Warren Murphy: Dark Horse

"Sir . . ."

"Governor. "

"Governor, what I think you got there is a pair of tickets from Miss- What did you say the lady's name was?"

"Mouskouri."

"It's clear to me that you're both being treated by the little lady herself. I don't see what the fuss is."

"You don't understand!" the lieutenant governor put in frantically. The copilot's face hardened. "Maybe it's the other way around," he said flatly. "We held up the flight to let you on board, sir. Now, the captain has the discretion to do that. But turning the plane around without an on-board emergency?" He shook his head. "No. I'm sorry."

They harangued the poor copilot, demanded to see the captain, but the man stood his ground.

Eventually, with mumbled apologies and a stiff face, the copilot returned to the cockpit.

The flight attendants refreshed their drinks and made a point of showing off their legs.

The governor and his lieutenant soon settled down. The drone of the jet engines became routine, putting them off their guards.

"Maybe it was Miss Mouskouri who sent the tickets," the lieutenant governor said hopefully.

"It's the only explanation that makes sense," the governor agreed.

"Still," the lieutenant governor said wistfully, "I wish I had taken the bus. Just in case."

They shared a laugh that rattled in their throats like old bones. It was an unpleasant sound that squelched further conversation and provided absolutely no reassurance up at twenty thousand feet, in a jet buffeting through clouds and air pockets like a shaky rollercoaster.

The jet rattled. The overhead luggage compartments jiggled uncertainly. The seats, although bolted to the cabin floor, shook and bounced them on their plush, roomy cushions.

The governor and lieutenant governor started to grow nervous all over again.

"Is this plane shaking worse than usual?" the lieutenant governor muttered.

"I can't tell. I'm shaking too much myself."

"Why are you shaking?"

"I'm thinking of how many death threats I've been getting since I vetoed that Gay Rights bill."

"Well, I didn't veto it. I was for it. But you-you wouldn't listen to me."

"That's right. If it was the Gay Rights people, they wouldn't be after you." A flush of relief raced up the governor's boyish features.

At that exact moment, the 727 went into a steep dive and the overhead compartments popped, like topsy-turvy jack-in-the-boxes.

A yellow oxygen mask slapped the governor of California in the eye. An identical one dangled before the lieutenant governor's suddenly bone-white face. They might have been hangman's nooses from the sick, incredulous way the two politicians stared.

The captain's drawling voice came over the intercom, saying, "Nothing to be concerned about, folks. We're experiencing a little problem with our pressurization, so we're just gonna descend to ten thousand feet while we check it out. If you start feeling light-headed, that's what the yellow oxygen masks are for."

"Oh my God! We're going to crash!" the governor said, voice twisting.

"But he just said-"

"I don't care what he said!" the governor snapped, pulling the plastic oxygen mask to his face and hyperventilating wildly.

The lieutenant governor grabbed his mask with one hand and his stomach with the other. As he inhaled deep lungfuls of cold, plasticky oxygen, he prayed to God to keep him from throwing up in the mask and blocking the air line.

On the flight deck, Captain Del Grossman had his flight chart in his lap, as scraps and wisps of cloud whipped by the windshield.

The copilot was guarding the throttles. The captain looked up from his chart and peered out the side window.

Below, under the lower edge of the cloud layer, he saw a city-sprawl that looked like a transistorized circuit board.

"Looks like Fresno," he muttered.

"Can't be Fresno," the copilot said. "It's not possible that we could have wandered this far off-course."

"That's why I said, 'looks like.' " The captain took another look at the flight chart. "According to our heading," he said, "we should be on Low-Altitude Airway Number 47."

"Right," the copilot said, as a hanging hump of cloud swallowed all forward visibility.

"But if we're following that route," the captain added, "we should be seeing the San Joaquin River beneath us."

"Huh," the copilot grunted. They were barreling through a world of gloomy stratocumulus now. "Wanna go lower?"

"No," said the captain. "I want you to check your flight chart."

The flight chart came out of its compartment, and the captain took the throttles.

The copilot checked his chart, frowned, and compared it with that of his senior officer.

"Everything I see tells me we're on-course," he said, with almost no conviction in his voice.

"And everything I see," said the captain, "tells me we're off-course."

"Charts don't lie, you know."

"And I trust the evidence of my eyes."

They were silent while the jet nosed through seemingly impenetrable cloud. The pressurization problem, which had forced them down to this perilously low altitude, was forgotten.

"I'm going to try to get under this damn weather," the captain grumbled.

He reached for the throttles. And his hand froze.

"Jesus H. Christ!"

There was no time to react. No time for anything. They both understood that with complete and utter clarity. They had each logged over twenty-six thousand hours in the air and knew the limitations of their aircraft.

Visibility was less than an eighth of a mile. The 727 was slamming along at about three hundred and seventy miles per hour.

By the time the stone face of Mount Whitney broke the low-hanging clouds and filled the windshield like an implacable idol, there wasn't even enough time to become afraid.

The cockpit crew were snuffed out with an appalling finality that could only have been equaled if they had taken seats in a high-speed trash compactor.

First-class got it from both directions. The foot-thick wall of tangled steel and human detritus that the cockpit and nose had become rammed back, while the rest of the airframe, still under power, drove it toward the collapsing forward bulkhead.

The governor and his lieutenant had a heartbeat's notice. That was all. Then they were both inextricably intertwined, in a roaring metallic entanglement that was almost instantly awash in the poisonous stink of Jet-A fuel. The plane careened and broke up as it made its absolutely final descent.

Down the side of the mountain that shouldn't have been there.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he had a dilemma.

Should he do the hit before, or after, the target was baptized?

It was, Remo had to admit, a first.

Remo had done hits many times. Too many to count. Big shots. Small fish. This particular fish was big. And ugly. There would be no mistaking him amid the small army of Federal marshals, FBI agents, press, and invited observers that, according to Upstairs, were due at any moment.

It couldn't be too soon for Remo Williams.

He was crouched in a thicket on a spongy isle in the heart of the Florida Everglades. It was hot. The air steamed. Love bugs danced in the heat. Remo showed barely a trace of sweat on his cruel face and bare arms. Still, that did not mean he was comfortable-only that he was the master of his own body.

For twenty years he had not felt cold, or heat, or pain or any ordinary discomfort that he was not able to will his body to ignore. For twenty years he had breathed not merely with his lungs, but through his entire body: nose, mouth, unclogged pores. For two decades he had been Sinanju. A Master of Sinanju. The latest Master of Sinanju in an unbroken line that stretched back to the dawn of recorded history. A line that had begun in a ramshackle fishing village on the West Korea Bay where men hired themselves out as assassins and bodyguards in order to feed the village, and now continued in Remo Williams, the first white Master of Sinanju, who served the newest empire on earth, the United States of America, as its secret assassin.