Bamboo Dragon

"I haven't slept that well in years," she said to Remo, passing on her way to make a pit stop in the forest. "That's some bedside manner, Dr. Ward."

"I try to keep my hand in," Remo told her.

"So I noticed. Don't waste too much energy today," she said in parting. "You'll be needing it tonight."

"I'll make a note."

Their breakfast was another freeze-dried meal, some kind of lumpy scrambled-egg concoction laced with colorful but tasteless cubes of meat and vegetables. Someone's conception of an omelet, Remo guessed, though he couldn't have sworn to the ID if he were under oath.

The best thing about bad food, he decided, was its tendency to vanish quickly; no one lingered to savor the experience before they were scraping plates and trooping down to the stream for K.P. duty. They were packed, including tents, inside of forty minutes from the time they first sat down to eat.

The jungle had begun to subtly change, thought Remo as they struck another trail beyond the clearing and resumed their eastward march. Not so much in appearance—which was standard tropic rain forest, from what he could observe—but more in terms of atmosphere. There was a darker feel about the new terrain; Remo would have been hard-pressed to put it into words, except to say that it felt dangerous, if not precisely evil. There was less room to maneuver on the trail, the jungle pressing closer on each side than it had the day before, and the mosquitoes came in greater numbers, reinforced by swarms of biting gnats and flies.

And they were being followed, yes indeed. The tail was back there, keeping a respectful distance, but maintaining contact all the same.

He thought once more about surprising their pursuers, falling back to search them out and wreak a little havoc for the hell of it, find out exactly who or what was on their trail. But Audrey kept on glancing back at Remo, smiling even when the heat and insects started getting to her, and he knew that she would sound the first alarm if she looked back and found him gone. Tonight, perhaps, if there was time and he could get a fix on their prospective enemies. A visit to the other camp in darkness might be just what Dr. Renton ordered.

In the meantime, Remo concentrated on the trail and his companions. Audrey working up a sweat in front of him, the rich aroma of her body wafting back to Remo on a sluggish jungle breeze. He put the stirring mental images on hold and checked the others, starting with their guide and working backward down the line. The men demonstrated varied levels of endurance, Remo saw, but none showed any signs of dropping from exhaustion. Up in front, their Malay pointman set a steady pace without demanding any superhuman effort. He appeared to have the oldest member of the team in mind, and Remo caught him glancing back at Dr. Stockwell every hundred yards or so, as if to reassure himself that the professor still had energy enough to carry on.

So far so good.

Three hours later, they stopped to rest for fifteen minutes, and Audrey winked on the sly before she settled next to Stockwell.

"Tell me, Audrey," the professor said, "have you seen anything unusual about the native flora?"

Audrey thought about the question for a moment, finally shook her head. "Not really, Safford. Much of what we see is rather primitive, of course—the ferns and fungi, obviously—but there's nothing I'd call prehistoric on the face of it. No fossil species sprung to life, by any means."

"An ordinary jungle, then?"

"In essence," she replied. "But we're not looking for a plant, remember. If I had to guess, I'd say that isolation would be more important to survival of an ancient species than specific flora. Even herbivores are fairly versatile, unless you're dealing with koala bears."

Their guide, Kuching Kangar, had seemed to follow the exchange with interest, though it was impossible to say how much he understood until he spoke.

"Nagaq eats meat," he said to no one in particular.

Professor Stockwell blinked and frowned. "A carnivore?"

The little Malay shrugged. "Eats meat," he said again.

"You've heard this from your people, I suppose?"

"Nagaq ate my datuk," the guide responded, slipping into Malay.

"His grandfather," Sibu Sandakan translated.

"What?" Professor Stockwell was amazed. "He surely cannot mean—"

"We hear him screams," the guide said, interrupting Stockwell. "Run down to the river where he go for water. Find his arm, kiri."

"The left one," Sandakan filled in, appearing shaken.

"Also, tracks left by Nagaq," the guide went on. "This big."

He held his hands apart, three feet or so, then let them fall into his lap. The story of his grandfather's annihilation seemed to conjure nothing in the way of strong emotion.

"When did all this happen?" Audrey asked.

"Two years gone, maybe three."

"What bloody rot," Pike Chalmers said. "It must have been a crocodile."

"No crocodile that big," the guide replied. If he was angered by the tall Brit's open skepticism, he concealed it well.

"My God, that's food for thought," Professor Stockwell said. "That is… I mean to say… "

"It's all right, Safford," Audrey told him, resting one hand on his sunburned arm. "I'm sure he didn't take offense."

"Nagaq eat meat," their guide repeated with a twitchy little smile, then scrambled to his feet and grabbed his pack.

"Rest over," he informed them. "We go now."

The Master of Sinanju had no difficulty following his quarry. Even on the river, it was child's play, watching for the point where they had landed their canoes and made a sad attempt at hiding them. The boats were tucked away behind some ferns, but no real effort had been made to sweep away the tracks where they were dragged ashore, and footprints from the several amateurs were everywhere.

The game was that much easier when they began the rough trek overland. Their clumsy boots left imprints that a blind man could have followed, tapping with his cane, and there were other signs, besides. A broken sapling. Scratches on a tree, where someone's gear had scraped the bark. A stone inverted, kicked aside to bare the worms beneath it. Fronds and branches cut with a machete where the trail was overgrown and they were forced to clear a path. Great imprints from their buttocks where they stopped to rest.

Remo was better than the others, granted, but he still left traces that the Master of Sinanju could detect with only minor concentration. In a contest, it wouldn't be good enough, but Remo surely would have chosen better footwear and equipment if the choice were his to make.

Chiun had started out a day behind the Stockwell expedition, giving them a night to sleep at Dampar, picking out a charter speedboat that would quickly shave their lead. He was an hour and a half behind them when he acquired the canoe, with no white men in the boat to hold him back once Chiun applied himself to paddling at speed. His quarry had no more than forty minutes' lead time when the Master beached his boat and took the time to hide it properly, where no man would discover it without a thorough, time-consuming search.

At that, Chiun was almost forced to view his tracking prowess as a handicap of sorts. He could have overtaken Remo and the others in an hour at the most, and shadowed them from killing distance, but he had no wish to baby-sit.

And after fifteen minutes on the jungle trail, he knew there was another problem that he must examine first, before he showed himself to Remo.

Stockwell's expedition had a tail.

He couldn't say another tail, because the faceless strangers had begun their hunt ahead of him. For all Chiun knew, they may have been in place before the expedition left K.L. They had made no effort to surprise the expedition yet, but they were armed and therefore dangerous—at least to whites with no appreciation of Sinanju.

Master Chiun had sensed the enemy before he covered half a mile on foot, then took time to sort the scents and general impressions that combined to let him know an adversary was at hand. He left the trail at once and moved wraithlike through the forest to pick up a second track that paralleled the first. The boots that trod this path were older, more run-down than those of Stockwell's expedition, and they were more numerous. He counted seventeen distinct and separate signatures along the way, including two men wearing sandals soled with rubber cut from blown-out tires. A smell of gun oil lingered on the air.

Chiun followed them that day, observed their progress, counted heads and weapons. They were Malay, with a couple of Chinese—the sandal-wearers—and their weapons, plus a motley sort of uniform patched up from camouflage fatigues and faded denim, readily identified them as guerrillas. Since he spoke no Malay, and the Chinese didn't use their native tongue, Chiun could only speculate upon their motive for pursuing Dr. Stockwell's party. Even so, their motive, while obscure, was clearly not benevolent.

Chiun considered falling on them from behind and winnowing the ranks, or traveling ahead to meet them on the trail, pretend to be an ancient, fragile pilgrim until they were close enough to strike, but he finally decided to do nothing for the moment. When in doubt, if there was no emergency at hand, a wise assassin limited his action to the gathering of information, all the better to react appropriately once his target was identified.

With that in mind, he broke off the surveillance and moved on to pick up Stockwell's trail. He shadowed Remo and the others on their first day's march and watched them from the overhanging branches of a great tree as they set up camp. Chiun considered stealing in to speak with Remo, when the others were asleep, but he had faith in Remo to detect the common enemy, and there was little he could add beyond a physical description of their foe.

And by that time, of course, the woman had begun distracting Remo from his task. She was a brazen hussy, little better than a common prostitute, the way she bared her flesh to Remo on such short acquaintance. Chiun couldn't decide if her seductive actions were deliberate, a piece of conscious strategy toward unknown ends, or whether she was simply what the white men called a slut, devoid of self-restraint and moral fiber.

Either way, Chiun had witnessed Remo's personal response with disapproval. The Master was prim, and he well remembered a recent attachment that had surprised him at the time… though he also knew that these days the young were promiscuous. Even then, it was not so much the fact that Remo chose to grant the hussy's wish—although Chiun had warned him more than once about the risks of sacrificing vital energy through sex, when he was on a mission for Emperor Harold Smith—as in his pupil's blatant disrespect for the time-honored methods of Sinanju.

Remo made no effort whatsoever to begin the mating properly, by seeking out the woman's pulse and forcing it to escalate. Maybe, Chiun thought, it was the memory of Jean Rice that hampered his style. He skipped some of the classic steps and duplicated others, stopping cold before he had completed even the most basic ritual for bringing female flesh to ecstasy. Chiun could not deny the woman's rapture even so, but he would have to speak with Remo later and remind him of the need to follow through in everything.

There was a moment when Chiun believed that Remo would detect him, watching from the darkness, but the woman managed to divert him with her supple body. She was handsome for a white, of course, but there was something in the pallid skin and too-abundant curves that put Chiun off.

Korean women were the best.

Next morning, after dining on a handful of cold rice, Chiun had checked on the guerrillas, found them breaking camp, before he hurried back to join the Stockwell expedition. If the enemy had plans to strike, he knew they would most likely wait for darkness, but it wouldn't hurt for him to scout the trail ahead. He would take care to leave the forest undisturbed and give the scientific party's Malay guide no reason to suspect another human being in the neighborhood.

When the attack came, if it came, Chiun would not be far away.

The stinking jungle had begun to wear on Lai Man Yau. Two days he had been waiting with his soldiers for the Yankee expedition to arrive, and now he had to track them at a snail's pace while they trekked into the Tasek Bera no-man's-land. It would have pleased him to attack the party and destroy them all—except, perhaps, the woman, who could entertain his men for several days before she died. Still, this was war, and Lai Man Yau was under orders. He would have to wait a bit, until the round-eyes found what they were looking for.

Beijing had been explicit on that point. A premature attack would ruin everything, and it would be considered treachery, deserving of a traitor's fate.

He could live on fish and rice, dried beef and fruit, for weeks if necessary. Long before that time, his enemies would either make their find or give up in disgust, and he would get approval for their execution either way.

It would be better, though, if they could simply find what they were looking for, deliver it to Lai Man Yau before they died.

Yes, that was how it ought to be.

Lai Yau was one of some six million ethnic Chinese living in Malaysia. He could trace his roots back thirteen generations, but he never saw himself as Malay. He would always be Chinese, and as a faithful son of China, he took orders from Beijing.

Six years ago, those orders had commanded him to organize a small guerrilla cadre, granting native Malays equal partnership, and to inaugurate a people's war of liberation that would ultimately doom the nation's constitutional monarchy, paving the way for a socialist regime patterned on the Chinese model. Everywhere throughout Malaysia, there were cadres much like his, intent on toppling the corrupt, outdated government in favor of a Beijing-type replacement. Communism might be dead in Russia and the mongrel states of Eastern Europe, but it was alive and well in Asia, with a program that demanded suitable respect.

The job at hand, as with so many missions ordered from Beijing, was long on orders, short on explanations. Lai Man Yau had been instructed to await the Yankee expedition, follow it and safeguard certain information that a spy within the party would provide when it was time. The information would be furnished to Beijing, the round-eyes executed. No provision had been made to spare the mercenary agent, once his work was done. Expecting Chinese gold, he would be paid in lead.

The ruthless plan appealed to Lai Man Yau. He only wished that it were possible to get the waiting over with, put it behind him and get on with killing round-eyes. That was still, would always be, his favorite sport.

It would have been so easy to surround their camp last night, move in with AK-47s blazing, rip the pup tents and their occupants to shreds before the round-eyes woke to recognize their fate. Or he could just as easily have taken them alive, interrogated each of them in turn until he found out what they meant by tramping through the Tasek Bera with their pitiful safari.

The Americans were crazy; everyone knew that. But they were also clever, crafty. Lai Man Yau dismissed the media reports of living dinosaurs as a pathetic, simpleminded cover for the expedition's true pursuit—whatever that might be. His masters didn't share their knowledge with a simple soldier in the field. It was enough for them that he showed up on time and did the job he was assigned to do, without complaints or questions. If he failed, there would be punishment in store. If he succeeded, then success would be its own reward.

Sometimes, before he fell asleep at night, Lai Yau thought he could understand the Western profit motive, as corrupt as it might be. Material possessions were an opiate, much like religion, but he understood why they were so addictive. Money, houses, fancy cars and women would appeal to most men if they were not educated in the dialectic that explained how such things spoiled man's days on earth. Lai Yau knew all the arguments by heart, and even he wasn't immune to cravings of the flesh.

Suppose he managed to obtain the information that Beijing desired so urgently, then went in business for himself. What then? His masters would be furious, of course, but how much could they really do to punish him? Assassins could be sent from China, but they would be strangers in Pahang, while Lai Man Yau was perfectly at home. He could evade them or destroy them as he chose. With cash enough behind him, he could hold his enemies at bay forever if he so desired.

Of course, defying Beijing would be treason to the people's revolution. Lai Man Yau had spent the past six years, one-quarter of his life, attempting to advance the cause of communism in Malaysia. What would he be if he reversed himself, belatedly rejected Chairman Mao and his disciples?

Rich.

His troops would never have to know. They followed orders to the letter, trusted Lai Man Yau as he himself had always trusted his superiors. His men were peasants—broken fanners, onetime beggars off the streets—who saw themselves as soldiers now, content to take direction from the man who had supplied them with a second chance in life. They wouldn't question his commands or fail him short of death. To them, Lai Yau was nothing short of God on earth. The masters in Beijing, by contrast, were a group of men too far away to merit real concern.

At that, Lai Yau knew his superiors had solid reasons for the things they did. He might not understand why a particular Chinese or Malay was selected for assassination, why a certain public building should be bombed or burned, but reasons still existed. This time, when he got the information Beijing wanted, Lai Man Yau would have to find out what it meant and weigh the risk of going private, opening an auction for the highest bidders from around the world.

He had connections in K.L. who could arrange the details, businessmen unscrupulous enough to take a chance where money was concerned. The trick would be establishing a price that made him rich, while covering his necessary partners, but without discouraging potential customers. For that, he had to know exactly what the product was, its open-market cost and the black-market value that would double, maybe triple the established asking price.

His first step, obviously, was to get the information in his hands, eliminate the middleman and find a place to hide while Beijing went berserk. What happened to his men once they had done their job was of no concern to Lai Man Yau. If some of them fell prey to Chinese execution squads, so much the better. He might even find a way to stage his own death, throw pursuers off his track so that he wouldn't have to waste a moment of the good life glancing nervously over his shoulder.

Foresight. Patience. Courage. Lai Man Yau had all these attributes and more. He hadn't failed thus far in anything he'd set out to accomplish for himself or for his masters in Beijing.

And he wouldn't fail this time.

He would be rich, no matter what it cost. And if he had to come back from the dead to spend his money, he would find a way to do that, too.

By noon, the jungle atmosphere had thickened, grown more humid and oppressive than the day before. Was it a simple change of weather, Remo wondered, or some constant aspect of the territory they had entered, making it the worst uncharted wilderness Malaysia had to offer?

He had seen more snakes and lizards in the past five hours than on any single day before, outside a zoo. Most of them went unnoticed by the other members of his party, dangling from the branches overhead or wriggling out of sight amid the undergrowth beside the path. But there had been a brief, unscheduled interruption of their march an hour previously, when their guide came face-to-face with a reticulated python on the trail. Pike Chalmers had his rifle shouldered in a flash, but Dr. Stockwell and Kuching Kangar dissuaded him from firing at the snake. Instead, the little Malay cut a six-foot walking stick and prodded at the sleek, fat reptile, irritating it enough that it was driven to retreat and clear the way.

"Now, that's a snake," said Audrey Moreland as the python slid from view, a gliding monster all of twenty feet in length.

"With any luck," said Remo, "that's the biggest thing we'll see."

"Bad luck, you mean," said Audrey, putting on an impish smile for Remo. "Don't you want to take a baby brontosaurus home?"

"I'd never make it back through customs," Remo answered. "Anyway, no pets allowed in my apartment building."

"That's a shame. No little pussycats?"

"If I get lonely," Remo said, "I stop off at the petting zoo."

"You don't know what you're missing," Audrey said.

"You may be right."

Their trek resumed from there, the python pit stop being counted as a rest break by Kuching Kangar. By Remo's estimate, the heat had gone up twenty-two degrees since they broke camp, and coupled with the increased humidity, any physical activity was a challenge, bathing them in sweat, while simply breathing called for conscious effort. Remo took the necessary steps to regulate his body temperature and respiration, let himself perspire without becoming drained of vital energy. In front of him, the others labored underneath their heavy loads like beasts of burden, pack mules hauling freight across a trackless wilderness.

Remo barely felt his own pack. He moved with the weight instead of fighting it, one foot in front of the other as he kept up with the expedition's steady pace. They weren't breaking any land-speed records, but there seemed to be no desperate hurry, either. If their guide was equal to his billing in Dampar, he knew exactly how much farther they would have to travel in relation to supplies on hand and the anticipated personal endurance of his team. As for the dinosaur, thought Remo, it would either be there waiting for them or it wouldn't. Either way, the game that held his full attention was about uranium, not prehistoric reptiles.

It would help, he realized, if he could find out something about the people who were trailing them. He had discounted the idea that they were being followed by a jungle predator; no animal he knew of would be interested enough in human beings to pursue them for a second day, when it had passed a chance to raid their sleeping camp last night. On top of that, it felt like people, sticking with the single-mindedness that indicated some specific purpose.

Waiting to find out if we get lucky, Remo thought.

In which regard? He tried to picture jealous dinosaur enthusiasts pursuing them for miles upriver, through the jungle, but it didn't play. A rival expedition would have gone out for the fanfare of publicity to scoop the competition.

No, he reckoned as he felt the earth grow softer, spongy, underneath his feet, they would be looking for uranium. And that, in turn, left him with either one of two distinct and inescapable conclusions. On the one hand, it was possible that their pursuers simply had suspicions that Professor Stockwell's team was looking for uranium. The flip side, much more ominous from Remo's point of view, would mean they knew the team—or part of it, at any rate—was searching for the mother lode and using Stockwell's dino hunt for camouflage.

And how could anyone be sure, unless he or she was associated with the ringer? Standing by as back up, perhaps, if something necessitated getting rid of pesky witnesses.

Remo could have checked the stalkers out last night, but Audrey had distracted him. A nice distraction, he admitted to himself, but Remo knew that he would have to keep his mind on business in the future.

Which was not to say that Audrey would be wholly out of luck. He might be forced to skip a few more steps in the Sinanju love technique, speed matters up a little and make time for prowling in the jungle after she was tucked in for the night.

An ugly job, he thought, half smiling to himself, but someone has to do it.

He would think of it as one more sacrifice for duty and Emperor Smith.

He checked his watch against the sun, deciding they could march for several hours yet before they had to pitch camp for the night. There was no way of knowing if their guide had picked another campsite in advance, or whether he was playing it by ear. In any case, the trackers would be somewhere fairly close at hand.

He knew their general direction—south and west of Stockwell's team right now—and had no doubt that he could find them in the dark. They might be smart enough to camp without a fire, but men still gave off a distinctive odor, still made conversation and a host of other noises that would serve as well as any beacon in the night.

The only question left in Remo's mind was what to do with them once he made contact, whether he should kill them on the spot or let the waiting game continue for a while, find out exactly what they had in mind.

With any luck, the faceless enemy might help identify the ringer on his own team. He would have to ask around before he killed them if it came to that.

"Are you okay back there?" asked Audrey, sounding winded.

"Hanging on," said Remo, hoping that he sounded tired.

"Don't overtax yourself," she told him, winking on the sly. "You'll need your strength tonight."

"My thoughts exactly," the Destroyer said.

Chapter Eleven

They pitched camp in another clearing, smaller than the first one, with the jungle pressing closer on all sides. The nearby stream was smaller, too, and somewhat farther from the camp than last night's stop. Their guide went out first thing, with his machete, and spent half an hour hacking out a narrow path between the clearing and their only source of water. By the time he finished, everyone but Audrey Moreland had their tents assembled. Remo helped her out again, despite his firm conviction that she could have managed this time on her own.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," Audrey whispered.

"Something tells me you'd survive," he said.

"Oh, I imagine so," she told him, smiling. "But it wouldn't be much fun."

Kuching Kangar went out to scout around before the sun went down, while the others settled in to rest a bit before they started on the evening meal. Pike Chalmers made a show of wiping down his big-game rifle with a chamois, maintaining a deliberate distance from the scientific members of the team.

"We should be close now," Dr. Stockwell said, considering his map. "A few more miles will bring us to the western finger of the lake."

"So, what about the Tasek Bera?" Audrey asked him.

"Technically, we're in the region now," said Stockwell, "but the sightings all originate from farther east. We'll look around the lake for tracks and so forth, but I don't expect the great Nagaq to make himself so readily available for photo opportunities."

"I shouldn't think so," Chalmers said with no real effort to conceal his mocking tone.

Professor Stockwell turned to face him. "You're the expert hunter, Mr. Chalmers. How would you proceed from this point on?"

"Depends on what I'm hunting," Chalmers said. "On normal hunts, you've got three options. If you're stalking a specific animal—a local man-eater, let's say—you may get lucky with a fresh spoor from the latest sighting, and go on from there to track the bugger down. Another way is bait, o' course. Fix up a blind or tree stand, stake your bait out in a clearing and be ready with your hardware when some hungry bastard comes along."

"If all else fails, you watch the nearest water source around the clock. No matter what you're hunting for, it has to drink."

"Which method would you recommend in this case?" Stockwell asked.

The hunter thought about it, finally shrugged. "There's been no recent sighting that we know of, and we can't track anything without finding its spoor to start from."

"What if we could find the former expedition's camp?" asked Stockwell.

Chalmers frowned. "We'd have to be damned lucky. If we find the camp, and if there's any tracks remaining, they'd be old by now. As far as picking up a trail that old and making something of it… well, it's not impossible, you understand, but damned unlikely."

"And the other methods you suggested?"

"What I understand," said Chalmers, "you've got no clear fix on what this bloody creature is or might be, other than some kind of prehistoric honker. Am I right?"

"Well—"

"And you've no idea what sort of menu it prefers, except for ravings from a dead man and the disappearing-granddad story, eh?"

"The evidence would seem to indicate a carnivore," said Stockwell stiffly. A tinge of angry color marked his cheeks.

Chalmers snorted in controlled disdain. "You've got no bloody evidence. Native superstition and the last words of a crazy man don't tell me anything. If there's a monster waddling around this patch, I need to see it for myself."

"And that's precisely why we're here," Stockwell reminded him. "We're paying you—and rather handsomely, I think—for your advice on how to make that sighting a reality."

"All right, then, here it is. We can't use bait without knowing what our intended likes to snack on, see? In fact, if it's a bloody carnivore we're after, I'll remind you that the only bait I've seen the past two days is us."

"In which case… ?"

"We can either get damned lucky with a set of tracks," said Chalmers, "or we find a likely place to sit and wait."

"Why can't we simply search the forest?" Stockwell asked.

"You mean go out and beat the bushes?"

"Well… in essence, yes."

"You're not a hunter, are you, Doctor?"

"Well, no, but in theory it should work… "

"I thought not," Chalmers said with thinly veiled contempt.

"Enlighten me, by all means, Mr. Chalmers."

"Beating works all right for birds and other small game," Chalmers said. "You scare 'em up and shoot 'em as they fly or run away. It sometimes works with larger game, as well, if you can place your quarry in a given area and pick your stand, have the beaters run him toward the guns. All clear so far?"

"I follow you."

"Then follow this," the hunter said. "We have no beaters, Doctor. There's the six of us, and no one else. Besides which, I'll remind you that we don't know where this bloody creature is—if he exists at all—and he's got several hundred square miles he can play in while we run around in circles, going nowhere."

"You appear to think it's hopeless, Mr. Chalmers."

"Bloody difficult, I'd say. You knew that going in."

"And what is your advice, in that case?"

"We should check around the lake for tracks, just like you said. That's first. If we get lucky, fine. If not, my guess would be that something really big will make its way down to the nearest water once a day at least. Good pickings by a jungle lake, if you're a hunter. All the grazers come to drink and have a snack some time or other. Big cats watch the water when they're on a hunt. Hyenas, too. No reason why your lizard shouldn't do the same, I'd say."

Their guide returned just then, with nothing to report. They spent the next half hour fetching wood and water, stoking up a fire and laying out the kitchen gear. The evening's fare was freeze-dried stew, complete with stringy shreds of beef and vegetables the consistency of rubber. Remo would have settled for a bowl of rice, and gladly, but he didn't have the choice.

The conversation lagged while they were eating, no one seeming anxious to prolong the meal. Their second day of marching through the jungle had exhausted Dr. Stockwell, and their Malay chaperon was equally fatigued. The trail had left its mark on Audrey Moreland, too, but from the hungry glances she gave Remo, it was evident that she retained a fair amount of restless energy. Pike Chalmers was his normal hulking self, apparently unfazed by roughing it, despite the sweat stains on his khaki shirt.

They finished cleaning up the supper pots and pans in record time, an easy round-trip to the stream, and left the gear to drip-dry on its own for breakfast. Dr. Stockwell couldn't stop himself from yawning as they finished up the chores and sat around the fire. It was full dark now in the jungle, with the night sounds closing in.

"We're getting closer," Stockwell said. "I know we are."

"I hope so," Audrey said, her eyes on Remo.

"If we reach the lake in decent time tomorrow, there's no reason why we can't start searching straightaway."

"We are agreed, I think," said Sibu Sandakan, "that no new species shall be harmed in any way?"

"Of course," Professor Stockwell said. "That's understood."

"You make allowances for self-defense, I take it?" Chalmers asked.

"Legitimate defense, of course," their Malay escort said.

"Because I tend to take a dim view of an animal that tries to eat, me, if you get my drift."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Audrey told him, "since you don't believe there is a dinosaur."

"Nagaq is here," Kuching Kangar declared. "We find him soon, I think."

"Whatever name the bugger goes by," Chalmers told the group at large, "I'm not his bloody appetizer. If we're clear on that, we've got no problem."

"On that note," said Dr. Stockwell, "I believe it would be wise for us to get some sleep. We have another early day tomorrow, as you know."

It was a repeat of the night before, retiring to their tents. Remo waited while the others fell asleep, Pike Chalmers taking longer than the rest, their Malay guide the last of all to pack it in. Before Kuching Kangar was wrapped up in his bedroll, Remo had begun to plan ahead, imagining what Audrey would expect of him, deciding on the steps that he would take to satisfy her quickly and leave enough time for himself to make a night search for the men who were pursuing them.

He could avoid the scene with Audrey altogether, Remo knew, but slipping past her would create more problems than it solved. She would be wandering around the jungle, looking for him, maybe getting into trouble on her own, and she would almost surely check his tent if Remo stood her up. That would mean questions in the morning, and if she was pissed enough, the woman scorned, she might say something to the others.

No, he thought, don't risk it. There were clearly worse chores in the world, and he was confident that he could have her ready for a good night's sleep in thirty minutes, tops. Once she was safely tucked into her sleeping bag and dreaming, Remo would be free to go about his business, prowling in the deep, dark woods.

He gave it twenty minutes more, then slipped out of his tent and edged around the clearing, to the rough trail. Another moment brought him to the stream, where Remo waited in the shadows, dodging moonlight. He would wait ten minutes, give her ample time, and if she had not shown by then—

A sound of cautious footsteps on the trail brought Remo into focus. Audrey came in view a moment later, stepping to the water's edge, briefly hesitating, then glancing left and right.

"Renton?"

"Right here."

She turned to face him. "There you are. I didn't hear you leave the camp."

"You weren't supposed to," Remo said. "I hope the others didn't hear me, either."

"They're all sawing logs," she told him, moving closer. "Did you learn to move that way from hunting snakes?"

"I've found that there are times it doesn't pay to make a lot of noise."

"How right you are." She was unbuttoning her blouse, below the pastel scarf she wore. "I'll do my best to hold it down, if you can keep it up."

His suave reply was interrupted by a tiny sound that emanated from the general direction of the camp. It wasn't loud, but it came to Remo's ears with great distinctness.

A sharp, metallic sound, as of an automatic weapon being cocked.

"Stay here," he said to Audrey.

"What? Why?"

"We have some uninvited company. Do as you're told and keep out of the way."

Remo never heard the rest of it. He was already moving back along the trail at full speed, a flitting shadow in the jungle night. Before he reached the clearing, Remo veered off to his right and circled through the trees, his every sense alert to danger now. It only took a moment for his nostrils to detect the smell of unwashed human bodies, sweaty clothes and gun oil. From the shifting, rustling sounds, he estimated there were ten or fifteen men positioned in a ring around the camp.

How had he missed them when he left the clearing? How had they missed Audrey Moreland? Remo guessed that it came down to timing, possibly a shifting breeze that had prevented him from picking up their scent, and his distraction at the thought of meeting Audrey for another one on one.

Chiun would gleefully have kicked his ass for screwing up a practice exercise through simple negligence, but this was even worse. A blunder in the field put lives at risk, potentially endangered Remo's mission. He would have to make it right, and quickly, if he didn't want the whole damned game to fall apart.

He reached out for the nearest prowler with his senses, found a target twenty feet away and closed the gap between them with long, silent strides. The gunman was a Malay, carrying an AK-47, with a pistol on his hip. He watched the sleeping camp and waited for the order that would send him forward into battle.

Were they here to kill or merely watch?

No matter. Remo couldn't take the chance.

He came up on the gunner's blind side, snapped his neck before the dead man realized that he was not alone and caught the body as it sagged, collapsing toward the forest floor. He laid the corpse out carefully, as one might put a drowsy child to bed, and left the automatic rifle propped across its owner's chest.

One down, and Remo went in search of number two. The second man he found was taller, slightly older, similarly armed. Because he huddled with his back against a tree, it was impossible for Remo to approach him from behind. He came in from the left instead, and used a floater strike to crush the gunman's skull, his free hand clutching fabric to prevent a noisy fall.

How many left exactly? There was no way to be sure except—

All hell broke loose. Someone was shouting from the far side of the clearing, and bodies crashed through the jungle. Remo didn't speak the language, but he recognized a signal to attack.

No shots were fired until Pike Chalmers bolted from his tent and saw a gunman charging toward him from the west. The Weatherby .460 Magnum roared, his target crumpling like a rag doll by the fire, and Chalmers whooped in satisfaction at the kill.

A scattering of automatic weapons opened up at that, and while it seemed to Remo that at least one Malay voice was calling for a cease-fire, those with itchy trigger fingers were in no mood to restrain themselves. Whatever their original intent, some members of the raiding party were content to kill these round-eyes on the spot.

He met a third guerrilla coming through the trees and dropped him with a short jab that ruptured heart, lung, spleen. The dead man wriggled for a moment on the ground, and then lay still. Behind him, in the clearing, the staccato sounds of gunfire tore the night apart.

Remo moved in that direction, caught a glimpse of Chalmers firing off into the trees. Professor Stockwell called out Audrey's name and got no answer as he peered briefly from his tent before a bullet kicked up dust mere inches from his face and drove him back to cover. Sibu Sandakan remained inside his tent, as if he thought the flimsy canvas could protect him from an armor-piercing round, but Remo couldn't spot their guide.

Halfway back home by now, he thought, and wondered whether they would ever see Kuching Kangar again—or if there would be anyone alive to guide should he return.

The sound of rapid firing close at hand led Remo to a Malay gunman who was pumping rounds into the camp without regard for where they went or who got hit. The surest, quickest way to stop him was a simple twist that left him facing backward while his lifeless body toppled forward, spinal column neatly severed at its juncture with the skull.

And that made five, including one for Chalmers. Remo calculated that the hostile force had been reduced by thirty-odd percent in something like a minute, but the odds were still against his comrades coming out unscathed.

He recognized the scream immediately, knew that it could only come from Audrey Moreland. In his mind's eye, Remo saw her waiting by the stream until the shooting started, drawn back toward the camp by curiosity and some part of the same fear that repelled her. Audrey on the narrow trail, advancing toward the sounds of battle, when a Malay gunman stepped across her path and—

Remo made his choice and bolted through the trees, directly toward the clearing that had turned into a shooting gallery. It was the path of least resistance if he kept his wits about him and remembered not to zig when he should zag. If it was not too late for Audrey, he could get there.

Pike Chalmers saw him coming, either failed to recognize him on the run or simply did not care whom he was firing at. The rifle swung around to cover Remo, Chalmers closing one eye as his other found the telescopic sight. It only took a gentle squeeze now, and the bullet that could drop a charging elephant would tear through Remo's chest.

Or maybe not.

In fact, he dodged the slug as he had done a hundred times before, anticipating Chalmers with a sidestep that did nothing to reduce forward momentum. By the time Pike understood that he had missed, began to work the rifle's heavy bolt, Remo was past him, reaching out to flick the weapon's muzzle with a fingertip and spin the Brit around, unceremoniously dumping him on his ass.

At that, he saved the hunter's life, though it had not been part of Remo's plan. Another member of the hit team, rising from the undergrowth beyond the clearing, had been set to riddle Chalmers where he stood, but now his spray of bullets cut through empty air, the big man sprawled just below the line of fire.

Another heartbeat put Remo in the startled gunner's face, an elbow rising at the speed of thought, connecting with the Malay's forehead, flesh and bone imploding into brain. The sweaty man went down without another sound, his useless weapon lost from lifeless fingers.

Back in camp, the Weatherby boomed again, but Remo didn't hear the bullet pass his way. Perhaps the trigger-happy hulk had been disoriented by his fall, or maybe he had simply found another target in the firelight, going where the action was.

Another scream came from Audrey, somewhere off the trail and to his right. Before he could correct and change directions, Remo was confronted with another gunman, this one a grim-faced Chinese. His AK-47 had been fitted with a bayonet, and now he made the critical mistake of thrusting with the blade instead of leaping back and firing from the hip. The man couldn't have saved himself in either case, but as it was, he made things easier.

A simple grab and twist disarmed him, putting the Kalashnikov in Remo's hands, where it became a deadly bludgeon. Only one stroke was required to shatter the guerrilla's skull, but Remo spared another second as he passed. He turned the gun around and hurled it like a javelin, impaling his late adversary with the bayonet and pinning him against the nearest tree before he had a chance to fall.

No sound from Audrey now, but Remo had fixed the general direction of her last outcry. Another ten or fifteen yards brought Remo to the place—he was convinced of it—but he had come too late.

The ground beneath his feet was moist and spongy here, like peat, and it gave way to quicksand several paces farther on. A shallow film of stagnant water overlay the quagmire, insects flitting here and there across the scummy surface, and a flash of color in the moonlight caught his eye.

A pale pastel.

The scarf that she had worn around her neck.

He grabbed a trailing vine and waded in, his free arm plunging deep into the mire, but he felt nothing underfoot, quicksand slithering around him like a vat of lukewarm oatmeal. There was no firm bottom to it, and suction dragged at his legs and buttocks, threatening to pull him down.

He gave it up before the stagnant water reached his chin, clung to the vine and dragged himself hand over hand until he cleared the quicksand, settling back on solid ground.

Sweet Jesus!

She was gone.

It took a moment for him to recover from the shock. He was accustomed to all forms of violent death, but Remo wasn't made of stone. Whatever he had felt for Audrey Moreland, simple lust or something more, it would demand a decent grieving period.

Okay, time's up.

He scrambled to his feet and turned back toward the clearing, suddenly aware that the Kalashnikovs had fallen silent. One more shot from Chalmers split the night, an exclamation point for the proceedings, telling Remo that at least one member of the party was alive.

In fact, they all were.

When he reached the clearing, Dr. Stockwell stood beside Pike Chalmers near the fire, and Sibu Sandakan was crawling from his tent. It took another moment for their guide to reappear from his concealment in the jungle, but he seemed to be unharmed.

"Is everyone… ?"

The question died on Stockwell's lips as he saw Audrey's pup tent, torn by bullets. Dropping to his hands and knees, he peered inside and found it empty.

"Audrey? Audrey!" he called out to her but got no response. "Where is she?"

"Where's the lizard man?" asked Chalmers, peering briefly into Remo's empty tent.

"Who? Dr. Ward? You mean he's gone, as well?"

"Seems so."

"For God's sake, where? Will someone tell me what is happening?"

Instead of stepping forward with an answer, Remo faded back into the darkness, silent as a falling leaf. A hasty body count informed him that a number of the enemy had managed to escape unharmed, and he wasn't content to let them go. It would be relatively simple to pick up their trail, despite the darkness, and pursue them till they stopped for rest.

And then he would have answers—or at least a taste of vengeance. Either way, this gaggle of guerrillas had performed their last night ambush in the Tasek Bera.

Remo left his traveling companions huddled near the fire, with Chalmers standing guard. As far as he could tell, from scouting out the area, they were at no risk of a new attack. The enemy had fled, perhaps to lick his wounds, but he would never get the chance.

Chapter Twelve

Lai Man Yau was physically exhausted when he called a halt for his surviving troops to rest. A forced march in the jungle could be difficult, but running through the jungle in the dark was something else entirely. When he counted heads by moonlight, Yau discovered he had lost eight men. Precisely half his fighting force.

The worst part of it was, he still had no clear fix on what had happened, why his plan had come apart like tissue paper in a weeping woman's hands.

The plan itself was simple and direct, foolproof from all appearances. He had examined it from every angle he could think of in advance, deciding that it didn't matter if a couple of the Malays missed their cue or moved in prematurely. There were only four round-eyes to deal with, after all, and only one of them was armed with anything besides a knife. If he resisted, it would be no challenge for a force of seventeen trained soldiers to subdue him with a minimum of force.

Yau sat and thought about the raid in detail, trying to pinpoint the moment when it fell apart, unraveling before his very eyes. It was impossible to say, of course, because he couldn't be with each one of his men every moment. Still, there had been no alarm before he gave the signal to attack, move in and seize the round-eyes while their minds were fogged with sleep.

The big one with the gun had been a rude surprise; Yau could admit that to himself. The round-eyed bastard came out shooting, not at all the groggy fool they hoped for. Yau had seen him drop one member of the strike force, and he had fired several other rounds before the raiders turned and ran. With eight men missing, who could say how many he had killed or wounded in the brief engagement?

Wounded?

Lai Man Yau felt tension coiling in his stomach like a viper poised to strike. Suppose that one or more of his commandos had been captured, still alive? If they began to spill their guts—

No, he wouldn't give in to that line of thought. They had all been trained, albeit briefly, to resist interrogation, and anyways, it really didn't matter if they cracked or not. Yau had been careful not to share the substance of their mission with the troops, withholding all the major details for himself and Sun Leo Ma, his second-in-command.

Sun Ma was lost now, almost certainly among the dead, and Yau felt his loss most acutely. He couldn't relate to Malays in the same way that he did a fellow countryman. They were all right as cannon fodder, handling the dirty work, but when the revolution came at last, a Chinaman—perhaps Lai Yau himself—would lead it, marshaling the people's army for a rousing victory.

Before that happened, though, he had to try to do a "simple" job with the survivors he had left, attempt to salvage something from the rubble of his master plan.

Beijing would not be understanding or forgiving if he failed. His contact had been crystal clear on the importance of this mission, and a disappointment could have painful—even fatal—consequences. Lai Man Yau had pledged himself to die, if necessary, to promote the people's revolution, but he didn't plan to be rubbed out because he'd let that revolution down.

Yau sat and thought some more, remembering a sound that had briefly distracted him in the midst of the battle, when everyone was firing. He recalled a scream. A woman's scream that emanated from outside the camp.

It had to be the round-eyed woman, screaming from the jungle. Why? What was she doing out there in the dark? Yau took the simplest answer and decided she was probably responding to a call of nature. Westerners liked privacy when they relieved themselves, as if their shit were something sacred, to be envied by the world. Perhaps this round-eyed bitch had left the camp before his troops took their positions, and no one saw her go.

But why was she screaming?

She had started only after shots were fired, Yau thought. Perhaps the sound had frightened her. And she had stopped almost immediately after that. Did she have sense enough to know the screams would give away her hiding place? Or had some member of his strike team found the woman, silenced her forever with a bullet or a blade?

Yau hissed for quiet in the ranks and waited till he had their full attention, asked the question to their faces. None of them admitted contact with a woman, and judging by their blank expressions, he had no reason to believe that they were lying. Furtive glances would be one thing, pointing to a guilty conscience, knowledge of a critical mistake, but Yau saw nothing of the kind.

If she was dead, then, it meant one of Lai Yau's missing troops had done the job. It would hardly matter, except he still had no idea which member of the expedition was supposed to be his contact, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might never know. If he was forced to stalk and kill the others, it would be a total failure, and Beijing's reaction would be inescapable.

The raid had sprung from an impulsive notion.

Yau was tired of tramping through the jungle on a mission that could last for weeks without result, if the round-eyes found nothing. On his own, he had decided it was better to corral the foreigners, interrogate them and discover which one was supposed to be his ally. Once that information was obtained, the round-eyes could continue with their expedition, more or less—but under guard and with a very different goal in mind. Forget about the fairy tales of giant lizards tramping through the forest. Yau would let them hunt uranium instead, and he would also let them dig for it, relieve his troops of one unpleasant task.

Before he sent them on to meet their round-eyed god.

Now he had botched it, and the fault was his alone. He had considered laying off the blame on Sun Leo Ma, but that was unacceptable. Friendship aside, Beijing would never understand why Yau, the officer in charge, had delegated such authority to a subordinate, with such disastrous results.

The only way to save himself, he realized, was to retrieve the situation somehow. He would have to do it soon, and he couldn't be subtle, given the present circumstances. There could be no question of negotiating with the round-eyes, making friends or "burying the hatchet," as they liked to say in the United States. It would be force or nothing, and his troop had already been cut in half. Their three-to-one advantage had been whittled down to something closer to two to one, and the Americans had shown a startling talent when it came to self-defense.

Surprise was critical, he understood, but it wouldn't be easy to achieve a second time.

"Be quiet," Yau snapped at his men, "and listen while I tell you what we have to do."

The tracking part was easy. In their haste, his enemies had made no effort to disguise their trail. He could have followed them on nothing but the fear smell in a pinch, but they had also left him footprints, trampled ferns and broken tree limbs—someone in the raiding party even dropped an empty AK-47 magazine and left it on the trail as he reloaded on the run.

It was no challenge, hunting clumsy amateurs.

The raiders had a six-or seven-minute lead when Remo started after them. Although they knew the territory better, they weren't all that adept at running for their lives in almost total darkness. Pushing it, with all the skills Chiun had taught him, Remo started picking up their panicked scurry-noises after just two minutes on the trail. Then he had to slow down to keep from overtaking them while they were on the move, and forcing a chaotic confrontation in the dark.

There was no question in Remo's mind of the outcome, but he wanted information first. He had no qualms about a battle on the trail, but Remo knew that it might be impossible for him to single out the leader, spare his life and save him for interrogation once the others were eliminated. He decided to follow them until they stopped to rest, as they were sure to do within the next half hour or so, and then to pursue the matter with a more coherent strategy.

Think first, Chiun had told him countless times, then act. The thinking didn't have to be prolonged in every case, no great excursion through the labyrinth of military tactics or philosophy, but it was never wise to strike in anger, blindly, without weighing the potential risks against rewards.

The hunt was twenty minutes old when Remo's quarry took a break, the early rush of panic fading as they picked up no immediate suggestions of a hot pursuit. They fanned out in a small glade overgrown with ferns, three gunmen keeping watch while the remaining six were huddled in a group, their heads together.

Remo studied them, moved past the guards as if he were invisible. The leader of the party was Chinese, but he spoke Malay to the others. Remo didn't understand a word, but no translation was required for him to know they must be hashing over what had gone wrong with the raid on Stockwell's camp. The leader started out with questions, but the answers clearly failed to satisfy him, and he had progressed to curt instructions by the time Remo began to make his move.

He started with the sentries, closing on the nearest one and striking from the shadows, catching man and weapon easily before they hit the ground. No noise. He didn't think of Audrey or of anything beyond the fine points of the stroke he knew by heart.

Imagine every move before you make it. See it in your mind and let your muscles feel it.

Done.

He moved on to the second guard, had no more trouble there. The target was not perfectly aligned, so Remo let the sentry hear him coming, just a scuffling in the dirt to bring the soldier's head around. He pulled the punch enough to keep from shattering his adversary's skull—too much potential for the sound to carry—but it did the trick, regardless. Blood was leaking from the dead man's nose and ears as Remo eased him down onto the turf.

The third lookout appeared to have no clue of what it meant to stand a ready watch. He had his back turned toward the forest, busy listening to every word his leader said, when Remo look him from behind and snapped his neck without breaking a sweat. Three up, three down—but now he had a problem on his hands.

The other six all carried automatic weapons, most of them Kalashnikovs, and while the distance was not great, their huddle almost perfect for his purposes, he didn't want to simply fling himself among them, striking left and right as if it were a barroom brawl. For one thing, he couldn't be sure the leader would survive that way. And for another, he wasn't convinced that the Chinese would be of any use to him, alone.

Which meant that he would have to use a gun.

It ran against the grain. Those days were long behind him now, the teachings of Sinanju having lifted Remo to another plane, where firearms were both awkward and unnecessary. He could snatch life from his adversaries in a hundred different ways, bare-handed, and if that failed, he had learned the secrets of converting household objects into deadly weapons as the need arose. With guns, you had the noise and smell, ballistics tests, the problem of disposal—but the rules were all on hold tonight. Whatever happened in the next few moments, the authorities could search for months and come up empty.

On the flip side, if he made his next move empty-handed, Remo could be forced to kill all six of the guerrillas, and come out of the experience no wiser than when it began.

The choice was made. He held the third dead sentry's rifle cocked and ready as he stepped into the glade.

"Does anyone speak English here?"

The sound of Remo's voice brought six men scrambling to their feet, a couple of them aiming guns in his direction. They were startled, but they also saw the AK-47 in his hands, and when their leader barked an order to the rank and file, they held their fire.

"I said, does anyone speak English?"

There was a momentary hesitation. Several of the Malays glanced back and forth at one another. Finally, the leader made things easy, holding up one hand as if he were a schoolboy asking for a bathroom pass.

"I do," he said.

"That's fine. Now, tell your boys to lay their weapons down—no tricks—and line up over there." As Remo spoke, he pointed with the AK-47's muzzle to a clear spot in the glade, some ten or twelve feet to the left of the Chinese.

The would-be soldiers did as they were told, reluctantly at first, but when the leader started snapping at them, they got motivated in a hurry. Remo had them covered as they stacked their weapons in a pile and lined up touching shoulders, as if waiting for a uniform inspection.

Remo could have shot them where they stood, one burst to knock them down like bowling pins, but he had something else in mind. Six pairs of eyes were focused on him as he crossed the glade in dappled moonlight, thick ferns swishing feather soft around his legs.

"You sit down on that log," he told the Chinaman, and pointed to a spot that placed the leader six or seven strides from the collected hardware.

It would have to be enough.

"All comfy?"

Remo waited for the leader's curt, resentful nod before he went to work. He used the AK-47 as a cudgel, spinning it around, first striking with the butt and then the barrel, crushing skulls, ribs, Adam's apples, breastbones, vertebrae. He caught the first two absolutely by surprise, and nailed the other three as they tried to break and run. The rifle wasn't balanced for such work, but it served well enough until he broke the stock on number four and had to kill the fifth by hand.

Their leader sat and watched them die, a stunned expression on his face. He didn't have to ask what had become of his three sentries when he saw the bodies strewed at Remo's feet. A sharp flick of the wrist, and Remo sent the broken AK-47 spinning out of sight.

"Okay," he said, not even winded by the massacre, "let's talk."

"Who are you?" asked the Chinese leader when he could find his voice.

"I'll ask the questions," Remo told him, stepping closer just to emphasize the point. "All right?"

"All right."

"You made a move on Dr. Stockwell's expedition, and I need to find out why."

"Stockwell?"

He closed the gap, reached out and grabbed his adversary by the throat. It was a simple thing, no trick at all, to hoist him off the ground and let him dangle, choking as a steely grip cut off his flow of oxygen.

"I guess I wasn't clear about the rules," said Remo. "When I ask a question, you're supposed to answer it, not pick a word and give it back like I was talking to a parrot. Do we understand each other?"

Remo shook the man a bit, then dropped him in a heap. Stepped back and gave his prisoner enough room to get up on hands and knees.

"We don't know Stockwell," the Chinese informed him, holding one hand to his throat and speaking in a raspy tone. "No names. I'm told a group of round-eyes will be coming, one of them a comrade. He has information I must send back to… send back."

He let the fancy footwork go for now. "Which round-eye?"

"We don't know. He will reveal himself when it is time."

"You took a chance back there," said Remo, "shooting up the camp. How did you know you wouldn't kill him?"

"My men get excited," the Chinese replied. "I try to stop them. They are not much good."

"Not anymore. You want to join them?"

Blinking rapidly, the Chinese shook his head. "No, please."

"Okay. What kind of information were you looking for?"

"Don't know. The round-eye would deliver. We would pass it on."

"On, where?"

The kneeling soldier hesitated, finally shook his head. Remo's hand moved to his neck and at a certain spot applied pressure. The soldier's eyes bulged as he was overtaken by a universe of pain he never even knew existed.

"That was just a love memento," Remo told him when he let go. "I don't think you really want to piss me off."

The Chinese stared at Remo. Silent tears of pain left bright tracks on his sallow cheeks.

"Once more, then," Remo said. "Who's waiting for the information? Where's it going?"

Silence, and he was about to try a different strike, had one arm poised and ready, when his hostage blurted out a single word.

"Beijing!"

And it made sense, of course. The Chinese had uranium at home, but there was no such thing as too much weapons-grade material these days. If they could strike a bargain in Malaysia—or promote a revolution that would sweep the present government away, put friendly Reds in charge—then Chairman Mao's disciples would be points ahead. The value of an ore strike would depend on size and easy access, the expense of mining and a dozen other factors Remo had no time to ponder at the moment.

He had managed to identify one set of players in the game, and that would have to do. The placement of at least one ringer on the U.S. team had also been confirmed, but he was short on evidence in that department.

"You've been a great help," Remo said, and chilled the rebel leader with a kick he never saw.

The forest glade was silent, still as death. He knew that when he left, within an hour at the most, a troop of scavengers would home in on the first faint smell of carrion and start to feed.

"Bon appétit," he told the night, and started back toward camp..

"I cant believe they both just disappeared," said Safford Stockwell, staring hard into the fire. "Under the circumstances," Sibu Sandakan reminded him, "it's possible they are unable to respond."

"But both of them? What were they doing out of camp?"

"That's what I'd like to know," said Chalmers, standing well back from the camp fire, with a captured automatic rifle braced against one hip.

"I thought…" Professor Stockwell hesitated, shook his head. "No, it's ridiculous."

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Well, there was a moment," he told Sandakan, "right in the thick of things, when I was almost certain I saw Dr. Ward. He seemed to come out of the jungle over there and run across the camp and out the other side. I must have been mistaken, though. You surely would have seen him, Chalmers."

"I'd have seen him right enough," the hulking Brit replied. "And all I saw were bloody wogs with Rooshian weapons, like this here." He brandished the Kalashnikov for emphasis. "I dropped one of them over there," he boasted, "and may have hit a couple more, besides."

"Of course you did your best," said Stockwell, "but I still can't fathom why they ran away. One gun against so many, and they simply vanished."

"All depends on who's behind the gun," said Chalmers, puffing out his chest. "I'd say they understood they'd met their match."

"But where is Audrey, then?" asked Stockwell in a woeful voice. "I could swear I heard her voice."

"A scream," said Sibu Sandakan. "I heard it, too."

"Outside the camp, it was, just like you said," Pike Chalmers told them. "She had no good reason to go traipsing through the woods that way. The neither of them did."

"My God, what if she was abducted by those men?" Professor Stockwell blurted out.

"Then you can kiss her pretty arse goodbye," said Chalmers.

"We must try to get her back!"

"And follow them, the three of us? Don't make me laugh." The big man caught himself and rushed to qualify the comment. "I could track 'em down, o' course, and try to take 'em by myself, but that's a sucker's game. The two of you would only slow me down, and as for fighting, well… "

His sneer left no doubt as to Pike's assessment of the value his companions would contribute in a killing situation. Neither Sibu Sandakan nor Dr. Stockwell rushed to contradict him, each man conscious of his limitations when it came to playing soldier in the wild.

"But if she's still alive—"

Their guide returned as Dr. Stockwell groped for something more to say. Kuching Kangar had gone to make a rapid circuit of the area, find out if he could pick up any trace of Audrey or the missing herpetologist. A tattered, muddy scarf was dangling from his left hand as he stepped into the firelight, moving closer to the fire.

"That's Audrey's!" Stockwell blurted, pointing with a shaking hand. "Where did you find it?"

"I find in quicksand, that way." As he spoke, Kuching Kangar inclined his head back to the north and east, the general direction of the nearby stream.

"Quicksand?" On Stockwell's lips, the word came close to sounding like a curse.

"No bottom," said the guide. "Sink down, too late."

"Dear God!"

"And what about the other one?" asked Chalmers.

"Nothing," said the guide. "Too many footprints. Dead men all around. Count seven, plus the one you shoot."

"God's truth! I must've hit more than I thought," said Chalmers.

"Only one more shot," Kuching Kangar replied. "The others killed by hand. Find one, back there, up on a tree, with his own rifle sticking through."

"What does it mean?" asked Sibu Sandakan.

"It's rubbish," Chalmers said. "If they were killed that way, it means the bloody wogs were killing one another. Can you make sense out of that?"

"But if he says they were not shot—"

"So, what the hell does he know, looking at a lot of bodies in the dark? He's not a bloody coroner, for Christ's sake."

"Well, there can't be much mistake about a rifle sticking through a man," said Dr. Stockwell.

"I'll believe it when I see it for myself."

"Eight dead men altogether," the professor said. "How many bullets does your rifle hold?"

Chalmers scowled as he said, "I have the Colt, as well."

"Did you fire it?"

Angry color rushed into the big man's cheeks. "All right by me, if you prefer to take this bloody wog's word over mine," he said. "But don't come asking my advice on anything, while you've got Mr. Answers over there."

"Now, see here, Chalmers—"

"We must certainly turn back," said Sibu Sandakan, his firm voice breaking Stockwell's train of thought.

"Turn back?" The very notion seemed to boggle Stockwell's mind. "But why? We're almost there!"

"We've been attacked by rebels, Doctor, and they may come back at any time. Two of our group are missing, one of them apparently without hope of return. It is enough."

"For you, perhaps!" It was the first time Stockwell's tone had risen to this pitch or taken on such grim determination. "I, for one, have not come to this godforsaken place and sacrificed so much to simply turn around and slink home with my tail between my legs. If there is something to be found here, I intend to find it. Audrey would expect no less."

"But surely, Doctor—"

"Mr. Chalmers, if you will continue with the expedition, I can promise you a fee of half again what we agreed."

"You'll double it, or there's no deal," said Chalmers.

Stockwell didn't even have to think about it. "Done," he said, and turned to face Kuching Kangar. "Will you continue as our guide?"

"I paid to find Nagaq," the little Malay said. "Not finished yet, unless you say go back."

"It's settled, then. We're pressing on."

"I really can't allow—"

"Excuse me, Mr. Deputy," Professor Stockwell said, "but if you feel like turning back, it seems you'll have to go alone. You're free to take a fair share of the food, of course. We're not barbarians."

"My duty is to stay with you and guarantee your safety."

"I suppose you'd better get some sleep, then," Stockwell told him, hollow eyed and grim. "It's morning now, and we'll be moving out at dawn."

Chapter Thirteen

Remo was in no great hurry to rejoin the expedition once he reached the clearing where the tents were pitched. Pike Chalmers was pulling sentry duty with his growing stash of weapons. Like Tom Sawyer at his funeral, in the Mark Twain novel, Remo understood that there were certain definite advantages to being dead.

The first time he had "died," in the New Jersey State electric chair, it opened up a whole new life for Remo. There was Dr. Harold Smith. His work with CURE. Chiun, of course, and the endless hours of his instruction in Sinanju. There had been understandable resistance on Remo's part in the beginning, but today, all things considered, Remo knew that he wouldn't have turned the clock back and resumed his first life for a million dollars in cold, hard cash.

This time across the River Styx, he calculated that the gains would be more modest. Still, it never hurt to learn what people said about you when you left the room, especially when they reckoned you were gone forever. Failing a disclosure from loose lips, he was content to watch and wait, convinced the ringer would be revealed before much longer, now that they had voted to proceed with the expedition despite the apparent losses sustained.

The vote surprised him in a way. He understood that Dr. Stockwell was a focused man, where old bones were concerned, but Remo had suspected that his grief for Audrey Moreland and the lurking threat of danger in the jungle would persuade him to retreat. Instead, he showed amazing—even foolish—courage, seasoned, Remo told himself, with just a dash of stubborn pride. The way he found the key to Chalmers's heart with cash, then silenced Sibu Sandakan, had been impressive for a man of Stockwell's seeming Milquetoast disposition. There was still the guide, though, and his bland acceptance of continued danger troubled Remo most of all.

"I paid to find Nagaq," Kuching Kangar had said, as if that answered everything. In fact, from Remo's personal experience, the hired help was the first to bail when things got dicey—locals in particular, because they knew the countryside, its dangers and the glaring limitations of the men they had been paid to chaperon. This guide, however, was not only willing to resume the hunt, despite a band of armed guerrillas breathing down his neck, but Remo would have almost called him anxious to proceed.

It didn't fit the profile, but he couldn't get a handle on the problem. Was their guide the ringer? That made even less sense, when he could have gone out searching on his own, made better time without a bunch of round-eyes straggling out behind him.

No. It made no sense at all. Whatever drove Kuching Kangar, hard logic said that it wasn't uranium—perhaps not even cash. The little Malay needed watching, then, but so did Chalmers, Stockwell, even Sibu Sandakan.

Four suspects, Remo thought. And while he hoped that it was Chalmers—anything to give him one more crack at the conceited Brit—it struck him that the odds were fairly level, all around.

He sat and watched their small camp as the night wore on and dawn's first light broke in the sky. Pike Chalmers nodded twice, but caught himself before he dropped the captured AK-47. With the sunrise, Chalmers roused the others from their tents, and they began the desultory task of boiling breakfast in a plastic bag.

It smelled like shit and looked a bit like corned-beef hash.

The long night watch had given Remo time to think. He had already come to terms with Audrey Moreland's death, accepting it as one of those events no man can truly guard against, and none can change. He had been fond of Audrey, in a piggy sort of way, but there had been no prospect for an ongoing relationship, once Remo's mission was completed. And although Jean Rice and he clicked in a nice way, deep down he knew that a settled life was not for him—especially given his role in life that the fates threw his way. When he thought about it, Remo realized that he was something of a hermit, but he liked it that way.

It was better than his first life, by a country mile.

He would miss Audrey Moreland, in the sense that he had taken pleasure from her luscious body, giving pleasure in return, but that was transitory, like an itch, a sneeze. Their conversation had been limited, confined primarily to subjects that meant nothing to him outside the parameters of his assignment. Once the job was finished, Remo knew that it would be a rare occasion when he thought of her at all.

That sounded cold, and so it was. It wasn't just because he was a professional assassin, part of a highly focused breed. As a matter of fact, Remo had his problems with that fact, problems that were ameliorated somewhat by the very cause CURE served—his native country, the home of the free. Beyond this, he knew his past life was gone, never to be resumed again. Then there was Sinanju, a way of life that had become his recipe for life, not something he could abandon for the comforts of a hearth—and the unthinkable, an ordinary job.

Sinanju was the work, the work was all, and God help the idiot who tried to take that work away.

He watched the shrunken team break camp, and noticed that they left two tents behind. His own and Audrey's.

"We can pick them up on the way back," Pike Chalmers said. "Enough to carry as it is."

"You're right, of course," Professor Stockwell said, despite a wistful parting glance at Audrey's pup tent.

They were on the trail by half-past seven, pushing hard. Kuching Kangar was still on point, with Chalmers next in line. The Brit had slung his Weatherby and kept the AK-47 in his hands, a liberated bandolier of extra magazines contributing more weight to his selected gear. Professor Stockwell was the third in line, and Sibu Sandakan had landed Remo's tail position by default. He seemed unhappy with the ranking, glancing frequently and fearfully over his shoulder, but he held a steady pace and didn't slow the party down.

They had been marching for an hour, Remo hanging back some twenty yards, when he discovered they were being followed once again.

He stopped dead in his tracks and closed his eyes, the other senses reaching out for any information they could gather. It was nil on the aroma, but his ears picked up a sound of someone moving through the jungle thirty-five or forty yards to Remo's right, due south. One person, by the sound of it, and he was taking care to limit the unnecessary noise.

The stranger's path ran parallel to Stockwell's, eastbound, and there could be no coincidence in that. With all the jungle territory of Malaysia to go hiking in, the odds against an honest chance encounter in the Tasek Bera had to be immense. No, make that astronomical.

He tried to guess who it might be—a lone guerrilla he had missed last night, perhaps, or someone who had picked up rumors of their mission in Dampar and trailed them out of curiosity… or greed. In fact, he knew that there was only one way to find out.

He homed in on the sounds, still meager and sporadic but enough to put him on the stranger's track. Five minutes later, he was standing on another game trail, where his quarry must have been just seconds earlier.

The man was gone.

A tiny rustling in the undergrowth ahead, and Remo braced himself, prepared to spring. The momentary tension drained out through his feet, as something like a giant guinea pig broke cover and ran squeaking down the trail, away from him.

The blow came out of nowhere, struck him square between the shoulder blades, and slammed him to the earth, facedown.

Somewhere behind him, to his left, a dry voice said, "You must not let your guard down, even for a moment, if you wish to stay alive."

It troubled Sibu Sandakan, the way that everything had suddenly gone wrong. He hadn't taken to this job from the beginning, didn't feel himself cut out for slogging through the jungle, but the past few hours had been a waking nightmare. The guerrillas bent on killing them, apparently succeeding with two members of the team, were bad enough. And now the old American, this "doctor" of old bones, insisted that they must go on with the charade. Pursuing dinosaurs, of all things, when their lives were certainly at risk!

The others had predictably agreed with Dr. Stockwell, since he held the purse strings for the expedition and could seemingly increase their salaries at will. Pike Chalmers was a racist mercenary who, in Sandakan's opinion, would do anything for money, while the guide was just a simple peasant. He might earn a whole year's salary for this one expedition if he went along with Dr. Stockwell and pretended to believe in giant prehistoric lizards plodding through the jungle.

Sibu Sandakan considered pulling rank and ordering the guide to turn around. He was a representative of the Ministry of the Interior, second deputy to the appointed minister, and as such he deserved respect. Unfortunately, peasants in the countryside were known for their indifference to authority. They failed to pay their taxes promptly—sometimes altogether—and were prone to settle arguments with violence. The last thing Sandakan desired, right now, was for an unwashed peasant to defy him while the Brit and the American looked on, amused by his discomfiture.

In fact, he had already tried to summon help and scrub the expedition, last night when the bullets started flying. Huddled in his pup tent, braced for death at any moment, Sibu Sandakan had searched his pockets for the small transmitter that First Deputy Germuk Sayur had provided on the night before their party left K.L.—but it was gone.

In panic, he had dumped the contents of his backpack, fingered each in turn and came up empty. There was simply no sign of the plastic box that was supposed to summon troops to his defense in an emergency.

Where had it gone? He thought about the past three days, couldn't remember any single incident where he had fallen, dropped his gear or anything of that sort. Still, the small transmitter had been in the pocket of his trousers, close at hand. It could have fallen out when he withdrew a handkerchief to mop his sweaty face or wriggled free when they sat down to rest at some point on the trail. Its bulk and weight were insubstantial; he had barely noticed it five minutes after they were on the plane to Temerloh.

The damned thing could be anywhere by now.

Which meant that he was trapped with Stockwell, Chalmers and the guide. He could start back alone, as the professor mockingly suggested, but it would be suicide for him to strike off through the jungle on his own. He had no compass, and it would have made no difference if he did. A city boy at heart, he looked for landmarks in the form of street signs and familiar buildings. Sibu Sandakan could no more chart a safe course through the wilderness than he could build a rocket ship from scratch and fly it to the moon.

Thus far, he thought he had concealed his mounting panic from the others fairly well. The argument in camp had been a test for him, and Sandakan had passed, not shouting once, and swallowing the tremor in his voice before the others could detect it They already thought of him as weak, but if they knew that he was terrified, it could become a different game entirely. Chalmers was a bully, and Sandakan would have no peace for the remainder of their journey.

Which, if the guerrillas struck again, would not be long.

He didn't grieve for the dead Americans, although the news would be embarrassing when it got back to the United States. His first consideration was potential damage to his own career resulting from his loss of the transmitter and whatever followed as a proximate result. Germuk Sayur and the men above him were expecting an alert if any member of the party found uranium, a dinosaur or any other object that the sitting government could seize and turn to profit for the state. Sandakan's own negligence had let them down—or would if there was anything to find in this forsaken hell on earth—and he couldn't expect the lapse to go unpunished.

He would be disciplined, of course, but there were varying degrees of punishment in civil service. Flat dismissal was among the worst, accompanied by the humiliation of explaining to his friends and family why he was fired. Sandakan knew men who had committed suicide with lesser provocation, but he wouldn't feel like dying for a job already lost. With any luck, he might get off with a demotion, possibly a reprimand. It would depend on what came next, the expedition's course from that point on, and whether they actually found anything of interest.

Before Germuk Sayur had a chance to punish him, however, Sandakan would have to make it back alive. And at the moment, he had no great confidence in his ability to manage that. No confidence at all.

He knew that he must watch the others—Chalmers in particular—and be prepared to save himself at any cost. Guerrillas might turn out to be the least of it where they were going. Sibu Sandakan didn't believe the legends of Nagaq, but there were hungry predators aplenty in the wilderness, and any one of them might prize a second deputy for dinner.

It would be different, he considered, if he were armed. Pike Chalmers held their only firearms, though, and he wasn't the sort to share his toys with "bloody wogs."

If I get out of this alive, thought Sibu Sandakan, I'll see the bastard's visa canceled. Yes, indeed.

But getting out alive would have to be the first priority.

And it would take up every bit of concentration he could muster in the next few days.

"You didn't have to hit me," Remo told Chiun as he was dusting off his clothes.

"A simple touch," the Master of Sinanju said. "If you were properly alert, I could not have surprised you."

"Some surprise," said Remo, blustering. "I heard you tramping through the forest like a water buffalo. You must be getting old."

"I let you hear me," Chiun responded, "and your impudence is unbecoming, even for a white man."

"Impudence? You knocked me on my ass."

"You fell upon your face," Chiun corrected him, "although I must admit the two are easily confused."

"Oh, that's hilarious. I see you're doing stand-up comedy these days."

"At least I manage to stand up."

"So, what's the story? Did you travel all this way to get a few digs in?"

"I am the Master of Sinanju, not a common miner. Is there something precious here that I should dig for it?"

"Could be," said Remo, frowning as he flexed his shoulders, working out the pain that lingered from Chiun's "simple touch."

"It is appropriate for an instructor to observe his student," Chiun remarked. "Your style leaves much to be desired."

"You ought to see the other guys."

"I have," Chiun replied. "Did you have difficulty killing them?"

"Get real."

"Then you have set yourself no challenge. In the early days of training, students learn from repetition of the simplest moves. A more advanced practitioner must test himself, seek new plateaus of knowledge and achievement, always learning."

"You've been watching Sally Struthers."

"Who?"

"You want to learn a new trade? Sure, we all do."

"You speak gibberish."

"Forget it," Remo said. "What brings you all this way?"

"A wish to supervise your mission. It occurred to me that you might not be totally prepared."

"I couldn't have a better teacher than the Master of Sinanju," Remo said.

"That much is obvious. The doubts lie not in my ability, but yours."

"Oh, thank you very much."

"Don't mention it. A master is expected to correct his pupil as the situation merits."

"Besides, I already earned the right to be a future Reigning Master, remember? So what exactly have I done to make you doubt me, Little Father?"

"Aside from simple negligence, there's nothing—yet." Chiun considered what he had to say for several seconds more before continuing. "I'm not convinced that you are ready to confront a dragon."

"What?"

"The challenge may be more than you can handle. It was not appropriate of me to send you on a job that needs a Reigning Master's touch."

"That's it?"

"Disposing of a dragon calls for special knowledge. We have not addressed it in your lessons up to now. I do not doubt your courage, Remo, but it may not be enough."

"You can relax," he told Chiun. "We haven't seen a footprint or a dragon turd so far, much less the Big Kahuna."

" 'Big Kahuna' is no fit name for a dragon."

"Little Father—"

"It is settled," said the Master of Sinanju. "I cannot allow you to proceed without the proper supervision."

"This is all about uranium," said Remo with a smile. "The dragon's just a smoke screen."

"Are you certain?"

"Well—"

"The white man often scoffs at things he has not seen or does not understand."

"The fact is, no one on the team apparently believes there is a dinosaur, except for Dr. Stockwell and the guide. He says it ate his grandfather."

"The doctor's grandfather was eaten by a dragon?"

"No, the guide's."

"Do not be quick in denigrating native tales," said Chiun. "I grant you, these are not Koreans, and their understanding of the world is therefore minimal at best, but they are not completely ignorant of their surroundings."

"Superstitious is the word that comes to mind."

"Even superstition may be based on fact. A legend stretches truth, but it does not begin without some circumstance to prompt its telling in the first place."

"What I'm thinking," Remo said, "is that the story makes a handy cover. Now, I know they've got a ringer on the team, who works for the Chinese. I got it straight from the guerrilla leader."

"He was Chinese?" asked Chiun.

"That's right."

"And you believed him?"

"In the circumstances, yes."

"You tortured him," said Chiun with satisfaction.

"I persuaded him."

"The Chinese want uranium?"

"He wasn't told, but that's what Dr. Smith believes. I can't see Beijing wasting agents on a dinosaur hunt."

"The Chinese are a mystifying race," Chiun replied. "They want to be Korean in their hearts, but since perfection has eluded them, they scheme like Japanese and try to make up, through intrigue, what nature has denied them."

"An unbiased view, of course," said Remo.

"When the truth is biased, should we lie? I had no hand in the creation of mankind, thus I gain nothing from a simple statement of the facts. All Asians envy the Korean people."

"What about the rest of us?" asked Remo.

Chiun responded with a gesture of dismissal.

"Black men envy whites," he said, "and white men are the most pathetic of the lot. They envy one another. It is too absurd," the Master of Sinanju finished, chuckling dryly to himself.

"Well, this has been a slice," said Remo, "but I really ought to catch up with the others now."

"And how will you explain your absence?"

"Oh, they think I'm dead."

"So your appearance may surprise them."

"I don't plan on dropping in," said Remo. "I've been following their trail since dawn and watching from a distance."

"In the hope this 'ringer' may reveal himself?"

"It's all I've got to go on at the moment."

"And your dalliance?"

"Say what?"

"The woman. What is she expected to reveal, beyond what you have seen already?"

"You were watching?"

"It is my responsibility," Chiun said.

"Well, you can scratch her off your worry list. We lost her in the raid last night."

"I never worry. Was she shot?"

"Quicksand."

"Another clumsy white."

"You shouldn't talk that way about the dead."

"Who better to discuss, without a fear of contradiction?" asked Chiun. "I trust that you did not become attached to this one."

"No," said Remo.

"It would be a grave mistake."

"I know that."

"Very well. You may wish to consider a revision of your plan."

"Which plan is that?"

"Your plan of hiding from the others."

"Why?"

"Consider the effect a ghost may have upon a guilty conscience."

"That's a thought."

"You are perceptive," said Chiun.

"I'm also out of here. You coming?"

"In my own time," said the Master of Sinanju. "These frail limbs—"

Remo grinned. "Just try to keep the noise down, will you? The Big Kahuna may show up and use you for an appetizer."

"Whelp."

"I'll see you, Little Father."

"Only if I want you to."

Chapter Fourteen

Dr. Stock well's dwindling group had gained a quarter of a mile since Remo left them, but he had no trouble catching up. Their progress was sluggish, with Stockwell plodding like a man whose hope was gone, continuing the march on stubbornness alone. Pike Chalmers didn't seem to care how fast they traveled, pausing every thirty yards or so to scan the jungle, listening, his AK-47 leveled from the hip. Their guide had slowed to the professor's slogging pace, and Sibu Sandakan resembled nothing quite so much as an exhausted marathoner suddenly confronted with the prospect of a twenty-seventh mile.

Remo was still debating Chiun's suggestion when he overtook the party, coming up behind them through the trees. He understood the logic of surprising them and watching for the kind of odd reaction that would point a ringer out, but he had tried that once before without results. Besides, he had no reason to believe the raid had been coordinated with his quarry, much less aimed at him. It seemed to Remo that the rebels had been jumpy. Looking for a way to speed things up, they had exercised poor judgment, acting on their own initiative. In that case, every member of the team would be surprised to see him still alive, but none had any special cause for disappointment at the fact.

Except, perhaps, for Chalmers.

He had definitely drawn a bead on Remo in the clearing last night, no excuses based on the excitement or confusion of the moment. He had also killed at least one of the rebels, though, and that appeared to mitigate against him as their contact on the team. More likely, Chalmers simply wanted Remo dead as payback for their brief encounter in K.L.

But who else on the team would fit the profile of a turncoat? Remo had examined each of them before, and none would be his own first choice for a clandestine operation. Only Chalmers, with his mercenary background, seemed to have the requisite credentials for the job, but his contempt for Asians and a certain lack of finesse made Remo yearn for more-persuasive evidence.

At least today he knew there was a ringer on the team. He trusted the guerrilla leader that far, even if the man had initially lied about his knowledge of the mission's goal. One member of the party was in league with the Chinese, had sold himself, and eighteen lives had already been lost as a result.

How many yet to go?

The question had no relevance for Remo. He wasn't concerned with numbers, unless they prevented him from finishing his job. What Remo needed at the moment was a suspect he could focus on and deal with one-on-one.

If he rejoined the others now, there would be calls for an explanation of his disappearance. He could always claim that he was knocked unconscious, maybe got disoriented in the dark and only found the group again by pure dumb luck, but would they buy it? And if not, what then?

He had about decided to maintain his distance, watching from concealment, when Kuching Kangar stopped short and raised a warning hand to halt the others. Remo froze in place, his senses reaching out in search of danger signals.

He almost missed it, but a subtle movement in the undergrowth before him marked the presence of another human being. Make that several human beings, crouched beside the trail. He hadn't seen or heard them going in, because they made no sound or movement to betray themselves. As for the human smell, once Remo saw the nearest of them, it appeared the almost-naked men were daubed with mud, like body paint, that covered them from head to foot.

Pike Chalmers almost cut loose with his AK-47 when the natives showed themselves, but he was concentrating on the new arrivals, and he overlooked Kuching Kangar. Before the Brit could aim and fire, their guide had turned on him and swung the heavy bolo knife he carried, knocking the Kalashnikov from Chalmers's hands.

Chalmers cursed, reached for his pistol, but the Malay guide was faster, leaping forward with a snarl to press the bolo blade against his adversary's throat.

"No guns," he warned, and Chalmers spent a moment glowering before he gave it up and raised his hands.

The tribesmen carried spears, some bows and arrows, with a hand-carved war club here and there. It was not their equipment, though, that held Remo's attention. He was looking at their faces, bodies, frowning as he checked them out.

Of twenty natives he could see, their guide included, only six were normal in appearance underneath the layers of mud. The rest displayed a wide range of bizarre deformities that made them look like something from a circus sideshow. Three were pygmy sized, but with heads out of proportion to their bodies, clutching six-foot spears in tiny hands. Another held his fighting club in hands like lobster claws. A fifth had short, bowed legs beneath a massive torso, with a dwarfish, pointed head on top. The man beside him only had one eye, but it was planted squarely in the middle of his forehead. Yet another stood on cloven feet, resembling fleshy hooves. Webbed fingers, crooked spines, diminished and distorted limbs—as Remo glanced around the group, he saw it all.

The expedition was surrounded by a tribe of pissed-off freaks. Professor Stockwell glanced around at the distorted limbs and bodies, fright-mask faces that surrounded him, and felt his last reserves of courage drain away. It was too much: first the guerrillas, then losing Audrey in a quicksand bog, and now this, surrounded by a band of nightmare creatures armed and seemingly intent on mayhem. And Kuching Kangar was clearly part of it—a friend of their assailants, possibly a member of their tribe. There were a few among the native band with normal faces, well-formed bodies, and he guessed their trusted guide was one of those, at liberty to move in the society of men without provoking undue curiosity.

When Stockwell found his voice, he spoke directly to Kangar. "What is the meaning of this outrage?" he demanded. "Are you mad?"

The guide faced Stockwell, smiling, while he kept his bolo pressed against the tall Brit's throat. "Some of us," he replied in English notably improved, "are surely mad, but it is no great handicap. As for the meaning of this outrage, you are needed, Doctor."

"Needed?"

"For Nagaq."

Professor Stockwell failed to catch his drift. "Of course," he said. "It's what we've wanted all along. We chose you as the man to help us find Nagaq."

"That's where you are mistaken, Doctor. I chose you," Kuching Kangar replied. "And you will not be searching for Nagaq. We have arranged for him to visit you."

"So much the better," Stockwell said, but he was frowning as he spoke. There was an undercurrent to the guide's voice, he belatedly decided, that did not bode well for the surviving members of his party. "I hope we can conclude our business promptly, then," he said.

"Your business is concluded, Doctor," said the Malay guide. "You have a very different role to play in what must happen next."

"You bloody wogs won't get away with this," Pike Chalmers snarled.

"And who will stop us, sir?" Kangar was grinning as he spoke, the sharp blade of his bolo drawing blood from Chalmers as he pressed it close against the tall Brit's flesh.

"I must inform you," Sibu Sandakan announced, "that I am here to represent the government. It will go badly for you if you harm us."

Kangar flashed him a mocking grin. "Punishment, you mean?"

"Of course."

"Who will punish us? Not you, I think."

"The government has troops—"

"And you were told to signal them," the guide told Sandakan, interrupting him. He reached into a pocket of his trousers with his free hand and withdrew a smallish plastic box. "With this device, perhaps?"

"Where did you get that?" Sandakan demanded.

"Why, from you, of course." The guide's smile stretched almost from ear to ear. "You won't be needing it."

That said, he cocked his arm and pitched the small black box into the forest, out of sight.

Professor Stockwell didn't hear it fall. "You were prepared to summon troops?" he asked, now facing Sibu Sandakan.

"In the event of an emergency," the deputy replied. "We're in the middle of the wilderness, for heaven's sake. It was a simple safeguard—"

"Which has failed to save us, after all," said Stockwell, interrupting him. He turned back to their former guide and asked, "What do you want from us?"

"I've answered that. You have been chosen for Nagaq."

"And what does that mean, if you don't mind telling me?"

"In good time, Doctor. We have miles to travel yet, before you meet the object of your heart's desire. It will not be an easy march, but that cannot be helped. We should arrive by nightfall if you do not slow us down too much."

"I'll do my best," said Stockwell, not without a hint of sarcasm.

"I'm sure you will," Kangar replied. "But if you lag along the way, my brothers will encourage you."

The Malay snapped his fingers as he spoke, and two of his compatriots—a grinning cyclops and a dwarf with six toes on each foot—stepped forward, prodding Stockwell with their spears.

"That won't be necessary," the professor said.

"In that case," said the little Malay, "shall we go?"

Pike Chalmers offered no resistance as the mud-smeared natives stripped him of the Weatherby, his Colt and hunting knife. They didn't frisk him like policemen, but it made no difference; he was effectively disarmed.

But that was not the same as being helpless. No, indeed.

From under lowered eyebrows, Chalmers counted twenty adversaries, with their erstwhile guide, but most of those were what the bloody PC crowd back home called "challenged": stunted limbs and missing digits, crooked spines, misshapen skulls. One bugger seemed to have no lips to speak of, while another's nose was nothing but a perforated pimple in the middle of his face. It was a blessing, Chalmers thought, that they had sense enough to cover up their genitals with loincloths.

He imagined running wild among them, swinging left and right with massive, angry fists. One stiff poke in the eye would blind the frigging cyclops, and the dwarfs would be no problem; he could boot them down the trail like flabby soccer balls. Six normal-looking men could be a problem, true enough, but if Pike could grab the bolo knife—or better yet, one of the spears…

On second thought, however, there was something that he didn't like about the bowmen. They were small and stupid looking, Chalmers granted, but they also held their bows as proper archers might, with arrows nocked and ready, pointed in the general direction of their targets. Long, sharp arrows, he couldn't help noting, with the tips discolored, as by some vile potion used to make them twice as deadly in the flesh.

The more he considered things, the less he liked those six-foot lances, either. That was no way for a man to die, with spears stuck through him till he looked like some damned insect on a bug collector's mounting board. And from Kuching Kangar's expression, he would only be too happy for a chance to use his bolo on a proper Englishman. The bloody wogs were all that way, ungrateful bastards to the bitter end.

So he would bide his time, thought Chalmers. Find out where the freaks were taking him—and his companions, too, of course—before he tried to break away. He didn't follow all this rot about Nagaq, but what could anyone expect from savages whose normal microintellect was cooked in a genetic soup that obviously left much to be desired?

He would find out where they were going, keep a close eye on the local landmarks so that he could make his way back out again. If there was profit to be taken at the end of their forced march, he would do everything within his power to secure the lion's share of it—and failing that, he would by God remember the location of his captors' sanctuary, come back later with a solid team of men who knew what they were doing, men who took life seriously, not a gang of bloody scientists who couldn't tell a pistol from a piss pot when the chips were down.

The world would never miss a tribe of freaks like this, he reckoned. It would be a public service to the gene pool, wiping this abomination off the map. If anyone found out and thought about complaining, it would be a clear-cut case of self-defense. There would be weapons to support Pike's claim… and maybe the remains of several recent victims, too.

The more he thought about it, slogging down the trail and sweating like a pig, the more Chalmers came to realize that he should make his break alone, when it was time. He didn't give a damn for Sibu Sandakan, the bloody wog, and Dr. Stockwell was an old man who would slow him down, most likely get him killed if Chalmers tried to pack him out with natives howling on their heels. Looked at another way, the old bone doctor made a perfect sacrifice. His death at savage hands would raise a bloody hue and cry from K.L. to the States, and anything Pike Chalmers did to pay his killers back would likely get a rubber-stamp approval from the powers that be.

All right, then.

By the time the first mile was behind them, Chalmers had his mind made up. He would be careful, watch and await his chance.

A small black plastic box came sailing at him through the trees, and Remo snatched it from the air, examined it and dropped it in his pocket. It was obviously a device for signaling. The brief exchange between their guide and Sibu Sandakan suggested it would summon army troops if Remo pressed the button, but he didn't want a mob of reinforcements rushing in.

Not yet.

The ambush had surprised him, an embarrassment that Remo swiftly overcame in his determination to pursue the natives and their hostages, find out where they were going and what bearing it might have on his mission to the jungle.

The deformities he saw among the natives meant no more to Remo at the moment than they seemed to mean among the tribesmen. He could think of several handy explanations for an isolated tribe where freakish traits had run amok. Inbreeding might explain it, some genetic taint passed down through generations, while new blood became increasingly uncommon. A pollutant in the air or water was another possibility, as with the plague of mercury-infected fish some years ago at Minamata, in Japan. Insecticides and toxic waste were out, considering the territory, but there were minerals and heavy metals found in nature that would have the same effect.

His train of thought was sidetracked as the party started moving. They kept on heading eastward, veering slightly to the south when they had covered half a mile or so. The trail was left behind, but it meant nothing to the natives, who guided their three prisoners by secret paths no white man had traversed in living memory.

Behind them, Remo was their shadow, hanging back enough to keep from being noticed but never falling far enough behind to lose their scent or sound. The natives were adept at forest travel, but they still left traces of themselves behind for anyone with eyes to see. If necessary, Remo could have let them lead him by a day, but he preferred to keep the hostages within his reach in case the end—whatever that turned out to be—came suddenly.

The hiking gave him time to think about what he had overheard while spying on the Malays and their prisoners. The captives were supposedly en route to meet Nagaq, whatever that meant. Remo didn't like the sound of it, but he was still inclined to wait and see what happened in the short run rather than attacking from the shadows and endangering his recent traveling companions. There was no fear on his own behalf, despite the heavy odds, but he couldn't prevent one of the natives spearing Stockwell, Sandakan or even Chalmers while he dealt with their associates. Whatever lay in store for the three hostages, Remo could be ready in a flash if someone tried to execute them on the trail, but otherwise, he thought it best to watch and wait.

The jungle felt more claustrophobic here, a combination of congested undergrowth and something less substantial—almost metaphysical—but Remo had no problem keeping up with the bizarre procession. Once, he traveled for a quarter mile above them, skipping through the treetops, feeling very much like Tarzan as he left the ground behind. It was a whole new world up in the canopy, some sixty feet above the forest floor, complete with creatures who were born, lived out their busy lives and died without a single visit to the ground below.

He thought of waiting for Chiun, but had no way of knowing where the elderly Korean was, when he would choose to reappear or what he had in mind. Right now, the more important task was keeping up with Dr. Stockwell and the others, making sure they didn't stray beyond his reach.

Some unknown ordeal lay ahead of them—that much was obvious. With luck, Remo thought it might just help him single out the ringer he was looking for and finalize his mission. Once the traitor was eliminated, Remo could decide what he should do about the freakish natives, the survivors of the expedition and the panic button nestled in his pocket.

Choices.

What was all this talk about Nagaq? It seemed that Stockwell's party had been captured by some kind of native cult, though Remo couldn't say for sure. Devotion to a mythic creature wouldn't be the strangest notion he'd ever heard of, and the setting clearly lent itself to legends, whether they revolved around a dragon or a tribe of forest trolls. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised him to discover that the freakish tribe itself had given rise to some peculiar stories in the neighborhood if he had time to ask around.

Mythology didn't concern him at the moment, though. His more immediate priorities were flesh and blood—the natives, their three hostages, the man he had been ordered to identify and kill. The jungle spooks and demons, meanwhile, would be forced to watch out for themselves.

There was a brand-new predator advancing on the Tasek Bera. Grim. Impervious to pity. Ruthless. And he wouldn't stand down until his work was done.

And old Nagaq would have to take a number if he wanted Remo's prey.

Chapter Fifteen

Safford Stockwell slapped at his neck. The heat and the incessant hum of insects buzzing in his head was driving him mad. He'd come so far, risked everything, only to be stopped by these primitives before he reached his goal. It was just too much. It meant that Audrey's sacrifice had been for nothing, all their effort a pathetic waste of time. When he was gone, another white man swallowed by the jungle with no clue to what had happened, how his mocking colleagues back at Georgetown would amuse themselves at his expense!

Kuching Kangar had promised they were being taken to Nagaq. Of course, the comment was intended as a threat, but Stockwell took it as a hopeful sign. The natives obviously meant to kill their prisoners, but there was still a chance that he could change their minds. And if he failed, at least there was a possibility to see his curiosity assuaged.

Stockwell was not an anthropologist, but he was literate, well-read in many disciplines. He knew, for instance, that most cults—at least among the aborigines, where modern drugs and psychopathic "saviors" weren't an issue—had their roots in some concrete and tangible event. The Polynesian cargo cults were an example, sprung to life from Allied air drops during World War II. Some isolated tribes still worshiped mock-ups of the aircraft that had showered them with blessings fifty years ago, a whole new generation waiting for the sky gods to return.

Why should Nagaq be merely fantasy, a witch doctor's hallucination? Was there any reason to rule out that this group, at some point in the past, had encountered some forgotten creature thought to be extinct?

It need not mean Nagaq was still alive, or even that it had been sighted by living men within this century. However, since the last known dinosaur abruptly vanished more than sixty million years ago, which was some fifty million years before the first appearance of a protohuman ape, it stood to reason that no man had ever seen a dinosaur… unless a few stray specimens had somehow managed to survive.

There were alternative hypotheses, of course. Nagaq might not be an official dinosaur at all. Stockwell had seen enough, when he was younger and more heavily inclined toward working in the field, to realize that science still had far to go in terms of understanding life on earth. New species weren't found as quickly as the old ones disappeared, but each year still brought some remarkable discoveries. Most of the "new" arrivals were diminutive—insects, amphibians and reptiles, with a few stray birds and mammals, but a larger species surfaced every now and then. The great Komodo dragon was a "legend" until 1912, and the first specimen of the "mythical" Kellas cat had been bagged—in Scotland, no less—as recently as 1983. If the immense, uncharted Tasek Bera region did not hold some secrets of its own, then Dr. Stockwell would be very much surprised.

He only hoped that he would live to find an answer to the riddle, even if he never had the chance to share his information with the world at large. There would be satisfaction just in knowing for himself, a certain pride in realizing that his last great effort hadn't been a total waste.

They didn't stop for rest at all that day, and there were times when Stockwell thought he would collapse from sheer exhaustion on the trail. Each time he faltered, though, one of his captors would rush forward, jabbing at him with a spear or crude stone knife until he found fresh energy and struggled onward. Sparing sips from his canteen kept Stockwell going, that and fear, but he grew famished as the afternoon wore on, exertion burning up the calories with nothing to replace them. His stomach growled like a caged animal, but no one seemed to notice, and the feeling of embarrassment passed.

By late that afternoon, their path was winding downward, losing altitude, although he reckoned that must be a function of his own fatigue. According to the topographic maps he carried, this whole region was a sort of swampy floodplain, nearly level, with no striking highs or lows. There were no mountains in the district, for example, and it stood to reason there would be no valleys, either. Still…

But as dusk approached, he realized there could be no mistake. Their path was intersected by a gully that led steeply downward for a hundred yards or so, then leveled out again. Trees from each side of the gully met overhead and blocked out the sunlight. More than once, he saw the disappearing tails of serpents startled by their passage and half expected a king cobra to rear up and block the path at any moment.

Watching out for snakes made Stockwell think of Renton Ward, and that in turn brought painful memories of Audrey Moreland back into the forefront of his mind. Such beauty, squandered in a godforsaken wilderness, and she would be forgotten almost overnight back home.

The trees cleared out in front of them, a sudden break in the oppressive gloom, and in the few short yards before they closed in overhead once more, he saw it.

He stood rooted to the spot until his captors shoved him on.

Stockwell thought he must have lost his mind. The heat had poached his brain; that must be it.

He blinked, then blinked again, but nothing changed. The scene in front of him was real, and his companions saw it, too. Pike Chalmers, too, had stopped dead in his tracks, dumbstruck, until a couple of the pygmies prodded him with spears. Stockwell now kept on moving, even though his legs had lost their feeling. He was giddy with excitement, close to passing out from the combined effects of hunger, heat, exhaustion and surprise.

But he kept moving.

Toward the ancient, hidden city that had risen from the ground in front of them, as if by magic.

Coming home was always a relief and pleasure for Kuching Kangar. He hated visiting the outside world, but he had no real choice. Cruel Fate had marked him with a face and body that were different from others in his clan—"normal" in the words of men who didn't know his people—and it meant that he was preordained to bridge the gap between his tribe and those Outside.

In every generation of his people, there were six or seven normal ones, enough to carry on their necessary commerce with the world of common men. It was a part of great Nagaq's own master plan, and while Kuching Kangar could recognize the genius of it, he was still uncomfortable with his special role. Raised from birth to be as those Outside, he always knew that he was strange, a fact the other children of his tribe wouldn't let him forget. They teased him constantly, threw pebbles at him when he tried to join them in their games and made it crystal clear that he would never be entirely welcome. The young women of the tribe had shunned him, too, as if his normal aspect was revolting, something to be feared. In time, he knew from adolescence, elders of the tribe would choose a normal female for him, to perpetuate the freakish bloodline, even if they had to snatch one from Outside.

The normal ones must never die out absolutely, after all. They were the only link between his people and the larger world that brought them special treasures: gold and silver, precious stones and sacrificial offerings for great Nagaq.

When he was sent away for education with the common men, Kuching Kangar had worried they would find him out, see something in his eyes or in his manner that would instantly betray him as a member of the tribe. He had been wrong, of course. The men Outside were idiots, for all their schooling. They knew nothing of his people or Nagaq. They even raised their children to believe that dragons were a figment of imagination.

Fools.

These days, he lived between two worlds, with one foot in the City and the other one Outside. With his diplomas duly registered and filed away, Kuching Kangar took pains to hide his education, building up a reputation as one of the foremost hunting guides in all peninsular Malaysia. He was famous, in his way, among the Outside men who came with guns or cameras to stalk the native wildlife, study plants or mingle with the aborigines. Some came in search of oil or other minerals, but it was all the same to him. Each year, a number of his clients vanished in the jungle, always under circumstances that would not reflect upon Kuching Kangar or make him suspect in the eyes of the authorities.

Nagaq demanded periodic offerings, but there were millions of unsuspecting fools Outside, and each new season brought a crop of them, intent on finding riches, romance or adventure in the wild. Most made it back intact, but if a member of the party should be lost occasionally, snatched by "tigers," "crocodiles" or "quicksand," who would be the wiser? After ten years in the game, Kuching Kangar had come to realize that strangers from Outside were fond of tragedy. It made their own lives more exciting, satisfying somehow, if they knew somebody who had died.

Perhaps it reassured them of their own invincibility, when Death brushed shoulders with them and selected someone else. The roots of their peculiar mind-set held no fascination for Kuching Kangar. It was enough for him, and for his people, that the idiots still made themselves available—and paid him very handsomely for leading them to meet their fate.

He'd never before snared an entire expedition, but Dr. Stockwell's group was special. They had come to find Nagaq, the first time in a generation that Outsiders had taken any interest in a "simple native legend." Last time, in the year before Kuching Kangar was born, a group of British soldiers had come hunting for the dragon, but their disbelief had blinded them, and they were too well armed for any member of the tribe to challenge them. Besides, they had been more concerned with pitching tents and practicing survival exercises than in hunting for Nagaq. A normal member of the tribe had been their guide, and he made sure they never passed within a day's march of the City.

There had never been another name for it, as far as he could tell. The tribe didn't possess a written history, of course, but the traditions were preserved in oral form, passed down among the normal ones and any others capable of holding long-term memories. It was "the City," plain and simple, built from massive blocks of jade, erected in the time before remembering. The site was chosen by an ancient father of the tribe who was the first to see Nagaq and worship him with offerings.

According to tradition, early members of the tribe had all been normal. It took a few years in the City, worshiping Nagaq, before the dragon god had started blessing them with special children. At first, in the beginning of the change, some members of the tribe were horrified, repulsed by "monster" children in their midst, but then a wise priest recognized the blessing of Nagaq and carefully explained it to the others.

They had chosen wisely in their god, and he rewarded them by setting them apart. He placed his mark on those who served him, leaving normal ones among the blessed to help deceive the world at large. Sometimes, he even favored normal ones with special children, so they wouldn't be discouraged by their lot in life or blame themselves for having failed to worship him with proper offerings.

Nagaq had placed his mark upon the City, too. A secret river from below ground fed a stone fountain in the spacious courtyard where the tribe conducted many of its rituals. And sometimes, in the dark of night, the very water seemed to come alive with eerie, dancing lights.

The blessing of Nagaq.

He stared ahead now, his heartbeat fast and joyous. His first glimpse of the City, after time Outside, inevitably caused his pulse to quicken. Beautiful was not a word that sprang to mind—the jade was ancient, weathered, faded, mostly overgrown with moss and creeping vines—but it was home. His heart was here, among the other members of the tribe. So would it always be.

The massive gates were fashioned out of square-cut timber, thirty-five feet tall, and flanked by sentries on the wall. At the appearance of the warriors and their captives, one of those on guard gave out a birdlike call to someone in the courtyard, an all clear for opening the gates. It took some time—each gate weighed tons, and only Small Ones were permitted, for some reason, to perform the opening—but Kangar felt no need to hurry. He had performed his mission, and he would receive his just reward.

Perhaps, he thought, already conscious of a restless stirring in his loins, he could request a night with Jelek, the three-breasted one.

"What is this place?" the old professor asked, yelping when one of the Small Ones jabbed him with a spear.

"The City," said Kuching Kangar, as if that answered everything. Which, in his own mind, was the truth.

"You live here?" There was amazement in the voice.

"The tribe lives here, white man. I am a member of the tribe. Where should I live?"

"I simply meant—"

The Small One used a bit more force this time, and Dr. Stockwell got the point. He shut his mouth and kept it shut, eyes focused on the double gates as they crept open, inch by groaning inch.

"I'll guess you don't have many visitors," Pike Chalmers said. "Be bloody tiresome, going through this nonsense every time somebody rings the bell."

The one-eyed member of their party stepped in close to Chalmers, lashed out with his spear as if it were a cudgel, using force enough to bruise the tall Brit's shin.

"Goddamn your eye!"

The next blow dropped him to all fours, a dazed expression on his face.

The gates stood open before Kuching Kangar now, his people gathered in the courtyard to behold the offerings he brought Nagaq.

He smiled and led the way inside.

His first glimpse of the hidden city startled Remo, made him double-check his map, but there was no mistake. He didn't have a fever, wasn't prone to fantasy and this was no mirage.

The maps were simply wrong—Or rather, incomplete.

He watched and waited while the massive gates were opened, a laborious procedure that convinced him there must be some other means of access to the city, for emergencies. If fire broke out, if they were suddenly attacked, there would be some hidden exit, almost surely more than one.

The trick would be to find it, if he didn't want to scale the wall for starters. Not that it would be a challenge, since the weathered stone offered countless cracks and crevices, all kinds of creepers on the outside that could double as a ladder. Even so, the wall was guarded, and while Remo had the utmost confidence in his ability to take the sentries out, there would be hell to pay if one of them lived long enough to sound a general alarm.

In that case, Remo knew, the hostages would be in greater peril than himself. It was impossible to know exactly how the tribesmen would react, but at a glance, he didn't think they would be noted for their self-control.

It was ironic, when he thought about it, that he felt compelled to try to rescue these three men, when one of them was his enemy and Remo was pledged to kill another on behalf of CURE. The rub was that he didn't know which member of the party was the ringer, which one he should terminate.

No problem, Remo thought. Just let the natives have all three.

It was a way to go, of course, but there was more to it than that. If possible, he needed to find out what had become of Terrence Hopper's expedition—though he had a fair idea by now—and also dig up any leads he could discover on a new strike of uranium.

Which meant that he would have to make his way inside the ancient city, check it out and go from there.

He was just starting on a quick reconnaissance of the perimeter when Remo heard someone approaching through the jungle. Solo, by the sound of it, and trying hard to keep the noise down, even though it didn't help that much. He scanned the wall, saw nothing to suggest the living gargoyles stationed there heard anything to put them on alert and turned away to meet the new arrival.

He chose his spot, a tree limb fifteen feet above the ground, well out of sight from sentries on the wall, and settled in to wait. Short moments later, Remo focused on a figure moving through the jungle, drawing closer to the ancient city, seemingly oblivious to its existence.

Seconds later, Remo knew this was no tribesman. This one's clothes were torn and stained, but they would never be mistaken for a layer of mud. The face, turned up toward Remo once without detecting him, was neither Malay nor malformed.

He chose his moment, dropped to earth behind the solitary hiker, pinning both arms while he clapped his free hand over Audrey Moreland's mouth.

She struggled for a moment, with surprising strength, then ceased when Remo whispered in her ear. "Don't make me break your neck."

The woman nodded, faced him as he cautiously released her.

"You're alive!" she blurted, smart enough to whisper on the home turf of their enemies.

"You, too, I see."

"Of course. I mean, what made you think I wasn't?"

"Our esteemed guide found your scarf in quicksand," Remo told her, leaving out his own discovery. "You never made it back to camp. It was assumed—"

"That I was dead," she finished for him. "Wrong, as you can see. I'm right here, in the flesh."

"So why the disappearing act?" he asked.

"I was afraid, I heard all kinds of shooting and I got lost in the jungle. Spent the whole night up a tree, in fact, and never got a wink of sleep. What happened at the camp?"

He fought the urge to smile. It was a variation on the same lie he had planned to use on Stockwell and the others, and it had the hollow ring of fabrication to it.

"I got lucky," Remo said without elaborating.

"What about the rebels?"

Remo did smile then. He had a flash of Audrey as she stood by a jungle stream in moonlight, well beyond sight of their last night's camp. Where he had left her, moments prior to any gunfire or anything at all to give the enemy away. How could she know who the attackers were, their politics, unless… ?

"Their leader asked about you," Remo said.

"Excuse me?" Audrey looked confused, fearful and angry all at once.

"Your contact," Remo said. "They must be disappointed in Beijing."

She stared at Remo for a moment, finally heaved a weary sigh. "What tipped you off?"

"It's not important. You were all right for a while, but in the long run, I'm afraid you don't have what it takes to pull it off."

"Which means?"

"The cloak-and-dagger business, Audrey. You're a lousy spy."

"I haven't had much practice," she informed him.

"That's apparent. Why the big career change?"

"Money, plain and simple, Renton. Is it Renton, by the way?"

"What difference does it make?"

"Not much, I guess. If you were really a professor, any kind of academic type, you'd know how boring it can be. Sometimes I feel like I'm the fossil. Can you understand that?"

"It's a lame excuse for treason," Remo said.

"There's no such thing in peacetime, Renton. Honestly, I looked it up. The laws on spying don't apply, since I've done nothing in the States."

"Except to meet with the Chinese."

"A business meeting," Audrey said. "One million dollars was the going rate, with half up front. A bonus when they make arrangements to deliver the uranium."

"You'll have to find it first."

"No problem." Audrey raised her left arm, turned it so that he could see the wristwatch, featuring the time zones of the world and phases of the moon. As Remo studied it, the second hand lurched drunkenly from left to right.

"A silent Geiger counter," Audrey said. "I'm getting closer."

"You'll need help," he told her. "Your connection isn't with us anymore."

"I'll manage, Renton. It's a seller's market."

"When did you become an expert?"

"I'm a damned quick study when I need to be."

"I've gathered that."

The pistol came from Audrey's pocket. Remo saw her telegraph the move but didn't try to stop her yet.

"I wouldn't use that now if I were you," he said.

"I'd rather not."

"In case you missed it," Remo said, "the others have been taken prisoner. They're being held back there."

He cocked a thumb in the direction of the ancient city, watching Audrey as her eyes and pistol wavered from the proper target.

"Taken prisoner? By whom? Held where?"

"You won't believe it till you see it," Remo told her. "Come with me."

He turned, pretending to ignore the weapon, kept on turning with a spinning kick that broke her wrist and sent the pistol flying. Audrey's shock gave Remo time to finish it, a tap behind one ear to put her down and out.

He tore the sleeves from Audrey's shirt, used one to bind her hands behind her back, the other as a makeshift gag. With some determination, she could free herself, but she would still be out for a while, and Remo meant to get his work inside the city done as rapidly as possible.

It was a simple rescue mission now, except for pinning down the main lode of uranium. With Audrey's Geiger-counter watch around his own wrist, Remo felt as ready as he ever would.

It wasn't quite an emerald city, and the road in front of him was mud, not yellow bricks, but he was off to see the wizard, come what may.

Chapter Sixteen

It took ten minutes, searching in the dark, but Remo found his secret way inside. There was a small gate, overgrown with weeds, near the northeast corner of the city's high surrounding wall. It was unguarded at the moment, and the hinges had been fashioned out of wooden pegs that had long rotted through. They offered faint resistance, but couldn't prevent his entering.

He wondered how long it had been since anybody used this exit, then dismissed the thought; it was a waste of time to ponder things that had no bearing on his mission. Off to Remo's right, a hundred yards or so, there was a spacious courtyard with a fountain at its center, water burbling from the open maw of what appeared to be a dragon carved from stone.

The fountain caught his eye because it shimmered, almost seemed to glow, as if there was some phosphorescence in the water. It was curious enough to draw him from his hiding place, a slow creep in the shadow of the looming wall, aware of sentries walking on the parapet above him.

Remo was no scientist, but he knew water in its normal state was not a source of light. At sea, you might find phosphorescent plankton, maybe larger creatures from the depths who gave off light from chemical reactions to attract prey, summon mates or frighten off their enemies. The same phenomenon was seen in fireflies, and in some inhabitants of caverns underground.

What did it mean? Were microscopic organisms found in water down below somehow escaping through the fountain, flaring into sudden brilliance as they reached the world above? Could they be toxic? Did consumption of the water help explain some of the freakish defects he had seen?

He had halved his distance to the fountain when a pair of tribesmen suddenly came into view, approaching from the far side of the courtyard. Remo froze, merged with the shadows, watched them as they stood before the fountain, genuflected and reached out to cup their hands beneath the sparkling flow. He saw them drink and bathe their grim, misshapen faces, all the while intoning syllables that ran together, slow and rhythmic, like a chant.

When they were done, the tribesmen rose and kept on walking, straight toward Remo. Neither saw him as he huddled in the deeper darkness at a corner of the wall, but he saw them up close. One was a giant, fully seven feet in height, with wrinkled pits in place of ears and fleshy growths on each side of his neck that looked like gills. His sidekick was a man of average height, who had a tiny third arm sprouting from the center of his chest. It twitched and groped its way across his upper torso, as if someone trapped inside his chest—a midget or a child, perhaps—were trying to break out.

The needle on his silent Geiger counter gave a violent lurch, then fell back to a desultory twitching as the human monsters put more space between themselves and Remo. Staring at the fountain, he knew everything he had to know about the freaks, their hidden city and the new lode of uranium.

They had been drinking, eating, breathing it for centuries, and breeding mutants all the while. Somehow, as if by destiny, the ancient tribe had built its city at ground zero, with predictable results for generations yet unborn.

Don't drink the water, Remo thought, and almost laughed out loud.

For he was standing in the middle of their nightmare now, breathing the same polluted air. According to his Geiger counter, simple ambient exposure held no short-run danger, but he wouldn't like to hang around and test the proposition. Was it sheer, perverse psychology that made him thirsty now, when he couldn't afford to drink at any cost?

Okay. So find the others and get out of here, he told himself.

Somehow, the ancient city had acquired a throbbing pulse. At first, he thought it was the amplified reverberation of his own heart, thumping in his ears, but then he recognized the muffled sound of drums. Big drums, at that, their steady cadence amplified by the acoustics of a chamber somewhere close at hand.

He couldn't name that tune, but he could damned well track it down, and that would have to do. His instinct told him he would find the other members of the Stockwell expedition when he found the drummers.

It wasn't a tune that made him want to tap his foot and sing along. If anything, it put Remo in mind of war drums, or perhaps a funeral march.

Somebody's funeral coming up, for sure.

He let the darkness cover him as he went off to find the pulsing heartbeat of the city.

Chiun was tired of walking through the jungle. He wasn't fatigued, but rather losing patience with the long trek through a landscape he had mastered in his first few hours on the trail. Where was the challenge for a Master of Sinanju? Where was the reward in tramping over muddy trails and following a group of men who made no effort to conceal their tracks?

Remo had shown imagination, taking to the trees, but Chiun wasn't inclined to follow his example. Not yet, anyway. For in addition to the tedium of following these clumsy savages and white men—terms the Master of Sinanju viewed as more or less synonymous—he had another goal in mind.

Chiun was watching out for dragon spoor.

At one point, midway through the long day's march, he thought that he had found it. An aroma, strong and pungent in his nostrils, beckoned him away from the main trail, a little to the north, and he couldn't resist the detour. What he found was a surprise and disappointment all at once.

He stood in front of a steaming pile of excrement. Not small, by any means, but neither was it dragon size, if he accepted the dimensions spoken of in legend. Pausing, peering closely at the mound, Chiun wondered, Could it be a baby dragon?

No.

Another glance and sniff told him the composition of the pile was wrong. Whatever mighty beast had dropped this load was strictly vegetarian, and anyone with common sense knew dragons were carnivorous.

He walked around the reeking pile once more, examining the ground for tracks, and blinked at what he saw. They were not dragon tracks, but they would be no trick to follow, and the effort might pay off. Indeed, if Chiun applied himself, he might acquire a weapon and a means of transportation at a single stroke.

It was worth a try.

He struck off at a tangent from the course his human quarry had established, following the clear path that a massive, ambling body had prepared for him. He could not calculate the creature's speed with any accuracy, but the excrement was fresh, and Chiun knew he couldn't be far behind.

It was good luck, Chiun thought, that those he followed hadn't found the creature, or vice versa. They would certainly have tried to kill it, possibly succeeded, and the Master of Sinanju would have been deprived the pleasure of a jungle ride.

He marked a change in course as he saw that the jungle giant had veered off toward water, and began to jog. If he could overtake his quarry at the stream, it would be perfect.

Chiun ran for half a mile without the first signs of fatigue, when suddenly the trees began to clear a bit, and he could hear the rushing stream ahead of him. He slowed his pace, and moved without a sound as he approached the water, coming at his quarry from behind.

The elephant didn't belong there. It wasn't a native of Malaysia, and while India was not so far away in global terms, Chiun wasn't inclined to believe that the beast had wandered over by mistake.

In fact, he knew that elephants were often used as beasts of burden through the whole of Southeast Asia. Some were bred specifically for work, while others were imported, oftentimes illegally. This pachyderm still wore the riding harness—nearly rotted through, but plainly visible—which marked him as a runaway.

That meant he was familiar with the ways of men, but might despise them. Asian handlers were notoriously cruel, at least by Western standards, and it hardly rated mention in the newspapers when an occasional "rogue" elephant rebelled against its master, using trunk and tusks and crushing weight to take a measure of revenge.

Chiun wasn't afraid of being gored or trampled by the great, unwieldy beast. It would require some effort for him to destroy the elephant, but that wasn't his goal. The Master of Sinanju had a very different plan in mind.

He circled wide around the animal while it was drinking from the stream, approaching slowly from the downwind side. It wouldn't smell him coming that way, and the gamy reek that stung his nostrils was a small price to be paid for the advantage of surprise.

When he had closed the distance to a dozen paces, still outside the creature's striking range, Chiun halted, stood with hands clasped at his waist and watched the elephant. A low-pitched trilling sound began to issue from his throat, almost hypnotic in its tone.

The elephant froze where it stood, its trunk poised midway between the water and its small pink mouth. Another moment passed before the gray behemoth turned its head to stare at Chiun, the small eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Chiun stopped trilling and addressed the forest giant in Korean. He had no illusion that the elephant could understand him, but a soothing tone was all-important as he made the first advances, opening communication between man and beast. The elephant, in Chiun's opinion, had an intellect on par with most white men he had encountered, and a memory superior to all of them. It would remember injuries inflicted by the hands of men, but he believed that it could also differentiate between one human and another, given half a chance.

Five minutes into the one-sided conversation, when the pachyderm had still made no aggressive moves, Chiun advanced one slow step at a time. He made no sudden moves, continued speaking in the same mild tone until the elephant was close enough for him to stroke its tough hide with his fingertips. The creature snorted at Chiun in warning, but he showed no fear and responded with the trilling sound that acted as a sedative upon the beast's nerves.

Five more minutes passed while Chiun allowed the elephant to test his scent and prod him with the soft tip of its trunk. He waited, knew when it was time to make his move. The handlers used commands to make an elephant kneel down, or hoist them with its trunk, but Chiun preferred another route. He stepped back from the beast four paces, got a running start and scrambled up the gray cliff of its side as if the hulking creature came complete with ladders. In another instant, he was seated on the giant's neck, his knees dug in behind the floppy ears.

There was a moment when the creature trembled, seemed about to spin and throw him off, but Chiun resumed his trilling, and the elephant relaxed. He let it finish drinking, then asserted his control, a nudge from his right heel that made the creature turn in that direction, facing eastward. Another nudge—both heels this time—and Chiun was on his way.

It would require some patient guidance for the elephant to pick up Dr. Stockwell's trail, but he had time. His days of plodding through the mud were over now.

Chiun was traveling in style.

The first thing Audrey Moreland noted, on regaining consciousness, was the ungodly throbbing in her skull. It felt as if a tribe of gremlins had moved in while she was dozing, and the little monsters were engaged in frenzied renovations, moving things around to suit themselves.

She knew that Renton Ward had punched her, even though she never saw the knockout coming. He was fast, that one, and she would have to be alert, tip-top, when she set out to pay him back. His hands were good for something more than milking snakes and foreplay that could drive a woman crazy.

Hands.

The second thing she noticed was that her hands were immobilized behind her back. A heartbeat later, she was conscious of the gag, a cool night breeze against her flesh that told her Ward had ripped her sleeves off and used them to bind and muzzle her.

Goddamn him!

Audrey's legs were free, however, and that marked his first mistake. It took ten minutes of intensive effort, straining till she thought her spine would snap, her shoulders pull completely out of joint and leave her crippled, helpless. She finally succeeded, worked around her aching legs to get her hands in front of her again.

And it was easy after that. She used her thumbs to pull the gag down, off her chin, and worried at the knotted shirtsleeve with her teeth until the knot gave way and she was free. Another moment, stretching stiffened muscles, working achy joints, and Audrey knew she was as ready as she'd ever be.

Another flare of anger burst inside her when she missed the Geiger counter, realizing instantly where it had gone. Ward knew her business now, what she was looking for, and it appeared that he was bent on getting there ahead of her.

But what did that make him? Forget about the serpentarium in old New Orleans. Renton might know snakes, but Audrey doubted whether any desk-bound herpetologist could move like he did, decking someone like Pike Chalmers with a single blow. Where had he come from, popping up behind her on the trail that way? Was he some kind of gymnast, in addition to the other talents he possessed?

Or could he be some kind of spy?

It hardly mattered at the moment. He had duped her for a while, and it had been a pleasure—some of it, at least—but she saw through him now. They had the same goal, more or less, and while she had no way of knowing who his sponsors were, she didn't really care. There was a million dollars riding on the line, half of it sitting in a special numbered bank account already, and she didn't plan on giving back one solitary cent.

Worst case, if Renton got to the uranium ahead of her, and she could find no way to rid herself of the intrusion, Audrey had a fallback plan that would allow her to escape with the half million she had already received. Of course, successful execution of the scheme required her to survive this foray in the jungle, but she still had confidence, despite her inexperience and the fact that she was now entirely on her own.

She was determined to track Safford's party and would willingly proceed on hands and knees if necessary. Renton said the others had been taken prisoner by natives, which would mean she had a larger group to follow, with a greater likelihood of clues along the way. The downside, Audrey realized, was that the tribesmen might be taking Safford and the others anywhere, perhaps away from the uranium, and in the absence of her Geiger counter, Audrey couldn't know for sure if she was getting warm or cold.

Damn Renton anyhow!

He had a swift kick coming when she caught up with him, and the delivery would be a pleasure. She would have to watch him, though. That one had more tricks up his sleeve than David Copperfield, and Audrey had the feeling he could just as easily have killed her instead of simply knocking her unconscious.

What had stopped him? Did she have a small edge where his feelings were concerned? If so, could she exploit it when they met again, to throw him off his guard?

She made herself slow down and take it one step at a time, or she risked losing everything, her life included. Even as a novice, Audrey knew the jungle was more dangerous at night, when predators came out to stalk the darkness, seeking prey. It would be bitterly ironic if she tangled with a panther, or whatever prowled this territory after nightfall, and wound up as so much raw protein on the big cat's menu.

Audrey found her way in moments, grinning as she realized that Renton had seen fit to leave her within several paces of the trail. She noted, too, that he had left her on the ground, where anything from ants to this Nagaq the natives raved about could come along and nibble on her flesh.

Some gentleman!

Make that two kicks where they would do the most good when she saw him. Nothing personal, old buddy, just a little message to your gonads from my foot!

Despite the darkness, Audrey found the trail wasn't as difficult as she had feared. The party—more than twenty strong now, from appearances—hadn't wasted time covering its tracks, as if the natives had no fear of being followed on their own home turf. So much the better, then, except that Renton Ward would have a decent lead by now. Without the Geiger counter, she couldn't tell exactly how long she had been unconscious, but she guessed at something like two hours, judging from the darkness and the drop in temperature.

Two hours was a lifetime in the wilderness, but she had managed to survive. And that was Renton's first mistake.

She took it easy on the trail, despite the sense of urgency that called for haste. The last thing Audrey needed at the moment was to blunder through the jungle in a rush, make noise enough to wake the dead and wind up drawing every predator and native in the neighborhood. At last she found her rhythm and moved along at a steady pace. She was just congratulating herself for her presence of mind when she realized her assessment might have been premature.

First she became aware of a muted throbbing in the foliage, then realized she must have been hearing the drums for a while. The natives seemed to come from nowhere, as if rising from the earth in front of her. She stopped short, biting off a scream, and turned to flee, but there were more behind her, blocking her escape. She stood her ground, willing herself not to panic as the shadow-shapes moved closer, spears in hand.

It was the moonlight that undid her, breaking through the canopy just then to pick her captors out. Two dwarfs, she saw, with queer, misshapen hands like crab claws, feet splayed out with webbed toes, like a scuba diver's fins. The other three were taller—normal size, in fact—but there was nothing else about them that would classify as normal. One appeared to have no nose, just shiny sockets in the middle of his moon-shaped face, below a pair of bulging eyes. Another had one normal arm, its withered mate the size she would have looked for on a five-year-old. The last one, their apparent leader, was a walking nightmare: earless, bald, with bright eyes glaring from beneath a caveman's brow, and crooked, fanglike teeth protruding from his thin slash of a mouth. Instead of a chin, there was something that appeared to be a second, half-formed face regarding Audrey from the middle of his chest.

She couldn't help it then.

Opening her mouth wide, she screamed and kept on screaming, helpless to resist them as the human monsters swept her up and carried her away.

The city's inner walls were etched with vast, elaborate designs in bas-relief, depicting men and animals, some of them giant creatures that could pass for dinosaurs—or dragons. Remo didn't linger for a critical assessment, but followed the pulse of drumbeats toward their source, a winding trek that led him from the phosphorescent fountain to the ancient city's very heart.

He found guards posted on the way, avoided them whenever possible, but had to kill a pair who blocked his access to a giant, looming structure where the throbbing dirge originated. They died instantly and silently, still on their feet, before they even recognized their peril. Remo took the bodies with him as he crept inside what seemed to be a temple dedicated to the worship of a giant lizard-god.

Nagaq, he thought, and stashed the corpses in an alcove to his left, not far inside the temple where he hoped they would go undiscovered long enough for him to scout the place and find out where the prisoners were being held. If an alarm was raised before he found the others, he would have to carry on and play the rest of it by ear.

So, Remo asked himself, what else is new?

The corridor in which he found himself was dank, dark, musty, lit by torches in the distance, where it turned into another, wider corridor. The sound of drums was louder here, and behind the pulsing drumbeat, he could make out chanting now—male voices, by the sound of it, no language that he recognized.

No language anyone would recognize, he guessed, if his suspicions were correct. This tribe wouldn't have lasted long if strangers from the outside world knew they existed, where they could be found. A generation earlier, they would have been packed off to populate the freak shows of a hundred circuses and carnivals in Europe and America. These days, they were more likely to be singled out for "help" from some well-meaning agency that would invade their world with scholars, doctors, CARE packages—inevitably followed up by medical researchers, newsmen, missionaries, tax collectors and police. The military would be coming, too, when they got wind of weapons-grade uranium.

There goes the neighborhood.

One corridor led Remo to another, on and on. He memorized the twists and turns, took care as he approached each corner just in case another group of sentries might be waiting for him on the other side. But there were none, and soon the throbbing in the ceiling overhead told Remo that he was below the drums and chanting throng. He found a narrow staircase, carved by hand, and scaled it, moving without a sound.

The staircase was blocked off by a hatch made of wood and relatively new, as if—unlike the gates outside—it had been recently replaced. He raised it cautiously, a half inch at a time, prepared to turn and flee if it made any noise at all.

From the trapdoor, Remo had a rat's-eye view of an expansive dais, with a terraced amphitheater in front of it, the stony benches packed by what looked to be scores of tribesmen. Remo didn't bother with a head count, since he was more involved with an examination of their faces and the various mutations they displayed. Except for tentacles and trunks, they could have been the barroom cast from Star Wars, turning out in costume for the grand premiere.

Onstage were Dr. Stockwell, Sibu Sandakan and Chalmers. They were kneeling, arms behind their backs, wrists bound to ankles so they could not rise, hand-woven ropes around their necks tied off to rusty metal rings set in the dais. Standing over them, the honcho of the tribe commanded full attention from the audience.

No wonder, Remo thought.

The guy was tall enough to make an NBA scout promise him the moon—if not eight feet, distinctly pushing it. Where several members of his audience had only one good eye, the chief had three—two normal ones, plus what appeared to be an embryonic orb set in the middle of his forehead, raised an inch or so above the others. Woolly hair was visible beneath a headdress fashioned from a large iguana's carcass, with the lizard's face protruding from above its wearer's, while the dorsal skin and tail hung down his back. Bright feathers had been thrust into the reptile's skin as decoration, to create the likeness of a mythical winged lizard, but the chief was otherwise entirely nude. No loincloth to disguise the mammoth genitalia, which, when added to his stature, clearly marked him as the biggest man in town.

It's quality, not quantity, thought Remo. Sure, and I'm a tenor for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

He tore his eyes away from Mr. Big and made another circuit of the room, saw that a portion of the roof was open to the sky, so moonlight aided the illumination of the torches set into the walls at ten- or twelve-foot intervals. In back, behind the ghastly audience, a pair of massive doors was closed against the night, and Remo guessed the courtyard lay in that direction, with the wall and outer gates beyond.

He was considering a move, convinced that he could drop the chief and liberate at least one prisoner before the audience responded in a screaming, killing rush, when there was a disturbance in the back rows of the amphitheater. Someone was pounding on the massive doors, and two sentries hastened to check it out. These doors were easier to handle than the outer gates, but they still needed muscle, with the two guards getting help from those outside.

As Remo watched, a squad of six more tribesmen trooped in to join the others, every eye in the assembly turned to follow them, weird faces scowling at the interruption, then displaying disapproval as they got a look at the captive boxed in by her guards.

Audrey Moreland.

Remo cursed himself and let it go—no more time for recriminations at the moment. He would have to think of something fast, before the party started heating up.

And from the looks of Mr. Big, his visible reaction to the struggling blonde, there would be little time to waste.

Chapter Seventeen

It was all too much for Audrey's mind to process, pouring in on her without a breather. Being decked by Renton Ward and waking up to find herself alone, trussed up like Grandma's Christmas turkey in the middle of the godforsaken jungle. Struggling to get free and picking up the trail, only to find herself surrounded by a gang who could be poster children for the next Wes Craven movie. Marching through the darkness to an ancient, obviously undiscovered city, where her captors led her past a glowing fountain—the uranium?—to reach a kind of Stone Age auditorium. Her traveling companions kneeling on the stage, tied up, while an ungainly three-eyed giant with a schlong the size of Baja California, shouted gibberish to an assembled audience of living, breathing nightmares.

What was she supposed to do?

Scream, baby, scream—and fight as if her life depended on it, which it obviously did.

She gave a fair impersonation of a grownup temper tantrum, kicking, screaming, spitting, scratching at her captors. She stopped short of biting them, since they were smeared from head to foot with mud or something worse that came from God knew where, but her resistance had its impact Her fingernails plowed bloody furrows down the cheek of Mr. No Nose, after which she kicked him in the loincloth, hard enough to leave him gasping on his knees. The pygmies tried to stick her then, but Audrey grabbed one of the spears and swung the first runt hard into his stubby buddy, dropping both of them.

She had a weapon now, and was prepared to use it, but she never got the chance. Someone came up behind her with a club and tapped her skull just hard enough to dim the lights, turn her legs to rubber, while a swarm of mud-caked hands reached out to grab the spear away from her, pin down her arms and legs.

One chance, she thought. I had one chance, and that was it It's gone.

They dragged her toward the stage, boots scuffing on the stony floor, where Three Eyes waited for her, showing signs of interest that a naked man had difficulty hiding. Hell, with that equipment, his excitement would have been apparent in a suit of armor.

Others noticed his reaction, too, and as the sleeping giant rose to full attention, certain members of the audience began to chant, a rhythmic, off-key dirge.

She reached the dais, borne on eager hands, and was deposited at Long John Silver's feet, his fleshy cudgel aimed directly at her face. No way, thought Audrey. Where the hell is Linda Lovelace when you need her?

Giant drums had fallen silent when the raiding party entered with their captive, but the beat resumed now, throbbing in the amphitheater like some great, cosmic heartbeat. Someone found a length of rope and bound her hands behind her, tied off to her ankles as the others were secured. If Audrey struggled now, she had a choice of four directions she could fall in: right, left, backward or directly on her face.

The three-eyed giant and his one-eyed buddy had begun to sway in front of her, a jerky little dance that matched the rhythm of the drumbeats more or less. She closed her eyes, preferring not to watch, her mind already focused on the prospect of what former generations had described—and accurately, she decided—as "a fate worse than death." There could be no "relax and enjoy it" with this freak, or those who might line up behind him if worse came to worst.

I wonder, Audrey thought, if you can will yourself to die?

The morbid train of thought was interrupted by a new sound, emanating from outside. Behind the chanting of the audience surrounding her, she heard one man, and then another, shouting frantically, their shouts resolving into screams of pain or panic. There was a distant sound of old wood groaning, screeching, splintering, but even that wasn't what riveted her full attention.

Something else.

A loud, unearthly snarling, as of some fantastic beast enraged.

The snarling, roaring, air-stirring sound had barely died away when the assembled natives went berserk. As one, they leaped up from their stony seats and rushed into the aisles, stampeding for the nearest exit. Some of them were shouting, and while Remo didn't speak their language, he could make one word out loud and clear.

"Nagaq! Nagaq!"

There was no time to hesitate or wonder what in hell was going on. He bolted through the trapdoor, charged across the stage and met the three-eyed giant just as Mr. Big turned back to face him, his impressive scepter thrust out like a weapon.

Remo saw his opportunity and seized it with a clutching, twisting move that left his eight-foot adversary standing in a pool of crimson, hitting high notes for the first time in his life. A crushing backhand silenced the soprano aria and closed the three-eyed stare forever. Remo stepped past the chief before he fell and moved on to free the hostages.

A number of the tribesmen saw their leader fall, and three of those were bold enough to leap on-stage, despite their panicky reaction to the noises emanating from outside, and try to dish out instant justice. They walked into a whirlwind of destruction, fists and feet they never saw before the lights went out forever. Their bodies sprawled on the dais while their mud-caked countrymen bailed out with all deliberate speed.

"Nagaq! Nagaq!"

Outside, the noises that had prompted the stampede were getting louder, closer. Remo couldn't place the snarling—if reminded him of King Kong talking tough in Dolby stereo—but something large and angry was advancing on the temple, obviously giving hell to anyone who crossed its path. He wondered if the drums—all silent now—had summoned it, and whether this kind of intrusion was a normal part of tribal gatherings.

From the reactions of the audience, he guessed that it wasn't. Apparently, no evacuation drill had been prepared, no chants or prayers designed for the occasion. They might worship great Nagaq, but they were plainly unaccustomed to its putting in a personal appearance in the middle of the ceremony.

Now they had a party crasher who—from what was audible outside—could really crash a party when it wanted to. The screams outside were frantic, terrified, some of them cut off sharply, like a chicken's squawking severed by a hatchet blade. And over all, the snarling bass tones of Nagaq provided background music for a waking nightmare, echoing inside the amphitheater as the creature from hell drew ever closer to the open doors.

Professor Stockwell gaped at Remo, evidently stunned to see him. "Dr. Ward! Where did you come from?"

"No time for a recap," Remo told him. "Do your legs work?"

"Pardon me?"

He reached down and snapped the ropes that shackled Stockwell. "Can you run like hell?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Be ready, then. We haven't got much time."

"I understand."

He moved on to the next in line, freed Sibu Sandakan. Pike Chalmers glared at Remo, stubborn pride at war with the survival instinct, but he didn't pull away when Remo stepped around behind him, pulled the ropes apart as if they were flimsy threads.

And he saved Audrey for the last, unfastening the rope around her ankles, hesitating for a beat before he freed her hands and helped her to her feet. She wore a dazed expression, no defiance visible as he took her by the arm and steered her toward the trapdoor in the stage.

"This way," he urged the others.

"Sod that!" Chalmers snapped. "Those bloody wogs have got a thing or two to answer for. They have my rifle and my trophy, Dr. Ward, and I'm not leaving here without the lot!"

That said, he leaped down from the stage and sprinted toward the exit, bowling over several of the pygmy types who blocked his path. He made it halfway there before a giant, looming shadow fell across the threshold, blotting out the night.

"My God, what's that?" asked Audrey.

Down below, the natives were yammering, "Nagaq! Nagaq!" Some of them knelt and pressed their foreheads to the floor, while others scattered for their lives.

"It can't be!" Dr. Stockwell said. "What's that… ?"

"I don't know," Remo said, "but something tells me we're about to meet the big kid on the block. And from the sound of it, he's pissed right now."

Chiun was still a half mile from the hidden city when he heard the drums, a muffled, throbbing beat that seemed to give the very jungle life. His huge mount hesitated, grumbling, but plowed ahead when he dug his heels in, snapping orders in his most authoritative tone. It made no difference what he said; he could have shouted, "Dog shit! Saxophone!" for all the pachyderm would know. It was the tenor of his voice, the aura of command, that left the Master of Sinanju in control.

It had been simple to follow his quarry once he steered the elephant back to the trail and got it headed eastward. Even in the darkness, he could easily keep up with twenty men who took no pains to hide their tracks. They may as well have blazed the trees or planted signs along the way to guide him.

Chiun had been concerned at first, in case their seeming negligence turned out to be a ruse, some crafty scheme to undermine his vigilance, prepare an ambush, but he quickly put his mind at ease.

The men he stalked were clumsy idiots.

The drumbeats told him that, if nothing else. Chiun could only marvel that the tribe hadn't been hunted down much sooner, since they were so careless with security. Of course, they dealt primarily with whites and Malays, which would make a difference. If a Korean had come looking for them, all the world would know their secrets now.

A quarter mile before they reached their destination, Chiun's mount was distracted by a new scent on the trail. It was a gamy, pungent odor that reminded Chiun a little of the snake farm he had visited in Bangkok years ago.

The elephant was trembling, scuffing at the ground with giant feet, but there was less fear than anger in its attitude. Chiun urged it forward, and the beast responded with the barest hesitation, trotting faster as the unidentified reptilian scent intensified. Its trunk was raised as if to trumpet out a challenge, but the only sound that emanated from its throat was the warm huffing of its breath.

Chiun wasn't surprised at the appearance of the ancient city. It made perfect sense, considering the circumstances, and he knew now where the rhythmic sound of drums was coming from. At first glance, he was worried that the looming outer wall might be a problem—not for him, of course, but for the elephant—until he saw the wooden gates, wide open in the moonlight.

Human figures milled about the open gates, as if they couldn't make their minds up whether to remain or flee. Chiun urged his elephant to greater speed, bent forward, with his hands braced on the giant's leather scalp until the gap had closed to fifty yards. Then something roared inside the city walls, a primal sound of rage and hunger from a set of massive vocal cords.

The dragon? What else could it be?

Chiun's elephant stopped short on hearing that, and actually backed up several yards before he could assert control. He thumped a fist on the behemoth's skull, not hard enough to damage anything, and dug in with his heels once more. The elephant resisted for another fleeting moment, but its will posed no real challenge for the Master of Sinanju. Finally, reluctantly at first, but then with greater energy, it moved ahead.

The natives clustered at the gate were unaware of Doom advancing on flank, until the elephant raised up its trunk and blared a challenge to the night. The tribesmen turned at that, and Chiun confirmed what he had surmised already from a number of their tracks. They were deformed, most of them, with a solitary normal-looking man who stood back and deferred to the grotesques. There was no time to speculate on how they got that way, no pity in Chiun's heart when three of them stood fast instead of taking to their heels as any sane man would have when confronted with a charging elephant.

The beast crushed two of them beneath its tree-stump feet before they had a chance to launch their spears in self-defense. The tallest of the three screamed once as he was lifted with the trunk coiled tight around his rib cage, emptying his lungs. Instead of goring him, the elephant released him with a quick toss of its head that flung him headfirst toward the wall. There was a crunch on impact, and his lifeless body tumbled ten or twelve feet to the ground, where it lay twitching in the mud.

The gates were tall enough that Chiun wasn't required to duck as they passed through. Where he had expected sentries on the wall, it was deserted. Something had distracted them before the Master of Sinanju put in his appearance, and the sound of human screams, with loud snarls overriding them, led him in the direction of the battle.

Maybe not a dragon, thought Chiun, but it was something he had never seen before, and that alone could make the trip worthwhile.

The Master of Sinanju spurred his mount to greater speed, his lips turned upward in a beatific smile.

Kuching Kangar hadn't been with his brothers in the Hall of Ceremony when Nagaq arrived. It was forbidden lor the normal ones to take direct part in a sacrifice, since they weren't considered pure. It galled him sometimes when he thought of the humiliation he endured to serve Nagaq, but it wasn't his place to argue with tradition.

Not when it could get him killed.

Still, none of them had counted on Nagaq appearing in the flesh. Nagaq always waited for the sacrificial offerings to be prepared and taken outside, to a clearing where the stakes were planted. You could hear it from the City, growling as it fed, bill there were few among the tribe who claimed that they had actually seen the dragon god. The chief, of course, and several of his close advisers, but no one else.

Tonight was different, somehow. Perhaps Nagaq was hungrier than usual, or maybe it could tell they had three offerings instead of one. Kuching Kangar could no more read a god's mind than he could predict the future, but tradition told him it would mean something momentous for the tribe if great Nagaq should ever deign to come inside the City.

From the sound of things, momentous massacre would be more like it. Great Nagaq was surly at the best of times, but if its snarls were any indication, then it must be positively rabid at the moment. Men were screaming in the courtyard, some of them in mortal pain, the rest in fear.

Kuching Kangar, emerging from his quarters, was uncertain how he should react. There had been no rehearsals for this moment, nothing to prepare them for a house call from the forest god.

He frowned and took his spear along for comfort.

Just in case.

A hundred yards separated Kangar's sleeping quarters from the courtyard of the shining fountain. There was no sign of Nagaq when he arrived but there were several bodies—and parts of bodies—scattered in the courtyard, as if some gigantic child had run amok and torn his toys apart. Fresh blood was everywhere, its sharp, metallic scent strong in the night.

Where was Nagaq?

The temple doors were open, wild screams issuing from those inside. The drums were silent now, but something had replaced their background noise. A rumbling sound, much like the purring of a giant cat.

The whisper of Nagaq.

Kuching Kangar was moving toward the temple when a babble of excited voices from the gate distracted him. A small group of his fellow tribesmen had collected there, wanting to flee the City, but something seemed to block their way. As Kangar stood watching, he was treated to a new and wholly unexpected sight.

An elephant came through the gate, trunk furled, tusks flashing in the moonlight, bellowing a high note to announce itself. Astride the gray behemoth's neck, a slight man with snow white puffs of hair and flowing robes sat watching with a smile as his mount trampled one of Kangar's brothers, then scooped up another with its trunk and flung him far across the courtyard.

Great Nagaq would have to wait. This stranger had the gall to trespass in the City with his elephant, slay members of the tribe as if they were insects. It was every tribesman's duty to defend their sanctuary from the Outside, make sure the secrets of the City were preserved for future generations. Even normal members of the tribe, excluded from its sacred rituals, were still expected to lay down their lives, if necessary, for the common good.

Kuching Kangar knew what he had to do. He didn't hesitate, but took a firm grip on his spear and charged directly toward the elephant, lips drawn back from his sharp white teeth as he unleashed a fearsome battle cry.

He couldn't kill the elephant, perhaps, but that wasn't important Given time, sufficient spears and arrows, they would bring it down or chase it back into the forest. No, it was the man who mattered, one who could betray their secret to the Outside.

The toss was perfect. He could actually see the spear arc toward its target, silent, deadly—

No!

Somehow the scrawny man had snatched his spear out of the air before it struck. Kuching Kangar stood speechless, stunned. Could such a thing be possible? Should he believe his eyes, or was the whole scene a hallucination, prompted by the lethal aura of Nagaq?

Before he had a chance to ponder that, Kangar observed the old man toss his six-foot spear into the air, reversing it, and catch it, primed for throwing, with the point directed back from whence it came. His feet refused to move somehow, and he was rooted to the same spot when the lance burst through his chest and out his back, below one shoulder blade. The impact knocked him over backward, and he would have fallen, but the three-foot shaft protruding from his back was jammed into the dirt. He screamed as gravity took over and his body started sliding down the wooden shaft by inches, creeping toward a rendezvous with Mother Earth.

He never made it, though, because the elephant stepped forward, following instructions from its master, and a large, round foot came down on Kangar's lower body. His last coherent thought, before eternal darkness, was a quick prayer to the only god he knew.

Avenge me, great Nagaq!

A living nightmare stepped in through the open temple doors. Or rather, hopped in, since the movement was distinctly birdlike, even with the new arrival's bulk and clear reptilian aspect. Remo thought it most resembled re-creations of Tyrannosaurus rex, except that this one had a blunt horn on its snout and bony knobs above each eye. A quick guess made it twenty feet in length, with half of that devoted to a heavy, twitching tail that helped the creature balance on its stout back legs and three-toed feet. The forelimbs looked a bit like chunky human arms, except for the four-fingered hands with wicked claws designed for holding lively prey.

"Ceratosaurus!" Dr. Stock well blurted out. "Extinct since the Jurassic period!"

"Why don't you tell him that?" said Remo, looking for a weapon that would let him keep some distance between himself and what appeared to be one pissed-off prehistoric carnivore.

"This is incredible!"

"You'll think so, while he's snacking on your ass," said Remo, scooping up a fallen spear. It felt more like a toothpick in the presence of their snarling enemy, but it would have to do.

Pike Chalmers recognized the better part of valor, in the circumstances. Dodging to his left, he grabbed a quaking pygmy, scooped him up and threw him at the monster like a basketball. Nagaq, or whatever the hell it was, snapped once and caught the offering in midair, chomping down a time or two before it shook its head and spit the mangled body out.

No sale.

By that time, though, Pike Chalmers had a lead and he was out of there, arms pumping as he ran. The Brit ran true to form. True-blue to himself, that was. Women and children last.

The snarling dinosaur was momentarily distracted by some stragglers from the audience, a couple of them kneeling down to worship him, while others had the good sense to evacuate. The supplicants were first to die, pinned down with giant three-toed feet and shredded with a set of teeth that looked like sharpened railroad spikes. That done, Stockwell's ceratosaurus started checking out the temple, looking for more agile prey.

"We'd better get a move on if we're going," Remo said.

Behind him, Sibu Sandakan and Audrey were intent on emptying the contents of their stomachs, gagging at the sight of mutilated bodies down below. Professor Stockwell stood erect and glassy eyed, as if he had been hypnotized.

"Incredible," he said, and then repeated it for emphasis. "Incredible."

"Unfortunately, we are not inedible," said Remo. "I'm afraid we have to leave right now."

With Audrey's help, he hustled Stockwell off the dais, toward the wings, with Sandakan behind them, bringing up the rear. Nagaq let out a screech that sounded like Godzilla dragging claws across a chalkboard, and you didn't need a special training course on dinosaurs to recognize the sound of big feet slapping on the stonework, gaining on them in a rush.

It would be snack time any moment now, and Remo felt a little like an appetizer, destined to be eaten raw.

One thing about this morsel, though, he thought. Nagaq might choke before getting it down.

Chapter Eighteen

Remo passed the trapdoor up deliberately. They were already short of time, with an alarm in progress, and he didn't care for the idea of getting ambushed on the stairs—or in the winding corridors that led back to the exit, either. It was a deliberate gamble, since he didn't have another way out of the temple readily in mind, but with the rush of tribesmen to escape their hungry god, he reckoned something would present itself.

The natives weren't just running, though. Enough of them still had their wits about them to remember who they were and who they were supposed to serve. Nagaq might be a bit disgruntled at the moment, snacking down on some of their compatriots back in the amphitheater, but what else could be expected from a demented, jungle-dwelling lizard-god? For a believer, it was only logical to think their god would be even more pissed off if it got done with the hors d'oeuvres and found out that its acolytes had let the main course slip away.

A couple of the pygmy types were waiting for them as the party made its way backstage. It felt like lighting children, but in this case both tykes carried six-foot spears and knew exactly how to use them. Remo put himself between the sawed-off warriors and his onetime traveling companions, bracing for the rush he knew was sure to come.

It came.

The runt on Remo's left went with a feint to try to throw him off before the other pygmy made his move straight down the middle. Remo turned the lance into a yardstick with a sharp flick of his wrist, then grabbed the shorter part and used it as a lever, yanked the pygmy close enough to kill him with an open-handed blow against his knobby forehead.

His companion could have run for it and saved himself, but something—call it courage or stupidity—made him stand fast, the spear poised out in front of him as if he were about to prod a hornets' nest. The point was darkened, maybe dipped in something lethal.

Instead of waiting for the pygmy to attack him, Remo went in for the kill, deflected an impressive thrust with no real effort and removed the long spear from his adversary's grasp. He could have let it go at that, but this was life-and-death, no substitutions, no time-outs. He gave the pygmy time to bark Nome kind of curse, a final gesture of defiance in the face of certain death, then ran him through.

Behind him, Audrey grappled with another bout of nausea, the others simply stared.

"Let's go," he said. "We haven't got all night."

They followed him past massive columns, all carved out of jade. The raw material in just one column would have kept a hundred Chinese sculptors busy for a decade, but there seemed to be no shortage where the tribesmen did their shopping.

Tribesmen.

It occurred to Remo that he hadn't seen a woman or a child so far, since entering the ancient city. They were obviously somewhere, but he hoped his luck would hold, remembering that females were among the most ferocious members of some primitive tribes, from early North America to "modern" Venezuela and Brazil.

They reached a spiral staircase leading down to what must be the ground floor near where he entered, though he didn't recognize the stretch of corridor that he could see. He had no trouble recognizing the committee gathered to receive them, though: eight warriors armed with clubs and spears.

"Stay close and watch yourselves," Remo cautioned his companions, starting down the stairs to meet their enemies.

One thing about the locals, while they might be crafty with an ambush in the jungle, they were pitiful on strategy for stand-up fights. If Remo had to guess, he would have said they didn't get much practice, having no real neighbors, but for now he would be satisfied to take advantage of whatever weakness they displayed.

They started up the spiral staircase three abreast, spears held in front of them, prepared to skewer him before he could resist. It would have worked with most opponents—Remo gave them that—but warriors lived or died on their ability to cope with an exception to the rule.

These died.

He stepped between the thrusting spears, gripped one in either hand and used the long shaft on his right to block a thrust from number three, the farthest out of roach. A swift kick dropped the tribesman on his right and left Remo with his weapon. He turned the spear on the others, nailing both of them and leaving them to wriggle like a pair of insects pinned on a dissecting needle.

The survivors were advancing with a bit more caution when a sudden babble in the corridor behind them reached his ears. And Remo saw the women now, God help him, some holding babies, others herding small, misshapen forms in front of them like livestock. They were shouting at the warriors on the staircase, managed to distract a couple of them from the work at hand.

It was enough.

Without another glance, Remo cleared a path like a whirlwind sent by the wrath of God.

Pike Chalmers found his nerve again somewhere between the amphitheater and the deserted courtyard. He came charging through the exit, snapping the neck of a native in his way, looking for a way to save himself. The others had evacuated, though, and that was fine with Chalmers, since he didn't feel like taking on an army when his only weapon was a bloody spear.

His guns were somewhere handy, if he just knew where to look. But he didn't speak the lingo, and they had only met one member of the tribe who had a grasp of English. And from what he saw, across the courtyard, poor Kuching Kangar was well past giving interviews.

Pike guessed the bloody lizard must have had him, though his corpse didn't display the kind of rip-and-render damage common to the others strewed about the courtyard. It would be more accurate to say their former guide looked broken, as if he had fallen from a lofty height, but that made no sense whatsoever, since he lay an easy fifteen paces from the nearest wall.

Forget it, Chalmers told himself. Not your problem.

He was gunning for a dinosaur, without a bloody gun, but now that he had found his guts again, all he could think of was the money he could make from packing home the monster's head—hell, any part of its anatomy at all. Live capture was a hopeless case, and it would take a cargo helicopter to transport the bloody carcass in one piece. Chalmers calculated that the head alone must weigh two hundred pounds or more, but he would settle for a jaw-bone and some bits of skin if he had to. Any egghead worth his salt could tell the specimens were fresh, and if that didn't do the trick, then he would lead them back to view the rotting carcass.

For a hefty fee, of course.

In fact, he saw a whole new profit angle on the site itself. He could run walking tours of the city, point out spots of interest for the visitors who could afford his services. The local wogs would want a piece of it, he realized, and they might cut him out entirely if they started getting greedy. In the meanwhile, though, there should be ample time for him to walk a film crew through the ruins, cut a deal with some fat-cat producer out of Hollywood—hell, why not Steven Spielberg?—for the movie rights.

Bui first, he had to bag his specimen.

He turned back toward the temple, moving toward the open doors, and made it halfway there before the elephant appeared. Not just an elephant, however, but an elephant with some ancient personage riding on its back. From the look of it, perhaps Chinese or Japanese.

Now, what in bloody hell?

The goddamned circus never ended—that was obvious. It wasn't bad enough that he had human mutants and some kind of prehistoric throwback to contend with; now they threw an ancient Oriental and a frigging elephant at Chalmers, just to see if he could handle it.

Too bloody right he could.

Chalmers broke into a trot, then sprinted all out for the open doorway, anxious to be out of sight before the old man or his elephant got wind of him.

And made it by a nose, as far as he could tell.

The bloody lizard-thing was wreaking havoc on its worshipers, just swatting one with its enormous tail as Chalmers barged into the temple. Not a pygmy, either, but he may as well have been, the way he flew across the room and landed in a heap some fifty feet away.

I'll have to watch that, Chalmers told himself, advancing cautiously along the central aisle. A crocodile could drop you that way, but its jaws still did the butcher work. This bloody thing was big and strong enough to kill a human being with its tail, the way your average man would splat an insect with a flyswatter.

Not for him, thank you very much.

He glanced around the spacious room, half-hoping he would find his weapons standing in a corner, but the guns were nowhere to be seen.

The decision had been made for him, then. He'd have to use the bloody spear or give it up.

There was a way to do it, Chalmers knew. In Africa, the pygmies hunted elephants with spears and arrows, but they had to hit a vital spot, and sometimes they lost a few men in the process. Chalmers didn't have a few spare helpers, at the moment, so he had to do the bloody job himself.

Which meant he had to get it right the first time, or be damned.

From what he saw and guessed about Nagaq's anatomy, his only hope would be a clean thrust to the brain. That meant he would be forced to go in through an eye, or through the great lizard's palate. The latter angle was a risk, since Chalmers didn't know if reptile skulls were even built the same way as a mammal's, but if that turned out to be his only option, he would have to do his best.

He stepped across a fallen tribesman, knowing he had to get a move on now, before the bloody gargoyles found their guts again and started back to find out what was going on between their lizard-god and any hapless stragglers in the amphitheater. Experience told Chalmers that a tribe of savages could stand for almost anything where their half-baked religion was concerned, and he had no doubt they would go for him before they ever tried to show Nagaq the gate. If he could top the lizard off before they got there, though, he might pick up some points for heroism.

Hell, he might wind up as some kind of a god himself!

A few more yards, and he could smell the damned thing now. More to the point, it caught a whiff of him and turned to face him, big jaws dripping mucus streaked with blood. The rumbling sound that issued from its throat was somewhere in between a belch and snarl.

And when it moved, Nagaq was lightning fast, not slow and plodding like a movie dinosaur. It ran, instead of walking, eight- or ten-foot strides that caught Pike Chalmers by surprise and left him no time to escape. The monster jaws were yawning over him before he even had a chance to raise his spear in lame defiance.

When the five-inch teeth clamped down on his body, there was nothing he could do but scream inside the reptile's suffocating gullet.

Chiun wasn't concerned about the white man who eluded him. It was not his job to protect or punish members of the Stockwell party, and he felt no urge to do so, since he wasn't being paid to baby-sit. He was concerned for Remo, but the Master of Sinanju had faith in his pupil. None of the deformed, pathetic creatures who inhabited this city was a match for Remo, even if they came at him in numbers—but the dragon was another proposition altogether.

It required a Master's touch.

Three tribesmen came around a corner of the temple seconds after the ungainly white man ducked inside, two armed with spears, the tallest of them carrying a bow. The archer nocked an arrow, aimed and fired, his one eye gaping in surprise as Chiun reached out to snatch the shaft in flight and snap it like a toothpick, smiling as he tossed the broken halves aside.

He spurred the elephant and ordered it to charge. The great gray beast responded like a born Korean native, lowering its head and rushing at the savages, a screech of fury rising from its throat.

Chiun's adversaries tried to bolt then, but they weren't fast enough. The elephant was on them, slashing with its tusks and stamping with its big round feet before they could escape. It almost felt too easy, killing this way, but the Master of Sinanju told himself his enemies deserved no better. They were not Korean, after all, and there was not an emperor or king among them worthy of a more elaborate death.

Chiun would save himself to face the dragon any moment now.

He turned his mount back toward the savages' temple, with its open doors. The snarling, snuffling sounds that emanated from inside there told him that the dragon had found something to amuse it and to quench the legendary reptile's thirst for blood. Chiun wondered if the other expedition members had been sacrificed, but didn't really care, as long as Remo wasn't found among the human offerings.

Impossible.

His white adopted son was far too swift and clever for these stepchildren of nature. If a hundred of them tried to corner him, Chiun would bet on Remo to emerge victorious.

But even skilled assassins sometimes made mistakes, Chiun realized, and no one was immortal. It was always possible that one of these creatures would creep up on a distracted Remo from behind and unleash an arrow while his back was turned.

A spark of anger flared inside Chiun, caught on and burst into a flame that seared his heart. No dragon god would save these savages if they were rash enough to harm his chosen son and heir. The very walls of jade would tumble down upon their heads before he finished with this miserable city of the damned. Chiun would wade waist deep in blood and shout his fury at the sky if Remo came to harm.

He caught himself before his mood affected the behemoth he had drafted as his warhorse. It was better to be calm around wild animals, lest excitement drive them mad and make them run amok.

In seconds flat, his pulse and respiration had returned to normal, while the burning fury in his gut was replaced by icy calm. He was prepared to face the dragon, and teach it that a Master of Sinanju had no peers where killing was concerned.

His mount stopped short outside the temple, peering through the open doors, its trunk raised, sampling the gamy air. Instead of trying to retreat, it trembled with a kind of urgency that told Chiun it would fight. A challenge issued from its tiny mouth, the bold note amplified by lungs like giant bellows, summoning the dragon out to war.

A moment later, Chiun beheld the monster's shadow, looming dark across the threshold. He wasn't sure what form it would take, if this one would have wings or blow fire through its nostrils, but he kept his seat and waited for his adversary to emerge.

The creature that appeared a moment later was familiar from a television program Chiun had seen, with Walter Cronkite. It was not Tyrannosaurus rex, but a smaller relative, and the most peculiar thing about it—aside from its very existence—was the pair of human legs that dangled from the monster's wicked jaws.

Chiun saw the blood-soaked khaki trousers, ankle boots, and knew what had become of the ungainly white man who had run inside the temple moments earlier.

With a sharp kick of his heels, he urged his mount to the attack.

The natives were almost ready to defend themselves as Remo vaulted down the spiral stairs. Almost But there is a world of difference, though, between a fit of mindless anger and cohesive strategy in crisis situations. Charging pell-mell toward an unknown adversary doesn't always do the trick. In fact, it can be self-defeating, as his adversaries quickly learned to their regret.

The leader met him with another of their carboncopy handmade spears, the darkened point out-thrust. It snagged a piece of Remo's shirt, but missed his flesh by inches as he went inside the thrust, deflected it and snapped the warrior's neck with an explosive straight-arm shot. The flaccid body tumbled over backward, down the stairs, and set the other tribesmen scrambling as they tried to get out of the way.

They never got the chance.

Still moving, homicidal poetry in motion, Remo closed the gap between them, striking left and right at his discouraged challengers. The tribesmen had already seen four of their comrades die, and while they might have happily retreated, there was nowhere left for them to go, with Death among them, reaching out to touch each man in turn.