Warren Murphy: The Last Dragon

"Great!" said Remo, seeing the guard start. Remo crossed the space to the guard booth like a shot.

The door was locked, but the guard solved that problem. He buzzed himself out, dragging a riot gun.

Remo met him at the door. To the guard, it seemed as if Remo had just sprouted up from the bare door like some gray-blue weed.

Remo relieved the man of his weapon and his consciousness, using one hand for each task. Holding the guard by the back of his neck, where Remo's hard fingers had found and squeezed down nerve centers, he lowered him to the hard floor.

Sonny and the others came up, and looked down at the slumbering guard.

"That's some finger," Sonny breathed.

"Can we kill this one?" asked DeWayne.

"No," said Remo.

"Can we boost his fingers?" Orvis asked. "You know, to practice what you just done."

"Practice with your own fingers," said Remo. "We gotta shake a leg, if we're going to make it out by dawn. "

"So how come you're dressed ike a garbageman?" Sonny wondered.

"You'll see when we get there," said Remo, growing tired of questions.

"What will we see?"

"You'll see."

"When will we get there?"

"You'll know it by the smell," said Remo, coming to the conclusion that if the educational system had taught these losers to think with their brains, maybe they wouldn't be sitting on death row. Then again, maybe not, noticing Sonny gnawing on a whetstone he had brought along.

They came at last to an out-of-the-way corridor area that smelled sour and maggoty.

"This here's the garbage room," Orvis pointed out.

"You got it," said Remo.

"It smells," said Sonny.

"You should talk."

"Huh?"

Remo had been forced to lock the door behind him, and it was still locked. He opened it the hard way. It required a real key of the insert-and-turn variety, so he couldn't manipulate any electrical timer. He punched it. The door jumped inward, taking the lock-set and part of the jamb with it.

They slipped inside.

The place was a welter of sealed garbage cans and trash bags, and there was an old dumpster by the single loading door.

The back of a filthy garbage truck had been backed into the dock. The black maw of its cold steel belly gaped, the slablike sweep blade in the up position, like a fat guillotine.

"In you go," invited Remo, gesturing to the truck. His deep-set eyes, flat as river-bottom stones, were unreadable.

Orvis made a disgusted face. "What, you mean crawl in with the garbage?"

"Look," Remo said impatiently, "The ACLU went to a lot of trouble to set this up. We had to steal a garbage truck and a uniform for me to wear, work out timetables, and drill for weeks. Everything has been worked out to the tiniest detail. This is Thursday morning. The truck comes every Thursday morning to haul trash. Okay, we're hauling trash."

"But there's garbage in there," Orvis said unhappily.

"I have to make it look good, don't I?" Remo said. "I already emptied half the barrels into the back so the screws would see that I was working."

"I ain't sittin' in no garbage," Sonny said. "I want to sit up front with you."

"The gate guards know only one driver drove the freaking truck in. Don't you think he'll get suspicious if two of us drive out?"

"Tell him I'm your brother."

"He'll know I'm not because we don't smell like brothers," Remo said.

Sonny frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Eventually, Remo convinced the trio to enter the truck. They clambered in gingerly and squatted down on their haunches, holding their noses and looking unhappy-except Sonny, who seemed either to enjoy the smell or not to notice it.

"Hold that pose," Remo said and, knocking off an aluminum lid, lifted up one of the still-full cans. He brought it to the truck's maw.

Three pairs of hands went whoa.

"Hey, what are you doing?" DeWayne hissed.

"Putting in the rest of the garbage," Remo said reasonably.

"But we're in here!"

"Look, if I only take half of the garbage, the guards will catch on."

"Okay, let us out and then put in the stupid garbage. After that, we'll get back in."

"You don't understand. What if they look in the back of the truck and see you guys?"

"Tell him we're your cousins," Sonny suggested.

"It's like this, I throw the garbage in or we call the whole thing off. You guys don't know how many Mission: Impossible reruns my superiors had to sit through to come up with a plan as foolproof as this."

"You say this is foolproof?" Orvis said.

"Guaranteed not to fail."

"Okay. But watch the clothes. I didn't take time to pack."

"Did I mention all dry cleaning bills are on the ACLU?" Remo asked.

The three immediately brightened.

And Remo threw the contents of the can in their beaming faces. He had deliberately saved the worst, smelliest cans for this moment.

As he flung refuse, inundating the trio, Remo mentally called off the names of their victims, adding after each, "This is for you."

Eventually, the three were buried in rotting cafeteria leftovers.

Remo called into the malodorous pile. "That's the last of it. You guys still with me "

A knot of rancid cabbage seemed to say, "Yeah."

"Okay, I gotta close the sweep blade now."

"You mean the hydraulic thing?" DeWayne asked.

"That's it."

"Isn't that kinda dangerous?"

"Only to garbage," said Remo, climbing to the side and giving the lever a yank.

He couldn't quite remember which way it worked. Up for close. Up and down for close and compress. Maybe it was down and up. He yanked the lever up.

With a grinding of the mechanism, the hydraulics started toiling. The great slab of a sweep blade dropped and closed like a vault door. And stopped.

Remo frowned. He tried yanking the lever another way. Nothing.

Then a guard was shouting through the open door, "Hey, you!"

"Yeah?"

"You about done in there?"

"Almost."

"The guard captain wants to know what's taking you so long."

"Sweep blade is stuck."

"Well, get that smelly rig out of here and fix it on your own time."

"You got it," said Remo, giving the ridged truck body a reassuring tap.

Remo slid behind the wheel and trundled out toward the yard. He stopped at the gate and handed over a clipboard with a lot of unreadable signatures.

"They don't pay you guys enough," said the guard, holding his nose against the smell while trying to sign the clipboard with one hand.

"Working toward a cleaner planet is reward enough for me," Remo said airily.

The gates rolled aside electronically, and Remo drove through without a problem. He ran the heavy truck a, quarter mile down the road, just fast enough to outpace the trailing smell, and pulled over to the side.

Getting out, Remo walked around to the back, tapping the side with a knuckle that actually left a small dent.

"We did it! We're out!"

The "Yay" coming from inside lacked enthusiasm.

"I'm having trouble breathing in here with all this slop," Orvis complained.

"Be with you in a second," Remo promised.

Remo took hold of the lever. There was a little light coming up now. It was dawn. The start of a new day. And in the light he found the metal plate that explained the proper way to work the hydraulic sweep blade. It was covered with grime. Remo swiped it clear with the sleeve of his gray-blue uniform.

" 'Push up and then down to compress load,' " Remo read.

So he pushed up and then down.

The sweep blade was already closed. Now it behaved like a monster steel tongue the truck was trying to swallow whole. The blade went deeper and deeper, and the three convicts inside began to panic.

"Hey! This slop's bunching up!"

"What goin' on?"

"My mistake," called Remo. "I think I yanked the lever wrong."