Warren Murphy: Rain of Terror

"Have you seen an elephant walking along this road?" Remo asked. There was no pleasure in his eyes.

The woman raised an ironic eyebrow. Her smile broadened. "Maybe you could describe him," she suggested.

"He's an elephant. Gray. Wrinkled skin. Small for an elephant. No tusks."

"A lot of elephants fit that description," the woman said breathily. "Could you be more specific?"

"Lady, I guarantee you he's the only elephant in the neighborhood. Now, have you seen him?"

"I'm trying to think," she said slowly. "It's possible. Maybe if you drew me a picture. I have some crayons back at my apartment."

"No time," Remo said, and pulled away.

The woman frowned, and deciding that the conversation had ended prematurely, hit the accelerator. The needle jumped to seventy and clawed at seventy-five. But try as she might, the Corvette kept losing ground at each whipsaw turn in the road.

The turns didn't seem to stop the man in the white T-shirt. She lost sight of him after he topped a rise in the road and never caught up. She decided to drive down this road every day at this time until she encountered him again. It was crazy, of course. But there was something about the guy. She just couldn't put her finger on it....

Remo was close to panic. There was no way he was returning without the elephant. Chiun would kill him. Not literally, of course. Although Chiun was the head of an ancient line of assassins and could snuff out a man's life with a casual gesture, he wouldn't kill Remo. That would be too merciful. Instead, the Master of Sinanju would make Remo's life miserable. He knew many ways of doing that, most of them verbal.

Seeing no sign of an elephant on the long stretch of open road before him, Remo plunged into the woods. For the thousandth time he wished he hadn't left the gate open.

It had been Remo's turn to water Chiun's pet elephant. Remo had led the pachyderm out of the shed where he was kept, and had gone to find the hose. The gardener of Folcroft Sanitarium where Remo and Chiun currently resided-had walked off with it. By the time Remo had talked the man out of the hose, the elephant, whose name was Rambo, had strolled out the opened gate of Folcroft.

Remo had unlocked the gate earlier. After he had hosed Rambo down, he intended to take him for a walk. Opening the gate first was meant to make Remo's job easier. It was Remo's turn to walk the elephant, too.

Remo had run out immediately, but the elephant had already melted out of sight. Remo hesitated near the gate, and decided two searchers would be infinitely better than one. He hurried to find Chiun, who would certainly understand when Remo explained the accident.

Remo found Chiun doing his morning exercises. He sat in a lotus position on the Folcroft gymnasium floor, tapping a bar of chilled steel suspended between two uprights with his long fingernails. He was a happy little mummy of a Korean gentleman, with pleasantly wrinkled features and the merest wisp of hair on his chin. He wore a canary-yellow kimono. He looked frail enough to snap in a stiff wind.

But when Remo blurted out, "I'm sorry, Little Father, but Rambo ran away," Chiun paused in mid-stroke. Then one fingernail continued down to sever the half-inch bar. It clattered to the pinewood floor in two neat sections.

Chiun got to his feet, his venerable face turning to granite.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was only gone a minute," Remo repeated.

"Find him." Chiun's normally squeaky voice was like chopsticks breaking.

"I thought two heads would be better than one," Remo said meekly.

"You thought wrong," said Chiun. "Why should I expend precious moments of my declining years cleaning up after your mistakes?"

"It's your elephant."

"Entrusted to you. And misplaced by you."

"He walked off. It was his own idea."

"And if he is now lying in some filthy ditch after being struck by a careless motor-carriage driver, I suppose that would be his fault too?"

Remo started to get angry. He checked himself. "C'mon, Little Father. You can at least help out."

"I will."

"Good."

"I will give you an additional impetus to search faster."

"Huh?"

"I will hold my breath until my precious baby is restored to me."

And Chiun inhaled mightily. His cheeks puffed out like a blowfish. He stopped breathing.

"Awww, no, you don't have to do that."

When Chiun's cheeks puffed out further, Remo threw up placating hands.

"Okay, okay. I'll find him. Stay right here."

Remo ran out of Foleroft and down the road, knowing that Chiun was not bluffing. He would stubbornly hold his breath until Remo returned with the Master of Sinanju's "baby," no matter how long it took.

Already it had been half an hour and Remo had found no trace of Rambo. He had no idea how long Chiun could hold his breath without exhaling. Chiun was a Master of Sinanju, the sun source of the martial arts. Masters of Sinanju were capable of incredible discipline. Remo was a Master too, and had once tried to test his own ability at holding his breath. He went exactly thirty-seven minutes before he got bored. Chiun, having trained Remo in Sinanju, was probably good for an hour. At least.

So Chiun was in no immediate danger. But he would make Remo pay for every breath not taken.

Remo found no tracks in the forest. He stopped in the middle of a stand of poplars, their dead, frozen leaves making no sound under his careful feet. He went up a tree to get a better view.

Back the way he had come, Remo spotted a police car pulled over to the side of the road, its light bar painting the surroundings a washed-out blue. Two cops stepped gingerly from each door with guns drawn.

They advanced carefully on a small elephant who looked like a corrugated gray medicine ball balanced on stubby feet.

"Oh, hell!" Remo said, sliding down the tree. He flashed through the woods like an arrow.

Remo skidded to a stop beside the police cruiser. "Hey, fellas, hold up," Remo called.

The cops turned in unison. Behind them, the elephant regarded the scene with tiny dull eyes. His trunk seemed to wave to Remo.

"Don't shoot him!" Remo pleaded.

One cop jerked his thumb at Rambo. "Yours?" he asked.

"Not exactly."

Uncertain how to handle an elephant, the cops turned their attention to Remo, their weapons dropping into their holsters. They were in their mid-forties, with hulking shoulders and meaty faces. They wore nearly identical expressions, like clones. Remo decided they were typical for cops who had seen too much and liked so little of it that they had shut down emotionally long ago. Remo knew how it was. A long time ago, he had been a cop too. Back before he had been framed for a crime he didn't do and executed in an electric chair that didn't work.

"Whose is it, then?" asked the first cop. Remo thought of him as the first cop because his nose hadn't yet been discolored by burst capillaries.

"A friend of mine. And he's very anxious to get him back."

"This friend. He have a permit to keep an elephant?" This from the second cop. The one with the Santa Clausred nose.

"I don't think he's gotten around to it yet. The elephant's only been in this country a month. But I'll be sure to bring it up."

"Is that a leash?"

"This?" Remo asked, hefting the coil of rope. "Yeah."

"Can you control this animal?"

"He'll come with me if I approach him right."

"In that case, we're going to ask you to leash the elephant and follow us to the station."

"Why?"

"You've allowed him to roam a major road, where he could be injured by a car. That's reckless endangerment of an animal."

"He ran away on his own."

"We'll look into that too. And you may have to prove ownership."

Remo's shoulders sagged. He could neutralize these two faster than they could blink, but they were cops. And they were only doing their jobs.