Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

"Hey, I like that."

"We'll have to decoy them in."

Uncle Sam Beasley turned to address a trio of his loyal musketeers, who had entered the control room in Union blue, their mouse-eared forage caps carried respectfully in their hands.

"I need a volunteer. Hazardous duty. Who will stand up for his Uncle Sam?"

The California Summer Vacation Musketeers looked down at their boots and up at the ceiling--anywhere to avoid the cold gray stare of Uncle Sam's single exposed eye.

"I'll double the pay of the man who undertakes this mission."

No one responded.

"What's the matter, isn't double enough? Don't I pay you competitively?"

When no one answered, Uncle Sam Beasley snarled, "Draw straws if you're going to be that way. But I want a man ready for action before those two bust in."

Uncle Sam returned to the video grid. "What are those two doing to my best guerrillas?"

"Looks like the white one is just poking them in the shoulder area."

"Then why are they dropping like DDT'd flies?"

"Maybe there's a sensitive nerve center there," Bob Beasley said, stabbing buttons.

"What's the old gook doing?"

Bob Beasley craned up in his chair to see the screen in question.

"I think he's eviscerating them, Director."

"With what?"

"His fingernails, I suppose," Bob Beasley said in a thick voice.

"They're going to be in the chateau any second."

Bob Beasley reached for an insulated lever. "I'll raise the drawbridge."

"Don't bother. I want 'em where I can LOX 'em."

REMO KICKED a kneecap to pieces and stepped over the dropping foe. He paused, turning in place, to orient himself.

The wind was out of the northeast. There was a blockage of dead air in that direction, and only the Sorcerer's Castle was big enough to create it, Remo decided.

He turned, not seeing but sensing the Master of Sinanju.

"Chiun! Shake a leg. The castle is this way."

"I will be along," said Chiun, and the ugly crunch of human bone and brittle plastic came unmistakably. "These evil tools must be destroyed."

"You just don't want to have to deal with Beasley."

"Do not fall into the moat."

"Fat chance," said Remo, running toward the blockage. He smelled the water in the moat, and the scent of the wooden drawbridge, still damp from a recent rain, guided him over the moat and into the castle's cool, gaping maw.

There were no guards. No obstacles. Remo ran with all senses alert for any click, thud or electrical whirring of booby traps or snares.

Surprisingly there were none.

From the last time he had penetrated this place, Remo knew there was a spiral aluminum stairwell going down. From memory, he arrowed toward it. There was an updraft, cool and dank. That helped.

Pausing at the top step, Remo listened a moment. No traps. No human ones anyway.

Remo started down. His skin temperature began to cool in anticipation of what he had to do ....

"DIRECTOR, hostile subject entering Utiliduck."

Uncle Sam Beasley turned to his waiting musketeers. "It's the moment of truth. Who's my brave volunteer?"

Feet shuffled and gazes were averted guiltily.

"Damn you slackers! You work for me!"

"Yeah," a musketeer returned, "but we aren't going up against that guy. Look what he did to the Florida Sunshine Guerrillas."

Uncle Sam made a fist of stainless steel and flexed it several times. It whirred like metallic butterfly wings. "It's not as bad as what I'll do to you bunch if I don't get my volunteers."

"How about we all volunteer?" one asked suddenly.

Uncle Sam blinked. "All?"

"Yeah. That way we'll have a better chance."

"All except the technician," Bob Beasley called over his shoulder. "We need him."

"Good luck, men," said Uncle Sam as the musketeers filed glumly from the room. When the door hissed shut, he turned to his nephew. "Punch up the corridor screens. I want to see this."

On the screen appeared the image of the skinny white guy with the thick wrists and high cheekbones walking down the white approach corridor, his arms swinging with deceptively casual ease.

"Doesn't look like much," muttered Bob Beasley.

"I don't know who he is, but his ass is mine."

At his console Bob Beasley swallowed hard.

"And here come my trusty musketeers," said Uncle Sam.

REMO WILLIAMS SENSED the footfalls of the approaching men. He counted six sets of feet.

They came around a bend in the corridor carefully, their hearts beating hard but not in the high pounding of a preattack rhythm. There was no residual gunpowder smell, so they carried no weapons Remo needed to worry about.

"Out of my way and nobody gets hurt," warned Remo, advancing on them.

"You looking for Uncle Sam Beasley?" a voice asked.

"That's right."

"Three doors down," said the voice.

"On the right," added another.

"Can't miss it," said a third.

"Who are you?"

"Ex-employees of the Sam Beasley Corporation."

"Since when?"

"Since we gave him up just now."

"How do I know it's not a trap?" asked Remo.

"We're supposed to lure you into a trap."

"What trap?"

"LOX room. Liquid oxygen. It's all the way at the end of the corridor."

"You guys are pretty free with information."

"You would be, too, if you worked for these cold corporate ducksuckers."

"Much obliged," said Remo, passing on.

"TRAITORS!" Sam Beasley screamed, stamping the floor with his stainless-steel peg leg. "What's wrong with them? I'm Uncle Sam. I practically raised those ungrateful brats!"

"They've been pretty unhappy since you froze cost-of-living raises companywide," Bob Beasley noted.

"Then why did they come all the way over here if they weren't behind this damn operation?"

"You promised not to fire anyone who signed on."

Uncle Sam Beasley rolled his eye down to the back of the head of his nephew. Stainless-steel fingers whirring, he snared a fistful of hair and yanked the head back sharply so he could glare down into Bob Beasley's upside-down face.

"Whose side are you on?"

"Yours, Uncle. You know that."

"Prove it."

"How?"

"You look a lot like me, you lucky stiff. You decoy him into the LOX room."

"But-but-"

Uncle Sam released the hair. "Do it!"

Shivering, Bob Beasley climbed out of his chair and backed out of the control room. "I won't fail you, Uncle."

"Not if you don't want those bratty kids of yours served up as cold cuts at the next company picnic."

The door opened and closed with a hiss, and Uncle Sam climbed into the seat his nephew had vacated.

"How's that control panel coming?" he snapped over his shoulder.

The hypercolor technician said, "I've raised orange."

"When you've got Supergreen, let me know. The French should be regrouping soon. I can't beat them back with pastels, you know."

"Yes, Director."

THE MASTER of SINANJU stepped up to a pounding heartbeat that blocked his path and aimed at the point where he knew the man's belly would be. The nail of his smallest finger went in like a needle into butter, and a disembodied voice said, "Urrk. "

The Master of Sinanju described the sign of Sinanju-a trapezoid bisected by a slash-in his abdominal wall and left the unseen foe lying in a heap of his own smoking bowels.

He moved on. The way to the castle was clear. He did not need anything other than the personal scent of his pupil to guide him.

But as he approached, a drone came from the north.

A nearby voice cried, "It is a bomber."

Chiun paused. "How do you know?"

"I know a French bomber when I see one," said Dominique Parillaud.

"What is it doing?"

"It can have only one purpose."

"Yes?"

"To bomb."

Then Dominique said, "Ze bomb bay doors are open. Somezing is coming down."