Warren Murphy: Shock Value

There were no armies in CURE. Only the president of the United States knew of it, along with two other men: Remo, the enforcer arm of the organization, and CURE's director, Dr. Harold W. Smith, a bespectacled, middle-aged man who ran the operation from a bank of the most powerful secret computers in the world. It was Smith who had arranged, so long ago, for Remo's transformation at the hands of the old Korean master, Chiun, into the most effective killing machine ever employed by a modern nation. It was Smith, in fact, who had created a master assassin from a dead man.

Nothing of that dead policeman existed anymore except for the veneer of Remo's appearance: the slim body, unusual only because of its extraordinarily thick wrists, the dark hair, the eyes some women described as cruel, and the mouth others called kind. The rest of him was a product of more than a decade's training and patience and work.

The old Remo had feared fire with the primordial, irrational terror born into the human species. The new Remo, this Remo on the burning buildings, feared nothing.

It was part of the peace that came with being a dead man.

He listened. The sound was faint but clear, a small voice calling out from below the tarpaper roof.

"Is someone there?" It was like the mewling of a cat, so small, so frightened. He had missed one. There was a child inside. Remo's heart hammered.

His movements were instinctive. Whirling to the edge of the roof, he placed his hands on one of the bricks making up the small safety skirt. It was already greasy with soot, and smoke crawled up the sides of the building like moving shadows, pouring into his lungs. He slowed his breathing, so that he would take in as little air as possible, then began a rapid drum on the brick. His fingers moved so fast, they were no more than a blur. A high sound, like a whistle, emanated from the wall for a moment, and then the brick broke off, shaped in a perfect wedge with a razor-sharp cutting edge.

"Please, somebody, help."

He was operating at peak now. His ears located the exact source of the voice, and Remo concentrated on the spot, focusing his whole body and mind on it, the wedge balanced easily in his right hand. Then, weighing his weapon, feeling its center and essence, he loosed the wedge of brick onto the tarpaper surface with a crack that split the air.

The brick sliced cleanly through the pebbled tarpaper, and below it, the wooden beams cracked as the roof split and gave. He smashed through the broken surface with one foot. After that, the roof gave way like a spiderweb, and he crawled in after the trapped child.

It was hot inside. The building, Remo knew, was ready to blow. The top floor hadn't yet been touched by the flames, but the heat had all but sucked out what oxygen there had been, and the smoke, coming in from every crack in the room, hung heavy as mist.

Enlarging his pupils to adjust instantly to the smoky darkness inside the building, he spotted what he was looking for. A bundle of rags lay in a corner, whimpering. "Help," it called again.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," Remo said gently, making his way toward the rags. "You'll be out of here in no time." He reached out his arms to encircle the trembling child. "You're safe now," he whispered. "You're safe."

"Safer than you." The voice inside the rags had changed in an instant to one of grating mockery, and in that same instant, a hand flashed out from the folds of filthy cloth. Remo caught the glint of metal as the switchblade sang, arcing, toward him.

Stunned, his reflexes performed the tasks his mind was too confused to follow. He drew back, feeling the whistle of the knife's wake against the skin on his throat. At the same time, one foot jutted upward to shatter the attacker's knife hand. As an extension of the same movement, his left arm swung around to meet the man's neck. It was a killing blow, as all of Remo's automatic moves were, and he watched the head bob once, almost delicately, before the eyes rolled white and the man slid to the floor. It was finished in milli-seconds.

Remo stood, waiting. The room was not empty; he had no need to turn around to know that others were behind him. For Remo, space was a palpable thing. Just as fish can sense the occupancy of their waters, so Remo knew that the silent room had three other people in it, and that those three had not come empty-handed. But there was no real movement from them, nothing but the usual sloppy motions of breathing and shifting weight that most human beings performed without even knowing it, so Remo waited. When they attacked, as he was sure they would, he would be ready. For the moment, though, he wanted to see the man he had killed.

He was young. The sparse beard on his chin was probably in its first growth. Out of the denim jacket he wore, covered with emblems and chrome studs, spilled several packs of matches. The jacket, indeed the whole room, smelled faintly of kerosene.

"Some fun, huh, kid?" Remo said absently to the corpse.

"Watch it. We got a gun," came the inevitable boast from behind him.

Remo turned slowly. He was relieved to see that the others were older than the dead boy. The one holding the pistol, their apparent leader, stepped forward, grinning and wielding the gun with the bravado of an amateur. He was ugly and muscular, and the grime on his face looked as if it had arrived there thirty years before and rested undisturbed since then. The gun in his hand was an old .22 Beretta, well used and discarded by its original owner, from the looks of it.

"We heard you nosing up there on the roof," he said, the arrogant smile baring an incomplete set of bad teeth. "You think you're Mr. Good Citizen or something?"

"Well, something anyway," Remo said.

"I got news for you, Mr. Good Citizen. This fire's ours."

"No kidding. I never would have guessed."

"This here fire's for the oppressed," put in one of the others stolidly.

"Yeah. Nobody should live in slums like this," said the third.

Outside, the fire engines and ambulances pulled to a halt, their sirens winding down to a low cry as the injured tenants screamed in relief and impatience. "You've done good," Remo said. "Now everybody can live on the street."

"Big deal," the leader said. "These buildings should have burned years ago. We just did those slobs down there a favor." His scowl turned into a grim smile. "Plus we got our rocks off. Right, boys?"

"Right," the two behind him agreed.

Smoke was pouring in from a crack in the far side of the ceiling, well away from the hole Remo had made when he entered. "Uh, listen, fellas..." he began.

"You listen, shithead!" the leader shouted.

Remo rolled his eyes. "Take your time, pal. But you might want to know that the roof's going to give." His eyes wandered back to the spot in the ceiling behind the men, where the smoke was jetting out in a thin black stream.

The leader smiled. "That's an old trick. There's nothing burning back there."

"I said the roof was going to give. The burning'll come after."

"How do you know?" asked one of the others.

"I can feel the vibrations from the beams," Remo said.

"Very funny. What do you take me for, a fool?"

Remo shrugged. "I wouldn't take you to a public trough."

"Shut up!" the leader yelled, his eyes glowing. "Now you listen and you listen good." He spoke with a whispered intensity. "Those cops down there are going to want somebody to pin this on. And it ain't going to be us, get it?"

"Heaven forbid," Remo said. "Then you wouldn't be free to start another fire down the street."

"You're catching on."

"The roof's going to give," Remo reminded him.

"Look, jerk, that roof crap didn't work before, and it's not going to work now, see?"

"Just trying to be Mr. Good Citizen."

"Well, you're going to get your chance, right, boys?"