Warren Murphy: Fool's Gold

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"I didn't notice," she said apologetically.

"Yes," said Chiun. "Three direct threats can be very subtle."

Remo moved on up the trail. He wanted to be alone for this. He wanted to move alone. He was quiet with the trail but the birds were not calling. He was quiet with the trail but the noises of people where there should be noises were not coming up the trail.

He had not done much training in the countryside because, as Chiun had explained, major work was almost always done in cities because that was where the rulers were.

Yet the way to knowing the jungle was knowing oneself. One knew the sea by one's blood. One knew the jungle by one's breath.

Remo moved like a midnight dream, silent with all that was around him because he was part of all that was around him. Long ago, before he had been recruited for this training, in a time of beer and bowling alleys and hamburgers with cheese on them and sugar and tomato sauce, he would have thought of a place like the jungles of the Yucatan as bushes that should be removed.

Now, as a part of it, he was sure of it.

"I hate this junk," he mumbled to himself, looking at the broad green leaves and bright flowers. "Pot this place, plant some grass and make it a golf course or a park."

A bowling alley, he thought, would look nice around here. Anything would look nice here except this jungle. That was what he thought when he saw the outlines of a man in camouflage combat fatigues. Man had a gun. Another sniper on the

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small ridge surrounding the trail that entered the village. Lookouts.

Remo moved off the trail and skirted the two snipers. He would have liked to have moved up a tree for a look into the village but high things for men who were preparing a trap always attracted notice. Underbrush was safe.

He moved low through that until he came to the clearing. The clearing reminded him that people did not really ever live in the jungle because they always had to clear space for their villages.

And then he saw the pit. He knew what was in there because no one was moving in the village. All the villagers had been killed and put in that pit. And then leaves had covered it.

It had to be recent, within the last few hours, because human bodies rotted quickly. It was one of the few species that almost always had food in its stomach.

There were more men. A few surrounded the village but the greater concentration were at the small hillock to the south, the one with a black craggy rock sticking out of it, as if someone had brought it in from Colorado and stuffed it into the jungle.

Remo counted ten men in all.

The main body was at the large black rock. They also had a spring net as if they were going to capture some animal. The important thing, Remo told himself, was not to let any one of the snipers go wandering off. One of them might just throw a shot down the trail, which would be no problem for Chiun but might hurt Terri.

Ten, thought Remo and moved up behind the

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first very quietly. The sniper was lying in prone position, the rifle resting on his palms. Remo severed the spinal column just beneath the cranium. The sniper went to sleep on his rifle forever.

Remo caught the next sitting lotus-like with the gun in his lap. Remo moved his left hand to the throat and with the concentrated power some might ascribe to a steam shovel kept the man seated with more and more pressure until the back cracked.

He put away two more who were scanning the long trail with binoculars. He simply put the binoculars into the heads with a smothered slap into the lenses. The eye sockets kept going.

Remo heard a little tune in his head. It was "Whistle While You Work" and he hummed it softly.

Walid ibn Hassan waited with his beloved, trained perfectly on the trail before him. He had not heard on his small radio from Mahatma for twenty minutes. That was strange. Mahatma had been the first point on the trail and had seen them. Three of them, an Oriental, a woman, and a white man.

He had beamed that in on the shortwave to Lord Wissex's man at a station nearby, and Hassan had picked it up on his radio. This was necessary because Wissex wanted to know what the bodyguards were like. Hassan knew why. He had heard that knife fighters had been killed by these bodyguards and now here he was. It was the old rule: first knives, then guns.

So Hassan kept his beloved ready, barrel pointed down the trail, eyes alert. He remembered what he had heard of the dead knife fighters and alone

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among the snipers he did nor regard this as just another easy mission.

And alone among all the snipers Walid ibn Hassan saw 2:30 P.M.

And then a man was standing right in front of him, as if dropped by magic in the middle of the trail, so close that Hassan could not use the scope. He was a thin man with thick wrists and dark eyes and he was smiling.

"Hi. Nice jungle, isn't it?" said the man. He was American so he must be one of the three. But Hassan did not wait to make sure.

In every other service he had performed for Wissex, he had been careful to be exactly right about the target. But this time, he knew no one would punish him for shooting first. So he let his beloved kiss the man's chest. That would fell him. Then he would let his beloved kiss the white man's eyes and then his mouth. Those were Hassan's plans for the next shots.

But the first shot did nothing. The trigger was pulled and the man seemed to move even before the thought of the shot. He was standing sideways. Hassan squeezed off two more shots where the man's eyes had been, realizing that the man moved again even as his beloved was firing.

Hassan was now shooting without even aiming, pulling the trigger madly, until his beloved left his hands.

The man was standing over him, pawing his beloved.

"What do you call this thing?" Remo asked, noticing how well-polished the rifle was.

"Beloved," cried Walid ibn Hassan, reaching for

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the precious one that would return his honor in blood.

"I could never tell these things apart. I don't even know the names of guns, you know," said Remo. "A man who uses a gun, well, that means he doesn't have it within himself. But, honest, it's a pretty gun. Okay, sweetheart. Party's over," said Remo and Hassan felt his beloved's barrel puncture his belly with eye-popping pain.

Hassan dared not move because any movement increased the pain. He felt the barrel go higher, into his chest cavity, even to his breathing, and then he noticed he was high off the ground. The man was carrying him easily, high above the ground as a waiter would carry a tray and just as easily.

He was bringing Hassan back to the village where they had killed everyone-impaled on his beloved.

He was bringing him to that Oriental sign that the Chocatl chief had been pointing to as some form of protection. The chief had been the first to die with Hassan sending a kiss from his beloved to the man's forehead. The chief was now at the bottom of the pile in the pit. He had died still pointing to that symbol carved in jade before his hut.

Hassan was now being lowered to that sign, his face very close to it.

"See that? In Korean, that means house or House of Sinanju. Just house will do. It's become sort of a trade name in the past few thousand years. It means that this village was protected by the House of Sinanju, except we blew it, and protection is impossible since you've already killed everyone.

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However, the House of Sinanju is also big on meaningless vengeance. Do I have the safety on?"

"What?" grunted Hassan.

"Hold it. No, I don't think so. I think the safety will move. Yes."

And Walid ibn Hassan's beloved sent a kiss up through her master's brain, taking off a piece of cranium.

Remo discarded the gun and impaled owner in the bushes and returned to Chiun and Terri.