Timber Line

Chapter Six

The mountains played tricks with the sounds, leading them up one slope and dropping them over another, bending them back and forth around crests and whipping them down valleys, and then stirring the whole thing in eddies of frosty air and sending them out into the night.

It took Remo ten minutes before he found what he was looking for, and when he did, his thin-soled black Italian loafers were still dry, even though he had traveled more than two miles over snowdrifts that were higher than his head.

In the end, it wasn't so much the sound that led him where he wanted to be, but the smell. At first he thought he was back in Times Square again or maybe on the Santa Monica Freeway, so strong was the smell of burning gasoline.

He had come tramping up a steep incline, gliding smoothly across the face of the powdery snow, hooked around a natural stone wall, and there it was: a valley, maybe a hundred yards long and twice that deep. And in the valley there was no snow, and it was not winter. Instead, grass was growing luxuriantly and a hundred trees were in full foliage.

Warming the valley, creating its artificial summer, and filling the air with stench and noise were what looked like nine vastly oversized gasoline heaters, each a 15-foot-square box that burned fuel at a blue-white heat and, through connected fans and ducts, blew the warm air down into the valley.

Remo stopped to study what lay beside him, scratching his head and twisting it from side to side at the same time. Whatever it was, it looked impressive. Then he sensed something.

"You are slow," the voice beside him said. "I have been waiting here for you for hours. And your feet are wet again. I have told you about that before."

"I'm sorry I took so long, Little Father," Remo said, "and my feet are dry."

"We will not quibble over small things," Chiun said. "Did you come here to comfort me before I freeze to death while you are spending your time in comfort before a warm fire?"

"Sorry about that," said Remo. "It's your choice after all."

"Sorry. Sorry. That is all you say. Sorry you are late. Sorry your feet are wet..."

"They're dry," Remo said.

"Sorry. Yes. You are a very sorry person. And sorriest of all he would be who would not let the Master bring his few meager possessions so that I might not have to spend my time in these mountains like the wild deer or bear or camel."

"No camels up here," Remo said.

"What do you know of camels? Nothing. I will tell you. You know nothing of camels. As you know nothing of responsibility, and so I am forced to face the elements here alone."

"Chiun, thirteen steamer trunks just wouldn't hack it," said Remo.

"Why hot?"

"You're supposed to be a wise and gentle, old religious man..."

"It sounds exactly like me," Chiun said.

"...who's up here on a spiritual retreat. Remember? You told Smith that once every ten years or so you have to commune with nature?"

"Correct. Get to the point if you have one."

"Little Father, saintly men do not take thirteen lacquered chests of Cinzano ashtrays and stolen restaurant napkins with them when they go into the mountains to meditate."

He looked at Chiun, who stood leaning against a tree, arms folded impassively, and looking down at the full blooming winter trees in the artificially warmed valley.

"Remo, there is one thing I don't understand," Chiun said, staring down at the trees.

"Yes?"

"I have tried to insulate you from the world, as much for the world's protection as for yours. So where do you learn all this nonsense?"

"What? About thirteen steamer trunks?" Remo said. "They're not filled with stolen ashtrays and napkins and matchbooks?"

"They are filled with personal treasures that do not concern you. But nowhere does it say that one cannot meditate without being miserable and cold. Maybe Chinese believe that, maybe monkey-faced Japanese; they believe anything. But how did these stupid ideas come to infect you?"

"I guess I'm a disappointment to you."

"You certainly are."

"I'll try to make it up to you."

"It's too late now," Chiun said.

They stood in silence, both looking down at the valley.

"These are those copa-iba trees, I guess," Remo said.

"They do not look like any Korean tree I ever saw," Chiun said.

"One of us has to stay here and watch them," Remo said.

"Perhaps if I had just one of my trunks, I would be able to do that," Chiun said. "But I have nothing except the clothes on my back. And besides, somebody is already watching them."

"Who? Where?"

"There is some big clod wandering around out there," Chiun said softly. He waved his hand toward the lip of the valley to their left. "I have heard him splashing around."

And then the fires went out. The roaring died. For a moment the hills were filled with the echoes of the dying flames, and then there was only the sound of the giant fans now blowing cold air onto the giant copa-ibas. Then that sound, too, died away, and the only sound left was that of the mountain wind.

Chiun and Remo stood silently for the space of seven slow heartbeats. Then Chiun raised a bony finger and pointed to the farthest left burner.

"There," he said. "Two men."

After another heartbeat, Chiun pointed to a second spot, closer to the mouth of the copa-iba valley.

"And there. The other man, the big clumsy one."

"Stay here, Little Father," Remo said. He started moving in a long, fast glide toward the two men.

Remo knew he was not the only one moving through the moon-clouded dark. Ahead of him, he could hear the pair of men trying to get away. And off to his left, he could hear the sound of the big man moving as quickly and quietly across the snow as he could.

In seconds, Remo had closed the distance between himself and the two men to just a few dozen yards. So, to Remo's surprise, had the big man. For a moment then, everyone but Remo stopped moving, and the mountain was as quiet as mountains ever get on cold, windy winter nights.

The light of the moon rebounded off the powdery white snow, and the edges of the valley were surprisingly bright. Remo could feel the temperature dropping, as warm air stopped rising out of the copa-iba valley. If the trees really needed a tropical climate to live, the cold would soon destroy them. Cutting off the gas-fired heating machines was their death sentence.

The big man was to Remo's left. He had stopped moving, and now he stood upright, stock-still, only a few yards from the other two men. They too stopped momentarily. Then the big man called out.

"Allo. Allo there," he roared in a voice loud enough and deep enough to match his six-foot-six and 250 pounds. "You will please to stop. We must talk."

The words were bellowed in a heavy French accent.

The man closest to the big man quickly slapped a rifle to his shoulder, and rapidly and surely squeezed off two rounds at the big man. But he was too late. The big man had seen the motion begin and had dived for cover behind the framework supporting one of the blowers.

The bullets cracked and whined through the frigid night air, but they missed their target. The big man started to stand up again, and this time the man was waiting for him. The rifle cracked again; again the big man ducked. But this time he did not escape unharmed, because as he pulled himself back into cover — successfully avoiding the bullet once more — he hit his head against one of the platform's steel support bars. The resulting crack set the whole structure echoing and re-echoing. The big man cursed loudly, moaned softly, and fell face forward into the snow.

Remo was confused. He had assumed all three men were working together, but' it was obvious now that the big man was on a different team from the other two.

The man with the rifle walked forward quickly to deliver the finishing touch of a bullet into the temple of the unconscious giant.

Without knowing who was who, Remo decided against letting him do that. He moved from behind the tree, in whose shadow he had been standing and walked lightly across the snow until he was standing between the two men, both of them with guns.

They were wearing heavy jackets, and ski masks, with cutouts around the eyes and mouth, covered their faces.

"Hi, fellas," Remo called out. Both men spun around to face him. Their rifles came up to their waists and were aimed at him.

"I'm doing a tree survey for the federal government," Remo said. "You seen any?"

"Who the hell?.." said the man closest to the unconscious giant.

"I told you. I'm a surveyor. Just want to ask you a few questions."

"You're never going to hear the answers, buddy," the man said.

"That's not nice," Remo said. He was moving closer to the other rifleman now. Behind him he could sense that the first rifleman had raised his weapon to his shoulder. Then Remo could feel the tension waves fill the air as he closed his finger around the trigger. Remo could feel the finger ever so gently squeezing the trigger.

Remo jumped across the two feet of ground separating him from the nearer gunman and waltzed him around like a grammar-school boy at his first dance. It took less than a heartbeat do so.

The other gunman was very good. He had lined up the shot exactly right. The only problem was that in the time between when he had started to pull the trigger and the time the bullet had reached its destination, the target had changed. The bullet never reached Remo, but buried itself instead in-the right side of the other man's head.

As the dead man fell away from Remo, his finger tightened in a convulsive spasm on the trigger of his gun.

It fired with a loud crack in the cold, clear night air. As Remo watched, in growing disgust, the bullet from his gun bored a hole in the direct center of the other gunman's forehead. First Remo could see the black dot where the hot bullet had singed through the woolen ski mask; then he could see the spreading redness of blood on the woolen fabric. And then the man toppled forward into the snow.

"Goddamn," Remo said in exasperation. First he had two who could talk to him and now he had none. "Nothing ever goes right for me anymore." He walked over to the other man to touch him with a toe, just on the odd chance that he might not be all the way dead.

Behind the heater blower, he heard the big man getting to his feet and stumbling around.

He moved out from behind the machine, saw Remo, and pulled a Bowie knife from his belt, holding it in front of him in an attack position.

"Try not to pick up ze gun," he growled at Remo. "I sliver your throat before you do."

The man was a bulky, bull-like giant. Even leaning forward, he was taller than Remo, and his shoulders were as broad as a doorway. He wore a light lumberman's wool shirt, with a sweater underneath it. A knitted stocking cap perched lightly on top of his head.

"Put that thing away," Remo said, waving at the knife. "I save your life and you pull a knife on me."

"Hah," said the big man. "And another hah. I not need any squeak-pip to save me from anyzmg."

"Squeak-pip?" Remo said.

"What you doing here?" the big man said.

"I work here," Remo said. "Who are you?"

"I Peer LaRue. I a tree-yanker, the very best there is. And one damn good mechanic too," he said. "Now you talk."

"You work up here for this company?" Remo asked.

Peer LaRue nodded.

"So do I," Remo said. "Well, not really. I work for the government. They sent me up here to study trees. I count them like."

The big man laughed. "Very funny. You one good storyteller. You have fun with Peer LaRue. Now you tell me who you are, and then we go talk to my boss-man, okay, yes?"

"No, okay, no," said Remo. "I told you, I count trees."

"You want to play games with me, we play the games," LaRue said.

"Tomorrow we'll talk," Remo said. "Look, these two guys are dead and that's annoying. I'm not feeling good. And Chiun wants his thirteen trunks. And nothing's going right, and I don't want to chit-chat. You want to talk, we'll talk tomorrow. Trust me, it'll be better that way."

He turned and started to go. Peer LaRue jumped toward him from behind. Remo took the man's knife away and threw it deep into the trunk of a big spruce about ten feet up from the ground, catching the back collar of Peer LaRue's shirt, and pinning the squirming, roaring, very angry tree-yanker to the tree.

Oscar Brack was sitting in an overstuffed chair in front of the roaring fireplace when Remo got back to the A-frame at Alpha Camp.

He looked up as Remo came in through the front door.

"Well, well, well," he said. "The tree reclamation technician. How's it going? You find any trees to reclaim?"

"Brack, I'm going to let that go this time," Remo said. "You got a guy working for you named Dock LaRue or something like that?"

"Dock? No, Piere. Right. He's our foreman."

"Yeah. He calls himself Peer," Remo said.

"What about him?"

"Well, he's stuck to a tree up above the copa-ibas, and somebody ought to get him down before he freezes to death. And somebody cut off the gasoline engines. I don't know how long those trees can live in the cold, but I guess you want to fix them."

Brack was already rising from his chair.

"Joey," he called.

Joey Webb came out of her room. She was still fully dressed.

"Trouble up at the tree site," Brack said. "We better go."

They moved quickly to a coat rack on the wall and took down heavy plaid jackets.

"Thanks, O'Sylvan," Brack called back.

"My pleasure." As Brack and Joey went to the door, Remo said, "One other thing."

Brack turned.

"Yeah?"

"There's two dead guys up there. I think Stacy ought to run an identity check on them. They're the two who turned off the heaters."

"Dead? How?"

Remo didn't feel like explaining. "A suicide pact, I think. They shot each other."

He looked at Brack, his face bland and expressionless. Brack just nodded.

"Another thing," Remo said. "If you see an old Oriental guy up there, leave him alone."

"Who is he?" asked Brack.

"Never mind," Remo said. "Just leave him alone."