Warren Murphy: Shock Value

"Then come to me, Circe." He kissed her. She trembled in his arms. "Don't be afraid."

"It's not him I'm afraid of," she said softly. "I've never been with a man before."

Remo smiled, surprised. "What? The sophisticated lady of the islands, a virgin?"

"I've always felt as if I belonged to Abraxas. He held me with awe and pity and fear. But I don't want to belong to him anymore." She touched his face. "Remo, will you love me?"

"Loving you is easy," Remo said. He brushed her cheek with his lips. She found his mouth, and her tongue searched out his own. Then he undressed her gently, and on the cool, secret earth of the cave, serenaded by the rushing sea, he awakened her body with his. Later, they lay side by side.

"What's that?" Remo said, sitting up. He cocked his head toward the mouth of the cave.

Circe snatched up her clothes. "What's what?"

"I thought I heard something." He got dressed quickly. "Let's go. Something's changed."

"What?" she asked, shaken.

"It's nothing for you to worry about. Just the air. There's a presence here."

"How can you tell?"

"It would be too hard to explain," Remo said. He took her outside and led her by the hand back to the car. "Wait here." He closed the door after her.

"What did you hear?" she insisted.

"Maybe nothing. A hum, I thought. Something electric." He left her and walked silently into the brush.

"A hum?" Circe whispered. "Here?" Her face went ashen. She fumbled with the door handle. "No," she screamed, tripping out of the car. "Don't go in there! Remo!"

Another noise came then, clear and distinct: the crack and whine of a bullet in the instant before it struck the girl. She cried once, softly, before she fell.

?Chapter Fourteen

Remo bent low over the girl to hear her words. "The car." She coughed, grimacing at the pain.

The bullet had hit her in the chest, although it struck well away from the heart. On the bright white of her dress grew a spreading bloom of red. "I should have known Abraxas would have the car tracked."

"Don't talk," he said. "You'll be all right. Just let me get you to a doctor."

"Help me..."

He felt the second bullet as soon as it was out of the pistol. It came toward him, parting the air in front of it in a miniature shock wave that stormed Remo's acute senses like the crude blow of a hammer. He threw himself over the girl. An instant later the bullet whizzed over his head, followed by the sharp crack of the report in the shadows of the scrub pines.

He was up before its echo died, moving swiftly through the darkness. Not a twig cracked beneath his feet. The silence that the bullet had broken was restored, and the air was still as he moved with the almost instinctive care of those trained in the arts of Sinanju.

He stopped. There was no sound. Chiun could walk with no sound, but few others could. Remo doubted that anyone who needed to use a gun to kill possessed the skill to run without disturbing the earth beneath his feet. He looked up. The man who'd shot Circe had to be waiting for him nearby. Ahead of him there was nothing. Behind, only the cheerful racket of mating sparrows.

"This way," a voice called from Remo's left. It was amused, mocking. Remo dashed for it, plunging through the trees and into a swamp of mangroves rising out of the mist like the spears of warriors.

"A little further." The voice sounded nearer. Whoever it was hadn't moved.

The swamp grew denser. The water reached up to Remo's knees. Above him, a low wind sighed through the spindly trees like a prayer for the dead, and the motionless fog hung like a pall around him. He felt as if he had stepped into another world, a primeval place half land and half water, stirring silently in darkness.

He moved with difficulty. The mud at the bottom of the swamp was getting thicker with each step he took. He felt as if he were walking on oatmeal. He grabbed hold of one of the upright mangroves. It bent in his hands like wet straw. Around him, as far as he could see, was nothing but swampland, swarming with the rush of mosquitos and sand flies.

The water was nearly to his waist now. His feet barely moved in the slimy bog at the bottom. He looked around. Which way had he come? And how far? It all looked the same. Everywhere was the thick soup of the fog and the ropy mangroves, stationed like sentinels in a lost prison stinking of decay.

"You're almost there... Remo," the voice called.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?"

A little man with slicked hair and a Walther P-38 in his hand appeared seemingly out of nowhere. "I was listening," he said.

Remo lunged at him. It took all his strength to wade even inches through the mire. Perspiration popped up on his forehead as he struggled to lift one foot and then the other.

"I'm waiting," the man said.

Remo felt as if he were in a dream. The muck seemed to pull at him like a living thing. He stretched out his arms in front of him. Anything, a stick, a rock, he thought, anything to pull him out of this pit. But even the mangroves had disappeared from the bubbling black slime that clung to him.

"Quicksand," the man said amiably. "Amazing stuff, isn't it?" He walked forward, examining his pistol. He was right in front of Remo, standing at the edge of the bog. With two more steps, Remo could take hold of the man and kill him.

If he could take two steps.

"Oh. Allow me to introduce myself. Michael LePat. I work for Abraxas. Incidentally, that was his woman you just raped. What a pity we won't get to know each other better." He smiled.

Remo was sinking faster. The quicksand tightened around his chest, easing the air out of his lungs slowly. He knew that if he panicked, the pit would swallow him whole. He held completely still and cleared his mind. Chiun had told him that, in situations where no answer was at hand, the voice of the gods spoke through a man's quiet mind. So he forced himself to be still, inside and out, while the hungry sea of quicksand churned around him.

No gods' voices came. Only a story Chiun had once told him about one of his ancestors who had ruled the ancient House of Sinanju. This Master of Sinanju, spoke Chiun, had passed his 120th year, and his strength was fading. In his dotage, while the Master lay in a bed of raw silk and gold waiting to pass quietly into the great void of death, a group of ruffians, to avenge a relative whom the Master had vanquished in his youth, stole him away to an unworthy place so that the old man would die in dishonor. They forced him to journey night and day to their own country to a cold crag overlooking a wasteland of rock.

"You will jump from this place to be smashed upon the rocks below," one of the abductors told the Master of Sinanju. "Your death will be one of weakness, a suicide, and the pain will be great."

The Master viewed the crag with his old eyes, which had seen the wonders of the world, and said, "I will do as you wish. I will jump from the crag and fall as the gods see fit. I ask only that you grant me one request before I pass into the void."

"We will do nothing to delay the wretched death you deserve," one of the murderers said.

"It will delay nothing. I ask only that you all stand near me to witness my end. As you can see, I am an old man, and no longer possess the power to fight you. All I wish for are witnesses to my death, so that those of my village will know truly that their Master has been defeated by a force greater than his own."

The ruffians swelled with pride. To tell the people of Sinanju that they had watched the Master die in ignominy and disgrace would satisfy their thirst for revenge.

"Very well, old man," their leader said, and the criminals advanced upon the crag to join the Master.

They did not see, as their aged prisoner had seen, that the crag was brittle and cracked and could not support the weight of many men. The crag broke free with a deafening splinter of rock and falling earth, dashing the men against the stones below. But the Master himself was prepared, and leaped away before the crag broke.