Warren Murphy: Killing Time

Vaux began to remove the vials of the precious mix­ture a little at a time from the laboratory. He was fright­ened of the first theft, but when no one even noticed, he took more and more. By 1937, he had removed some 1200 cases of the drug and stored it on his fami­ly's estate in upstate New York.

Then, in 1938, Germany invaded Poland, and the Pentagon now wanted procaine. It was too late, as Vaux knew it would be. A clerk with a penchant for in­ventory figures discovered that 1200 cases of the drug were missing. In a eolossally stupid move, the govern­ment took action against Vaux, and the affair mush­roomed into a fiasco that ended with Vaux's expatria­tion and the end of the procaine research program. The experiments were abandoned, and the research facility in Enwood sold.

It was sold, through intermediaries, to Vaux's fami!y. And while Vaux himself was in Geneva, starting up the procaine age retardant clinic that would begin his fortune, the family quietly shipped the 1200 cases of the drug to him.

Thus began the career of Felix Foxx. With his new name and the clinic in Switzerland, he was making enough money to start an army. And if the small avail­able supplies of procaine had to be augmented by an occasional "horse" or two like Irma Schwartz, no one would notice. His dream had begun. By the time he

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moved his operation back to the house in Pennsyl­vania, he was ready to make it a reality.

Riley trained for six weeks alone at the mansion. When he was in peak physical condition, Foxx sent him out to recruit the others for the Team.

The other members of the Team were much younger than Riley, but superior combat men, every one of them. They came from different branches of the military, and for different reasons. There was the ma­rine who was busted for insubordination; the sailor who could outfight every man in his platoon with his bare hands; the Air Force cadet who got booted out for attacking his D.I. Later, there was the Green Beret who lost it somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam and went on a spree of indiscriminate murder from one end of the Mekong to the other. There was Davenport and a lot of guys like him. And the mercs. The merce­naries were the best of the lot. They killed because kill­ing was what they did, and they did it without question.

Killing was the one thing that held the Team to­gether. Every one of the men Foxx had selected knew how to kill. More important: They wanted to kill. In five years, Foxx had developed the beginnings of the greatest combat force in the world. The Team. And the Team belonged to him, body and soul.

Interested countries had financed Foxx and his Team right from the beginning, with shipments of gold. By 1960, the Team was ready for its first real mission. Panama hired Foxx's Team to attack the U.S. embassy on September 17. In 1963, Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated. The Team was there. In 1965, a prominent Cuban dissi­dent met the Team on a back street in Havana. His body was found three weeks later, mutilated beyond recognition. In 1968, the dictator of a small island

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power carried out his own counterrevolution against his Soviet superiors. The Team stayed long enough to see a new puppet regime placed in power on the day of the funeral.

The decade passed, and then another. And when­ever the leaders of a nation had required some messy business that had to be taken care of in the swiftest way possible, Foxx and the Team were called in. Ev­ery country in the world knew of the Team except the United States of America, where the Team was based.

America never knew because Foxx kept clean in America. So clean that he had written two books about diet and exercise under his new name to allay any possible suspicions and to give him a record with the IRS.

The books were a good cover. The best, and noth­ing but the best would do now, because a new mission had come in. The most interesting mission of them all.

Ruomid Haiaffa, the strongman leader of Zadnia, had commissioned Foxx and his Team to assassinate the military leaders of the United States. This, Haiaffa said, would weaken the country's military organiza­tion. Haiaffa stipulated that the Secretary of the Air Force, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Army were to be first on the list of hits.

"What about the Secretary of Defense?" Foxx asked.

Haiaffa dismissed the thought with a contemptuous wave. "A businessman," Haiaffa said with a smirk. "We will leave him to his graphs and his charts. I wish to eliminate the men of might in the United States. Not a pencil pusher with his head in his behind."

Haiaffa had frightened him. He was a big man, with a demented strength that seemed to emanate from his madman's eyes in waves.

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"You will do this for me," Halaffa said, and it was not a request.

"Yes," Foxx answered. "I-will. Is that all?"

Haiaffa burst into laughter. He laughed so hard that Foxx started to laugh, too, a small hysterical titter of a laugh, until Halaffa stopped suddenly and there was nothing on his face but rage. "Fool! It is only the be­ginning. The real assassination will only come after you have liquidated the first three men."

"The-the real assassination?" Foxx asked.

"The president. You will kill the president of the United States. And then, when that odious nation has become too crippled to fight back, I will come to rule the garbage that infests that huge country and show them what a true leader is like."

Foxx shivered. Later, when he related the story to Riiey, he shivered again. "His eyes," Foxx said again and again. "Crazy eyes."

"That's about it," Riley said. "He's going to Zadnia now. He'll switch to a commercial flight in Boston and reach Zadnia by tonight." The wind was gusting through the pines now, and for the first time Remo felt the chill in the air. "Can we have the drugs now?"

"Are you nuts?' Remo said. "After what you've told me you're going to do?"

"We can't do anything," Riley said quietly. "Foxx is gone. He didn't bring us any new supplies. Guinea pigs aren't the only things that die without the injec­tions."

Remo looked over at the group of soldiers. They were trembling with cold. Their eye sockets looked hollow and dark. Some of the men had fainted during Riley's story. Remo thought of Posie back at Shan­gri-la. "Are you telling me you're going to die?"

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Riley shrugged. "Maybe not. Maybe Foxx'll come back."

"Then !'d be crazy not to kill you now," Remo said.

One of the soldiers seemed to be strangling on his own spittle. Two others dropped to their knees, their eyes rolling. "You gave your word," Riley said.

Remo turned to Chiun. "Watch the case," he said. He went to the soldiers and methodically destroyed every weapon in sight. Then he made a body search of each man and smashed the concealed knives and guns. That still didn't eliminate the possibility of a hid­den cache of weapons somewhere on the grounds.

"How long will the stuff in the case last?" Remo asked.

"Maybe five days," Riley said.

"What happens after that?"

"I don't know. Maybe there's a program some­where, like a methadone clinic." He grinned bitterly. "More likely, we'll die. But I'd rather die five days from now, if I've got a choice." Remo studied him. "Your word," the soldier reminded him. "I kept mine."

With a wrench of indecision, Remo handed the case over. "Take off. All of you, together, up that hill." He pointed to a rounded knoll, where he could see clearly to the top. "And then keep on going. No breaks for a quickie, nothing. Just go."

"Yes, sir," Riley said. He picked up the case. Remo saw that the man's knees were wobbling. Those left standing in the crowd of sick soldiers helped those on the ground to walk, and the group shambled off to­gether.