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"Don't shoot! Whatever you do, don't shoot!" she pleaded.

"Shoot if you have to!" King howled. "Don't let it get away. It's worth five million, dead or alive."

Harrooo.

Remo popped out of his rented car. A moment before, the decrepit old barn had been leaking light from chinks and knotholes and a corner of the roof like a gray old jack-o'-lantern fallen into ruin.

Every fragment of light went out at once.

"Must have a sentry posted," Remo muttered.

The Master of Sinanju said coldly, "It does not matter. We have the fiends where they cannot escape our wrath."

"Yeah, well they're probably not firing blanks now. We gotta do this so Nancy and the Bronto aren't hurt."

Then they heard the sound.

Harrooo.

"Damn," said Remo. "Now we really have problems." He turned to Chiun. "Listen, I gotta have your word that no matter how this goes, the Bronto comes out of it in one piece."

"That is our assignment," Chiun said in a thin voice.

"Keep that in mind. No accidents, no taking advantage of opportunities. Got me?"

The Master of Sinanju screwed up his tiny face into an amber knot of wrinkles. "I know my emperor's wishes."

"Okay. Now let's take them."

They split up, attacking the barn from opposite approaches.

And the foghorn sound of the Apatosaurus came again-and with it the unmistakable complaints of heavy cables straining and snapping.

The blat of automatic weapons fire was followed by barnboards being knocked off their frame supports.

Abandoning stealth, Remo moved in for the side door, his face angry.

Below the hayloft. Skorpion machine pistols were spitting long tongues of yellow fire, throwing intermittent shadows about the huge barn interior.

The freakish light illuminated the Apatosaur throwing off its chains. Its goat eyes were coursing about the room, searching, frightened. A rear leg unbent itself and found momentary purchase on the right rear set of oversized tires. The rubber burst under the weight and the Apatosaur's leg slid off. The barn shuddered and shook when the padded leg touched the floor.

The hauler suspension wasn't equal to the stress. It snapped. The opposite tires broke like thick-skinned balloons. The entire rear end fell and the great pumpkinlike rump of the Apatosaur slowly slid to the haystrewn floor.

It was screaming now, its mouth open and set like a frightened snake.

"Don't shoot!" Nancy screeched. "It won't hurt you if you leave it alone."

"Do what you gotta," King yelled.

Bound hand and foot, Nancy rolled toward King's standing form. That does it. You're going over the edge if I have to go with you, she thought fiercely.

Then the side door came off its hinges, jumped six feet, and brought down a man who was trying to draw a bead on the Apatosaur's small, questing head.

Simultaneously, a cluster of boards at the back splintered and fell and a high, squeaky voice filled the shot-with-gunfire darkness.

"Surrender, minions of the hamburger king. For your doom is surely upon you."

Recognizing the voice, Nancy stopped rolling.

"Remo!" she yelled.

"Yeah?"

"I'm up here in the loft. With King. A prisoner!"

"I'm a little busy right now," Remo said, and men were screaming.

"What's got me? What's got me?" one shrieked.

"I do," said Remo, and the sound of human bones snapping came with a finality that was undeniable.

"What's going on down there?" King yelled.

A man yelled back. "Something is down here! And it ain't the damn dinosaur!"

Then a gurgle came from the vicinity of the yelling man, and when King called back to him, there was no answer.

"Somebody hit the light!" King screamed.

In the darkness, Skip King became aware of a shape looming in the black empty space before him. It was a long shadow amid patterns of shadow, and he sensed eyes on him even though he couldn't see an inch past his sharp nose.

Came a low, interested sound: Harrooo.

And a noxious cloud swept over Skip King. It smelled disagreeably of raw mushrooms.

Remo was moving through a twilight that only his eyes and those of Chiun's could discern. To everyone else, the barn interior was pitch dark, except when someone expended a clip of ammo.

Those flashes were growing infrequent now.

Remo came up behind a man, tapped him on his shoulder, and the nervous man brought his weapon around in a chattering semicircle.

Before the bullet track could cross Remo's chest, Remo drove two fingers into the back of the unprotected skull, just under his green beret. They came out clean. The two holes squirted blood and thick matter, but Remo had already moved on.

The Master of Sinanju took hold of a neck in one bird claw hand. He squeezed. The flesh surrendered and then he was holding the hard bones of a man's spine. The bones proved no more resistant than the flesh, and the man struggled briefly then hung limp in the Master of Sinanju's grasp.

Chiun dropped him onto the growing pile of bodies and turned to another foe. This one was walking blindly in the darkness, his eyes so wide they threatened to pop from his fear-struck skull. He was sweeping his weapon around, prepared to execute shadows.

Except that he could not even see shadows.

So the Master of Sinanju gave him a voice to shoot at.

"I know something you don't know," he taunted.

The weapon muzzle shifted and erupted in angry challenge.

But the Master of Sinanju had already stepped behind the man, saying, "You missed. As I knew you would."

The man whirled. His bullets peppered the walls and shook hay down from the rafters.

"Damn!" he cursed, removing an ammunition clip and replacing it with a fresh one. He had drawn close to the great tail that lay uncoiled the length of the floor, unawares.

"You may try again, blind one," Chiun squeaked.

This time the man stopped in his tracks and pivoted, firing.

The Master of Sinanju effortlessly dipped under the stream of crude metal. He came to his full height once more, his voice a strident bell.

"You are defenseless now."

"Says you." And the gunman got off a final shot. One bullet. The round struck the hauler, ricocheted twice, and struck the Apatosaur in the thick meaty part of the tail.

The tail twitched in the darkness, and blood oozed.

Seeing this, the Master of Sinanju gave a cry of anger.

"Aiieee!"

His sandled feet left the ground floor in a leaping kick. One foot caught the gunman in the head, imploding his blind, fear-strained face. The Master of Sinanju landed gently on the body as it struck the floor.

Then he stepped off the quivering hulk to examine the injury done to the ugly African dragon whose bones meant long life.

Skip King was staring into a darkness that seemed to be staring back at him. His mouth felt dry.

"Somebody," he croaked. "Anybody. Turn on the lights. "

Somebody did. The hauler's headlights blazed suddenly. They made the back of the barn a cauldron of white light and tall shadows.

Skip King stood on the edge of the loft, blinking into the cold reptilian gaze of a backlit serpentine head.

"Oh shit," he said.

Nancy called out, "Remo! Are you all right?"

"Who do you think turned on the lights?"

"Thank God."

"Somebody tell this thing to stop looking at me like that." King said in a voice that was unnaturally low. "He's all right. Thank God he's all right," Nancy sobbed.

"Uh-oh," said Remo.

Nancy started. "What?"

"Old Jack caught one in the tail."

"Bad?"

"Looks like a scale wound, or something. It doesn't seem to be bothering him. It's just standing here."

"It's looking at King."

"I don't like the way it's looking at me," King said. "It's creepy."