Warren Murphy: Ghost in the Machine

The Master of Sinanju selected the nearest man, a Tokarev-weilding ox, and relieved him of his pistol with a high kick that shattered every bone of his gun hand, creating a kind of limp bag of bone-and-blood pudding at the end of the man's wrist.

His scream refocused the attention of every Russian in the room. Away from the floating target, and toward the two intruders.

It was exactly what Remo and Chiun wanted.

They harvested their foes with methodical precision.

A strangling scarf descended on Chiun's frail neck. One long-nailed finger snapped up, struck, and the heavy silk parted with a short snarl.

Two others tried to use Remo for target practice. He gave them a few seconds of his time, twisting and arching out of the way of their precise shots.

They were good. That is, they were skilled marksmen. But to Remo, they might as well have been cavemen attempting to brain a man on a motorcycle with stone hatchets.

Remo eluded each shot by sight alone. He could actually see the bullets emerge from each muzzle, compute the trajectory, and easily slide out of the bullet track.

Two shots from each man equaled two steps closer to each man. Remo didn't need three. He took one out with a two-fingered strike to his rotator cup that sent shoulder bone spears ripping through his major organs, and dislocated the neck of the second with a light tap to the point of his chin. His head snapped back so far on his suddenly elongated neck it was crushed under his broad back when he hit the rug.

The survivors took note of the carnage and, dropping their weapons, took man-to-man fighting stances.

"Guess these guys' taste in fighting styles matches their taste in clothes," Remo grunted.

"We will educate them," Chiun sniffed.

It took less than two minutes. But they cleared the room.

All except for a stark-white figure floating over their heads and another cowering behind the big television.

Chiun got under the Krahseevah and began leaping up at it, like a pit bull after a treed cat. His clawlike hands swiped futilely, and he hissed his anger.

"Nothing we can do about that one," Remo muttered, stepping over to collect the other. He dragged the shivering form of Major Yuli Batenin out by the collar of his shirt.

"At least this one is in fashion," said Remo, noticing his suit, "So who are you, pal?"

"I cannot say."

Face angry, Chiun stepped up and pinched a dangling earlobe.

"You can."

Suddenly, the man could say. In fact, he could sing. He began singing out a stream of information, evidently convinced, in his pain, that singing was faster than speaking.

"I am Major Yuli Batenin, formerly with KGB, come to America to capture Captain Rair Brashnikov, also formerly with KGB, and reclaim vibration suit for motherland before nuclear event occurs and we all die."

Remo turned to Chiun. "You make any sense of that?"

"He is off-key." Chiun squeezed harder.

Batenin screamed louder. He pointed toward the ceiling. "Brashnikov! Is Brashnikov! Vibration suit is running out of power. If he rematerializes inside wall, atoms will mingle and there will be nuclear event."

"He is making no more sense," Chiun warned.

Remo looked to the floating Krahseevah edging toward the wall and the burning red light at his belt buckle. "Wait! I think I get it. The suit is about to shut down. If the guy is touching anything, it'll be like the old atom bombs, only worse."

"More machine talk," sniffed Chiun.

"Maybe. But we gotta keep him from entering that wall."

"How?" asked Batenin.

"Like this," said Remo, going up to the wall. He made one hand into a spear point, and using it like a jackhammer, began chipping out a section of the wall. He cut a long horizontal line just under the floating figure, stepping onto an end table to continue cutting. Plaster dust and old lathe cracked and showered down in a dusty storm.

Remo swiftly completed a rectangle and pulled it inward. A square chunk of horsehair plaster came loose and hit the carpet, with a billow of dry white dust.

"Problem solved," Remo said, stepping down. "If he floats out, he won't hurt anything."

"But we still have not captured that fiend!" Chiun said harshly.

"The day's young yet," Remo said, returning to the shivering Major Batenin. "I recognize you," he said.

Batenin looked incredulous. "You do?"

"Yeah. Our boss once had us intercept you when you were trying to smuggle stealth technology out of the country in a diplomatic bag."

"I was never intercepted by you."

"Sure you were. Remember at Dulles International, we made you put your case through the X-ray machine?"

Major Batenin's suspicious eyes lost their narrowness. "That was you?"

"In disguise," said Remo.

"I was inside the machine," sniffed Chiun.

"We switched bags," Remo added. "You got one filled with junk."

"It was not Brashnikov's fault?" Batenin said bleakly.

"It was us. But enough ancient history. You said you were with the KGB. Everybody knows they went the way of the Berlin Wall. Who are you with now?"

"I will not say."

The fingernails bit into his earlobe again, and Major Yuli Batenin screamed, "I am Shchit! I am Shchit!"

"You got that right," said Remo, killing the Russian by the simplest means at hand. By killing his brain. Remo's steelhard right index finger went in through the forehead bone and came out clean.

"Not bad, huh?"

Chiun made a disgusted face. "Check under your fingernail for brain."

Remo looked injured. "There's no brain under my nail."

"Did you check?"

"I don't have to check. That was a perfect stroke."

"Your elbow was not aligned perfectly."

"Are you saying it was bent? It was not bent!"

"I did not say bent," Chiun sniffed. "I said not perfectly aligned. It is not the same."

"It wasn't bent," Remo insisted.

"It was not perfect, either."

"Never mind. Let's finish up our business here."

The eyes of the two Masters of Sinanju looked up toward the helplessly floating figure of the thing Remo had years ago dubbed "the Krahseevah," and which they now knew was a Russian named Captain Rair Brashnikov.

Behind his expanding and contracting face membrane, Rair Brashnikov looked down at the pair of deadly eyes and came to a bitter conclusion.

"I am not dead. I am worse than dead."

His choice was as simple as it was stark. Turn off the vibration suit and be delivered into the hands of the same American agents that had tricked him into a purgatory of fiber-optic cables and American telephone cross-talk, or hope that the suit stayed powered long enough for him to float out into the clear air and drop to his certain death.

Rair Brashnikov was not a brave man. He was, in his heart of hearts, a common thief. It was his kleptomania that had gotten him cashiered from the old KGB in the first place, and the same uncontrollable urge that had compelled his old KGB superiors to reinstate him and unleash him, virtually untraceable in the vibration suit, upon the technological candy shop that was America.

He reached for the buzzing rheostat and gave it a twist. The buzz cut out.

His teeth suddenly hurt, and his vision went blurry.

Gravity took hold and Rair Brashnikov crashed to the carpet, taking a chunk of wall with him.

"I am surrendering peacably to you," he said, as swift hands more strong than Soviet leg irons took hold of his wrists. He was hauled to his feet unceremoniously.

"Gotcha!" said the Caucasian American agent.

"Your ugly head will be set before my emperor by sundown," threatened the Oriental American agent.

"I would like to be keeping head," Rair said thickly.

"That'll be up to our boss," the Caucasian said. "I'd better call him. Here, Chiun, hold both hands so he doesn't pull a fast one."