Still, they were several tons of mobile metal monster. They should have flattened the skinny white guy and the old Asian. Flattened them dead.
Unfortunately it had been the other way around. And now the unstoppable duo was creeping through Mesozoic Park, and Rod Cheatwood had a pretty damn good idea where they were headed.
The access tunnel to Utilicanard.
As the first droplets of cold sweat began popping out on his forehead, Rod Cheatwood went to check the generator.
There was enough power for a fast hypercolor pulse, he found. Maybe two or three if it wasn't juice-sucking Optired or Supergreen.
"Okay, let's see if you guys can take it as well as you can dish it out."
And Rod Cheatwood reached for a joystick that sat above a brass plate reading Supersaurus.
"UH-OH," SAID REMO, looking up through the trees. "More company."
The helicopter looked like a prehistoric dragonfly skimming low over the treetops. It circled, whipped up the plastic ferns and settled in a clear patch by a stagnant pool of plastic algae.
Out stepped the French agent they knew as Avril Mai. She advanced with her nose in the air and her cold green gaze fixing them.
"I see someone has wiped ze vomit from your sorry faces," she said haughtily.
"Have a care how you address the Master of Sinanju, Frankish wench," warned Chiun.
Avril Mai stopped dead in her tracks. The ice in her eyes seemed to shatter in shock.
"You are not-I mean, do you claim ze title of Master of Sinanju?"
"Does the sun claim to shine?" Chiun retorted coldly.
Avril Mai lost her color. Her face became slack. She made a red O with her mouth, and it began contorting into ovals and hoops of uncertainty. "Wha-what is your mission here?" she demanded at last.
"Tell us yours and we might tell you ours," said Remo casually.
"Nevair!"
"Suit yourself. C'mon, Little Father, we have things to do."
They started off. Avril Mai hurried to catch up. She wore a formfitting taupe unitard and a black balaclava rolled up on her head like a knit cap.
"I am coming with you," she said.
Remo noticed the balaclava. "Lose your beret?"
"Parisians do not wear berets except in stupid Americain cartoons. My beret was a disguise."
"Tell that to the troops camped outside the gates," said Remo.
"Zat is different. Zey are military men."
"And what are you?" demanded Chiun. "Deuxieme?"
Avril Mai compressed her red mouth.
"We're with the CIA," said Remo.
"Moudi! I knew it. You are a CIA agent and because you are an incompetent Americain you 'ave hired ze House of Sinanju to assist you."
"Looks like you got our number," said Remo.
Abruptly Avril Mai got in front of the Master of Sinanju and paced him walking backward.
"Whatever ze Americains are paying you, France will double it. I vow zis."
"Their gold is very soft."
"Our gold is softer."
"Their gold ships on time. French gold is slow."
"Slow?"
"Yes, the gold of the Frankish kings was exceedingly slow. By the time it arrived in my village, the babies were being drowned in the cold gray waters of the bay."
"I 'ave not heard zis story."
"Slow gold is the bane of all French lieges. It is the reason my House has not served the House of Bourbon in many centuries."
"I offer speedy gold, gold zat moves with ze speed of light."
"Hey, isn't it illegal to speak English now?" said Remo.
"No. It is illegal to speak junk Americain. I am speaking the king's English."
"English is a serviceable language," Chiun admitted.
"Thanks to Guilliame le Conqueror, who gave it a certain insouciant flavor," said Avril.
"Guilliame le Conqueror?" said Remo.
"She means William the Conqueror," explained Chiun.
"After ze Battle of Hastings, Britain became a vassal of the Normans, and our language elevated ze true, good English. It is much like ze way your junk tongue debased our pure French, except in reverse."
"Le crap," said Remo.
They were walking along a footpath that meandered through the plastic ferns and other trees. From time to time a branch-dwelling bird would track them with dark, glassy eyes.
"We are being watched," Avril said.
"Your name really Avril Mai?"
"Non."
"Betcha I can make you tell ...."
"Impossible."
"Her name is Dominique Parillaud," said the Master of Sinanju, striding along with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his kimono.
"Mouth! How'd you come by zis intelligence?"
"Very simply," said Chiun.
Dominique Parillaud gasped. "I am Agent Arlequin in all but ze most confidential files of ze DGSE. Merde! I 'ave given myself away."
And the Master of Sinanju separated his sleeves. Out came one ivory hand, a slim black leather wallet tucked between two fingers.
"I picked your pocket," he said. "Your true name was inscribed on a card."
"My driver's license!" Dominique said, snatching the wallet away.
Remo laughed. "Some agent."
Then he stopped laughing. They all stopped.
Not far away the branches were squealing and rustling.
"I don't hear any thudding," said Remo.
"What is zis zudding?" Dominique said.
"I said I don't hear any-"
"Ze word! What does ze word zudding mean?"
"Look it up sometime," said Remo, who fixed the sound with his ears and decided to climb a tree. " Under z."
He got to the top in about the time it would have taken a monkey to do it.
"Do you see anyzing?" Dominique asked anxiously.
"I think we're okay. It's just an apatosaur."
"What is zat?"
"Brontosaurus," said Remo.
And the head burst into view. It was gray and blunt and decorated with dark, soulful eyes. It hovered in the ferns like a disembodied python. The rest of its body was lost in the greenery.
"Oh, one of zose," said Dominique, lowering her MAS automatic.
Chiun's voice quavered. "Remo, is it alive?"
"You know better than that," said Remo, pushing the nudging brontosaurus head back. He made it look easy. It kept trying to knock him off his perch, but he held on with one arm while using his free hand to reverse the thrust of the stubborn head.
"For if it were alive, I would lay claim to its bones," Chiun said.
"Why would you want ze bones?" Dominique asked.
"Because dragon bones, mixed in a proper potion, prolong the life span."
"I can see why you would wish such a thing. You are very old."
"Thank you," said Chiun. "But I wish to see a greater age."
The bronto changed tactics. It began butting the trunk below Remo's feet. The plastic bole shook and shook.
Chiun called up, "Remo, stop playing with that ugly machine."
"I'm not playing with it. It's playing with me."
And Remo kicked down at the top of the beast's skull.
THE MONITOR PICTURE jiggled wildly before Rod Cheatwood's startled eyes. Again and again.
"What does it take to nail this guy?" he complained. "That's a damn supersaurus. The biggest radio-animatronic construct on the face of the earth."
But try as he might, he couldn't knock the guy off the tree or the tree out from under the guy. Every time he sent the head forward on its long gray neck, the guy batted it aside as if it were a garden hose.
Rod couldn't make the supersaurus advance. It was one hundred fifty feet long and stood on four truncated legs the size of redwood stumps. They were fixed in place. Not even Beasley animatronic science could make such a behemoth mobile. Only the head and tail moved.
Pulling back the neck-motor control, Rod positioned the head so it was looking at every
one.
Then he uncapped the lemon-yellow protective cap and laid his thumb on the button labeled Ultrayellow.
"Here's looking at you ...."
REMO WAS STARING at the brontosaurus's head, thinking how much it reminded him of an elephant in the color and texture of its hide, when the dark, soulful eyes began strobing.
The first pulse of light seemed to stab Remo in the stomach with the kick of a lightning bolt. The second was hotter, more yellow, and if it lasted only a nanosecond, it was a nanosecond too long.
"Run, Little Father!" he shouted, letting go of the tree trunk.
"I am running," Chiun cried, his voice twisted.
When he hit the ground, Remo ran, too.
"Why are you running?" Dominique called after them.
"Look into its eyes and you'll find out!"
Dominique turned. The eyes of the brontosaurus were pulsing every second and a half. The light was quite bright. Very white from her perspective. It was not green or pink. They would appear gray.
"What color is zis?" she cried.
"Yellow," shouted Remo, not looking back.
"Yellow?"
"Sickeningly yellow," Remo said.
"Disgustingly yellow," said Chiun.
"Interesting," said Dominique Parillaud, reaching into a slash pocket of her unitard.
ROD CHEATWOOD COULDN'T figure out what the problem with the French girl was. She was actually staring the supersaurus down while the other two were tearing ass as if their shoes were on fire.
Rod was eating power he couldn't afford even if it was pulsed bursts of low-draw Ultrayellow. He was going to have to get serious.
One eye on the screen, he snaked his finger under the blue protect plate marked Contrablue while the French woman facing down the animatronic supersaurus lifted what looked like a tear-gas pen in both hands and aimed it upward.
When he had the button, Rod faced the screen and said, "This is going to hurt you a heck of a lot more than it hurts me."
Then the pen point flashed, the screen turned Supergreen and Rod Cheatwood was upchucking all over his console, which went bang when his unconscious forehead slammed into it.
Chapter 23
In his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold W. Smith was trying to pull the puzzle pieces together.
He thought he understood the objective in Virginia. The Sam Beasley Corporation, desperate to establish a new American theme park to offset the massive public-relations and financial losses of Euro Beasley, had set the stage for a public-relations coup by triggering a low-risk but high-impact media event significant enough to dominate the headlines but sufficiently isolated that it could be quelled before it raged out of control.
It had worked. Typically the press had run with the story, blowing it up bigger than it was. Even though the rebellion had been almost entirely limited to reenactors and civilians, it was being called by virtually every media personality the Second American Civil War.
Video footage of the pink Beasley-character balloons descending on the battlefield had been telecast nationwide. It was a propaganda bonanza for the Sam Beasley Corporation. They had already announced a multimedia product stream that included a TV miniseries, cartoons, comic books and a complete line of action toys dominated by America's latest overnight sensation, Colonel Dixie.
The participants in the Third Battle of the Crater were being signed up by every newspaper, magazine and TV talk show in the nation. Renewed interest in the Civil War and the steady stream of tourists already pouring into Petersburg had turned the tide of Virginia public opinion-already divided-toward allowing Beasley U.S.A. to go forward.
The Sam Beasley Corporation appeared to have won that campaign.
The Euro Beasley crisis was another matter. There was no question in Harold Smith's mind that Euro Beasley was the flashpoint for what the media was already calling the Great Franco-American Conflict.
But why? Why would the French air force bomb a theme park? Especially one that was technically owned by such institutions as Banc Frontenac and Credit Hollandaise?
Nothing was coming out of the corridors of the French government.
Nothing was coming out of the PR machinery of the Sam Beasley Corporation, either. After the first flush of victory in Petersburg, it had fallen silent.
Mickey Weisinger had dropped out of sight, as had Bob Beasley.
The whereabouts of Sam Beasley himself would be impossible to track. He had no more official existence than Remo Williams, whom the world also believed dead.
That was not true of the other Beasley officials, however.
Smith had to find them. He began calling up the airline passenger-reservations networks, beginning with Apollo. Punching in the names of Robert Beasley and Mickey Weisinger, he drew a blank at Continental Airlines.
Switching to Paz, Smith input both names. If they were moving by air, their names would pop up, and Harold Smith would find them.
The trouble was, their names were not popping up. And the airlines reservation system was overloaded with French nationals fleeing the United States and US. citizens evacuating an increasingly hostile France.
Determined to locate them, Harold Smith switched to the credit-card data banks. Beasley executives all had use of company credit cards. If they rented cars, purchased gasoline, ate in roadside restaurants and made any other purchases along their route, their names would surface and their courses could be plotted simply by electronically connecting the dots.
All Harold Smith had to do was locate enough dots.
Chapter 24
Remo Williams caught up to the Master of Sinanju, who was tearing through the plasticky stink of Parc Mesozoique. Side by side they zipped through ferns that flew apart at a touch of their scissorslike fingers.
"You scared?" Remo asked Chiun.
"A Master of Sinanju does not acknowledge fear."
"If he did, would you be as scared as I am right now?"
"You are a Master of Sinanju. You are not afraid, either."
"Then why are we running like two scared rabbits?"
"Do not underestimate the rabbit. In my village it is considered wise beyond all other creatures."
"If you're a rabbit, how come you look like a scared little rabbit, not a wise rabbit?"
"A wise rabbit knows when to embrace fear," Chiun snapped.
Remo started to look over his shoulder, then remembered how spine-chilling yellow the brontosaurus's eyes had been.
"How come we're scared of that yellow light here, and we weren't back at the Crater?"
"At the Crater we did not look directly into the awful eyes of the gray dragon."
"Good point, we only saw the back-glow, which wasn't so bad."
"This is no back glow now," said Chiun.
"You want to stop and take a chance?"
"No."
"One of us should."
"I am not afraid, so you should."
"If you aren't afraid and I don't mind admitting that I am, why don't you stop?"
"Because I have conquered my fear, and you have yet to conquer yours. Therefore, you need to test your mettle against your fears."
"Nice try, Little Father. But no sale."
Eventually they ran out of park. The other side of the high bamboo stockade fence came rushing up.
"You stopping?" asked Remo.
"No."
"Then I'm not stopping, either."
They hit the wall in unison. Bamboo splinters flew in jagged chunks as they blew through the stockade.
They came to a halt only when they reached a lagoon that bore a sign saying Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers De Jules Verne, which Remo figured translated as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but only because he recognized the submarine from the movie.
At the quietly lapping edge of the lagoon, they stopped and drank in the tranquil color of the water.
"Boy," said Remo, "that water is sure blue."
"Exceedingly blue," Chiun agreed.
> "I love blue. Always have."
"It is a good color, perhaps not as good as gold, but good."
"I can never look at gold with the same eyes again. Too yellow for my tastes."
"Yellow is not gold, nor gold yellow."
"Gold is still too yellow for me. But man, I just love looking at this blue."
And as they stared deep into the placid, soul-calming blue waters, the deep blue turned indigo.
"Oh, shit."
"What is it, Remo?"
"Remember that soldier in the Crater? The one who saw a blue color when everyone else saw yellow?"
"Yes."
"I think that blue is catching up to me."
"I see it, too. It is like a burning in my eyes, except it burns deep blue and not a correct burning color."
"Damn," said Remo. "I feel awful."
"I, too, feel unhappy."
"Well, at least it's not yellow."
"It is not much of a blessing, but it is a blessing nonetheless," agreed the Master of Sinanju.
"Maybe if we blink up a storm, the blue will go away."
"It is worth a try."
When they had blinked the deep blue from their burned retinas, Remo and Chiun mustered up the courage to turn and face Pare Mesozoique.
The stockade fence still held.
Remo licked his dry lips to wet them. "You up for going back in?" he asked.
"It is our duty."
"Then I guess we gotta, although between you and me, I feel more like going back on strike."
"It is a worthy idea. Worthy of Jool Phairne."
"Who?"
Chiun gestured over his shoulder. "That brilliant writer whose name adorns that sign."
"You means Jules Verne?"
"That is not how you pronounce it."
"You mean Jules Verne is pronounced 'fool Phairne'?"
"Yes."
"No wonder these people keep getting conquered."
"It is part of their problem. From the Romans and Vikings to the Prussians and Germans, they have fallen before invader after invader. Perhaps it has given them an inferiority context."
"It's 'complex.' And you wouldn't know it to talk to a Frenchman. Or woman."
As they approached Parc Mesozoique, the whine of a rotor disturbed the stillness of the park. A moment later a small French army helicopter lifted, canted west and droned out of sight.
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