The Color of Fear td-99 Read online

  "The little guy sure has balls." And he pushed the traction lever that set the T-rex lumbering toward the old man.

  The view through the T-rex's eyes jumped, then retreated. Something was wrong. It wasn't advancing. It was impossible. He had green lights all over the board.

  Then one light turned red. It was a square panel and it was blinking so the red and black letters showed on and off. They read, "Overload."

  Yanking the traction lever back, Rod rammed it forward again. Hard.

  The T-rex lunged-and bounced back like a rubber band.

  "What is wrong, dragon-beast?" the little Asian asked in a squeaky voice that reminded Rod of Dingbat Duck's cartoon voice. "Are you afraid to approach the Master of Sinanju? You, the master of a long-ago time?"

  Rod didn't know what the Master of Sinanju was, but he hauled back on the traction control and, grabbing the head joystick, began twisting.

  The T-rex head swung left, saw only jungle, then swung right. More jungle. Rod pushed it all the way, and the T-rex craned to see over its shoulder.

  Directly behind, the white guy in the T-shirt and chinos was standing with his arms casually folded, one foot pressing down hard on the thick tail.

  "How can this fucking be?" Rod gulped.

  Then the white guy called out, "Show us the way down, or the lizard buys it."

  Rod stabbed the Roar button. The T-rex roared its rage.

  But the man with the foot of lead stayed put.

  "Okay, if that's the way you want to play it," Rod said, deactivating the T-rex. "It's time to bring on the allosaur pack."

  Chapter 21

  Dominique Parillaud might have had difficulty getting through U .S. customs at Richmond's Byrd International Airport except that US. customs was only too happy to eject any French nationals eager to return home before the conflict became hot.

  "Au revoir," she told the customs man.

  "Good riddance to bad rubbish," the man snarled.

  When she came to the magnometer, it naturally beeped as she stepped through the sensitive metal frame.

  "Empty your pockets," the security guard commanded.

  "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" she said, wrinkling her smooth brow.

  "I said, empty your pockets."

  "Je ne comprends pas, " she said.

  "Damn. Another frog. Parlez-vous anglais?" he asked, flattening the lilt of the vowels and utterly demolishing the sweet consonants by actually pronouncing them.

  "Non," she told him.

  "Just keep going, Lewis-lover," the security guard said impatiently. "We don't want your kind here."

  "Anglophone," Dominique muttered under her breath.

  And so the greatest military secret since the hydrogen bomb sauntered past United States authorities and boarded an Air France jet bound for Paris, France, safely nestled between DGSE agent Dominique Parillaud's shapely legs.

  When she crossed her legs, she winced. But the pain was exceedingly reassuring. It meant the Legion of Honor medal was hers.

  Then she settled down to await the stewardess and the Air France meal that, although airplane food, true, was also French. And thus was exquisite even if the mussels simmered in white wine had cooled by the time the dish reached her.

  The in-flight movie was a double feature, Terry Chez les Cinques and Doctor Jerry et Monsieur Love.

  It was wonderful to see him in the original French.

  Upon reaching de Gaulle Airport, Dominique had the taximan stop at a grocer while she purchased a warm, reassuring baguette of bread.

  As the cab pulled away from the curb, she began tearing great chunks off with her bare teeth.

  "U.S.A.?" The cab driver clucked sympathetically.

  "Oui, " Dominique said through a mouthful of cooked dough.

  "I have seen strong men weep at the sight of a wheel of cheese hanging in a shop after spending a week in that awful land. But enough. You are home now. Where do you wish to go?"

  "The DGSE. But not until I have finished this luscious bread."

  "The Americans, they do not understand good bread."

  "They do not understand good bread, fine wine or even cheese."

  "Not to understand cheese. Unpardonable."

  "But most of all, they do not understand French. Or speak it well."

  "How can they? They are so gauche as to put junk into their mouths-how can anything but junk come out again?"

  "Garbage in, garbage out," Dominique said, smiling as the taxi entered the gray city where a raging mob was sacking a Haagen-Dazs shop, tarring and feathering its manager with his own faux-European product.

  It was delightful to be back in civilization again.

  WHEN SHE WAS ANNOUNCED, the director of the DGSE flung open his office door and regarded Dominique with stark eyes.

  "You live?"

  "I have conquered. The secret of l'affaire Beasley is mine."

  "Enter, enter, Agent Arlequin."

  When the door shut behind her, Dominique Parillaud said "Pardonnez-moi, " and lifted her skirt to reveal hex lack of underwear.

  "This is the device that has unmanned our citizens," she said.

  "I have always thought thus," said the DGSE director, looking away, not out of modesty but because a white string hung in plain view. He was squeamish about such womanly things.

  To his consternation, he heard the squishy sound of a tampon being extracted and tossed onto his desk. It landed with a distinct click.

  "Please . . . " he said.

  "No, I mean what is inside that."

  "Will you not do the honors?" he asked delicately. Frowning, Dominique Parillaud picked the tube apart with her nails, exposing an object slightly larger than a child's marble from the cotton packing.

  Gingerly the DGSE director picked it up. He saw that it was of machined steel.

  "I do not understand ...."

  "Turn it around."

  The DGSE director did and, when the other side looked at him with a frosty gray glare, he all but dropped it.

  "An eye?"

  "An electronic eye. I think it is-how do you say cybernetique."

  "Hush! That is now a forbidden word."

  "Sorry," said Dominique. "I took this from the skull of a man the world has believed dead for many years. "

  "Oui?"

  "A man made of machine parts. A man of evil. The mastermind behind the wicked terror of the Blot."

  "Who is this evil one?"

  "He is Uncle Sam Beasley himself."

  The director of the DGSE blinked rapidly.

  "Impossible!" he exploded.

  "I do not know how this can be, but it is true."

  Rapidly she explained her encounter with the American agents who seemed more than human but who fell before the pulsing fights from the cybernetic eyeball the DGSE director now rolled around between his nimble fingers.

  "How did you best him?" the DGSE director added.

  "Judo. He is part machine and, while stronger than I, very clumsy. I used that strength against him. While he was flat on his back, I took a rock to his skull, and as he lay insensate, his good eye rolled up in his head, while that abomination you now hold pulsed at me angrily. So I took it."

  The DGSE director winced. "Did you employ a . . . knife."

  "No. I merely unplugged it."

  "Just like that? Poof!"

  "Just like that. Poof. Then I fled with my prize."

  Eyebrows jumping up in astonishment, the DGSE director assayed a very Gallic shrug. "This is remarkable work, Arlequin."

  "The light that compels men to do its bidding exists within that orb."

  "What could it be?"

  "I believe it is a laser."

  The director of the DGSE hissed violently. "Do not say that word! It is a junk word. It, too, has been banned."

  "I forgot. It is so hard. My brain is starved for true nourishment. I have been in America so horribly long."

  "I sympathize. Just yesterday I caught myself using the word waterbed when I shoul
d have said aqualit. "

  "It is the horrid influence of American movies, all of which should have long ago been banned."

  "Except for Jairy's, of course."

  "It goes without saying," Dominique said carelessly.

  The DGSE director held the orb up to the light, inspecting it curiously. "I wonder how you make this function?"

  "There is an aperture in the back."

  "Perhaps it will respond to electric stimuli," said the DGSE director, ripping the cord from his desk telephone and braiding the wire until it was small enough to be inserted into the hole.

  "Is this wise?" Dominique asked.

  "I will close my eyes. You say you are immune to its effects?"

  "Oui."

  "What color was its pulse?"

  "How should I know? All I see are grays."

  "Of course, of course."

  "But it was not pink. Pink has a very positive effect, making even uncouth Americans positive and gentle in manner. The color that it pulsed made them vomit. "

  "What kind of color makes a man vomit?"

  "For all I know, gray," said Dominique, shrugging her slim shoulders.

  The director winced. "I will definitely close my eyes." And he did as he guided the copper wire into the eyeball that locked back at him like a disk of dirty ice.

  The copper wire scratched around inside for a few seconds before a tiny spit of a sound triggered a faint click. The gray pupil brightened, and the black pupil seemed to explode.

  That was what the DGSE director saw even through his closed eyes. An explosion of intense green. It stabbed like a thousand piercing jade daggers into his retina.

  Then his stomach exploded out his throat.

  WHEN THE DGSE DIRECTOR awoke a day later, he moaned, "Vert..."

  "Eh?" a voice murmured.

  "It was green. Green is the hue of vomit."

  "Actually it was more yellowish."

  "It was green . . ." he groaned.

  "I myself cleaned the vomit off your face before you were brought here, mon Directeur."

  "I meant the color that makes men vomit," he murmured.

  The DGSE director snapped open his eyes. They roamed around the room. He saw Dominique Parillaud's face hovering over his, looking cool and the epitome of Gallic sangfroid.

  "I am hospitalized?"

  "Under a false name, of course. But your vital signs are well."

  "Brief me, Arlequin."

  "The electronic eye pulsed, you puked and fell forward into your dinner. Escargot, if I am not mistaken."

  "It was very good. And the light was very green. Hideous to behold."

  "It has been analyzed. It is a laser."

  "Shh."

  "I mean a rayon de l'energie. DGSE scientists have gotten it to emit pink, green, red and yellow. They have remarkable effects upon the nervous system."

  "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.

  When the gas bombs had first dropped, he had been the one to relay the word to Vanaheim general HQ.

  And the word back from Vanaheim was,
"You are sanctioned to self-destruct. Initiate countdown."

  "I'm not dying for my job," Rod had snapped over the satellite uplink.

  "If you're captured, they'll prosecute you under a zillion French laws. You invented the hypercolor laser."

  "I didn't order it installed all over this white elephant! I was just following orders."

  "Tell it to a French magistrate."

  "I will, because I don't plan on dying."

  "This is disloyalty and punishable by termination."

  "Duck you. I just declined to commit suicide for the company. I'm not exactly about to change my mind to hold on to my job."

  "That is not what we mean by termination."

  "Blowing myself and Euro Beasley to smithereens is not in my job description."

  "We pay excellent survivor benefits."

  Rod sighed. "My cats will be delighted. Now, let's get real, shall we? What's plan B?"

  "Defend our hypercolor technology at all costs. It must not fall into unfriendly bands. We have loose ends and damage control to do back here. Once we're done, we'll extract you."

  "How do I know you're not hanging me out to dry?"

  "You could implicate the company."

  "True..." Rod said slowly. "Tell you what, you fax me a release on the TV remote finder, and I'll stick it out as long as I can."

  "Robber," growled the voice of Bob Beasley.

  "Takes one to know one," said Rod, who knew he had the company by its ratlike tail.

  The fax arrived within fifteen minutes, and after he had read the fine print, Rod called Vanaheim back.

  "It's a deal. Don't keep me waiting too long, okay?"

  For twenty-four hours it had not been bad. The French had given up after the first two assaults. Every time they showed signs of advancing, Rod activated the low-power pink periphery light. That made them grin and purr and try to lick the pink air as if it were cotton candy. It also forced the French field commanders to rotate their troops every few hours.

  Now, according to the radio they had the park under what was being called cultural quarantine. It was a perfect standoff.

  Then the two Americans showed up and made mincemeat of the Mesozoic Park population.

  It was patently impossible. It was true that as dinosaurs went, the animatronic constructs weren't exactly perfect. They tended to stumble a lot, and the complex software that controlled their movements got their commands fouled up sometimes. Either that or some joker had deliberately installed a cannibalize program.