Identity Crisis td-97

by Warren Murphy

  In the end only three agents had to transfer to the backup boat. Tardo himself was surprised. He was sure he was going to lose half his team.

  When everyone was organized, they donned their assault hoods and readied their weapons, and Wayne Tardo gave the order.

  "Hit the beach!"

  The engines kicked into life, and they hunched low to the decks just in case the IRS decided to defend their seizure.

  "I don't think this has ever been done before," a grinning agent muttered.

  "We're making interagency history here," Tardo said. "And guess who's going to lose?"

  HAROLD SMITH did not believe his eyes or his ears.

  The Master of Sinanju had returned to his hospital bed. "I bring tidings both glad and dire," intoned Chiun.

  Smith blinked his gray eyes rapidly.

  "I have come to release you from this unhappy state. But only if you promise to me that you will refrain from causing harm to yourself. Blink your kingly eyes twice if you agree to this, and you will be set free."

  Smith blinked his eyes twice.

  And a fingernail whose touch was as light as a moth's feelers grazed his forehead.

  Smith felt life return to his limbs. He sat up. Immediately he felt the heavy load in the seat of his pants.

  "I must change clothes," he said weakly.

  "There is no time. For the taxidermists of terror have given the order to break the chains of certain evil ones who are held in your thrall."

  Smith had to think about that a moment before it made sense. "Beasley?"

  Chiun nodded grimly. "And the terrible Dutchman, as well."

  "Summon Dr. Gerling. I will countermand the order."

  Chiun bowed once. "It will be done as you say." And he flashed from the room like a fluttering black-and-orange comet.

  Smith pulled himself out of the bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. He had not been so embarrassed since that time in the third grade when he stubbornly refused to ask to go to the bathroom in the middle of an important English test and had soiled his pants where he sat.

  He hoped there were enough towels to clean himself with. If not, he would take this up with the supply staff, whichever of them remained.

  DR. ALDACE GERLING hesitated before the steel door in the psychiatric wing of Folcroft Sanitarium.

  He had his instructions, but he also had his duty to his patients.

  To release the man calling himself Uncle Sam Beasley would be a grave injustice to the poor fellow. His delusions made him unfit for society. Utterly unfit. Moreover, the man was a menace to those around him with his threats of violence and retribution.

  God alone knew what he would do if he ever got to California and the Beasley Corporation. He had vowed to lynch virtually every employee of the vast corporation, from the CEO to the lowly greeters in their Monongahela Mouse and Dingbat Duck costumes.

  Still, the IRS had decreed this. And the IRS had seized Folcroft.

  So Dr. Gerling undid the steel latch bar and inserted the brass key into the lock, giving it a hard twist. The lock squealed and grated.

  "It is time," said Dr. Gerling, entering the room that was kept at a sultry 92 degrees because the pirate demanded it.

  The man who thought he was Uncle Sam Beasley was as usual seated at his writing desk working on his art.

  Beasley didn't bother looking up. "Time for what, you quack?"

  "It is time to go."

  "Go. Go where?"

  "To go from this place. You are being released."

  "My time is up?"

  "The way I see it, your luck has run out."

  Uncle Sam Beasley stood up and adjusted the pirate ruffles around his throat with his good left hand. He clumped toward the door on his artificial leg.

  "It's about damn time you morons woke up to reality. Where's my hand?"

  "You mean your hook?"

  "No, my mechanical hand. I was brought here wearing a mechanical hand. Where is it?"

  "I know only of a hook."

  "They switched my hand for that idiot hook. Who wears a hook these days?"

  "Someone who dresses as Blackbeard the pirate?" Dr. Gerling said.

  "Don't be funny. Now, are you going to get my hand, or do I have to go get it myself?"

  "I am afraid you are to be released in your present state. Do you have any relatives I should call?"

  "If I had any relatives worth a damn, do you think they'd let me rot in this hellhole? Now, point me to my hand! "

  "I will escort you to the front door, where a taxi will be waiting for you. In the meantime, you must wait here."

  "Like hell," said Uncle Sam Beasley, taking Dr. Aldace Gerling by his plump throat and squeezing.

  Dr. Gerling fought back as fiercely as a man of such soft muscles and extra poundage was able, which was to say not very hard at all. His round face turned red, then scarlet, and just as the purple was coming to the fore, his fat-fingered hands stopped slapping the ruffles at Uncle Sam Beasley's wattled throat and he slid to the floor.

  Uncle Sam Beasley broke Dr. Gerling's glasses on his face with the heel of his solid silver foot as he stepped out into the corridor and freedom.

  As he clumped down the corridor in search of his missing hand, he paused to open doors with a brass key he picked up off the linoleum beside Dr. Gerling's twitching body.

  "Come out, come out, whatever you lunatics are," he sang as he flung open doors at random on either side of the corridor.

  When he came to the door marked Purcell, the occupant of the room only turned his neon blue eyes in his direction and stared at him blankly and made no move to leave.

  "Idiot," growled Uncle Sam, going on to the next door.

  REMO WILLIAMS had no sooner slipped out the side door of Folcroft's basement when the noisy roar of approaching speedboats came from the direction of Long Island Sound. He ducked around a corner and saw them tearing toward the rickety dock, throwing up dirty waves of foam.

  Even from this distance his sharp eyes could make out the white stencil letters DEA on their black battle suits.

  "Dammit," Remo said. "Don't I get a break once today?"

  Fading back to the freight door, Remo hesitated. No time to move the gold now. And the minute Chiun got wind of this, he was sure to fly into a killing rage. In fact, he was probably halfway there by now.

  Remo knew he'd have to head the Master of Sinanju off before Chiun started taking down DEA agents left and right. But if he abandoned the gold, the DEA would pounce on it.

  Remo stood in the shadow of Folcroft, rotating his thick wrists, his face warped with confusion.

  If only there were some way to make all that gold disappear...

  THE MASTER OF SINANJU found Dr. Aldace Gerling unconscious outside an unlocked door.

  He flashed into the room and saw no sign of the man Beasley. This was a calamity, but there was a worse calamity at hand.

  Up and down the corridors other doors lay ajar. The Master of Sinanju flew from open door to open door, his heart pounding.

  Jeremiah Purcell had been sealed behind one of these doors. Jeremiah Purcell, who was also called "the Dutchman." He'd been a disciple of Chiun's first pupil, Nuihc the Renegade. The Dutchman was the only white other than Remo to be shown the secrets of the sun source that was Sinanju. He had learned well. But he was as evil as his Master, who had been Chiun's nephew.

  Thrice before they had battled the wicked Dutchman. In their last encounter, he had slain the maiden Mah-Li, whom Remo had intended to marry. Remo had tracked the Dutchman to his lair and exacted a terrible vengeance. When it was over, the Dutchman had been rendered helpless, his mind shattered. With no mind he had no memory of Sinanju, and thus was no threat.

  The Dutchman had other powers, as well, subtle hypnotic ones that made him a menace beyond the skills he had learned from Nuihc the Renegade. The shattering of his mind had banished that threat, as well.

  Still, Chiun thought wildly as he raced from room to room, there was a legen
d of Sinanju that linked the Dutchman to the dead white night tiger, who was Remo. If one died, so said the legend, the other would perish.

  If the Dutchman should come to harm wandering Folcroft in his infantile state, Remo would suffer the same fate.

  And if the evil one and Remo should cross paths once more, surely both would perish. For Remo might well finish exacting the vengeance of so many years ago.

  So Chiun leaped from room to room, his parchment face twisted in concern. It softened when he came to the door to the Dutchman's room. It lay open but Purcell sat within, unconcerned. He was watching television, his eyes fixed on the screen, his arms helplessly wrapped about himself.

  The Master of Sinanju stood there, regarding him in silence. Some intuition or remnant of the Dutchman's old Sinanju training must have come to the fore, because slowly Jeremiah Purcell turned his wan face toward the open door.

  The awful radiance of his neon blue eyes fixed on the Master of Sinanju. The Dutchman smiled a crooked smile and stuck out a too-pink tongue in vague derision.

  He tittered, the sound as unpleasant as it was mad.

  The Master of Sinanju threw the door closed and, because there was no key about, he drew back a tight fist and sent it into the area of the lock. The door groaned under the sudden impact, the tiny glass window shattering.

  When the hand came away, the door was as fixed to its frame as if it had been welded at lock and hinges.

  Turning, the Master of Sinanju glided down the corridor. One threat had been averted. There was still Beasley, a much lesser problem. He would not be difficult to find and conquer.

  Then, from beyond the thick walls of Fortress Folcroft came the concerted roar of motorboats and the beginning of gunfire.

  "What is this!" Chiun squeaked. "What is this?"

  Going to a window, he looked out with shocked eyes. He saw the boats converging as before, and the men in black with their loud weapons jump off to land in the mud of the bay.

  "The gold!" he shrieked, and flung himself toward the stairwell like a moth on fire.

  This time he would show no mercy to those who vexed him so.

  Chapter 20

  Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin was a crafty man. Everyone knew that. During the days before the UN had come to Stomique, he had scammed his way up from simple gunrunning to control of lower Stomique. When UN relief supplies began pouring in, his ragtag militia hijacked the food, stockpiling some and selling the rest back to various relief agencies.

  The hungrier the Stomique people became, the more free food poured in. The more food that came ashore, the richer Warlord Anin became.

  It was amazing how long it went on before the international community noticed that Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin had managed to become the indirect recipient of one fifth of all charitable contributions to the various United Nations relief funds.

  Anin showed his craft by playing the US. off the UNOSOM and both off the international press until everybody lost and only Mahout Feroze Anin really won.

  In the days after the UN-US. pullout, he consolidated his control over the countryside, enforcing his will by political assassination and starving those who didn't support him.

  He deserved to die. Winston Smith was happy as a pig in shit to be the one to blast him to the boneyard.

  If the guy would just stop bobbing and weaving.

  Once he'd gotten his bearings, Smith had found his way to Anin's French colonial villa. Or his mistress's villa, according to Intelligence reports.

  Anin did have a wife. She lived in Canada, where Anin had supposedly sent her to be safe from his political enemies. In truth, she was fat and over forty and lived off the largess of the Canadian dole while Anin happily porked a vast array of mistresses who opened themselves to him because he filled their bellies with pilfered UN-supplied relief food.

  When Winston Smith got up into a sniper position in the crown of a banyan tree, he sighted Anin through the lighted window. The LED distance reader called it less than one hundred meters. It looked as if it was going to be a piece of cake.

  Anin's head appeared almost immediately.

  Smith brought the BEM weapon up and whispered, "Arm one."

  "Louder," requested the gun.

  "Arm one," Smith barked into the sight microphone.

  "Arm one," the weapon replied.

  That gave him five minutes. Plenty of time for a clean head shot.

  Except Anin kept bobbing in and out of view.

  At first Smith thought he might be doing push-ups. But as Anin kept going at it, his face darkened and the sweat crawled off his balding brown forehead. Then he started going faster.

  Smith got it then.

  "Damn."

  Winston Smith debated the ethics of shooting a man when he was doing the wild thing. Should he wait? Or should he nail Anin while the nailing was good?

  While he was giving it thought, the gun disarmed itself.

  "Damn you," he said.

  "Damn you," said the BEM gun.

  Smith said, "Arm one."

  "Arm one" came the reply.

  He lined up on the window and used the night scope again. The laser would give him away. What kind of moron put a laser targeter and a night scope on the same piece of equipment anyway?

  Warlord Anin seemed to be coming to the end of his exercise. He stopped, arms trembling, face flushed, eyes closing.

  A woman's shriek of pleasure pierced the damp African night air.

  It was a perfect head shot. So Winston Smith took it.

  The trigger came back smoothly. He heard a click, and the gun said, "Congratulations. You have executed a perfect kill. Mission over. Return to pickup zone, please."

  "What the fuck," Smith blurted.

  "What the fuck," the BEM gun dutifully repeated.

  Smith fired again.

  The gun told him, "Twelve-point demotion for unnecessary fire. Return to pickup zone, please."

  "Why don't you fire?"

  "Antifiring interlock is armed," said the gun.

  "Well, tell me how to disarm it!"

  "See manual."

  "My ass is hanging out a fucking tree! I don't have time for any goat-fuck manual!"

  The gun said nothing, so Winston whacked it with his hand.

  "Arm one."

  "Arm one."

  He fired a test shot at the low-hanging moon. Nothing happened.

  Dragging the clips out one by one, he thumbed out rounds, holding them up to the moonlight. "Nothing wrong with these rounds. What the fuck!"

  His shout was heard by Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin, who came to the window, buck naked except for a Dragunov sniper rifle.

  Anin used it to methodically chop the branches surrounding Smith's perch to pieces.

  Smith dropped to the ground and ran for his life, swearing softly but often.

  The unwieldy gun swore back with amiable vehemence.

  Chapter 21

  Wayne Tardo had point. He was ready for armed IRS agents, heavily armed drug traffickers-ready for anything.

  Except for what he did encounter.

  It flew across the landscaped grounds of Folcroft Sanitarium like a vampiric butterfly. Face fierce, shrieking in fury or agony or God knew what, it tore directly at him on billowing black-and-orange wings.

  It was not armed, so Wayne Tardo hesitated. The hesitation was brief and fatal.

  The DEA agents bringing up the rear saw it all. So did the IRS agents who had flocked to the Folcroft windows, alerted by the roar of the speedboats and the battle cries of the DEA agents.

  Everyone saw the same thing, and no one believed their staring eyes.

  A monarch butterfly flew screaming at Wayne Tardo. Its shriek of fury froze the DEA agent in midstride. He had his Uzi up. He started to drop it into line. He looked as if he were moving in slow motion. Or perhaps it was only an illusion created by the headlong fury of the butterfly creature with the bald human head.

  Its great wings suddenly spread, and from the tips g
reat yellow bird claws seemed to sprout. It left the ground with a flutter of fabric like a boat sail cracking in a high wind.

  The butterfly seemed to pass over Wayne Tardo's head. Its shadow fell across the paralyzed DEA agent's body. Its great wings obscured him only a moment, no more.

  But when it passed beyond him, Wayne Tardo was gone.

  That was what their slow eyes and brains told them when the onlookers saw the spot where Wayne Tardo had stood. The butterfly alighted a short distance beyond the spot and threw up his winged arms in the faces of the other agents of the DEA. One arm swept back, like a stage magician indicating a feat of legerdemain.

  On the spot where the butterfly with the human head pointed, Wayne Tardo began to reappear. One limb at a time. A leg fell first. Then his head. It bounced and bounded toward the water.

  By far the loudest sound came when Tardo's barrel-chested trunk went splat on the grass, ejecting fountains of blood from all five stumps.

  The butterfly let out another shriek, this one articulate. "Behold the fate of those who defile this fortress!"

  At first the DEA agents didn't quite know what to make of this. They stood wide-eyed and riveted in their heavy mud-caked boots.

  Two of them shook off the shock and, shiny steel pistols elevating, issued a warning.

  "DEA! Freeze."

  The human butterfly lunged at them. He should have died right there. The DEA agents had plenty of time to riddle him. In fact, two had already begun to squeeze their triggers in unison.

  This became very apparent when yellow claws caught them at the elbow and forced their arms around so their weapons faced one another. The shiny muzzles came together with a clank that welded them nose to nose.

  The agents stood blinking, obviously slow to comprehend how they had come into this awkward position. They tried to withdraw their weapons, but they refused to separate, like Chinese handcuffs holding two facing fingers together.

  The weapons had hair triggers. The exertion of trying to separate the muzzles caused them to fire. Both weapons exploded in their gun hands, sending gun metal flying into soft organs and fragile skulls.

  "Who will challenge the Master of Sinanju now?" shrieked the butterfly with the voice of a man.