Warren Murphy: Skull Duggery

"Well, thanks for the ride."

Fang Yu laughed with childish cruelty. "You very welcome, Sagwa."

"Don't mention it," Remo growled. "I don't suppose you'd care to enlighten me as to how your teacher manages his disappearing acts. Every time I follow his footprints, I end up where he isn't."

"Perhaps he walk backward," she said with a tinkly laugh. "You not think of that, Sagwa?"

Fang Yu pulled back and let the trailing ponies catch up. She joined them. Remo rolled up the window to shut out the cold.

At the border of the two Mongolias, frontier guards looked on stonily as they rode by like a funeral procession.

They followed the Great Mongolian Road to a small town and then with the Blue Bees beating a path, into the snowdusted steppe and toward the foothills of a nearby mountain range.

Here, the driving became rough. The car jumped and jounced, waking the mandarin Wu Ming Shi in back. He looked like an animatronic mummy coming to life. Even awake, only his eyes looked alive.

They moved through a narrow pass between rising hills. As had been the case since leaving Sayn Shanda, Remo couldn't see where they were going. The line of horse rumps made sure of that.

Finally, with hills rising sheer on either side, the Blue Bees broke ranks and Remo hit the brakes.

He looked around. They were in a pass beside the entrance to a cave. Before them, the road led to a narrow iron bridge fording a wide river. Behind was the pass. There was no other way to go, Remo thought worriedly, except over the bridge or back the way they came.

The mandarin's voice in the speaker tube said, "Attend me, Sagwa."

Remo hesitated. The urge to obey the short command was not as strong as it had been. He looked to Chiun. Chiun nodded. He got out, wondering if he could have disobeyed the command.

As he opened the rear door, Remo's eyes shot to the mandarin's emerging feet. But the settling gown hem had already covered them-if they even existed.

Wu Ming Shi levered himself to a standing position. His heart beat once and was still. It made the hair on Remo's neck stiffen.

All around them, the Blue Bees were dismounting.

Fang Yu hurried up, carrying a teak box in both hands. She extracted the cracked skull and presented it to the mandarin.

With glittering eyes, Wu Ming Shi read the inscription on the skull aloud.

" `Now that you have beheld the seat of my mighty power, go to the lands that I have conquered. In Five-Dragon Cave, you must not walk the left path, or the false path wall claim you.' "

He looked over to the Master of Sinanju, who sat patiently on his pony.

"Do you swear to me that this is the skull you found at Karakorum?" he called, crack-voiced with effort.

"I do," Chiun intoned.

"Then I am done with you."

He signaled to Fang Yu, who retreated to the limo and gave two long blasts on the horn.

From both ends of the pass came the roar of starting engines and the drumming of booted feet.

All eyes turned to the narrow iron bridge. From behind low hills came the clanking murmur of T-55 tanks and other motorized infantry.

Chiun's hazel eyes, blazing anger, sought the mandarin's face.

"You gave me your word that there would be peace between us!" Chiun said vehemently.

"It saddens me to break it," Wu Ming Shi said brittlely, "but I have grown very, very old and I can no longer indulge my honor at the expense of my dreams of empire."

"You have abided by ink too long," Chiun spat.

"Come, my trusted Blue Bees," Wu Ming Shi said. "We shall now claim our glory, and when the time is right, these tools of Beijing-which I shall restore to its ancient name of Peking-will also feel your sting."

"Not so fast!" Remo said, reaching for the Chinese's brocaded shoulder.

"Sagwa!" the mandarin hissed. "You will remain in this spot, rooted like a locust tree, and when the green ants of the PLA come for you, you will not resist them."

"Wanna bet?" Remo said. His fingers dug into bony flesh.

Look above you," Wu Ming Shi said without concern.

Remo looked up. PLA soldiers had appeared on the rock walls above them. Scores of AK-47 muzzles were directed at Remo's face.

Before they could fire, the Master of Sinanju's cold voice rang in his ears.

"Remo, you will do as you are told!"

Remo let go. He stood in place dutifully.

The mandarin Wu Ming Shi looked to Chiun. His betelnut-brown smile showed through parted lips.

"Our debt is now truly canceled," he intoned.

Then, his Blue Bees gathering around him like workers around a queen bee, the mandarin stalked stiffly and with ginger steps into the yawning mouth of the cave. Their horses followed after them.

As the tanks rolled closer, Remo's eyes sought the ground. Scores of foot- and hoofprints tracked the dusty snow. But mingled with them one single contrary pair-toes pointing in the wrong direction. They ran back to the spot next to Remo, which the mandarin had just occupied. Remo looked down. A single pair of footprints were pressed into the snow. But they faced the car. Wu Ming Shi had been facing away when he stood beside Remo.

"Chiun, maybe you can explain this to me," Remo said.

"Not now. We must deal with the so-called People's Liberation Army."

"I can't pitch in until you counter-command me."

"Remove your skin patch, Remo Williams," Chiun said, "and do what you can to hold that iron bridge. I will take the other end."

"Great!" Remo tore the patch from behind one ear. He shucked off his tight chauffeur's jacket, exposing a white T-shirt.

"No!" Zhang Zingzong spoke up. "Master, I beg you Let me do this. I will buy you all the time you need for escape."

Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed. "You wish this?"

"Very much. I must know if I am truly brave, as everyone says."

"Then go," Chiun said, rending Zhang's bonds with a slicing fingernail.

Shaking off the braided bamboo bonds, Zhang wheeled his mount and went racing for the narrow iron bridge.

Zhang Zingzong slapped his pony's flank with one hand. The bridge neared. Just short of it, he reined up and threw himself from the saddle.

He ran, and as he ran, he fumbled out a cigarette. One last smoke would do the job. He lit it with his Colibri lighter, reaching the bridge as the first dome-turreted T-55 rattled onto it, making it shudder in sympathy with the mighty engine of death.

Zhang walked across the bridge to meet it. His heart beat high and fast in his throat. He sucked in a brain-reviving cloud of tobacco smoke. It was just as it was after Tianamnen Square, in the moment that he had electrified the world. Except this time Zhang Zingzong was not burdened with bags of groceries in each hand. And here, there was no place for the tank to turn aside. It must crush him or back down.

The driver of the T-55 was a peasant from Shenyang. He was a good soldier, belonging to the Fortieth Army, which had refused to move against the pro-democracy demonstrators. He saw the man standing alone on the bridge, refusing to cower. It reminded him of another Chinese man and another Chinese tank not long ago.

He braked. He would not run this courageous man down.

Unfortunately, his tank commander had no such scruples. After a furious exchange, he reached forward into the driver's pit from the turret and pulled the stubborn driver out. He got behind the controls and sent the T-55 lurching ahead.

Still, the lone Chinese refused to back down. A second tank rolled onto the bridge behind him.

The commander hesitated. Beijing had told him that he would find the infamous counterrevolutionary Zhang here. The one who had faced down a column of PLA tanks. His orders were to take the man alive, for a propaganda trial. He grinned. What better propaganda than to force the man to back away, undoing his supposed feat?