wizard, come what may.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It took ten minutes, searching in the dark, but Remo found his secret way inside. There was a small gate, overgrown with weeds, near the northeast corner of the city's high surrounding wall. It was unguarded at the moment, and the hinges had been fashioned out of wooden pegs that had long rotted through. They offered faint resistance, but couldn't prevent his entering.

  He wondered how long it had been since anybody used this exit, then dismissed the thought; it was a waste of time to ponder things that had no bearing on his mission. Off to Remo's right, a hundred yards or so, there was a spacious courtyard with a fountain at its center, water burbling from the open maw of what appeared to be a dragon carved from stone.

  The fountain caught his eye because it shimmered, almost seemed to glow, as if there was some phosphorescence in the water. It was curious enough to draw him from his hiding place, a slow creep in the shadow of the looming wall, aware of sentries walking on the parapet above him.

  Remo was no scientist, but he knew water in its normal state was not a source of light. At sea, you might find phosphorescent plankton, maybe larger creatures from the depths who gave off light from chemical reactions to attract prey, summon mates or frighten off their enemies. The same phenomenon was seen in fireflies, and in some inhabitants of caverns underground.

  What did it mean? Were microscopic organisms found in water down below somehow escaping through the fountain, flaring into sudden brilliance as they reached the world above? Could they be toxic? Did consumption of the water help exp
lain some of the freakish defects he had seen?

  He had halved his distance to the fountain when a pair of tribesmen suddenly came into view, approaching from the far side of the courtyard. Remo froze, merged with the shadows, watched them as they stood before the fountain, genuflected and reached out to cup their hands beneath the sparkling flow. He saw them drink and bathe their grim, misshapen faces, all the while intoning syllables that ran together, slow and rhythmic, like a chant.

  When they were done, the tribesmen rose and kept on walking, straight toward Remo. Neither saw him as he huddled in the deeper darkness at a corner of the wall, but he saw them up close. One was a giant, fully seven feet in height, with wrinkled pits in place of ears and fleshy growths on each side of his neck that looked like gills. His sidekick was a man of average height, who had a tiny third arm sprouting from the center of his chest. It twitched and groped its way across his upper torso, as if someone trapped inside his chest—a midget or a child, perhaps—were trying to break out.

  The needle on his silent Geiger counter gave a violent lurch, then fell back to a desultory twitching as the human monsters put more space between themselves and Remo. Staring at the fountain, he knew everything he had to know about the freaks, their hidden city and the new lode of uranium.

  They had been drinking, eating, breathing it for centuries, and breeding mutants all the while. Somehow, as if by destiny, the ancient tribe had built its city at ground zero, with predictable results for generations yet unborn.

  Don't drink the water, Remo thought, and almost laughed out loud.

  For he was standing in the middle of their nightmare now, breathing the same polluted air. According to his Geiger counter, simple ambient exposure held no short-run danger, but he wouldn't like to hang around and test the proposition. Was it sheer, perverse psychology that made him thirsty now, when he couldn't afford to drink at any cost?

  Okay. So find the others and get out of here, he told himself.

  Somehow, the ancient city had acquired a throbbing pulse. At first, he thought it was the amplified reverberation of his own heart, thumping in his ears, but then he recognized the muffled sound of drums. Big drums, at that, their steady cadence amplified by the acoustics of a chamber somewhere close at hand.

  He couldn't name that tune, but he could damned well track it down, and that would have to do. His instinct told him he would find the other members of the Stockwell expedition when he found the drummers.

  It wasn't a tune that made him want to tap his foot and sing along. If anything, it put Remo in mind of war drums, or perhaps a funeral march.

  Somebody's funeral coming up, for sure.

  He let the darkness cover him as he went off to find the pulsing heartbeat of the city.

  Chiun was tired of walking through the jungle. He wasn't fatigued, but rather losing patience with the long trek through a landscape he had mastered in his first few hours on the trail. Where was the challenge for a Master of Sinanju? Where was the reward in tramping over muddy trails and following a group of men who made no effort to conceal their tracks?

  Remo had shown imagination, taking to the trees, but Chiun wasn't inclined to follow his example. Not yet, anyway. For in addition to the tedium of following these clumsy savages and white men—terms the Master of Sinanju viewed as more or less synonymous—he had another goal in mind.

  Chiun was watching out for dragon spoor.

  At one point, midway through the long day's march, he thought that he had found it. An aroma, strong and pungent in his nostrils, beckoned him away from the main trail, a little to the north, and he couldn't resist the detour. What he found was a surprise and disappointment all at once.

  He stood in front of a steaming pile of excrement. Not small, by any means, but neither was it dragon size, if he accepted the dimensions spoken of in legend. Pausing, peering closely at the mound, Chiun wondered, Could it be a baby dragon?

  No.

  Another glance and sniff told him the composition of the pile was wrong. Whatever mighty beast had dropped this load was strictly vegetarian, and anyone with common sense knew dragons were carnivorous.

  He walked around the reeking pile once more, examining the ground for tracks, and blinked at what he saw. They were not dragon tracks, but they would be no trick to follow, and the effort might pay off. Indeed, if Chiun applied himself, he might acquire a weapon and a means of transportation at a single stroke.

  It was worth a try.

  He struck off at a tangent from the course his human quarry had established, following the clear path that a massive, ambling body had prepared for him. He could not calculate the creature's speed with any accuracy, but the excrement was fresh, and Chiun knew he couldn't be far behind.

  It was good luck, Chiun thought, that those he followed hadn't found the creature, or vice versa. They would certainly have tried to kill it, possibly succeeded, and the Master of Sinanju would have been deprived the pleasure of a jungle ride.

  He marked a change in course as he saw that the jungle giant had veered off toward water, and began to jog. If he could overtake his quarry at the stream, it would be perfect.

  Chiun ran for half a mile without the first signs of fatigue, when suddenly the trees began to clear a bit, and he could hear the rushing stream ahead of him. He slowed his pace, and moved without a sound as he approached the water, coming at his quarry from behind.

  The elephant didn't belong there. It wasn't a native of Malaysia, and while India was not so far away in global terms, Chiun wasn't inclined to believe that the beast had wandered over by mistake.

  In fact, he knew that elephants were often used as beasts of burden through the whole of Southeast Asia. Some were bred specifically for work, while others were imported, oftentimes illegally. This pachyderm still wore the riding harness—nearly rotted through, but plainly visible—which marked him as a runaway.

  That meant he was familiar with the ways of men, but might despise them. Asian handlers were notoriously cruel, at least by Western standards, and it hardly rated mention in the newspapers when an occasional "rogue" elephant rebelled against its master, using trunk and tusks and crushing weight to take a measure of revenge.

  Chiun wasn't afraid of being gored or trampled by the great, unwieldy beast. It would require some effort for him to destroy the elephant, but that wasn't his goal. The Master of Sinanju had a very different plan in mind.

  He circled wide around the animal while it was drinking from the stream, approaching slowly from the downwind side. It wouldn't smell him coming that way, and the gamy reek that stung his nostrils was a small price to be paid for the advantage of surprise.

  When he had closed the distance to a dozen paces, still outside the creature's striking range, Chiun halted, stood with hands clasped at his waist and watched the elephant. A low-pitched trilling sound began to issue from his throat, almost hypnotic in its tone.

  The elephant froze where it stood, its trunk poised midway between the water and its small pink mouth. Another moment passed before the gray behemoth turned its head to stare at Chiun, the small eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  Chiun stopped trilling and addressed the forest giant in Korean. He had no illusion that the elephant could understand him, but a soothing tone was all-important as he made the first advances, opening communication between man and beast. The elephant, in Chiun's opinion, had an intellect on par with most white men he had encountered, and a memory superior to all of them. It would remember injuries inflicted by the hands of men, but he believed that it could also differentiate between one human and another, given half a chance.

  Five minutes into the one-sided conversation, when the pachyderm had still made no aggressive moves, Chiun advanced one slow step at a time. He made no sudden moves, continued speaking in the same mild tone until the elephant was close enough for him to stroke its tough hide with his fingertips. The creature snorted at Chiun in warning, but he showed no fear and responded with the trilling sound that acted as a seda
tive upon the beast's nerves.

  Five more minutes passed while Chiun allowed the elephant to test his scent and prod him with the soft tip of its trunk. He waited, knew when it was time to make his move. The handlers used commands to make an elephant kneel down, or hoist them with its trunk, but Chiun preferred another route. He stepped back from the beast four paces, got a running start and scrambled up the gray cliff of its side as if the hulking creature came complete with ladders. In another instant, he was seated on the giant's neck, his knees dug in behind the floppy ears.

  There was a moment when the creature trembled, seemed about to spin and throw him off, but Chiun resumed his trilling, and the elephant relaxed. He let it finish drinking, then asserted his control, a nudge from his right heel that made the creature turn in that direction, facing eastward. Another nudge—both heels this time—and Chiun was on his way.

  It would require some patient guidance for the elephant to pick up Dr. Stockwell's trail, but he had time. His days of plodding through the mud were over now.

  Chiun was traveling in style.

  The first thing Audrey Moreland noted, on regaining consciousness, was the ungodly throbbing in her skull. It felt as if a tribe of gremlins had moved in while she was dozing, and the little monsters were engaged in frenzied renovations, moving things around to suit themselves.

  She knew that Renton Ward had punched her, even though she never saw the knockout coming. He was fast, that one, and she would have to be alert, tip-top, when she set out to pay him back. His hands were good for something more than milking snakes and foreplay that could drive a woman crazy.

  Hands.

  The second thing she noticed was that her hands were immobilized behind her back. A heartbeat later, she was conscious of the gag, a cool night breeze against her flesh that told her Ward had ripped her sleeves off and used them to bind and muzzle her.

  Goddamn him!

  Audrey's legs were free, however, and that marked his first mistake. It took ten minutes of intensive effort, straining till she thought her spine would snap, her shoulders pull completely out of joint and leave her crippled, helpless. She finally succeeded, worked around her aching legs to get her hands in front of her again.