Warren Murphy - Last Rites

NEAR DAWN, a light rain fell from the desert sky, and Remo opened his eyes to see Vega and Altair burning faintly on either side of the Milky Way.

He sat up. And in the sand beside him the gong suddenly rang. It was very faint. Nothing seemed to have struck it. Unless it was raindrops.

The faint sound faded. Then it came again. Nothing struck the bar of steel. Unless it was a ghost.

Remo stood up. And to the west he heard the sound of the gong's mate coming across the sands.

"Chiun. He's calling me."

Grabbing the gong, Remo pulled the mallet and struck it in response. Then he took off over the sand, toward Red Ghost Butte. The carrying gong note pierced the still air again, and the gong in Remo's hand answered.

The notes blended into a single sustained cry that didn't subside until Remo reached the cave mouth.

There stood the Master of Sinanju, his face a shell of sorrow and unconcealed pain.

"Don't tell me...." Remo said thickly.

"My sorrow..."

Remo squeezed his eyes tight as fists. "Nooooo."

". . . is only as great as your joy," Chiun continued aridly. "For you have gained a father, and I have lost my only son."

Remo's eyes popped. "He's alive!"

Chiun nodded. "He awaits you within."

Remo started in. "Well, c'mon"

"No. It is not for me to do this. I will remain here. For it is the seventh moon and it is my custom to bathe in the bitter tears of Kyon-u and Chik nyo, whose sufferings I understand only too well."

Chapter 24

Two days later three men rode into the Sonoran Desert on horseback.

Sunny Joe Roam took the lead. Remo rode on his right. Balanced on an Appaloosa pony, Chiun followed at a respectful distance, his face creased with pain like crumpled paper.

The sky was utterly cloudless, and in the clear desert air objects and people possessed an unnatural clarity, as if cut from glass. Overhead the sun beat down like hot jackhammers.

"I owe you two my life," Sunny Joe said after a while.

"Our blood is the same color," said Chiun. "More than that, I owe you some answers."

Remo said nothing. It was a subject no one had wanted to address in the two days that old Bill Roam had recuperated from the Sun On Jo Disease.

"For you to understand," Sunny Joe began, "you have to understand who I am. Long, long before the white man came, my ancestor Ko Jong Oh arrived in this desert. He came from the land that comes down to us as Sun On Jo. They say all us redskins are Asians originally. So I always figured he came across the Bering Strait from somewhere in China. Anyway, Ko Jong Oh settled down here among a tiny group of Indians and married one. We think they were head pounders."

"Head pounders?" Remo said.

"That's what we call the Navajo, on account of they used to bash in the skulls of their enemies. That's to differentiate them from the Hopi, whom we call cliff squatters.

"Now, Ko Jong Oh was a mighty warrior and magician, and he took this tribe under his wing. In gratitude, they took the name Sun On Jo. He taught the Sun On Jos the ways of peace. War and fighting and killing were forbidden. Only Ko Jong Oh and each eldest son descended from him were allowed to fight. And only then to protect the tribe. For it was handed down from the mouth of Ko Jong Oh that if any of his sons brought attention to himself, it would bring down the wrath of the Great Spirit Magician himself, Sun On Jo."

Sunny Joe looked back at Chiun.

"I told you this story that time a few years back, chief."

"And I have told you the legend of my village," Chiun returned coolly. "But you did not believe that our legends were one."

"I'm still on the skeptical side. But we'll get to that." Sunny Joe resumed his tale. "Every eldest male heir of Ko Jong Oh is taught the way of Sun On Jo. How to track game stealthily, to see farther than the hawk, to become one with the shadows. All the better to protect the tribe. When I was born, disease and poverty had claimed many of the tribespeople. It hit the women especially hard. When I came of age, the Sunny Joe before me, my father, took me up to Red Ghost Butte and before I was invested as his successor, he told me that the tribe was dying in spirit. Too many had left for the cities or were buried under the red sands. There were no women my age. And none had been born in a long time. My father thought it might have had something to do with the atomic fallout over in Utah and New Mexico."

Sunny Joe shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. But if the tribe was to go on, I had to go out into the greater world and find the land of Sun On Jo and beg of the Great Spirit Magician for one of his women to be my bride. Otherwise, the Sun On Jos would not survive the century."

Remo grunted.

"So I packed my bag and piled into my old Studebaker, and since west was the direction from which Ko Jong Oh had come, it made sense that I go west. Well, I didn't get very far until I ran out of money and had to look for work. So I fell into stunt work. It paid, didn't demand all of my time and, between shoots, I could travel. Let me tell you I traveled all over the globe. Sometimes with a production, other times on my own. I was searching for Sun On Jo, studying maps, talking to people. But China had gone Communist, and every way in was blocked.

"I was in Japan during the last days of the occupation when I ran into a Korean who told me of a place called Sinanju way up in North Korea, whose warriors were feared and respected throughout Asia. By that time old Marshal Kim Il-Sung was in charge up there, and as an American I couldn't get there for money, marbles or chalk."

"What year was this?" Remo asked.

"I'm getting to that. About that time the Korean War broke out. I watched it seesaw back and forth a while, and when MacArthur took Pyongyang, I saw my chance. I up and joined the Army. After basic, I shipped out for Korea. I asked for action and I got it. They handed me a BAR and put me right on the line. Chosin Reservoir. MiG Alley. I saw it all. It was a terrible war. But I guess all wars are terrible."

"I did a tour in Nam." said Remo. "Marines."

"If I had been around, I would have knocked that notion out of your skull on day one."

Remo said nothing. Sunny Joe went on.

"I was with General Walker's Eighth Army when we took up positions along the Chongchon River in October 1950. Our orders were to hold a bridgehead north of Sinanju. Mountains to the east. Mountains to the west. I never saw so many mountains outside of Arizona. Or such a bitter winter. We had the North Koreans licked, but there were rumors the Chinese were about to take a hand. While we were digging in, they attacked. Wiped out the entire Eight Cav at Unsan. We knew we were in for it then.

"Me, I just wanted to take a look around Sinanju, but I was stuck where I was. So I hunkered down as we pounded the enemy and they pounded us back, with Migs and Yaks and U.S. Sabre jets screaming over our heads and the winter closing in and the bigwigs chanting 'Home by Christmas.' They just never got around to saying which Christmas. Sound familiar, Remo?"

"Yeah. It does."

"Anyway, by early November my unit, the Nineteenth Infantry, were still trying to hold the bridgehead, when the Chinese swooped down on our battery position with their mortars and small-arms fire, blowing bugles to freeze the blood. We fought practically eyeball to eyeball, dead Chinese stacking up not thirty yards from our gun shields. Before long we were surrounded, Chinese knife men killed some of us in our sleeping bags. It was a grim night, I will tell you. I was sure I was going to die."

Sunny Joe hung his head at the memory.

"We withdrew under fire, abandoning the bridgehead. The tide was turning, just as it would all war long. Then on the night of November 6, the Chinese forces broke contact and went into full retreat. To this day, no one's ever been able to explain it. They just up and marched into the mountains, never to be heard from again. You won't read about the Battle of Sinanju in too many history books, but for my money it was the worst conflict of the war. They had us cold. But they bugged out."