Warren Murphy: Timber Line

They moved up the north side of the sloping mountain, until they were only fifty yards ahead of the wall of fire, which was swooping down the mountainside, leapfrogging from burning tree to burning tree. As Remo watched, Chiun felt the side of a tree trunk, searching with his hands for the point of critical balance. Then, with a push that was almost childlike, Chiun pressed against the tree, and with a ripping, cracking sound, the big timber toppled to the ground.

Remo understood. He and Chiun flashed along the line of trees, pushing them over. Big trees took down smaller trees. Slowly, they were creating a clearing, in which toppled trees were piled one on top of another. As the flames coming down the hillside met that wall, there would be no more standing trees for the flames to jump to. The fire would burn itself down toward the ground and ignite the fallen trees, but it would be a slow process, and the fire would not have enough energy to jump across the firebreak.

Without resting, without waiting, Chiun kept working his way around the rim of the bowl of the mountain. Remo raced ahead, leveling a broad swath of timber, then would feel Chiun run past him to do the same thing ahead. They leapfrogged their way around the entire mountain, cutting a wide path through the standing pines.

Finally, after two hours, they moved back down the hill toward Alpha Camp.

As they looked up, around them, 360 degrees, they could see that already the fire was slowing, running into the wall of felled trees, unable to jump that wall, and now turning its energy away from expansion, and in upon itself, consuming itself, slowly burning itself out.

They decided to leave Joey in the igloo. She would be safe there until they came back.

Roger Stacy was leaning back in his swivel chair, playing with the gold-plated steel lumberjack's hook that had been presented to him by Tulsa Torrent at a testimonial dinner honoring his contributions to American forestry.

It was probably time, now, he decided, to call for help from surrounding fire departments. The fire through the forest should be out of control, too late for anybody to do anything about.

Joey Webb should be dead and the copa-ibas destroyed, and he on his way to being a very wealthy, very retired man.

It had all started that night when that bitch Webenhaus had made fun of his lovemaking. She had laughed at him. He had killed her husband and was going to kill her, but those goddamn Indians interrupted. He had been lucky to escape with his own life. And the baby Joey had survived, somehow, too.

There had been all those years of work with the copa-ibas, work that seemed that it would never be successful, and there had been all the money from the Association — which wanted to make sure that the copa-ibas never grew in the United States.

It was a shame, he thought, that he had to share any glory with anyone else from the Association. Stacy looked at the golden hook in his hands. It was a solid-steel bar, almost two feet long, bent into a square handle at one end, curved and razor-sharpened into a hook at the other end. And even though it was plated thickly with gold, it was still a deadly weapon.

He laughed inwardly. Perhaps he would present it to the other member of the Association as a gift. Right in the neck. The Association appreciated ruthlessness in its people, and such an act might put him on the right track with them. Who knew — he was still only 45 — there might be a second, more exciting career awaiting him in life.

"Stacy," a voice said. "It's all over."

He looked up to see Remo O'Sylvan and the old Oriental. He smiled at them, but his mind boiled. Why were they alive? How?

"I didn't hear you come in," he said.

"You didn't expect us either, did you?" Remo said.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

"The fire you set," said Remo.

"Fire? What fire? Our trees?" He jumped up and ran to the window. He had hoped to see the forest still full of flame, but instead, the rim of the valley showed only a thin line of flame around it, the fire having been unable to jump the thick firebreak Remo and Chiun had built.

"The copa-ibas?" Stacy said, his mind moving fast, looking for answers.

"Can it," Remo said. "Who paid you to stop the project? To kill Joey?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Stacy said. He walked back and sat in his chair. "And if you're going to talk crazy, you can get out. I've got to get the fire departments here." He was sweating now, and the churning of his body was pumping off the smell of his after-shave lotion, a heavy musky smell.

He reached for the telephone. Remo slapped his hand away and gently pushed the chair Stacy was in. It began to whirl around. Remo pushed again. Stacy whirled faster. He thought he was going to throw up. He began to lose his peripheral vision. His sight took on a red tinge. All he could see was Remo's face. Faster and faster he whirled.

Stacy raised the hook and swung at Remo. Somehow he missed. His chair was slowing down. He was facing the old Oriental. He moved the hook back again and swung at the old man.

The last thing Roger Stacy ever saw was Chiun fluttering his hands delicately, slowly, at him, and the golden hook traveling in a long powerful arc, past the old man and back toward himself.

The hook caught Stacy below the Adam's apple and ripped upward, coming to rest in the roof of his mouth.

Roger Stacy fell forward and whimpered, as the blood and the life ran out of him.

Remo stood up from the edge of the desk where he had been perched. "Case closed," he said.

"Not so," said Chiun.

"No?" said Remo. "Smell that after-shave? That's that sweet smell we've been smelling every time there's a body," he said.

"No," Chiun said. "It is similar, but it isn't the same."

Remo didn't trust himself to deal with small-town bureaucracies, so he called Smith and told him to do whatever was necessary to get local fire departments to respond to the burning forests of Tulsa Torrent.

Then he sent Chiun back to Alpha Camp to protect Joey Webb.

And then he drove down the road toward the main camp of the Mountain High Society. Something had been nibbling at his mind for the last thirty hours, and he had finally remembered what it was.

The society's camp was rapidly emptying. The police were letting the protesters leave, a few at a time, and then shuffling them down the road back toward town, under police escort, away from Tulsa Torrent land.

The police were occupied with the protesters when Remo arrived, and he was able to slip into Cicely Winston-Alright's trailer without being challenged.

Her butchered body had been covered with a large blanket. But on a little stand in her room, he found what he was looking for. It was a box and inside was a picture.

When he had made love earlier to the woman, she had said, "Only one man" and pointed to the box.

The picture was signed, "To CeCe. With eternal love. Lance." Lance Alright. Her last husband. Remo looked at the picture. The bland, blue eyes of Harvey Quibble stared back at him.

He shoved the picture into his trouser pocket. Eight minutes later, he was back at Alpha Camp. He could see fire-fighting apparatus, some painted yellow, some painted red, on the narrow roads leading through the forests, moving up the trails and pumping water on the fire, which now gave signs of burning itself out.

As he went into the Alpha Camp clearing, he saw Chiun. Chiun raised his finger to his mouth to shush Remo, and the younger man walked up silently toward his mentor.

Chiun pointed toward the igloo. Remo could hear voices inside. There was Joey's and there was Harvey Quibble's.

"Why?" Joey was asking.

"It's a long story," Quibble said. His little pipsqueak's voice sounded different now, strong and in control.