Warren Murphy: Deadly Seeds

"You are not good enough to stand against such an attack," said Chiun.

"It's all right," said Remo. "I've got to do everything around here anyway. It's not like I had a coequal partner or anything. But it's just me and my employee. And you know how hired help is these days."

"That is vileness unequaled by anything you have said before."

The Korean in the Ninja uniform spoke to Chiun. "Away, old man. We have no quarrel with you."

"I quarrel with your continued existence," said Chiun.

"It's your funeral, old man," the Korean said, glancing at his watch. Behind him, Remo heard a cardboard tube being ripped open and he turned to watch the six men around the outside of the fence pull out rifles.

"Eight o'clock," the Korean yelled. "Attack."

"Work the inside, Little Father," said Remo.

"Of course. I get all the dirty work," said Chiun.

The man at the far end of the compound was just raising his rifle to his shoulder as Remo and Chiun moved toward the eight Ninja men. The Orientals ignored Chiun and moved toward Remo but Chiun passed before Remo, moving from the left to the right, pulling in upon himself the force of the eight men, collapsing with it, and opening a gap that Remo darted through. The Ninja noticed Remo was gone only when they looked for him, but when they tried to follow him through the gates, they found them blocked by Chiun, his arms spread wide, his voice intoning in Korean:

"The Master of Sinanju bids you die."

The six men outside the fence saw nothing but a pile of bodies. Where the hell was the white man? Fred Felice of Chicago was nearest the mass pileup, but the wire of the fence was in his way and he moved his head to see more clearly. Then the wire of the fence was no longer in his way as his head went through the fence like a hard-boiled egg being slammed through a wire slicer. He didn't last long enough to scream.

The next man screamed.

Remo reached him by moving crablike, skittering, remembering the lessons-the hour after hour of running at top speed along wet toilet tissue and being lectured by Chiun if he should so much as wrinkle the paper-and by the time he reached Anthony Abominale of Detroit, Abominale was just turning toward him. He shouted, then the shout turned into a scream that drowned in his throat on the blood that leaked into it from his shattered skull.

The shout brought the eyes of the other marksmen toward Remo.

"There he is. There he is." Bullets started pinging as the riflemen fired shot after shot from automatic clips. Remo kept moving, seeming to travel back and forth, seeming to take only one step forward and two steps back, but still moving like a slow wave of water toward the corner of the compound where another man waited, firing point blank. He was lucky. He was able to squeeze the trigger one last time. He was unlucky in that the rifle barrel was in his mouth when the gun went off.

As he moved, Remo glanced over his shoulder. The Ninja battle had moved into the center of the compound and all he could see of Chiun was an occasional flash of blue robe. Well. Nothing to worry about. There were only eight of them.

Remo went over the fence of the compound to come up upon the fourth man, then took him by vaulting back over the fence and with his feet driving the man's skull and spine deep down into his shoulders.

The fifth man got off two shots more before his intestines were ruptured with his own gun butt and the sixth dropped his weapon and ran but got only two steps before his face was buried deep in sand and he inhaled deep, sucked in the deadly grains, twitched once, and was still.

Then Remo was back at the front of the compound and running away from the tents through the dusk. A crowd had come out of the tents, attracted by the gunshots, and Remo moved silently past them, so quickly most did not even notice anyone passing. Then Remo was at the Cadillac which sat, motor idling, with Johnny Deussio behind the wheel.

Remo jerked open the door without bothering to depress the door-handle button.

Deussio looked at him in surprise that turned to fright, then to horror.

"Hiya," said Remo. "I almost didn't recognize you. You're not wearing your toilet."

"What are you going to do?"

"How many guesses you need?"

"Okay. Okay. But tell me. You really are a force fighting crime in this country, aren't you? Just tell me if I'm right."

"You're right. But don't look on us as a force. Look on us as a CURE."

And then Remo cured Johnny Deuce of life.

He did not wait for the autopsy. Instead he was back, moving through the crowds of people into the compound. Ahead he saw only motionlessness and as he grew nearer a mound of bodies. But no Chiun. He raced forward faster and as he neared the bodies, he caught a glimpse of the blue robes and he heard Chiun say, "Is it all right to come out?"

"Well, of course it's all right to come out."

Like a dolphin rising from water, Chiun moved up, seemingly unwrinkled, out of the mass of the dead, and Remo took his arm and walked him away, ignoring the crowds beginning to cluster around them.

"Why of course?" asked Chiun. "You play your games and those silly men are firing bullets all over and you think that one might not hit me? Do you think coequal partners are that easy to find? Particularly one who takes care of eight enemies while you are fooling around with only six?"

"Seven," said Remo. "I found another one over there in the car."

"Still. It is not eight."

A reporter clapped Chiun on the shoulder. "What happened? What happened? What's going on here?"

"Those men tried to overthrow the United States Constitution, but they did not reckon with the wiles and skill of the Master of Sinanju and his assistant," said Chiun. "They did not-"

"Some kind of gang war," interrupted Remo. "These guys in here; those guys out there. The guy behind it is over in that Cadillac." He pointed to Johnny Deuce's car. "Talk to him."

Remo moved backwards with Chiun toward the far corner of the compound, out of the reach of the tent lights in the suddenly accumulated night darkness, and then he felt the sand under his feet and for a moment, it did not seem sandy enough.

"Chiun, what about this sand?"

"The feel is wrong," said Chiun. "Why do you think I worried about being hit by a bullet? I could not move right."

Remo sniffed. "Is that oil?"

Chiun nodded. "I have taken many breaths. Even your deserts smell in this country."

Remo rubbed his toe in the sand. The consistency underfoot did not feel right. He spun on his right foot, pushing off with his left, corkscrewing his right foot into the sand, and then stopped.

"Chiun, it's metal." He moved his leg around. His foot rested on a large metal plate. Through the thin leather soles of his Italian loafers, he felt small holes in the plate.

Remo pulled his right leg from the sand like a person yanking a toe from a too-hot bath.

"Chiun. I've got it."

"Is it contagious?"

"Don't be funny. The Wondergrain. It's a fake. Fielding's got an underground compartment here. The grain doesn't grow here. It's pushed up from underneath the sand. That's why those construction men were killed. They knew. They knew."

"And you have solved the riddle."

"This time, yes. The radioactive warehouse. This bastard's going to peddle radioactive grain and make farmland all over the world worthless. It'll make every famine the world ever had look like a picnic." He looked down at the sand, more in sorrow than in surprise. "I think it's time to talk to Fielding."

They moved through the crowd and then heard it --the whoop, whoop, whoop of an ambulance.

"Little late for an ambulance, Little Father," said Remo.

The ambulance rushed up toward the tent, kicking up sand sprays from its wheels and two men jumped from the back carrying a stretcher.