Warren Murphy: Failing Marks

"That which you call engineering was not invented for the convenience of this century," Chiun said impatiently. "Such a feat would not have been impossible. It would also explain the difficulty my ancestor had in finding the Hoard."

"I hope we have better luck than him," Heidi said. She continued to stare into the wide hole at the muddy riverbank.

The men dug for another half hour. Kluge was about to suggest that they should redraw the map, this time with more care, when a sharp clang emanated from the deep hole. It was followed by another.

Kluge got to his feet.

"There is something here!" one of the skinheads called from within the deep pit.

Kluge and Heidi looked at each other, neither of them certain what to do next. Heidi seemed genuinely surprised.

The Master of Sinanju was first to react. He flounced to the edge of the hole, looking in his jaundiced kimono like a huge yellow bird that had just spied a particularly succulent worm. He stopped at the muddy edge of the pit.

Only five skinheads could fit in the hole at one time. The area they had excavated was more than ten feet deep. The men inside were looking up from the bottom, their bodies coated with thick black mud.

"See?" one of the skinheads said.

He handed his shovel to one of the others and got to his soiled knees. With the palms of his filthy hands, he wiped away a pile of thick, gloppy mud, revealing a flat surface underneath. The men were standing atop what appeared to be a buried strip of sidewalk.

Kluge and Heidi came up behind Chiun.

"Clear off the rest!" the Master of Sinanju boomed. His eyes sparkled brightly.

The men did as they were told. More shovelfuls of mud had to be removed to clear the stone to its edges. It was found to be rectangular in shape.

Some of the blond-haired men brought buckets from one of the trucks. As the last of the dirt was hauled out, water was brought from the nearby stream. Lowering the pails into the hole, they washed the surface of the chiseled granite.

"I cannot read it," Kluge said. He strained to look down at the ancient letters. They appeared to be nothing more than a series of indecipherable slashes. He glanced at the Master of Sinanju for help.

Chiun's eyes had narrowed to narrow slits, swallowing up any small spark of hope in his hazel orbs. His mouth was a thin, furious line.

"Accursed fiend," Chiun hissed. There was far more menace in the softness of his tone than in a thousand screaming voices. "He dares mock the House of Sinanju from across the ages." His rage suddenly boiled over. "Villain! Cur! Fraud! Lying Hun thief!"

Like a crazed Olympic diver, Chiun flew down into the hole. A swirling, frenzied yellow tempest, he swatted vicious, angry hands at the skinheads still gathered below. The slime-coated men scurried up the muddy banks in fear.

Mindless of the grime, Chiun dropped to his knees atop the stone. It was as large as a big door. He pried slender fingers around its smooth edge.

"What does it say?" Kluge asked in wonder as he watched the aged Korean tear at the stone.

"I believe those are runic characters," Heidi said. Her eyes narrowed as she attempted to read what was visible around Chiun. They looked like random cat scratches. "I am not entirely unfamiliar with this. Those are bitter runes. They are intended to bring down evils upon enemies."

Kluge glanced from the scampering form of Chiun to Heidi. "This is not the storing place of the Nibelungen Hoard?" he asked. He could not mask his disappointment.

Heidi smiled tightly. "I am afraid not," she said. In the pit, the Master of Sinanju had pried up the massive flat stone, heaving it to one side. There was nothing beneath but a pile of mud-swamped rocks. "Aiieee!" Chiun screamed.

His hand flew toward one of the short sides of the stone. There was a sound like a thunderclap. As Kluge watched, the flat rock split in two long halves. Before the pieces had even fallen to the bottom of the pit, Chiun's pipestem legs shot out in two quick jabs. The halves split in half again, falling into smaller pieces. Chiun fired his tiny fists forward into the quarters, cracking the chunks of stone into ever smaller fragments. All the while, he screamed his anger and frustration at the mud walls of the deep, slick pit.

Kluge backed slowly away from the hole. Witnessing the awesome sight of the wizened Asian shattering a two-ton slab of rock as if it were made of glass, Kluge felt almost a little grateful that he hadn't been able to follow through on his plan to kill the Master of Sinanju. This lasted only as long as it took him to realize that the wealth he so coveted was not there. Without that money, there would be no reestablishing IV. The fifty-year-old ultrasecret Nazi organization was finished.

And along with it, Adolf Kluge.

This realization was only just beginning to sink in when Kluge spied the first figure creeping through the underbrush on the other side of the river.

He stiffened. Made an effort not to stare.

Kluge tried not to let the man know he had spotted him as he casually began to scan the surrounding flora.

There was another. And another.

Creeping forward, they were attempting to stay hidden in the winter woods. The men were all armed.

In the pit behind him, the Master of Sinanju continued to pound away at the diminishing chunks of rock. Dust and pebbles flew up out of the hole as if from some insane sculptor's underground studio. The tiny Korean's screams had grown less fierce with every passing second.

Kluge hardly noticed Chiun's tantrum any longer. Keeping his arms close to his sides and his movements subdued, he walked with forced casualness over to Heidi.

She was in the process of gathering up Kluge's three collapsible stools from where they had been propped on the forest floor. They were draped over her forearm as Kluge stepped up to her.

"We are being watched," he said in a measured tone.

She had been lost in thought, obviously thinking of the amount of gold she had lost.

"What?" she asked, perturbed. She handed the stools off to a waiting skinhead. "What are you talking about?"

Her answer exploded from across the small river. The first gunshot ripped through the torpid silence of the ancient forest.

The bullet caught the skinhead beside them square in the chest. The young man wheeled around, flinging the three stools into the air as he did so. They flew through the air, landing in a tangle of bushes near the heap of displaced mud.

The dead skinhead fell to the forest floor as the next bullet tore from the tangle of low plants across the river.

Kluge threw himself to the ground. His elbow slammed against a flat rock. He ignored the shooting pain in his arm as he half crawled, half pushed himself along the damp forest surface to the protection of a cluster of thick pine trees.

All around him, Kluge's mud-soaked neo-Nazi followers had drawn weapons. Ducking for cover themselves, they had begun to shoot blindly at their concealed attackers.

Gunfire erupted all around.

The men who had ambushed them were in no hurry to advance. They stayed at a distance, firing with care into the cluster of neo-Nazis. From his vantage point behind the trees, Kluge could see that the first man he had noticed wore the uniform of the German Federal Border Police. He skulked on the other side of the small tributary, popping into view every few seconds with a blast of automatic-weapon fire.

A volley of bullets ripped into the soft trunk of the tree above him, sending splinters of pulpy wood down onto Kluge's sandy hair.

Kluge glanced frantically the other way. Through the overgrown forest, he could barely glimpse his parked convoy of trucks. As he watched, the lead car began rolling off down the road. It was joined a moment later by several of the trucks. The Numbers were fleeing.