Mexicans would not mistake him for one of their own, however. That was why Colonel Rshat Kirlov kept his distance from the occasional real migrant worker as he led ten handpicked soldiers, mostly enlistees from the Asiatic republics of Uzbekistan and Tashkent, across the desert on their hands and knees. They were dressed in the Mexican peasant clothes which had been provided to them at the embassy in Mexico City, where they had been flown directly from Moscow. They had donned the garments when they got to the dusty border town of Sonoita, to which they had been driven in a rickety bus.
There they had set out on foot for the Arizona border. The embassy had briefed him that the border was not heavily patrolled. Although the American government frowned upon the migrant workers who stole up from Mexico, they also needed them to harvest their fruit crops. Crossing would be comparatively easy, he was assured.
Colonel Kirlov was not a man to take chances. So he had his men drop to their knees and, leading the way, he showed them how to walk on their knees and just the tips of their fingers. The tracks they left would look uncannily like those of a hopping jackrabbit. That was to fool the American border police.
They traveled for three miles in this fashion, with hot desert sand burning their fingertips and windblown sand abrading their faces. Colonel Rshat Kirlov worried that their fingers would be too raw to pull gun triggers when the time came, but inasmuch as he had been forbidden to carry weapons into the United States, it did not seem especially important just then.
When Colonel Kirlov finally gave the order to stand, they were on American soil.
They ambushed a camper van on a lonely road. Kirlov waved his cotton shirt in the face of the oncoming vehicle, and when it slowed, his men leapt from out of the rocks. That they were unarmed made no difference. There was only a middle-aged man and his wife and their dog. They killed all three with bare hands, burying all but the dog by the side of the road. They buried the dog too, but only after they had eaten the meat.
Colonel Kirlov's orders were to reach the town of Vaya Chin, near the Papago Indian Reservation, and wait.
When Anna Chutesov showed up two days later, she took one look at the hijacked camper and said, "Good. You are not as big a fool as I would have expected. We will need this."
Colonel Rshat Kirlov was not used to having a woman talk to him like that. Especially one who was not a KGB officer. He started to raise his voice in protest.
Anna Chutesov slapped him in the face. It was the shock more than the pain that stilled his tongue. Disdainfully the blond woman turned her back on him and addressed his men, who were lined up at attention. "I have brought you all American tourist clothes," she said, tossing bundled packages at their feet. "Go behind those rocks and change while I load your equipment on the vehicle."
When Colonel Kirlov opened his package, he discovered a gaudy Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. Changing clothes in silence, he felt like a fool. Looking at his men climbing into their new clothes, he knew he looked like one too.
Kirlov sat in the back of the camper during the drive across the desert to the place that Anna Chutesov, breaking a long smoldering silence, told them was California. She kept adjusting a beeping device that sat in her lap. Often she raised it, turning a loop antenna this way or that, and sending the camper in confused circles. Kirlov knew she was homing in on some radio signal. But that was all he knew.
Finally, after many long hours in which the driven blond woman had refused to give any of them a turn at the wheel, they stopped on a great black highway where the traffic was backed up until they could drive no further.
Anna Chutesov stood up.
"We can go no further. The rest of the way we will travel on foot. In twos. You will find your weapons in the overhead compartments."
The men fell on the compartments like thirsty dogs. They had been alone in an enemy land too long without weapons. Weapons would make them feel like men again.
Colonel Kirlov pulled out a stubby Uzi with a folding stock and looked at his men. They, too, had brought forth identical weapons.
"No Kalashnikov rifles?" Kirlov said to no one in particular.
"The Uzi is an excellent field weapon and easily concealed," said Anna Chutesov. "Gather up extra ammunition clips and form your men into pairs. I will direct them on when to exit."
"Where are we going?"
Anna Chutesov pointed out of the windshield, beyond the lines of honking, smoking cars.
Colonel Rshat Kirlov squinted. Not many hundreds of yards away was a great encampment. Towers climbed to the sky. A peculiar wheel turned against the sun, like a cog in a great machine. Flying machines darted like dragonflies.
Colonel Rshat Kirlov nodded. Obviously the place was an important American installation. Probably a space complex, for Kirlov knew of the recent loss of the Yuri Gagarin.
He tried to read the enormous sign over the entrance, but he could translate only the last part of the complex's official title.
He turned to one of his men, whose English was better than his own.
"What means 'Larry'?" he asked. "I do not know the word."
"We are obviously going to that secret American space complex ahead," he whispered to the others. "Do any of you know what that word on the great sign means?"
The men took turns squinting at the large sign.
But none of them could translate the peculiar name Larryland into proper Russian. And the cold Anna Chutesov refused to enlighten them.
Chapter 18
Larry Lepper was lord and master of all he surveyed. Standing on the top of a fairyland minaret, he enjoyed the spectacular panorama that was Larryland. From the main gate, where the crowds streamed in through the opening in the shape of Buster Bear's smiling mouth, to the hundred-foot statues of Squirrel Girl, Magic Mouse, and other Larry Lepper creations, he owned it all. Children played in the plastic-cobbled streets. Their shrieks of joy radiated from the Room of the Creepers, laughter welled up from the Hologram House, and the smells of popcorn, cotton candy, and fried dough wafted into the dry heat of the southern California afternoon.
Larry had it all. No more slaving away at a drawing board. Never again would he have to work for the likes of Bill Banana or draw another robot. In fact, producers were banging at the door to option his characters. Larry had always assumed that he would achieve his dream the other way around-get the characters on the air first and hope they led to a theme park. But it had come true the easy way.
And best of all, it had happened overnight.
Larry had led the strange Mr. Gordons to the site, a deserted theme park that had gone bankrupt trying to compete with Disneyland.
"Can you do something with this?" Larry had asked. It was night. Mr. Gordons simply walked through the chain-link fence, cutting a hole large enough to pass through with fingers like wire cutters. He walked over to the deserted Ferris wheel and into the control booth. Not through the door, but literally into the wall. Larry had blinked, and the wall had seemed to absorb Gordons.
Larry had felt a trembling in the ground, and suddenly, like the color filling the screen in The Wizard of Oz, the park came to life. Larry rushed in like a child.
He had spent the first evening overseeing adjustments. He had only to ask the Ferris wheel to change and it became the Squirrel Girl ride, complete with colorful images of Squirrel Girl on each hub.
When the last attraction, the sprawling Moon Walk, had been modified, Larry was satisfied.
"We'll make millions," he cried. "What should I charge for admission?"
"Nothing," said the voice of Mr. Gordons, which this time came from the Moon Walk entrance, which Gordons had designed so that no one could leave the park without enjoying it.