Warren Murphy: Target of Opportunity

Kirby Ayers saw the tiny red-rimmed eyes, saw the big ears wriggling in seeming anger and the way the long, goatlike white beard swung madly beneath the angry red features, giving him a momentary flash of confused recognition.

I've seen this particular Santa somewhere before, he thought. And for some reason his mind harkened back to the Washington Zoo.

That thought was uppermost in his mind when Santa Claus dropped his head and butted Kirby in the exact center of his chest.

Kirby Ayers was thrown off his feet and flung backward. The air whoofed from his stunned lungs. He saw stars. His brain disconnected for several all-important seconds.

He got his senses back just in time to fully appreciate the rib-splintering, lung-flattening, eyeball-bugging experience of being tramped to death by the stomping size-18 double-E black boots of the heaviest Santa Claus that probably ever walked the face of the earth.

This guy weighs as much as a damn elephant, Ayers thought wildly in the moment before his heart was pulped by his own compressing rib cage.

FROM HIS POST guarding the President of the United States, Remo Williams spotted the commotion at the East Gate. He was the only one to see it clearly. The lights of the press were blinding everyone else.

Remo saw a Secret Service guard on his back and a three-hundred-pound Santa come charging up the circular path toward the tree-lighting ceremony.

There was something not right about the Santa. He carried his head too low, and his eyes were too slitted. And he came in a crazy gallop with his head seemingly fixed in place, the long white beard and tail of his red Santa cap whipping and jingling madly with every pounding step.

The way Santa moved didn't compute. It wasn't the body language of a man, but something else. Something Remo instinctively understood to be dangerous.

Remo lifted his Secret Service wrist mike and said, "Trouble coming up the East Gate. I gotta check it out."

In his earphone the lemony voice of Harold Smith said, "I have just called for Marine One."

Remo ducked out, circled the crowd and moved on an intercept line with the charging Santa Claus.

The guy was stomping to beat the band. The ground actually quivered under each step. Small wonder, Remo thought. He weighed three hundred pounds if he weighed a gram.

He was charging toward an outlying clot of reporters when he paused and did a strange thing. Throwing back his head, one foot lifted, he made a sound from deep inside himself that could only be described as a trumpeting.

When he settled back down, he continued his charge. On all fours.

Remo veered toward him and got in his path.

"Hold it, Santa. Where's your pass?"

The Santa dropped his head and stuck out his ears. Remo almost laughed. He stood his ground until the last possible minute, then stepped aside like a matador evading a lunging bull.

The charging Santa blew past him. Remo reached out to snap a fistful of the back of the scarlet coat. He dug in his heels, his brain calculating the opposite pull needed to arrest three hundred pounds of charging fury.

He snatched the fabric. It was solid stuff. It would hold. Remo felt the first pulling-away tension and was ready. Or so he thought.

Remo was yanked off his feet as if he'd taken hold of a Mack truck. Surprise washed over his face. Before his brain got organized, his reflexes took over.

Digging in his heels, he found his balance again. The fabric in his hand ripped away.

Recovering, Remo swept around and got in front of the Santa. Santa reared up, and Remo launched a low kick at the man's red right kneecap.

The kick connected. Remo heard the bone crack with the disabling impact. Santa charged on, unfazed.

Remo got out of the way just ahead of the earthshaking boots.

Then the Master of Sinanju appeared as if from nowhere.

"What is wrong with you?" Chiun hissed at Remo.

"He's stronger than he looks."

"He is only a fat white in a pagan costume."

"Then you take a crack at him."

The Master of Sinanju slipped up behind the broad red back and inserted a single fingernail into the spine. He withdrew the nail, stepped back and waited.

The Santa lumbered on.

Remo caught up with Chiun, whose mouth lay open in shock.

"See?" he said.

Chiun made a mean mouth. "I severed his spinal cord."

"Obviously his brain hasn't gotten word yet."

There was a microwave van parked in the lawn, and when the Santa came to it, he didn't bother to go around it. He rammed into it.

His skull should have caved in. Instead, the cab rocked on its wheels. Santa reared back bellowing and tried again. This time the wheels on one side left the ground. They fell back complaining.

The third time, Santa screamed in defiance, his white beard whipping wildly with each jerk of his head, and the van went over on its side with a resounding crash.

That caught the attention of the press. The blaze of videocam lights swung their way, and Remo and Chiun broke in opposite directions to escape being filmed.

Remo called into his wrist mike, "Capezzi. We got a rogue Santa out here."

"A what?"

"The Santa. He's off his rocker. Better get Big Mac out of here."

"Roger," said Vince Capezzi. Into his hand mike, he said, "Marine One. Where are you?"

"ETA ten minutes," a thin voice said.

"Roger."

THE WHITE HOUSE lawn became bedlam as the press turned the glare of their lights on the weird figure of Santa Claus climbing atop an upended microwave van and throwing his head back to the moonlit sky, bellowing and screaming and growling in a way that froze everyone's blood.

Especially the President's.

"What the hell is wrong with that guy?" he asked. Vince Capezzi laid a hand on the President's shoulder. "Mr. President, I think we should get you to the Rose Garden right away. Marine One is en route."

"If you say so," the President said worriedly.

"No," the First Lady shouted. "He can't go now. He'll look like a coward running from danger."

Then the Santa reared back and began stomping the flat side of the microwave van. The steel panel began to dent up under his boots. The metal complained. The dent grew wider, then deeper, and even the press who had surged closer to get better coverage found themselves falling back.

In that moment Remo started in again, one hand a spear, prepared to deliver a death blow nothing living could withstand.

The snipers started firing before he had cleared half the space.

The shots came from opposite directions-one from the Treasury Building, the other from the Executive Office Building.

Transfixed in the camera lights, the figure of Santa Claus started coming apart. One arm, in the act of being flung up, kept on going, separated at the shoulder. The arm lanced like a hank of ham bone, and the color of its blood was indistinguishable from the scarlet sleeve.

Rounds began ripping into his back and coming out the paunch of his stomach, carrying stringy shreds of viscera with them.

The Santa gave a last trumpeting of pain and horror and fell where he stood.

The dented white van began turning red in a puddle around the quivering bulk.

But it wasn't over yet. Santa struggled to rise, but only the head obeyed. The reddish eyes, full of pain, looked out over its tormentors.

They saw nothing except a darkening light. Then the head fell with a heavy thud. The chest continued to heave like a great red bellows.

"Did you see that?" Remo whispered to Chiun.

"Yes. Its eyes looked into mine at the last."

"Its? You mean his."

"That was no man, but a musth, wounded, confused and maddened with pain."

"A what?"

"When Hannibal of Carthage crossed the Alps, it was on the back of one such as this. The Greekling Alexander defeated the Persians with great armies of such beasts."