The Destroyer - 41 - The Destroyer 041 - Firing Line 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: 2010-03-19T14:51:47+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Re­mo stopped out­side the door of his room. For a fleet­ing in­stant, he had felt that there was some­one in­side, but now as he lis­tened, there was no sound. He heard no breath­ing, nor the rus­tle of gar­ments as some­one’s chest rose and fell from breath­ing. He put his hands gen­tly on the door, touch­ing the wood with his fin­ger­tips, try­ing to pick up vi­bra­tions from in­side. There were none.

Re­as­sured, he opened the door and stepped in­side the room. He was a wreck and he knew it. The cab driv­er had not want­ed to pick him up. Usu­al­ly, Re­mo could con­vince cab drivers by break­ing their door locks and twist­ing their ears. He was too weak for that tonight. He had paid two hun­dred dol­lars cash for the cab­bie to bring him to his ho­tel.

In­stinc­tive­ly, he knew that he must show­er and then stop to think this out. He had seen some­thing tonight that he had not known ex­ist­ed, and if he was go­ing to sur­vive it, he had to un­der­stand it.

He pushed the door shut be­hind him and walked across the soft car­pet to­ward the bath­room. He stopped as he heard a voice be­hind him.

“A dis­grace.”

Re­mo wheeled. Chi­un sat in the cen­ter of the floor, atop a couch cush­ion, look­ing at Re­mo, shak­ing his head and cluck­ing.

“Look at you,” Chi­un said. “Look­ing like dog doo-​doo, act­ing like a rab­bit. Is this what all my train­ing has come to?”

Re­mo hes­itat­ed. Had Chi­un been sent by Smith? Was this to be the end of poor Re­mo? He stayed in po­si­tion, watch­ing, and then he saw that there was in Chi­un none of the in­ten­si­ty Re­mo had so of­ten seen when Chi­un was in­volved in a mis­sion. The old Ori­en­tal sat, fin­ger­tips touch­ing across his lap, shak­ing his head in dis­may at Re­mo’s ap­pear­ance.

“I had some trou­ble tonight,” Re­mo said.

“Oh. You had some trou­ble,” Chi­un said. “I was sure that ev­ery­thing was go­ing won­der­ful­ly for you. You look so good.”

“Knock it off, Chi­un. This hasn’t been an easy night.”

“And they will get no eas­ier. A fish out of wa­ter might not like the first few min­utes, but he can be sure that the next min­utes will be even worse.”

“Please,” said Re­mo. His body, which had with­stood the burn of heat and flame, was now pay­ing the price the ten­sion had de­mand­ed. Re­mo felt weak. He could feel his tis­sues de­hy­drat­ed and dry­ing. All the flu­ids he had pushed to the sur­face of his body to guard against be­ing bad­ly burned were now dis­si­pat­ing through­out his body, and his skin felt parched. His mouth need­ed wa­ter. He could feel a light­ness in his head and for a mo­ment, he felt him­self sway­ing to the right. He al­most fell, but held him­self up by catch­ing on­to a dress­er with his right hand.

Chi­un was at his side. “Fool,” he hissed. “Fool­ish, fool­ish child.”

Re­mo tried to say some­thing flip, but no words part­ed his dry lips. He felt him­self be­ing steered, al­most lift­ed, be­cause he

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