There was nothing he could do here. He'd send a burial party out tomorrow at daybreak. With his automatic cradled in his arms, Bauer began to work his way slowly and cautiously toward the fire.
After an hour, Bauer slowly lowered the nightglasses. His legs felt cramped from crouching so long in one position. His temples throbbed dully, the headache fueled by the rage that had been steadily building inside him. He didn't understand what was going on, and that was what he hated the most. Two guys and an old gook. How in the world could they possibly have slaughtered eight armed men without even using bullets?
The strangest part of it was that he thought he recognized one of the men. The guy with the high cheekbones and the brown hair. There was something familiar about the set of his head and shoulders, as if Bauer should know him well. Still, he couldn't place the man.
He pushed the annoying thought out of his mind. For over an hour now, his finger had been itching to squeeze the trigger, to finish off the interlopers with a couple of bursts of fire. But if it had been that simple, he reminded himself, that's what Brickell would have done. In wartime, you didn't make major by repeating somebody else's mistakes. Particularly when that somebody else was a dead man.
Bauer moved silently back up the mountain, straying off the path for a while in order to give the campsite the widest possible berth. He needed time to think, to come up with some sort of plan. He knew instinctively that they'd head for the monastery tomorrow, maybe as early as first light. That didn't leave him a lot of time.
Ambush?
No. He'd already lost eight good men. He couldn't afford more casualties. He needed something more subtle, and yet with much greater force. He couldn't take any chances this time. He couldn't make the mistake again of underestimating the enemy.
His mind began to play with an idea, vague at first, then suddenly defined in perfect clarity.
It would work.
There was no way that it couldn't.
Slowly, Bauer's hard-set mouth began to relax. It was the kind of idea that made him smile.
?CHAPTER NINE
The first rays of the morning sun burned off the ground fog and took the chill out of the air. Birds darted among the towering pines, swooping down to feast off clusters of chokecherry and buckbrush. There was a light breeze, sweet-scented and cool. All in all, it looked like a perfect morning for a climb.
Chiun was the first to rise. He padded over to the fire, tossed a few sticks on the dying embers, and then waited for the fire to gather strength before heating a pot of water for tea. Some twenty minutes later Remo woke up.
"Sleep well?" he asked as he squatted down beside the Oriental.
"Sleep," Chiun drawled accusingly. "Even the dead could not slumber with all that noise. Ata-tata-tat."
"It was a helicopter," Remo said quietly. "But I don't think it spotted us."
With a series of groans, Sam Wolfshy got up and came to the fire, smacking his lips. "What time is it?" he yawned. He tilted back his straw hat and tucked his hair beneath it. "I know you guys wanted to get an early start," he groaned, "but this is ridiculous." The Indian squatted down beside the fire and poured himself a cup of Chiun's tea. "What is this stuff?" He eyed the steaming, greenish-tinted liquid with obvious distaste.
Chiun slapped the cup out of his hands. "It's not for you," he said peevishly.
"I was only going to borrow some."
"Borrow some cloth and tie it around your mouth. We leave in ten minutes."
"Is he always like this in the morning?" Wolfshy asked when Chiun was out of earshot.
"Only on good days. Usually, he's worse."
They started up the mountainside together, Remo taking the point while Chiun and the Indian trailed behind. Of all the times of day, Remo enjoyed the morning the most. There was something about the air and the sunlight, the quiet tranquility of the world before it was completely awake, before it had a chance to fill up with old scars and new memories. Remo smiled. From down below he could hear Chiun's voice reciting a long poem about a butterfly.
"There's the path," Wolfshy exclaimed, clambering over a boulder. "See where the ground is all grown over with buckbrush?"
Chiun hoisted himself up beside him. "Will miracles never cease," he said. "For once, you are right."
Sam beamed.
Then, as if the sky had been torn open, a thunderous explosion knocked them both to the ground. Above them the mountain rumbled and groaned. A second later, the sun was blocked out as a forty-foot wall of rock and earth hurtled down on them.
The air was filled with choking, blinding dust. The terrible sound was everywhere, a deafening scream as the earth collapsed on the three travelers. Remo struggled to keep his footing, relaxing his body instead of tensing it, as Chiun had taught him. He pushed off, launching himself skyward, fighting his way through the onslaught of rocks and dirt.
For a while, he thought this dark, breath-robbing rain would be endless, but he finally broke free above the swirling dust. He blinked to clear his eyes of debris and hung on to the branches of an uprooted pine. The ominous roar of rocks diminished, but he could still see only a few feet in front of his face.
While he caught his breath, the air began to clear. The devastation caused by the landslide was freakish. It was as if some giant hand had torn a gaping hole in the mountain, scooping up a square quarter-mile of earth and then letting it fall on what was below. The campsite was buried under a hundred-foot mound of ashy dust. Towering pines had splintered like matchsticks, the severed trunks sticking out at bizarre angles. All the familiar landmarks had been obliterated. There was nothing below them but a grayish-brown pile of earth, as silent and dead as the day the world began.
Only one thought came to Remo's mind.
Chiun.
The last time he'd seen the old Oriental and the Indian, they'd been crossing a gully, a long channel that snaked halfway up the mountainside. He knew that the hurtling wall of debris would have filled it in a matter of seconds. Chiun would have had considerably less time to leap free, especially since he was encumbered with Wolfshy.
Remo felt himself sweating. He drew a slow breath to relax, but it wasn't working. He was thinking the unthinkable…. That Chiun and Wolfshy hadn't made it to safety. That because of their position, they were buried somewhere below, entombed beneath thousands of pounds of rock and earth.
He started to dig, blindly, aimlessly, in the still-swirling clouds of dust.
"Be still," Chiun hissed. He felt the giant boulder shift lightly where it rested on his outstretched fingertips. He could see nothing in the total darkness. He could hear nothing from above. The only sounds were his own carefully measured breathing and the panting and squirming of the Indian beneath him in the small pocket of space they occupied.
"Cease all movement," Chiun whispered in warning. His words were barely audible, but their tone halted Wolfshy's thrashing. "Good. I did not wish to kill you. Imagine the embarrassment if I myself did not survive."
The very thought of it made Chiun wince. Not death; that was merely the gateway to paradise. But to share a grave with a common red-skinned white man of dubious intelligence? Would he drag Chiun along to meet his ancestors? Such a thing would be horrendous.
Therefore, Chiun concluded, he would not die.
It was all the Indian's fault to begin with. Chiun could have carried them both clear if this cretin hadn't insisted on running in the wrong direction. So Chiun had lost the fraction of a second needed to transport them safely above the falling rocks. The old man could have saved himself. After all, he told himself, what was this trembling moron beneath him in comparison with a Master of Sinanju? But the moment had decreed it otherwise. And now Chiun knew that he had to live or die by that decree.