"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 everyone.
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.