Warren Murphy: Troubled Waters

Ramirez saw him coming, but it was too late. The drug lord swung his weapon to the left, in Kidd's direction, finger clenching on the trigger, but he had already spent the magazine and was rewarded with only a sharp metallic clicking as the hammer fell upon an empty chamber.

Kidd wasn't about to waste his golden opportunity. The revolver thrust in front of him, he squeezed off three rounds and watched the bullets strike his target, the once-stylish jacket rippling with the impact of his lethal rounds. Ramirez staggered, dropped to one knee, staring back at Kidd before he toppled slowly onto his back.

One down, Kidd thought, but taking Carlos down wasn't the same thing as a victory. Kidd's crew and his community wouldn't be safe as long as one of the attackers lived.

"Come on, you scurvy swabs!" he shouted to his men who were still alive and fit to fight. "Have at 'em, lads, and get it done! It's time to be true pirates again!"

REMO MET CHIUN EMERGING from the shattered back wall of a thatch-roofed hut. The Master Emeritus of Sinanju had four women with him, one of whom was Stacy Armitage. She wore some kind of formal gown that had been pinned beneath her arms and ripped along the seams, revealing shapely legs. A handmade diadem of flowers sat atop her head, askew and dangling from one side, although she didn't seem to notice it. She recognized him in the darkness, and her mouth fell open like the jaw hinge had suddenly broken. She made noises as if she were trying to speak but couldn't.

"Looks like I missed the party," Remo said.

"You are certainly tardy," Chiun squeaked in irritation.

"I had to catch a ride from where you dropped me off," Remo explained. "I would have walked, but you know how it is."

"Excuses," Chiun snapped. "Now clean up this mess while I convey these young women to a safer place."

Remo knew better than to argue, even with the sound of automatic weapons hammering his eardrums from the far side of the hut. Chiun was moving toward the tree line with the women, even as Remo prepared to join the shindig in the pirate compound. Stacy seemed as if she had something to say, but simply squeezed his hand before she followed Chiun into the night.

He went in through the open back wall of the hut. A bullet slapped into the wall as Remo neared the entrance, but he paid it no attention. Peering out into the camp, he glimpsed a strange, surrealistic battlefield, where pirates brandished swords along with modern firearms, squaring off against opponents dressed in flashy suits and pointy shoes.

The strangest, and least pleasant, aspect of the battle was the smell.

Remo could only guess who the invaders were, but it was no concern of his. They weren't police-that much was obvious-and he wouldn't allow them to impede his mission. Now that he had found the pirate stronghold, and Stacy was out of the way with Chiun, he knew exactly what he had to do.

He slipped outside, keeping to the shadows, watching the gunners he could see. A ragged-looking pirate came at Remo, slashing at him with a cutlass in his left hand and a metal hook that had replaced his right. Remo ducked the blade, grabbed the hook and maneuvered it. The pirate saw what was coming even if he didn't understand how it was happening.

"Yo-ho-ho," Remo said, then with a lightning stroke forced the pirate to rip his own throat open. A spray of bullets rippled past him, and he sidestepped them instinctively. Remo sought the shooter and found one of the raiders scowling at him, grappling with a compact weapon that was either jammed or empty. Remo closed the gap between them in a flash, moved around the SMG his adversary swung as if it were a club and struck back with an open hand. The shooter's head snapped backward, eyes already glazing, as the front of his skull shattered and sent shrapnel ripping through his brain.

Remo moved through the grappling, cursing combatants like a shadow of death. He was everywhere at once, lashing out, thrusting, jabbing with stiffened fingers like daggers. Wherever he paused for a heartbeat, another man died on one side or the other, pirate or invader. At the same time they were so engrossed in their loud, confused melee they never even suspected he was there as they continued killing one another without letup, guns rattling, blades flashing, doing Remo's work for him.

It struck him that the pirates seemed to be at a disadvantage, even with their greater numbers on the battlefield. Most of them had a sickly look about them, as if the attack had caught them in the middle of a grievous hangover or bout of ptomaine poisoning. It had something to do with the ungodly stench about the place. He didn't stop to consider it now-he was on a roll and headed for the finish line.

He came up on the blind side of a pirate with wild red hair, who was strafing the camp with a modified M-60 machine gun, three of the stylish invaders jittering before him as the bullets tore into their bodies. Remo let him finish it before he slipped an arm around the gunner's neck and twisted sharply, hearing the snap-crackle-pop of vertebrae as they separated, shearing through the spinal cord and cutting off all signals to the angry brain.

The killing ground fell silent, but one figure still remained upright. Remo had never seen the man before, but from his garb, he guessed that this was a ranking officer-if not the leader-of the pirate crew. He held a shiny automatic revolver in one hand and raised it.

The pirate discharged the weapon. Remo approached him, walking.

The gun fired again. And again. The final three shots were fired from just a few steps away, and confusion etched itself in the features of the pirate as his target refused to drop. When the pistol's hammer clicked down on an empty chamber, the pirate flung it aside with a sound of disgust and drew the sword that weighted down the left side of his belt. The blade was long and highly polished, glinting in the firelight.

"You don't have the same look as these other scurvy bastards," the pirate said.

"I'm alone," Remo replied.

The pirate glanced around, saw bodies scattered everywhere and said, "It would appear that I am, too."

"It's over," Remo said, advancing slowly toward the sole survivor of the pirate crew.

"Is it?" He wore a crooked smile. "I started on this island alone and look what I built. I'll do it again."

"Yeah, but why?" Remo asked. "I mean, what's with all this Captain Hook stuff?"

Still smiling, Kidd lunged forward with the sword, but Remo dodged easily. The pirate tried a backhand slash that would have left him headless if it had connected, but the blade sliced empty air instead.

"You're quick, my friend," the pirate said.

"That's only half of it."

"Indeed?"

"I'm not your friend," said Remo.

"I suppose I'll have to kill you, then."

So saying, his assailant charged, sword flashing overhead and down toward Remo's face. It would have split his skull down to the shoulders if he had been willing to stand still and wait for it, but Remo was in motion even as the strike began. He removed the sword from the pirate's hand. It was strong, old steel but it snapped easily enough at the hilt.

"God! Oh no!" Kidd exclaimed.

"What?" Remo asked, snapping the blade again and again until it was nothing more than a handful of inch-wide scraps that tumbled into the dirt. The hilt fell there, too.

"That was the sword of my grandfathers!" the pirate said.

"I don't think they need it anymore."

"That sword shed blood around the world," he moaned. "The Kidd family terrorized the oceans for generations."

"So you're just following in your father's footsteps? That's why?" Remo asked.

Captain Kidd spit angrily. "That on my father. He was a pathetic loser, no better than his father. I was the first real man in the Kidd family in generations-the first Kidd in a century to devote himself to the calling that is our heritage."