Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

"What do you want now, Ray?" the madam asked irritably.

"1 beg your pardon," the man said in pear-shaped tones. "My captors wish me to bring them a bottle of tequila. Could 1 put you to the trouble?"

"Tell those suckers to buy their own hooch, Maestro," the madam bellowed. "They're getting enough for free as it is."

"Oh, 1 assure you, I'll pay for the bottles myself."

"Hold it, hold it," Remo said. "You're one of the MLF's hostages, right?"

"Yes." The man showed a mouthful of dazzling white teeth. "I'm Raymond Rosner. Are you one of the liberators?" He extended his hand.

Remo slapped it away. "I don't shake hands with anybody who wears plastic before noon. Why are you buying tequila for them?"

"Well, they lead a very trying life," Rosner said earnestly. "It's the least 1 can do for these fine young men in their noble cause."

"What cause?"

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"It's too complex to express in mere words."

"Try," Remo said.

The conductor blinked impatiently. "It is quite impossible for pampered capitalists such as ourselves to understand the inner rage of these valiant desperadoes. But I dig it. I absolutely dig it."

"Oh, I get it. You don't know what they want, either."

"Not really. Something about welfare. They abducted me from my apartment rather too hastily for us to enjoy a true rap session. But I'm sure they've got a good cause. I'm going to give a benefit performance for them after they release us."

"If they don't murder you first."

"We mustn't make generalizations about the lawlessness of the socio-economically repressed. Liberalism is more than just a word," Rosner said, winking. The wink changed iato a mask of pain as a fat Managuan rushed in and kicked him in the kidneys, sending him sprawling face down on the floor.

"Where dat tequila?"

"Coming, bro," Rosner moaned.

The Managuan stepped on his neck. "I ain't your brother, honkey." He swaggered out into the corridor, toward a heavy metal door. Remo followed him.

"Right on," he heard Rosner croak from the bedroom carpet.

The door led to a steamy, white tiled chamber dominated by a giant hot tub filled with revelers. Aside from the fat Managuan and his cronies, plus several beautiful girls who Remo assumed worked for the establishment, there was a portly lady in her fifties, with yellow Shirley Temple curls and an impending case of turkey neck, a balding, pig-eyed little man, a nubile young girl whose chest displaced at least twenty gallons of water, and a skinny, seedy, middle-aged fellow with mercurochrome-

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colored hair and a nose that seemed permanently engaged in the act of inhaling various drugs. There was something vaguely familiar about the man's distended nostrils.

"Hey, whoozat?" one of the Managuans asked, inclining a smoking joint toward Remo.

"I don't know, but he can come play in my bubble bath anytime," the fat lady squealed.

The young girl eyed Remo's physique and pronounced him "totally wow."

Remo looked around. The only member of the group of hostages and terrorists not immersed in the eight-foot round tub was a stringy, morose-looking man wrapped in a towel. He sat on a tile bench swigging periodically from a bottle of vodka.

"Bourgeois hedonists," the man growled in a thick Russian accent.

"Who're you?" Remo asked.

The man drank thoughtfully. "Who am I?" he mused. "What is 'I'? What is existence but the quintessential nothingness?"

"Forget it," Remo said. He walked over to a pile of dirty T-shirts and jeans. There was some grumbling from the hot tub as Remo scattered the clothes to reveal several shoddily constructed- explosives and an Uzi submachine gun.

"Oh, great," he said, as he dismantled the bombs. He noticed a pair of long legs in boots standing next to him.

"I'm Francine," the madam purred.

"1 recognized you." Remo's fingers moved swiftly.

"You're serious, aren't you?" she asked with some surprise. "About rescuing the hostages and my girls, I mean."

Remo expelled a gust of breath. "I'm supposed to rescue them. 1 don't have to take them seriously."

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A smile spread across Francine's face. "You're cute. Maybe you want to party?"

"Can it, lady. I left my traveler's checks at home."

"I take American Express." She gestured toward the tub. "Now just look at those people. They're having a wonderful time. That little man's a millionaire builder, and that's his wife beside him, with the cocaine spoon. The groupie's with Freakie Dreems, the rock star. You've heard of him, haven't you?"

So that was why the nose looked familiar. It had become famous twenty years ago, in the "ugly is sexy" movement that Mr. Dreems had pioneered.

"Who's that?" Remo inclined his head toward the man with the vodka.

"Oh, that's Ivan Nyrghazy, the Russian novelist. He defected to America two years ago. He moved into this building after his book, Nothing Is Everything was made into a TV miniseries."

"Uh," Remo said as he unraveled the fuses of the bombs. He stood up. "I guess that takes care of the explosives, at least."

"What'd he do?" the fat Managuan said, rising out of the tub like a tattooed porpoise in gold bikini trunks.

"I defused your bombs, Baby New Year. They could have gone off any minute."

"I'll tell you what's going to go off, nosy." He grabbed the machine gun. "This."

Freakie Dreems clutched his forehead. "What is this drug?" he rhapsodized. "It's bending my mind. I just thought I saw someone pick up a machine gun."

"Gag me with a spoon," the groupie said abstractedly.

The Managuan fired. Bullets sprayed around the tiled enclosure like popcorn. Remo flung himself into a recess in the wall. The groupie leaped out of the tub, shimmying

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frantically as a cloud of white bubbles traveled spectacularly from her neck to her ankles.

Remo peeked out at the barrage of gunfire coming his way.

The Russian drank. "A moment of boredom, then nothingness," he intoned.

"I face bullets for this?" Remo muttered. But he couldn't afford to think about that now. Pulling himself up the tile wall quickly, he somersaulted away toward the gunner. He landed with his feet in the Managuan's soft abdomen. The machine gun flew into the air. Remo caught it and wrapped it like a scarf around the man's neck.

A second Managuan charged him. As he came forward, Remo studied the man's chest. Standing among the garish lettering of his tattoo were five lonely hairs. Remo used them as his focus. He thrust at the chest and tore off the man's tattoo, along with several layers of epidermis. The Managuan screamed.

"You pay for that, mother," another MLF representative said, pulling a knife from his beret and throwing it expertly toward Remo's throat. Remo stepped aside and waited for the blade to come within range. Then he flicked it with the end of his fingernail to send it boomeranging back to its owner.

The Managuan's face registered blank terror. He turned to run, but before he reached ninety degrees, the knife struck home, sliding through his temples with a swish. The Managuan stood still for a moment, then fell, the knife quivering in his forehead like a large silver fish.

"Grody to the max," the groupie said, chewing her gum energetically.

Francine wound her silken arms around Remo as the last two Managuans pulled themselves cautiously out of the hot tub and stalked over the tiles. "Violence excites me," she whispered, breathing heavily. "How about you?"

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"It wears me out," Remo said, throwing off her embrace and darting forward to collar the two men. He picked them up, one in each hand, and propelled them against the tile wall near the tub. They landed with a splinter of bones, then slid noiselessly into the water, their corpses draping themselves over the hostages.