Warren Murphy: Deadly Seeds

"Honnnnk," he snored on the intake. "Hnnnnnnk," he snored on the exhaust.

Remo sat up on the couch. He was about to make the decision, one he had made often before, that sleep this night would be impossible, when the telephone rang.

Chiun's snoring stopped abruptly but he slept on. Remo was at the phone halfway during the first ring. He picked it up.

"Hello."

He was answered with the click of someone hanging up.

Remo shrugged, and went back to the couch. Wrong number probably. If a man answers, hang up. At least the phone had stopped the snoring.

He lay back down on the couch.

"Hooonnnnnnk." Intake.

"Hooonnnnnnk." Exhaust.

"Shit." Remo.

He left the suite, went downstairs out into the early morning air of Dayton, filled his lungs deeply, and immediately wished he hadn't. There were trace elements of arsenic, carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, cyannic gas, hydrochloric acid, swamp gas, and methane.

And then he forgot the air as he sensed something else, an unconscious pressure on him as if he were living inside a dark, opaque balloon and a giant was squeezing the sides. He stopped for a moment, not breathing, not moving, just sensing and knew he felt it.

He turned toward the left, began to step in that direction, then wheeled and came back toward the right. Behind him, he heard a soft spat, a click, and a thud.

He did not turn to see what it was. It was a bullet. The pressure had been a marksman zeroing in on him. From the way the bullet had hit behind him, smacking the hotel wall then a water outlet pipe and then the sidewalk, Remo judged it came from the roof of a building across the street.

That was the phone call. To try to get him outside.

Remo moved along the sidewalk, apparently walking casually. To a passerby, he would seem to be another insomniac out for an aimless early morning stroll. But to Anthony Polski, atop the roof of an old apartment building across the street, Remo seemed to be moving like a squirrel. A burst forward, a pause, a burst, a pause. It was as if Remo were in darkness and was illuminated only by the flashing of a strobe light at random intervals.

Polski sighted down the barrel of his silencer equipped rifle, peering carefully through the light-gathering scope. There he was. Moving ahead slowly. He led Remo just a hair with the rifle, then softly squeezed the trigger. But even as he squeezed and the rifle softly fired, he knew he had missed. In the scope he saw Remo stop, pause, then start again at a slightly different angle.

The bullet splatted almost quietly against a wall ahead of Remo. Angry now, Polski fired again, allowing for Remo's pause, allowing for his stopping, leading him, but then stopping the lead and shooting right at where Remo stood. When he fired, he knew he had missed again. The bullet hit into the wall behind Remo.

On the street, Remo had learned enough. Only one marksman up there. If there had been more, shots would have bracketed him by now. He moved into a doorway. Across the street, Polski saw him move into the doorway. He circled the edges of the doorway with a slight movement of the tip of his rifle barrel. Sooner or later, the bastard'd have to come out of that doorway and it wouldn't be any stop-and-go movement then. He would have to come straight out and when he did, Polski would let him have it right in the chest. He lay there, arms propped up on the slight roof overhang, the tip of the rifle moving back and forth gently, and waited.

"Pardon me, boy, is this the Pennsylvania Station? I'm the Minister of Silly Walks."

The voice came from behind Polski. He rolled onto his back, wheeling the gun around, pointing it at the other end of the roof. There he was. The bastard was standing there, thirty feet away, smiling.

"No. This is the morgue," said Polski grimly and he jerked down on the trigger of the rifle.

The shot missed. The bastard wasn't there. There he was, six feet off to the side and closing.

"Son of a bitch," Polski yelled and fired again. But he missed and Remo kept moving, sideways, frontwards, skittering crablike across the roof and Polski had but one more chance and even before he fired that shot, he knew, with a sickening thump deep into inside his stomach, that it would miss too.

Polski felt the rifle come loose from his hands and then he was standing there, smiling down at Polski, the rifle held loosely across his two hands. He had thick wrists, Polski saw.

Polski kicked up at the man standing above him, aiming a hard leather-clad toe toward the groin, but that missed too and Polski gave up and just lay there.

"Who sent you here, fella?" asked Remo.

"Nobody."

"Let's try again. Who sent you here?"

"Shoot and get it over with," said Polski.

"No such luck, junior," said Remo. Then Polski felt a pain in his shoulder, as if a shark had just bitten out a large chunk of it.

He wanted his shoulder back. "A contract. I got it by phone," he hissed, through pain-distorted lips.

"From who?"

"I don't know. It came on the phone and the money came by mail. I never saw nobody."

"Money? Tell me. What am I worth these days?"

"I got five thousand for you and they told me how to do it. From up here on the roof."

Remo squeezed, Polski pleaded, and Remo knew he was not lying. He released the shoulder. Polski cringed against the small brick wall atop the roof.

"What are you gonna do to me?"

"What would you do if you were me?"

"Yeah," said Polski. "But that was a contract. I didn't mean anything against you."

"Well, don't you go thinking that this means I don't like you," said Remo and then Polski saw a flash and then, not stars but one single bright star and then he felt nothing more, not himself being lifted up, not himself being dropped off the edge of the building, not himself getting tangled in the rope of the building's ancient metal flagpole. He came there to an abrupt stop, hanging off the flagpole like a pennant for a long-ago World Series.

Remo looked down on Polski. "That's the biz, sweetheart."

He put the rifle back onto the roof and trotted lightly toward the back of the building and the drainpipe he had clambered up.

Even though he had learned nothing, he felt good. A little exercise was good for both the body and spirit. And then he did not feel quite so good anymore. His senses told him Polski had not been alone. There was someone else.

Remo went over the edge of the roof and started down the drainpipe. The pipe was warm in places under his hands. The rough-painted cast iron did not draw the heat from his hands the way it should. As he went down, he felt the warmer spots on the pipe. The spread between them was sixteen inches. That meant a small man had climbed the pipe after Remo.

As he neared the ground, Remo glanced back up.

Against the dark shadow of the roof overhang was an area of slightly darker shadow and Remo forced the pupils of his eyes to open even wider, absorbing light from darkness, giving up the precise and narrow but light-robbing focus, and he was able to make out a head peering over the roof. It was wearing a black hood.

A black hood?

Ninja. The ancient Oriental art of deception, invisibility, hiding, and then attacking out of darkness.

At the end of the alley, the dark walls on both sides ended in a bright rectangle of light, illuminated by the street beyond.

Remo sensed movement to the left of him, in the shadows. He breathed deeply, then paused, saturating all his tissues with oxygen. He did it again. And then stopped breathing, so the sound of his breathing did not interfere with his senses. Behind him he heard the faint rustle of linen-the black linen night-fighting suit of the Ninja-and he knew it was the man coming down the drainpipe. It would probably be an attack from the rear. He took a step toward the front of the alley, slowly. There was a faint rustling to the right also. They had him boxed, left, right, and back. The exit from the alley, brightly lighted, might be a trap also. They could have men waiting there for him.