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that Chiun would follow suit. Too late.
From behind the patch came a burst of Supergreen.
THE MASTER of SINANJU heard the click, and while his pupil moved backward to
protect himself from the unknown danger, he moved forward to meet it head on.
The seated figure was slumped against the console.
The Master of Sinanju, his right hand forming the sharp point of a spear,
moved in for the kill ....
WHEN HE AWOKE, Remo first checked his internal clock. Over one hundred minutes
had passed. Then he sat up and looked around.
The Master of Sinanju lay facedown. So did Dominique and the hypercolor
technician. They had emptied their stomachs on the stainless-steel floor.
Uncle Sam Beasley sat slumped forward, his neck in his lap. The stump was red
and raw and showed a cross section of sheared vertebrae and biological
plumbing.
There was no sign of his head. But the hypercolor technician was dead. Lying
facedown, he had choked on his own vomit.
Remo went to the Master of Sinanju and shook him gently awake. "Get up, Little
Father. We were scammed."
Chiun blinked awake. He snapped to his feet like a tornado rearing up. "The
fiend tricked us," Chiun said. "There was a false eye behind the patch."
"Yeah. We never suspected a spare."
"But he was too slow. I removed his head before the terrible color could whelm
me."
"Well, he's dead for sure this time. And we have less than an hour to get the
hell out of here before the bomb falls."
Chiun looked around worriedly.
"Where is the head?"
"Head?"
"Yes. I removed the fiend's head. Now it is nowhere to be seen."
"Forget the head," said Remo, lifting Dominique across his shoulders. "Let's
save our behinds."
"The body is here, so the head must also be here."
"Look, you see the body. It's dead. So the head is dead. Now, let's shake a
leg."
Reluctantly the Master of Sinanju followed his pupil from the control room.
"If we can get to the car, we might be able to outrun the blast," Remo said.
"The French would not destroy such a place as this."
"Don't count on it," said Remo.
They ran through the attractions, their legs carrying them in floating fashion
that ate up the yards.
The drone of a bomber came distinctly. It grew. Its roar bounced off Big Rock
Candy Mountain, the second-highest point on Euro Beasley, filling the park
with thundering sound vibration.
"That's it," said Remo, not looking up because there was no time to waste. "We
either make it or we don't."
"Run now, worry later," Chiun puffed.
They accelerated, becoming to the eye like a slowmotion film of two men
running at high speed. It was as if the air offered no resistance to them,
inertia ceased to exist and gravity was repealed.
They tore up Main Street, U.S.A., leaving their shoes and sandals behind
because in the fractions of seconds they had, even those were an encumbrance.
The entrance gate with its iron scrollwork replica of the Beasley signature
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came into view. They ripped through that and into the parking area where
French tanks and APCs stood sentinel.
Atop a tank was Rod Cheatwood, a hypercolor eximer laser in each hand. He
pointed them up into the sky, shouting "Bastards! Bastards!" over and over
again.
"Forget it! It's too high. You can't hit that bomber from this range. Run!"
"Bomber? I'm talking about the company. They stole my idea!"
On his way past, Remo reached out and snatched Rod Cheatwood up, tacking him
under an arm.
"See this?" Rod complained. "I invented this. It's a remote-control finder.
The ducking bastards ripped me off again!"
Out on the highway Remo bore down. The thunder of the bomber was bouncing all
over the place. By his internal clock it was 118 minutes since the leaflets
had been dropped.
"We're not going to make it, Little Father."
"Never give up!" Chiun growled tightly.
They heard the whistling, even though it was very high in the sky.
"Goodbye, Little Father," Remo whispered.
They were less than a mile from the Euro Beasley gate when the bomb struck Big
Rock Candy Mountain, collapsing it.
The sound wasn't great. More on the order of a dull thud. There was no blast,
no roar, and certainly no angry fist of atomic fire lifting up to spread
horror and deadly radiation.
The shock wave was nonexistent.
"Do we stop?" Remo asked Chiun.
"It may yet go off."
"It takes an explosion to detonate a nuclear device. I think the explosive
charges failed."
"We take no chances," Chiun snapped.
Five miles down the road, they finally stopped. Remo set Rod Cheatwood onto
the side of the road and rolled Dominique off his shoulders.
He looked at Chiun, looked toward the Norman ramparts of Euro Beasley and back
at Chiun again. "Guess it was a dud, huh?" said Remo.
Before Chiun could answer, the entire park suddenly erupted in a dozen
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