Warren Murphy: Timber Line

The bunkhouse was quiet. Joey Webb slept curled like a two-year-old on a fur rag in front of the fire. Not far away, Chiun sat on the floor, legs folded under him. He had managed to confiscate some paper and an old fountain pen from the desk, and despite grumbling that it was impossible for a civilized man to write with junk and toys, he was busy writing another chapter for the History of Sinanju. Now that Joey had explained to him how he may have saved the Western world from the Arab oil threat by discovering how to make the copa-ibas grow, Chiun thought that all generations to come should know of this.

He had tentatively entitled the chapter: "Chiun Saves the Barbarians."

Remo sat in a chair, watching Chiun.

The telephone rang. It was a soft ring, and Joey did not even stir in her sleep. Chiun said, "It is becoming impossible to work with all these interruptions. Please answer that thing."

"Let it ring," Remo said.

"Answer it," Chiun commanded.

Remo walked over to the telephone. He half expected Smith's acid voice to bite at him over the phone, but instead the voice was one he had not expected.

It was an oily, insidious half-whisper, hissing "Remo, Remo, Remo." It was the same voice Remo had found on the tape recorder the night before.

"Who is this?" Remo said.

The faraway voice ignored the question. Instead it hissed, "LaRue needs you. At Cicely's trailer. Hurry, Remo."

"Who is this?" Remo said again. The voice was familiar but not familiar — as if it were a voice he had heard before but talking through a series of baffles that changed its pitch and rhythm.

The telephone clicked in his ear.

"I have to go," Remo told Chiun.

"Good. Take the telephone with you," Chiun said.

Remo pushed off through the woods, jogging up to the road, and then down toward the Mountain High encampment. Of course, it was a trap. He knew that. But right now, walking into a trap might be his best lead, his only way out of the dead-end of this puzzle.

Still, he was on his guard as he moved toward the clearing that the Mountain Highs infested.

The first thing he noticed was the silence. Before, there had been people moving around inside the tents, talking, cooking, making love. Now, there was only stillness. He moved into the shadow of a tree to look over the area.

In the far left corner of the clearing, he saw a cluster of three people. They were holding portable lights and camera equipment. Remo was puzzled. Apparently what they wanted was to film him. But why? And what about Pierre LaRue? How was he involved?

In the cluster of people in the far corner, he recognized the oily little man who was Cicely Winston-Alright's aide. Some kind of setup, he thought again.

Remo pushed his way quietly along the edge of the clearing, watching for movement, traveling noiselessly across the top of the snow. When the trailer was between him and the cluster of people, Remo dropped to the snow and, skittering across its surface like a crab across sand, slid under the trailer.

Quietly he moved to the far end of the trailer. In the shadows, he could not be seen. He heard their voices.

"Be ready," he heard the oily man say. "When he goes in, we'll set up, and then when he comes out, we'll film him. Then we'll move right into the trailer and film inside."

"What's inside that's such a big deal?" someone asked.

"You'll see," the oily man said.

Remo moved back to the far end of the trailer. He would be just about under the kitchen, he figured. He reached up with both hands and felt one of the metal panels that provided the sub-flooring for the trailer. He slammed out with the spear of a hardened fingertip and punched a hole into the thin steel. There was one muffled thump and then silence. He waited. No one had heard. The three people in the corner of the clearing kept whispering to each other.

Carefully, Remo extended the hole in the steel, until it was large enough for both his hands to dig into. Then he carefully, slowly, and quietly ripped out the panel and set it on the ground. Above him, the flooring was a series of plywood squares, covered, he remembered, with nine-inch-square vinyl tiles. Remo used the heel of his hand to thump up against the plywood. It gave immediately, and a wedge of space opened up into the trailer above. Remo waited for a few moments to make sure no one had heard, then moved through the narrow opening up into the trailer.

The structure was dark, but light filtering in from outdoors made it seem as bright as daylight to Remo.

He moved toward Cicely Winston-Alright's bedroom at the far end of the trailer. On the floor, in the doorway, he saw Pierre LaRue. He bent down next to the man. He saw the bullet wounds in the chest. There was a faint pulse in LaRue's neck and as he touched it, Remo heard the big Frenchman groan softly.

There was nothing Remo could do. Perhaps if he had come ten minutes sooner. But too much blood had been lost.

Remo tried to make him comfortable.

"Pierre, who did this?" he asked.

"A rat," LaRue said. "A rat did zees. And inside, too."

"Worse than a rat," Remo said, not understanding.

"A rat," LaRue said. In the dimness, his eyes pleaded for understanding, for comprehension on Remo's part. "A rat. A rat."

He bubbled blood for a few seconds, then his lips turned blue. His hands began to slash and his eyes rolled back in his head. Pierre LaRue died.

What had he meant, "Inside, too"? Remo stood up and looked into the bedroom. He found Cicely. There was no need to check to see if she were dead. There weren't any pieces big enough to sustain life.

Remo understood now why the men were outside. They wanted to film him and LaRue and the woman. They were going to blame her death on Tulsa Torrent, perhaps use it all to kick off a riot that could sweep like a flood through the Tulsa Torrent land and destroy the copa-ibas.

Remo was angry. He had liked LaRue.

He lifted LaRue in his arms and brought him back to the trapdoor he had cut in the kitchen floor. Gently, as if the man were still alive, he lowered him down to the ground.

Then he went back to get LaRue's axe. He dropped it, too, through the opening. For a moment, he considered disposing also of Cicely's butchered body, but decided it was too messy. He let himself back down through the kitchen floor, then pulled the plywood and tile back into place from below. He bent up the ripped steel panel.

He had the feeling that he was forgetting something, something he should check. It gnawed at him, but he shrugged it off and scrambled to the end of the trailer, pulling Pierre LaRue's body after him.

Once he got out from under the structure, he hoisted Pierre LaRue into his arms, grabbed the double-faced axe in his right hand, and moved off silently into the safe darkness of the trees.

As he walked back through the woods toward Alpha Camp, Remo could feel Pierre's body growing cold in his arms. Remo stopped on the hill overlooking the valley of copa-iba trees. The heat from the generators and blowers moved up around them, along with the scent of gasoline and the noise of motors. Remo shook his head. Was it all worth it? Were these trees worth so many lives? Were they worth the life of this big, glorious, happy Frenchman he carried in his arms?

Gently, Remo lay Pierre down in the snow, and with his hands he covered over the man's body. There would be time for burying later, and this would be the spot, among the trees that LaRue loved. Dragging the big woodsman's axe behind him, Remo went back to the log cabin. When he reached Alpha Camp, he drew his arm back and angrily slung the axe, end over end, across the clearing. The blade hit clean and buried itself three inches deep into the trunk of a ponderosa pine.

Chiun was still sitting where Remo had left him.