126597.fb2 Skull Duggery - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 83

Skull Duggery - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 83

The tank commander hit the gas. The T-55 lurched ahead suddenly. Taken by surprise, Zhang flinched. The tank commander grinned. He would back down now, he knew. No mere student could face an oncoming tank. If not, there was plenty of time to stop.

Zhang Zingzong took a last puff of his Double Pleasure cigarette. He flicked it at the slitlike driver's periscope slot. It shed sparks going in.

The tank commander got a face full of embers as the butt bounced off his chin. He swatted it away angrily. It hit the floor. He stepped on it with his free foot.

And then his eye returned to the periscope. There was no sign of Zhang Zingzong.

He grinned. The coward had retreated. He sent the tank surging ahead with a heavy boot.

The grinding splintering sounds came from directly under his feet. His grin turned to a grimace of horror. He heard a muffled pong! and suddenly he had a vision of his own head dropping into a wicker basket-the penalty for giving the pro-democracy insurgents a greater propaganda tool than they had had in the living symbol of resistance that Zhang Zingzong had become.

Zhang Zingzong, the martyr.

The T-55 refused to go on. Somehow, those splintered bones had wedged in the tracks, freezing the tank in the middle of the bridge, and cutting off the others from access to the pass.

It would be up to the other unit now.

The tanks rolled around the bend and stopped, blocking the other end of the pass. Charging before them were PLA regulars, with bayonets fixed on their lunging AK-47's.

"C'mon, Little Father," Remo said. "I'll show you how to play pong."

"Really, Remo! Ping-Pong at a time like this?"

"Not Ping-Pong. Pong. Just watch me."

Remo rushed in to greet the first group of soldiers. Their fixed bayonets told him they were disinclined to shoot. That was a lucky break for him, but not for the soldiers whose green helmets were no protection from the rapid series of double-handed slaps that closed on them with jackhammer force.

Pong! Pong! Pong!

Three PLA soldiers dropped in their tracks, their heads crushed within the suddenly mangled shells of their duty helmets.

The sight of this had a profound effect on the soldiers directly behind them. They stopped dead in their tracks. Some started to back away in fear.

Remo turned to Chiun, saying, "See? Pong."

The Master of Sinanju floated up beside him. He took out two flanking soldiers with snapping circular kicks, landed lightly, and split the larynx of a third with a long fingernail.

"This is no time for games," Chiun said loudly.

"Why not? There's only a couple dozen. We can take them easy."

"Twenty-four here. Many on the walls above. Probably a hundred if not a thousand in reserve. For this is a land of a million green ants. We cannot fight them all." The tanks, forming a bulwark that jammed the pass, began to creep forward. Remo looked back over his shoulder. He lost his cocky grin. The lead tank on the bridge was bearing down on Zhang Zingzong.

"Can you hold then a little while?" he asked Chiun.

"Can a duck swim?" Chiun asked indignantly.

"Just hold that line." Remo rushed back to the limousine. He got behind the wheel and sent the limo charging in a circle. Bullets from the sharpshooters on the walls above drummed the roof and pocked the windshield. The limo was obviously bulletproof.

Out of the corner of his eye, Remo spotted Zhang Zingzong. The man was crawling under the bridge tank. Then it lurched forward, gnashing treads making a clattery sound on the bridge.

Remo tried to shut out the splintering-of-bone sound. Then he heard the distant, too-familiar pong!

Teeth clenched, Remo sent the limo's blunt nose toward the bulwark of T-55's, muttering, "Why didn't I think of this before?"

He raised the compartment lid beside his seat, exposing the twin rows of shiny black buttons.

The Master of Sinanju was dodging tanks. They lurched and lunged at him without success.

"Chiun!" he shouted. "Back away-now!" Without wait-

, Remo began stabbing buttons. The sound of hydraulics toiling came from under the hood and greenish gas spewed from the grille. Remo cranked up his window, as PLA soldiers dropped in their tracks.

He hit more buttons, and other things began happening. From his driver's seat, he couldn't tell what exactly, but there came a spray of sparks from somewhere low on the front end, a jolting recoil, and streaks of fire ripped the sir between the limo and the tank line.

Explosions began peppering the tanks.

"Rockets?" Remo said. He stabbed the button repeatedly. He got the same result. "Rockets," he said happily. Each stab discharged flame-tailed rockets. The constant recoil jammed him back in his seat, but he didn't care. He was having fun.

Remo veered away from the now-blazing tank line and pulled up at Chiun's side. "Get in," he said.

The Master of Sinanju leapt inside, saying, "We are still trapped here, and outnumbered."

"Us-outnumbered?" Remo said, looking through the windshield. The ground was littered with PLA bodies. Some dead, others actually snoring from the green gas. Bullet strikes from the sharpshooters above were visible all around them.

"The Chinese are inexaustible. We are not." Chiun sounded very worried.

Remo sent the car around in a circle, looking for a way out of the trap. His eye brightened at the cave entrance. It looked wide enough to accept the limo.

"Can't hurt to try," Remo muttered.

"No!" Chiun said abruptly. "Do not go in there."

"Why not?" Remo demanded. "It's shelter, isn't it? I'll just back in and hold 'em off with rockets."

Remo changed his mind when a cloud of dust rolled out of the cave mouth in a slow, dusty exhalation. He braked suddenly. Then came a low rumble and screaming from deep within the cave.

"What the hell happened?" Remo said, trying to see past the bullet-starred windshield.

"The mandarin Wu Ming Shi followed the instructions on the skull. He took the right tunnel and so he has perished."

"But the skull said to go right, didn't it?"

Chiun raised a wise finger. "One should not believe everything one reads-even if it is graven on a skull by Genghis Khan."

"I'd say especially if it was written by Genghis Khan." Remo frowned. Soldiers were climbing over the tanks stalled on the bridge. Others were trying to get past the blazing tank line, with less success. Spurred on by shouted orders, a few plunged through the flames. Their uniforms caught fire. They ran a few steps, then threw themselves into the snow, rolling and screaming while trying to put the flames out.

"I don't think they're in a mood to give up," Remo said.