Terminal Transmission td-93

by Warren Murphy

  "Just relax. Nothing bad will happen if everyone relaxes." Moose directed his voice toward his captor. "Isn't that right, pal?"

  "Depends on my mood," said the man in an unruffled voice. "I'm looking for Jed Burner."

  "Not in the building," someone said. "Honest."

  Then a desk phone rang. The man reached down and picked it up. He moved his body only slightly, but the hand holding onto Moose's spine moved with him. Moose moved too. He also saw stars. Electric green ones.

  The receiver came up to Moose's ear. "Yes?" he grunted.

  "Mr. Mulroy! Mr. Burner's helicopter just landed and there's something going on. I hear shooting."

  "I'm a little busy right now," Moose grunted. "Can't someone else take it?"

  Then through the earpiece came a shriek. It was no ordinary shriek. It sounded sharp enough to cut diamonds.

  For the first time, a worried note crept into his captor's tone. "That isn't who I think it is?" he muttered.

  "If you're thinking it's Haiphong Hannah, your thinking is right on the money."

  "Actually, I was thinking it sounded just like Cheeta Ching. "

  "That's possible, too. She blew in twenty minutes ago, all hot and bothered and looking for Burner."

  "Damn," said the voice in Moose's ear, and suddenly Moose found himself walking backward toward the elevator, a human shield. It was his worst nightmare.

  Security paced him every step of the way, hands on gun butts. No one was dumb enough to draw iron. And Moose fervently hoped no one would. He liked his spine-even though at this exact moment it felt like an arcing electronic cable in his back.

  "You're my office guide," the voice said.

  "We got pages for that kinda work."

  "You just volunteered."

  Then, they were in one of the elevators and the doors were closing on the frightened faces of the security team and the glassy fish eyes of the clustering videocams.

  As the lift shot up, Moose grunted out a halting question.

  "You here to kill somebody?"

  "Maybe."

  "If it's Haiphong Hannah, you'll get no argument from me."

  "Right neighborly of you," said the voice of the man who owned Moose's spinal column. He showed his appreciation by giving a brain-darkening squeeze.

  When Moose Mulroy regained consciousness some hours later, he was surprised to find himself alone and in one piece. The first thing he did was tear off his shirt and run screaming into the men's room.

  The long mirror showed that a fist-sized area between his shoulder blades was a mass of purplish black, edged in green. It was the biggest, ugliest bruise Moose Mulroy had ever seen.

  Otherwise the skin was completely unbroken. There wasn't a drop of blood. It made no sense, but for a month afterward Moose could still feel those strong fingers wrapped so tightly around his spine the fingertips must have met.

  Ultimately Moose Mulroy had a lot of time to contemplate it all, because he found himself unemployed and on the street. He considered himself lucky.

  Lots of folks ended up dead.

  Chapter 13

  Remo Williams released the security chief on the thirty-fourth floor, the top floor. The man made a pile in one corner of the elevator as Remo came out of the lift with every sense alert.

  He found himself surrounded. By videocam lenses.

  A man waved at him from behind his camera.

  "Just pretend we're not here," he said in a friendly voice.

  "That's right," chimed in a second. "We're just here to record events as they happen. Pay no attention to us."

  "Do whatever you were going to do," encouraged a third cameraman.

  And so, forefingers extended, and Remo began to methodically shatter each camera lens.

  "Hey! You can't do that!"

  "This isn't how it's done!"

  "We're the media!"

  Remo growled, "And here's the message: Get out of my way."

  Their eyes blackening from sudden impact with recoiling viewfinders, the camera crews begrudgingly fell back.

  There was only one security guard. He had his Glock up in a two-handed marksman's grip, the muzzle pointed at Remo. For a twelfth of a second.

  Walking on the outside of his soles, Remo feinted, moved in, and used the man's own hands to crush the plastic gun into so much sharp black plastic shards.

  He left the guard moaning and wringing his bloodied hands.

  Heads poked out of half-open doors all along the corridor.

  "Which way to the roof?" Remo asked.

  Most of the heads withdrew like frightened gophers.

  A hand snaked out and pointed helpfully in the direction of the ceiling. "Up. The roof is up."

  "I know that, you dip. What I don't know is how to get there."

  "Fire stairs. Straight ahead and turn left."

  Then, a bullet ripped down through the ceiling tiles and forced the remaining heads to withdraw behind slamming doors.

  Remo shot forward. A woman screamed. The high, piercing sound was joined by another scream. Both screams were ear-punishing. Yet they blended into one anguished otherworldly shriek as if vented by identical twins, dying in harmony.

  Remo floated up the stairs, leaping over the sprawled bodies of security guards who had died defending their posts, and reached the roof.

  It was a nest of satellite dishes. In the center of the nest, like a dragonfly, sat a luxury helicopter.

  And standing in the shadow of the drooping helicopter blades was a small knot of people.

  The knot consisted of two parts-a man and a woman, and another man with a woman.

  The nearest pair whirled, and Remo recognized the flat, pasty face of Cheeta Ching. She was so frightened her face was shedding flakes of pancake makeup like dandruff.

  "Ronco!" she cried. "Help me!"

  "Ronco?" Remo said blankly.

  "Stay back," the man with the gun said, pushing the barrel into Cheeta Ching's temple. He was tall, his features masked by oversized sunglasses and a big hat. He was using Cheeta Ching as a human shield, but Remo could see that his lower legs, visible behind Cheeta's, were bare.

  "What makes you think that'll stop me?" Remo asked.

  "Ronco! How could you!"

  The gunman transferred the pistol muzzle to Cheeta Ching's bulging stomach. "Or I can waste the brat."

  Remo stopped dead still. The baby was another matter.

  "Just hold that pose," said the gunman, walking backward.

  The other pair had frozen at the open door of the helicopter, Jed Burner turned and gave Layne Fondue a hard shove. On all fours, she scrambled into the helicopter.

  Then the gunman resumed backing away, pulling Cheeta with him. Her almond eyes were wounded.

  "Ronco!" she pleaded. "Don't let this happen!"

  "Ronco," warned the gunman, "don't be a chump."

  Remo stood, rotating his thick wrists absently. His face was stone.

  The gunman reached the waiting helicopter and abruptly sat down on its sill. Remo saw his legs clearly. He was wearing a plaid kilt of some kind.

  But Remo was keeping his eyes on the man's hands. To pull Cheeta Ching into the helicopter in her condition was a two-handed job. To pull it off, the gunman would have to point his weapon away from his captive.

  Crossing the roof while the gun was pointing elsewhere was possible, Remo knew. But the weapon would have to be at least three feet from Cheeta for it to work. Any closer and it was even money Cheeta would catch a bullet.

  Imperceptibly, Remo came up on his toes, ready to strike.

  Then, behind him, KNNN cameramen poured out of the roof hatch, along with a pair of reporters clutching hand microphones. Fanning out, they called excited questions to no one in particular.

  "Is this a kidnapping?"

  "If so, who's being kidnapped?"

  And the gunman whipped his muzzle back to Cheeta's belly.

  "You!" he shouted, yanking Cheeta into the helicopter. "Keep them away or the sl
ope gets a .45 caliber abortion right here!"

  That decided it. Remo pivoted and began tripping legs. He caught videocams as they slipped from clutching fingers and smashed them under his feet. He made sure to pop cassette ports where he could and pulverize the cassettes, so that his face could not be broadcast.

  The helicopter began to wind up.

  "Nobody go near that bird," Remo warned, crushing a cassette to powder in a cameraman's face.

  And no one did.

  Blowing air and city grit, the Superpuma lifted off and racketed out to sea.

  Remo watched it go. "Damn," he muttered. "Chiun is going to kill me."

  A reporter shoved a microphone into his face and asked Remo a breathless question.

  "Can you tell us what's going through your mind right now?"

  Remo answered the question by using the mike to perform a radical tonsillectomy on the questioner.

  The others withdrew.

  "Pretend we're not here," one suggested.

  "Pretend you're not here," Remo growled.

  The KNNN news gatherers who could still walk under their own power hastily helped the others down the roof hatch.

  Remo ignored them. His features grim, he watched the helicopter become a dwindling speck of light in the night sky.

  When the sound of its rotors no longer reached his sensitive ears, Remo slipped jumped down the hatch and found an empty office, where he called Harold Smith.

  "Smitty. Bad news."

  "What is it, Remo?"

  "I got here too late. Burner and Haiphong Hannah just took off with some guy in a kilt. They got Cheeta. She's a prisoner."

  "What was Cheeta Ching doing there?"

  "Who cares? Listen, if Chiun finds out I've blown this mission, there's no telling what he'll do."

  "How can we stop it?"

  "Search me. But I'll find a way."

  And he did.

  Twenty seconds later, the building filled with the tormented wrenching of metal under extreme stress. The awful sounds could be heard coming from the roof. When a two-man security team ventured up there, they came down, weapons mysteriously missing.

  "I think we should evacuate the building," said one.

  "Evacuate?" the station manager blurted out. "Why?"

  "The guy on the roof told us we should."

  "What kind of a reason is that?"

  Then one of the satellite dishes sailed past the long eastern window, on its way to the sidewalk many floors below.

  Staff surged to the window. Another dish cartwheeled past.

  The station manager cleared his throat and rumbled, "I move we evacuate right now."

  The evacuation was swift, orderly, and successful. Everyone exited the west side of the building, because the dishes seemed to be falling on the east face.

  Eyes straining upward, the entire staff of KNNN waited for the third and last satellite dish to fall.

  Remo Williams finished dislocating the last satellite dish from its roof base. He did this with the naked edge of his palm. The base consisted of steel struts painted white. They were built for support, not resisting hands that could by touch alone seek out weak spots and snap them with lightning blows that separated the metal along molecular lines, leaving superclean edges, as if giant bolt cutters had been brought to bear.

  Remo left the last dish when it fell. KNNN was no longer transmitting. He went downstairs to report to Dr. Smith.

  The building seemed deserted. Remo's acute hearing detected no sounds of life. Air conditioners hummed. Water moved through plumbing. A mouse chewed at a partition.

  But no human heartbeats came to his ears.

  He picked up a phone at random, holding the one button down.

  "Smitty, good news. I solved the problem."

  "How?" asked Harold Smith.

  "I knocked KNNN off the air."

  Pause.

  "Remo," Smith said tightly, "I hope you have done the correct thing."

  "Maybe I did and maybe I didn't. But I bought us some time."

  "No, I mean in reference to the blackout matter."

  "I'm worried about Chiun. Screw the rest. Besides, isn't KNNN the source of the jamming?"

  "That is my information, but we have yet to prove it.

  "Well, I got the building to myself. At least until the local Marines are sent in. Just tell me what to do."

  "Look for suspicious equipment."

  "Hold the phone," Remo said, sweeping the control area with his deep-set eyes. "On second thought, this is a cellular. I'm going to carry you with me, Smitty. Try not to wriggle."

  Remo walked around the sprawling control area. There were banks and banks of monitors, tape decks, and other broadcasting equipment Remo didn't recognize.

  "I can't tell one thing from another around here," Remo told Smith. "Give me some clue."

  "I cannot," said Smith. "I am not very familiar with broadcast equipment."

  "Wait a minute. I just found something weird."

  "Describe it."

  Remo was looking through a long Plexiglas port. Inside was what appeared to be a video library racked in row upon row of shelving. There were two great tapedecks at the far end of the room.

  And moving along a ceiling track, an aluminum robot arm. As Remo watched, it slid along, emitting a thin red laserlike beam. It was scanning the exposed sides of the racked cassettes. As the scanning beam came to a silver bar code label, it beeped, then stopped. The arm telescoped downward to grab the cassette between flat aluminum fingers.

  Holding it firmly, it retracted, and tracked back to the dual cassette decks and with too-precise movements, inserting it into one deck. A red light went on as a matching red light in the other deck winked off. The second deck released its cassette and the arm swung in perfectly and seized it.

  Slowly, it retreated along its track until it came to an empty slot. Smoothly, the cassette was returned to its receptacle.

  "It's some kind of automatic cassette feeding thingy," Remo said.

  "Thingy?"

  "It's big, there's no one in charge and I don't even see a chair for someone to sit in."

  "Remo, many cable outfits run automatic programming. The commercial tapes are programmed into a guiding computer."

  "That explains the bar codes."

  "Bar codes?"

  "Yeah. Every cassette is coded."

  "I do not think that is what we are looking for," Smith said disappointedly.

  "Maybe I should rough up some of the technicians," Remo suggested.

  "Where are they?"

  "Out on the sidewalk waiting for the third shoe to fall."

  "Er, I fail to understand."

  Then above him, Remo heard the clattery rattle clatter of helicopter blades.

  "Don't look now," Remo said guardedly, going to a window, "but either the bad guys are back for more hostages or the local SWAT team just arrived."

  "Remo, can you leave the building unseen?"

  Remo opened a window and looked down. The streets were choked with people looking up.

  "No," Remo told Smith.

  Smith groaned.

  "Can you leave it safely?" Smith asked.

  "Probably."

  "Do so. If KNNN is off the air, you may have crippled any jamming capability they might possess. It is time to regroup."

  "Gotcha," said Remo, dropping the phone.

  He made for the elevator, and before he could press the call button, every door on every elevator opened simultaneously and out came floods of cameramen. They were looking through their viewfinders and didn't notice Remo at all.

  Remo whistled. A baker's dozen lenses swept in all directions. They pointed up, down, up the corridor, down the corridor-in every direction except where Remo was standing.

  So Remo shouted, "He just headed down the stairs to the lobby."

  A man took up the cry. "He's headed for the lobby!"

  Instantly, the cameramen ducked back into the waiting elevators, unaware that Remo was snu
gly in their midst.

  No one noticed that Remo was riding to the lobby with them. They kept their videocams on their shoulders, their eyes glued to eyepieces, fingers on triggers-ready to record whatever sight the opening doors revealed.

  They revealed, Remo discovered to his displeasure, a phalanx of Atlanta Metro Police in full riot gear.

  A cameraman shouted, "He headed back this way!"

  Bending his knees so no one could see his face, Remo rammed a pointing finger out of the clot of bodies and said, "There he goes now!"

  Immediately, the elevators emptied. The lobby was soon boiling with riot helmets and videocams bumping blindly into one another.

  Remo said, "What the hell," and abruptly pressed the Up button.

  The lift took him back to the top floor, where he made his way to the roof stairs in time to meet landing police helicopters.

  They were festooned with lights and M-16 rifle barrels prodded from the open sides of the bubbles. One sweeping light found him, and he heard someone yell through a bullhorn, "Don't move! We have you dead to rights."

  Remo moved anyway. The light tried to follow him. Each time, he eluded it. Once he inserted his hands into the beam long enough to make a hand shadow of a bunny rabbit nibbling a carrot.

  That brought a fusillade of bullets, and enough noise and confusion that Remo was all but invisible on the darkened tower roof.

  Moving with a self-assured calm, Remo took hold of the tipped-over satellite dish. It was as big as a swimming pool, but light in proportion to its weight. Not that its weight would have mattered to Remo.

  But there was a steady breeze out of the west and the dish was unwieldy. Using his sensitive fingers to find its center of gravity, Remo flexed his wrists. The dish, responding to an innate balance that was in all things, came up in Remo's hands and he caught the breeze. That helped.

  Remo walked to the helipad, not exactly propelling the dish so much as guiding it, like a great round aluminum sail.

  The police choppers were hovering there, preparatory to landing.

  Holding the dish over his head like a shield, Remo began fending them off.

  The ringing clash of the dish against landing skids spooked the first chopper pilot. He swung away. Remo slid under the next one and caught the tip of a skid with the joined points of the dish's emitter array. Walking backward, Remo guided the chopper along like a stubborn kite, then whipped it free.