Warren Murphy: Survival Course

"We cannot trust that man-I mean, machine."

"I know what you mean, but Chiun has him thinking we don't know who he is. If Chiun is right-"

"I am," Chiun said loudly enough for Smith to hear. "I never fail. When I have been sent to the proper place at the proper time. Unlike this mission."

"If Chiun's right," Remo went on, "Gordons may come along peacefully. Maybe we can make this work. Once we have the President, dealing with Gordons will be another matter."

"What does Gordons want?"

"Hard to say," Remo said. "Safe passage to the U. S. Diplomatic immunity. Fifty cases of Three-in-one oil. With that ambulatory junk pile, who the hell knows? I say we give him what he wants and sort out the casualties after the President is safe."

"Yes. Absolutely. Do what you have to, Remo. Offer him anything. Just bring the President back alive. "

"Just call me Frank Buck," Remo said. "You know," he added, "I can't believe this. How the hell did Gordons get involved in this?"

Smith expelled air into his receiver. "I did some backtracking, Remo," he said wearily. "You remember that Gordons had taken over that California theme park, Larryland."

" I remember it, well," Remo said. "He had the place rigged with that stolen Russian satellite, the one that sterilized people with microwave bursts. He thought he'd sterilize every visitor and eventually wipe out the human race. We'd all die out and he'd survive. Him and the cockroaches."

"The Army Corps of Engineers blew up Larryland."

"I was there too. I thought Gordons was gone for good. "

"As it happens, the previous President had been flying to his California ranch during that operation," Smith said. "Air Force One flew over the detonation site, apparently on orders from the President, who wanted to see the explosion from the air."

"What?"

"This is supposition," Smith went on, "but if Gordons' central processor survived the explosion, it could have been exploded upward, possibly high enough to attach itself to Air Force One."

"Christ!" Remo rasped. "You mean Gordons became Air Force One?"

"It is my best guess," Smith admitted.

"And two presidents have been riding around inside him?"

"It is a sobering thought, I know," Smith admitted.

"Sobering? It makes my blood run cold. What was he up to?"

"Think about it, Remo. Gordons exists to survive, and survives to exist. Air Force One has an excellent maintenance program and relatively light duty cycles. Gordons is a machine. As Air Force Ore, he would be the most pampered machine on earth. No one suspected him. No one molested him. In a way, it's unfortunate that this happened the way it did. The presidential plane is scheduled to be replaced in another year. Gordons would have been retired from service."

"We gotta nail him this time," Remo said fiercely.

"No. The President comes first. Gordons is secondary. "

"What happened to acing the President if he compromises national security?" Remo asked.

There was silence on the line. Remo started to say, "Hello?"

Smith spoke. "If anything goes wrong, that is your option of last resort. Some things are going on in Washington I do not understand, but we have an extremely sensitive political situation developing."

"Tell me about it," Remo sighed, a vision of the Vice-President-the real one-floating through his mind. "Look, one way or another, we should have this wrapped up tonight. Will the lid stay on that long?"

"Barely. The media are getting restive. Report back as soon as the situation is resolved."

"Gotcha. "

Remo hung up. He turned to Chiun. "We're a go for negotiating. But Smith says if it goes bad, the President is better off dead."

The Master of Sinanju's tired eyebrows lifted. "Ah, he is preparing to make his move at last."

"No. It's a last resort."

"Smith is clever," Chiun mused. "Perhaps this entire scheme is his doing."

Remo went to the door and looked out in the hallway. There was no sign of Guadalupe Mazatl. He shut the door.

"You were right," he told Chiun. "Lupe's cut out on us."

"If I was right about one matter, I might be right about another," Chiun said, getting up. He lifted to his feet like a column of scarlet smoke emerging from a floor heat register.

"Not about that," Remo said flatly. "What do you say we get to Teotihuacan early? Just in case."

"We risk much, the longer we breathe this foul air," Chiun warned.

"I'm feeling better," Remo said, rotating his thick wrists like an arm wrestler warming up.

Chiun nodded. "Now. Here. In this air-conditioned room within our bellies full of rice. But out there, the very air robs us of our strength, our mighty resources. Ordinarily, Gordons is a formidable foe. Under these circumstances, we are as ordinary men."

"So what do you suggest?" Remo wondered.

Chiun raised a lecturing finger. "We avoid combat at all costs. We negotiate, as Smith would have us do."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Remo admitted.

"And then, once back in the pure clean air of America, we will strike, for Gordons has cost us dearly in the past. He murdered the woman you knew as Anna and he robbed me of the seed of the future."

Remo's face grew sad. "Yeah, Anna. Funny, I hadn't thought of her in a long time. And Gordons did sterilize you that last time, didn't he?"

"We have much to repay Gordons for," Chiun said in a cold voice. "But we will do this in the time and place of our own choosing."

Chapter 24

Behind the pond-scum-brown smog that hung over the Valley of Mexico, the sun set like a smoky brazier. The stagnant air, fed by unregulated car exhausts and industrial smokestacks, stank of carbon dioxide. Millions of pairs of sore human lungs sucked in the unhealthy air. It scoured sinus passages and caused spontaneous nosebleeds. Scarlet tanagers, one moment winging past the Pemex Towers, simply folded their wings and plummeted to their deaths, their immune systems succumbing to toxic chromium levels.

It was just another afternoon in Mexico City.

Except for a series of seemingly unrelated events.

First, the President of the United States woke up to total darkness. He thought he was dreaming. Then he wondered if he were dead. He was not lying down, not standing, but somehow suspended in the dark. His questing fingers brushed an abrasive surface like raw plaster. He found that he could move his arms, but not much. He couldn't move his legs at all. And something was digging into his crotch, on which he was somehow balanced.

His legs tingled with pins and needles. And he smelled something odd. It reminded him of the stuffed-animal section of the Smithsonian Institution-formaldehyde and dead fur.

He called for help. There was no answer.

The Museum of Anthropology on the Paseo de la Reforma was closed on Mondays. Today was Monday. And so the spacious museum was deserted except for a single guard named Umberto Zamora.

Zamora was making his rounds when he heard the sudden awful grinding sound. Like a million giant pestles grinding maize. He ran to the sound, or where he thought the sound emanated. It changed from the grinding and sparking of stone to a slow, ponderous tread.

Zamora stopped so swiftly he skidded on the polished marble floor. He listened fearfully. The ponderous tread was coming in his direction. Slowly, methodically, unstoppably.

Umberto Zamora felt the floor tremble under his feet, and his courage deserted him. He dived behind a Mayan stela.

There he huddled, trembling as the terrible tread lumbered past him. It was like an earthquake on legs. He waited until it was gone, presumably from the museum-if the terrible rending of wood and metal meant what Zamora thought it meant.

Gingerly Umberto Zamora emerged from hiding. He followed the scuffed floor prints. They led to a hole in one wall. A very big hole. And out on the grass, giant footprints led away.