Warren Murphy: Holy Terror

Remo relaxed. The ride was slowing down. It would soon be over. Then he sensed movement behind his right shoulder. He turned casually.

Flashing at him, like a flying saucer, was a metal plate. It spun, noiselessly, at his head, directly on a plane with the ground, its hard cutting edge moving straight for his two eyes.

Damn, and here he was with a goldfish bowl that he couldn't let get broken. The best he could do was slip his head to the right. His left arm crooked at the elbow, and then his hand shot forward like a spear. Its hardened fingertips caught the center of the plate just before it buzzed against his head. The plate shuddered, its metal center crumpled, and dropped at Remo's feet.

Now he looked up. Ten feet away, he saw a thin young man holding two more plates. Remo smiled. He had called the Divine Bliss Mission to let them know where he was, just so that anyone sent by the Maharaji Dor would be able to find him.

Hunt smiled and waited as Remo moved another step closer. The fool. By chance, he had gotten his hand up and stopped the first plate. He would not be lucky this time.

Another step by Remo, who was being very careful and moving slowly, so as not to spill any water from the goldfish bowl.

The plate in Hunt's right hand curled back under his left elbow, then shot forward toward Remo's throat. At eight feet it could not miss.

But, damn it, he was lucky again. He caught the edge of the plate, sliding off his left wrist, and the plate spun off its course, down into the asphalt pavement, where it dug a six-inch-long gouge before stopping.

Remo took another step forward. Hunt realized plates would not do. He needed a sturdier weapon, and he had no stomach for hand-to-hand combat. He heard another "whee" from the Flying Bucket.

Time to split.

He looked up. The car carrying the Oriental had reached the bottom point of the ride and was now on its way up again. Hunt's right hand again snaked back under his left elbow and then sent the third plate silently screaming toward the ride. Remo turned to watch, then moved toward the ride. The plate flew toward the car Chiun and Joleen occupied. Its front edge bit through the thin steel cable holding up the right side of the car, hacked through it, before the plate clattered off the side of the car toward the ground.

The car started to drop.

"Wheeee," said Chiun, giggling. His left arm reached up and grabbed the frayed strand of cable. His left toe found a crevice inside the car and hooked itself into it. His right hand grabbed the safety bar. His left hand overhead, and his left foot and right hand below, prevented the car from plunging, and still shouting "wheeee" with all his might, Chiun held the car together as it rode up, around, and over the top of the wheel, with Joleen huddling in panic on her side of the compartment.

"Stop that damned thing," Remo yelled at the operator, who instantly pushed the heavy lever that tossed in the clutch of the motor, then squeezed the hand grip that acted as a brake. When the cars came around, the operator saw the broken cable and the old Oriental holding the car together. Expertly the operator brought the ride to a stop just as Chiun's car reached the wooden boarding platform. Chiun released his left hand grip on the cable. The car dropped four inches and settled against the wooden platform.

Chiun's face was framed in a smile. "Wheeeee," he said. He jumped out of the car. "What a wonderful ride. Do you have my goldfish?"

"Yes, I have it. You all right?"

Chiun smirked and looked toward Joleen, recovering from her shock and rising slowly to her feet.

"Of course, we're all right," he said. "These rides are safe. No one ever gets hurt. Mr. Disney would not let that happen."

Remo turned. The young man had gone. Following him now would be a waste of time.

Later, outside the carnival, Chiun confided, "There is one thing, Remo, I do not understand."

"What's that?"

"When Mr. Disney shoots the plate at the cable and breaks it, how many people have the control to grip the cable and hold the vehicle together? Do not some fall?"

"No," said Remo, his right index finger hooked into the goldfish bowl. "That's the first thing we Americans learn. How to grab the cable and hold the ride together."

"A very curious thing," said Chiun. "Here you are, a nation of people who cannot talk and cannot run and cannot move well, who eat the flesh of every sort of beast, and yet you can do that."

"It is easy," said Remo.

"Another thing. Did you see someone following you in the park? A thin, young man?"

"No," said Remo. "I didn't see anybody."

"Typical," said Chiun. "You never notice anything. Don't drop the goldfish."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Although he fled the amusement park, Hunt had a smile on his face that would have been hard to ascribe to failure.

The young American had been able to block the plates, and Hunt would no longer call it luck. So this Remo was exceptional. So? So it did not matter. Hunt had been warned years before by his grandfather that there were some such people.

In recollection now, it seemed as if his grandfather had been trying to prepare him for the life of the assassin, but that too was immaterial. What was important was that his grandfather had told him of the way to deal with people who had physical skills that were out of the ordinary. A simple technique, but foolproof. Next time, there would be no swift hands blocking plates.

Hunt smiled again as he drove out toward the lower edge of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. He knew how he would handle this Remo the next time they met, and he looked forward to the meeting.

Meanwhile, Elton Snowy had other things on his mind.

He stood at the counter of the sporting goods store on Market Street.

"I want a gross of shells. Double O buck."

"A gross?" asked the clerk, smiling faintly.

"A gross. That's one hundred forty and four."

"Yes, sir. Big hunting trip, eh?"

"You might say that," said Snowy. He paid cash and angrily signed his real name and address to the register kept in the gun department. The clerk noted the name as Snowy left the shop, then, recalling the look of grim anger on the big man's red face, walked toward the telephone.

Snowy's next stop was another sporting goods store at the farthest end of Market Street, where the street dissolves into a maze of crossing streets and highways and trolley tracks, seemingly always under repair. There he purchased a .38 caliber revolver and ammunition, again paid cash, again signed a register, and again, a clerk, noting the set to his jaw, waited until the man had left and then called the police department.

Snowy's last stop was a bar across the street from a railroad yard, where he drank bourbon, struck up a conversation with a drunken off-duty switchman, and finally wound up buying a dozen railroad detonating caps for fifty dollars cash.

While no report of that transaction reached the police, the first two reports had set them in motion. Two city detectives got a description of Snowy but could not find him registered in any motel, because by now Snowy was in a furnished room under an assumed name, carefully opening shotgun shells and pouring the powder into a plastic bag.

The detectives dutifully reported their failure to find Snowy. Their report went to the detective commander and was routinely picked up by an FBI messenger. The agent-in-charge of the San Francisco office read the report. Normally, he would have flipped it into an outbasket full of other inconsequential matters. But today was different.

For the past week, there had been a highest-priority order that any unusual activity in arms buying should be reported cross-channels to the CIA in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The agent-in-charge did not know why; he suspected it had something to do with that guru coming to San Francisco and the CIA wanting to avoid an international incident, but it was no real business of his until someone told him it was a real business of his.