Warren Murphy - Last Drop

He desensitized his skin to the heat. His hair was singeing; he could smell it. Pools of the goo, liquifying fast, gathered around his feet as the plastic sloughed off Remo's skin in syrupy sheets.

In the closet, behind the gusts of flame, was an empty elevator shaft. From that shaft now issued a noise above the crackle and rush of the fire, something that sounded like an engine. And it was coming from above. From the roof.

Of course, Remo thought. The elevator went up as well as down. The dome.

Feeling his eyelashes burning off, he stretched out his hand and worked his fingers. They moved.

There was another way to the roof. The stairway would be on fire by now, but he could run it. His legs were free enough.

But inside him! The coil, the thread, wound so tight, vibrating so hard it was going to strangle him.

"Chiun!" he called.

And then he understood.

He picked up the telephone, blistering and soft now, and dialed the international routing to Folcroft.

It was answered on the first ring. "This is not a secure line," he said quickly. "What does Chiun want?"

"For you to escape from there," Chiun's reedy voice piped.

"Thanks for reminding me. That all?"

"Get back here immediately," Smith interrupted.

"And I repeat, this is not a secure line."

"Look, secure or not, this place is on fire. Trace this next call. It's to somewhere in the States, I think, but I don't know where. And make it fast. The circuits are burning." He depressed the cradle, released it, dropped the phone, and pressed the red button twice. Then he ran for the stairwell.

?Chapter Fifteen

The dome was open, its half-sphere tilted back like an oyster. Inside it was what Remo had expected from the sound of its engine: a combat-sized Grauman helicopter.

Remo was running at full speed. The blaze in the stairwell had seared off what remained of the immobilizing plastic that once coated him. He saw Arnold in the pilot's seat, wearing a ludicrously large crash helmet, look down at him with alarm while he worked the controls frantically.

Preparing with a low coil, Remo sprang upward, grasping the runner toward the tail end of the machine with both hands. The helicopter swayed, tilting precariously with the imbalance.

Arnold tried to level the vehicle, but without sufficient speed, all he could manage was to drift at low altitude, weaving like a dying insect with something black and mobile dangling from one side of it.

In the growing distance, yellow flames tongued out of the house. From Remo's vantage point, Esmeralda's mansion was like a shimmering vision, its contours wavy behind the heat, its windows exploding, sending sparkling fragments of glass shooting into the black night like stars.

He managed to get one leg up on the runner, then another. Then, scuttling upside down, he made his way forward toward the cockpit.

The chopper righted itself. With Remo's weight away from the tail, Arnold could maneuver the helicopter with ease.

Remo raised an arm to reach the door, when suddenly the helicopter flew into a deep dive. He had to retreat to his crouched position on the runner.

They were descending fast. Ahead loomed a broad, black shape, only distinguishable from the rest of the night-darkened ground by its dense color. The helicopter approached it, picking up speed as it did.

Remo hung on. He knew what the black shape was now. He was too close to miss it. It was an expanse of trees, the same copse where he had left the pilot Thompson to die. The trees were directly below him now, so close that their tops scraped Remo's back.

At the end of the grove, the chopper gained elevation, turned around, and headed for it again.

The kid's trying to scrape me off. Like mud from a boot. A sharp branch skimmed deep over Remo's back, ripping his shirt and gouging a deep groove into his flesh that made him suck in his breath.

In the next instant, a loud report sounded and a sharp crack whistled past Remo's ear. He looked up. Arnold had a pistol in his hand.

As he watched, Arnold squeezed off three more shots. There was limited space to move on the runner of the helicopter, but Remo managed to dodge each of the bullets as they came. The fifth shot grazed his forehead. It was a flesh wound, and a minor one at that, but he was bleeding like a pig. The blood streaming into his eyes blinded him for a moment with a thick curtain of red.

In that moment, Arnold fired for the sixth time. The bullet took Remo in the side of the hand. He yelped. Involuntarily the hand sprang away, but the other held fast. He blinked away the blood from his eyes. Above him, Arnold was smiling.

"You little bastard," Remo muttered.

He gathered his strength. Breathe. Breathe, the way Chiun taught you. In and out, steady. Control the shock in your body, and your body will heal itself. Just hang on.

The trees appeared again, their branches cutting deep. Remo concentrated on breathing. He breathed, and the pain subsided, and soon the trees were far below him again and the helicopter was circling for another round.

"Okay," Remo said aloud. "You want to play games? You just got yourself a playmate, sonny."

Arnold had the helicopter and the hardware, and that was good. Because as far as Remo was concerned, anyone inside a machine was at a disadvantage to a free man working under his own power. Machines didn't have will. Without will, a thing only operated until something went wrong. Without will, the smallest setback could stop the works.

Men weren't like that. They slogged on with wooden legs and broken hearts and cancerous bellies and eyes that didn't see anymore. They kept going without any reason in the world except that they wanted to find out what was coming next.

Remo was a man. No pimple factory with a gun and a helicopter was going to stop him.

Slowly, hand over hand, his legs sliding, he made his way back toward the rear of the runner. When he'd gone as far as he could, he swung his legs and hooked them over the tail. Then he followed with the rest of his weight, taking care to stay on one side of the tail to keep it out of balance, and bounced.

The chopper swerved. Arnold, close to the trees, tried to gain altitude, but Remo had changed his tactics. He was jumping from one side of the tail section to the other, landing in crazy angles that made the rudder veer wildly.

The helicopter dipped. From time to time Remo caught a glimpse of Arnold's frantic face. He was trying to watch Remo, the controls, and the view in front of him at the same time. His shoulders worked. He was obviously reloading his gun.

When he'd finished, he aimed out the cockpit window, but it was easy for Remo to lose the bullet from his position on the tail. He jumped to the other side, sending the helicopter into a sharp curve. The bullet hit the rudder.

The chopper dived. The engine sputtered. A stall. Inside the cockpit, Arnold hammered at the controls, but the trees kept coming closer, closer. If it crashed headfirst, the engine would catch fire, Remo knew, and with it would go his only chance to get out of Peruvina before daybreak.

He waited. Then, just before the moment of impact, Remo leapt into the air, turned a fast double somersault to gain the weight and momentum he needed, and landed square on the tail's center.

The helicopter landed flat in the trees, without an explosion.

Arnold's arm extended out from the window, the gun in his hand firing in every direction.

"Forget it, kid," Remo said, snatching the weapon away from him through the open window.

Arnold stared at him. Remo was standing erect, balanced on the tops of the trees. Although he had used enough weight to move a helicopter, Remo now seemed to be weightless. Not a branch cracked beneath his feet. Not a leaf moved.