Warren Murphy - The Last Dragon

"What happened to your great training?"

"I had to rush through the lever part. I tried cramming for it, but you know how that sometimes goes."

"I'm feeling crammed right about now," Orvis complained.

"Do tell," said Remo.

"Do somethin'!"

"I'm open to suggestions," Remo said, casually leaning against the truck body and mentally counting off the seconds.

"Use your magic finger."

"Great suggestion." Remo counted five more seconds and said, "Oh-oh!"

"What was that uh-oh?"

"My magic finger isn't working."

"What! What happened?"

"Battery must have gone dead."

They were screaming now.

"You got fresh ones?"

"Sorry. Fresh finger batteries would have set off the metal detector."

"Oh, Mother of God," DeWayne groaned. "He's right!"

"The best laid plans gang aft a-gley," Remo said sympathetically.

"What was that last part?"

"If you ever find out, let me know."

Then they were screaming and their arm and leg bones were snapping. Howls came. Rib cages began splintering. Skulls were compressed and internal organs ruptured, merged, and became red masses of jelly.

Finally, the only sound was that of the hydraulics completing their inexorable cycle.

Satisfied, Remo drove the truck to the local office of the ACLU and after only an hour of trying, finally succeeded in getting the Leach Body to disgorge the truck's contents into the dumpster behind the office building.

Then he returned the truck and borrowed uniform to the Department of Sanitation yard, where he called the local police.

"Police Emergency."

"I got a hot tip for you," Remo told the police operator. "The ACLU just broke three death row convicts out of prison, and when they refused to pay their legal fees, killed them and dumped the bodies."

"Sir, there is a stiff fine for filing a false police report."

"I'm calling, not filing. And if you don't believe me, check the prison. Then go talk to the ACLU. And here's a major clue: look in their dumpster."

Remo hung up, knowing that even if the police followed through, the ACLU would probably weasel their way off the hook in the end. He only wished he could stick around to hear them explain away the dead bodies.

It was not an entirely happy ending, but in an imperfect world, it was as good as Remo sometimes got.

He walked away whistling.

Chapter 3

Nancy Derringer was overcome by the urge to commit murder.

She had never wanted to kill a living thing in her entire previous twenty-eight years on earth. She loved all living things. The stinger of the desert scorpion filled her with the same wonder as the delicate mechanism of a butterfly's wing. The beauty and terror of biology were two sides of the same wondrous coin to her. All life was sacred.

Today, standing on the sloppy edge of a primordial pool, her nostrils filled with the fecund stench of swamp water, she wanted to throttle Skip King with her bare hands. Except that she was using them to cover her ringing ears. She had been standing directly beside him when he had unloosed the first volley of tranquilizer darts. That had pretty much paralyzed her left eardrum.

Nancy barely heard the call to open fire. But she heard the rest of the guns opening up through her remaining good ear. It was one great blast of concussive noise, and then she was down on her knees in the muck trying to hold the sound out with both hands while screaming, "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

No one heard her. Not even herself.

The rifles had long fallen silent when she felt it was safe to unblock her ears. They rang. Quasimodo seemed to be busy in either inner ear chamber, ringing his discordant bells.

When she opened her eyes, Nancy saw the creature whose discovery was the culmination of her career slowly slip into the swamp water.

The head was looking directly at her. The face, seen full on, was a bright dayglo orange paint splatter that shaded to black just behind the brow ridges. It looked as if it were wearing some abstract Halloween mask. The face was dull, but the eyes were growing sleepy.

They were goat eyes, the pupils squared. The pupils were squeezing into vertical slits as the orange lids slowly dropped over them.

The head was swaying snakelike from side to side, like a sleepy cobra trying to match the snake charmer's rhythm.

It went haroooo, in a low, sick voice. Its tongue was green and forked, the dentition gray and worn from eating jungle roughage.

Then, dimly, although he was standing at her elbow, Skip King yelled, "Skip King, king of the jungle, bags another brute!"

Nancy jumped to her feet and slapped him so hard he lost his balance and his bush hat.

"You jerk!" she screamed. "Look what you've done."

King lay there, holding his face. "My job. I did my job."

The beast's head was dropping by stages.

"Your job! You agreed to be a corporate observer. Nothing more!"

"I didn't see you take up arms when we were in danger."

"The idea was to film it in the wild first. Document its habits. Now we've lost the opportunity forever."

"Skip that biology crap. This is bring 'em back alive. Frank Buck time. Man stuff."

The saurian head came up, wavered, and sank anew.

"Not unless we do something fast," Nancy said in a lower register.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the poor thing. He's passing out on his feet."

"That is the idea," King said stiffly.

"In the middle of the swamp? If his head goes under, he'll drown. And all because you had to draw first blood!"

Skip King got to his feet. He wiped his sweaty brow and squinted through the bright afternoon air at the beast's slow struggles.

"Maybe it's amphibious," he murmured.

"Those are nostrils at the tip of its snout, not gills," Nancy spat. "It's no more amphibious than you are."

"You sure?"

"Yes!"

King's mouth dropped open. "Oh God."

"Now do you understand?"

"Understand? If that thing dies, it'll be my job! We gotta do something!"

"Wonderful. Now you're getting it." Nancy swung on Ralph. "Thorpe, any help you might render would be appreciated."

"Right." He turned to the natives and shouted out Bantu orders. Instantly, the natives dropped their rifles and pulled short machetelike swords out of their native clothing.

They went to work on the trees on either side of the creature. The boles were thin. They surrendered quickly. It was lucky for the expedition that they did.

Soon, the long thin boles were in the water, floating. The natives jumped in, completely without fear, and pushed the logs toward the wavering head.

"Magnificent!" Nancy said. "It could work."

The PR officer hovered close. "Should we be filming this, Mr. King?"

"And film my career going up in flames?" King spat. "I'll fire the first man who uncaps his lens."

The videocams remained capped.

More trees crashed down. Soon, there was a logjam, and slowly, the great beast known to the Bantu as N'yamala surrendered to the powerful narcotic coursing through his massive system.

The eyes closed completely before the chin settled onto the logjam. There was a breathless moment before they knew if the logs would support its weight.

Nancy closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. She was praying.

Everyone else held their breath.

"Somebody tell me to open my eyes if it's good news," Nancy said earnestly.

"Just a mo, Dr. Derringer."

Then Skip King made a guttural throat noise that almost brought hot tears to Nancy's eyes.

It was followed by him saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

"You can look now, Dr. Derringer," Thorpe said quietly.

Nancy opened her blue eyes. The beast stood in the middle of the pool, still on his feet, like a preposterous elephant, but with his long serpentine neck undulating along the scattering of logs, where it had come to rest.