Terminal Transmission td-93

by Warren Murphy

  "Eh?"

  "I can't piss when people are looking."

  That brought another laugh and the Mounties turned their brown serge backs.

  Because he really did have to urinate, Don Cooder did so at great length. When the sound stopped the Mounties waited politely for the sound of his zipper.

  Instead, they caught a long length of chain in the sides of their heads and went down, sidearms still flapped and undrawn.

  Cooder made a dash for the lead RMCP car.

  His driver was on the other side of the road relieving himself. A number of the others were similarly preoccupied.

  They turned around at the sound of the idling car engine racing into life.

  "Sacremont! The American is escaping!"

  Don Cooder flipped them the bird and floored the gas.

  Some of them ran, holding on to themselves and peeing all over their limping legs. Others finished their business, cursing fluently.

  Either way, he had a head start. And a head start was all Don Cooder ever needed to be the first to break a breaking story.

  "This," he chortled, pulling a .38 from the glove compartment, "is going to be bigger than Dallas, 1963!"

  Captain Nodell was making a preliminary pass, dragging the landing area for stones and muskeg patches when he saw the black-and-white car scoot out of nowhere.

  "Uh-oh," he told his copilot.

  "Think he saw us?"

  "Dunno. Is it a police car?"

  "Well, it's got a roof flasher and there's some kind of letters stenciled on the door panel. Begins with R."

  "RCMP?"

  "Maybe."

  "Mounties," said Captain Nodell.

  "They still got those up here?"

  "Looks like." He pulled up and sent the Stealth fighter sweeping around.

  And got a clear view of the speedy little car, distantly pursued by two others, racing toward the mountain that supported the 200-foot statue of a nun-and disappearing into it.

  "Must be a cave or something in the base . . ."

  "Do we still land?" asked the nervous copilot.

  "No choice," said Nodell, feeling his tender earlobe. It felt hot, like a cooked piece of steak.

  Frank Feldmeyer was shivering in his blue Captain Audion bodysuit in the great control room under the mountain when he saw the red warning light go off and swore under his breath.

  Bolting from the control room, he grabbed up a pistol from a rack by the door.

  From down the corridor cut from rough stone, shrieks and wails of pain were coming. He shut them out.

  Moving to the spiral stainless-steel steps, he ran down, weapon at the ready, prepared to defend his post.

  A familiar voice called up. "Psst, Frank!"

  "Don. Is that you?"

  Don Cooder, shackled and holding a .38 revolver, stomped up the stairs on his ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

  "Yeah," he said, his breath steaming. "Are we still on the air?"

  Frank Feldmeyer wiped the cold sweat off his brow and said, "Yeah. But power's getting low. How long do you expect me to keep this up?"

  "It's time to wrap this up."

  "Great. Let's get out of here."

  "Can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Mounties are on my trail like a pack of redbone foxhounds in heat."

  "Mounties! What the hell do we do?"

  "They think I'm trying to break this story. I'm covered."

  "What about me?" Feldmeyer demanded anxiously. "Look at me, I'm dressed up like Captain Audion, for God's sake."

  "You can hide once we set things up. Where are Burner and that loudmouth bitch?"

  "Cheeta?"

  "No, the other loudmouth bitch."

  "On ice."

  "Okay, let's get them out."

  Ignoring the shrieks of pain, Don Cooder moved through frost-rimmed stone corridors to a stainless-steel door like a walk-in freezer and yanked on the handle. A blast of cold air wafted out, along with the chill dead smell of frozen meat.

  They entered a small cave. Past shelves of frozen steaks and chicken parts, they pushed to the dimly lighted rear of the natural freezer.

  Cooder knelt beside two motionless figures.

  "They look kinda blue," he muttered.

  Feldmeyer said, "They weren't dead when I looked in on them last."

  Cooder put his ear to the still chest of Jed Burner.

  "This man's heart is beating like a stone, which is to say it's not."

  "Oh God, I didn't count on murder." "Shush. Let me check on old Haiphong Hannah." Cooder listened, his face contorting. "I got a beat."

  "Great. Thank God."

  "Okay, let's get them into the control room."

  Rattling his chains with every step, Don Cooder lugged Haiphong Hannah down the corridor to the control room and dumped her into one of the console seats. Jed Burner was dropped into the other, not quite fitting because his joints had stiffened.

  "Where's the damn helmets?" Cooder demanded, looking around.

  Feldmeyer pointed unsteadily. "In that cabinet. Why?"

  "We're going to set it up so that it looks like they're the black hats. Why do you think I had you abduct them in the first place?"

  "Will it work, Don?"

  "Burner's dead and Haiphong Hannah's got the credibility of Saddam Hussein. How can it fail?"

  Shrugging, Frank Feldmeyer helped Cooder set the Captain Audion helmet over Jed Burner's frost-rimmed head.

  "Now let's get old Hannah set up and this thing is in the barn."

  When they were done, two television-headed figures sat at the console that controlled the most powerful broadcast TV signal on earth.

  "Okay," Cooder said panting, "let me have your gun."

  "Why?"

  "I'm going to shoot Burner."

  "Why?"

  "Why? The low-down goat roper had the nerve to ask 'Who the hell is Don Cooder?' when I was holding onto the Chair by my sphincter. Made me a laughing stock. Nearly ruined my career at a crucial time."

  "No, I mean what good will it do?"

  "Dead men tell no tales."

  Then the ringing of steel stair treads came from beyond the open door.

  "That's the Mounties," Cooder snapped. "Right on cue. We gotta shoot them right now or it's boot hill for us both."

  "I can't shoot anyone," Feldmeyer said shakily.

  "Tell you what, you shoot Burner. He's already dead. And I'll shoot Hannah. Deal?"

  "O-okay."

  Together, the two men lifted their weapons and pointed them at the unmoving backs of their targets.

  "Count of three," Cooder said.

  Swallowing hard, Feldmeyer nodded.

  "One!"

  "Two!"

  "Three!"

  Closing his eyes, Frank Feldmeyer steeled himself to pump a single round into the cold back of Jed Burner, and never opened them again.

  The roar of Don Cooder's pistol in his ear reached his eardrum just as the bullet had gouged out one ear canal and exited the other in a spray of grayish curd.

  Cooder emptied the cylinder into the back of Haiphong Hannah's head, shattering her screen with its steady NO SIGNAL message.

  Taking the dead hand of Jed Burner in his, he wrapped the stiffened fingers around a black handle marked DESTRUCT and pulled hard. A red digital timer began counting backward from 00:00:10.

  Calmly, he wiped the gun free of fingerprints and placed it in Frank Feldmeyer's still-twitching hand. From the floor, he took the automatic that had killed no one, squeezed the grip so he left crystal clear prints, lifted both manacled hands to the ceiling, and patiently whistled "Cowboy's Lament" as the Mounties pounded up the spiral stairs.

  The shrieking of Cheeta Ching in the torment of childbirth filled the corridor.

  "Damn," he muttered. "Forgot one. Oh, well. Next time."

  The digital timer reached 00:00:00.

  From far above, there came an explosive sound muffled by tons of granite.

  Chapter 36
>
  The sleek black shape of the Stealth bomber rolled to a whining, bumpy stop, and a hatch popped open.

  "Wait for us," Remo called over his shoulder as he followed the Master of Sinanju out into the coldest, most inhospitable expanse he had seen outside of Outer Mongolia.

  "What if you don't come back alive?" returned Captain Nodell.

  "Wait anyway."

  "You got it."

  Remo found himself standing on hard rock dappled by spongy moss and lichen. Muskeg pools, some no bigger than his fist, speckled the terrain.

  "Ready, Little Father?"

  "I am prepared for anything," said the Master of Sinanju.

  It was a good half mile to the flat-topped mountain which loomed up from the rock-and-muskeg waste. The statue of Saint Clare stood watch like a lonely bride atop an ugly wedding cake.

  They started off at a dead run, picked up speed and soon were moving as fast as a speeding car. "Remember," Remo warned, "we don't kill anyone unless we're sure."

  Then, as they crossed the difficult terrain, the head of Saint Clare came apart in a noisy black puff of smoke.

  A shriek went up to the heavens and the Master of Sinanju pulled ahead of Remo like a spastic-limbed bat.

  "Cheeta!" he squeaked. "I am coming, my child!"

  And as they pulled closer, the smoke began to thin, revealing the red top of a transmission tower poking up from the statue's broken stump of a neck.

  Then the skin of the statue began to crack apart, coming away to expose the spidery alternating white and red supports . . .

  Don Cooder's face and smile looked ready to crack. He had flopsweat, severe eye-dart and cottonmouth all at once.

  "You're just in time," he shouted to the arriving Mounties.

  They stormed in with their revolvers trained on him.

  "What happened here?" demanded the major.

  "I was too late."

  "You just said we were just in time."

  "You were. I wasn't." He rattled his chains in the direction of the bodies. "Mark it. The culprit, Captain Audion, dead at his console with his accomplices scattered around him like so many checked pawns. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." His grin stretched to the tearing point. "That's going to be my lead."

  The Mounties were having none of it. Don Cooder was made to sit on the floor amid the blood, but he didn't care.

  "I saw most of it," he was saying as the Mounties examined the bodies. "Feldmeyer shot them both."

  "Why?"

  "Thieves fall out is going to be my tag. It's up to you nice folks to flesh out the details. On TV, we have to reduce a story to its gut. And man, this one. has a lot of guts to it. Back in my field days we called this a 'Fuzz and Wuzz' story. You folks are the fuzz. No offense."

  The RCMP major was frowning as he looked at the TV screen faces of the two dead people seated at the control console. He noticed the dead hand of one clutching a handle marked DESTRUCT and tied it with the faint rattling of rock that was coming from the mountaintop, far above this warren of stone tunnels.

  "Let's get this contraption off them," he said.

  Cooder asked, "What about the cameras?"

  "Cameras?"

  "Look, this is the climax. You gotta get this on tape. This will make great television. I could win an Emmy for this."

  "Any tape will become state's evidence."

  "You boys don't get it, do you?" He pointed ceilingward. "This is the hidden transmitter."

  "A statue of a nun?"

  "Saint Clare of Assisi. The patron saint of TV. That's how I figured it out. I've thrown a few thankyous her way in my time. This isn't some misplaced religious shrine. Dollars to doughnuts the antenna mast is jammed up the sister's skirts." Cooder lifted sheepish eyes to the rock ceiling. "Excuse my French, Saint Clare."

  A videocam was trained on the two figures and when the light was blazing, the major removed the first helmet.

  "I'll be danged!" Don Cooder said. "If it isn't Jed Burner. Captain Audacious himself!"

  The second helmet revealed a head like a Pekinese that had been used to wipe up an abattoir floor.

  "Haiphong Hannah Fondue," Cooder said. "She came to fame broadcasting for the North Vietnamese. Now she meets her maker trying to undermine capitalism's greatest, loudest voice---free TV."

  "She has no face," said the major. "How do you know that is her?"

  "I'm a trained network anchor. I know hair. That's Haiphong Hannah. Probably a wig."

  The major pushed at the hair. It slipped loose. A wig.

  "So who is this individual?" he asked, pointing to the sprawled figure in the anchor-emblazoned blue bodystocking.

  Don Cooder put on a mournful face. "That, I deeply regret to say, is a colleague of mine. Frank Feldmeyer. He is-was-our science editor. And probably the brains of this insidious operation."

  The major looked doubtful. "So which of them is this Captain Audion?"

  "You call it and I'll broadcast it that way," Cooder said, winking.

  A sudden shriek pierced every ear-long, ripping and bloodcurdling.

  "What on earth was that?" said Don Cooder in a suddenly shocked-dead voice.

  The Mounties seized him by his chains and pulled him along as they went in search of the horrible sound's source.

  Remo Williams followed the Master of Sinanju into the cave mouth, where three RCMP cars sat, engines still radiating heat, amid piles of discarded car batteries.

  His head straining forward, turtle-fashion, Chiun zipped up a set of spiral stairs like a careening black pinball.

  "Cheeta, I am coming!"

  "Wait up! Chiun! You don't know what you're walking into!"

  Another shriek came, louder than before.

  Remo skipped the too-narrow stairs and went up the circling rail like a monkey. He still reached the top a full second after the Master of Sinanju.

  "Halt!" an authoritative voice cried. "Who goes there?"

  "I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju and the man who stands between me and Cheeta Ching has seen his last sunrise!"

  "I am Major Cartier of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and I will know your business here."

  Remo got between the guns and Chiun and told the Mounties, "We're from the USA. Take it easy. We're looking for Cheeta Ching."

  "Who is Cheeta Ching?"

  Behind the Mounties, Don Cooder smiled with pleasure.

  Then another shriek filled the cold stone corridor.

  Remo could see it coming, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Master of Sinanju leaped for the sound. The Mounties brought their big revolvers tracking around. Fingers tightened on triggers.

  And Remo, cursing under his breath, swept in and took them out.

  He killed no one. But his hands snapped wrists, his feet exploded kneecaps, and pistols flew everywhere to land clattering and unfired.

  Don Cooder backed away, his hands lifted in surrender and his shackles rattling nervously.

  "What are you doing here?" Remo demanded.

  "Don't be ridiculous. You know what this place is?"

  "I have a good idea."

  "Where there's news, there's Don Cooder."

  Chiun's voice rose to a keen. "Cheeta, my beloved! What have they done to you?"

  Grabbing at a hanging loop of chain, Remo raced to the sound, pulling a hopping Don Cooder with him.

  There was an open door and the smell of fresh blood was coming out of it in warm metallic-tasting waves.

  Remo put in his head-and the sight sickened him.

  The Master of Sinanju was kneeling beside a bloodsoaked bed where Cheeta Ching, her face contorted in what looked like a permanent grimace of agony, lay in her own pooled blood. A flap of flesh lay open, exposing her internal organs. And lying beside her, red as if dipped in Mercurochrome, was a wriggling baby.

  "The butchers!" Chiun shrieked. "They have killed Cheeta. "

  "Urrr," gurgled Cheeta, only the whites of her eyes showing.

  "Yet the child lives. My an
cestors smile." The Master of Sinanju lifted the baby in gentle hands. From its stomach trailed a purplish pink umbilical cord. He severed it with a broad sweep of one flashing fingernail.

  Then, holding the baby up, he spanked it once on the backside, producing a wail that made Remo want to cover his ears.

  "Takes after its mother," Remo said.

  "Son of perfection," Chiun intoned gravely, "I welcome you into the bitter world that has taken the life of your mother."

  Then the eyes of the Master of Sinanju fell upon the baby's kicking legs.

  "Aiieee!"

  "What's wrong?" Remo asked, "Is it deformed?"

  "Worse. It is a female."

  "So?"

  "I wanted a male," Chiun wailed. "This is a calamity! I have lost Cheeta, and her only offspring is unsuitable for Sinanju training."

  "What is he talking about?" Don Cooder asked Remo.

  "You stay out of this," Remo snapped.

  Chiun, his voice dripping with distaste, said, "Take this whelp, Remo. I do not want it."

  Remo backed away. "I don't want it."

  "Neither do . . . I . . ." Cheeta Ching groaned.

  Whirling, Chiun gasped, "Cheeta! You live!"

  "Barely . . ."

  "Name the ones who savaged you so cruelly and I will place their heads at your feet, my child."

  "Frank . . . Feldmeyer . . . kidnapped me. The bastard."

  "Frank's dead," Don Cooder said quickly. "I found him dead with the other two."

  "Other two?" Remo asked.

  "Jed Burner and Haiphong Hannah. They're in the control room yonder."

  Chiun hovered over the bed. "You have been avenged, Cheeta. The evil ones who cut the child from your belly are no more."

  "What are . . . you talking . . . about?" Cheeta groaned. "I . . . did that."

  "You-?"

  "I couldn't stand it-anymore-the endless labor-the contractions. I used a . . . jackknife."

  One bloodied arm came up clutching the dripping blade.

  Chiun nodded grimly. "Suicide. I understand. The pain must have been unendurable to drive you to this."

  "No," Cheeta said weakly. "I gave . . . myself a. . . caesarian."

  Chiun gasped.

  Cheeta rolled her eyes up in her head and moaned, "I was magnificent. If only there had been a camera crew . . ."

  The Master of Sinanju offered the baby to its mother, saying, "Fret not, Cheeta. Your child breathes. Here . . ."

  "Get it away from me!" Cheeta shrieked.