Chiun stepped off the corpse, frowning.
"Obviously some of the inhabitants have not been informed that Sinanju now rules their happy domain," he sniffed.
Remo stopped to lift off the absurd wolf's head. The face revealed was unexceptional. Remo replaced it, sick. The guy looked barely twenty.
"These guys are supposed to be greeters," he said, aghast. "What are they doing toting automatic weapons?"
"Uncle Sam can explain this to us," Chiun said firmly.
"Listen!" Remo said sharply.
And all around them, the cool air carried furtive sounds. Pounding heartbeats. The sip and whistle of people breathing carefully through their mouths. Padding feet. Floppy, padding feet.
"Don't look now," Remo said, "but the bears are coming out of hibernation."
In the long shadows of the rising sun they spied peering, semi-human faces. Flat, too-round eyes seemed to regard them. Unreasonably large paws reached around gingerbread corners. Or clutched assorted weaponry.
"What say we split up?" Remo suggested. "Maybe get to whoever's giving the orders faster?"
"Let no harm come to Mongo Mouse, Remo," Chiun admonished.
"What if he's the ringleader?"
"Take him prisoner. One as famous as he will surely fetch a bountiful ransom."
"Gotcha," said Remo, thinking that he couldn't hurt Mongo Mouse, no matter what. Once he had been the roundeared rodent's biggest fan. They went in opposite directions.
Chapter 17
"Director, they're splitting up."
"Damn!"
"And Wacky Wolf is down."
"Process his mangy carcass according to park guidelines. And burn his timecard. He did not show up for work today."
"Yes, sir."
The Director turned in his chair. The overhead screens were cutting from monitor to monitor, scanning for the intruders.
The Director heaved himself out of his chair and clumped over to Captain Maus's station.
"Relinquish your chair," he snapped. "I'm directing this damned production from now on."
"Yes, Director."
The Director clumped over and eased himself into the warm chair, taking care with his sterling-silver left leg. His hands went to the control-button array. He began calling up cameras.
It was a frustrating search. The greeters stood out like marshmallows in a coal bin. The two intruders might as well have been invisible.
Once, the Director caught a glimpse of a fugitive rag of black slipping behind a polyurethane candy cane. When he called up a different angle, there was no sign of the owner of the ebony garment.
But Screwball Squirrel lay on his back, impaled by his own umbrella.
"Damn! The Squirrel is down, too."
"I assure you we have the two unknowns outnumbered," Maus said from his station.
The Director worked his cameras impatiently. There was Dingbat Duck, his pride and joy, crouching at the edge of the Phantom Lagoon, his beady crossed eyes alert.
"The hell!" he snarled suddenly.
"What is it, sir?"
"Will you look at that idiot quacker! You can see the seam at his neck. Pull him out of it. I want my people looking like their inspirations, damn it!"
"At once, sir."
Captain Maus went to a console and spoke into a microphone mounted on a flexible steel stalk.
"Overseer. Withdraw the duck. He's out of character. Repeat: The duck is out of character."
The Director moved on, knowing his orders would be carried out to the letter. It was like the Jesuits used to say: "Give me a boy at seven, and I will show you the man."
It was his second favorite saying.
The first was: "The Mouse means revenue. Shield the Mouse, and you protect the revenue."
A roving camera mounted near the Tom Thumb Pavilion happened to pick up the top of someone's head. The hair was brown and human.
"Got one!" he exulted.
As if the owner of the hair had somehow heard him remotely, the brown-haired head stopped, turned, and looked up. And the deadest eyes the Director had ever seen were looking directly at him.
"He's by the Tom Thumb Pavilion," he snapped to Maus.
"Acknowledged." Maus began issuing orders into the mike.
And on the screen, the owner of the dead eyes lifted two splayed fingers and poked them in the Director's direction.
The screen spiderwebbed and went dark.
"Damn!" spat the Director, punching up another camera.
"Sir. The overseer reports the duck is down."
"Not Dingy?"
"Afraid so, sir. That seam? When the overseer went to check, the quacker was in a crouching position and refused to respond to vocal commands. He pulled the Duck's head off to reprimand him."
"And?"
"Nothing but a stump where the neck ended."
"That's it! We're changing tactics. Sweatbox them!"
"Yes, sir!"
"We're at Threatcon Gumpy. Go to Threatcon Spooky. I want the entire park on a military footing. All pavilions and attractions convert to combat readiness. Now!"
"Executing."
"See if you can get the fruity-looking guy with the brown hair into the Tom Thumb Pavilion."
"I'll instruct the greeters to flush him in that direction."
"Flush, my pink ass! Lure them in. I want them dead and disposed of. We open to the public in two hours and we have a duck head unaccounted for. What if some snot-nosed brat picks it up? The lawsuits will go on into the next century."
"At once, Director."
It was too easy.
Remo slipped between the places where the skulking greeters lurked. He didn't want to kill any, but he was forced to ace the squirrel and the duck. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Near the Tom Thumb Pavilion, he paused. A faint whir brought his head up alertly.
Remo turned. Through a tiny window, he sensed an electrical hum. Another concealed camera. The park was riddled with them.
He used two stiffened fingers to blind this one and then moved on.
Then the patterns changed.
Up until now, Remo had been aware of every nearby stalker. Their hot breaths and clumsy walks gave their positions away.
Now, they retreated. Flat, wide eyes withdrew from windows.
Something was going on. Moving low, Remo floated down to Phantom Lagoon, where piles of papier-mache rocks hugged the artificial shore.
He slipped onto the landward side and went up the rocks.
Remo lay flat on the sun-warmed summit, looking around. The position kept him out of sight, and also distributed his body weight so that the rocks wouldn't buckle beneath him.
Beasley World looked peaceful in the morning sun. Here and there a 'toon edged around a corner, his machine pistol poked forward incongruously. There was no sign of Chiun. Which actually was a good sign.
Behind him, he heard a warning gurgle.
Remo looked over his shoulder. Just in time.
Breaking the stillness of Phantom Lagoon was a baroque purple submarine, its narwhal-nosed bow pointed in his direction.
"Uh-oh," Remo muttered, remembering the movie the attraction was modeled after.
The water bubbled and boiled-and something shot out of the sub's unicorn nose. It arrowed toward Remo's flimsy perch.
Remo bounced to his feet and kept going. He executed a slow, languorous midair backflip that took him backward, over the churning torpedo.
Remo dropped behind the armored safety of the sub's conning tower as the torpedo struck the fake rocks.
The explosion was muffled. Papier-mache flew in fiery rags, mixed with pebble shrapnel.
When the echoes had ceased reverberating, Remo stood up to look. There was a smoking pit where the "rocks" had been.
Then Remo began peeling plates off the sub's colorful hull. It was like peeling a banana with an onion skin. Every layer revealed another. Muttering, "The hell with it," he drove his fist into a point along the waterline, making a hole.