Warren Murphy: Terminal Transmission

"They think I'm trying to break this story. I'm covered."

"What about me?" Feldmeyer demanded anxiously. "Look at me, I'm dressed up like Captain Audion, for God's sake."

"You can hide once we set things up. Where are Burner and that loudmouth bitch?"

"Cheeta?"

"No, the other loudmouth bitch."

"On ice."

"Okay, let's get them out."

Ignoring the shrieks of pain, Don Cooder moved through frost-rimmed stone corridors to a stainless-steel door like a walk-in freezer and yanked on the handle. A blast of cold air wafted out, along with the chill dead smell of frozen meat.

They entered a small cave. Past shelves of frozen steaks and chicken parts, they pushed to the dimly lighted rear of the natural freezer.

Cooder knelt beside two motionless figures.

"They look kinda blue," he muttered.

Feldmeyer said, "They weren't dead when I looked in on them last."

Cooder put his ear to the still chest of Jed Burner.

"This man's heart is beating like a stone, which is to say it's not."

"Oh God, I didn't count on murder." "Shush. Let me check on old Haiphong Hannah." Cooder listened, his face contorting. "I got a beat."

"Great. Thank God."

"Okay, let's get them into the control room."

Rattling his chains with every step, Don Cooder lugged Haiphong Hannah down the corridor to the control room and dumped her into one of the console seats. Jed Burner was dropped into the other, not quite fitting because his joints had stiffened.

"Where's the damn helmets?" Cooder demanded, looking around.

Feldmeyer pointed unsteadily. "In that cabinet. Why?"

"We're going to set it up so that it looks like they're the black hats. Why do you think I had you abduct them in the first place?"

"Will it work, Don?"

"Burner's dead and Haiphong Hannah's got the credibility of Saddam Hussein. How can it fail?"

Shrugging, Frank Feldmeyer helped Cooder set the Captain Audion helmet over Jed Burner's frost-rimmed head.

"Now let's get old Hannah set up and this thing is in the barn."

When they were done, two television-headed figures sat at the console that controlled the most powerful broadcast TV signal on earth.

"Okay," Cooder said panting, "let me have your gun."

"Why?"

"I'm going to shoot Burner."

"Why?"

"Why? The low-down goat roper had the nerve to ask 'Who the hell is Don Cooder?' when I was holding onto the Chair by my sphincter. Made me a laughing stock. Nearly ruined my career at a crucial time."

"No, I mean what good will it do?"

"Dead men tell no tales."

Then the ringing of steel stair treads came from beyond the open door.

"That's the Mounties," Cooder snapped. "Right on cue. We gotta shoot them right now or it's boot hill for us both."

"I can't shoot anyone," Feldmeyer said shakily.

"Tell you what, you shoot Burner. He's already dead. And I'll shoot Hannah. Deal?"

"O-okay."

Together, the two men lifted their weapons and pointed them at the unmoving backs of their targets.

"Count of three," Cooder said.

Swallowing hard, Feldmeyer nodded.

"One!"

"Two!"

"Three!"

Closing his eyes, Frank Feldmeyer steeled himself to pump a single round into the cold back of Jed Burner, and never opened them again.

The roar of Don Cooder's pistol in his ear reached his eardrum just as the bullet had gouged out one ear canal and exited the other in a spray of grayish curd.

Cooder emptied the cylinder into the back of Haiphong Hannah's head, shattering her screen with its steady NO SIGNAL message.

Taking the dead hand of Jed Burner in his, he wrapped the stiffened fingers around a black handle marked DESTRUCT and pulled hard. A red digital timer began counting backward from 00:00:10.

Calmly, he wiped the gun free of fingerprints and placed it in Frank Feldmeyer's still-twitching hand. From the floor, he took the automatic that had killed no one, squeezed the grip so he left crystal clear prints, lifted both manacled hands to the ceiling, and patiently whistled "Cowboy's Lament" as the Mounties pounded up the spiral stairs.

The shrieking of Cheeta Ching in the torment of childbirth filled the corridor.

"Damn," he muttered. "Forgot one. Oh, well. Next time."

The digital timer reached 00:00:00.

From far above, there came an explosive sound muffled by tons of granite.

Chapter 36

The sleek black shape of the Stealth bomber rolled to a whining, bumpy stop, and a hatch popped open.

"Wait for us," Remo called over his shoulder as he followed the Master of Sinanju out into the coldest, most inhospitable expanse he had seen outside of Outer Mongolia.

"What if you don't come back alive?" returned Captain Nodell.

"Wait anyway."

"You got it."

Remo found himself standing on hard rock dappled by spongy moss and lichen. Muskeg pools, some no bigger than his fist, speckled the terrain.

"Ready, Little Father?"

"I am prepared for anything," said the Master of Sinanju.

It was a good half mile to the flat-topped mountain which loomed up from the rock-and-muskeg waste. The statue of Saint Clare stood watch like a lonely bride atop an ugly wedding cake.

They started off at a dead run, picked up speed and soon were moving as fast as a speeding car. "Remember," Remo warned, "we don't kill anyone unless we're sure."

Then, as they crossed the difficult terrain, the head of Saint Clare came apart in a noisy black puff of smoke.

A shriek went up to the heavens and the Master of Sinanju pulled ahead of Remo like a spastic-limbed bat.

"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "I am coming, my child!"

And as they pulled closer, the smoke began to thin, revealing the red top of a transmission tower poking up from the statue's broken stump of a neck.

Then the skin of the statue began to crack apart, coming away to expose the spidery alternating white and red supports . . .

Don Cooder's face and smile looked ready to crack. He had flopsweat, severe eye-dart and cottonmouth all at once.

"You're just in time," he shouted to the arriving Mounties.

They stormed in with their revolvers trained on him.

"What happened here?" demanded the major.

"I was too late."

"You just said we were just in time."

"You were. I wasn't." He rattled his chains in the direction of the bodies. "Mark it. The culprit, Captain Audion, dead at his console with his accomplices scattered around him like so many checked pawns. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." His grin stretched to the tearing point. "That's going to be my lead."

The Mounties were having none of it. Don Cooder was made to sit on the floor amid the blood, but he didn't care.

"I saw most of it," he was saying as the Mounties examined the bodies. "Feldmeyer shot them both."

"Why?"

"Thieves fall out is going to be my tag. It's up to you nice folks to flesh out the details. On TV, we have to reduce a story to its gut. And man, this one. has a lot of guts to it. Back in my field days we called this a 'Fuzz and Wuzz' story. You folks are the fuzz. No offense."

The RCMP major was frowning as he looked at the TV screen faces of the two dead people seated at the control console. He noticed the dead hand of one clutching a handle marked DESTRUCT and tied it with the faint rattling of rock that was coming from the mountaintop, far above this warren of stone tunnels.

"Let's get this contraption off them," he said.

Cooder asked, "What about the cameras?"

"Cameras?"

"Look, this is the climax. You gotta get this on tape. This will make great television. I could win an Emmy for this."

"Any tape will become state's evidence."

"You boys don't get it, do you?" He pointed ceilingward. "This is the hidden transmitter."

"A statue of a nun?"