"You do not have to tell me that, Arlequin," said the DGSE director, sitting up. "I am famished."
"Would you like a Bosc pear?"
"Merci." The director reached out to take it, saw that it was green, and began heaving into his pillow.
"What is wrong?"
"It is green. Take it away. It is green."
"I cannot tarry. I have been ordered into the Blot."
"Why?"
"American agents have been seen in that area. It is suspected they are the same ones I encountered in the Uncouth Nation. I am the only agent who is immune to the evil eye."
"Where is the awful orbe?"
"That, I am forbidden to reveal on the grounds of French national security."
"Say no more," said the director of the DGSE, burying his head under his pillow to keep out the sight of the ugly green pear that sat on the bed stand like an evil Buddha whose plump stomach reminded him how distressed his own was.
Chapter 22
The allosaurs charged out of the brush like a stampede of angry plucked chickens running on pumping drumsticks. They were a vivid Purdue yellow.
"Now I know what this place is," Remo said to Chiun.
"What?"
"It's based on that hit movie they did a couple years back, Mesozoic Park. "
"What is a Mesozoic?"
"One of the big dinosaur eras millions of years ago."
"I prefer my era," Chiun sniffed. "And these beasts appear hungry."
"They're machines. They won't eat us. Probably just tear off chunks of flesh with their teeth and spit them out."
"A good idea," said Chiun, reaching up into the chest of the immobile chocolate brown tyrannosaur. One clawlike hand sunk its curved nails into the slick plastic skin and wrenched out a clot of machinery and wiring.
The Master of Sinanju reared back and, without seeming to take aim, let fly.
The tangle made a low and controlled zizzing arc and, when it struck the lead allosaur in the pack, removed its head.
The allosaur kept up its birdlike hopping run, but blinded, it stumbled into the path of two others.
The resulting allosaur collision was nothing if not spectacular. No doubt real allosaurs were not subject to blind collisions, but these were mere machines. When they got their pistoning legs tangled, they kept running anyway.
Allosaur drumsticks wrenched loose with metallic screams, and three of the animatronic dinosaurs pitched snout first into the AstroTurf, trailing wiring and sparks.
Even lying legless on the ground, they fought to crawl forward. One took a bite out of another, and within seconds they fell into a cannibalization frenzy.
"Nice," said Remo, setting a foot onto the T-rex tail and stamping. The tail went flat where he stamped. Remo reached down and harvested the thin end with a quick twist.
Spinning in place like a discus thrower, he got the tail moving smartly, then stopped suddenly. He let go. The tail kept going.
Like chain shot out of a cannon, it flew, striking two of the remaining allosaurs across their throats. The heads snapped back, and while the bodies kept moving, they didn't get far.
That left one allosaur, which came on like a chicken gone amok.
"You wanna do the honors or shall I?" Remo asked Chiun.
"I vanquished three. You only accounted for two of the lizards."
"Actually they're birds."
"Chicken-lizards, then."
As they talked, the surviving allosaur roared and lunged low.
Remo took point, waved in a friendly manner even as the allosaur emitted a scream and lunged with gaping jaws for his head.
Remo stepped off to one side and stuck out his foot, catching a pebbled shin.
The allosaur stumbled, pitched its entire length and went sliding on its belly, whereupon the Master of Sinanju caved the crown of its skull in with a sandaled foot.
"So much for the superiority of dinosaurs over man," said Remo.
They went in search of a way down into the bowels of Utilicanard.
DOMINIQUE PARILLAUD watched the awesome battle through field glasses from her hovering Gazelle helicopter.
"It is they," she told the pilot. "Set me down."
"The park is alive with dinosaurs."
"Zut! They are but machines designed for the amusement of children."
"They are deadly machines. They could devour my helicopter."
And Dominique unshipped her 9 mm MAS pistol and showed the pilot its hard, merciless snout. "You will land for the good of France and for the sanctity of your living brain"
The pilot wrestled the Gazelle to the ground, cursing the DGSE and the Americans by turns. He did not come all the way to this hellish place to be devoured by American-made dinosaurs, which, as everyone knew, were the junkiest dinosaurs ever constructed by man.
ROD CHEATWOOD SAT with his jaw hanging almost to his lap. He was alone in the main computerized control room of Utilicanard. He had been alone since the forced evacuation.