Warren Murphy - The End of the Game

Buell gave a whoop of triumph and leapt to his feet. "I won," he shouted. It did not bother him at all when his champion, the old Oriental, weaved on his feet, dropped the dripping mess in his hand to the ground, and collapsed in a heap. The sunlight glinted off a trickle of slick blood pouring from his mouth.

"Kee-rist," Buell said between his teeth. "That Dr. Smith is some fighter."

"His name's not Smith," said a soft voice behind him. Buell whirled around. On the opposite side of the rock shelf was a gray-haired middle-aged man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a three-piece suit. In his right hand was a pistol that seemed the size of an electric drill.

"What'd you say?" Buell asked.

"I said his name's not Smith. Mine is."

A confused smile came to Buell's face but when the barrel of the oversized gun did not waver, the smile faded. The man with the gun was not joking and behind his steel-rimmed spectacles, his eyes held the kind of desperation that made killers of ordinary men.

"What's this about?" Buell asked, swallowing hard.

Smith's eyes wandered for a fraction of a second to the two bodies lying motionless on the field below. "It's about sanity," he rasped.

"Come on," Buell began but Smith cut him short.

"I know sanity isn't a big part of your life," Smith said. "Not somebody who's willing to blow up the world because it's some kind of game. Some of us don't think the world's safety is a game. So some of us are willing to kill for it." He glanced down again. "Even to die for it."

"If you're Smith, who are those two?"

"They worked for me," Smith said. "Enough explanations."

He started to tighten his finger on the trigger but before he could, a strong arm was clamped around his throat. A gun was pressed against his temple.

"Not just yet," said a woman's voice. "Drop it."

Smith heard the gun against his head cock. There was more than just one of them. He could still get Buell, but this one would get him and the end of the world might just proceed on schedule. He had to wait. Try to get them both.

He lowered the Barsgod and tossed it away, toward Buell.

"You have all sorts of talents, Marcia," Buell said, as the woman released her hold on Smith's neck. "Hey, I said the cavegirl costume."

Smith turned and saw a woman in slacks and a white blouse. She said to Buell, "We can stow all that sex-kitten crap now, Buell."

Smith backed away from the woman. Buell looked surprised, then shrugged and walked over to pick up the Barsgod. The Russian-made Tokarev.38 in the woman's hand fired and took a crease out of the surface of the rock near Smith's weapon.

"Leave it alone, Abner," she said. She aimed the Tokarev squarely at Buell's chest. "I want the code that activates the missiles," she said. Smith thought her eyes were as dark and deadly as a shark's.

"What is this?" Buell said in bewilderment. "Are you with him?"

The woman named Marcia smiled. "I am with the Committee for State Security of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," she said proudly.

"You're a Russian? KGB?" Buell said.

"Why else would I have spent so much time with the likes of you?" she spat. "May I remind you, Abner, that time is of the essence? And I do have this gun. The code numbers, please."

"But the missiles are set to blow up Moscow too," Buell said.

"Not anymore. The American missiles have been redirected. Each of their missiles will strike an American city."

"Then think about yourself," Buell said desperately. "If they all go off in this country, you'll go too. You'll be incinerated."

"And Russia will rule the world," she said. "It is a small price to pay, to die for so glorious a cause."

"Then pay it now," came another voice. Smith wheeled as another figure hopped up onto the small plateau. It was a blond-haired woman with a British accent, and she moved quickly into a marksman's position and fired without hesitation at the Russian woman.

Even before Pamela Thrushwell's gun sounded, Marcia had fired. Both women careened backward as if two giant hands had slapped them off their feet. Pamela's abdomen was torn open in a red burst of blood and entrails; the Russian woman's once-spectacular face was an unrecognizable blob. Her legs twitched weakly, reflexively, once; then she lay still.

Smith started toward Buell, but the thin young man was holding the Barsgod.

"These women need help," Smith said.

"They'll get help in heaven," Buell said. "We all will, and we'll all be there soon."

"You're crazy," Smith said.

"Just bored," Buell said. A smile crossed his unlined face. "You know, I don't think I'll kill you after all. I think I'll just have you wait here with me for the big fireball in the sky. Would you like that?"

"You don't have a chance," Smith said.

"Why not?"

Smith started walking slowly toward Marcia. Her gun lay alongside her dead body.

"Because you can't stop me from doing what I want to do," Smith said. "That gun isn't loaded."

"We'll see about that," Buell said. He pointed the gun at the ground. Smith stopped and watched. Buell squeezed the trigger. The gun fired, the bullet hit the rocky plateau, and Smith dove behind Marcia's body. The plateau exploded with a rush of sound and the shell shattered, sending jagged pieces of metal scattering everywhere, twinkling in the reflecting sunshine like a shower of stars. The body shielding Smith thunked as shell fragments tore into it.

One of the pieces kicked back and embedded in Abner Buell's brain. He dropped the Barsgod and sank slowly to his knees. His body twitched, and then there was another muffled explosion, as the fragment itself exploded again, this time inside Buell's brain. He pitched forward, his face hitting the rock. He did not move.

Smith raised himself slowly from the ground, stunned that he himself was unharmed, that all the shrapnel had missed him. Buell's head looked like a macabre Halloween mask. The eyes had been exploded from their sockets. His teeth lay like charred kernels of corn on the ground beside him. His slicked hair was now matted red and flecked with bits of soft gray tissue, spilled over from his brain through the gaping hole in the top of his skull.

Shaking violently, Smith stood up to full height. Don't lose it now, he told himself. He had been prepared for death, but death had passed him by. Now he had to force his thoughts to other things. Like dismantling Buell's computer. Like ending the sequence that would result in Russia and America both firing their missiles into America's heartland. That had to be done first.

He owed it. To a lot of people. To Remo and to Chiun.

He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked over the cliff's edge down toward the field. The two bodies appeared to have vanished.

Who could have taken them?

He scanned the horizon, feeling a rising tide of anxiety well up inside him. For some reason, losing their bodies seemed as tragic as losing the men themselves. Remo and Chiun had been sacrificed for the most worthy of causes; even in Smith's last day in hell, he would be able to say that much in defense of himself. But to lose their bodies--

He was filled with shame and he could do nothing else but sink to the ground, surrounded by the three grotesquely mutilated corpses, and cry like a lost child.

He sobbed for Remo, the innocent he had betrayed so easily; for Chiun, whom he had forced, in his old age, to kill his own son; and he wept for himself, a tired, bitter old man, who no longer dreamed dreams but only lived nightmares.

He never heard the footsteps approaching. But then, no one ever heard them.

"Ever wish you had a camera?" It was Remo's voice.

Smith looked up as Chiun clucked disdainfully. They both stood in front of Smith.

"You're alive," he said.

"Most perceptive, Emperor," said Chiun fawningly, bowing low.