Warren Murphy - Cold Warrior

Now it was too late. By presidential decree, CURE could not undertake that task. It shouldn't even have been necessary. The Cold War was over.

Yet there he was: the last Cold Warrior, trying to push the world to the brink once more ....

Chapter 10

Remo left the out-of-the-way gas station pay phone off the loop road, with a slow look of uncertainty settling over his lean features.

The Master of Sinanju saw this as his pupil approached their rented car.

"You are troubled," he said.

Remo eased behind the wheel. "Smith just ordered Ultima Hora hit."

"What is so troubling about this? They are enemies of the Emperor. They live to die."

"No," said Remo, starting the car. "They are Cuban patriots. All they want is to take back their homeland. Nothing wrong with that." He sent the car running down the long tunnel of a Spanish moss-overhung road. "We're supposed to be on the same side."

"They are pawns," Chiun said coldly. "As are you."

"Maybe. But I thought this kind of crap went out with the Cold War."

"If you wish, I will dispatch them."

"You will?"

Chiun raised a wise finger. "But you must tell Smith you accounted for some of the vanquished."

"Why?"

"Because while I wish the credit, I am negotiating a contract for your services as well. You must demonstrate your worth."

"I haven't done so badly this far," Remo growled, swerving to avoid a road-crossing armadillo.

"For a white. A parentless white."

"Get off that kick. And while you're dismounting, how about clueing me in on the bone that's caught in Smith's throat?"

"What is this you ask?"

"The sticking point in the contract. It's gotta be pretty big."

"If you must know, I am seeking a new residence. One worthy of our station in this ugly land."

"Yeah?"

"One with battlements and great stonework and other accoutrements befitting our worth."

Remo's bright expression darkened. "Sounds like Dracula's castle. Where is this place?"

"It is a surprise."

"Uh-huh."

They drove along in tight silence. At length, the Master of Sinanju broke it.

"What do you think of this province?" he asked.

"Florida?"

"Whatever it is called," Chiun said with a vague wave.

"Well, it's hot and steamy where it's not dank and swampy, heat rash is a big problem, the cockroaches are almost indestructible but not as bad as the snakes and gators, and there are the hurricanes."

Chiun looked over. "You prefer a northern clime?"

"Just so long as we're talking south of the North Pole," Remo said.

"My native Korea is not hot like this place. But one could get used to the heat. If one had a suitable cool place in which to dwell."

"Castles aren't cool. They're dank."

"The castle I would dwell in will be cool," Chiun sniffed. They followed their headlights back into the swamp. When the road petered out, they got out and started across the swampy terrain. The air was moist yet unseasonably cool. Katydids chirred amid the bullfrog croakings. Red eyes low in the water told of lurking gators.

The Master of Sinanju's black silk kimono became a flitting thing in the darkness, like an ebony bat on wing. Remo, also in black, moved easily between the cypress trees, avoiding when he could the watery sloughs and, at all costs, the black, sucking muck. Even in the water, their feet made no sound warning of their approach.

A bull alligator, like a floating log, turned up in their path.

The Master of Sinanju simply stepped onto his ridged reptilian back and, pausing only to drive a heel into his skull, moved on.

Remo leaped onto the gator's back and off again before it could sink in death.

The moon ghosted out of a thin boil of fast-moving cloud cover, and just as swiftly fell behind a patch of haze to shine, mistily and eerily quiet, through a dome of Spanish moss-draped cypress.

Remo and Chiun paused when the moonlight found them. They waited. In the silence, an egret took wing.

When the moon had faded behind fatter clouds, and the deep of the night returned, they resumed their silent progress.

The base camp of Ultima Hora was a dry highland surrounded by mangrove-festooned sentries, standing ankle-deep in stagnant water.

The Master of Sinanju drifted up to one of these men and broke his neck with a short chop to the base of his skull.

Remo caught the body and held the head underwater until the last air bubbles had ceased tailing upward.

They moved on, unchallenged.

The first time they were escorted to the camp, the guards had been clustered together, waiting to escort them in.

This time they were spread out in a circle surrounding the base camp. A common defensive posture, and one Sinanju had long since learned to defeat.

"Walk the circle," Chiun intoned.

With a silent nod passing between them, Remo went north, and Chiun south.

Each time they encountered a guard, they took him down. Not a shot was gotten off. Then they met at the opposite point of the circle. It took all of three minutes.

"The circle is closed," Chiun intoned.

Remo bowed.

They moved into the base camp.

There was no rattle of gunfire. The Castro dummies lay slumped on their stakes, faces torn, mossy beards askew.

Remo and Chiun moved in utter silence, their every sense alert.

All human signs of life seemed to be clustered in the tobacco-drying shed.

"I will go ahead," Chiun said. "You will guard."

Remo hesitated. His face stone, he said, "No."

Chiun turned.

"This must be done," he said coldly.

"It will be," Remo agreed. "By both of us."

The Master of Sinanju nodded quietly. Together they advanced.

Then, without warning, came the rip and pop of automatic weapons fire.

Splintery holes pocked the rude sides of the shack. The incessant chirr of katydids fell still.

The two Masters of Sinanju dropped flat on the dry ground.

Rounds whistled through the Spanish moss, making clip clip clip sounds punctuated by the creak and snap of fractured cypress branches.

"Sounds like we have a firefight on our hands," Remo growled.

Without warning, a door banged open. Remo and Chiun froze, two black shadows against the dark mossy earth.

Out of the powder smoke came a man, his body awash in the metallic scent familiar to assassin and soldier alike.

Blood.

The man paused on the open veranda, yanking an empty clip from his FAL rifle and slapping home a fresh one. He set the butt plate against his hip, moving the barrel this way and that with casual confidence.

They watched his face. It resembled sculpted brown rock inset with two black eyes that held no more expression than the buttons on an old coat. Shadows made his identity impossible to ascertain.

Nothing happened.

"Is he such a fool, that he thinks we will show ourselves?" Chiun undertoned.

"I don't think he's waiting for us," Remo said.

The wrinkled face of the Master of Sinanju grew more wrinkled still. His hazel eyes narrowed, like those of a thoughtful cat.

The salt scent of blood hung in the moist, humid air like a portent.

Chiun nodded. Remo knew then that he understood.

They waited.

The man in the camouflage uniform stepped off the shack step reluctantly and strode out into the night. A stray shaft of moonlight caught his face and they could see him clearly.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla. His eyes were hard, but a sad moistness hung far back in their liquid depths.

He strode out into the swamp and, like two fugitive rags, Remo and Chiun followed.

Zorilla moved with the stealth of a trained soldier.

But to the two Masters of Sinanju, he might have been an elephant dancing on its hind legs. His boots made rude splashes and crinkled undergrowth. Insects and frogs darted from his path, to come to resting places that were not abandoned even as Remo and Chiun moved stealthily by them.