Warren Murphy: Last War Dance

"Are you alone?" asked Petty.

"Right," said Remo. "Alone."

"Charge!" screamed Petty. Startled by his roar, the forty RIP members charged. Half got confused and charged in the wrong direction. Half of the remaining half charged into each other and started fighting among themselves. Only ten got moving in Remo's direction. The first one to reach him was Petty, whom Remo immediately put to sleep. Then Remo lifted Petty up over his head and tossed him at the nine other charging men.

"Leader sickum," said Remo. "He need heap big medicine. You takeum him home and fixum him up. Or I breakum your asses. Move it!"

Shocked by Remo's terrible audacity in knocking out one of the forty men who had planned to kill him, the Indians retreated to plan their new strategy.

The new strategy revolved around some news they had gotten just that evening. Perkin Marlowe, the Hollywood star who was one 256th Indian if you could believe him, although no one had ever yet found a reason to, was on his way to Wounded Elk. He would set everything right. As Petty had pointed out, hadn't Marlowe just played a Mexican bandit who outwitted a whole army? If he could do that for mere Mexicans, who knew what wonderful things he could do for Indians?

As the RIP members trudged away, Remo turned back toward the monument to help Van Riker. But just then he heard another voice. Attracted by the noise, Jerry Candler of the Globe had slipped past the marshals' lines. He was standing now in the glare of the floodlight, only ten feet from Remo.

"Atrocities!" he screamed, pointing to Petty, who was being dragged away by the arms. "Atrocities!"

The tendons stuck out in his neck as he screamed, making him look like a chicken with a muscular neck. He was small, and his skin, which seemed stretched too tight, took on a vague fluorescence in the dazzling, light.

"Oh, shut up," said Remo.

"Attica! Chile! San Francisco! And now Wounded Elk!" shouted Candler. "Well, I will expose this bestiality."

He looked hard at Remo, then swallowed and said, "Oh, my goodness. You've killed them."

"Killed who?"

Candler was looking past him now, into the darkness. Remo turned and followed his eyes. He saw that the caps had been removed from the access holes in the monument and Chiun had lifted two bodies out of the twin cylinders. Van Riker was scrambling down into the cylinder on the left. Only a few minutes remained of the fifteen Van Riker had given that part of the world.

"I think there's something wrong with your eyes," said Remo.

Candler sneered. "There's nothing wrong with my eyes. I can recognize murderous genocidal brutality when I see it."

Remo shook his head. "Oh, no. There's something wrong with your eyes. Something definitely wrong."

Impressed by his sincerity, Candler raised his right hand to his face and touched the sockets around both eyes. "What's wrong with my eyes?" he asked.

"They're open." Remo moved forward and tapped Jerry Candler on the back of the neck, and the reporter's eyes closed as if his eyelids were weighted. Remo let him drop to the ground, then went back to help Chiun and Van Riker.

Inside the cylinder he could hear Van Riker breathing heavily, occasionally grunting with the exertion.

"How's it going?" Remo asked.

"This is a nation of messers," said Chiun. "There were dead people in the cylinders."

"Oh, that's awful," said Remo. "The nerve of America, exposing you to death that way."

"Yes," agreed Chiun, "it is thoughtless."

They listened to more grunting, and then Van Riker's head emerged from the cylinder.

"Done," he said.

"It's disarmed?" asked Remo.

"Right. Harmless as a newborn babe." He lifted a twelve-inch part up over his head. It looked like some kind of transmission gear. "This out makes it safe."

He put the part down carefully and hoisted himself out of the hole. He stood there for a moment, brushing the dirt from his caked silver suit. "I just don't know how you got that seal off," he said the Chiun.

"You watched me. Now you should be able to do it."

Van Riker smiled weakly. "Science, I guess, does not know all the world's secrets."

"What you call science knows none of them," corrected Chiun.

"Get off there," said Remo. "We're going to have to put these bodies back."

He stepped toward the monument, and Van Riker quickly picked up the piece he'd removed from the Cassandra. "Careful not to touch this," he said. "It's highly radioactive. It could kill you in minutes."

He tossed it under a bush beside the monument, then climbed down from the marble.

He looked at the two bodies lying on the ground. "I though I would never see them again," he said.

"Your work?" asked Remo.

Van Riker nodded. "Not pleasant. But necessary."

Chiun nodded in agreement. Then he and Remo flipped the two dead men back into the cylinders and slid the barbell-shaped dual bronze cap over the holes.

"Now, listen, Van Riker. You're not going to have to open this again?"

"Right. Not again."

"Okay, Chiun," said Remo. "You can seal it tight."

He moved back to stand beside Van Riker, and both watched as Chiun scurried around the bronze cover.

He moved like an ant around the edges, his hands like flurries of yellow sparkle in a swirling wind. First one end, then the other. Total elapsed time: thirty seconds.

He stood up. "They are sealed. They will remain sealed."

"After things around here return to normal," Van Riker said mildly, "we'll have to open it up to make it operational again. But then we'll be sure to bring the special instruments from Washington."

"If you ever wish to open it again," corrected Chiun, "you would do well to bring high explosives. I said it is sealed."

They were interrupted by a moan. Jerry Candler rolled over on the ground, opened his eyes, and looked up. He shook his head, as if in disbelief, then saw Remo, Chiun, and Van Riker around the monument.

"Terrorists!" he shrieked. "Fascist executioners! Right-wing oppressors! Genocidal…"

"Who is this person?" asked Chiun aloud. "Why is he yelling at me?"

"I am part of the growing consciousness of America," screamed Candler hysterically.

"Make him part of the growing unconsciousness of America," Chiun suggested to Remo.

"I already did that," Remo said.

"You should have done it harder." To Candler, who was now lifting himself up off the ground, Chiun said, "Be gone, you. Before I seal your mouth with a stone."

Candler backed away slowly. "What'd you do with the bodies?"

"What bodies?" asked Remo.

Candler kept backing away, his voice growing louder as the distance between him and the monument increased.

"You haven't heard the last of this," he said. "I saw them. I saw the bodies. I know you killed two poor Indians. The world will know soon."

"Good," said Remo. "Everybody likes a little recognition for his work."

Candler slunk away.

CHAPTER NINE

Jonathan Bouchek was annoyed. He was starting to get pimples. Under his pancake makeup he could almost sense the little bastards first making tinies, and then getting bigger, creating little pools of pus under volcano-shaped lumps.

And all because of this frigging government!

Bouchek had been at the Wounded Elk siege for four days, and he had worn makeup twenty-four hours a day. It was especially important at night, since every night the concensus in the press tent was that tonight would be the night, that as soon as the government felt the press was asleep, it would unleash its massive manpower and armaments and massacre the small RIP encampment.

Night after night Bouchek stayed up and waited for the government to begin its brutal assault.

He had the scenario all mapped out in his mind. The government would send in tanks and armored personnel carriers. They were not fooling anyone by having just a second lieutenant, a corporal, and one jeep on the scene. All the reporters knew that the government had amassed thousands of men and tons of heavy equipment only a few miles away. They knew this for a fact because, they told each other, the government had to take that course. If the government allowed this Indian uprising to continue—why, all of middle America would soon be in the streets, marching along their neat lawns, driving one of their family's three cars, expressing their hatred of a government which had oppressed them so.