Green-bereted heads swiveled, and Gallic eyes widened in horror.
"Americain?"
"You bet," said Remo.
"Americain!"
The hated word ran up and down the ranks of the French army unit laying siege to the greatest theme park on the European continent.
A tank turret began rotating with a low, steady whine.
When the muzzle of the 105 mm howitzer was lined up with the taxi windshield, Remo said to Chiun, "I think we've hit a definite anti-American bloc."
They were out of the taxi before the shell coughed from the black muzzle and were accelerating to sixty miles per hour on foot when it struck.
The French taxicab took a direct hit and became the focal point for screaming shrapnel to ricochet in all directions.
When it settled back to the ground on puddling tires, it was a black frame of twisted steel in which flames crackled and danced.
While French army troops huddled behind their steel charges, waiting for the last bits of shrapnel to stop bouncing off, Remo and Chiun rendezvoused behind their siege line.
"That was easy," Remo said as they entered the park.
"These Gauls are very excitable, and therefore easily defeated by superior wits"
"I'll try and remember that," said Remo.
"I was thinking of my superior Korean wits, not your inferior white ones."
They walked down Main Street, U.S.A., unchallenged. Remo, who had been through Euro Beasley before, trying to locate Sam Beasley, was surprised how empty it was. Without the crowds who normally thronged the pavilions and attractions, there seemed to be no magic to the place.
Part of that may have had to do with the fact that most of the attractions had French-language names. Remo recognized the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse despite the sign saying, La Cabane Des Robinson, but what La Taniere du Dragon was, he had no idea.
"Last time I was here," Remo told the Master of Sinanju, "there was a way into Utiliduck-or whatever they call it here-through the castle."
"Therefore, we will not enter through the castle."
"I don't know any other entrance."
"Which only means that they will be expecting you to enter through the castle and will not be expecting us if we enter another way."
Turning a corner, they came upon red-bereted bodies around a grassy mound in the town square where Mongo's grinning face was reproduced in a varicolored flower pattern.
Everybody breathed, everyone's heart pumped, yet everyone lay facedown in a dried puddle of vomit, dead to the world.
"Looks like they got greened, too," Remo remarked.
Holding his nose, Chiun hurried on.
They passed an area called Parc Mesozoique, and Remo said, "I don't remember that from last time. What's it mean?"
"Mesozoique Park."
"That helps a lot," said Remo. "I thought you understood French."
"I understand the good tongue of the Franks, not this tongue-twisted patois."
The section of the park was walled off by a high bamboo fence, three times as tall as a man, lashed together with fibrous, ropelike vines. Remo tried to see through the chinks, but the spaces were caulked tight.
"Seems to me," Remo said, "something fenced off this tight might be important."
"I agree," said the Master of Sinanju, examining the fence carefully.
"Looks like something out of King Kong. "
"We never worked for him," Chiun said vaguely, attacking the vines with his long, knifelike fingernails. They began parting with dry snaps, and a section of bamboo began to sag outward.
"Your turn," Chiun invited.
Remo made a spear with his right hand and began chopping. Bamboo splintered and crackled in surrender. When he got an opening, Remo stepped in.
CHIEF CONCEPTEER Rod Cheatwood watched the two strange intruders amble around the park curiously. They weren't French. Certainly the Asian wasn't. The white guy was dressed for shooting pool, so he couldn't be French, either. He looked as American as Bruce Springsteen. But he wasn't a tourist.
Rod stabbed console mike buttons trying to pick up shreds of their conversation, but they seemed to somehow sense the electrical fields surrounding the concealed mikes. They lowered their voices every time they came within audio range.
And when he moved the concealed security cameras, trying to track them, they seemed to sense those, too, always turning so their backs faced the lenses, as if to foil lip-readers. Not that Rod had that talent.
When they came to Parc Mesozoique, Rod smiled slightly.
And when they began chopping away at the imported bamboo fence, he swallowed his smile and stabbed at console buttons.
It would be messy, but it was the best way. Since the French government had cut off all power to Euro Beasley, he didn't dare use the hypercolor eximer lasers unless he absolutely had to.
The things drank electricity the way a whale ingested water, and the Euro Beasley backup generators hadn't yet recharged from that French Foreign Legion incursion.
And his orders were to hold Euro Beasley at all costs until the cavalry came.
REMO DETECTED NO SOUNDS or scent of living things behind the bamboo wall so he entered Parc Mesozoique with confidence, stepping into an impenetrable rain forest.
There were birds squatting on the trees, but they weren't real. They simply perched on branches and looked glassyeyed. Animatronic. No doubt about it.
"Coast looks clear, Little Father," Remo called over his shoulder.
But Chiun had already entered. "This place is not real," he said, looking around with stern eyes.
"The trees are plastic," Remo explained.
"I do not like this place, where even the trees are not real."
"Hey, it's Beasleyland. Everything is plastic here. Come on, maybe we can find our way downstairs from here."
They melted into the plastic trees under the blind, watchful eyes of the jungle birds.
At the first earthshaking thud, Remo said, "What's that?"
"Something is coming this way."
The thud was followed by another. Foliage shook, and shook again. The thudding picked up.
"Something alive," Chiun added.
"If something living is coming this way, why don't I hear its heartbeat or lungs?" asked Remo.
"Perhaps it does not have any."
"Can't be animatronic. It's too big, whatever it is."
The trees continued to shake with each lumbering footfall, and branches snapped with a sound that was not right because the branches were not made of natural wood, but man-made polymers. They squealed and groaned instead of snapping and splintering as they should.
Remo hesitated.
"This is really starting to remind me of King Kong. "
Then the trees parted, and a leathery chocolate snout lined with countless ivory needle teeth dropped toward them.
"T-rex!" Remo shouted, breaking left. The Master of Sinanju stood his ground, staring up at the great behemoth, whose head waved back and forth like a serpent trying to fix its prey with its side-mounted lizard eyes.
Remo stopped, turned. "Chiun!"
"It is not living."
"It weighs as much as a truck and it has teeth. Move it."
The chocolate snout dropped lower. The mouth opened, and a mechanical roar issued from the sharklike mouth.
The Master of Sinanju cocked his head like a spaniel. "It is looking at me."
"It can't. It's a machine."
"Then someone is-looking at me through it," said Chiun stubbornly.
"Now that's possible," said Remo, slipping up behind the full-size Tyrannosaurus rex.
DOWN IN UTILICANARD, Rod Cheatwood couldn't believe his eyes. Or the eyes of the T-rex, rather. The little old guy wasn't scared in the slightest. He looked back at the animatronic T-rex with a serene indifference that made the short hairs on Rod's bare forearms lift like spiders walking.
"The little guy sure has balls." And he pushed the traction lever that set the T-rex lumbering toward the old man.