Warren Murphy - Skin Deep

Remo exhaled noisly. "Well, you're not staying here. You can go conscious or unconscious. Pick one."

Then Caan screamed, a blood-curdling shriek.

"Oh, balls," Remo said as the door flung open and four uniformed guards rushed into the room. "Get out of the way," he said to Caan, shoving the pilot into a corner.

He worked them all at once. One slashing hand went to a throat, dropping the soldier on the spot. At the same time, he sent a knee into another man's ribcage, embedding the bones deep in the man's lungs and heart. He smashed a temple with a fast three-finger attack, then flew feet first into the last soldier, collapsing his chest cavity. It was over in seconds. They had all died instantly.

He grabbed Caan by the scruff of his neck. "I don't want to have to carry you out of here," he said to the cringing pilot. "But if you pull that trick again, I'm going to have to. I've got an old man to check on, and then I'm coming back here, I don't want you around. People are going to get hurt."

"You're an American, aren't you?" Caan asked, squinting at the stranger who could fight better than any commando.

"Yes," Remo said. "And so are you. Try not to forget it next time, okay?"

"I am a Jew," he said quietly, as Remo led him into the maze of underground corridors.

A half-mile or more farther on, deep in the cave complex, the corridor— now little more than a narrow stone walkway— emptied into a massive hall.

The sight was incredible. The huge area, obviously once the main chamber of the cave, was filled with military machinery and soldiers. There were dozens of them, all in the nondescript uniforms he had seen before, but the men in the cave wore armbands bearing insignia of the red and black Nazi swastika.

The walls were hung with forty-foot portraits of long-dead leaders of the Third Reich. At the far end of the cave, draped in thick folds of black, stood an awesome painting of Adolf Hitler.

"Zoran's got a freaking army," Remo mused aloud.

For the first time since they left the room, Caan spoke. "I think there's a channel near here," he said. "I heard the guards talking about it. But we'll have to get there through the hall."

"We'll stay near the wall." Remo looked out. "I think I see it. About thirty feet to the left?"

Caan nodded.

"It's a clear run from here. Let's go." He sprinted out, supple as a cat. Caan followed.

All Remo could see of the channel was a cave opening, but it was exactly what Remo was looking for. It was a perfect hiding place, dark and unobstrusive. Remo darted in. "Hurry up," he whispered.

But Caan hung back at the mouth of the opening, directly beneath the arc lights of the massive work chamber.

"Get in here, will you?"

"You are an American," Caan said glassily. He pressed a button on the wall, and a steel mesh screen crackling with electricity, slammed down between them.

Remo touched his hands to the mesh. The jolt threw him backward into the darkness.

"I could not let you undermine my mission," the pilot said without feeling, staring at Remo's astonished face peering at him from the blackness of his prison.

They faced each other that way for what seemed like an eternity. Then a group of soldiers came quietly for Caan and led him away. He never looked back.

?Chapter Thirteen

Smith sat down creakily on a rock beside the lake at the base of the great waterfall. "Magnificent," he huffed, watching the thundering cascade through a film of sweat. "Just let me catch my breath."

"Wait here, Emperor. I will seek out the girl."

"What's that?" Smith pointed to a high, frail ledge jutting out over the crest of the fall. On it was a speck of red.

"It is Ana," Chiun said, puzzled.

She stood on the ledge for several seconds, her body rigid, her black hair swirling around her like smoke. Then, lifting her face to the sky, she stepped forward.

"Ana," Chiun called.

But the girl didn't stop. Her hands at her sides, she careened off the ledge like a wooden doll, falling end over end toward the rockstrewn waters below.

The instant that she dropped, before Smith's horrified eyes, Chiun was propelling himself over the surface of the lake in a dive so shallow and swift that he appeared to be flying. He clambered up onto the tallest of the boulders at the bottom of the waterfall and waited for the young woman to finish her descent. At the moment when she would have smashed against the rocks, Chiun raised his arms, caught her by the base of her spine and the back of her neck, and carried her back to shore.

She was unconscious. Before she could come to, Smith had joined them, panting from the exertion of the climb.

"That was remarkable, Chiun," he said. "I had no idea—"

"Silence. Let her awaken peacefully." He touched the girl on a spot just below her collarbone.

Her eyes fluttered open. "You should not have saved me," she said.

"That was for me to decide," Chiun said gently.

"I have brought only sorrow and pain to those who love me. Even Remo. For his kindness to me, I have returned cruelty. Zoran will kill him now, surely."

"He's still alive," Smith said with relief.

"Zoran has locked him in a channel of the cave," she said. "I just came from there. He is sealed in by an electric fence and surrounded by Zoran's soldiers. He can never get out. I have killed him, as surely as if I held a knife to his throat myself."

She choked on her own sobs. "Let me die. Please, Master. Do not save me the next time."

Chiun spoke crisply. "It is not in my power to keep you from killing yourself if that is your wish. No one can judge the suffering in another's heart. But I tell you this: your death will do nothing to help your people now. It will ease your pain, perhaps, but no good will come of it."

"But I betrayed your own son!" she screamed.

Chiun dried her face with one long sleeve of his kimono. "If you wish to aid us, you will be much more help alive than dead."

The girl blushed. She looked first at Smith and then Chiun. "How can I help?" she asked softly.

"Lead us to him."

"Zoran will find you. He sees everything. You'll be killed, surely."

Chiun shrugged philosophically. "We must all enter the Void at our time," he said. "To fear death is to fear life."

Ana stared at the ground, ashamed. "Yes," she said. "It is life I have been fearing."

"No one need be another man's slave," Chiun said.

Ana didn't answer. Picking up a twig, she drew a diagram on the soft earth. "This is the layout of Zoran's cave," she said. She pointed out the wide mouth of the cave entrance leading deep underground to the Great Hall and to the small cave, like an appendix, where Remo was being held behind the electrified steel mesh.

"A few rooms are above ground. They are for Zoran's use. Some even have windows. But most are deep within the earth." She drew a wobbly line leading from a spot in the Great hall near Remo's prison to the outside of the cave. "This is a secret route leading from below the roots of a tree into the Great Hall," she said. "It was dug by children. Even the strongest security measures cannot stop a curious child from finding a way into a forbidden place."

"It is ever thus," Chiun said.

As the girl had told them, there was a hollow beneath the roots of an immense yew tree near the edge of the rain forest, facing Zoran's high-domed cave.

"Now, Emperor," Chiun said in his most diplomatic manner. "If you will be so kind as to wait for us here—"

"I'm going in," Smith said.

"Ah..."

But Smith was already lowering himself under the tree's spreading roots, frowning as he squeezed into the narrow passage.

"Crazed," Chiun whispered to the girl. "I brought him along to drive the boat." He gestured for the girl to enter the hollow, then followed her to cover the rear.