Failing Marks, page 10
The first rock he encountered was only as large as a beach ball. It was rolling rapidly as Remo dropped one toe atop it. Using opposite force against the stone’s forward momentum, Remo vaulted up and over. He landed on a larger, flatter stone that was being swept along at the fore of the advancing pile of churning rubble.
Fortunately Heidi was not fighting him. She remained limp beneath his arm, not wishing to distract him from his life-or-death ballet.
His next jump brought him to a toppled tree trunk. It was scraping down the hill at a terrifying speed. Remo ran to the far end of the log, then rode it like a surfboard back down into the growing pile of debris.
Already in the valley, many of the rocks they had been climbing on earlier were covered by fresh stones.
When the lower end of the log they were on struck the swelling pile of debris, Remo jumped again. Both feet barely touched the surface of a dangerously splintering boulder before he sprang again. He landed on yet another stone.
The huge rock he had barely trodden on struck an even larger boulder at the bottom of the ravine and shattered. The pieces were instantly covered in a washing mass of dirt.
Remo leapfrogged a few more times, but found the going increasingly easier.
The avalanche was tapering off.
With a sigh of settling earth and a cloud of choking dust, the last of the largest chunks of earth and sections of broken road rolled into the ravine. Long after, tiny stones still toppled along the devastated path of the avalanche.
In all, it had taken no more than a minute.
Remo set Heidi down to the still-reverberating earth. He glanced back at the damage.
It looked as if the claw of a gigantic backhoe had swiped a huge chunk out of the side of the mountain. There was a single stripe of missing trees and rock running straight up to the road. The valley where they had been standing was buried.
Panting, Heidi looked at Remo. For all his exertions, he had not broken a sweat. He wore a deep scowl.
“Have I told you lately that I hate Nazis?” Remo grumbled.
As he spoke, Chiun bounded into view far ahead of them. He stood at the nearest visible part of the valley that had not been overrun by the avalanche. For an instant when he first saw Remo, the Master of Sinanju was visibly relieved.
“Remo, that was—” he suddenly considered his words, and his look of relief morphed into one of blasé acceptance “—adequate.”
“Adequate, my ass,” Remo griped. “That was perfect. And how the hell did they do that without us stepping on the damned things?”
“They could be set to accept a radio signal.”
Remo turned away from Chiun, looking at Heidi. “Thank you, Professor Science,” he said.
“Do not ask if you do not wish to know,” she said with a shrug. Readjusting the pack on her back, she struck off toward Chiun.
“No wonder everyone loves Germans,” he muttered to himself. “They’re so damned cuddly.” Following Heidi, he began hiking across the fresh pile of stone rubble toward the waiting Master of Sinanju.
. . .
It had been forty-five minutes since Kluge had set off the field of land mines. The leader of IV had sat in front of the bank of video monitors the entire time, his anxiety level rising every minute.
“Has everyone reported in?” he asked Herman.
“Yes, sir.”
“Even Theodor? You were not able to raise him.”
“It was a communications problem,” Herman explained. “It has been corrected.”
Kluge nodded. He glanced at the monitor on which he had last seen his stalkers. A ragged V-shape crater was visible on the road. Beyond it sat the girl’s parked jeep.
“They are dead, Adolf,” Herman insisted.
“Possibly,” Kluge said. There was a touch more optimism in his voice than there had been of late.
“I cannot imagine anyone surviving that,” Herman said, indicating the minefield damage on the monitor.
Kluge snorted derisively. “In that case, I have the greater imagination.” He bit his lip. “Still...”
Herman waited a moment before breaking the silence. “We could send the second unit down to sift the rubble,” he suggested. Indeed, this was the third time he had floated the same idea in the past forty-five minutes.
Kluge nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, all right.”
Herman wheeled around in his chair. He held his hand delicately over the slender microphone that was hooked around the back of his head and positioned it over his mouth.
“Christoph, come in.”
Herman waited. There was no reply. He repeated the command. Again, his radio message was greeted by silence.
“More equipment failure,” Herman griped.
He attempted to raise the IV soldier a third time. As he did so, Adolf Kluge switched his attention to the monitor screens.
The second unit was the designation given to the IV villager and his attendant group of Numbers who were at the next checkpoint up from that of the late Veit Rauch, only a few yards outside the periphery of the village.
When he called up the appropriate image on the nearest monitor, the tree-mounted camera panned the designated scene.
Kluge’s blood chilled to ice.
“Never mind, Herman,” Kluge said woodenly.
Still trying to raise the second unit, Herman turned, confused. “Sir?” he said.
Kluge pointed at the monitor above the second unit’s small guard station. Herman gaped at what appeared to be bodies lying around the road. When he looked closer, he saw a face that was clearly that of the man he had been trying to raise on the radio. The man’s head was several feet away from his body.
“How—?” Herman asked, incredulous.
He never finished his question. At that moment, the sound of gunfire erupted outside the ancient stone temple.
. . .
They had followed the ravine until it cut up by the upper guard shack. Remo and Chiun preceded Heidi up the hill. She was stunned by how easily they took out the dozen men stationed near the small shed.
The IV village sprouted out of the leveled mountaintop where the ruins of an ancient city had once stood. The priceless architecture of a culture long dead had been demolished for the comfort of the band of fugitive Nazis.
Looming far above the village was Estomago de Diablo—the name given to the huge old temple that was the focal point of the entire area. The massive stone structure stared down protectively over the orderly little houses from its separate mountain peak.
“Dollars to doughnuts the head guy’s in there,” Remo said, pointing to the temple.
Focused on the temple, they ran toward the first line of neat Bavarian-style houses…
…and into a hail of machine-gun fire.
“Crappity crap-crap-crap,” Remo groused.
As a cluster of frantic IV soldiers ran toward them down the street—shooting madly—the three of them quickly ducked down an alley. Bullets ripped against the wall nearest them.
Remo quickly plucked Heidi from the path. Kicking open the door of the nearest house, he tossed her to the floor. “Stay put,” he commanded, slamming the door tightly shut.
Remo and Chiun whirled on the soldiers.
The men ran into view at the mouth of the alley. Remo recognized their shared face immediately; he’d encountered the same face at the airport, as well as at the first two guard shacks.
“Not him again,” Remo complained.
“Do not get distracted,” Chiun warned the instant before the men opened fire.
Chiun leaped high to the left, Remo to the right. Hitting the eaves of the roofs with one foot, they pushed off and forward. They formed an invisible X as their paths nearly crossed in the air above the blazing gunfire.
The heads of the baffled soldiers slipped below them as both Masters of Sinanju flew over. Twisting in midair, they dropped down behind the startled IV troops.
Before the shock could even register, Remo and Chiun launched themselves forward.
A few guns fired feeble bursts of lead into the clear blue sky as Chiun ripped through the men. Diet-and-exercise-hardened fingernails clawed vicious strips through chest muscle and bone. Kneecaps shattered. Skulls collapsed.
Remo had torn into the crowd from the other side, spinning like a top on one foot, barely seeming to change position. As he swirled, an arm or foot would fly out of the twisting blur. In their wake, streaks of blood erupted from corrupted throats and chests.
In a matter of seconds, the attackers were dead.
“I’ll get Heidi,” Remo said quickly.
Racing back to the house where he had left her, he flung open the door. She was nowhere in sight. A quick search of the one-story structure found the house empty and the front door on the far side of the house ajar.
“Double crap,” Remo complained. He ran back to meet Chiun. “Heidi’s gone,” he said, arriving back at the carnage in the alley.
“We cannot search for her now,” Chiun stated.
Remo shook his head. “She can’t say I didn’t warn her,” he agreed.
Together, they ran back out onto the tidy village road.
. . .
Kluge had become more animated as he watched the men from Sinanju slaughter his soldiers as easily as lesser mortals might step on an anthill. IV was still his home. He would do everything he could to preserve it.
“Have them pull back to the field,” he ordered Herman.
“Is that wise?” Herman asked.
“Do it!” Kluge shouted. There was an angry spark in his eyes, a spark that had been absent ever since the dark days in Paris several months ago.
Herman obediently gave the order into his headset.
Kluge watched Remo and Chiun advance through the vacant streets of the village. Unseen by the Masters of Sinanju, the defenders of IV began backing along streets closer to the temple. On Kluge’s order, they were retreating to the large open field with its trampled vegetable and flower gardens.
It seemed ridiculous. An entire army in retreat because of two unarmed men.
“Is the other system operational?”
Herman nodded. “Tested this morning.”
“I want it ready to switch over to manual if automated tracking fails,” Kluge warned.
“At your command, Herr Kluge.”
Kluge saw that Herman was sweating. He had been so calm during the whole time leading up to this crisis. Herman had never thought there was a crisis. The fool.
Kluge turned his attention back to the monitors. Remo and Chiun continued their relentless advance. As he watched them move stealthily through the streets, his eyes strayed to a single red button on his control console. Unlabeled, it was covered by a clear plastic lid.
Unseen by Herman, Kluge flipped the plastic cover open.
And prayed.
. . .
“Now there’s something you don’t see every day,” Remo commented. He nodded to the army of identical soldiers arranged in the field before the ancient stone fortress.
Although the men were lined up to fire, they didn’t do so when Remo and Chiun cleared the last of the quaint little gingerbread houses.
“There is something else here,” Chiun declared, concerned.
“Not more mines,” Remo said. He had been stomping his foot occasionally to get a crude sonic reading of the land up ahead. As far as he could tell, there were no land mines.
The field was to their right. To their left, a stretch of rocky terrain dropped down after a few yards, only to come back into sight a little farther beyond. Continuing only briefly, it disappeared for good a short way farther on. Somewhere far below the last appearance of the rocky ridge was the road.
The army continued to stand down as they approached.
“Gee, you think it’s a trap?” Remo asked sarcastically.
Chiun was peering at the uneven mound of stone to their left. Remo followed the elderly Korean’s line of sight.
He immediately saw the thick metal barrel jutting from the stone. Beyond this was another. And a third, fourth and fifth. Each of the weird gun muzzles was aimed down the path. Directly at Remo and Chiun.
“Oh, great,” was all Remo had time to say before the muzzles hidden in the rock flashed to life. All five of them exploded in a deafeningly violent, unified blast.
They weren’t controlled by human hands, so Remo hadn’t felt the telltale sign of men about to shoot. Before he had properly prepared for an attack, the air was suddenly alive with burning lead fragments.
More rounds screamed at him in that one instant than at any other single time in his life. His senses were strained to overloading as he flung himself to a protective outcropping of rock beside the road.
The outcropping did not shelter him for long. As soon as he had hunkered down behind the great black stones, the blond-haired IV soldiers in the field aross the road broke their cease-fire. As one, they opened fire on Remo.
He slid down behind the rocks, pushing himself low behind a small lip. Bullets whizzed like angry hornets above his head, ricocheting off rocks and whizzing into the distance.
Remo was a sitting duck.
He didn’t know where Chiun had gone to when the automated weapons had begun firing. Remo only hoped that the Master of Sinanju was faring better than him.
. . .
Chiun had done much the same thing as Remo when the guns had begun their automatic firing. Unlike Remo, however, he had the fortune of landing in a crevice that was the sole blind spot of the nearest machine gun.
As the men in the field opened fire on Remo, Chiun quickly scampered around the far side of the large finger of rock behind which he had taken refuge.
He came out close to the nearest gun. It continued firing relentlessly, deafeningly down the path. But though it tracked from side to side with relative ease, it had more difficulty moving up and down.
Out on the road once more, Chiun ducked below the barrage of lead. He skittered crab-like to the left, coming up between the first two weapons.
They were altered versions of the GEC Minigun. Each was capable of firing 6000 rounds per minute. The pockmarked road was testament to the effectiveness of the weapons.
Racing up alongside the automated guns, Chiun ducked in behind. With two slaps from one long-nailed hand, Chiun broke the heavy guns loose from their moorings. Two sharp kicks sent them spinning over in the direction of the small army.
The firing guns swept across the advancing mob of blond-haired men. Crumpling bodies spit streaks of crimson across the lush green field.
There was no defense against the remorseless attack of the automated guns. Some tried to run. Most didn’t have the time to even consider the option. In seconds, the grisly deed was done.
As the bullet-riddled bodies fell, Chiun worked to disable the remaining three guns. By the time he had reduced them to pieces and returned to the road, the first two weapons had grown silent.
He climbed down to the path. The dying echoes of machine-gun fire sighed forlornly against the distant peaks of the Andes, fading to an eerie silence.
The entire IV army lay dead on the road. Not one man had survived the fierce gunfire.
Across the road from the nearest dozen bodies, Remo came out from his protective outcropping of rock. He ran up to meet the Master of Sinanju, his face growing more severe as he beheld the breadth of the carnage. He paused next to Chiun, looking up at the ancient temple.
“Let’s finish this,” he said, hollow of voice.
They turned to the huge stone fortress.
The road ended at a long stone bridge, a remarkable piece of ancient construction spanning the two peaks of the IV complex.
Remo and Chiun were nearly to the bridge when an odd expression crossed the face of the younger Master of Sinanju.
“Wait a sec,” Remo said, stopping abruptly. His bare forearm barred Chiun’s path.
Chiun frowned even as he stopped beside his pupil. “What is it?” he asked impatiently.
Remo squinted at the bridge, uncertainty clouding his features. “Didn’t you feel—?”
He never finished the question.
A powerful rumble rose from beneath their feet. The vibrations were different from those of land mines or machine guns. This was something muffled and heavy.
And as both men watched, each one knowing now what Remo had heard, the bridge before them began to collapse.
The carefully buried charges tore huge slabs of the bridge away. The massive chunks of rock tumbled in slow motion to the ravine floor more than a half mile below.
The wide gap the crashing stone left behind was too great for even a Master of Sinanju to traverse.
. . .
Adolf Kluge removed his finger from the single red button. He turned to Herman.
“We should go,” he said. His face was stone.
Herman seemed shell-shocked. He nodded numbly to the IV leader. Together, they left the monitor room, heading farther into the bowels of the ancient temple.
. . .
Remo ran back to the village in order to find something to bridge the gap left by the collapsed bridge. He returned after a few moments with a long extension ladder.
Extending the ladder fully, Remo lowered it across the ravine.
Unmindful of the dizzying height, he and Chiun raced across the aluminum ladder and into the temple.
Remo was surprised when they encountered no resistance inside the huge, drafty fortress. He commented on this to the Master of Sinanju.
“This Kluge is wise,” Chiun said knowingly as they raced through the cool stone corridors, “Fearful for his life, a prince would ordinarily surround himself with guards. He realized that his greatest safety lay in sending his entire legion against us.”
“Fat lot of good it did him,” Remo commented. They found the monitor room, which had been abandoned. Remo immediately identified the pungent odor of nervous sweat.
“That way,” he said, pointing to a narrow hallway off the large stone room.
He and Chiun ran through the cramped space and into a much larger chamber.
This had been the main sacrificial room for the priests of the ancient temple. A rock stairway led up the side of a huge pyramid-shaped stone structure in the center of the room. The sacrificial pit.
