Warren Murphy - Skin Deep

"Nie wieder," Lustbaden shouted. The girl screamed. "Nie wieder!"

The knife quavered, but did not fall.

"Nie wieder!" Lustbaden roared.

"You do not control me," she said slowly, struggling to speak. Her body was trembling. Spittle gathered around her lips. She would not be able to withstand him much longer, she knew.

"Nie wieder," he said again, teasingly this time, his half-moon smile returning. The girl doubled over in pain.

Caan stood, frightened, a chill like a razor running down his back. Nie wieder. Nie wieder?

"The plane, sir," a soldier said, tapping his arm.

He looked at the young man in bewilderment. "The plane? Yes, the plane," he said ambling off.

He didn't even see the lepers pick up their rocks and clods of earth and hurl them toward Lustbaden and his men.

"Ana is right," someone called. "There are worse things than death."

"You murdered our chief."

"Zoran is a liar and a killer!"

A stone struck Lustbaden on the shoulder. The villagers cheered in approval.

"Fire," he shouted to his troops. "Kill all of these diseased scum. They never deserved to live in the first place. Fire, I say!"

The shower of bullets sounded like thunder, puntuated by the screams of the wounded and dying. But the lepers refused to run. Watching their neighbors drop beside them, an unspoken bond seemed to rise among the survivors and command them to stay and fight the soldiers with whatever weapons they could find— to stand and die.

A young boy took Ana's arm and helped her to her feet. You are brave," he said gravely. "Fight with us now. Do not fear pain." He picked up Timu's knife and handed it to her. "This belongs to you now," he said, clasping her fingers over the hilt.

At the edge of the rain forest, Chiun dropped the bundle of herbs and leaves in his arms and ran for the melee. He could hardly believe his eyes. Timu, along with a score of villagers, lay dead by the hut. Lustbaden's SPIDER corps was picking off the unarmed lepers in a bloody massacre of the people his ancestor had sworn to defend.

With a high leap that made him seem to float in midair, he descended on the soldiers with the fury of a jungle cat. The Nazis fired randomly, but their weapons were of no use against this small old man who possessed the force of ten divisions. He traveled from one soldier to the next, shattering their pistols and rifles with quick, complex strokes of his hands.

The lepers fought with him, cheering each other on as the soldiers dropped beneath Chiun's killing blows. When at last the few who survived had dropped their weapons and fled, Chiun stopped.

"Who is named successor as chief?" he shouted to the throng of villagers.

The young man with Ana stepped forward. "I am, Master," he said.

"Henceforth, call no man Master," Chiun said. "You are evenly matched, now that the soldiers have been deprived of their guns. Lead your people into battle with these evil ones who run from you, and do not fail."

The boy brightened. "I will," he said. And with a cry he brought the lepers forward to fight.

Smith looked up from his straw mat in the hut, trying to mask the pain from Lustbaden's kicks to his ribs and back.

"Is Lustbaden alive?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Why did you stop?"

Chiun answered softly. "With my skills, I can bring safety to the lepers. But only they can win back the pride that Zoran and his men have taken from them."

He wrapped Smith's ribs. "I must leave again. There is something I need to attend to."

"Remo?" Smith asked.

"Remo."

Smith took hold of Chiun's sleeve. "He's dead," he said quietly. "The plane. Stop the plane."

"Remo first." Chiun left.

Behind the straw hut he knelt, his eyes half closed, his heartbeat slowed almost to coldness. He sent his mind ranging through space, seeking to connect with another beyond the hearing of every other being in the universe. Chiun signaled only one word: Shiva.

You are created Shiva, the destroyer, death, the shatterer of worlds, the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju.

And in the cave, deep in hypnotic sleep, Remo stirred.

?Chapter Twenty

The SPIDER corps was gone.

The bodies of their dead lay strewn in a mire of blood and mud extending from the village clearing to the edge of the rain forest. Lustbaden alone remained, crying out frantically to his lifeless protectors.

"Get up!" he commanded, kicking a fallen soldier where he lay. "This is insubordination. This is treachery." He shook the corpse of another. "Do not betray me!" he raged, his white coat now bloodsoaked and torn.

Led by Ana and the new chief, the lepers converged on him.

"He is mad," the boy said.

"He has always been mad," Ana answered, steadyng the knife in her grip. "And we were mad to listen to him."

Lustbaden turned, his eyes wild. "I am not mad," he shouted hoarsely. "I am the greatest medical mind the world has ever known. You dare to come to me like this, you foul creatures with blood on your hands?"

"We will welcome your blood on our hands," Ana said, swinging the knife high over her head.

Suddenly Lustbaden laughed, the highpitched giggle of a girl. "You forget," he whispered, his madness darting like lights out of the blue eyes. "The birds."

He held up his left arm, showing the wristwatch with the ultrasonic alarm. "I'll call them," he threatened. "I'll call them and you'll all die. Every filthy, stinking last one of you."

"The birds," someone whispered.

"Zoran still has the birds."

"The birds will kill us."

The villagers began to disperse, crouching and fearful, seeking shelter in their huts. Their victory had vanished.

"Come back," Ana cried. "Can't you see? He would not release his birds. He is in the open with us. They would kill him, too."

"They won't kill me," Lustbaden said, his half-moon smile twitching. "Nothing can kill me." He pressed the button on his watch.

A high shriek like the wail of a ghoul pierced the air. In the distance, the dark shadow of a gull flapped toward them.

* * *

Remo awoke.

Wilhelm Wolfe, who sat beside him reading, looked up in surprise when Remo rose from the settee.

"Get out of my way," Remo said.

Wolfe attempted a smile, but it died on his face. There was something in Remo's countenance that frightened him down to his bones.

He picked up the red glass ball, its sparks still swirling inside. Remo swatted it away, shattering it in the air.

"What— what's gone wrong?" Wolfe said, more to himself than to Remo. He barreled around the room, opening drawers, searching frantically for some kind of weapon. At last he found a small silver pistol on the corner of a desk. Whirling around, he fired at Remo without taking aim.

Remo dodged the bullet easily. It came to rest in the wall behind him. "I thought you weren't going to try to kill me," he said. "Just you and me and the doc, remember? The three musketeers, sowing my Aryan seed for the glory of the Eighty-eighth Reich or whatever the hell it is."

With a sliding jump that took him completely across the room, Remo was on him, and the pistol was flying, and Wolfe cried out in alarm.

"I was only following orders. That's all. I meant you no harm personally."

"That's the biz, sweetheart." He grasped him by the back of the neck.

"Wait," Wolfe gasped, his eyes bulging. "Please."

Remo loosened his hold.

"I know that I must die," he said. The marks on his neck from Remo's hands stood out, raw and mottled. "Perhaps in another time, in other circumstances, we could have been friends." He shrugged. "That is of no consequence now. All I ask is that I be permitted to take my own life."

Remo considered. "Why?"

"I was born to an ancient and noble house. Dishonor would fall on the shadows of my ancestors if I were to be killed by a man with no weapons other than his hands."