The Destroyer - 70 - The Destroyer 070 - The Eleventh Hour by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:51:25+00:00

Chapter 10

Re­mo struck out to the north, not notic­ing where he was go­ing. He just want­ed to get away.

For the last few months Re­mo had been haunt­ed by the need to find out who his par­ents were, and why they had aban­doned him as a ba­by. It meant, re­al­ly, dis­cov­er­ing who he ac­tu­al­ly was. It had all seemed so im­por­tant. But now that Chi­un was dy­ing and Re­mo faced the ul­ti­mate test of where his loy­al­ties lay-​with Amer­ica or with Sinan­ju-​it wasn’t rel­evant any more.

What would hap­pen, Re­mo won­dered, when Smith didn’t hear from him? Would he as­sume Re­mo was hurt, or killed? Would he send the U.S. Marines in to find out? Or would Smith even care, now that CURE op­er­ations were wind­ing down?

But CURE op­er­ations nev­er wound down. Re­mo knew Smith had been de­ceiv­ing him­self. This was just a lull. Soon, some cri­sis would rear its ug­ly head, and it would be back to busi­ness as usu­al. When the call came to re­turn to Amer­ica, what would he do? Re­mo won­dered.

Re­mo looked back from a low hill. Sinan­ju lay be­low, with its tarpa­per and wood shacks, pago­da roofed hous­es, wood­en side­walks, and the mag­nif­icent trea­sure house. It looked like an Ori­en­tal’s ver­sion of a Wild West town, and noth­ing like home. Not Re­mo’s. Not Chi­un’s. Not any­one’s.

Re­mo felt sud­den­ly very, very tired. He had walked off to be alone with his thoughts and his frus­tra­tions, but now all he want­ed to do was find some nice warm place-​in­doors-​where he could nap.

Re­mo found such a place al­most im­me­di­ate­ly.

It was a mod­est house by it­self in a lit­tle vale, far from any oth­er hous­es. By Amer­ican stan­dards, it was just down the road from Sinan­ju prop­er, but by the tight­ly knit stan­dards of Chi­un’s vil­lage, the house was an out­post.

There were no signs of habi­ta­tion as Re­mo ap­proached. No bowl of radish­es dry­ing out­side, no strings of noo­dles hang­ing in the sun. Maybe the oc­cu­pant had died. Re­mo couldn’t re­mem­ber hav­ing seen the house in any of his pre­vi­ous vis­its to Sinan­ju. He de­cid­ed that if no one want­ed it, he would take it.

Re­mo pushed the door in. It was un­fas­tened. On­ly a lit­tle light en­tered with Re­mo. It was very dark in­side. That was good. He would sleep bet­ter in the dark­ness.

Re­mo’s foot touched a floor mat. He lay down on it, start­ing to re­lax al­most as soon as his spine felt the hard­ness of the floor un­der it.

“Maybe I’ll wake up back home,” Re­mo said wish­ful­ly.

“Who is it?” a small voice asked in the dark­ness. The voice spoke in Ko­re­an.

Re­mo shot to his feet. His eyes di­lat­ed au­to­mat­ical­ly. Some­one else was in the house, sit­ting in the dark­ness of one cor­ner, sit­ting with­out light or sound. “Hel­lo?” Re­mo asked, em­bar­rassed.

“I do not rec­og­nize your voice,” the voice said. “Is there some­thing that you want?”

The voice was light, lilt­ing-​a wom­an’s voice.

“I thought no one lived here,” Re­mo said. “I’m sor­ry.”

“Do not be,” the voice said sad­ly. “No one vis­its me.

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