Warren Murphy - The Last Dragon

There was no point in pretending, so Nancy sat up and glared at his approaching figure.

"I see you're awake," King said smugly.

Nancy made an angry noise in her throat. It came out of her nose, buzzing.

"Simmer down," King spat. "Let me get this thing off you." He untied the gag, and reached cold fingers into her mouth for the gag. Nancy spat out the bitter sponge taste then followed it with sharp words.

"You bastard! What are you up to?"

"Call it a sting."

"Sting?"

"The board stung me. I'm stinging them back. If they want Old Jack in one piece, they have to pay me. A cool five million. That's enough to retire on."

"But why?"

"You saw how the board humiliated me. And you're asking why?"

"Yes, I'm asking why. Two men are dead and the last Apatosaur on earth is at risk because your scrotum is as swelled as your head?"

"Since when are you such a big board booster?"

"Since you went off the deep end."

King smiled in the twilight. More than ever, his smile struck Nancy as foxy. "You wouldn't think so much of those stiffs if you knew what I know," he said.

"I'm listening."

"They never intended to find a good home for Old Jack, you know. All along, they were planning to run his carcass through the grinder and make Bronto Burgers."

"I don't believe it."

"Too audacious, huh?"

"Too stupid. Only a cretin like you could imagine such a thing."

"As a matter of fact," King said in an injured voice. "It was my idea from the very beginning."

And Nancy knew he had been speaking the truth. The realization caused a coldness to settle into her marrow. She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach to regurgitate. She settled for staring at King as if he were a ghoul that had stumbled out of a fresh grave.

King asked, "Listen, those cables? Will they hold him down if he wakes up?"

"I have no idea. I tranked him for a two-hour ride, with an hour safety margin. He could come around any time now."

"Uh-oh. What do we do?"

"You call the authorities before you get in any deeper," Nancy snapped.

King stood up. "Like you said, two men are dead. It doesn't get any deeper than that."

King walked to the edge of the loft. He cupped his hands before his mouth and shouted down. "Check the hauler. Maybe there's a trank gun on board."

Nancy was considering rolling into the back of King's calves and knocking him off his perch when one of the hijackers came through the side door.

"There's a car coming!" he hissed.

"Douse the damn lights!" King yelled.

The lights were connected to a single portable battery. Someone disconnected it and the barn became a great black space in which there was no sense of orientation.

Then in the blackness, a sound. Low, mournful, but blood-chilling in its implications.

Harrooo.

Chapter 24

The sound came again, louder, freezing the blood of everyone on the old barn's dark confines.

Harrooo.

Then something snapped with a metallic twang. Great suspension springs groaned as the hauler shifted on its huge tires.

"Is that what I think it is?" a wary voice croaked.

"The lights!" King cried. "Turn the lights back on!"

"Something's moving down here. Something big."

Another voice said shrilly, "The groats! Whose got the damn groats?"

Nancy Derringer strained to see through the inky dark. It was impossible to see more than doubtful shadows.

"Don't shoot! Whatever you do, don't shoot!" she pleaded.

"Shoot if you have to!" King howled. "Don't let it get away. It's worth five million, dead or alive."

Harrooo.

Remo popped out of his rented car. A moment before, the decrepit old barn had been leaking light from chinks and knotholes and a corner of the roof like a gray old jack-o'-lantern fallen into ruin.

Every fragment of light went out at once.

"Must have a sentry posted," Remo muttered.

The Master of Sinanju said coldly, "It does not matter. We have the fiends where they cannot escape our wrath."

"Yeah, well they're probably not firing blanks now. We gotta do this so Nancy and the Bronto aren't hurt."

Then they heard the sound.

Harrooo.

"Damn," said Remo. "Now we really have problems." He turned to Chiun. "Listen, I gotta have your word that no matter how this goes, the Bronto comes out of it in one piece."

"That is our assignment," Chiun said in a thin voice.

"Keep that in mind. No accidents, no taking advantage of opportunities. Got me?"

The Master of Sinanju screwed up his tiny face into an amber knot of wrinkles. "I know my emperor's wishes."

"Okay. Now let's take them."

They split up, attacking the barn from opposite approaches.

And the foghorn sound of the Apatosaurus came again-and with it the unmistakable complaints of heavy cables straining and snapping.

The blat of automatic weapons fire was followed by barnboards being knocked off their frame supports.

Abandoning stealth, Remo moved in for the side door, his face angry.

Below the hayloft. Skorpion machine pistols were spitting long tongues of yellow fire, throwing intermittent shadows about the huge barn interior.

The freakish light illuminated the Apatosaur throwing off its chains. Its goat eyes were coursing about the room, searching, frightened. A rear leg unbent itself and found momentary purchase on the right rear set of oversized tires. The rubber burst under the weight and the Apatosaur's leg slid off. The barn shuddered and shook when the padded leg touched the floor.

The hauler suspension wasn't equal to the stress. It snapped. The opposite tires broke like thick-skinned balloons. The entire rear end fell and the great pumpkinlike rump of the Apatosaur slowly slid to the haystrewn floor.

It was screaming now, its mouth open and set like a frightened snake.

"Don't shoot!" Nancy screeched. "It won't hurt you if you leave it alone."

"Do what you gotta," King yelled.

Bound hand and foot, Nancy rolled toward King's standing form. That does it. You're going over the edge if I have to go with you, she thought fiercely.

Then the side door came off its hinges, jumped six feet, and brought down a man who was trying to draw a bead on the Apatosaur's small, questing head.

Simultaneously, a cluster of boards at the back splintered and fell and a high, squeaky voice filled the shot-with-gunfire darkness.

"Surrender, minions of the hamburger king. For your doom is surely upon you."

Recognizing the voice, Nancy stopped rolling.

"Remo!" she yelled.

"Yeah?"

"I'm up here in the loft. With King. A prisoner!"

"I'm a little busy right now," Remo said, and men were screaming.

"What's got me? What's got me?" one shrieked.

"I do," said Remo, and the sound of human bones snapping came with a finality that was undeniable.

"What's going on down there?" King yelled.

A man yelled back. "Something is down here! And it ain't the damn dinosaur!"

Then a gurgle came from the vicinity of the yelling man, and when King called back to him, there was no answer.

"Somebody hit the light!" King screamed.

In the darkness, Skip King became aware of a shape looming in the black empty space before him. It was a long shadow amid patterns of shadow, and he sensed eyes on him even though he couldn't see an inch past his sharp nose.

Came a low, interested sound: Harrooo.

And a noxious cloud swept over Skip King. It smelled disagreeably of raw mushrooms.

Remo was moving through a twilight that only his eyes and those of Chiun's could discern. To everyone else, the barn interior was pitch dark, except when someone expended a clip of ammo.

Those flashes were growing infrequent now.

Remo came up behind a man, tapped him on his shoulder, and the nervous man brought his weapon around in a chattering semicircle.