Warren Murphy: An Old Fashioned War

"A mob doesn't have a mind."

"It most certainly does," answered Chitin, "That is why it runs around in hysteria, blindly attacking anything in front of it. What a mob does not have is control. But it does have a mind."

"So why am I learning this? When am I ever going to need this? I'm in training to fight criminals, not soldiers."

"And I am teaching you Sinanju. Let your silly courts decide who is a criminal and who is not. I am teaching you reality. You will learn armies, because that is the way Sinanju teaches. It teaches thought first, then the body."

So Remo had learned about armies, and dynasties, and how one approached a pharaoh, even though there hadn't been a pharaoh around for over three thousand years and there was little likelihood there would ever be one again. He learned Sinanju, and some of it he learned better than the rest of it.

What he forgot quickly and became bored with was the legends of the Masters, which, as any American over thirteen would recognize, was promotional material for the oldest house of assassins in the world.

And Chiun never stopped tiring of telling him that if he did not learn Sinanju whole he did not know Sinanju. And this meant reverence for the lost treasures as well as the histories. But this admonition was useless after Remo had made the last passage and become himself a Master of Smanju.

For Chiun it meant he could no longer threaten Remo by telling him that if he did not do something, he would never become a Master.

Because now he was. And thus on that hot summer day, Remo and Chiun, two Masters of Sinanju, walked along the prairieland toward the Little Big Horn, ready to stop the second battle there between the U.S. Army and American Indians.

And no one noticed that the two men strolling along under the sun did not sweat, nor did they kick up dust under their feet. And no one noticed that they seemed remarkably unaffected by warnings from braves with guns.

They did not notice these things until it was too late to notice, and then they noticed nothing. A platoon of machine-gunners from an eastern tribe lay forever in the land that once belonged to the Sioux. Cannoneers from Minnesota reservations lay draped over the barrels of the guns they had learned to use only that morning.

Right up the organization created by the military genius of Little Elk moved Remo and Chiun, until they found a long flatbed truck with many antennae sticking out of it, and several men squatting over maps nearby. Only one was out of uniform. He wore a suit and tie and carried a briefcase, and every once in a while the men in the new Ojupa uniform, deerskins, would turn to him with a question. And he would answer it.

They called him Mr. Arieson.

"That's our man," said Remo. There were only a few guards protecting the command group. But even if there were many, it wouldn't matter.

It would not be too hard to move in, take out the leader, perhaps keep the subordinates for a while in some safe place like a locked truck or one of the manned vehicles preparing for this war, and let the army disintegrate into an aimless mob.

Then the remnants could be handled by social workers and sheriffs.

Remo ambled toward the group whistling a tune from a Walt Disney film he liked, the words to which he remembered only randomly, but it was a cheery little thing about going off to work.

He noticed Chiun was not with him, and assumed this was because of Chiun's distaste for fighting soldiers. But then he heard Chiun's voice calling after him, saying what Remo had never heard before.

"It won't work. Come back. Let us return to Sinanju. The time to wait is at hand. Let the world go crazy."

"What're you talking about?" laughed Remo.

"You won't be able to do what you want," said Chiun. Remo did not even turn around.

"See you when I'm done."

"You won't be," said Chiun.

Remo whistled ". . . it's off to work we go" as the first guards threw up their hands, warning him to halt, and lowered the automatic weapons as a sign of what would happen to him if he didn't.

He spun them backward, sweeping his palms upward, bowling them into the dust, and walking on. He took a bayonet charge and kept moving. The last two guards protecting headquarters got off a few shots, and Remo slapped their guns away from them, catching the weapons as they fell and never breaking stride until he walked into the command council of the new Indian army, headed by the men now known as the fearless Ojupa.

He dropped the guns on the map. That gave the kneeling men something to do. Then he went for the man with the thick neck in the three-piece suit. Remo noticed there was no perspiration on the man's forehead, although he was out in the sun.

Was that what Chiun meant by his work being useless, that he had spotted something in this man that showed he knew Sinanju?

But why wouldn't Remo spot it?

Remo did not lunge with a simple stroke. He approached as though offering his own body as a target, but in reality he wanted to make the man commit to a thrust so Remo would see how he moved.

But the man didn't move. He didn't even exhale properly. His eyes seemed to burn, and he was laughing.

To Little Elk and Running Deere and the rest of the commanders of the new Indian army, it looked like some weirdo had startled them by throwing guns on their maps and then walked over to Mr. Arieson and leaned backward.

They looked up to see how he had gotten through their defenses. Where were their guards? A quick glance at the strewn bodies on the dusty grasslands told them.

Running Deere, now always ready for action, always ready to charge, took his own sidearm and got off a shot to the stranger's head. Apparently the weapon misfired, because while there was noise and smoke, the bullet didn't strike anything. He fixed again. And missed again.

The stranger moved as though segments of time disappeared. Now he was leaning backward and now he was between Running Deere and Mr. Arieson. And before he could think, Running Deere got off two more rounds. And they missed the stranger and they missed Mr. Arieson.

Only Remo and Mr. Arieson knew they hadn't missed. Remo had lured the shot to see what effect a bullet would have on the man who did not sweat or move in to deliver a sucker punch. The sidearm was a big, slow weapon. There was the pulling of the trigger, the aim of the barrel, the explosion, Remo dropping beneath the line of the bullet and then watching it go past. Both of the bullets landed in a hillock three-quarters of a mile away, shattering a rock. Both of them went through the third button of the vest of Mr. Arieson.

Mr. Arieson had not even bothered to dodge.

He did not wear armor plating. And he was not affected by missiles. Remo fanned the ground, first with little motions of his flat palm against the dry dust, then faster, feeling the air as hard as wood paddles, compressing it with a swooshing sound until in brown fury the dust exploded into a dry storm.

Grass was blown out of the dirt. And still Mr. Arieson did not move.

Running Deere went at the stranger with his hands. Running Deere kept going, but Remo kept the hands. "I think I know who you are," said Mr. Arieson, "but you're white. I've never seen moves like that from a white man."

"Who are you?"

"I believe I am your enemy," said Mr. Arieson. Just on the chance that it might work, having tried several things that didn't, Remo threw a stiff finger into the right eye of Mr. Arieson.

And this time the dust came back at him in the form of smoke, like a campfire with strange, sweet smells.

And Mr. Arieson was gone.

So it had worked. What had worked, Remo was not sure. But something had worked. Mr. Arieson, the leader of this army, was gone. And now Remo could turn to the rest of the command.