Warren Murphy: Coin of the Realm

It was time to go to the defense of last resort. Not even a man who walked with impunity through a mine field could overcome Big Bonsalmo, who stood gleaming by the fieldstone fireplace.

Remo came up on the side of the log cabin, which generated its own electricity, was supplied by a private well, possessed no telephone lines, and technically did not exist. Except that there it stood.

Remo set the heads down on the grass and dug out the cigarette lighter. Lifting up one head, he applied the lighter's flame to the thick oily hair. It caught instantly. Remo let it burn a little, and then flung it toward a window.

The smoked glass shattered on impact.

Remo set two more of the heads on fire and ran around to the back. He tossed one head in an upper window and the other in a lower window. The other heads, blazing like torches, shattered strategic windows on the other side. Remo saved the sixth head for last. He carefully closed its stubborn baleful eyes and, setting it alight, gave it an overhand toss to the roof.

Pedro Ramirez did not fear the smoke. His eyes were shielded and he breathed pure oxygen through a breathing aparatus. He did not fear the grenades that he knew had smashed the windows, although it was taking an awfully long time for them to detonate. The fire bothered him not at all, although it was rapidly spreading. He started for the front door. When he moved, he clanked.

But when the sun roof broke into glittering shards, his heart quailed. The glass bounced harmlessly off and about him. But the thing that landed at his feet was another matter.

It was Santander. His hair was a ball of flame and as it ate into the darkening flesh of his face, one eye twitched open.

Remo watched until the smoke billowed out of every window and chink in the cabin and then walked up to the door, happy to have free hands once again.

He knocked politely. And waited.

Metallic sounds greeted his ears and he wondered for a moment if Upstairs had slipped up. There had been no mention of a midget tank in the briefing.

The door suddenly slapped open and Remo looked up. Remo was tall-about six feet high-but the thing that greeted him was taller by a solid two feet.

It was silvery-gray and plated like an armadillo. It stood on thick legs that ended in clubby feet. The arms hung crooked, like those of an overmuscled gorilla. The head was a box with round glass eyes and a black rubber appendage like an elephant's trunk. The breathing sounds it made resembled those of a hospital respiration machine. "Do your worst!" the thing said hollowly.

"I beg your pardon?" Remo said politely.

"I said do your worst. I'm not afraid of you!"

"Let's take this from the top, shall we?" Remo said. "I'm here to see Pedro Ramirez, millionaire playboy a chief distributor of crack in the western hemisphere. Could you tell him I'm here, Tobor? Or do robots relay messages?"

"Idiot. I'm Pedro Ramirez."

"You?"

"You're here to kill me, no?"

"Actually, I come bearing options," Remo started to say.

"But I can't be killed," said Pedro Ramirez, smashing a mittenlike gauntlet against his thickly plated chest. It made a bell sound. "Not as long as I'm wearing this. It's titanium plate. Stronger than steel. Over it is bullet-proof Kelvar with a Teflon base. Bullets bounce off. Grenades are nothing to me. I'm impervious to poison gas, fire ... you got it, I spit upon it."

"Actually, I was hoping you'd just surrender to the authorities. The government wants to make an example of you."

"You'll never take Pedro Ramirez alive."

"I'll go with option B if I have to," Remo said, shrugging.

"Just try," boomed Pedro Ramirez. "Go ahead, see if anything works. Why don't you try shooting?"

"Shooting?" Remo asked vaguely.

"Yeah, don't tell me the little cockroach forgot his gun."

"Actually," Remo said, patting his pockets, "I'm not sure if I thought to bring a gun. I was really hoping you'd just surrender, especially after I went to all that trouble with your guards. You did notice that."

"Yeah. So what?"

"I thought it would convince you of the error of resistance," Remo said, continuing to pat his pockets. "Guess not," he added weakly.

Out of his back pocket Remo pulled a folded slip of paper. He glanced at it and tossed it away.

"What was that?" Ramirez asked.

"Nothing much. Just the layout of your mine field."

"How did you get hold of that?"

"Satellite surveillance," Remo said. "My superior monitored the entire construction of this place."

"Oh," said Pedro Ramirez, who knew the U.S. government wanted him, but didn't know they wanted him quite tkat badly.

"I can't seem to find it," Remo was saying.

"Too bad," said Pedro Ramirez. "Why don't you just go away?"

"Ah," Remo said suddenly. "Here it is." Out of his right pants pocket he brought out his fist. He held it in front of him as if about to throw a punch. His arm was bent at the elbow.

"That's your fist," Ramirez pointed out.

"Keep your scales on," Remo said. "I haven't cocked it yet." Remo pulled back the thumb of his fist. He made a little click of a sound with his tongue, and his index finger popped out like a gun barrel.

"There," Remo said with a satisfied smile. "Now-last chance. Put your hands up."

Pedro Ramirez did not put his hands up. He spread his arms. "Go ahead, cockroach. Shoot! Shoot!" he howled. Remo shrugged. He dropped his thumb like a falling hammer and said, "Bang!"

Pedro Ramirez guffawed inside his protective square helmet. His eyes closed with laughter. He didn't see the index finger, pointing at him, move for the center of his chest. He wouldn't have seen it move even if his eyes had been open. For the finger was coming for him at supersonic speed.

The coroner's official verdict was that Pedro Ramirez died of hydrostatic shock. Because Pedro Ramirez was at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted list, he was forced to explain hydrostatic shock to a flock of reporters at the FBI news conference.

"Hydrostatic shock, gentlemen," the coroner said carefully, "is a phenomenon wherein the human body is subjected to a noninvasive impact so great that it results in a chain reaction of internal stress which quite literally disrupts the body cells. This man's mitochondria were destroyed. The result was instantaneous death. We see such a phenomenon when the wearer of a bullet-proof vest is struck by a bullet of sufficiently large caliber-a .357 Magnum round for example-where even though there is no penetration of the protective garment, the impact is as lethal as if penetration was achieved. "

One reporter wanted to know what kind of bullet-proof vest Pedro Ramirez wore.

The coroner replied that it was not a vest, but an armored body suit.

Another reporter asked the question that the coroner feared.

"What caliber was the murder weapon?"

"That I am unable to answer at this time," he admitted. "No shell fragments were found at the scene, but the size of the dent in the suit's chest is consistent with a .38 slug."

The coroner was relieved that the logical follow-up question-how could a mere .38 slug cause hydrostatic shock?-was drowned out by a journalist asking him to speculate on which of Pedro Ramirez's many enemies had finally gotten to the drug kingpin.

When the news conference finally ended, the coroner went back to his lab and sat down to put the finishing touches on the official death report. He decided to simply state the details as they existed, and not try to explain how a .38 slug had wrought such havoc-especially when no corresponding slug could be found and the impact point bore a strange indentation.

The coroner lifted the plate to the light. It was bent. And the impact point was unmistakable. Also unmistakable were the tiny rills at the impact site. He couldn't get over how much like the ridges of a man's fingerprints they were. There was even a little slice of a line above the ridges that corresponded to the edge of a fingernail.