Fool's Gold td-52, page 14
part #52 of The Destroyer Series
"Ole, indeed," he muttered to himself. The crowd hushed as the matador drew the short curved sword from under the muleta. Slowly, holding the small cape at waist height and peering down the length of the sword which he held near his shoulder, the
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torero advanced on the poor confused bull, which stood in the middle of the arena, bleeding, sweating, tormented. If the beast had had a brain to wonder with, he would be wondering why he was being taunted by this young jackrabbit, Spencer thought, even as the bull, with the bravery born of stupidity, charged the red cape one more time and the matador plunged the curved blade down behind the bull's neck, and rolled off to the left to escape the bull's right horn. The blade curved down, severing the spinal cord and piercing a lung before cutting into the beast's giant heart.
The bull stopped leadenly in its tracks, and then, like a newsreel film of an exploded building collapsing, seemed to come apart in sections. First it dropped to its knees and then its rear legs collapsed and then it coughed, a hacking spray of blood that spotted the sand for fifteen feet in front of his body, and then it pitched onto its side and quietly, heroically, stupidly died.
The crowd leaped to its feet cheering for the torero who now strutted around the ring, looking up at the spectators, waving his hat to the ladies, curiously mincing in his walk, as the fans shouted their approval of his bravery in the face of death.
And Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer, O.G., K.L.M., D.S.C., thought it was all kind of disgusting and pointless, fit only for the brutish unwashed, and got up from his chair and started downstairs to kill people.
Tern looked away from Remo to Chiun. "It says there's no gold," she said. She turned back
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toward the plaque and illuminated it with the flash light in her hand. "It says "
Chiun spoke softly. "It says 'Look no further. The gold is no more. You will not find it.' "
Terri wheeled around. "How did you know?"
"It was many years ago," Chiun said, "in the time of the Master Hup To. He came to Hamidia to do something for the chief of the golden people there. That master learned the language of the people and masters pass these things along." He looked at Remo. "Except some masters who are so unfortunate as to have no one to pass wisdom along to. The life of some is spent in having to shout into cracks in mountains, wishing they were ears."
"I've got it," Remo yelled.
"Keep it," Chiun said.
Terri asked Chiun, "Why didn't you tell me you read ancient Hamidian?"
"Because it was not necessary. You have translated all correctly and have missed nothing. Until now," Chiun said.
"No, I've really got it," Remo yelled again. He got to his feet.
"Be quiet," Terri said. She asked Chiun, "What have I missed?"
Do you not notice something strange about the carvings that made these letters?" Chiun asked.
"No," Terri answered slowly. "They're all the same. Wait."
"That's it," Remo said, "they're all the same." He talked fast so no one would interrupt. "They're all the same because they were all written by the same person. That's why there's less powder on
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the ground under the plaque. Because somebody disturbed it when he came here to hang the plaque. That's why. It was probably the same guy who hung the plaques all over. That's how it was. I figured it out. Me." He looked at Chiun, who ignored him and looked at Terri. Then Remo looked at Terri, who ignored him to look at Chiun.
Terri said, "The writing's exactly the same. That shouldn't be. There should be differences if the plaques were engraved by different people at different times. They were all written by just one person."
"Exactly," Chiun said.
"You knew," Terri said.
"Only when I felt the edges of the writing here," Chiun said. "Along the straight lines of the engraving, there is a nick. It comes from a flaw in the chisel used to cut it. There was the same flaw in the other plaques. Written by the same man, with the same tool, at the same time."
"I figured it out," Remo said. "I figured it out."
"Who cares?" Terri snapped at him. "Probably done in one place at one time," she told Chiun.
"Correct," the old man said. "No one could have traveled that far to engrave plaques all over the world. Not in ancient days. The Hamidian boats were just too slow. They were made for cargo, and there is a saying in Sinanju that when offered a Hamidian voyage, one is better off swimming because it is faster."
"I knew it," Remo said. "I knew it." He touched Chiun's shoulder. "It was the powder on the ground," he said. "Somebody moved it when he was hanging this plaque."
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Chiun continued to look at Terri, whose face was illuminated in the glow of the flashlight she held at her waist.
"But why?" Terri asked. "Why would somebody go to all the trouble and expense of forging these plaques for us to find?"
"Because someone wants us to do just what we have been doing," Chiun said. "There is another thing also. There have always been stories of mountains of gold. But there has never been found a mountain of gold."
Terri shook her head. "Who wants us to do what we are doing? I don't understand."
They were interrupted by the sound of a trumpet, playing the Spanish march of the invitation to the bull.
Then behind them, they heard another sound. There was the noise of heavy hooves and the ugly snorting sound of an enraged bull; and then the beast, a whole half-ton of him, stomped around the far corner of the tunnel. He stopped under the bare light bulb. His eyes, fixed on the three humans, were narrowed and malevolent. Heavy breath came from his nostrils, its hot moisture creating little puffs of fog in the damp tunnel. His tail swished back and forth.
"Oh, crap," Terri said.
"Big Mac is here," said Remo.
Several women smiled warmly at Commander Spencer as he walked down the bleacher steps of the Plaza de Toros. He brushed against one woman and murmured an apology.
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"Senor, you can bump me anytime," she said, her doe-eyes flashing at him.
"Perhaps later," Spencer said, without breaking stride. His mind was not on women. His mind was on the game. The quarry waited and he was the hunter.
The tiny pulses in his temple were beginning to throb again.
The bull stood his ground. Remo, Chiun, and Terri looked at the big animal, then suddenly, the tunnel behind them was bathed in bright light. Remo glanced over his shoulder. The giant doors behind them leading to the sunlit arena had been opened, and standing in the center of the sand-floored arena, framed in the rectangle of the doorway as if it were a camera viewfinder, were a matador and two picadors on horseback.
Remo looked back at the bull and Chiun said, "Remo, please dispose of that thing."
"You never showed me how to do bulls."
"You can't see things. You can't do bulls. What good are you?" Chiun asked.
"I'm good in bed," Remo said.
"Will you two stop bickering and do something about that beast?" Terri said.
Remo stepped forward in the tunnel and called out, "Heyyyy, toro." He turned to Terri. "How do you like that? I saw it once in an Anthony Quinn movie."
Terri turned toward the sunlit entrance to the tunnel. "I'm getting out of here," she said, but Chiun reached out, took her arm and stopped her.
"We do not know what is out there. Someone
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brought us here. Someone may wait out there for you."
"Damned if I do and damned if I don't," Terri said, just as the bull charged.
Spencer was in the front row of seats, just behind the high wooden fence. He put a hand atop the thick wooden boards and lightly vaulted over the rail, dropping the eight feet into the sand of the arena below.
The crowd saw him and let out a surprised hiss, then began chattering nervously to themselves as Spencer marched across the sand toward the open doors of the tunnel.
The matador ran up to stop him, but without breaking stride the Englishman backhanded him across the face and he dropped into the sand as if felled with an axe. Then the Englishman in the dark-blue suit reached the tunnel entrance and stepped inside.
Remo was showing off. The bull had pulled up in its charge and Remo had dropped down on his knees so that his nose touched that of the giant creature.
From the side of his mouth, Remo said to Terri, "Wheeew, some breath. How do you like this?"
But Terri did not answer. Another voice did, a man's voice. Spencer stood in the archway, and said with a voice surprisingly devoid of malice, "Not bad, Yank. Too bad you won't have time to pursue it as a career."
With one smooth motion, Spencer slipped off
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his jacket and dropped it onto the floor of the tunnel, then pulled the doors shut behind him.
Strapped to each shirt-sleeve was a thin, eight-inch-long bomb that looked like a fireworks rocket. Spencer peeled one from the snap holder around his left forearm, then laid it over his arm and aimed it down the tunnel toward Remo. He twisted a small pin at the back of the missile and with a whooshing hiss, it flamed off down the tunnel.
Remo rose and turned, but he had no time to raise his arms or react to the weapon. Before it struck him, Chiun flashed across in front of Remo, his yellow robe a blurring fuzzy sun in the semilit tunnel. The side of his hand touched the rocket and it soared over Remo's shoulder to explode against the rear wall of the tunnel.
Without looking, Remo reached behind him and rapped the bull between the eyes with the side of his hand.
"Go to sleep, Ferdinand," he said. The bull moaned and fell onto its side, unconscious. Remo took a step toward the Englishman in the doorway, but Spencer had already ripped the second missile loose from his right forearm. Chiun grabbed Terri and ran down the tunnel and Remo followed.
Behind him, he heard the high-pitched sound of Spencer's vicious laughter.
Chiun hissed, "I know these boom-shooters. They seek out the heat of the human body."
They passed under the small light bulb that illuminated the far end of the tunnel. A thick iron door blocked their way out of the maze which wandered under the arena's stands. When they turned, their backs to the stone wall, Spencer was
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moving toward them. He stepped over the unconscious downed bull.
"Just step toward me, Missie," Spencer said to Terri. "I don't want to have to hurt you, you know."
Terri said, nodding dumbly, "I understand."
Remo said, "You understand? He's trying to kill us and you understand? Lady, put your oars in the water."
Remo looked toward Chiun. He knew the two of them could take off through the iron door and escape but Terri would be too slow, too vulnerable. Their fleeing would cost her her life.
Chiun was staring straight ahead at the burly Englishman but the stare was one of neither threat nor fear. It was a curious, dead stare as if Chiun were embalmed, the look of a man dead, but with his eyes wide open and staring. The color had drained from Chiun's face and in the flickering overhead light; he looked ghostlike.
He stepped forward to meet Spencer.
The Englishman had stopped twenty feet from them. Behind him, Remo heard the sound of the trumpet blaring again from the bull arena.
Now Chiun was only three feet from Spencer.
"Out of the way, old man," Spencer said.
Chiun shook his head, sadly and with finality. Remo noticed how stiffly Chiun moved, as if the life already had gone from him. What was he doing?
"Have it your own way, sir," Spencer said.
From only three feet away, he aimed the missile at the center of Chiun's forehead. Then he twisted the firing mechanism on the back of the rocket. It
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shot forward with a hiss, but then, seemingly by magic, it veered upward and exploded against the overhead lightbulb.
Terri inhaled her breath noisily as Chiun slowly extended a finger toward Spencer and touched the Briton's cheek.
"It's cold," Spencer said. "You're cold."
Remo nodded. Of course. The only defense against bombs that sought out the heat of a human body was an inhumanly cold body.
"Cold," Spencer said again.
"As you soon will be," Chiun said slowly. "Remo, remove this one."
"You're there," Remo said. "You do it."
"You need the practice," Chiun said.
Remo sighed and released Terri's arm.
"All right, I'll do it. But I'm getting tired of being the schlepp around here. Wait. We ought to question him. Find out what's going on with these phony inscriptions. Good idea, Chiun. I'll do it."
"I don't think either of you will be doing anything quite so easily," Spencer said. "You ever see one of these before?" He pulled a small black ball that looked like a regulation handball from a clip on the back of his belt.
"Naaah," Remo said. "Chiun, you ever see one of those before?"
"No," Chiun said. "Ask him if it plays Space Invaders."
"I don't think it does," Remo said. He moved past Chiun as the old man went back to guard Terri.
"It's a deadly fragmentation bomb," Spencer said. "Blow you to bits, Yank."
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"Naaah," Remo said. "That stuff never works. It never goes off and if it does go off, it busts up windows and nothing else."
He heard Chiun behind him. "The British always used toys. That is why they never amounted to anything."
"I know, Little Father," Remo said.
Spencer's face reddened in anger. "We will see," he said. Softly, underhanded, he tossed the fragmentation bomb at Remo, then ran back toward the entrance to the tunnel. Remo picked up the bomb and held it in his hand. He could feel it whirring. There was an explosive charge inside of it, and when it went, it would break through the metal covering, which was already scored to break apart in jagged-edged pieces. But just as water could not rush into an already-full vessel, an explosive force could not explode against a containing force that was exactly its equal.
It would be stalemate: an irresistible force pushing an immovable object, neither giving way until the power of the force just passed its vibrations off into the stillness of the surrounding air. Remo felt the bomb still whirring inside his hand. He stretched his fingers to see if his hand could contain the entire sphere, but it was slightly too large. Some parts of the metal remained uncovered and the explosive force would break through there, and then the whole bomb would blow apart, taking Remo's hand with it.
He cupped his left hand over his right. The delicate flesh of his hands felt the coldness of the metal held inside. He softened his hands, relaxing his muscles, until he was sure that the entire sur-
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face of the spherical bomb was touched by his flesh. Then he began to exert pressure. That was the tricky part-to have the pressure forcing inward exactly equal to the pressure blasting outward at the moment of explosion.
He felt a click as the bomb's firing mechanism went off. Inside his hands, he felt the sudden buildup of pressure against his left ring finger and his right pinky. Instinctively, he increased downward pressure of those two fingers. His hands held and the explosion stayed muffled in his hands.
He could feel the pressure waves of the dissipating force vibrate the air around his hands and then the waves reached his face. He could see them shimmer against the light from the partially open doorway at the end of the tunnel. For a split second his arms twitched in the eddy of the force currents. Then the blast slowed down and in another second, the force had leaked harmlessly into the air.
Remo opened his hands and looked at the pure, unbroken black sphere. He tossed it toward Spencer.
"Told you. You can't trust these things."
Spencer recoiled as the bomb hit the stone floor in front of him and rolled harmlessly away.
The Englishman reached down to the back of his shoe, snapped a pellet from the back of his heel, and tossed it onto the ground in front of Remo. It popped, almost a firecracker's pop, and a dark billow of smoke rose, surrounding Remo's face. He stopped breathing, in case it was poison. Spencer pulled a throwing knife from the back of his belt, raised it over his head, and propelled it at
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the center of the smoky mist, at the spot where Remo's chest would be.
An ordinary man would have been defenseless, unable to see to protect himself against the razor-sharp blade flying toward him. But mist and smoke, Remo knew, were not just one thing; they were a bundle of bits, just as television was not one picture, continuously moving, but a series of still pictures flashed at the rate of thirty per second. It took the cooperation of the average person's mind and eyes to make them into a moving picture.
So with smoke. It did not have to blind or obscure if a person simply realized that it was made up of separate particles. Then he could focus on the particules with primary vision, changing the fog and smoke to a transparent drizzle, and then use secondary vision to see the object behind the smoke.
This Remo did and saw the knife flying toward his chest.
Spencer saw the knife disappear into the column of smoke that was Remo. He expected the usual thud and scream when it bit flesh, but there was no thud and no scream.
Instead there was silence. Then a snap, a hard, metallic cracking sound. And then two halves of the knife, the handle and the blade, came flying back from the mist to land on the stone floor at Spencer's feet.
"Oh, bloody, shit," said Spencer.
Wissex had warned him that these two were dangerous but had not prepared him for this. It was time for Old Reliable. As the smoke dissipated and Remo's form again became visible, Spencer
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reached into a shoulder holster and withdrew a Pendleton-Sellers .31 caliber semimag automatic with the Bolan augmented armature. The pistol fired a shell that exploded into fragments a foot away from the muzzle of the gun. Anything in the immediate area would be downed. It could level a cocktail party of people faster than Norman Mailer talking prison reform could level common sense.
Spencer pulled the slide back to put a shell into the firing chamber. As he did, he backed away from Remo, lest the crazy American make a suicidal lunge.
"Don't back up any more," Remo said.
