Warren Murphy: Terror Squad

They didn't know his name, but the training was at Patton College, near Seneca Falls, New York.

"Come on now, who trained you?"

"We never saw him. Honest," said Tyrone.

Remo believed him. He believed Tyrone because those were the last words on Tyrone's lips all the way to the door and through it.

"All right, ma'am," said Remo. "Give me a fast rundown on your training, how many months, what methods."

"An afternoon," said the woman. Her eyes were tearing from the pain in her knee.

"Let me pay you a compliment. You're too good for an afternoon. Too damned good. Now, let's try again."

"I swear. An afternoon. You're not going to kill me, are you?"

"Of course I am," said Remo.

"Then you go screw, you honky bastard."

Remo said goodbye to the woman and ushered her to the door, shutting it behind her wind-whipped robes. She had vanished into a cloud, when Remo snapped him fingers in annoyance. Damn. He had forgotten to ask them. How had they smuggled the weapons aboard the plane? Smith would be sure to ask him that. Damn and double damn.

Remo went to the cockpit and told the pilot to return to Los Angeles. At the airport, a team of radical lawyers were waiting for their clients. Remo told Agent Peterson, the first man to board the plane, that the lawyers should have left their briefcases at home and brought sponges instead. The parachutists tried to escape, he explained, and their chutes failed to open. Remo vanished into the crowd, and the next day, when Peterson told a superior that a man from Washington headquarters had killed the Hijackers, he was brought up on quiet departmental charges. Washington, an agency spokesman said, had never sent any such man. Peterson would face a departmental hearing. Privately, he was assured that he would face nothing worse than ten years in Anchorage.

CHAPTER FOUR

Remo turned the Rolls off the Palisades Parkway onto the New York Thruway. He had driven from the coast nonstop and non-sleep, the last thousand miles of which were accompanied by Chiun's complaints. They ceased only when the daytime serials began. Chiun sat in the back seat with his portable television rig. With Remo's driving up front, it made it seem as if he were now the chauffeur for the Master of Sinanju. The problem was Barbra Streisand.

When Chiun had heard Seneca Falls was in New York State, he had asked:

"Is that near Brooklyn?"

"No, it's not near Brooklyn."

"But it is in the same province."

"At opposite ends."

"We will pass Brooklyn on our way to Seneca Falls, correct?"

"Not exactly. It's out of our way."

"A little stop in Brooklyn would not be so awesome a task for a 'not-exactly.'"

"What's in Brooklyn, Chiun?" Remo had asked.

"I wish to visit the monument to Barbra Streisand who was born there."

"I don't think there is a monument in Brooklyn to Barbra Streisand."

Chiun looked up, puzzled.

"You have a Washington Monument, correct?"

"Yeah," said Remo.

"And a Lincoln Memorial?"

"Yeah."

"You have a Columbus Circle?"

"Yeah."

"Then let us visit the Streisand monument, for surely if Americans could honour a lecher, a failure and a navigator who got lost, they must mark the birthplace of one of their most beautiful souls."

"Chiun. Barbra Streisand is not a national hero."

"And that is the sort of country you think worth saving?" asked Chiun. He had been silent since Youngstown, Ohio, when "As the Planet Revolves" came on. Remo could have sworn that the plot never changed, not even the point in the plot that he had overheard the year before in Miami when Dr. Ramsey Duncan feared telling Rebecca Wentworth that her stepfather, William Vogelman, the discoverer of a cure for malnutrition among the Auca Indians, was not her stepfather at all but the lover of her half-sister who had threatened suicide. Zipping out of Youngstown one year later, Remo heard the television set in the back seat disclose that Dr. Duncan was still pondering whether to tell Rebecca about her stepfather.

But now, in New York State, the soap operas were ended and Chiun was sitting silently in the back seat, his eyes closed.

Dr. Smith had wanted Remo to fly to Fatten College, but Remo feared being seen at any airport. The news was full of the mystery-man imposter who had boarded the plane and perhaps even pushed them to their deaths, and while the cameras only got the back of Remo's head, and the artist's sketches were no closer to his looks than the cover of a paperback book, all airports were very much aware of a six-foot man with dark eyes and thick wrists.

Smith had continued his strange excitability concerning this terrorist thing-Dr. Harold W. Smith, who had been chosen a decade or more before to head CURE because of his integrity and stability.

Smith had flown out to Los Angeles to brief Remo personally again, knowing full well that each meeting was a risk to CURE'S almost sacred cover.

"We can get you to Pattern College tonight. Navy Phantom. Less than three hours from coast to coast," Smith had said.

"With the whole country associating air and the mystery man? Suppose someone gets word of a guy looking like me getting taken for a ride in a Navy jet? C'mon, Smitty. What's the matter with you?"

"You don't know how urgent this is, Remo."

"All the more reason to be careful and proper and competent"

"You're beginning to sound like Chuin now," Smith said.

"I'm beginning to sound like you used to sound."

"You've got to smash them now, Remo. Now."

"I'll get them, and I'll get them right. Now relax."

"The international conference on terrorism is scheduled for New York next week. We can't allow this force to be in existence by then. Do you understand? Do you really understand what's involved?"

"Yes," said Remo. "We're up against it."

"Right," said Smith, and suddenly him lemon face flushed maroon.

"Are you all right?" Remo asked softly.

"Yes, yes. I'm fine. Fine. Perfectly all right"

"Can I get you a glass of water?"

"No. I'm all right."

That had been two days and a few thousand miles ago and Remo was still worried about Smith, not that he cared really about the man's well-being. Rather, Smith uncorked was like a violation of the universe as Remo knew it Smith knew what the job could do to him, and Remo knew what his own waiting due-bill was. Still, to see Smith like that, well.....

Remo slowed the Rolls to pick up an entrance ticket at the toll booth. The late afternoon sun cast a reddish glow over the foothills around them. Only the smoggy

pollution of the air reminded Remo they were still near a major city.

"We have passed Brooklyn," said Chiun as Remo sped into the center lane.

"Yes."

"It would have been nice to see the street where she was born."

"Streisand?"

"Yes. It would have been a blessed relief for a poor aging benefactor who has given so much to so unworthy a recipient"

"Well, we're not going back to Brooklyn, Chiun."

"I know," said Chiun sadly. "I know that Brooklyn would be out of your way. It would be an inconvenience. And who am I to cause you any inconvenience, no matter how my heart longs for a bit of pleasure? After all, I am only the man who has transformed worthless cow dung into...."

"Yes," said Remo, attentive now, awaiting praise.

". . . into something barely adequate," said Chiun. "In this world, there is no reward for excellence, for perfection. What a man gives, he gives, and from the ungrateful it never comes back."

"We're not going to Brooklyn, Chiun."

"I know that, Remo. Because I know you."

On that, Remo knew he must avoid getting close to other cars. When piqued, Chiun had a habit of taking vengeance on passing vehicles. him long nailed hands would flick out the car window and snip an aerial or a rear view mirror off a passing car. Then Chiun would smile and wave at the driver.