Warren Murphy: Rain of Terror

Then Remo suddenly had a vision of Chiun's face. It was red, on its way to turning purple.

"I'll put the leash on him," Remo said, and started to approach the elephant.

Rambo saw the rope in Remo's hand and reared up. His trunk waved like a wrinkled python. He trumpeted in warning. The two cops pulled their service revolvers just as two blunt forefeet came down on the hood of the cruiser.

"Oh, no!" Remo groaned as Rambo smacked the light bar with his trunk. The light bar abruptly shut down. Then the elephant stepped off the hood. The hood bore a shallow dent.

The first cop turned to Remo and said, "That's destruction of police property, buddy, and you're under arrest." The red-nosed cop took aim on the elephant's head and Remo knew that choice no longer entered into the picture. He disarmed the first cop in the simplest manner. He grabbed at the buckle of his gunbelt and tugged sharply. The gunbelt ended up in Remo's hand. He threw it into the woods. Then Remo tapped the cop in the exact center of his forehead. The man's bloodshot eyes rolled up in his head and he fell like a slab of beef.

The other cop was about to shoot. Remo chopped at the side of his neck and the man fell into his waiting arms. Remo made a quick noose of the rope and snared the elephant's trunk. But Rambo threw off the noose and reared up on his hind legs.

"Don't make this any harder than it has to be," Remo muttered.

Rambo started to drop back to all fours. The way his trunk flayed the air told Remo he was upset. He would run the moment his feet touched ground. Remo moved in first.

When the front feet came down, Remo was there to catch them. He pushed at the elephant's padded feet with both hands. Rambo trumpeted angrily. He pushed harder, his entire wrinkled weight leaning against Remo.

Remo kept the stumpy forefeet above the ground. Seeming to exert no effort, he kept Rambo off balance. When the elephant tried to step back, Remo stepped forward, still pushing.

Anyone who had driven down the road would have been treated to the sight of a rail-thin man doing the minuet with an Asian elephant. And the man was leading. Remo kept the elephant off balance until the pachyderm began to tire. When he sensed that moment had come, he stepped back. Rambo's forefeet struck the ground. Remo lassoed the knobby head with a quick, easy motion. He tugged Rambo over to the side of the road and tethered him to a tree.

"Stay," Remo said firmly.

Then Remo hurried back to the prowl car. He dug into the glove compartment and found, as he expected, a flask. He uncapped it and poured a mouthful down the throat of each recumbent cop, kneading their larynxes so that they swallowed safely. Then he placed one behind the wheel and the other in the seat beside him.

Before untying Rambo, Remo popped the hood and, balancing on the front fender, flattened out the dent with the palms of his hands. He looked like a cook kneading pizza dough.

When he closed the hood, the car looked as good as new. And when the two cops woke up and realized that they had been drinking-even if they couldn't remember tasting a drop-they would dismiss what they'd seen as a hallucination.

The Master of Sinanju wasn't purple when Remo found him. His face was blue. Light blue. Kind of a robin's-egg blue. But he was definitely blue.

Remo figured he had been gone not quite two hours. "I found him," Remo said hastily. "He's outside."

The Master of Sinanju folded his arms stubbornly. His cheeks still puffed out defiantly.

"Look for yourself if you don't believe me," Remo said. Chiun shook his head, which was bald but for tufts of hair over each ear.

"You want something else?" Remo asked frantically. Chiun nodded.

"What?"

Chiun did not say. His hazel eyes regarded Remo pointedly.

"I already apologized," Remo said. Chiun nodded.

"It won't happen again."

Chiun nodded as if in agreement. "You want more?"

Chiun raised a long-nailed finger in assent.

"Look, if you want to stick me with some punishment, okay, but do you have to make me work for it too?" Chiun's eyes brightened. Remo was starting to get the idea.

"We walk him every day. No more taking turns." Chiun's upraised finger indicated acceptance of Remo's offer. But he still did not draw breath.

"And hose him down daily."

A second finger joined the upraised one.

"Twice daily. Okay! Twice daily. Now, come on. You're turning bright blue."

Chiun made sweeping motions with both hands.

"No, not that. I'm not cleaning up after him. No way." Chiun folded his arms, and deep inside him, he coughed. But he refused to let the cough escape his lips. He seemed to shrink. The bluish cast to his face darkened and he suddenly clutched at his thin breast.

"Okay, okay! You win. I'll clean up after him too. Anything else?"

Chiun released his breath in a long, gusty exhalation. "How should I know?" he squeaked. "You are doing all the negotiating."

And then he floated out of the room like a happy elf. Remo stood in the middle of Folcroft Sanitarium, his teeth clenched and his face slowly turning red.

Dr. Harold W. Smith picked that moment to enter the room, peering owlishly at Remo through rimless glasses. "Could I see you one moment?" Smith said in a serious tone. "It's about your elephant."

Chapter 3

"It's not my elephant," Remo said in a defensive voice. He had followed Dr. Harold W. Smith up to Smith's Spartan office. Smith closed the door after them and retreated to the security of his shabby desk.

"You brought it back from Vietnam," Smith said flatly.

"Chiun made me. It was his idea. I wanted no part of this. If you want to get rid of the elephant, you have my total, unconditional moral support. Just don't quote me."

"We can't have an unlicensed animal like that on the grounds. This is supposed to be a private hospital. On that basis alone, I'm risking health-code violations and problems with AMA recertification." Just the thought of those bureaucratic hassles brought that old, haggard look to Smith's gaunt, lemony face. Smith reached into a desk drawer and Remo made a mental bet with himself that out would come the aspirin. Smith's haggard look suggested aspirin. His sour look usually signaled a liquid antacid binge. On occasion, it would be Alka-Seltzer. Smith was not wearing his Alka-Seltzer face today, so Remo was dead certain it would be aspirin.

"Talk to Chiun," Remo said exasperatedly. "You have good security reasons. Just give him the chapter and verse."

"The health-code matter of course is not uppermost," Smith told him. "Folcroft is a secret government installation. Security must be our primary concern at all times. An elephant is bound to attract attention."

"Save it for Chiun, Smitty. It's out of my hands."

Out of the desk drawer came a paper cup, and a worried notch appeared between Remo's eyes. A paper cup usually meant aspirin, but Smith always took his aspirin with water from the office dispenser. Why would Smith have a paper cup in the desk when they were racked next to the bottled mineral water?

"I hold you responsible for this elephant situation," Smith said, digging around in the drawer.

"Why me? I told you it was Chiun's idea."

"Which he wouldn't have gotten had he not been forced to follow you to Vietnam. Need I remind you that you were in that country despite my strict orders?"

"I don't want to rehash that mission."

"It was not a mission," said Smith. "It was a renegade action on your part."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Remo slouched onto the office couch. Why was everyone on his case today?

"I am not even mentioning the expense to the taxpayers of having the elephant shipped to Folcroft. I'm sure there are naval officers who are still trying to learn how an Asian elephant came to be on a United States submarine. By the way, how did you get the animal into the sub in the first place?"