Warren Murphy: The Final Reel

"I did not mount this conveyance to watch you sleep."

Eyes springing open in shock, Aryeh grabbed at the rearview, shifting it lower.

He caught sight of the old man sitting calmly in the middle of the back seat.

"I am so sorry," Aryeh apologized, clearing the sleep from his throat. "I did not see you."

"When one wishes to see, it helps to keep one's eyes open." The fare settled back in the seat. "Now, coachman, take me to Golan," he ordered.

"Golan?" Aryeh said, surprised. He turned around, placing an arm on the back of the front seat. "Do you not know what is happening there, old one?"

"Yes," Chiun spit. "Idiocy that keeps me from my true calling. And woe to me I have left my son in charge." The Asian tapped a finger on the seat. "Hasten, lest in my absence the callow mooncalf ruins all that I have worked for."

Aryeh shrugged apologetically. "I am sorry, but I cannot take you there. The farthest I can go is perhaps Tiberias. It is south of the Golan Heights."

"Oh, very well," the Master of Sinanju snapped. "Just be quick about it. I must kill Sultan Omay of Ebla and return to Hollywood before my son allows the buffoons who run my studio to cast one of the insipid Sheen offspring in my production. Or worse, a Baldwin." He pitched his voice low, leaning forward. "Those boys are box-office poison." He sat back knowingly in his seat.

The cabdriver's eyes narrowed. "You are going to kill Omay?"

"If this infernal machine ever moves," Chiun said with growing impatience.

Aryeh started the engine.

"For that I would drive you all the way to Akkadad."

Tires leaving a smoking trail of rubber, the car squealed away from the curb.

THEY DIDN'T GET as far as Akkadad. The cab did, however, manage to travel a good distance up around the northern edge of Lake Tiberias. It was stopped by a military blockade manned by members of the Israel Defense Force.

"Don't you know what is going on up here?" a young soldier asked of Aryeh when the cab had stopped.

"Of course," the driver said. "But I was taking this nice gentleman on a special mission. He is a famous screenwriter who also works as an assassin. He is here to kill Sultan Omay."

The soldier raised a skeptical eyebrow. Together with another Defense Force soldier, he went to the rear of the cab. When they looked in the windows on either side of the back seat, they found it empty.

Aryeh was surprised when the door of his taxi was opened and the soldiers began helping him out. They talked to him in soothing tones.

"But he was here," Aryeh insisted. "He told me how his son would probably ruin his one chance for success. I agreed with him and told him how the one time I trusted my boy with my taxi while I was in the hospital he almost-"

The story was cut short when one of the Israel Defense Force jeeps that had blocked the road into the mountains roared to life.

As the soldiers around it scattered, the jeep flew away at full speed, bouncing its way up the rugged road into the Golan Heights. So shocked were they at the sight of the figure behind the wheel none of them thought to fire a shot.

The wizened old man with the eggshell head and the purple kimono drove like a madman away from the knot of soldiers. Up into the thick of the raging battle.

Chapter 31

The explosions came at such a constant rate that they blurred into a single, endless, deafening roar. The sky was fire. Acrid smoke blew up all around the region, choking sight and filling lungs with dust and sand.

Israeli aircraft swooped down over the field of battle, skimming lines of advancing Eblan soldiers and unleashing wave after lethal wave of bullets and rockets.

The F-16s had just completed their latest devastating assault. An attack squadron of AH-1 helicopters soared through a moment after the airplanes had rocketed out, rattling endless rounds into the pride of the Ebla Arab Army.

The earth shook beneath the mighty treads of Israeli tanks-far more sophisticated than those of tiny Ebla. Across the battlefield lay the remains of countless Eblan heavy military vehicles, thick clouds of billowy black smoke curling up from their twisted metal hulks.

As he stood at the mouth of his tent, which had been propped up at the edge of the battle line, Sultan Omay sin-Khalam scowled. It seemed at once to be both a grimace of pain and one of intense displeasure.

This was not the glorious contest he had imagined. He had allowed himself the conceit that his men would be able to repel the Jewish infestation from the Golan Heights and retake the region for Islam. But that vain self-image had collapsed beneath the inexorable force of reality.

Ebla would lose this battle. Badly. But in so losing, it would ultimately win the war.

This thought was but a minor comfort as Sultan Omay watched the Israeli army slice through his poorly trained soldiers like a thresher through autumn wheat.

Omay was sitting now. A stool had been brought to the shaded canopy that stretched on poles beyond the closed flaps of his tent. He could no longer stand. In the past few hours walking had become almost impossible without assistance. Death gripped his soul. Yet he willed his body to live. Just a little longer.

His breath came in softly gurgling wheezes. Each time he filled his lungs, they burned with the intensity of the fires raging in the rocky desert plain before him.

The colonel who was his aide had left to lead units of the Eblan cavalry. Another soldier had been conscripted into service for the sultan. This young Arab held a pair of binoculars to the eyes of his ruler, so that Omay could get a better view of the great carnage spread across that part of the mountainous battlefield visible from his encampment.

As he was peering out at the line of advancing Israeli soldiers, the scene suddenly wavered. The field of combat blurred and vanished. Omay blinked at the sudden change in his vision.

The spyglasses were gone. An anxious face stood before him. His communications man. The young soldier held a cellular phone in his hand.

"O Sultan, I have received two urgent calls for you," the man said hastily. "One has broken in on the other."

Omay's eyes were watery. They seemed much farther away than even the nearby conflict.

"Who wishes to speak to me at so momentous a time?" he asked, his voice supremely tired.

"The first was Minister Hamza. He insisted that he speak to you on a matter of utmost urgency." Hamza? Omay's eyes were dragged back into focus. His thoughts turned to the Great Plan. His legacy.

"Give me that," he insisted.

The soldier hesitated. "It is no longer Minister Hamza, Sultan," he explained nervously. "This is now the one who broke in on the connection. It is the Saudi. Al Khobar."

Omay became even more animated. All thoughts of Minister Hamza vanished.

"Now!" he commanded. A hand wrapped in wrinkled, gray-tinged flesh shook impatiently.

The soldier dutifully handed him the telephone.

"Assola, you live?" Omay rasped anxiously, his words sounding far off.

"Yes, Omay sin-Khalam," the terrorist replied. It was almost as if it pained him to speak. His voice sounded oddly muffled.

"You have succeeded." It was a statement. The old man was so excited, he began to stand.

"No. Not yet," al Khobar replied.

Omay fell back onto his stool. "What has happened?"

"Something that could not be planned for," Assola explained quickly. "It is of no consequence. You have begun the attack already?"

"Yes, Assola," Omay responded, the life draining from his voice. "I had assumed you dead."

"The Americans have yet to invade here," al Khobar mused. "Yet it can only be a matter of time now that the war has begun there." The terrorist was thinking. "Though I have been put behind schedule, there are but a few trifling details to attend to here." His muffled voice steeled. "This I vow-we will this day claim victory for all of Islam against the hated American desecrators."