Warren Murphy Destroyer 134 Bloody Tourists

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boyfriend could add his two cents' worth. They started stomping all over the
offending beer-spiller.
Their victim twisted free of the bruising boots just long enough to stab one
finger viciously skyward. "'Twarn't me!" the poor man yelped. "Johnny Ogden
throwed me!"
Suddenly the plump couple and their heavily stomped victim were at peace with
one another and forged an instant alliance against a common enemy.
"Johnny Ogden, you sheep-fucking son of a swine!" The woman had a piercing
quality that cut through the disco-country soundtrack. Everybody looked at
her. Nobody stopped stomping. The fallen man, one arm hanging limp, struggled
to his feet and even he resumed stomping.
Oops, Grom thought. He'd suggested something about dancing all night long,
hadn't he? And this was what these people called dancing.
The music stopped. The stomp dancing continued, but it was now the march of
soldiers into battle, filling the vast saloon with the clomp-clomp rhythm.
The woman and her pair of male followers stomped up the ramp to the
upper-level dance floor.
Other patrons stomped out of their way.
The plump young woman stomped at a big stomping man that could only be Johnny
Ogden.
Greg Grom noticed the bartender. The only non stamper in the place. He was
punching numbers into a cell phone and looking frantic. Calling the cops. Time
to go, Grom decided.
The bartender looked right at him.
Grom's heart sank.
The guy would remember him. Recognize him. He would be lucid enough to give
the cops a description. That would ruin everything.
Grom felt foolish. But he couldn't stop to berate himself now.
He had to solve the problem. "Stop!" he shouted.
They stopped fighting, Johnny Ogden and his three attackers. Everybody in the
bar turned to Greg Grom, still stomping. The grinned and waved at their good
friend, the guy who bought them the beer.
"Johnny Ogden is not a bad man." Grom declared. "Johnny Ogden is your friend!
But there is someone else here who is the enemy! Someone you all hate!"
The stomping grew furious as fifty-three enraged beer-swillers craned their
necks, trying to find the enemy. "Who?" squealed the plump lady. "Who is it?"
"It is-" he paused, just for the drama "-the bartender!"
The bartender looked stricken. He didn't understand why this was happening,
but suddenly, with perfect clarity, he knew how it was going to end.
Grom left as the stomping became deadly.
He pulled out his little black book. With regret, he found the entry for that
night's batch and penned in next to it, "Imperfect."
Chapter 9
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The quartet of sky marshals scowled at Remo Williams. They scowled at the
nervous young lady at the checkin desk. They scowled meaningfully to one
another to make it appear they knew what was going down.
But they didn't have a clue.
"You sure there's no problem here?" the head sky marshal asked the airline
ticket puncher for the third time.
"They say everything is fine," she protested.
"What about the complaints?"
"The passengers issued an apology through a spokesman," she explained
reluctantly.
"Since when do a bunch of passengers have a spokesman?" the sky marshal
demanded.
"I guess they're traveling together," she said. "A tour group from Paris."
Uh-oh, thought Remo, who now had an inkling as to what was going on aboard the
737 that had just landed. Its pilot had relayed a passenger-disturbance
complaint minutes before landing. That brought the sky marshals in a hurry,
but after the aircraft landed the pilot called back to say the complaint had
been retracted. The sky marshals weren't buying any "retraction."
"Let me get this straight;" the head sky marshal said to the ticket puncher.
"This tour group issues a complaint against another passenger and asks for law
enforcement. Then the passenger apologizes, so the Paris tour group says no
hard feelings and expects us to just drop it?"
The ticket puncher seemed to shrink into herself. "Not exactly, Officer."
"Marshal."
"Not exactly, Marshal. From what I understand, the Paris tour group apologized
to the passenger. You know, the one they issued the complaint about."
"Well, why'd the bejeezus they do that?"
Remc knew the answer. The answer strode out of the debarking door, scowling.
The scowl became worse by degrees when Remo approached.
"Bad flight, Little Father?"
"Do you know what was on that flight, Remo? Can you possibly guess?"
"Hmm. When you screw your face up that tight, it's got to be, oh, French?"
"Yes!" Chiun exclaimed, pleased to share his outrage. "They spent the entire
flight behaving like French. They spoke French. They smelled French. I was
harassed for hours."
"It's a fifty-minute flight."
"They gave me no peace. They insulted me in their hideous tongue, thinking I
could not understand their meaning. It was a mob of uncivilized nonbathers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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