Warren Murphy: Bamboo Dragon

A couple of the pygmy types were waiting for them as the party made its way backstage. It felt like lighting children, but in this case both tykes carried six-foot spears and knew exactly how to use them. Remo put himself between the sawed-off warriors and his onetime traveling companions, bracing for the rush he knew was sure to come.

It came.

The runt on Remo's left went with a feint to try to throw him off before the other pygmy made his move straight down the middle. Remo turned the lance into a yardstick with a sharp flick of his wrist, then grabbed the shorter part and used it as a lever, yanked the pygmy close enough to kill him with an open-handed blow against his knobby forehead.

His companion could have run for it and saved himself, but something—call it courage or stupidity—made him stand fast, the spear poised out in front of him as if he were about to prod a hornets' nest. The point was darkened, maybe dipped in something lethal.

Instead of waiting for the pygmy to attack him, Remo went in for the kill, deflected an impressive thrust with no real effort and removed the long spear from his adversary's grasp. He could have let it go at that, but this was life-and-death, no substitutions, no time-outs. He gave the pygmy time to bark Nome kind of curse, a final gesture of defiance in the face of certain death, then ran him through.

Behind him, Audrey grappled with another bout of nausea, the others simply stared.

"Let's go," he said. "We haven't got all night."

They followed him past massive columns, all carved out of jade. The raw material in just one column would have kept a hundred Chinese sculptors busy for a decade, but there seemed to be no shortage where the tribesmen did their shopping.

Tribesmen.

It occurred to Remo that he hadn't seen a woman or a child so far, since entering the ancient city. They were obviously somewhere, but he hoped his luck would hold, remembering that females were among the most ferocious members of some primitive tribes, from early North America to "modern" Venezuela and Brazil.

They reached a spiral staircase leading down to what must be the ground floor near where he entered, though he didn't recognize the stretch of corridor that he could see. He had no trouble recognizing the committee gathered to receive them, though: eight warriors armed with clubs and spears.

"Stay close and watch yourselves," Remo cautioned his companions, starting down the stairs to meet their enemies.

One thing about the locals, while they might be crafty with an ambush in the jungle, they were pitiful on strategy for stand-up fights. If Remo had to guess, he would have said they didn't get much practice, having no real neighbors, but for now he would be satisfied to take advantage of whatever weakness they displayed.

They started up the spiral staircase three abreast, spears held in front of them, prepared to skewer him before he could resist. It would have worked with most opponents—Remo gave them that—but warriors lived or died on their ability to cope with an exception to the rule.

These died.

He stepped between the thrusting spears, gripped one in either hand and used the long shaft on his right to block a thrust from number three, the farthest out of roach. A swift kick dropped the tribesman on his right and left Remo with his weapon. He turned the spear on the others, nailing both of them and leaving them to wriggle like a pair of insects pinned on a dissecting needle.

The survivors were advancing with a bit more caution when a sudden babble in the corridor behind them reached his ears. And Remo saw the women now, God help him, some holding babies, others herding small, misshapen forms in front of them like livestock. They were shouting at the warriors on the staircase, managed to distract a couple of them from the work at hand.

It was enough.

Without another glance, Remo cleared a path like a whirlwind sent by the wrath of God.

Pike Chalmers found his nerve again somewhere between the amphitheater and the deserted courtyard. He came charging through the exit, snapping the neck of a native in his way, looking for a way to save himself. The others had evacuated, though, and that was fine with Chalmers, since he didn't feel like taking on an army when his only weapon was a bloody spear.

His guns were somewhere handy, if he just knew where to look. But he didn't speak the lingo, and they had only met one member of the tribe who had a grasp of English. And from what he saw, across the courtyard, poor Kuching Kangar was well past giving interviews.

Pike guessed the bloody lizard must have had him, though his corpse didn't display the kind of rip-and-render damage common to the others strewed about the courtyard. It would be more accurate to say their former guide looked broken, as if he had fallen from a lofty height, but that made no sense whatsoever, since he lay an easy fifteen paces from the nearest wall.

Forget it, Chalmers told himself. Not your problem.

He was gunning for a dinosaur, without a bloody gun, but now that he had found his guts again, all he could think of was the money he could make from packing home the monster's head—hell, any part of its anatomy at all. Live capture was a hopeless case, and it would take a cargo helicopter to transport the bloody carcass in one piece. Chalmers calculated that the head alone must weigh two hundred pounds or more, but he would settle for a jaw-bone and some bits of skin if he had to. Any egghead worth his salt could tell the specimens were fresh, and if that didn't do the trick, then he would lead them back to view the rotting carcass.

For a hefty fee, of course.

In fact, he saw a whole new profit angle on the site itself. He could run walking tours of the city, point out spots of interest for the visitors who could afford his services. The local wogs would want a piece of it, he realized, and they might cut him out entirely if they started getting greedy. In the meanwhile, though, there should be ample time for him to walk a film crew through the ruins, cut a deal with some fat-cat producer out of Hollywood—hell, why not Steven Spielberg?—for the movie rights.

Bui first, he had to bag his specimen.

He turned back toward the temple, moving toward the open doors, and made it halfway there before the elephant appeared. Not just an elephant, however, but an elephant with some ancient personage riding on its back. From the look of it, perhaps Chinese or Japanese.

Now, what in bloody hell?

The goddamned circus never ended—that was obvious. It wasn't bad enough that he had human mutants and some kind of prehistoric throwback to contend with; now they threw an ancient Oriental and a frigging elephant at Chalmers, just to see if he could handle it.

Too bloody right he could.

Chalmers broke into a trot, then sprinted all out for the open doorway, anxious to be out of sight before the old man or his elephant got wind of him.

And made it by a nose, as far as he could tell.

The bloody lizard-thing was wreaking havoc on its worshipers, just swatting one with its enormous tail as Chalmers barged into the temple. Not a pygmy, either, but he may as well have been, the way he flew across the room and landed in a heap some fifty feet away.

I'll have to watch that, Chalmers told himself, advancing cautiously along the central aisle. A crocodile could drop you that way, but its jaws still did the butcher work. This bloody thing was big and strong enough to kill a human being with its tail, the way your average man would splat an insect with a flyswatter.

Not for him, thank you very much.

He glanced around the spacious room, half-hoping he would find his weapons standing in a corner, but the guns were nowhere to be seen.

The decision had been made for him, then. He'd have to use the bloody spear or give it up.