Warren Murphy: Air Raid

"Why? What are they?"

Dilkes closed his eyes wearily, sinking back in his chair. "You never listened; Olivier," he said, shaking his head. "You were an exceptional student, but you were always only interested in your gadgets and toys. You loved those Rube Goldberg contraptions of yours, but you never bothered to learn the history of what we are."

"I am listening now. Tell me who they are."

Dilkes sighed, opening his eyes. "Sinanju, Olivier. Those men were Sinanju."

A pause on the line. "I thought they were mythical."

"They are absolutely real," Dilkes insisted. "The old one was the reason I left America twenty-five years ago. He is the Master. I've since learned that he's taken a pupil. An American, if the stories I've heard are accurate."

"The younger one acted like an American." There was a growling contempt in the voice.

"It was them. It's amazing you met them and got out alive," Dilkes said. "Olivier, do you have any idea how rare a thing that is? In all of recorded history, there are only a handful of men who've done what you have."

It was the wrong thing to say. The fear that had been there at the start of the conversation was slowly overcome by arrogance.

"I almost had them, Benson."

Dilkes sat up rigid in his chair. "No," he insisted. "No, you didn't. And don't even think about going back after them. You live in isolation, Olivier. You've never appreciated that there are forces out there that you and I will never understand. You've achieved a well-deserved reputation, but it's only the reputation of an individual. Sinanju is the reputation of our entire career."

"Thank you, Benson. I will try to come down for a visit in the spring."

"You're a dead man if you try to engage them," Dilkes said in final warning.

The phone buzzed loud in his ear. With a hot exhale of air, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. So few men in his line of work lived to enjoy retirement. He had just spoken to another that would not.

Getting up from his comfortable living-room chair, Benson Dilkes went back out to his yard and his prize roses.

Chapter 14

He sent back the ice because it wasn't cold enough. His lunch was too hot. Then it was too cold. Then it wasn't lunch at all anymore because he'd thrown it on the waiter's tidy uniform.

The bulbs in the overhead lights were too bright. Someone was sent for replacements.

While he waited, some marauder with mallets for hands improperly fluffed his pillow. Since everyone knew a pillow once improperly fluffed could never be fluffed properly again, both pillow and fluffer would be thrown off the plane the minute they landed in Brazil.

In the back of the jet, people searched for a persistent rattle that only he could hear. Agents and record company executives, promoters and accountants, the flight crew and various personal staff scurried around the cabin, chasing after a sound that wasn't there. They'd been looking, straining their ears, since the jet took off from London.

"I want it found by the time we touch down or there'll be sackings all around," Albert Snowden snapped over his shoulder. He was chewing on an ice cube as he talked. "Still not cold enough," he snarled, spitting the too-warm ice into the forehead of the lentil-covered waiter.

As the terrified man scurried around the floor of the plane in search of the wayward chunk of ice, Albert settled angrily back in his seat.

He was always angry. Even an entire private planeload of people-his people, his employees-bending over backward to service his every whim couldn't soothe the perpetual state of agitation that was, for Albert Snowden, the very stamp of miserable life itself.

He had always been peevish. Even back when he was a nobody working a starvation-wages job as an English teacher at a boys' school in Saint Albans, twenty miles outside of London.

Albert Snowden. He hadn't gone by that name in years.

The last time he'd used it was that long ago winter when he'd taken a sabbatical from teaching. He went to London to indulge in his avocation. Rock and roll music.

Everyone thought Albert was insane for even thinking he might have a career in music. Crazier still for thinking he could front a band.

"You're tone-deaf, Albert," his voice coach had told him. "When you sing, it sounds as if your genitals are being pressed between two very large flat rocks. That is not a pleasing sound to hear, Albert. I would demonstrate to you on an animal, but the RSPCA would stop me for inflicting pain on that animal. Which they will do to you if you subject an audience to that voice of yours. Go back to teaching. Go back now. If not for me, man, do it for queen and country."

But in spite of such negative encouragement, he had persisted in his dream.

A few days after firing his voice coach-who had taken to wadding cotton in his ears during their sessions-Albert was at an open-mike night at a London club. As luck would have it, he met up with a young American who was looking for a lead singer for his band. Called Fuzz Patrol, the band would consist of only three main members. In those heady days of joyful masochism, Albert and his voice just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He quit teaching altogether and joined the band on the spot.

They started out in small venues, eventually graduating to bigger clubs.

From the moment he began with Fuzz Patrol, Albert was on the lookout for a suitable stage name. As fate would have it, he happened to be pricked by a bee before a small gig in Los Angeles one night. After he threw a forty-five-minute temper tantrum backstage, someone suggested he call himself Prick. They claimed they'd come up with it from the bee. A lot of people who had known Albert thought otherwise.

That night for the first time, Albert introduced himself to an audience as Prick. The name just felt right. From that moment on, Albert Snowden was dead. It was Prick who stepped off that stage and into a new life.

The name change seemed to work like a lucky talisman. It was during that small L.A. booking that Fuzz Patrol was spotted by a scout from a major record label. That very night they were signed to a multirecord deal.

After that, the sky was the limit. Fuzz Patrol got national exposure on the late-night talk shows. Hit song followed hit song as their albums all went multiplatinum. They became a powerhouse in rock, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Success should have brought great happiness. But like so many people who finally achieved precisely what they set out to, Prick was unsatisfied.

It came as a shock to the rock world when Prick announced he would be leaving Fuzz Patrol. After much soul searching, he had decided that going solo was the only way he could do the sort of music he wanted to. The truth of the matter was, in the few short years they'd been together, Prick had become Fuzz Patrol. Few people outside the music industry even knew the names of the other band members.

"Why split the money three ways when I only have to split it once?" he reasoned privately to his wife at their rural English estate.

"You're so right, luv," his wife had replied. "By the way, have you met my new boyfriend? You've had his wife up for a few weekends here and there." As Prick's wife led the handsome stranger over to their very liberated bed, Prick merely sat and watched. He had important business on his mind. Some had their doubts about a solo Prick. After all, he was neither the brains of nor the talent behind Fuzz Patrol. In truth, he was just a shrieking English teacher whose incredible luck had already defied all odds.

Once more the former Albert Snowden proved his critics wrong. Prick went on to establish a solo career every bit as successful as his time with Fuzz Patrol. For fifteen years he reigned supreme at the top of the adult contemporary charts.