Warren Murphy - Bay City Blast

"Yes."

"I see," Chiun said.

Mickey nudged Remo. "He may come back. Sometimes they do."

The two men stood at the front of the boat, watching, their eyes circling, but the ocean was still.

"We're far away from the chum slick," Remo said.

"Makes no difference," the mate said. "When there's a great white around, the other sharks make themselves scarce."

Remo glanced back and noticed that Chiun had risen from his seat on the locker. Ht was standing at the rear of the boat. From behind, he appeared to be dipping his hands into the water. Mickey noticed him too.

"What's he doing?" the mate asked.

"Don't be surprised at anything," Remo said.

As they both looked toward the stern, they saw it. The giant shark came up to the surface of the water, directly behind the boat. He was only thirty feet away. He sped toward the boat at full speed.

Mickey ran toward the rear of the vessel.

"Chiun, look out," Remo called. He started back also. Chiun did not move.

The shark was upon the boat now and the vessel shuddered as the giant fish hit it at full speed. Remo could see the snout of the big beast rise above the gunwale as his teeth and mouth rammed the back of the boat. Chiun, instead of retreating, leaned further over toward the water.

Mickey grabbed another harpoon. Remo ran up behind Chiun. Before the two men reached him, the old Korean turned, an angelic smile of calm on his face.

"Now we go?" he said to Remo.

And behind him, the body of the great white shark rose slowly to the surface, floating, its eyes already glazed over with death. It was a full twenty-feet long and its tail fins fluttered feebly as it floated behind the boat, and then it slowly revolved onto its back and its white belly reflected the afternoon sunlight like a piece of metallic foil.

Mickey tossed the harpoon into the shark's belly and quickly secured the nylon rope to one of the rear cleats.

"I don't believe it," Remo said. "I've seen sharks with a bullet in their head live for hours."

"I have seen grasshoppers withstand cannon shot," Chiun said.

Remo said "How?"

"Because the cannon shot missed. The bullets in the shark's head missed. I do not miss."

"Got to bring him to side before he sinks," Mickey said. He began hauling the shark in closer to get another line around his tail. The captain came down from the top cabin to lend a hand.

"What happened to him?" the captain asked.

"Don't know, Cap," the mate answered.

"They don't just die for no reason," the captain said.

Mickey shrugged. "Got me," he said.

As the two men struggled to bring the shark in, Remo asked Chiun, "How'd you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Make him come. Then kill him."

"I called him with my fingers. It is really easy. If you had paid attention, you would have learned how. I think I taught that to you... yes, in your second month of training. Ten years ago. What? You mean to say you weren't listening?" Chiun looked at Remo quizzically. "Surely you must remember. It came right between my lecture on Ung poetry and the history of the House of Sinanju during the reign of the greatest Master, Wang. You do not remember this?"

"Don't be wise," Remo said. "You know I don't remember it. I slept through that month. How'd you kill him?"

"I hit him on the nose as I will hit you on the nose if we do not return immediately to our room."

Chiun climbed into the large deck chair, closed his eyes and pretended to nap.

Behind him, Remo heard someone swear.

He looked up to see Mickey and the captain leaning over the port side of the boat. When he joined them, he saw the faint trace of the great white's silvery-brown body slipping down through the waters toward the bottom of the ocean.

For a moment, Remo thought of jumping in after it to retrieve the line, but decided it would take too long. The shark would drop down to the bottom and within minutes other fish would begin eating away at the once-feared killer.

"Line broke," Mickey explained. "Damn."

When they got to shore, Chiun woke up and looked around.

"Where is the fish you wanted so badly?" he asked Remo.

"It got away," Remo said disconsolately.

"The big ones always do," Chiun said.

The fishing boat dropped Remo and Chiun off at a private dock jutting out into the ocean, before going back to the main marina where the mate and captain planned to tell everybody about the giant shark that just seemed to die of old age, but slipped the ropes and dropped to the bottom before they could boat it. In a town whose economic survival depended more and more on shark hunters and stories of great whites caught and almost caught, 90 percent of those who heard the story would smile and quietly consider it a lie. The other 10 percent would keep open minds. They themselves had run into great whites and they knew anything was possible.

When they walked across a hundred yards of sand dune and entered their motel room, Remo and Chiun found Dr. Harold W. Smith sitting in a chair. He was not watching television or reading a newspaper. He was simply sitting, as if sitting were an end in itself and he had worked hard to learn the technique of doing it well.

"You should've seen the shark we had, Smitty," Remo said. "Thirty feet." He spread his hands as wide apart as he could to illustrate.

Behind him, Chiun held up his right hand, with thumb and index finger separated by only about three inches. Silently, he mouthed the words to Smith, "A minnow."

"Yes, yes," Smith said. "I'm glad you've both enjoyed your vacation so much."

"Do I detect the past tense there?" Remo asked.

"Actually it was the present perfect," Smith said. "But past will do. I have an assignment."

"Bay City?"

"Yes," Smith said.

"I knew it. I knew it. I knew you were going to change your mind. I knew I should have hit that guy while we were there."

"Please, Remo," Chiun said. "Don't talk about hits. It makes you sound like some kind of killer."

"Sorry, Chiun," Remo said. He turned back to Smith. "All right, I'll finish it tomorrow."

"You don't understand," Smith said.

"What don't I understand?"

"You've got the job assignment wrong. I don't want to dispose of Mayor Nobile."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to be his bodyguard. Protect him."

"From what? The FBI? An overdose of cavatelli? What?"

"I don't know from whom or from what. He got a threatening letter today from someone who called himself 'The Eraser.' "

Remo sprawled down on the bed and looked over at Smith. Chiun turned on the television set and pulled the vanity chair around so he was sitting six inches from the screen. A sports program was showing the full contact karate championships. Chiun turned off the set in disgust. He had hoped there would be an ice skating show on. He had fallen in love with one of the skaters. When he found out she was married to a football player, he watched football hoping the player would be killed and cursed defensive linemen for their inability to make him into a vegetable.

" 'The Eraser?' " Remo said.

Smith nodded.

"Why should we care if Rocco Nobile gets himself knocked off by The Eraser or by anybody else for that matter? I told you he was turning that city over to the mob. What's it to us?" He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling.

Smith cleared his throat. Chiun went into the bathroom to count the bars of soap. If there were extras, they would go into one of his trunks.

"Remo," Smith said, "a number of years ago the CIA had an agent in Europe named Wardell Pinkerton the Third."

"He must have been a winner," Remo said.

"He was. He was one of the best field agents the CIA ever had. Then he developed heart trouble and had to be moved out of active line duty. He came back to the States."