Warren Murphy: The Final Death

She laughed again and looked back in triumph. The man had stopped growing larger. Mary smirked. But now the hook was getting larger. Mary suddenly lost her sense of humor.

She ignored the swirling sunset out the front as she watched, in dread fascination. The hook seemed to float alongside the plane in slow motion. It turned slowly in the air, getting bigger and bigger. Then it was lifesize right in front of her face.

Then her view shattere'd. There was a cracking scream and then a violent pressure, as if someone had dropped a barbell on her chest. She watched as every loose object in her plane broke loose in the rush of wind. She watched her flight plan fly up, her silver chromatic two-color pen, her sunglasses and her leather attache case. She saw her auburn hair streak across her vision and she slowly wondered why her seat belt had not snapped so she would be sucked out too.

She held on tightly to the throttle and looked down. Coming out of her stomach was the tail end of a meat hook.

The point and catch of the metal had rammed through her body and locked out the back of her pilot's seat.

Mary threw her head back and howled like a drowning wolf. She opened her eyes and saw the horizon stretched out in front of her in a slash. From the top left of her broken windshield to the bottom right. Like the edge of a guillotine blade. Like the edge of the leader's fingernail.

Then the ground filled her vision and then nothing. She did not even have the time to feel pain. She did not even see the engine explode into the cockpit with the raging force of a full tank of gas. She did not even know that when the airport emergency crew put out the fire at the end of runway three and found what was left of her body that the meat hook looked like just another piece of melted metal.

She never knew that when the dull, green cannister melted, the fire evaporated the white mist immediately. She never knew that the control-tower man reported to the board of inquiry that she had shown signs of drunkeness and hysteria just before take-off.

And she never knew that the man who had come across five runways to get to her, the man who could move his body in such a way that light did not reflect off it toward the control tower, the man who could move so that he would never be where any member of the ground crew was looking, the man who had hurled the cold, bloody meat hook into her cockpit, had stood by the burning, wrecked carcass of her plane just after it had crashed, spread his arms and said, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"It's done, oh leader," said a voice in room 1824, the Houston Sheraton. "The meat eaters have gone to their Final Deaths."

The leader gripped the heads of the green-fanged dragon arm rests in supplication. He had waited, for what seemed like eons, for those very words to be spoken. He would not worry if they were not spoken by his female translator's voice as he had expected. For they were spoken in Chinese. And they were spoken.

The male voice had said that the stomach desecrators had gone on to their Final Deaths. Which meant that now he could go on to his last reward. He could enter the afterlife and join his ancestors, his loved ones, and companions. His gamble had paid off. The doubt of entrusting his creed's age-old secrets to paid mercenaries was over. They had done their jobs. The objective of their creed had been achieved. The leader sighed.

"It is good," he said.

"No," said a high-pitched Oriental voice in another tongue. "It is not good. It is evil."

The leader knew the language. It was Korean.

Remo and Chiun stood before the blood-red chair and its wizened occupant in the darkened hotel suite. One overhead 40 watt bulb shone down between the three, bathing their faces in dim, yellow light.

The leader tensed and sucked in his breath.

"Sinanju," he exhaled.

"Yes," said Chiun. "And your turn has come."

The leader's white brows came together in a "V," the lines in his face deepened, then, he relaxed and smiled.

"It shall be as it is," he said, waving a hand. "But surely you must understand. You, who live by a belief as old as mine. You must know the honor and dedication that drove me on."

Chiun shook his head gravely. "Sinanju is not a belief," he intoned. "It is a way of life. A way of life we do not force onto others. Few are blessed with the honor that is Sinanju." The Master looked at Remo. "We would not have it any other way."

"So it is not done," said the leader with sudden apprehension.

"No, it is not," said Chiun, "The only ones cursed with the Final Death are your amateur help,"

The Korean leaned in to hiss into the leader's ear.

"You could have finished us as easily as drowning a child. Yea, as old and blind as you are. You had only to face us yourself and your creed could have ruled the earth again."

The Master rose to his full height.

"But you diluted your wisdom with the stupidity of others until you were no more dangerous than a dying wind. So now you must pay."

"Yes," said the leader, anxious to join his creed in the afterlife. "I am ready. Do it now. Kill me."

Chiun stepped back. "Yes, you will die," he said. "But we will not kill you. For you are of the undead, and it is written that only in death are you truly alive. So it follows that only in life are you truly dead."

The leader sat still, drinking in Chiun's words. Then, before the full meaning of those words dawned on him, before he could drive his own fingernail into his neck to escape, Remo moved.

His right hand chopped just under the leader's ear, stopping all movement, paralysing all limbs as the left hand sped forward, faster than the eye could follow, faster than skin could react, faster than bone could break, to snake into the leader's skull, to shave a part of the leader's brain, then withdraw, without stopping movement to join the right hand again at Remo's side.

The leader still sat. No cut appeared on his skin. No break could be discerned upon his skull. His eyes were closed, but the heart still beat, the blood still flowed, the mind still worked.

But the electrical impulses that guided the muscles went no further than the top of his spine. The leader's mind no longer had any direct control of his body. The brain still functioned but his limbs would not respond to his orders. He was trapped.

"See?" said Remo to Chiun. "I didn't bend my elbow that time."

The Houston doctors marvelled at the patient. The old Chinese was almost an exact replica of the case of the Massachusetts girl who had been in a coma since birth.

He, like she, was still alive, but he, like she was unaware of that fact. An incredible case. The Houston doctors were pleased and honored to get it.

They had warned the man who committed him that there was very little chance of his ever recovering.

"That's all right," said the man. "Just keep my grandfather alive as long as possible."

They had warned the man that with the new life-sustaining techniques, it was quite conceivable that the old Oriental could outlive them all.

"That's fine," said the man. "I'd like to think of him as a memorial to the family."

They had warned the man that this sort of prolonged treatment would be very expensive.

"That's fine too," said the man, plopping down five piles of hundred dollar bills. "Money is no object."

The doctors had no more warnings. After they checked the authenticity of the bills, they hoped that Mr. Nichols' grandfather would live a long and full life in the intensive-care unit and that Mr. Nichols and his father would visit any time they pleased.

"Well, actually," said Remo, "we're going out of town for a long time. Just, please, keep granddaddy alive."

The doctors sympathized and wished Mr. Nichols and his father well, even though they could not figure out how, medically speaking, a tall, white, dark-haired American was born to such a short, white-haired, yellow-skinned man.