The door came out like a portrait from a frame.
"You will never take him away," Dominique insisted with less conviction than before.
"Wanna bet?" said Remo. "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
A blondish head poked out. The face under it was tanned and tentative.
"You Americans?" he asked.
"That's us. You the Beasley guy?"
"That's me."
"You're coming with us," said Remo.
"What about the you-know-what?"
Remo blinked. "We don't know what."
"The cybernetic hypercolor eximer laser eyeball."
Remo blinked. "Say that again in English? My French is real rusty."
"That was English. I'm talking about the eyeball the Beasley boys had me make. It was for some radioanimatronic project."
"It was for Sam Beasley," said Remo.
"Yeah. That's who I work for."
"No, I mean it was for Uncle Sam Beasley himself."
The tanned face looked doubtful. "But he's dead."
"I wish," said Remo as the Master of Sinanju pulled the prisoner from the cell by the front of his peach jumpsuit.
"Your name?" Remo asked.
"Rod Cheatwood."
"Make you a deal-you tell us everything you know, and we'll get you back to the good old U.S.A."
"EUD," hissed Dominique. "You must say EUD while in my country. It is the law."
"Stuff it," Remo told her. To Rod, he said, "How about it?"
"Done deal."
"That was quick. Whatever happened to company loyalty?"
"Are you kidding? You think I'd stack my neck out for those ducking bastards? They mugged me the minute I walked through their front door."
"Okay, let's go," said Remo.
"I wish you would have waited another hour," Rod said as they called for the elevator.
"Why?" asked Chiun.
"They're showing the finale of 'Star Trek: the Next Generation' this afternoon."
"You can catch that anytime," said Remo.
"I keep trying to, but it never happens."
"It would only be in French," said Remo. "Only Jerry Lewis movies work in French."
"Jairy est Dieu, " sighed Dominique before being yanked bodily into the elevator.
Chapter 28
Commander Luc Crocq of the French Foreign Ugion forces surrounding Euro Beasley was confident in his men and materiel. They had encircled the park with a ring of steel. The tanks and APCs sat snout to rump and rump to snout all around the place of defilement. Commander Crocq considered it a defilement because although he had nothing against American culture in particular, he was a lifelong fan of Coulommiers cheese, which was made in this very area. That many of the farms that produced this cheese among cheeses were razed to prepare the land for the Euro Beasley park was in Commander Crocq's eyes the desecration of desecrations.
Secretly he hoped for word to roll in and raze Euro Beasley from the face of France.
But no such order had come. All was quiet since the last attempt to close the ring of steel had been met with a pinkish radiance that took the fighting piss out of his legionnaires.
There had been an altercation in which a French army helicopter had descended into the park, only to lift off again later. Nothing more was known about this operation, but Crocq suspected DGSE involvement.
All the commander understood was that he was to hold his ring of steel in place, tightly and without faltering, so that none could exit the hellish enclave of American junk culture.
He did not expect a wave of forces sneaking up from his rear to wash over his ring of steel and retake the park. The objective was not to defend Euro Beasley, Commander Crocq later pointed out to the military board of review. If they had wanted him to defend the park from external threats, as well, should that not have been included in his orders?
So pleaded Commander Crocq in vain before they court-martialed him.
There were many other reasons Commander Crocq was not responsible for what later transpired.
First there were crowds. They came by auto, by truck-even by metro line. The terminus of the A RER train line was called Parc Euro Beasley. Daytrippers who came to sample the place of cultural perfidy employed it. Although the park was under cultural quarantine, still they came to look, to gawk, perhaps to catch a glimpse of Mongo or Dingbat or one of the others who dwelled here no more.
It was a festive time, so when men dressed as soldiers of Napoleon III began to appear among the growing crowd, it was not a cause for concern, never mind interest. And since all attention was focused inward, not outward, just as his orders dictated, Commander Crocq was completely oblivious to the increasing preponderance of soldiers dressed in the fashion of a bygone century.
That is, until they attacked.
THEY CAME SCREAMING unintelligible sounds. Not curses, not imprecations, not defiance. Just sheer bloodcurdling noise.
This arrested the attention of all in the awkward moment when they came pouring over ring of steel in waves of blue and gray.
They carried no guns, no rifles, no pistols. To that, Commander Crocq swore to his dying day.
But when they poured under the ring of steel, the ring of steel lay helpless. Multiton tanks and APCs could not move as fast as a man. Not from a cold start. Not when parked snout to rump and vice versa.
"Defend your positions!" Commander Crocq cried. Too late. Their position had already been overrun. Soldiers of the past, including fez-hatted Zouaves not seen since the 1800s, poured into the gates of Euro Beasley.
"Fire at will!" Commander Crocq sputtered when he realized his line had been breached before he could respond to the insult.
That was when the horrible event transpired.
His men were chambering their weapons. Not a shot had been fired. Not by either side. That was the remarkable thing, the terrible thing.
The infiltrators turned, dropped into crouches and pulled masks of lead over their eyes. The peculiar quality to these masks was that they bore no eyeholes. The infiltrators were digging into defensive positions utterly blind.
Then they unleashed the terrible power of what looked from the near distance like universal remote controls.
There came flashes, pulses, strong lights. All hues and colors imaginable were represented. The lights bombarded Commander Crocq and his unflinching Foreign Legionnares like a light show with the kicking power of a thousand mules.
Some men ran for their lives, unhurt. Others lost their nerve and their consumed rations before succumbing to vivid green flashes. Still others, subjected to red, became beside themselves with anger, which they took out on their comrades-in-arms.
It was a horrible, unearthly thing. The ring of steel held strong, but the men manning it collapsed like paper dolls before a firestorm. A firestorm of rainbow colors.
For his part Commander Crocq, who sat high in the turret hatch of his tank, ducked down and pulled the hatch after him. He would later protest this was not an act of cowardice, but the reasonable response of a commander who needed to preserve his wits in order to marshal his forces.
For all the good it did him, Commander Crocq might as well have taken his medicine like a soldier of France.
The awful lights penetrated the tank's thick plate armor, showing the utter futility of France's engines of war before new technologies.
He received a simultaneous burst of pink and yellow.
Commander Crocq leaped from his tank and ran off into the scattering crowds of onlookers. He was very, very frightened by the yellow light that seemed to have deep-fried his brain in sizzling butter.
But under that mindless fear lay a peaceful feeling that all would be right once he got far away enough. It was a very peaceful feeling. And somehow it was pink.
MARC MOISE SAW the French defenders fall back in confusion and a wide spectrum of emotions. A few, pinked, actually came toward them. They were hued by cavalry who had control of the yellow universal units or by artillery, which had red.