Cold Warrior

"The operation has redundancy built into it at all levels."

"But I am a key component."

"None of us is key. Except the Director. We have to assume the unknown unfriendlies have superiors they have already reported to. Your name is known. But the trail ends here. No one leaves. Therefore there are no further leads."

"But-"

"Comandante, the future of the operation, not to mention the fate of your native land, hangs in the balance. I ask that you reflect on the situation, and your operational responsibilities. You have your orders."

"Si, " said Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla, unbuttoning the blouse pocket of his insignia-less uniform and extracting a pack of chewing gum.

His eyes on the screen as the camera tracked the two strange men, he mechanically slid off the paper wrapper and peeled the foil from the gum. Ever the military man, he took the refuse and with the remaining pack replaced them in his blouse pocket, which he rebuttoned.

Then, he put the stick into his mouth and began to chew.

He was still watching the screen when his eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled over.

After a few minutes, the cherry-wood panel slid open and two uniformed soldiers stepped out. They checked the body for signs of life and, finding none, went to a blank wall.

A magnetic keycard caused a chutelike drawer to drop down.

A faint howling came from far below.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla's still warm body went feet-first into this. The drawer closed on his thick black hair, and the soldiers disappeared into the elevator.

After a moment the image of the two figures on the screen winked out and the room was still, except for the quiet hum of the air conditioner.

Chapter 14

The great door dropped, and a locking latch as big as a nautical anchor rolled up out of the poured concrete floor and secured the guillotine of steel.

"This," Remo said uneasily, "reminds me of one of those underground nuclear command centers."

The Master of Sinanju looked about the space before them. It was a parking area. There were cars, vans, a few forklifts, and a pair of golf cart-like utility vehicles.

Some of the vehicles sported insignia. Curious, Remo went to one and examined it.

It consisted of a white circle encompassing three black disks. A large bottom circle topped by side-by-side smaller duplicates. All three disks overlapped.

"Looks familiar," Remo muttered. "But I can't place it."

"I, too, have seen this arcane symbol."

"Where?"

The Master of Sinanju stroked his smoky tendril of a beard. His eyes narrowed. "I do not know. Perhaps it is the symbol of some cabalistic secret society."

"Could be," said Remo, looking around. He tested the back of one of the vans. It came open.

"Hey, Chiun! Check this out!"

The Master of Sinanju came around to the back.

The entire van was stacked with cloth-covered poles, like cordwood. Remo pulled one from the top of the stack.

A corner of a red cloth unraveled. Remo gave the pole a crack and unfurled a red flag, on which the three-black-circles-in-a-white-circle symbol swam.

"It's some kind of national flag," Remo said.

Chiun made a face. "I know of no such nation."

"Maybe it's supposed to be the flag of the new Cuba," Remo mused. "The three circles must stand for something. Either that, or the Neo-Nazis are into circles these days."

"Hark," Chiun said suddenly.

"Hark?"

"I hear something."

"Oh." Remo tossed the flag away and went to one of the rubber-tired open carts, saying, "Come on."

Remo found a key in the ignition. The head was shaped in the three-circle style. He turned it and an electric motor caught.

Remo sent the car around in a circle as the Master of Sinanju leapt aboard.

"Why walk when we can ride?" Remo said.

"Hear hear," said Chiun.

There was only one exit from the tunnel, so Remo sent the cart humming into that.

They passed into a long service corridor filled with the monotonous thrum of air conditioning and other mechanical sounds.

"Big place," Remo said.

"Remo. What is an animator?"

"A guy who draws cartoons," Remo said, noticing a closed door with a sign that said: ANIMATORS' MESS.

"We know that can't be right," he grunted. "Must be a goofy code name. Military types love to play word games."

Just then a lavender cart scooted out of a side passage and turned in their direction. It was driven by a soldier in a white jumpsuit and helmet. Another soldier sat blank-faced behind him. They looked like identical twins going to some sort of military First Communion.

Remo steered over to the left and said, "Signal a right, will you, Little Father?"

"Gladly," said Chiun, as Remo pressed the accelerator to the rubber floorboards.

The two carts barreled toward one another in a quiet game of chicken.

The other car swerved first. It went right, because there was no way to go left without slamming into the wall.

As they passed, the Master of Sinanju jutted out a bony arm and decapitated the soldier next to the driver.

The driver lost control when the person seated beside him became an organic red fountain that gushed hot liquid into his face.

The cart went nose-first into a wall and turned over, pinning the driver.

Remo took the left-hand tunnel, saying, "Nice job."

"Director, we have a problem," said Captain Maus.

"Solve it," said the Director, making the face on the computer screen revolve on an imaginary axis. His signature revolved with it, became alternately readable, a thin stitching of electronics and reversed. He frowned.

"How do you get this thing to freeze the signature?"

"Director, the unknowns have just decapitated a soldier."

The Director turned and looked up. The screen showed the overturned utility vehicle and the quivering mess that had been the guard.

The Director sniffed, "I've seen worse," and returned to his play. If this operation was to succeed, these snot-noses would have to learn to solve the little problems for themselves.

As the tunnel walls whipped by, Remo Williams was saying, "I figure this for a military installation, probably funded by ultra-right-wing Cubans out to topple Fidel. There's probably an orange grove or something over our heads. It's the perfect cover."

"I do not understand this 'wing' thing," Chiun complained.

"Our ultra left wing is the same as Cuba's ultra right wing."

"Thank you for enlightening me. Not."

Remo shrugged.

"All we need is to find the big cheese, wring some truth out of him, and contact Smith," he said. "Smith will tell us if we take down this place or leave it to the Marines."

They passed side tunnels every few yards. Brief glimpses showed white-uniformed soldiers pushing white-handled push brooms.

"Whoever runs this place must have a mania for cleanliness," Remo said.

"There is nothing wrong with that," Chiun sniffed.

"You'd think, since they know we're here, they'd have the place on alert. But I don't see any signs of panic."

"The answer to that conundrum is obvious."

"Yeah? Explain it to an ex-Marine then."

"The overlord of this vault does not yet know he has allowed Sinanju into his lair."

The way was suddenly blocked by two rows of white-uniformed soldiers.

"But he's about to find out," Remo muttered, bringing the utility vehicle to a slow stop.

"Halt, please," ordered a soldier.

Remo lifted empty hands off the steering wheel. "Too late. We already did. Next order?"

"Dismount, please."

"We under arrest, or just prisoners?"

Rifle safeties latched off.

"You will please dismount instantly."

"Ride's over, Little Father," said Remo, stepping off the truck.

The Master of Sinanju stepped away from the vehicle as well.

They were surrounded at riflepoint.

"Last guys who did that to us ended up with their trigger fingers in splints," Remo offered in the way of friendly information.

"Place your hands atop your heads, please."

"Since you're all so polite I guess we can't say no, can we Little Father?"

"We will allow them to keep their fingers," Chiun said thinly. "For now."

They placed their hands atop their heads. Remo took a moment to scrutinize the faces surrounding them. The men all had a fresh, well-scrubbed look, like Boy Scouts coming into early manhood. The weapons at their shoulders were American-made Colt AR-15s. Purchasable at many sporting-goods stores. There was no hint of ethnicity in any of the faces. In fact, they looked corn-fed, most of them.

Remo frowned. More and more this was looking like a U.S. military operation. But who the hell was running it, and why?

Remo decided there was only one way to find out.

"Take us to your leader," he said, straight-faced.

The circle broke, and half the soldiers formed up behind them. The others formed an honor guard of sorts.

"March, please," the leader requested.

They marched.

"Why are they so polite?" Chiun wanted to know.

Remo shrugged as best he could. "Search me."

"No talking in the ranks, please."

"We are not of your ranks," Chiun sniffed.

"No talking, please. Thank you."

Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.

They were walked through a labyrinth of spotless tunnels. White-coveralled soldiers swabbed the pastel walls with ammonia-scented rags. Others dusted the exposed ductwork with white-enameled foxtail brooms.

Remo started whistling "Whistle While You Work" to break the silence, and the captain's head suddenly jerked around. For the first time, an expression crossed his set features.

"What's the problem, pal?" Remo asked. "You don't like my taste in music?"

The man said a tight-lipped nothing, but he picked up his pace. Consequently they all picked up their pace.

"These guys are too perfect to be U.S. military," Remo said, after some thought.

This time, the captain hissed for silence.

"Struck a nerve," Remo said.

The captain whirled, his corn-fed face white and tight. It almost matched his coverall uniform.

"I have instructions to shoot one of you to ensure the cooperation of the other."

Remo smiled tightly, "You forgot to say 'please.' "

"Separate them!" the captain snapped.

The Master of Sinanju shook his black silk sleeves off his pipe-stem forearms. He folded them resolutely, saying, "I will not be moved."

Remo folded his arms as well. "That goes double for me. I'm tired of all this pussyfooting."

"Shoot the old man."

Remo got between the captain and the Master of Sinanju and said in a low tone. "You forgot to say 'May I?'"

"Fi-yeeh!"

The captain's order had been interrupted by a sensation like a tightening vise in the specific area of his testicles. He looked down to see that the skinny man had grabbed his crotch with one hand. The old one now took him by the throat.

While he was still screaming, the captain went ballistic.

Had he not been wearing his helmet, his head would have been split open against the overhead conduit pipe. It was as large as a sewer main, and as heavy.

The helmet protected the top of his skull from being caved in. It punctured the pipe and hung there, forming a solid cup that collected the compressed remnants of his pulped head.

The other soldiers looked up at the dangling white boots, to the skinny guy with the thick wrists, and remembered the captain's unfinished final order.

They trained their weapons on the old Asian. Fingers squeezed triggers.

Remo moved among the soldiers. He came in low, bent at the waist, and slammed the AR-15 muzzles ceilingward, like a handball player deflecting a rebounding ball.

Bullets erupted straight up, riddling the pipe and making the limp body of their captain jerk and jitter and string blood from points along his torso.

The overhead pipe suddenly cracked apart with a roar and a section crashed down, spewing assorted paper trash, soft-drink cans, used camera-film boxes, and colorful napkins. All propelled by a hurricane of air.

Remo and Chiun retreated as the soldiers were swiftly inundated.

"What the hell is going on?" Remo shouted over the din.

"I do not know."

"What the heck is that thing?" Remo said, retreating from the spreading sea of refuse.

From the relative safety of several yards down the corridor, Remo and Chiun watched as the soldiers, weapons forgotten, tried to wade from the snowstorm of debris. They were not fast enough. The stuff covered them faster than they could wade. They slogged waist-deep, then shoulder-deep, and then, like men drowning in some frothy white water, their helmeted heads were soon covered.

Somewhere someone must have thrown a switch, because with a silence that made their ears ring, the whooshing roar ceased and all was quiet.

A final paper cup tumbled out of the fractured ceramic pipe, and all was still.

Remo and Chiun walked around the mound of trash, their faces bemused.

"They must have a whole division under arms, from the look of all these food containers," Remo pointed out.

The Master of Sinanju noticed a corner of the mound shift. The gleam of a white helmet appeared.

With the heel of his hand, he gave it a tap. The emerging helmet rang like an old bell, and fell silent.

Then the Klaxons started.

Remo looked up and down the gleaming corridor worriedly. "Uh-oh. Now we did it."

"Perhaps this might be the correct time to escape, my son," Chiun pointed out, his bearded chin indicating the severed pipe.

"Just a sec."

Remo went to a wall-mounted video surveillance camera and with an extended forefinger shattered the lens, blinding it.

"No sense leaving a trail," he said over the Klaxon howl.

Remo got under the ruptured pipe and took hold of its cracked maw. He pulled himself up. The Master of Sinanju, being somewhat shorter, leaped high, fading into the maw like a spider slipping into a web hole.

Crouched low, they moved along the pipe. It was dark and surprisingly clean, in spite of being a conduit for trash and food refuse. The inner walls were teflonslick.

The way was dark, but their visual purple compensated for the lack of illumination.

At a bend in the tunnel they came to a clump of trash.

Remo cleared it with distaste on his hard features.

They continued on.

They found the body of Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla wedged in a catch basin, where the pipe angled up into a sheer vertical well.

"Guess he was too heavy to make the turn," Remo said, checking the body's carotid artery and finding no pulse.

The body of Zorilla had landed in a kind of tangled ball of outflung limbs. They dragged him free and laid him out. There were no obvious marks or wounds. The man's eyes were wide, and already turning to dull glass. Remo noticed that his mouth was open and there was something in it.

He pried the jaws apart and saw the pink wad crushed against his wisdom teeth.

"Gum," he said, dismissing it without a second thought.

Remo went through the man's pockets and found a pack of gum in the blouse pocket. He barely glanced at it before tossing it aside. There was an INS green card, and a plastic syringe filled with liquid. The needle was stoppered. That was all.

"Must have been a drug addict," Remo said, dropping the needle.

"Or a gum fiend," sniffed the Master of Sinanju, retrieving it. He tossed the instrument aside after examining it curiously.

Remo straightened. "Well, they wasted him without wasting any time. Serves him right, too. Murdering his own men like that."

The Master of Sinanju moved to the point under the vertical length of pipe. His wise old face frowned tightly.

"It is time to see what lies above," he said firmly.

"Want me to go first?" Remo offered.

"No," said Chiun, making a fist like a block of old bone and punching a dent at the level of his head. He reached up and made another off to one side.

Then, leaping high so that one sandaled toe caught the lowermost dent and the other the next one up, the Master of Sinanju quickly created a ladder of indentations, climbing as he went.

Remo followed. He was halfway up when he heard a metallic screech.

Past his head came a ball of twisted steel.

"What was that?" he called up.

"An inconvenient propeller."

"Must be part of a pneumatic system," Remo said, continuing on. Unlike Chiun, Remo lacked the long fingernails of the traditional Sinanju master. He had to knock deeper holes here and there.

Near the top, Chiun's voice came, high and squeaky.

"Remo! Remo!"

"Yeah?"

"I know where we are!" "Where?" "Home! We are home!" "Huh?"

Chapter 15

"Director, I have bad news."

"What is it now?" demanded the petulant, chilly voice.

"The two unfriendlies are topside."

The Director looked at his famous smiling watch. "We're two hours from opening. That should be enough time to erase them from the drawing board."

"Instructions?"

"Send the Wolf Pack after them."

"At once, Director."

"And have a mop-up team on standby to take care of the damned blood. I want topside to sparkle. And turn up the heat. I'm freezing in here."

"Yes, Director."

"Wolf Pack, you are go for the hunt."

Chapter 16

Warily, Remo emerged from the disposal pipe, not knowing what to expect.

A section of the pipe, an elbow, had been knocked aside by the Master of Sinanju. Remo found himself staring into another horizontal stretch.

He walked around it and saw that he was in a semidark concrete bunker, and that the final length of pipe was jutting from a giant piece of machinery studded with air-compressors.

"I was right." he said. "This is a giant pneumatic tube. That means it's like a vacuum in reverse."

Then he noticed the Master of Sinanju standing at a window, staring out with a pleased expression on his face. Chiun was standing at his full height now, his chin uptilted slightly, like an emperor surveying his domain.

"This doesn't look like any home I've ever seen," Remo said, approaching the window.

The Master of Sinanju stepped aside. "Open your benighted eyes to their fullest then," he said proudly.

Remo peered out the window. The expression on his face was an odd mixture of curiosity and bafflement.

He saw in the near distance the tessellated ramparts and spindly towers of a castle.

The curiosity drained from his face as the bafflement took over. His mouth dropped open. His deep-set eyes seemed to crawl out of their enshadowed orbits. He blinked. And blinked again.

No matter what he did, the castle was still there.

"What the hell?"

"Is it not magnificent?" Chiun asked, beaming.

"Huh?" Remo gulped.

"That is where we will live," added Chiun. He clapped happy hands together. "It is what I have always wanted."

"No doubt there," Remo growled, "but what is it?"

Chiun's tiny mouth went round. "You do not recognize this place?" he squeaked. "You, a child of this generous nation?"

"It looks familiar, sure," Remo admitted. "But I can't place it. I was expecting an orange grove."

"Come. Perhaps this wondrous place which Harold the Munificent has granted to the House of Sinanju contains such things."

The Master of Sinanju floated to a closed door.

Remo followed. "Smith gave you this?" he asked, small-voiced.

"It was my final demand, and he agreed to meet it."

Remo Williams was so befuddled by the disorienting experience of escaping an underground military installation, only to find above it a place Chiun called home, that he couldn't think of any comeback. He let his brain shift into neutral and went with the flow.

Chiun opened the door, and the building flooded with too-bright sunlight. They passed through and out into an immaculately landscaped fairyland that Remo instantly recognized.

"Oh my God!" he said.

Chiun drew in a long breath. "Smell, Remo. Orange blossoms." He beamed. "Here, all wishes come true."

"This is Beasley World!" Remo said, aghast.

"Yes," said Chiun happily.

"Beasley World. The Beasley World."

"Yes!"

"Somebody built a secret military installation under Beasley World!" Remo said, his voice incredulous.

"A minor annoyance which we will soon remedy," Chiun said.

Remo looked around.

The summit of Star Mountain reared up in the early-morning sun, the shadows of fast-moving clouds dappling it.

They were standing near an artificial pool. It appeared to be empty. At the far end of a long whitecobbled walk, past colorful children's rides, loomed Sorcerer's Castle, emblem of "the Enchanted Village," as Beasley World-the greatest theme park in the universe-was sometimes called.

"This is a dream," Remo muttered.

"A wonderful dream," Chiun said.

"A bad dream," Remo said. "A nightmare."

Chiun frowned. "What is wrong?"

"We can't live here. It's wide open!"

"The sun will be good for you, Remo. You look pale." The Master of Sinanju began to walk, his merry hazel eyes darting this way and that, his perfect white teeth dazzling in his tiny mouth.

Remo followed. "No, I mean this is a public place. Millions of people come through the gate every year."

Chiun shrugged unconcernedly. "I have left them Beasleyland. They may go there instead."

Remo's incredulous eyes took in an Alice-in-Wonderland panorama that was familiar to children throughout the entire world.

"I can't believe Smith gave this place to you."

"Why not? I deserve it-even if you do not."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it. It isn't Smith's to give. One of the biggest corporations in the world owns all this. And from what I hear their lawyers are real piranha."

"Let them plotz," Chiun said disdainfully.

Remo looked back. The building they had just left was some kind of disguised waste-disposal collection center. The walls were covered with open-mouthed cartoon faces. The mouths were round holes, and beside one of them was a pair of covered plastic barrels. The covers were adorned with puppet heads.

"That pipe we came through was part of the trash-disposal system for this place," Remo decided aloud.

"It is very efficient," Chiun agreed. "I hereby make you Lord High Sanitation Engineer of Assassin's World."

"Assassin's World?"

"The old name needs updating."

"You weren't listening to what I said," Remo said tightly.

"What else is new?" Chiun returned carelessly.

"That means the military guys are in cahoots with the Beasley Company."

Chiun turned, his mouth going prim. "Remo! Such blasphemy! Was this man Beasley not one of your childhood heroes?"

"Sure. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Uncle Sam Beasley would never go against the wishes of Emperor Smith."

"He never heard of Smith. Besides, he's dead."

"Nonsense."

"He died back in the sixties. Everybody knows that."

"Humph," sniffed Chiun, resuming his promenade. "If this is so, then who draws the wonderful cartoons bearing his illustrious name?"

"A bunch of artists, that's who. Uncle Sam never drew the cartoons himself."

"Slanderer! Defamer of greatness!"

Remo stopped, blinked, and said in a very small voice, "Uncle Sam . . ."

"Come, Remo. We must find Monongahela Mouse. I will accept the keys to the Enchanted Village from him personally. No lesser functionary will do."

"Chiun!" Remo croaked.

The Master of Sinanju stopped, turned, his eyes narrowing.

"What is wrong with you, Remo? This is the culmination of my years of hardship in your ugly country. This is a moment about which the future children of Sinanju yet unborn will sing. For no Master of Sinanju was ever bequeathed a kingdom as wondrous as this one."

"Chiun, listen! I just said the name 'Uncle Sam.' Uncle Sam Beasley-the founder of Beasleyland and Beasley World."

"You did," Chiun allowed.

"The creator of Monongahela Mouse, Screwball Squirrel, and Dingbat Duck."

"His reknown has reached even Sinanju," Chiun said. "Although he is a mere white artist, his greatness is unsurpassed."

Remo said, "Everybody from the captured Cubans to Zorilla swore Uncle Sam was behind the operation. Remember?"

Chiun's eyes squeezed to walnut slits.

"Not the Washington Uncle Sam, but Uncle Sam Beasley! This is a Beasley Corporation operation!"

"I will believe this only from the lips of Uncle Sam himself," Chiun said firmly. "Come, the famous rodent can wait. We must speak with Uncle Sam himself."

In a swirl of black silken skirts, the Master of Sinanju flounced off toward the towers that Remo had first seen what seemed like another lifetime ago, as a wide-eyed child watching a cheap black-and-white picture tube back at Saint Theresa's Orphanage.

There was a lump rising in his throat.

Ronald Phipps had grown up on Sam Beasley.

Every Sunday night, he had watched The Marvelous Realm of Sam Beasley in his fire-engine-red Dr. Denton's. He had collected Sam Beasley Comics and Cartoons. Colored in Mongo Mouse and Screwball Squirrel coloring books, with Sam Beasley-brand crayons. If it bore the flourishing signature of Uncle Sam Beasley, Ronald Phipps had collected it.

The first time he had visited Beasley World was akin to a religious experience. He was nine. By the age of eleven he had been to Beasleyland and Beasley World what seemed a million times. He liked Beasley World better. It was bigger and-more to the point-he could go more often. Ron Phipps lived just outside of Furioso, Florida, Vacation Center of the Galaxy, site of Sam Beasley World.

When he reached high school age and other boys were discovering cars and beer and girls, Ron Phipps spent his weekends at Sam Beasley World.

After high school, he horrified his parents by announcing that he wasn't going to Yale after all. He had applied to a much more exclusive institution.

"I'm going to be a greeter at Sam Beasley World," he announced proudly.

His father glared. His mother broke down. His younger sister asked, "Does that mean you can get me in for free?"

Ultimately, his disappointed parents had not stood in his way. They thought it was just a phase. It would pass. And Yale would still be there next year.

They were wrong. The day he first donned the furry costume and oversized lop-eared head of Wacky Wolf, Ron knew he had found his true calling. But being a greeter, he discovered, was not quite as much fun as being a greetee. There were rules, and violators could be summarily fired. One could never appear in public out of costume. Or with one's character head removed. One mustn't speak. One must be unfailingly polite and kind.

Once a greeter dressed as Screwball Squirrel had come upon a little girl who had fallen into the Phantom Lagoon. As her parents watched helplessly, the little girl splashed and cried piteously for rescue.

The Screwball Squirrel greeter had doffed his bucktoothed head and plunged in. He pulled the girl to safety and after applying mouth-to-mouth, brought her around.

The crowd had applauded the man.

The CEO had hauled him onto the carpet within the hour.

As Phipps later heard it, the CEO opened up the confrontation with a curt, "You're fired!"

"But sir, I saved a little girl from drowning."

"And removed your squirrel head. That wasn't necessary."

"I had to resuscitate!"

"You could have done it through the mask, or let the parents do their own CPR. You stepped out of character, and worse, you deprived the organization of a wonderful public relations bonanza."

"Sir?"

"A ton of tourists took photos of you giving mouth-to-mouth. Had you kept your head on your shoulders, we could have had that photo run in everything from People to Isvestia, furthering the glorious Beasley legend."

"But-"

"We're selling fantasy here, and you popped the bubble! Can you imagine that little girl's trauma when you took your Screwball Squirrel head off?"

"She was unconscious!"

"Turn in your tail and pick up your last check."

When Ron Phipps heard the story from the tearful greeter that very same day, he wondered aloud, "What would Uncle Sam have said if he could have seen it?"

"The same thing the CEO did," the greeter overseer said. " 'You're fired.' Keep that in mind, Phipps. "

Ronald Phipps did. He never, never wanted not to be a part of Sam Beasley World. So when the demands on him increased, he made sure he was equal to them. If the organization said to dump that old lady out of a Beasley-owned wheelchair, he did so. If a fellow worker grumbled about working in "Mouseschwitz," he turned him in. None of it was what Ronald Phipps had thought Beasley World stood for, but orders were orders.

But this . . .

"You all know how to use these things," the security overseer was saying, in the underground dressing rooms where all the cartoon costumes were stored.

Phipps accepted the short-barreled machine pistol, with its oversized trigger guard so he could slip his padded wolf's-paw fingers inside. The weapon felt enormously heavy.

The overseer went on.

"We always knew that terrorists would one day try to penetrate Sam Beasley World, symbol of all that is America. You've trained for this day. You're prepared for this day. Now that day is here."

Ron Phipps looked around, and saw a disturbing sight. Screwball Squirrel was brandishing an Ingram. Mother Goose had a pump-action shotgun. Everyone had known about the potential Cuban threat, but it was incredible that Beasley World actually had been targeted. The overseer said Cuban terrorists had already penetrated the park.

"Rule number one is 'Aim at your target and hit what you aim at.' " reminded the overseer.

"Rule number two is 'Try not to damage the attractions,' " he added. "There are only two terrorists. This should be a walk in the Haunted Grove, so to speak."

There came nervous laughter from a dozen happy heads, as they marched single-file to the freight elevator that would take them topside to their rendezvous with destiny.

Remo followed the Master of Sinanju through Sam Beasley World, a dull, stricken look on his face.

"This isn't happening," he said under his breath.

Then Chiun's squeaky voice called out, "Look, Remo! Wacky Wolf! Let us ask the befuddled canine the way."

Remo looked up. The Master of Sinanju had veered off toward Horrible House, a Louisiana Gothic mansion whose shuttered windows held ghoulish faces.

"Hold up, Chiun. I don't think we should take anything for granted here."

"Yoo-hoo, Wolfie!" called Chiun.

And to Remo's horror, the giant form of Wacky Wolf dropped to one knee and brought up the muzzle of an Ingram submachine gun.

The weapon blatted nasty sound and a tongue of fire.

The Master of Sinanju leaped high in the air, over the scream of bullets that tore past Remo's dipping shoulder and perforated a child-size Ferris wheel. The creaking seats rocked and swayed, some dangling, damaged.

The Master of Sinanju landed atop the Wolf's funny hat. The head jammed down with a dull, mortal crack, and the rest of the creature folded to the immaculate cobblestones.

Chiun stepped off the corpse, frowning.

"Obviously some of the inhabitants have not been informed that Sinanju now rules their happy domain," he sniffed.

Remo stopped to lift off the absurd wolf's head. The face revealed was unexceptional. Remo replaced it, sick. The guy looked barely twenty.

"These guys are supposed to be greeters," he said, aghast. "What are they doing toting automatic weapons?"

"Uncle Sam can explain this to us," Chiun said firmly.

"Listen!" Remo said sharply.

And all around them, the cool air carried furtive sounds. Pounding heartbeats. The sip and whistle of people breathing carefully through their mouths. Padding feet. Floppy, padding feet.

"Don't look now," Remo said, "but the bears are coming out of hibernation."

In the long shadows of the rising sun they spied peering, semi-human faces. Flat, too-round eyes seemed to regard them. Unreasonably large paws reached around gingerbread corners. Or clutched assorted weaponry.

"What say we split up?" Remo suggested. "Maybe get to whoever's giving the orders faster?"

"Let no harm come to Mongo Mouse, Remo," Chiun admonished.

"What if he's the ringleader?"

"Take him prisoner. One as famous as he will surely fetch a bountiful ransom."

"Gotcha," said Remo, thinking that he couldn't hurt Mongo Mouse, no matter what. Once he had been the roundeared rodent's biggest fan. They went in opposite directions.

Chapter 17

"Director, they're splitting up."

"Damn!"

"And Wacky Wolf is down."

"Process his mangy carcass according to park guidelines. And burn his timecard. He did not show up for work today."

"Yes, sir."

The Director turned in his chair. The overhead screens were cutting from monitor to monitor, scanning for the intruders.

The Director heaved himself out of his chair and clumped over to Captain Maus's station.

"Relinquish your chair," he snapped. "I'm directing this damned production from now on."

"Yes, Director."

The Director clumped over and eased himself into the warm chair, taking care with his sterling-silver left leg. His hands went to the control-button array. He began calling up cameras.

It was a frustrating search. The greeters stood out like marshmallows in a coal bin. The two intruders might as well have been invisible.

Once, the Director caught a glimpse of a fugitive rag of black slipping behind a polyurethane candy cane. When he called up a different angle, there was no sign of the owner of the ebony garment.

But Screwball Squirrel lay on his back, impaled by his own umbrella.

"Damn! The Squirrel is down, too."

"I assure you we have the two unknowns outnumbered," Maus said from his station.

The Director worked his cameras impatiently. There was Dingbat Duck, his pride and joy, crouching at the edge of the Phantom Lagoon, his beady crossed eyes alert.

"The hell!" he snarled suddenly.

"What is it, sir?"

"Will you look at that idiot quacker! You can see the seam at his neck. Pull him out of it. I want my people looking like their inspirations, damn it!"

"At once, sir."

Captain Maus went to a console and spoke into a microphone mounted on a flexible steel stalk.

"Overseer. Withdraw the duck. He's out of character. Repeat: The duck is out of character."

The Director moved on, knowing his orders would be carried out to the letter. It was like the Jesuits used to say: "Give me a boy at seven, and I will show you the man."

It was his second favorite saying.

The first was: "The Mouse means revenue. Shield the Mouse, and you protect the revenue."

A roving camera mounted near the Tom Thumb Pavilion happened to pick up the top of someone's head. The hair was brown and human.

"Got one!" he exulted.

As if the owner of the hair had somehow heard him remotely, the brown-haired head stopped, turned, and looked up. And the deadest eyes the Director had ever seen were looking directly at him.

"He's by the Tom Thumb Pavilion," he snapped to Maus.

"Acknowledged." Maus began issuing orders into the mike.

And on the screen, the owner of the dead eyes lifted two splayed fingers and poked them in the Director's direction.

The screen spiderwebbed and went dark.

"Damn!" spat the Director, punching up another camera.

"Sir. The overseer reports the duck is down."

"Not Dingy?"

"Afraid so, sir. That seam? When the overseer went to check, the quacker was in a crouching position and refused to respond to vocal commands. He pulled the Duck's head off to reprimand him."

"And?"

"Nothing but a stump where the neck ended."

"That's it! We're changing tactics. Sweatbox them!"

"Yes, sir!"

"We're at Threatcon Gumpy. Go to Threatcon Spooky. I want the entire park on a military footing. All pavilions and attractions convert to combat readiness. Now!"

"Executing."

"See if you can get the fruity-looking guy with the brown hair into the Tom Thumb Pavilion."

"I'll instruct the greeters to flush him in that direction."

"Flush, my pink ass! Lure them in. I want them dead and disposed of. We open to the public in two hours and we have a duck head unaccounted for. What if some snot-nosed brat picks it up? The lawsuits will go on into the next century."

"At once, Director."

It was too easy.

Remo slipped between the places where the skulking greeters lurked. He didn't want to kill any, but he was forced to ace the squirrel and the duck. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Near the Tom Thumb Pavilion, he paused. A faint whir brought his head up alertly.

Remo turned. Through a tiny window, he sensed an electrical hum. Another concealed camera. The park was riddled with them.

He used two stiffened fingers to blind this one and then moved on.

Then the patterns changed.

Up until now, Remo had been aware of every nearby stalker. Their hot breaths and clumsy walks gave their positions away.

Now, they retreated. Flat, wide eyes withdrew from windows.

Something was going on. Moving low, Remo floated down to Phantom Lagoon, where piles of papier-mache rocks hugged the artificial shore.

He slipped onto the landward side and went up the rocks.

Remo lay flat on the sun-warmed summit, looking around. The position kept him out of sight, and also distributed his body weight so that the rocks wouldn't buckle beneath him.

Beasley World looked peaceful in the morning sun. Here and there a 'toon edged around a corner, his machine pistol poked forward incongruously. There was no sign of Chiun. Which actually was a good sign.

Behind him, he heard a warning gurgle.

Remo looked over his shoulder. Just in time.

Breaking the stillness of Phantom Lagoon was a baroque purple submarine, its narwhal-nosed bow pointed in his direction.

"Uh-oh," Remo muttered, remembering the movie the attraction was modeled after.

The water bubbled and boiled-and something shot out of the sub's unicorn nose. It arrowed toward Remo's flimsy perch.

Remo bounced to his feet and kept going. He executed a slow, languorous midair backflip that took him backward, over the churning torpedo.

Remo dropped behind the armored safety of the sub's conning tower as the torpedo struck the fake rocks.

The explosion was muffled. Papier-mache flew in fiery rags, mixed with pebble shrapnel.

When the echoes had ceased reverberating, Remo stood up to look. There was a smoking pit where the "rocks" had been.

Then Remo began peeling plates off the sub's colorful hull. It was like peeling a banana with an onion skin. Every layer revealed another. Muttering, "The hell with it," he drove his fist into a point along the waterline, making a hole.

Water rushed in, and Remo rode the sub to the shallow bottom. An escape hatch blew in a boil of bubbles, and a frogman swam out. Not a man in a wet suit, but one in a rubber frog skin. Eyes goggling, he kicked his webbed feet toward the surface.

Remo caught him by the back of his green neck and held him just under the surface, until his flippers stopped kicking and the last air bubble struggled from his gasping mouth.

Then Remo let his natural buoyancy bring him back to the surface.

Remo popped up and found himself face-to-snout with a gray polyester aardvark, standing on the shore.

He didn't recognize the aardvark. There had been a lot of Beasley cartoons produced since Remo was a boy, and over the years he'd lost track.

Consequently he didn't know what to call the aardvark.

So he said, "Don't make a mistake, pal."

The aardvark didn't seem to take the advice to heart. He lowered the muzzle of his short-barreled machine pistol in the direction of Remo's dripping head.

He didn't get to use it.

Remo shot out of the water like a porpoise. He went up and, with his ankles still submerged, suddenly changed direction, veering toward his assailant. He left a modest wake and landed upright on shore, where he took possession of the pistol by yanking it from its owner's furry grasp.

The aardvark's paw came away with the weapon, trigger finger caught in the ringlike trigger guard.

"Betcha can't do this, even in cartoons," Remo said, squeezing the weapon in his steel-hard fingers. They found weak points in the metal. The weapon began shedding parts amid metallic squeals of complaint.

The aardvark cried "Tarim!" in a funny voice and turned tail. Literally.

Remo started after him.

He was easy to follow, for he waddled as he ran. Remo decided to follow him back to his hole-or wherever it was aardvarks lived. Someone had to be in charge of this insanity.

The gray 'toon bobbled and slipped among the plastic palms, looking back often as he worked his way to the Tom Thumb Pavilion. His eyes, unreal as they were, looked positively frightened.

At the pavilion entrance he turned one last time, lingered, and, when he saw Remo coming in his direction, ducked in.

"Looks like a trap," Remo muttered. "Okay," he said, shrugging. "So it's a trap."

The Master of Sinanju paused to ask directions.

"Excuse me," he inquired, of the figure standing before an old-fashioned outdoor clock resembling a numerically calibrated all-day sucker. "I seek the illustrious Mongo Mouse."

The figure, its clear eyes very bright in its homely, bearded face, ignored the Master of Sinanju.

The Master of Sinanju tugged at its sleeve.

"I said, I seek the illustrious-"

Suddenly the figure jerked to life. Only then did the Master of Sinanju recognize it as one of the previous rulers of this odd nation. He wore the royal crown of that era, known as the "stovepipe hat."

Then the figure of Abraham Lincoln spat out a croaky, "Fuck you," and went stiff once more.

Insulted, the Master of Sinanju narrowed his hazel eyes.

His acute hearing picked up no sounds of human biology. So he stamped the simulacrum's feet into shattered piles and stepped away as it fell on its gaunt face and shattered.

He walked on.

Here was wonder at every step, Chiun thought. Here was an abode worthy of the Master of Sinanju. With a critical eye, he made a mental inventory of the ugly structures that would have to be razed. Future World would be the first to go. But the monorail might be retained. For his personal use only. Remo could drive.

Off to one side stood the Haunted Grove, where the trees had faces. Curious, he moved toward it.

A hulking shape loomed out of the plastic copse.

It was Hunny Bear, his porkpie hat askew.

"Hail, O bashful bruin," cried the Master of Sinanju in greeting.

The bear had a crockery honey jar under one arm, and he lifted it over his head with both hands. He heaved it at the Master of Sinanju.

The spot where the old Korean had been standing was cobbled in plastic. The jar broke, and splashed a hissing, spitting white liquid onto that exact spot. The white paint browned and bubbled like a witch's cauldron. But there was no one there anymore.

The bear stared at the phenomenon, long jaw agape. He was still staring when the angry form of the Master of Sinanju came out from behind a growling tree and relieved him of his heads.

Both of them.

The goofy bear head sailed up and then returned, a falling spacecraft separating into two reentry vehicles: Bear and not bear.

Both heads struck the ground at the same time. The human one went splat.

The Master of Sinanju looked about him.

Beyond the Haunted Woods, perched on a low sawgrass hill, loomed Horrible House, its jack-o'-lantern shutters hanging askew. And waving to him from one of the windows was no less than Monongahela Mouse himself, his lollipop ears alert.

"Ah," said Chiun. "The famous mouse will point the way, for he is always helpful and kind."

"Director, the tall one has entered the Tom Thumb Pavilion."

"Hah! Did you see that? I spooked the little gook. I made Lincoln say 'Fuck you' right in his face. Remind me to have a fart function installed in the Presidential Pavilion. Not just sound, but smell too. I want every Chief Executive, with his own distinctive and identifiable gas!"

"Director, shall I load the alternate program?"

"Huh? What? Oh, right. Switch over."

"Switching over."

"It's a life of wonder, "A life of gloom, "We live a life of storms, "And a life that's doomed. "It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"That's not how the song goes," Remo muttered as he entered the Tom Thumb Pavilion.

It was dark, but there was enough light to see by. Remo ignored the cake-frosting trolley cars and walked the track.

On either side of him stood tiny scenes. Ballerinas. Fairy woods. A tiny ice pond with skaters. Eskimo. Tahitians. Bavarians. All nationalities were portrayed. It was a celebration of the diversity of life on the planet Earth.

And it didn't go with the music being piped in from hidden loudspeakers. At all.

"We have just one life "And one atmosphere, "A few brief breaths "And you're in your bier. "Because the grave is deep "And long is our sleep. "

"That is definitely not how the song goes," Remo repeated.

And then, as the maddening music swelled, the miniature scenes sprang to life.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

The ballerinas exploded.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

The ice skaters burst into flames.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

And the Eskimo family opened their happy mouths and began to emit a poisonously yellow smoke Remo knew wasn't exactly a cure for lung cancer.

He started running, dodging, ducking, as the maddening refrain repeated itself over and over again until he was tempted to throw himself into one of the death traps just to get it out of his brain.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"I know! I know!" Remo yelled back, as he wove his way through the deadly missiles.

The foyer of Horrible House was dark. Electric candles cast a sickly yellow-green light.

Hands tucked into the sleeves of his night-black kimono, the Master of Sinanju studied the room. This was plainly the entrance to the manor. The front doors had been opened for him, as if by unseen fingers. Yet there were no other doors, and the front portals had locked themselves after he had passed through them.

He lifted his voice. "Mongo? Mongo Mouse? Are you home?"

And the walls began to sink into the floor.

The Master of Sinanju looked upward.

A great crystal chandelier was coming closer. The cracked and cobwebbed ceiling loomed larger and larger.

His eyes warned him that the ceiling was coming down to crush him, but his inner senses told another story.

The floor was moving upward, carrying him with it.

Either way, the promised result would be the same. A crushing, ignominious death.

Chiun waited, face calm. The Master of Sinanju, Dispenser of Awesome Death, prepared to face death itself.

At the last possible moment, the ceiling split along its longitudinal axis and flew upward in two sections, taking the fixed chandelier with it.

The floor lifted the Master of Sinanju level with the second story of Horrible House, and he stepped off the settling platform.

He found himself in a place of death.

There was a coffin at one end of a funeral parlor. Around it, silently weeping mourners huddled, dabbing eyes with black handkerchiefs. All were turned away from him in their noble grief.

The Master of Sinanju cleared his throat out of respect for the dead. "I am looking for the Mouse of the house," he said solemnly, "and have no wish to disturb your grief."

At the sound of his voice, all heads turned-to show exposed bone and flaming eyes. Toothsome jaws dropped. Ghoulish laughter echoed off the crepe-hung walls.

And the coffin lid creaked slowly upward, impelled by a rotted purple hand.

"You are all dead," Chiun hissed.

The laughter returned, booming.

"And therefore you mock life," he snapped. "I will dispense with you all, shades of the living."

Sweeping in, the Master of Sinanju struck out with his deadly nails. They flashed and slashed through necks, impaled glaring eyeballs, and sliced at solar plexuses. All to no avail. The shades of the dead were insubstantial. They could not be harmed.

Eyes wide, the Master of Sinanju hurried from the room of the dead, slamming the heavy ironwood door behind him.

The next room was absolutely dark. Only the mocking laughter from beyond the door disturbed its vibrations.

But within a moment, a green witch was sporting along the black-painted ceiling.

She was a crone of rags and lank hair, her hat a black cone. She rode her ratty broom in furious circles that disturbed none of the quiet vibrations of the room.

The Master of Sinanju watched as, like a trapped bat, she swooped and climbed. This was beyond understanding. But even a creature of other realms could make a mistake.

The bottom of one long swoop brought her to within striking range. Chiun uncoiled like a striking viper.

His feet took him up, where he paused for a heartbeat. Then, with the witch about to veer away he unsnapped his coiled limbs and struck out in all directions at once.

The witch passed through him without harm to either of them and he dropped to his feet, discouraged.

"Look at him," the Director chortled. "He looks like he doesn't know whether to shit or go blind!"

"Director, the other one is successfully negotiating the Tom Thumb Pavilion."

"He won't make it. He can't."

"Take a look for yourself." The Director turned in his seat. His dead left eye, behind its patch, tried to focus by reflex. He cursed.

And when his one good eye had focused on the overhead screen, he cursed again and kept on cursing.

For there, moving like a figure in some nervous silent film, was the fruity man in black. Puppets exploded around him, or breathed thin lances of flaming oil, yet he managed to avoid every one of them.

"Where's the damned bear?" he growled.

"Cowering," Maus reported.

"Get him out there! Have him gun down that son of a bitch before he can get out the exit door!"

"Yes, Director."

"In my day, people did a day's work for a day's pay."

The Director returned to his screen. The tiny Asian man was looking around in the dark room, his figure as seen through the night-vision camera a greenish dappling of pixels.

"Agile little bugger, isn't he?" he muttered, reaching for a switch. He reset the control computer for Fatal Cycle, adding, "I've had enough fun with that little chink."

The entire floor dropped away under the Master of Sinanju's black-dyed sandals.

There was nothing for him to grasp and no time to think, so he did what his trained body told him to. He relaxed.

Limbs loose, he landed lightly twenty feet below in a chamber of rude stone. High in the ceiling the floor trap clapped shut, and in the sudden darkness yellow-orange cat's eyes blinked on at points high atop the walls.

These illuminated the grilled drains at ankle level, which began to gush cold water, quickly covering the floor in converging currents.

The Master of Sinanju watched the waterline creep upward. He was not concerned. It was only water. If it filled the entire chamber, he would simply float to the ceiling, where the trapdoor would surrender to his awesome skill.

And so he waited.

"Look at him! It's like he hasn't got a nerve in his entire scrawny body!" the Director complained.

"Perhaps he's paralyzed by fear, sir."

"Well, I'm going to unparalyze him. Here come the snakes."

They were water moccasins, and they eeled out of the lifting grates and twitched into the water angrily, wedge-shaped heads attempting to orient themselves to the unfamiliar environment.

When their eyes fell upon the Master of Sinanju's floating skirts and exposed legs, they arrowed toward them.

The water was now approaching the Master of Sinanju's tiny waist.

He could float if he so wished. He did not wish this, however. His hazel eyes watched the V-shaped wakes of the approaching banded brown vipers with mild interest.

And he began to stamp his feet in place, his hands still concealed in his kimono sleeves. He would not need his hands to discourage mere serpents.

The Director watched, aghast.

"The little runt is doing some kind of jig!"

Captain Maus came over.

"No, Director. Look at the blood in the water. He's killing the snakes with his feet."

"By stepping on them? Just like that?"

"So it appears."

"Who does he think he is, Saint Patrick?"

"Unknown, sir."

"Well, let him try kicking bull gators around then!"

The alligators crawled and splashed from the grates like khaki logs with stumpy legs. They yawned as they came, disclosing unkempt toothy ripsaw mouths.

By this time, the Master of Sinanju was afloat. His skirts hung low in the water, presenting, he knew, an attractive enticement to the reptiles.

So he dived down into the water to meet them on their own terms. One lacked a left eye. He came first.

There were three. They kicked and slashed about with their muscular tails.

A corded tail came around, and the Master of Sinanju blocked it with a pipe-stem wrist. The reptile, his sluggish brain reacting to the pain of its encounter, curled up in a ball and floated inert, one eye closed and the other a black pit.

The other two circled, legs flippering.

One passed close enough for the Master of Sinanju to seize its tail and arrest its progress. The grinning head snapped around angrily. Chiun tugged. The jaws snapped, and kept snapping. With the second gator in a mood to bite anything it encountered, the Master of Sinanju gave it a gentle nudge in the direction of its third saurian brother.

Soon the two gators were chomping one another to shreds, and the water was turning a rusty red.

When the bodies had floated to the surface, the Master of Sinanju mounted them and stood resolute while the upward-creeping water brought him inexorably closer to the trapdoor and freedom.

"He killed my gators!" the Director raged, pounding the console with one gnarled fist. Plastic buttons cracked and popped up from their settings.

"Calhoun isn't dead, just stunned."

"Screw Calhoun! I want that slacker turned into shoes! I fed him a pitbull a day to develop his appetite, and he couldn't eat one bite-sized Chinaman when I needed it!"

"His nationality hasn't been definitely established, Director."

"I don't care if he's a pygmy. I want him dead. And the other one too!"

"The Bear is about to take him down, Director. You might want to watch."

"Now you're talking, Maus!" The fist came down again, cracking the console top.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

Remo ducked under a buzzing biplane no bigger than a robin. It was wire-guided. When it struck a light fixture, it chewed it to pieces and bored on into the wallboard like an angry mole.

Another came, and Remo was ready for it.

He grabbed the wire, snapped it free, and began spinning the biplane around his head in snarling circles.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"Shut up," Remo said, sending the biplane in the direction of the incessant singing. It chewed into the speaker.

And to his surprise, the music stopped.

And another biplane dive-bombed him.

Remo snared it, and using the force of its flight, let it spin him around.

On the spin, he saw the hulking form of Mucky Moose step out from behind a replica of Big Ben and aim a pumpaction shotgun in his direction.

Both barrels blew at once. They destroyed the ceiling, bringing cascades of plaster and lath down on his antlered head.

But Mucky Moose no longer cared.

He was already on his back, the biplane's stainlesssteel propellor pureeing his heart muscle in the miocardial sac.

"Scratch one Moose," Remo said, pushing on the exit door bar.

When the water level had brought his bald yellow head to the ceiling trap, the Master of Sinanju, balanced atop two dead alligators, reached for the exposed hinge pins.

He used his right index fingernail to shear one and then the other clean off. They dropped into the water. The trap yawned, to hang down from its splintery lock. Slowly, like a rotting tooth, the weight began to tear the lock housing loose.

The Master of Sinanju couldn't wait. He took hold of the trap and whisked it into the brownish water.

Hands unseen in his sleeves again, he waited for the water to come level with the floor, then stepped off his saurian raft.

Each wall framed a door. He chose one, and passed through it.

The next room canted at a thirty-degree angle, and the one beyond also at a thirty-degree angle but on an opposite pitch.

There were no separating walls. The Master of Sinanju saw before him a long succession of twisted and canted rooms, like some drunken tunnel. Some boasted furniture on the ceiling and light fixtures bolted to the floor.

At the far end, he spied a familiar round-eared shape. It waved at him, then beckoned with a whitegloved finger.

"At last," murmured Chiun, starting along this grotesque path.

The walls were decorated with ornate mirrors, he saw.

Eyes alert, Chiun watched these as he walked at a thirty-degree-cant through the first room. He knew that mirrors sometimes concealed spying eyes-or foes poised to strike.

In the first room his sharp eyes detected the reflection of a green ghost, dressed in chains and rags, following him.

He whirled, prepared to strike.

There was no green ghost. Yet the mirror had shown one clearly.

He continued. And again, the green ghost appeared in the mirror.

Again, he whirled. And again there was no ghost.

Frowning, the Master of Sinanju went to the mirror. His reflection appeared undistorted. And behind him was a ghost.

The Master of Sinanju broke the mirror with a tiny fist, and when he resumed his progress he was not molested.

Passing into the next room he found himself walking at the opposite cant, but he shifted his inner balance as easily as a fly walking on a sheer surface. A mirror to his left showed clearly that a giant scarlet spider was stalking him. Yet the opposite mirror reflected a yellowish mummy, dragging his dusty wrappings.

This was an impossibility, he knew. He was being stalked either by a spider or a mummy. Not both. The mirrors each reflected one apparition, not two.

He stopped. The apparitions stopped. He continued. They followed. When the Master of Sinanju leaped into the next room and stood poised to defend himself, he saw that the room was empty of any shapes, of this world or others.

"What sorcery is this?" he muttered darkly.

Thereafter, as he passed through the crazy procession of rooms, he simply ignored the obviously bewitched mirrors and his progress was undisturbed.

In a room larger than the others, he encountered the mouse.

Chiun lifted his voice.

"Mongo! Hail, entertainer of children. I bring you greetings from the House of Sinanju."

Mongo spoke not a word. Laying a quieting finger to his licorice lips, he beckoned the Master of Sinanju to follow. Then he opened a secret panel in a wall.

"The Mouse has succeeded in drawing him into the Slab Room, Director."

The Director looked away from the screen, which framed Mucky Moose's quivering, defeated bulk.

"When he steps in, drop the ceiling on his head."

"The Mouse, too?"

"Mongo Mouse is immortal. He will never die."

"Yes, Director."

The Master of Sinanju stepped into the chamber and smelled death. It hung in the close air. It was in the walls, which appeared ordinary. The floors felt like stone under his sandaled feet.

And when the Master of Sinanju looked up, he saw that the ceiling too was stone, pitted and discolored where scouring hadn't managed to remove all traces of blood.

"You have lured me to this bitter place for a reason, Mouse," he accused.

The black-and-white figure of Mongo Mouse grinned starchily, and wriggled playful white-gloved fingers.

"Why do you not speak?" Chiun demanded.

The Mouse moved his head from side to side happily. But the Master of Sinanju could smell the sweat he exuded.

Then, the ceiling began to grind downward.

And the mouse spoke.

"No, No, Uncle Sam! I'm your biggest fan!"

"You are not Monongahela Mouse," Chiun said suspiciously, hearing the unfamiliar voice.

"Damn straight, I'm not," said the Mouse, removing his head and throwing it at him. Chiun caught it easily, his eyes stricken with momentary surprise.

From an unseen loudspeaker an angry voice demanded, "Mongo, put your head back on. You are out of character."

In an ugly voice the mouse called back, "The ceiling is coming down, Captain. I'll be crushed!"

"Then die like Mongo would die. With his wooden shoes on."

"Screw you!" said the mouse with a human head, pounding on the walls like a trapped rat.

In its inexorable descent, the rumbling ceiling scraped wallpaper from the walls and knocked portraits off their nails.

The Master of Sinanju turned and attacked the only visible door. Thick and built of heavy panels, it was now fixed and immovable. Stripping the hinges did no good.

Chiun selected one panel and, using a fingernail that had been hardened by diet and exercise, outlined it swiftly. The wood screeched in protest. He repeated the action. Long shavings curled and fell to the floor. On the fourth circuit the panel fell out, leaving an aperture large enough for a child to use.

Tucking the prized mouse head under one arm, the Master of Sinanju passed through it easily. On the other side, he called to the frightened mouse impersonator. "Reveal to me the name of your master, and I will allow you to escape this way."

The mouse turned, said "Huh?" and clopped toward the hole.

The ceiling had swallowed half the cubic area of the room by this time, forcing the mouse to stoop, then crawl.

"Speak now!" Chiun urged.

"Out of my way, you old fart!"

The mouse-man reached the aperture, eyes wild, and attempted to struggle through. He got his head out. That was all.

As the ceiling inched toward the floor, the mouse's human eyes and tongue protruded. He gagged and made strangling noises deep in his throat. Then the blood began to run from eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and something pinker than its tongue was forced from its mouth like an organic balloon.

Sternly, the Master of Sinanju watched the mouse in its death throes.

"So perish all imposters." Then he turned on his heel to go.

Chapter 18

When Remo stepped out into the cool, orange blossom-scented sunlight, he spied the Master of Sinanju looking wet and bedraggled as he emerged from the rear of a cartoony-looking Louisiana Gothic mansion.

"Small world, isn't it?" he said dryly.

"Pah! I have been betrayed by a rodent."

"Not Mongo Mouse?" Remo asked in mock-horror.

"He attempted to lure me to what he thought would be my doom."

"I see you got his scalp," Remo said, nodding toward the black cap the Master of Sinanju now wore proudly atop his bald skull.

Chiun adjusted the round-eared skullcap.

"I now wear the crown of Beasley World, so that none will dare to harm me," he said.

"Don't count on it. This entire place is a death trap. Further proof that the Beasley Corporation is behind the whole thing."

"A base lie."

"I hate to burst your bubble, Little Father," Remo said, "but check out the flag."

Chiun followed Remo's pointing finger. It was directed toward the Sorcerer's Castle. Its pennant-like flag chattered in the morning breeze. Its was white. The design inside was black. A black circle, adorned by two smaller black circles.

"Remember the flags we found underground?" Remo asked.

"Mongol" Chiun gasped in horror. "It is true!"

" 'Fraid so." Remo looked around. "The head cheese should clear this up. If we can only find him."

"I have seen nothing of Uncle Sam."

"And you won't. He's long in the ground. But someone's pulling the strings of this Punch and Judy horror show. My guess is it's the Beasley CEO, whoever that is. I can never remember his name."

The Master of Sinanju gazed about, his mouse ears like questing radar dishes.

"A chieftain might be expected to live in an edifice worthy of his domain," he said slowly.

"The Sorcerer's Castle," Remo said, eyeing its fluted spires. "Sounds farfetched, but at this late hour I wouldn't doubt anything."

The Master of Sinanju girded up his black skirts.

"Come, Remo. We will take the castle and wrest the throne from the wicked ruler."

"Come, Remo. We will take the castle and wrest the throne from the wicked ruler."

"Who are these buffoons?" roared the Director, pounding the console with his fist. It was becoming a wreck.

"No idea, sir. But Horrible House and the Tom Thumb Pavilion are no longer operational. We may not be able to open today."

"Of course we'll open! Sam Beasley World is open three hundred and sixty-five days a year, come rain, come shine."

"Not unless we can stop them cold in the next hour."

The Director stood up suddenly.

"Lure them into the Buccaneers of the Bahamas attraction."

"What good will that do, sir?"

"Do! It's the best damn ride in the park! And I'm going to be there to make sure those two walk the plank. Personally." He stood up, balancing on his silverfilagreed leg, and adjusted his eye patch.

"Yes, Director."

Captain Maus went to his microphone and began to issue terse instructions to the units in the field.

From every nook and crevice of Beasley World, they emerged. A kangaroo hopped out from behind a plastic toadstool and shoved his 9-mm Glock back into his pouch. A Transformed Tae Kwon Do Teen Terrapin popped a manhole cover and scampered down, leaving his scimitar behind.

Padded feet took flight all over the park. Every creature was headed in one direction.

"Look, Remo!" squeaked Chiun. "The forces of the treacherous mouse are in retreat before us!"

"Don't count on it."

"But they are fleeing."

"Looks to me like they're headed for the Buccaneers attraction."

"Then we will follow them."

"What if it's a trap?" asked Remo. "Not that there's any doubt."

"Then they will die, and you and I will enjoy the sights of the Old West."

"Old West?"

"Yes. The Buccaneers of the Old West. Wyatt Burp. Buffalo Beef. Catastrophe Jane. And the other slowpokes."

"I think you mean 'cowpokes,' and you're confusing buckaroos with buccaneers. A buccaneer is a pirate."

"Let us not dawdle, for the sun climbs high. Soon it will be High Noon, a portentous time for buccaneers."

Remo rolled his eyes and followed.

They approached the Buccaneers attraction carefully. It was in the shape of a galleon that had run aground on an elkhorn coral reef. A Jolly Roger flapped and chattered in the wind.

The greeters were jumping into the open cannon ports all along the ship's hull, which clapped shut after them. They ignored the tiny boats that sat in the water surrounding the mock-shipwreck.

"What say, Little Father?" Remo asked, when they came to the water's edge. "Walk or ride?"

"We are the rightful lords of this domain. We shall ride."

"It's safer to walk."

"A ruler who cannot pass safely through his own kingdom does not truly rule."

"You're the one with the mouse ears," Remo said, drawing a boat to the shore for the Master of Sinanju to step aboard. Remo climbed in after him and shoved off.

"I don't see any paddles," Remo said, looking about the gunwhales. The boat began to move. Remo went to the prow. He could see a submerged cable pulling them along. It dragged the boat around to the galleon's bow and passed waving mermaids on the shore. He returned to his seat.

A dark stove-in section of hull came into view and they were pulled into it.

As they passed into darkness, a mechanical jackdaw swiveled its beady eyes toward them and said, "Screw you jerks!" in a raucous voice.

The Master of Sinanju decapitated it with a piece of gingerbread ripped from the boat's stern.

Inside, they found themselves on a shakily illuminated underground stream. Fake rock walls reared up on either side of them. Indirect red lights shed a hellish, fitful illumination, bathing their frowning faces. Rusty, ill-smelling water lapped and sucked at the boat's knifing bow.

The the song began.

"Yo Ho Ho and a bucket of blood. . . "

"That is not how the song goes," murmured Chiun suspiciously.

"I don't give a hoot," Remo growled. "Anything to erase that other stupid song. I can't get it out of my mind."

"What other stupid song?" Chiun demanded.

" 'It's a short, short life, don't you know?' " Remo sang.

Chiun looked puzzled. "That is not how that song goes, either."

"Sue the management. I'm just here for the ride," Remo said sourly.

They passed under an overhang of rock, and a mechanical pirate lowered his stockinged head and brought an arm slowly toward them. The hand clutched an antique flintlock.

"Watch it, Little Father!" Remo warned.

A shot disturbed the air. The pistol blossomed in a flash of fire, and a hard round ball like a lead grape whistled past them, to punch a hole in a papier-mache outcropping.

As the boat slid by, Remo stood up and took hold of the pirate's head. He twisted. A spark flew out of the pirate's grinning mouth and when Remo sat down again, he was holding the corsair's glassy-eyed head.

The Master of Sinanju looked his question.

"Souvenir," Remo said nonchalantly.

"It is my pirate you have beheaded," Chiun said thinly.

"He might come in handy."

He did. They rounded a corner into a wider stretch of river and as the "Bucket of Blood" song swelled in their ears, they were surrounded by pirates.

They were stamping their feet to a mechanical fiddler crab sawing on a real fiddle, waving their muskets and flintlocks merrily. The weapons spat sparks and noise, but not balls.

"These creatures do not look like buccaneers," Chiun muttered. "Where are their half-pint hats?"

"I told you, you've got buccaneers mixed up with buckaroos. These are freaking buccaneers."

Suddenly the robots gathered themselves and, in synchronization, brought their weapons into line with the slowmoving boat and tracked it.

Remo brought the pirate head up in both hands and, from a sitting position, let it fly, like Wilt Chamberlain trying to sink a set shot.

The head struck the pirate captain in the face. Then there were two heads flying in two directions. Each struck another head, which in turn caromed off another. Within seconds the cavern was a chain reaction of mechanical heads rebounding in every direction.

Without their heads, the mechanical buccaneers and corsairs fired randomly, peppering the flimsy rocks and one another with grapeshot and lead ball.

A solitary head flew by their boat, forcing the Master of Sinanju to weave out of its path. It plopped into the brownish water.

"Not bad, huh?" Remo said with a grin, as they left the carnage behind them.

"One almost struck me," Chiun complained.

"It's been a while since I was on this ride," Remo said dryly.

Chiun made a wrinkled face. "This is terrible."

"You can fix them when we're done, okay?"

"That is not what I meant."

Remo lifted an eyebrow. "No?"

"This ride is a death trap. Therefore, impossible as it is to believe, what you have told me is true."

"Why is it so impossible that the Beasley Corporation is the culprit? They're Big Business. Anything's possible, when that much money's involved."

"It is not that."

"No?"

"It is that you were right," Chiun sniffed.

"Gee, when has that ever happened?"

"I do not recall," the Master of Sinanju said vaguely, as the tow cable pulled them from a stretch of darkness to another mechanical display.

This time, it was a depiction of a plank-walking. The plank jutted out in their path. Perched on the wavering tip was a fat merchant, his hands lashed behind his back. A freebooter in a red costume was prodding him with a cutlass. The merchant swiveled his head fearfully, his mouth agape.

As they came within hailing distance of the ship, every figure, including that of the terrified merchant, turned to regard them with unseeing glass eyes.

The freebooter took a step back and lifted his cutlass.

"Your turn," Remo prompted.

The Master of Sinanju came out of his seat like smoke from a hookah. His hands reached up to intercept the blade. It gleamed along its edge.

With both hands, Chiun reached around the wicked edge to grasp the pirate's cutlass arm by the wrist. He exerted little obvious effort, yet the arm, sword and all, came free, trailing multicolored wiring. It fell into the water and sank.

He returned to his seat and he and Remo ducked under the plank.

On the other side, they looked back to see the pirates hissing words at them.

"Fuck you! Fuck you!"

"Such language," Chiun sniffed.

"They're pirates."

"They swear like presidents."

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Look! Up ahead."

Remo's gaze followed Chiun's indicating finger. Ahead, bathed in a dancing red radiance, was a scene called FREEBOOTERS IN HELL, according to a crude sign.

Here, the pirates were getting the worst of it.

They were shoveling coal into mock fires, and being prodded by pitchforks wielded by plump green imps and a scarlet Lucifer figure.

"Looks like they got what they deserved," Remo said.

"I see no guns," Chiun pointed out.

"That's a good sign. They can't shoot us."

But they could throw pitchforks and hot coals-which they proceeded to do.

Standing up, Remo caught the pitchforks easily. He collected a handful with no more effort than if they had been stickball bats.

He sent them back the way they had come, impaling devils and the damned alike. Sparks snapped. Wires uncoiled, hissing.

The Master of Sinanju plucked the coals that fell into the thwarts of the boat with nimble fingers. A quick pinch with his fingernails and they sank hissing into the water.

"Nice try," Remo called back.

"Blow me," a pirate hurled back mechanically.

"Is it not 'Blow me down,' Remo?" Chiun wondered.

"Maybe they are buckaroos, after all," Remo said lightly.

"I will be glad when we come to the end of the trail," Chiun sniffed.

"No sweat. These guys aren't even in our class."

"The ride's not over yet," a raspy voice called out. "Remo!" Chiun squeaked. "Who spoke?"

"One of the marionettes."

"That did not sound like a marionette."

"I don't hear a heartbeat."

The Master of Sinanju listened. Among the echoing sounds-the whine of hidden motors, and the buzz and click of relays-there was no gulping pump of a human heart.

But there was a raspy breathing.

"I hear lungs laboring," Chiun said thinly.

Remo listened. "Yeah. Me, too. But no heartbeat."

"How can there be lungs where there is no heart?"

"Maybe we nailed a real pirate, and he's on his way out."

"The voice that spoke did not sound dispirited in that way," Chiun pointed out.

"You're right," Remo said, looking worriedly about. "It is kinda spooky, at that. And the voice sounded familiar somehow."

Chiun narrowed his eyes to slits. "Beware, Remo. I sense great danger."

"I hear you," Remo said. He was standing up, his hands loose at his sides. His thick wrists rotated absently, an unconscious habit he had in situations like this.

Chiun pointed past the bow. "Look, Remo! There he is!"

Remo had been watching their wake. He turned, saying, "Who?"

"It is Uncle Sam. We have found him at last."

Remo narrowed his eyes.

Where the false rocks piled up, a lone figure stood balanced on a shiny peg leg. He wore a green felt sea captain's longcoat. His hat was a black tricorne, made rakish by a purple ostrich plume and a white skull-and-crossbones staring back from the upturned brim. He wore an eye patch.

Other than the costume and patch, he was the spitting image of Uncle Sam Beasley, right down to the frosted brush mustache and twinkling grandfatherly eye. He offered a folksy smile.

"It is him, Remo," Chiun said in a hushed voice.

"It's another marionette," Remo shot back. "Beasley's long dead. I told you that."

"I detect lungs."

Remo listened, interested. "Okay. Lungs. But where's the heart? It's a marionette. The lungs must be a bellows."

"The sound is coming from Uncle Sam."

"It's a bellows. Maybe he's getting ready to exhale poison gas."

"Why would he do that?" Chiun asked.

"Remember last year, when they had to close this ride? Stuff got in people's lungs. I'll bet this guy's the culprit."

"Very astute," said the pirate, in a cold voice.

Chiun's eye went round. "He answered, Remo!"

"Crap," said Remo. And as they watched, the pirate slowly lifted a hand to peel off his eye patch. It revealed a dark cavity like the orbit of a skull.

"What is this?" Chiun asked uncertainly.

"Offhand, I'd say a buccaneer who doesn't know his right from his left."

Without warning, the dark socket exploded in a flash of searing light.

Remo and Chiun were caught unawares. The light seared their eyeballs. It was no mere flashbulb. Their pupils irised down protectively, saving their sight. Still, the pain was excruciating. It sent synaptic needles into their brains.

"Damn!" Remo said, clapping his hand before his eyes.

The Master of Sinanju did the same. He expelled an angry breath past clenched teeth.

Through their pain, they caught the dry ratcheting back of a flintlock hammer.

Remo called, "Dive, Little Father!"

His shout was drowned in a splash of water. Chiun, moving first. Remo followed him into the cold, brackish brine.

A ball whupped into the water and knifed past them, sending rippling shock waves that made them separate like frightened dolphins.

Another shot struck the boat, knocking a hole in its bottom. It began to sink.

Remo, struggling to gain equilibrium, let his ears take him in the direction of the Master of Sinanju. His eyes were still closed. They stung terribly, as if heated pins had been driven through them.

When his bare arms felt the watery vibrations that told of Chiun's nearness, he reached out blindly. And got a wrist that was like a pair of long bones covered in loose chicken skin. It struggled.

He held on. Chiun calmed down. Like two groupers under a coral formation, they waited, not inhaling, and exhaling only slow beads of carbon dioxide that would not be visible in the darkness.

They waited. Through the water, the "Yo Ho Ho and a Bucket of Blood" song continued its rollicking cadence.

Remo began to wish the other song would come back. At least it was kind of catchy.

When the pain had lessened and he could trust his reflexes again, Remo let go of the Master of Sinanju and shot upward like a submarine-launched missile.

He emerged from the water a foot from the rocky river edge, hung a moment before gravity could reclaim him, and then, like a cartoon figure, simply stepped from his vertical position to the papier-mache shelf.

Remo still couldn't see. But he could hear.

The marionette that strongly resembled Uncle Sam Beasley was still there, holding his smoking flintlock at the ready. The bellows sound and the smell of oldfashioned black powder told Remo that.

At the sight of Remo, it cracked a hideous grin and brought the long-barreled pistol in line with Remo's chest.

Remo stomped the papier-mache under his feet and it split.

This stand of the outcropping collapsed, taking the peg leg pirate figure with it. He cursed like a cutthroat as he went down. Remo didn't hear a splash. But the bellows sound went away. He figured the mechanical thing was finally broken.

Remo returned to the water and, taking Chiun's wrist again, began to swim, the Master of Sinanju in tow. Chiun had lost his mouse ears.

They negotiated the underground river by feeling their way along the supporting shelf of slimy stone.

When daylight lightened the inner pink of their eyelids, they knew two things: that they were outside the attraction, and that their sight was gradually returning.

Remo was the first to the surface. The Master of Sinanju's bedraggled head surfaced a second later. His hazel eyes were like knife slits in his wrinkled visage as he released a squirt of brown water from his mouth.

"I think I got him," Remo said.

"That was not Uncle Sam," Chiun muttered.

"That's what I've been telling you," Remo said.

"Uncle Sam would never try to kill us."

"Have it your way," Remo said, looking around.

Sound from above them caused Remo to look up.

They were under the galleon's stern. Leaning over the rail of the poop deck was a menagerie of popeyed trademarks.

"The natives are about to revolt again," Remo said in a low warning voice.

Chiun looked up. His tiny mouth dropped open. He lifted a raging fist.

"Begone, vermin! Begone from my sight, or I will have all your heads on posts!".

A Terrapin brought a shotgun to his green shoulder, and aimed it downward. His movements were fluid, not jerky. A man in a suit.

The Master of Sinanju vanished beneath the waves.

The Terrapin redirected his weapon toward Remo's head.

"He wasn't kidding," Remo warned, as the creature adjusted his aim.

Before he could fire, the Terrapin tumbled over the rail, shell-over-flippers, into Remo's grasp. He pushed the bright green head down and kept it there, simultaneously bringing a knee upward.

The Terrapin mask cracked and leaked a cloud of blood. Remo released the floating flotsam.

Others began to fall. They were coming off the rail simply because the galleon itself was capsizing. They landed all around Remo.

Remo went to work, breaking necks and shattering spines. In a moment, the Master of Sinanju joined him. His technique was simpler. Remaining underwater, he began pulling the creatures down into the water, to hold them there like bunched grapes.

One by one they floated back to the surface, muzzles and snouts downward.

"I think that's all of them," Remo said when Chiun had resurfaced.

"I do not see the head buckaroo," Chiun complained.

"He wasn't real."

"Neither are these," said the Master of Sinanju coldly, indicating the dead. "Yet they bleed like persons."

"Point taken," said Remo. "What say we hit the castle?"

"No."

"No?"

"We will enter my castle as the conquerors we are."

Chapter 19

The angry voice crackled over the loudspeaker.

"Damage report, damn it!"

"The galleon has been scuttled, Director."

"I know, you ninny! I was on it. I barely made it into the escape hatch in time."

"Three major attractions down, and they're headed for the Sorcerer's Castle. We have no greeters standing."

There was a pregnant pause over the connection.

"Order evacuation," said the Director, hoarsely.

"We're not opening, sir?"

"We're not staying! The lid is about to come off this entire base. We have to regroup. I'm moving B-Day up a day."

"I understand, sir. I'll blow retreat. What about Drake?"

"Tell him to play the goat."

"At once, Director."

Captain Maus punched the pound button on a telephone handset.

"Drake here. What the hell's going on?"

"No swearing in the ranks. You know the Director's feelings."

"Sorry."

"You've been watching?"

"With my Gumpy binoculars. This is a catastrophe. Half the attractions are in ruins."

"The Director has sounded retreat."

"Then it's over?"

"No. The operation continues. But we need time."

"What can I do?"

"Shield the Mouse."

"You can't be serious!"

"Shield the Mouse. Those are the Director's express wishes."

"He . . . he can't ask that of me! I've served him loyally!"

"Sorry. The Director's orders stand."

"But . . . but," sobbed Drake. "I . . . I was his biggest fan."

"And now he's asking you to make the ultimate sacrifice. You should be very proud."

"I . . . I am . . . !"

A sob broke over the loudspeaker before it cut out, leaving only silence.

Chapter 20

Every avenue in Sam Beasley World led to the Sorcerer's Castle. It was like the fantastic hub of a great architectural wheel.

An iron portcullis barred the entrance. The drawbridge was in the half-raised position.

The moat held real alligators. They splashed their tails in sluggish warning.

Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju and said, "I think we can jump it."

"I will not be seen jumping into my own castle!" Chiun said stubbornly.

"We can't stay here."

"We will not. You will leap, and lower the drawbridge so that I may enter in a manner befitting my suzerainty."

"Oh, come on!"

"No. You go on."

Shrugging his shoulders, Remo stepped back and took a running jump. At the edge of the moat, he gave what looked like a weak double kick. But he seemed to take wing.

Remo landed on his feet on the precarious edge of the drawbridge. Without pausing, he snapped out with the edge of his right hand. It shattered one restraining chain. The drawbridge quivered, but held. Remo went to the other chain and took hold of a fistful of links. He gave it a hard twist and the drawbridge slammed down, throwing up dust.

Remo was left hanging onto the broken chain. He released it and landed lightly on the still reverberating planks.

"How's that?" he asked, bowing and waving Chiun to enter.

Chiun frowned. "Was it necessary to break my chains?"

"You're welcome," Remo said sourly.

As they entered a stone-walled antechamber, they saw only suits of armor set in wall niches.

"I do not trust these guardians, Remo," Chiun said thinly. "Test their loyalty."

Remo went about, lifting visors. The suits proved to be empty.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"No," said the Master of Sinanju.

"No?"

"They are ugly and will have to be replaced." He swept to the winding staircase and mounted it on sure, silent feet.

Frowning, Remo followed.

There was a honeycomb of chambers clustered at the highest point in the castle. One door lay open. Remo approached it cautiously. Cautiously, because he smelled the fresh, sour scent of human excrement.

A body slumped over a long conference table proved to be the source of the unpleasant odor.

Remo went to it, pulled it up in its chair.

"That's the guy!" he said.

"What guy?" Chiun asked, examining the dead face.

"The CEO of Beasley Corp. Whatever his name is."

The man's mouth hung slack. Stuck to his back teeth was a bright pink wad.

There was an open pack of Mongo Mouse chewing gum on the desk, next to a pocket dictaphone.

"Huh?" Remo said. "Smell."

Chiun sniffed the dead man's mouth delicately. "Almonds," he said.

"Cyanide. That's probably what killed Zorilla, too," said Remo, picking up the dictaphone. He fiddled with the rewind button until the device began to whir. When it had clicked to an automatic stop, Remo thumbed on the play-back.

The familiar but trembling voice of the Chairman of the Beasley Corporation began to vibrate from the tiny built-in speaker.

"This is the full confession of Eider Drake, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Sam Beasley Corporation. It all began with our third quarter of fiscal 1991 . . . ."

"A confession," Remo said, clicking the device off. "I'd better call Smith."

Harold W. Smith was changing in the Spartan privacy of his Folcroft office. He had not gone home. He had not slept, except in catnaps in his well-worn executive's chair.

Dawn was breaking over Long Island Sound as Smith replaced his gray trousers with an identical pair. His wrinkled white shirt came off his back and he struggled into a crisp white one. A fresh tie replaced the old. He examined his gray vest critically. It was still serviceable so he drew it on, patting the watch pocket to make certain his suicide pill was still there. It was.

Finally, he drew on his gray suit coat and returned to his still warm seat.

America slept. On the TV screen a test pattern sizzled. It was, unfortunately, a Spanish-language test pattern: the red-white-and-blue flag of Cuba and the words TELEREBELDE.

Havana had not yet relinquished its grip on South Florida airwaves, and the networks were perversely repeating the transmission in a desperate attempt to grab ratings.

Smith knew, because the President had informed him, that a surgical strike on a Cuban broadcast station was under active consideration in the War Room of the Pentagon. It would be justified not only in the name of the sanctity of U.S. airwaves, but as a tit for tat over the failed Turkey Point attacks.

At the moment there was a lull. But by afternoon-evening at the very latest-the next escalation was certain to take place. It was only a question of who would strike first.

And from Remo and Chiun, Smith had heard nothing.

A knock at the door and Eileen Mikulka, Smith's personal secretary, poked her head in. She saw an oblivious Harold Smith, looking as if he had just arrived refreshed by a full evening's sleep. Knowing how her boss detested any intrusion when he was concentrating, she quietly closed the door.

She saw he was working at his terminal again. It had always puzzled her. Sometimes it was there. Sometimes it wasn't.

She wondered if her starchy employer liked to play video games. Not a sheet of computer printout had ever crossed her desk. What could he be doing?

The blue contact phone rang and Harold Smith took it up.

"Remo. Report."

"Ultima Hora is history," Remo said.

"Good."

"Zorilla's dead-"

"Yes?"

"So is Eider Drake."

"Who is Eider Drake?" Smith asked.

"Try punching him up on your computer," Remo suggested.

Smith obliged.

"Remo, the only Eider Drake I have is CEO of the Sam Beasley Corporation." And as it sunk in, Harold Smith's bleary eyes went wide.

"Remo! I promised Beasley World to Master Chiun!"

"No sweat, Smitty," Remo said cheerfully. "We've taken possession."

Smith's lemony mouth compressed into a bloodless pucker. His gray eyes took on an aghast look.

"Remo," he said tightly. "What about the mission?"

"Hey," Remo said. "After all the work we've done, don't we deserve a trip to Beasley World?"

"That is not funny!" Smith flared.

"Neither is what I'm about to tell you. Hold on to your truss, Smitty. It's been a long night."

"Proceed," Smith said, thin-upped.

"We didn't kill Ultima Hora. Zorilla did. He musta got the word from his superior."

"Understood."

"We followed him. He led us to an underground military-style complex that seems to be headquarters of the whole operation."

Smith let out a pent-up breath. "Good," he said.

"Maybe. Maybe not. The underground complex is directly under Beasley World."

"Impossible."

"We fought our way out and ended on Pleasant Street, U.S.A. Then the mice and ducks tried to waste us."

"Come again?"

"The place was booby-trapped. Every freaking ride. And every swinging tail had a gun. And you have a lot of explaining to do to Chiun."

"Never mind that," Smith snapped testily. "What about Zorilla?"

"We found him dead. Might be suicide. Might not. But Drake definitely took his own life. He left a taped confession, and a new reason why Mongo Mouse chewing gum is bad for you."

"Remo, you are talking nonsense."

"Both Zorilla and Drake ate a stick and it killed them," Remo explained.

Harold Smith paused to digest the storm of information swirling through his confused brain.

"Remo, are you certain of your facts?" Smith asked, more calmly than he felt. "Certain that the Beasley people are behind this?"

"Remember the one thread that ran through this? Uncle Sam?"

"Yes?"

"Think about it." And Remo began humming the annoying tune still in his brain.

"Uncle Sam Beasley!" Smith exploded. "My God!"

"Drake left a taped confession. I'll Fedex it. But we still have the problem of the military complex under the park. Someone has to fumigate it. Chiun says he wants the vermin out by sundown. And he's not happy about the state of the park. A lot of it got trashed in the fighting."

Smith's voice became urgent. "Remo, hold the tape up to the phone and play it back, please."

"Okay. Here it comes."

Harold Smith pressed the receiver tight to his ear. He listened. And as he listened, his eyes grew wide enough that they threatened to drop out of their sockets.

The sound stopped abruptly. Remo's voice came back on the line.

"Crazy, huh?"

"That was Drake's voice," Smith said, tight-voiced. "It's incredible. But I have to accept it." Smith cleared his voice. "Remo, do not lose that tape. It's the proof we've needed to take before the U.N. Security Council."

A dull boom came across the miles of wire. Smith heard a faint jangle of glass.

"What was that?" he demanded.

"Dunno. Let me check."

Remo's voice came back on a moment later. "Hey! Future Realm just blew up! It's on fire!"

"My park!" Smith could hear Chiun wail in the background.

"Relax. You were going to tear it down anyway, right?" Remo reminded.

"But it is burning!" Chiun cried.

Remo's voice came back on. "Smitty, I think someone's hit the destruct button. What do we do?"

Another boom came. This time louder. The crash of glass was a short symphony, ending in a tinkling timpany.

"Remo! Take the tape and get out of there as fast as you can! Report from a secure location."

"Gotcha," said Remo. "We'll-"

The line went dead, and Harold W. Smith went white as a sheet.

He composed himself and reached for the red phone. The President of the United States should have risen by now. This was going to be impossible to explain ....

Remo dropped the dead phone and turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"Smith says we're outta here. Now!"

"But my beautiful kingdom! It is under attack!"

"No help for it. Maybe Smith'll give you Beasleyland as a consolation prize."

"It is inferior," Chiun said distastefully.

"Tough," said Remo, snatching up the dictaphone. "Let's go!"

"Look! Remo, the villains are escaping!"

Remo returned to the window, now a jagged frame of glass.

At the back end of the park, trucks and cars were rumbling away. They were, he knew, escaping by means of the secret entrance through which they had penetrated the underground complex.

"We can't stop them by complaining about it," Remo said quickly. "Come on."

As they floated down the winding steps, the ground shook. A stone fell out of the wall, and mortar cracked everywhere. On the lower floors, the suits of armor were tumbling into inert piles of helmets and leggings and gauntlets.

They flashed across the drawbridge, above the panicky splashing of the gators. The ground under their feet felt strange.

Chiun looked around, his face dark with horror. "What is happening?" he squeaked.

"Feels like an earthquake," Remo said.

Then, in the exact center of the park, the ground cracked and began to settle.

"My park!" Chiun moaned. "The earth is swallowing my park!"

"It's a sinkhole! Let's get out of here!"

They ran for the entrance gate, as pavilions burst into flame or simply erupted skyward all about them. They dodged flying glass, uprooted trees, and once a sleek monorail car that rolled off its track and burst open like a loaf of bread.

As they ran, the spreading sinkhole edge followed them hungrily.

The entrance gates were already collapsing by the time they reached them, and they were forced to work around those.

The parking lots-there were acres of them-contained a few cars. Remo picked one whose color he liked and popped the ignition in jig time.

They roared out of the lot as the asphalt began to separate and sink, the victim of what the next day's Furioso Guardian would call "the largest sinkhole in Florida history."

"Anybody left in that underground complex is pressed ham by now," Remo said in a small voice.

Chapter 21

By the time they'd gotten clear of the spreading sinkhole, it was too late to do anything about the escaping convoy of trucks.

"But they are responsible for this travesty!" Chiun raged, shaking a tiny fist in the air.

"Can't be helped. Smith says he needs this tape."

"And my magnificent kingdom is burning even as we speak!"

"It's insured," Remo said. "Count on it."

"So?"

"For millions of dollars," Remo added.

They were driving toward the outskirts of Furioso. The roar of sirens filled the air. Fire trucks and ambulances roared past them, filling the air with an ungodly cacophony. There were even some crash vehicles from nearby Furioso Airport racing back toward the park. Beasley World was the heart of Furioso's economy.

The stricken look faded from the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled countenance. "It is better to build these things from scratch," he sniffed, seemingly mollified.

"We gotta find a hotel to park for a while," Remo said. "That is a good one," Chiun said, pointing east.

Remo looked east. He saw a tall white hotel. "What makes you say that?" he asked.

"It has a duck on its side. It is a good augury."

"Haven't we had enough of those? Ducks, I mean."

"One can never have enough duck. And I am in the mood for well-prepared duckling."

"Suit yourself," said Remo, taking the next exit.

The Podbury Hotel not only had a duck on its tower but a lobby filled with mallards, waddling about in an artificial pool. They shook water droplets off their down in the direction of a curious Master of Sinanju as Remo checked them in.

"Do not splash me," Chiun warned, stepping away from a spattering of water. "For I am in a foul mood. And hungry."

The mallards again shook their down in response, showering the Master of Sinanju's kimono.

Chiun quacked back at them, to no avail. He sounded like Dingbat Duck on an off day.

On the elevator ride to their room, Remo broke the bad news.

"No duckling on the menu."

"How can this be?"

"The desk clerk says that it would offend the guests who come to feed the lobby ducks."

"This is wrong," Chiun said huffily.

"Take it up with management. I gotta get this tape to Smith."

Abruptly, Chiun stabbed the sixth-floor button. The elevator instantly lurched to a stop and the doors slid apart.

"This isn't our floor," Remo pointed out.

"I must arrange for my trunks to be shipped from our last hotel to this one," Chiun said, stepping off the elevator. He turned and grazed the down button.

"What makes you think we're going to be here that long?" Remo asked, holding the door open with one hand.

"Why, I must supervise repairs to my Enchanted Village, soon to be renowned as Assassin's World."

"Give it up, Little Father. It's a crater now."

"Never," said the Master of Sinanju firmly.

"Suit yourself," said Remo, releasing the door. It closed, and the lift resumed its upward climb.

Remo entered his suite to find the phone ringing.

"Don't tell me Chiun maimed another member of the Hotel Workers Local," he grumbled as he reached for the receiver.

Before he could say hello, Harold Smith's lemony voice was saying, "Remo. Stay put. I am on my way."

"How'd you know we were here?" Remo blurted out.

"The hotel computer told my computer," said Smith, hanging up.

Harold W. Smith arrived at eleven-thirty sharp. He came into the suite carrying his ever-present well-worn briefcase. Not seeing the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Where is Chiun?"

"Said something about going out for a bite to eat," said Remo. "The tape's over there," he added, indicating a coffee table.

Smith picked up the dictaphone and let it run.

The voice of Eider Drake came, dull with shock.

"This is the full confession of Eider Drake, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Sam Beasley Corporation. It all began with our third quarter of fiscal 1991, when we realized that declining revenues, spiraling taxes, and unforeseen start-up costs for EuroBeasley threatened the foundation of the company. I knew something would have to be done. My thoughts went to Cuba. There, I knew, was the perfect location for a new Beasley theme park, if only the current unpopular government could be toppled. I established contacts in the Cuban exile community toward this end. I realize now that I overreached my corporate authority, brought ruin down upon the company, and harmed the great memory of Sam Beasley. This, most of all, pains me. I am sorry. The idea was mine. The responsibility was mine. And I must pay the price. Everyone else was just following orders. Good-bye."

The tape ended.

"Not much of a confession," Remo remarked.

Wordlessly, Harold Smith placed the dictaphone in a receptacle in his briefcase that also contained a portable terminal and cellular phone hookup.

"I have spoken with the President," he said, closing the case.

"Yeah?"

"He is incredulous, of course. But we have agreed that for the good of the country and to preserve the good name of Samuel Beasley, this . . . um . . . undertaking should never become public knowledge."

"Smitty, Sam Beasley World is now a sinkhole bigger than Rhode Island. How are you going to cover that up?"

"You have just explained it perfectly. It's a sinkhole. A natural phenomenon."

"Yeah? You heard the tape all the way through. It was disgusting. They were going to relocate Beasley World to Cuba, for crying out loud."

Smith rubbed his jaw. "Cuba was quite a resort island in its heyday. It is not so farfetched. Assuming they could seize control by force."

"Smitty, everyone who died, died for a theme park! Castro is trying to nuke us with one of our own power plants, because some suit didn't want to pay taxes!"

Smith frowned. "We will have to deal with the Beasley angle later. The crisis has not passed. A third MIG has been shot down. It's unlikely the Cuban Air Force will penetrate our coastal-defense net, but these continued provocations cannot go unanswered forever."

"This is crazy," Remo muttered, looking out the window.

"You seem troubled."

"I am. I grew up watching Sam Beasley on TV. A lot of kids were betrayed when Drake perverted the company. All I can think of is 'What would Uncle Sam say if he were alive to see this'?"

"Not important," Smith said flatly.

Remo turned, his eyes angry, "So that's it? You take the tape and tie it into a pretty ribbon?"

"Not quite," said Smith. "We must go through Utiliduck and destroy all evidence of the criminal conspiracy."

"Utiliduck?"

"That is the official designation of the underground command, control, and utility complex underlying Beasley World."

"Where'd you learn that? No, wait. Let me guess. Beasley's computers told yours."

"No. The complex is no secret, although off-limits to the general public. It is from there the attractions are controlled, largely by computer."

At that point the Master of Sinanju entered the suite, his hands concealed in his voluminous sleeves.

"Hail, Emperor Smith," he announced loudly, not stopping.

Smith nodded. "Master Chiun."

"Bestower of crumbling castles." And with that, Chiun swept into the other room. The door slammed.

Remo looked at Smith ironically. "Guess you're back in the doghouse."

"It will pass."

"Did you really intend to hand over Beasley World to him?"

"No," Smith admitted. "But I had to placate him. The situation was desperate, and Chiun can be exceedingly stubborn at times."

Remo raised an inquiring eyebrow. "At times? Next time you notice him not being stubborn, blow a whistle, will you? I'd like to take a photograph for posterity. But what are you going to do now? You're out from under the promise, but you know Chiun. He's going to want the moon if he's ever to work for you again."

Before Smith could answer, a mangled quack came from the other room.

"What was that?" Smith asked.

"Sounded like a duck," Remo said casually. Then it hit him. "A duck!"

Remo shot into the next room.

He discovered the Master of Sinanju in the act of squeezing the life out of a gasping, kicking mallard.

"Give me that!" Remo demanded.

Chiun clutched the wriggling duck's neck more tightly. "It is mine! It is dinner!"

"Did you steal that duck from the lobby pond?"

"What duck?"

"That duck."

Chiun looked injured. "It is a mallard. And it offered itself to me."

"It did not!"

"In return for a kernel of corn," Chiun admitted. The mallard was kicking its webbed feet violently now. Its eyes bulged.

"You lured that innocent duck up here? Children play with those ducks."

"I only took one," Chiun said in an injured tone. "There are many others for the children to play with. They will not miss this scrawny specimen, barely fit for eating."

Remo put out his hand. "The duck, Chiun. Now."

Grudgingly, the Master of Sinanju surrendered the now limp mallard. It began coughing quackily as soon as its slim neck had been freed.

Chiun turned his bleak hazel eyes in the direction of Harold Smith.

"This is what the head of the mightiest house of assassins in history has been reduced to," he said bitterly. "A vagabond existence, scrounging in low places for his next meal."

Smith adjusted the knot of his tie. "I am sure we can come to some accommodation, Master Chiun."

"I will not negotiate on an empty stomach. A caliph once locked himself into a stone chamber with Master Boo and won many concessions, because Boo could not stand the sound of his own growling stomach."

"I meant nothing of the kind," Smith said quickly.

"Did you bring my tape of the beauteous Cheeta?"

"Er, I forgot. Sorry."

"Another insult!"

"It was not meant that way," Smith protested.

"I could overlook it," Chiun said guardedly. "Perhaps."

"I would appreciate that, Master Chiun."

"In return for Beasleyland."

"Absolutely not!"

"Then a castle to be named later," Chiun said quickly.

Smith hesitated. Adjusting his glasses, his face grew reflective.

"Possibly," he said.

Before Remo could open his mouth to object, Harold Smith said, "Beasley World is thick with search teams and rescue trucks. We must move quickly, if we are to seize all evidence in this matter."

As they approached it, Sam Beasley World seemed more and more to resemble some fanciful lunar crater. Black smoke toiled upward, throwing the crumbled and drunken ramparts of Sorcerer's Castle into intermittent shadow.

The park was too big to rope off, but state police cars blocked the main entrance road.

Harold Smith offered a genuine-looking photo ID that said FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY in intimidatingly large letters.

"How bad?" he asked.

"A lot of bodies down there, sir," a trooper said respectfully. "No survivors so far."

"Good," said Chiun.

"Hush," said Remo.

"We're going to look around," said Smith.

"The area isn't safe, sir."

"We'll chance it," Smith said.

They were waved through.

"My poor kingdom," Chiun said forlornly, his button nose pressed to the car window. "It is unsalvageable."

"Too bad," Remo said dryly. "The world really needed an Assassin's World. Right, Smitty?"

Smith said nothing. His pinched face was grim. The carnival desolation was appalling. The summit of Star Mountain had fallen in and was smoking like a volcano.

Remo fell silent.

They found a flat place in the outermost parking lot and picked their way over the jagged crevices and upflung shelves of asphalt. All around them lay ruins. The ground had settled alarmingly. Phantom Lagoon had been drained of water, like a bizarre swimming pool. Monkey Domain was emitting a confusion of monkey chatterings and yeeps, evidently coming from tape machines all playing at different speeds-some too fast, some too slow.

Over by Horrible House-now a collapsed house of cards-rescue teams were extracting floppy bodies from a crack in the ground. None was human. A team of paramedics was trying to shock a seven-foot-tall rabbit back to life by applying electric paddles to his furry chest. They gave up when his long pink ears caught fire..

"Anybody trapped below when the ground fell in didn't have a prayer," Remo said quietly.

Smith asked, "Can you find the section where you emerged from underground?"

Remo led them to the disposal building that masqueraded as a fun house. It was in a quadrant of the park that was not as deeply sunken. They stepped in cautiously.

"We came up this tube," Remo said, indicating the pneumatic mechanism.

Smith peered down unhappily. "I am not sure I can negotiate this."

"No sweat. We'll give you a hand." And Remo cheerfully tucked a protesting Harold Smith under one arm. Paling, Smith closed his eyes.

Smith experienced a brief sensation of descent as Remo climbed downward. Then he found himself being set on his feet, as the Master of Sinanju stepped off the broken handholds in the side of the pipe.

Remo grinned. "How was that?" he asked, leading the way.

Smith straightened his coat and followed stiffly. He almost stepped on the body of Leopoldo Zorilla, but the Master of Sinanju assisted him around the tangled form.

At the broken end of the pipe, Smith endured the ignominy of being lowered by both hands to the polished white-tile floor, now shrouded in darkness.

He still clutched his briefcase, and from it he extracted a penlight. It whisked light about the long tunnel curiously.

"Remarkable," he said.

Remo and Chiun dropped lightly to his side. Remo said, "Follow me."

They walked.

Remo looked around. "Funny, this part isn't crushed flat like the rest."

"These walls are heavily reinforced," Smith said carefully. "It is my guess that this is not Utiliduck, but a secret wing."

"This is perfectly sensible," Chiun murmured.

"It is?" said Remo.

"All ducks have wings. Heh heh heh."

Remo rolled his eyes in silence.

They came to a sealed door. It resembled the guillotinelike entrance portal-a slab of steel plate, set in the grooves of a massive stainless-steel frame.

Smith's tiny ray found a magnetic keycard slot.

"Without a passcard, we cannot enter," he said.

"Wanna bet?" said Remo.

He placed his hands against the door, balanced himself on his feet, and pressed inward.

Nothing happened for some moments. Then Remo moved his flattened palms upward.

Smith clapped his hands over his ears to protect them from the interminable scream of tortured metal. The portal lifted, seemingly impelled by nothing more than the surface tension of Remo's flat palms.

When he had the door halfway up, Remo turned and said, "Slide under. I can't hold this thing forever."

Smith ducked under and in. The Master of Sinanju swept after him.

Remo gave the door a final lurch upward and rolled under the descending portal, which came roaring down behind him with a harsh, ringing clang.

The room was a nest of electronic equipment. Video monitors were lined up on overhead racks. Most were dead or filled with static. Tape spools gleamed. The console chairs were empty. There were no bodies to be seen, either.

Idly, Remo stabbed a button labeled TOM THUMB PAVILION.

To his surprise, a red light winked on and a set of reels began to turn.

Over the loudspeaker, a song warbled.

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"It's a short, short life, don't you know?"

"That is not right," Smith murmured.

Remo snapped the tape off, growling, "Tell me about it. Just when I got that thing out of my mind."

"What?"

"Never mind. It's been a long day."

Smith found another door. It was marked ANIMATION.

"Odd," he said. "I did not know the cartoonists worked underground."

They entered the door. It opened easily.

The room looked more like the War Room of a military base than an artist's studio.

In the center of a long table lay a topographically exact scale model of the island of Cuba.

"Here's your proof, Smitty," Remo said, indicating the walls with a wave of his hand.

Smith used his penlight. His brow furrowed at what he saw. Almost every square foot of wall space was covered with sheets of paper. Each sheet contained a drawing of some sort. They formed long rows of continuously depicted action.

"Odd," Smith said. "These appear to be storyboards."

"What?"

"Storyboards. Before they animate a cartoon, professional cartoonists work out the action in separate drawings, much like a comic strip," Smith explained.

"I say it's a War Room," Remo said firmly.

Chiun was examining the drawings critically.

"I do not understand this story," he said.

"That is because it is not a story," Smith said firmly. "These are the invasion plans for Cuba. Very clever. Instead of committing them to paper in text form, they worked them out as step-by-step cartoon illustrations."

"That is the goofiest thing I ever heard of," Remo said.

"It is not so farfetched," Smith suggested. "During World War Two, Sam Beasley loaned the government many of his artists for the war effort. They designed topographical models of Japanese-held Pacific Islands which were used in planning sessions, as well as socalled 'nose art' for bomber planes and camouflage details. He was quite a patriot."

Smith moved along one wall, following a line of drawings. They seemed to show a coastal area under invasion by waves of ocean-going military barges, while being defended by a large armed force.

"This calls for an amphibious landing at . . ." He went from the end of a row back to the beginning of the wall, to read the next tier of drawings.

Smith gasped. ". . . Zapata Swamp! At the Bay of Pigs!"

"Explains why Ultima Hora was training in a swamp," Remo said. "But why are these guys dressed like pirates?"

Smith came to Remo's side. His penlight followed the drawing sequence. In this sequence, the invading forces were standing up in their landing craft and returning fire. They wore costumes Remo had seen in the Buccaneers of the Bahamas attraction.

"This appears to be a secondary force," Smith ventured. "It is too small to be the spearhead for a fullscale invasion. But where is the main thrust?"

Chiun's voice piped up.

"Remo, if an animator is one who draws cartoons, what is a reanimator?"

"Huh?"

"What is a reanimator?" repeated Chiun, indicating the sign on another door. It read: REANIMATION.

Remo and Smith joined him at the door. It looked like a submarine bulkhead door. It was locked, accessible only by passcard. Or as it turned out, by a fist that packed the power of a sledge-hammer. Remo casually punched the door off its hinges. It rang for a good half minute, even after they had stepped over it into the room beyond.

The Reanimation Room was lit up like a hospital. In fact, it looked a lot like an operating room. There was an operating table, an autoclave for sterilizing instruments, a defibrillator for restarting a stopped heart, and other medical paraphernalia.

"Must have an emergency generator," Smith mused, thumbing off his penlight. His face in the harsh white light appeared puzzled and sharp.

"Maybe it's an emergency hospital," Remo suggested. "Like a MASH unit."

"It does not appear to be portable," Smith said. He followed his inquisitive nose to a long stainless-steel capsule that sat in a corner. It might have been an old-fashioned iron lung, except that it was completely enclosed and stood upright. There was a face-sized porthole on one side near the top.

"Bomb?" Remo wondered.

Smith checked the support equipment. Tubes and coils ran from the long chamber to a framework of gleaming, cylinders like oxygen tanks. They were labeled. One said OXYGEN. The others were labeled LIQUID NITROGEN. Various old-fashioned gauges were calibrated for pressure and temperature. The needles were dead.

Harold Smith stared at these a long time without speaking a word.

"You okay, Smitty?" Remo asked, noticing Smith's uncharacteristic stillness.

When Harold Smith turned around, his light-washed face was ghastly, his eyes sunken. "Remo," he croaked. "At any time during this operation, did you happen to encounter an individual who in any way resembled Sam Beasley?"

"Sure," Remo said brightly. "But I wouldn't call him an 'individual.' He was a marionette."

Smith asked in a dead voice, "A what?"

"A robot. You know, one of those animatronic things."

Smith let out a leaky sigh of relief, closing his eyes as if he had narrowly avoided walking off a cliff.

"It was no machine," Chiun inserted testily. "It was Uncle Sam himself."

At that, Harold W. Smith fainted dead away.

Chapter 22

Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta was nervous. He did not understand what was happening. All he knew was that he was being whisked into the pages of history. To his destiny.

It had begun with a phone call. From the man known as "Maus," to whom he had reported his strange encounter with the thick-wristed Anglo and the elderly North Korean less than a day before.

"Be ready to move," Maus had said.

"Move?"

"Today is Beasley Day."

"I do not understand. What is this 'Beasley Day'?"

"You have loaned us your Ultima Hora."

"I loaned my soldados to Zorilla, the patriot."

"Zorilla is dead."

"It is sad. He was muy Cubismo, much Cuban."

"But you are more Cuban," the flattering voice had said. "You are Cubissimo, the most Cuban."

At that, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta knew he was speaking to a comrade-in-arms.

The car whisked him to a pier, where a great cruise ship waited. The name on the stern was a well-known one. It read: BEASLEY ADVENTURE.

They took him up the gangplank, and two men in uniform escorted him to a stateroom. Their uniforms were white. Not army. Not navy. They bore simple insignia: three black circles in a white badge.

Somehow the men looked familiar.

"Do I not know jou?" he asked them.

"Si, " said one. And then Revuelta knew. They were Ultima Hora. His Ultima Hora. But they acted as if they no longer served him, but another.

"To whom are jou taking me?" he asked.

"To the Director."

"Director who?" he demanded, thinking that the CIA was run by a director. Perhaps they were secretly on his side, after all.

To that, they made no reply. Stone-faced, they escorted him to a cabin amidships and remained outside as he entered. It was incredibly hot in the cabin.

There was a figure seated behind a modest desk. He sat with his back to Revuelta, staring out a porthole at the blue sky. He wore some kind of a top hat. It looked black in silhouette.

"You are Osvaldo Revuelta?" the voice asked in a gravelly tone.

"Si."

"Soon to be President of Cuba?"

"Who says this?" Revuelta snapped.

The figure turned in the creaky chair. His whitemustached face came into the light. The man was old, his face a fist of kindly wrinkles. Osvaldo Revuelta noticed that he wore a white eye patch. He also wore a tall hat of red and white vertical stripes.

It was not a face Revuelta immediately would have recognized. Except that in the center of the eye patch was a black insignia. Three joined circles. The same as on the crew's uniforms.

That was all that was needed. "Jou are el Senor Uncle Sam!" Revuelta exploded. "But, Madre de Dios-jou are dead!"

The man stood up and assumed a grandfatherly pose. He wore a long frock coat. The cut of the coat seemed ancient. It, too, partook of the style of the American flag, Revuelta saw.

"You know," he said, in a chuckling tone that was at once professorial and folksy, "some people laughed when I broke ground for Beasleyland. But I knew what I was doing. I saw the future clearly. I knew what people want. They want escape. They want fantasy. And I gave it to them." He chuckled inwardly. "Simple as that. No secret to it."

"I do not understand how jou cannot be dead," Revuelta said, dull-voiced.

The old man went on, as if unhearing. "Vision. That's what it's all about. Vision. Take my work on radio-animatronics. Robots. An old idea. But I made it come to life. People thought I was cracked. 'Why spend the money?' they asked. 'Stick with rides,' they said. 'That's where the money is.' "

The caricature of Uncle Sam paused, and fixed Osvaldo Revuelta with his single good eye.

"You know who Paul Winchell is?" he asked.

Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta shook his head no.

"Ventriloquist. Used to be on TV. Had a dummy named Jerry something-or-other. Not the point. Winchell perfected a valve that to this day is used in artificial hearts. Not many people know this. Not many would believe it. But it's true."

"Si, I have heard of this. But what does this mean?"

The weird old man smiled under his frosty mustache. "I'm a futurist. Always have been. The problem with being a futurist is that you never live to see all your works bear fruit. So when they told me I had a bum ticker back in '65, I thought it was the end. But I wasn't about to give up. Not me. So I went to my Concepteers-that's what I call the people who work up my ideas-and put the problem to them. They're good people. At first, they wouldn't touch it. Out of our depth, they said. But when I fired the first few, the others got hopping. That was when I first heard the word 'cryogenics.' That's from the Latin. Means 'the science of super-cold applications.' They explained that if I was willing to be frozen alive in a liquid nitrogen bath, some day a cure for heart disease might be found, and I could be defrosted like a mackerel and fixed up good as new."

The old man chuckled reflectively. "At first I told them they were crazy. I'd rather be dead. Then one of them happened to use the phrase 'suspended animation.' Well, that rang a bell with me, as you might expect. So I said, 'Tell me more.' The more I listened, the more it made sense. I liked the idea. It had vision. But I'm not a man to wait. I said, 'I'll go along, but you people have to pitch in. Do your part. I can't wait for science. I have plans.' Good thing, too, because I keeled over a year later. Massive coronary. I never knew what hit me."

"Jou have been frozen all these jears?" Revuelta gasped.

"You got it."

"But-but there has been no cure for heart disease that I have ever heard of," Revuelta pointed out.

The figure in the Uncle Sam outfit opened his coat and shirt with a single gesture, exposing a wrinkled, hairless chest and a long purple scar over his sternum. He clumped out from behind the desk and stood on an ornate silver peg leg that ended in a rubber cap.

"Transplant?" Revuelta croaked.

"Have a listen," said the old man. Revuelta made a face. "Come on, I don't bite!"

Reluctantly, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta approached the odd figure. He placed one ear to the scarred chest.

"I hear no beating," he said in a strange voice.

"Animatronics," said the old man in a proud voice. "I own the world's first completely portable artificial ticker. They say it'll keep me going long past my hundredth birthday."

Dr. Revuelta straightened.

"Jou have an animatronic heart?" he gasped.

"When Winchell finds out, he's going to hemorrhage through that stupid dummy's mouth."

And Uncle Sam Beasley laughed his familiar grandfatherly laugh. But to Revuelta's ears, it sounded cracked.

Chapter 23

Harold Smith's eyes snapped awake. They looked stark as they flicked from the open face of Remo Williams to Chiun's stern visage.

"You saw Sam Beasley?" he croaked.

Remo shook his head. "A pirate. It only looked like Beasley. He had a peg leg, for crying out loud!"

"No," Chiun insisted. "It was Beasley."

"Bulldookey," Remo said.

Smith said dully, "I fear Master Chiun is correct."

"What?"

"Help me to my feet," said Smith.

Remo obliged. Smith wobbled unsteadily on his feet. He leaned against the stainless-steel cryogenic capsule uncertainly.

"Are you okay, Smitty?" Remo asked worriedly.

"Do you recall a popular story about Sam Beasley?" Smith asked in a dry croak.

"That he drew all his own cartoons?"

"He did," Chiun inserted. "Everyone knows this."

"No. That upon his death the company had his body frozen in ice and preserved against the day a cure could be found for his failing heart."

"Boy, I haven't heard that in a long time. That was a myth, wasn't it? People said he was entombed under Star Mountain."

Smith looked upward. "Unless I miss my guess, we are under what remains of Star Mountain."

Remo folded his lean arms. "So?"

"Remo, I am leaning against a cryogenic chamber designed to store a single human body in suspended animation," Smith said.

Remo's face acquired a strange expression. "Animation?"

Smith nodded. "The sign on the door says 'Reanimation,' " he pointed out.

Remo's eyes took on a look of deep horror. "You're not serious!"

"Remo, how many trucks did you see evacuating this installation?"

"For crying out loud!" Remo said plaintively. "This is Uncle Sam Beasley we're talking about!"

"How many?" Smith repeated.

"Six or seven."

"Hmmm. How many Ultima Hora soldiers were killed in Big Cypress?"

"Oh, twenty or so. Not a lot."

Smith frowned. He returned to the Animation Room, Remo and Chiun in tow, and splashed the drawings with his fading penlight.

"According to these," he said slowly, "a force of at least company strength is to be involved in the Zapata assault."

"That's what, a hundred men?"

"Exactly," said Smith, setting his briefcase on the tabletop model of Cuba. He flipped it open and lifted the receiver.

"Mr. President," he said after a brief pause. "This is Smith. I am afraid I have some bad news."

"Bad," groaned Remo in a sick voice. "This is terrible."

"I told you so," said the Master of Sinanju tartly.

But Remo Williams paid no heed. He was thinking that this wasn't over yet. He had wanted the guy who gave the orders to have Ultima Hora slaughtered. If Harold Smith was right, Remo was going to get his wish.

Smith completed his call and faced them stonily.

"The President agrees with my assessment of the situation."

Remo swallowed. "Which is?"

"You are to go to Guantanamo Naval Air Station. Immediately."

"Where's that?" Remo wanted to know.

"Cuba."

"You're sending us to a Cuban air base?"

"No, an American one."

"Since when do we have an air base on Cuba?" Remo demanded.

"Since 1903," Harold Smith said flatly.

Guantanamo Naval Air Station sprawled on the tail of the alligator shape that was the island of Cuba. It was surrounded by anti-submarine nets on the Guantanamo Bay side, and electrified fences, guard towers, and the largest mine field ever laid on the landward perimeters.

Hostile forces of the elite Cuban Frontier Brigade were picketed beyond the fence, always watching. Cuban aircraft buzzed this vast acreage daily. Other than by air or sea, the only way in or out was through a fenced-off corridor between the approximately fifty thousand antipersonnel mines.

On this, the second day of the Cuban crisis, no one was walking the narrow enclosure.

Navy Captain Bob Brown was explaining the crisis to his visitors as they stepped out of the C-130 cargo plane.

"Fidel's gone too far this time," he said bitterly. "I've skippered this place ten years now. It's never been this bad. Never!"

Remo looked past the airfield. "Gitmo"-as the captain had called it-was bigger than he'd imagined. It also looked pretty peaceful for a base that was, after all, in the middle of an enemy nation. He spotted a church steeple, nice homes-even the golden arches of a McDonald's.

"I don't see any trouble," said Remo, as they climbed into a waiting jeep. The captain drove.

"They blockaded our front gate!" he said savagely. "Nobody can go in or out. And we're on Water Condition Bravo."

"How bad is that?"

"How bad? I'll tell you how bad. The desalinization plant it on the fritz. There's been no water for the fairway for three weeks straight, and we're down to doing the wash on alternate days."

"Fairway?"

"We're blessed with an eighteen-holer. How do they expect us to defend democracy, if we can't break the monotony with a few rounds now and then?"

"Listen Captain-"

"Skipper. Call me Skipper. Everybody calls me Skipper."

"Let's get back to the security problem," Remo said.

"Problem? It's an unmitigated disaster! They've always allowed our Cuban help to pass through the front gate freely. The wash is not only backed up for lack of water, but we don't have anybody to do it." He plucked at his uniform. "Look at this. Wrinkled worse than my granny's face. And the fairway! The shade trees are dying. Ever try to play through eighteen holes without benefit of shade? It'll throw you off your game quicker than dysentery."

Remo was sitting beside the captain. He used his foot to press the captain's boot onto the brake. The jeep lurched to a halt. Remo grabbed the captain by the throat and squeezed.

"Listen," he bit out. "I'm only going to say this once. Never mind who we are. We represent the highest authorities. Got that? They sent us here to do a job. Out beyond the fence. Are you with me so far?"

Remo allowed the man a sip of air. It went whistling in past his larynx and came out a strangled grunt.

"I'll take that as a glimmer of understanding," said Remo. "Now, we don't have a lot of time. Take us to the entrance gate, and we'll leave you to your miserable existence."

Navy Captain Bob Brown went pale. His eyes seemed to retreat into his head. Remo encouraged him with a squeeze, then released him.

The captain got the jeep going. It went racing past a crushed-coral golf course dotted with wilting mango trees, toward a line of guard towers manned by sharpshooters. Beyond were purple mountains and scooting fluffy clouds.

Moments later, the jeep pulled up at the inner-perimeter fence. There were triangular red signs that warned:

DANGER/PELIGRO MINES/MINAS

"I take it this is the famous minefield," Remo said.

"Yes, sir."

"Don't 'sir' me. I'm a civilian." Remo spied a long thin dirt path through the field. Hurricane fences paralleled it.

"That the way out?" he asked.

"They've threatened to shoot anyone who sets foot on it," Captain Brown offered.

"They say anything about walking through the minefield?"

"No. But that's certain death."

"Only if you step on a mine," said Remo. He turned in his seat and said, "Coming, Little Father?"

The Master of Sinanju stepped from the vehicle. His face was tight.

"I do not like this assignment."

"You've been saying that all through the plane ride. Give it a rest."

Captain Brown looked interested. "You guys here to smoke Castro by any chance?"

"Hear hear," Chiun said.

"He wishes," Remo grumbled. "But orders are different this time out. We gotta protect him."

"From who?"

"Believe me, you'll sleep better if you don't know."

They started toward the minefield.

The captain called after them, "Hey, good luck! This base may have its down side, but there's no drugs, no guns, no juvenile delinquency, and no crime. I'd hate to be evaced to the States. It's not safe up there."

Chiun frowned. "I do not understand this lunacy." "What lunacy?" asked Remo, as they approached the minefield fence. "The lunacy of being sent to protect Castro, or the lunacy of the skipper back there?"

"Both lunacies. If this bearded tyrant rules this island, why does he suffer the presence of his enemies? And if he is so weak as to allow this, why does Emperor Smith not simply have us dispatch him?"

"Politics are complicated."

"But death is the great toppler of dynasties."

They went to a gate in the minefield fence, and Remo sheared the padlock off with a sweep of his hand. He threw open the gate.

"Ready?" Remo asked.

Chiun nodded.

They walked into the minefield.

It was not as dangerous as it looked. For mines to be planted, soil has to be removed and repacked. No one who digs a hole and puts something in it ever gets all the soil back into the hole. That was certainly the case here. Rains had tamped down the loose soil around the mines. This wasn't noticeable to the naked eye, but as Remo and Chiun's feet inched through the minefield, their toes could feel the slight sponginess of the softer earth. Each time they encountered a spot of less resistance, they stepped around it.

By meandering through the hard-packed ground surrounding the mines, they reached the outer fence. It hummed. Electrified.

This presented a problem. Until Remo, using a spade-shaped hand, excavated a buried mine. He blew crumbs of moist soil off the top and placed it in a small depression the Master of Sinanju had cleared under the fence edge.

Then they retreated to a safe distance and threw a rock.

It struck the plunger. The mine made a surprisingly muffled boomlet . . . and there was a hole in the fence, like a torn sheet of paper.

They slipped through this hole easily.

Then the snipers of the Frontier Brigade, who had been watching in wide-eyed fascination, began to open fire.

It was lucky they did so. The first bullets missed Remo and Chiun completely. But they triggered mines placed on the other side of the perimeter fence.

"That idiot never said anything about another minefield!" Remo burst out.

"Perhaps these are Cuban mines," said Chiun.

A mine erupted a few yards in front of them, showering them with clods of dirt.

"Great," muttered Remo. "We're sitting ducks."

"Not if we keep our wits about us," said Chiun, bending down to scoop out a long-buried mine. It was gray, and shaped like a soup can with antennae.

He threw it. The mine, tumbling, sailed toward a royal palm tree, where a lone sniper was perched.

It landed, plungers down, in the swaying fronds. The top of the palm jumped apart. Palm fronds, rifle fragments, and assorted human limbs and organs showered down. The stone-gray bole now sported arty red stripes.

"Good thinking," said Remo.

Together, they excavated mines and tossed them at muzzle flashes. Before long, they had decapitated every palm in sight and cleared a lot of brush.

When the firing had stopped completely, they picked their way through the mines. It was easy, this time. The snipers had cleared most of the mines for them.

They found a jeeplike Russian-made Gazik vehicle, keys still in the ignition, and commandeered it. No one stopped them.

"Okay, on to Zapata Swamp," Remo said grimly.

"I am not looking forward to this," Chiun said thinly.

"I know what you mean."

"I have no desire to be the one to slay the illustrious Uncle Sam Beasley."

Remo said nothing, but he was thinking the same thing himself.

And he knew that before the day was done, he might have to kill his childhood hero in the name of his country. The thought made him sick to his stomach.

Chapter 24

The President of Cuba puffed angrily as he stared out his office window. He had to be very angry, to puff in full view of the masses below. For he had sworn to them that he had given up his cherished cigars, as a token of the new Cuban smoking-prevention program he himself had inaugurated amid much fanfare.

He had said it was for the health and well-being of his beloved Cuba. It took him four hours of passionate speechmaking to get his point across, appealing to the people's pride, their patriotism, their concern for their precious Socialist lungs.

In fact, the program was a blind to cover the sad fact that the tobacco crop had failed miserably, leaving only enough for the people to smoke their cigarettes-or Fidel his magnificent cigars.

That had been an easy choice. He would never give up his cigars. He would sooner shave his beloved beard.

An adjutant came in, gasping.

"Another MIG has been shot down!"

"Bah! Send another!"

"But El Lider, we have no more petrol to fuel them!"

El Lider turned angrily, puffing like a steam shovel.

"Then siphon some from my personal helicopter, dolt!"

The man saluted smartly. "At once, El Lider!"

An orderly came in a moment later. Fidel knew it was an orderly, because they were required to call him El Presidente. Each rank of subordinates was restricted in the manner in which they could address him. His women invariably called him El Guapo Grosso.

"El Presidente!" gasped the orderly.

"What is it now?"

"A ship has been sighted bearing toward Havana Harbor."

The Maximum Leader turned from the window curiously. "What ship?"

"An American vessel."

"A warship?"

"No. A cruise ship. It bears the name Beasley Adventure."

"Beasley! El Sam Beasley?"

"Si, El Presidente."

The Maximum Leader of Cuba took his cigar from his bushy mouth and grinned fiercely. "He made mucho gusto cartoons in his day!"

"Si, El Presidente. I personally am a fan of Dingbat Duck."

"Bah! He is nothing beside the pure flame that is Monongahela Mouse. A mouse after my own heart, that one! Now, as for this matter: The stupid capitan must be lost. Capture that ship! We will ransom it."

"Si, El Presidente."

In the filthy waters off Havana Harbor, Cuban gunboats surrounded the Beasley Adventure, like minnows around a basking shark.

The captain of the flotilla lifted a megaphone to his mouth and shouted up.

"Prepare to be boarded, or jou will be blown out of the water!"

It was a colossal bluff. If a firing squad hadn't been the reward for disobedience, he would never have been so audacious as to risk it.

To his surprise, a white-uniformed captain leaned over the rail and shouted down through a megaphone of his own. It was quite powerful. It nearly blasted the Cuban captain's hat off his head with just two words.

"We surrender!"

"Jou will follow us to Habana Harbor!" the captain shouted back.

"Understood!"

And like a tamed and beaten Moby Dick, the leviathan cruise liner Beasley Adventure fell in behind the scooting gunboats.

All along the decks, Cuban naval guns fired into the air in joyous celebration.

The captain shared in none of it. He licked his lips in worriment, as the crumbling gray lines of Morro Castle loomed ahead.

"This is too easy," he muttered.

Chapter 25

The sun was setting in the turquoise expanse of The Bay of Pigs when the first low shapes appeared on the horizon.

First there was but one.

Faustino Barranca, of the Cuban Territorial Troops Militia, saw it through the crimson haze of the setting sun, as if in a dream. He had been grilling alligator meat for his dinner. Since Option Zero, Faustino had personally thinned the alligator population of Zapata Swamp, overlooking the historic Bay of Pigs. It wasn't particularly tasty, but it was better than banana-rat stew.

He had been told of the failed U.S. incursion. All Cuba knew of it. It worried the people greatly, because El Loco Fidel had used it as an excuse to attack Florida. Unsuccessfully, it was true. But the rumors were that he would not give up until he had struck the Colossus of the North a mortal blow.

Everyone knew that the result of this insanity was beyond question: a small crater in Florida-and all of Cuba an inferno.

No one doubted the rationale for this. Socialism was failing. Cuba was crumbling. Castro would fall one day. He was not a man to fall gracefully. Not with his monumental ego.

The Maximum Leader would rather see armageddon, the utter destruction of Cuba, than accept the humiliation of political defeat.

So when the barges began to appear in the dancing red reflections on the Caribbean, Faustino threw sand on his roasting fire to quench it and gathered up his Dragunov sniper's rifle. If these were the Americans, it could only mean that Fidel had succeeded-and Cuba was as good as toast. He wept silently.

The barges grew in number, until they were strung out along the Bay like dark bars of soap.

From low superstructures, dishlike shapes revolved. Their designs were familiar, yet not. As he watched, Faustino came to recognize the odd configuration of three joined discs.

He blinked. "Mongo?"

Then the uniformed figures seated low in their seats stood up in unison. In perfect synchronization, they turned as one.

Rifles snapped to bulky shoulders. It was perfect. Not a man was out of order.

And as if a single button had been pressed, the murderous automatic weapons fire began to rake Zapata Swamp.

Faustino flung himself into the mangroves. He had no choice now but to return fire. He was a sharpshooter. And he was good.

With his eye to the scope, he selected a soldier. The cross hairs lined up with the silhouette of his head, and Faustino squeezed the trigger.

The dark head exploded on its shoulders.

Faustino grinned through his sweat and fear. He had scored a direct hit with his first shot!

Then he laid his eyes against his scope again . . . and saw that the man he had shot, the headless man, was still firing. Firing without a head!

Faustino was so shocked by this sight that, unnerved, he jumped to his feet, the better to see this incredible thing.

A stitchery of bullets violently sewed his tunic to his chest and Faustino Barranca was flung into the mangrove tangle where the alligators would later find in him a tasty snack.

Mouse-eared radar dishes whirling, the amphibious barges came on. Firing relentlessly. Without mercy. Without surcease.

Not even when the rumbling T-64 Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces tanks came, and began to return the withering fire.

"What manner of soldados are these?!" the tank commander cried. For he saw through his binoculars men without arms, without heads, shattered and broken, yet still firing. Some wildly, others with unerring aim. "They are like machines, not hombres!"

Chapter 26

The Maximum Leader of Cuba was beside himself. The first reports from Zapata Swamp were incredible. A sea armada. Soldiers who continued to fire even as they were being blown to pieces.

He would have ordered the man who brought him the message shot for intoxication on duty, but the only alcohol on the entire island was safely housed in his private wine cellar.

"Our forces are being decimated, El Jefe!" The man was a major, so he was allowed to call him that. "Only your heroic presence will rally them!"

"Good thinking. Order my private helicopter to be readied. The one with the custom bar."

"But El Jefe, there is no petrol! It has been siphoned into a MIG, as per your instructions!"

Maximum Leader glowered. "Then summon the MIG back. We can bomb the nuclear plant later."

"It is too late, El Jefe! The MIG has been destroyed! Shot down!"

"Then we will drive to Zapata Swamp!" he bellowed. "Make it so!" he added, borrowing a line from his favorite American TV show.

"At once, El Jefe!"

Then another flunky came running in, with the news that the Beasley Adventure had been forcibly docked at the rusting oil terminal in the harbor.

"Has it been boarded yet?" he demanded.

"No, El Presidente."

Fidel struck a pose. "Good. Good. For I must be the one to board it personally."

"But El Jefe," the first man asked worriedly, "what of the Zapata incursion?"

"Order all forces mobilized to repel that cowardly assault. Hurl the Yanquis back into the bay. I have more important things to do."

"But ... but-"

"Go, do it!"

To the hovering orderly, he hissed, "Is Mongo on board?"

The orderly shrugged. "I did not see him, El Presidente."

"He will be aboard. For he is ever-present. I look forward to meeting him." The President drew on his campaign cap. "Let us go."

His personal customized Gazik whisked the Maximum Leader of Cuba from the Presidential Palace to the oil terminal. Traffic, normally light in these petroleum-starved times, was extraordinarily heavy. All of it consisted of military vehicles mobilized for the drive to Zapata Swamp. And all flowing in the opposite direction-gut of Havana.

Cuba's leader was oblivious to the massive response to his all-powerful orders. A beaming grin struggled past his dark profusion of beard. He was looking forward to this rendezvous very much.

After all, he was Mongo Mouse's biggest fan.

Chapter 27

Remo Williams had been supplied a detailed map of Cuba by Harold W. Smith. It showed all highways, significant roads and military installations, and mileage distance between. A big red circle indicated Guantanamo Naval Air Base and another highlighted Zapata Swamp, with a fat red line connecting the two.

Smith, after he had drawn the red parts, had pronounced the map foolproof.

Unfortunately, he had overlooked the fact that the map was a product of the nation's brief flirtation with the metric system. Mileage was given in kilometers.

"We're lost," grumbled Remo, who didn't know a kilometer from a kiloton. It was a balmy night in Cuba. The royal palms swayed in the breeze, like hula dancers with shaggy heads, as he tried to read the tiny mileage numbers by moonlight.

"How can we be lost?" Chiun said plaintively. "You have the Emperor's personal map."

"It's in kilometers. I only know miles."

"I have told you that you should be acquainted with all tongues," Chiun sniffed.

"Give me a break! The kilometer isn't a verb. It's a unit of measure. A stupid, useless unit of measure. I figure we've come thirty miles. What I want to know is, how many kilometers is that?" He looked toward a nearby city. "If that's Sancti Spiritus, we should take the left-hand road. But I don't see any signs saying it is."

"Even if you did," Chiun sniffed, "it would not help you, who cannot read elementary Spanish."

"I can read signs," Remo said defensively.

"If that is so, why can you not read a simple plan, on which circles and lines have been drawn for you in crayon? A child could follow that map."

Remo got the Gazik in gear, saying, "It's not crayon. It's Magic Marker."

Chiun sniffed. "An American crayon. There is no difference."

They received a lot of attention as they barreled along. Natives of amazingly varied skin colors waved to them as they passed.

It was crazy, but Remo took a chance and stopped.

"Sancti Spiritus?" he asked a roly-poly woman who looked amazingly like Aunt Jemima, pointing to the left-hand road. She was carrying her wet wash bundled on her head.

"Si, si, " she said pleasantly.

Remo threw her a gracias and took the left fork with confidence.

"The natives are unaccountably friendly," Chiun remarked.

"Or dumb as posts," Remo muttered. "We could be Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell, for all they know."

Behind them they heard a low roar, growing louder as it came closer. They looked back and saw a mechanized column approaching at a high rate of speed.

"Uh-oh," said Remo, pulling over to the side of the road. They got their vehicle into some brush and waited for the convoy to pass.

It was big. And long-consisting of T-64 tanks, BMP armored vehicles, and lurching Gaziks like their own. There was also a flock of military bicycles.

"They appear to be in a hurry," said Chiun, peering through rank foliage.

"I wonder," Remo muttered. "Could they be going where we're going?"

"If that is so, the attack has begun."

Remo got the stubborn engine going. "Let's follow them."

They shot out of the brush and fell in behind the column. Fortunately the roads were of hard-packed dirt, and the long tunnel of dust the convoy was generating was more than enough to conceal them.

At a major fork in the road the convoy encountered another and, after some argument over who would get to lead the march, formed one long olive-green line. A few miles along, the long convoy absorbed another.

Overhead, a lone observation helicopter sputtered along, heading north. It seemed to be running on empty.

"We may be too late," Remo said darkly.

By the time the swamp-stink had begun to tickle their sensitive noses, they could hear the sound of automatic weapons fire, punctuated by the relentless boom-boom-boom of artillery pieces and 125-mm tank cannon.

"We're too late!" Remo snapped. He was standing up in his seat, trying to make out the scene through the haze of gunsmoke and roiling oil smoke.

"What do you see?" asked Chiun, straining unsuccessfully on tippytoe.

"I see barges out in the water. They're taking a pounding."

"Is this good or is this bad?" Chiun wanted to know.

Remo had to think about that a minute.

"It's good for our mission, I think," he said slowly. "But it's bad for Cuba."

"Is it good for the bearded tyrant, the preempter of beauty and joy?" asked Chiun. Remo's brow puckered. "Yeah. Dammit, it is."

Chiun's face darkened. "There is no justice."

"Let's see if we can't scare up our own," Remo said, dropping into the seat and sending the Gazik bumping and jouncing along the rough terrain.

As they drove, their tires popped the swarms of fleeing red crabs, with a sound like a symphony of flat tires.

When they had reached the edge of a vast swamp, they jumped out and climbed a hillock.

They had a panoramic view of the Bay of Pigs. The barges were as thick as ice cakes in an Arctic sea. As they watched, men in old-fashioned pirate costumes shouted in Spanish and swept the defenders strung along the swamp with concentrated fire. Remo recognized a few choice curses.

A number of barges had run aground and been blown up in the mangrove tangle. They were littered with heads and limbs and other body parts. There was no visible blood on the wrecked amphibious barges.

But they did notice the radar dishes shaped like Mongo Mouse heads.

"Why do they need radar?" Remo wondered.

"Because they are blind," said Chiun.

Remo looked down at the Master of Sinanju blankly. "Try me again, Little Father?"

Chiun beckoned for Remo to follow. Remo complied.

They came down the hillock, as the bullets and shells whistled all around them. They slipped down to the moonlit water and waded through the mangroves, which resembled multi-legged trees attempting to rise up out of the water.

They worked their way to one of the half-sunken barges.

"Behold!" cried Chiun, dragging a corsair off the rail where he had been slumped. His body ended at the waist, tapering into a male electronic connection the size of a fireplug.

Remo grunted. "Hey, this guy's animatronic!"

"All are," said Chiun. "This is why they need mouse heads to tell them where to point their boomsticks. "

Remo looked out across the darkling Bay of Pigs. The pirates in the barges, some standing, some sitting, were firing in precise controlled bursts, stopping to reload with the same jerky economy of motion as a factory robot designed to fill empty cans with sliced peaches.

"I don't see any live guys," Remo said.

"There are none," Chiun said.

As they watched, a barge passed more or less unscathed through the murderous fire and coasted toward them. They slipped down until the rank water lapped at their lower eyelashes.

The barge nudged a mangrove clump, splintering it. The pirates, seated, continued to fire mechanically, while the mouse-head radar-with one ear blown off-continued its back-and-forth rotation.

"They're not getting out," Remo whispered, lifting his mouth free of the water to speak. He was not fired on.

"They are not created to perform that task," Chiun agreed. "For they have no legs."

"So what's the point? They can't take the beach-I mean, swamp. And the first rule of invasion is: grab a piece of land and hold it."

Chiun frowned.

"This is not the invasion," he said.

"Well, they're doing a bang-up imitation."

"This is a diversion," said Chiun.

"Maybe it's just to soften up the Cubans until the main force arrives," Remo suggested. "Remember Ultima Hora?"

"There is one way to find out. And that is to end this charade now."

With that, the Master of Sinanju porpoised into the water and swam toward the grounded barge.

Remo, ducking, followed.

Chiun floated under the barge and scored a circular hole in the flat-bottomed hull with one long fingernail. He tapped the circle with a knuckle. It popped in like a soup can lid.

The barge quickly filled, and they watched it as it sank. The pirates-and a ragtag crew they were-continued to fire as they sank. They gave off bluish-green sparks as water found their electronic components, and their guns sputtered into silence.

The last one vented a squawky "Tu Madre!" before it sank.

"Looks like a breeze," Remo said. "Let's do the job."

They swam out into the bay. The high-powered bullets were a nuisance, but they hit the water and immediately deflected at crazy shallow angles, to drop harmlessly to the ocean floor. The water was unnaturally warm.

Remo and Chiun split up and attacked the barges from below. Chiun scored holes with his nails. Remo, who had always resisted Chiun's insistence that he grow killing nails of proper length, used the blunt tip of his forefinger as a punch press instead. The stiff digit made thirsty drill-bit holes.

To the hunkered-down Cuban detachments along the beach at Playa Giron and stuck in the muck of Zapata Swamp, it looked as if their return fire was finally winning the day. One by one the barges had listed, capsized, or simply taken on water.

The order to cease firing came, and they watched in muted awe as the pirates continued to fire even as they went down with their ungainly ships. The water swallowed their muzzles and their still functioning mouths. Some of them were swearing in mechanical voices even afterward.

Silence settled over the Bay of Pigs.

And the crabs scuttled out of their places of concealment, and the long-necked buzzards floated over broken human carrion.

Remo and Chiun returned to a sheltered portion of the shore in the silence. They looked out over the bay. A huge full moon rose higher, seeming to shrink as it climbed.

"Guess there's no main task force," Remo muttered. "So where's the invasion?"

Then, from behind them, they heard excited cries in Spanish.

"What are they saying?" Remo asked Chiun. The Master of Sinanju listened with grim mien.

At length he said, "They are saying Habana does not answer their radio calls. They fear it is under attack."

Remo dug out his map and looked at it.

"I don't see any 'Habana,' " he said.

"It is called 'Havana' on the map."

"Then why doesn't it say that?" Remo demanded, ripping the map to shreds and scattering it away.

The convoys started to back up. Between the damaged vehicles and the ones that had used their yearly allotment of gas to reach the combat zone, they managed only to create a logjam that trapped the rest. Spanish curses flew. Fights broke out over ownership of bicycles.

"So much for the Cuban cavalry," Remo grunted. "I'd say Fidel has been suckered good."

"So have we. For we must reach Havana immediately."

Remo looked around. He spotted the FAR helicopter, sitting like a droopy-winged dragonfly on a low hill.

"If there's any gas left in that bird, I think we have a chance," he said.

They flitted toward the waiting bird, avoiding the Cuban bodies-which the scarlet land crabs had already begun to attack hungrily.

Chapter 28

The Maximum Leader of Cuba strode up the waiting gangplank to the gleaming white cruise ship, Beasley Adventure. It was magnificent! And so clean, it sparkled as if dusted by pixies.

Right then and there he decided not to ransom the opulent floating palace, but its crew and passengers only. He would keep it for his personal yacht. It was a prize worthy of the greatest soldier of the Americas, himself.

At the top of the gangplank two stewards in white waited for him, standing at attention. They were unarmed. In fact, they saluted crisply as he stepped onto the deck, trailed by a contingent of his loyal bodyguards.

"Why am I not met by the captain, as is fitting?" demanded the President of Cuba.

"The captain is expecting you in the main dining room, sir," one steward said politely.

El Lider blinked. He liked the treatment these men were according him. It was muy respectful.

"I will go to him!" he snapped. Motioning for his men to follow, he stormed along the deck, taking in the beauty of the prize that was now the flagship of the Cuban navy. Perhaps he would have it outfitted with surface-to-air missiles. No doubt the Beasley people would have fits, but in the historic struggle between ideologies the capitalists could expect no quarter.

They were two more stewards standing at attention in front of the main dining salon, on B Deck. They saluted with one hand, and with the other reached out to open the doors.

El Lider nodded curtly as he swaggered into the breathtaking crystalline sumptuousness of the salon.

He heard the muffled gunshots and turned, cigar dropping from his mouth.

The stewards had each put a bullet into the brains of his two closest bodyguards. They were crumpling to the floor as, from places of concealment behind gleaming white ventilators, others opened up on the remnants of his protective contingent.

"Mierda!" he raged.

And the doors were clapped shut in his bearded face.

"Welcome," a voice said.

The Cuban leader whirled, eyes stark.

Across the room, a captain in a starched white uniform sat quietly at the head table.

Making fists with his hands, El Lider stormed toward the man. If necessary, he would break this dandy's neck with his bare hands.

Out from under the tables, soldiers appeared. They wore white jumpsuits and carried AR-15 automatic rifles with ludicrously white stocks. There was an insignia on each stock. The same insignia was on patches stitched to their shoulders.

It was the world-famous silhouette of Monongahela Mouse, he saw.

The rifles were all pointing toward him. He came to a stop.

"I see, I see," he grumbled. "This is, how jou say, a 'Troyan Horse'?"

"Not exactly," came a cool voice from behind him, a voice with a kind of gravelly twinkle in it. "Although this ship is just filled with young lads just waiting for the signal to march into Havana. But you might say what we have here is more of a kangaroo court."

The Maximum Leader of Cuba turned. And beheld the last face in the world he had expected to see.

"Uncle Sam?"

The Cuban helicopter pilot was only too happy to give the Anglo and the old man from the East a ride to Habana. There was only one problem.

"There is no petrol, senores!"

"There enough to get us in the air?" asked the Anglo, holding him up as the waves of pain continued to converge on his poor heart.

"Si. But how far, no one can say!"

"Let's take this one step at a time," said the Anglo.

And then, because the Anglo had been good enough to relocate his shoulders, the Cuban pilot happily lifted the helicopter into the air.

They had to stop twice for fuel. Petrol was a precious thing in the Cuban Revolutionary Army, and hoarded zealously. The Cuban pilot had told the pair of this, but they had seemed strangely unconcerned.

The pilot at last understood why, when they settled down next to a disabled T-64 tank and the two made the stranded tank crew perform the difficult act of siphoning the gas into the helicopter.

It was amazing, the things men could do even with their shoulders dislocated.

On the last leg of the trip the Anglo turned to the old man and, over the rattly clattering of the laboring helicopter, shouted, "Teach me some Spanish, Little Father. "

"Why?"

"Because when I meet Castro, I want to give him a piece of my mind in his own tongue."

The President of Cuba wore the expression of a poleaxed zebu.

A figure stood up from behind a long banquet table. It was a ludicrous figure, dressed in the frock coat and top hat of the mythic symbol of American imperialism, Uncle Sam. Even his eye patch matched his costume. It was blue, and sprinkled with white stars.

But this Uncle Sam was not the graybeard of cartoons, but a cartoonist renowned throughout the world.

"But, jou . . . jou are dead, Uncle Sam Beasley!" The man smiled under his frosty brush mustache. It was a reflective smile, if chilly.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "when I first explained my ideas for Beasley Isle, a lot of my people thought I had been in the freezer too long."

" 'Beasley Isle'?"

" 'Cuba' sounds too ethnic. People don't want ethnicity in their leisure activities. That's why I had them call my French base EuroBeasley. Sounds more palatable. Anyway, I first got the idea after they pulled me out of that damn icebox."

"Icebox?"

"Everything had changed. Including our tax base. Revenue was down. Attendance off. But taxes were through the roof. I had bases all over the world, and the host countries were sucking every operation dry of operating capital through value-added taxes and every other kind of damn tax you could think of. So I asked myself, how can I be sure that the Beasley Corporation will survive into the next century, since it looks like I'm going to?"

"I do not know," El Lider said thickly, his mind still processing the impossibility of Uncle Sam Beasley standing before him, in the flesh.

"I'll tell you what came to me," said the star-spangled apparition. "I said, Beasley's too big now to be a corporation. It should be a nation. Think of it! An entire island that is also a theme park. It'll be bigger than all the other Beasley parks combined. Folks will flock from all over the world! And when they do, I'll just shut down the other parks. No more taxes. No more minimum-wage laws. No more government regulations. And maybe down the road when the fuss is over, after we're admitted into the U.N., I'll wrangle a seat on the Security Council and do really big things."

"Jou are going to turn my Cuba into a park!" El Lider roared.

The frost-tipped brush mustache quirked over snowy teeth. "I thought you'd be impressed."

"This will never happen! Never!"

"Thanks to Leo Zorilla, it will."

El Lider narrowed his eyes.

"That name sounds familiar," he mumbled, scratching his beard.

"Deputy Commandant, Cuban Air Force. Diabetic. He was picked up by this very vessel some months back. Unfortunately, the INS got to him before I could. But we got together. I offered him a job in return for whatever military secrets he cared to divulge."

"That traitor! I will have him shot!"

"Too late. He's history. Just as you, my friend, will be."

"Jou are loco!"

A twinkle came into the man's single visible eye. "You know what Leo told me? He told me that the weakest point in the Cuban coastal-defense net was the one everybody thought would be the strongest. Any idea where that is?"

The Maximum Leader suddenly turned green.

"Playa Giron?"

"Or Red Beach, as we say north of the border. It made sense to me. No one would want a repeat of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. You thought you could leave it unguarded, relatively speaking."

"Hah! The yoke is on jou. It is no longer unguarded. I have ordered the cream of the Revolution to that historic place!"

"That's right, you did. You've got practically all your regulars out there right now, shooting at animatronic soldiers."

"Animatronic?"

"You can't kill them, but they can kill you. Gives new meaning to the word 'expendable,' doesn't it?"

El Lider gaped. "A diversion?"

"I believe you said something about 'a Trojan Horse' earlier."

"And jou said something about a kangaroo court. I suppose you think jou can try me?"

"Intend to."

"Hah!" said the President of Cuba, pounding on his massive chest. "Do your worst! I am above your laws. Above history. Jou cannot try me for war crimes. I have committed none. I am a revolutionary, a soldier of the Americas doing the work of the revolutionary. My interventions in other countries are no different than that of any great historical world power. The acts I have committed in my own country are the business of Cuba and Cuba alone. Jou cannot try me for these things. "

"I don't expect to," said Uncle Sam Beasley in his dry-ice voice.

The President of Cuba plowed on as if unhearing. He was on a roll. He began ticking off points on his thick fingers.

"Jou cannot try me for crimes against the U.S.A., jou cannot try me for crimes against my people, jou cannot try me for-"

"Try copyright violations," said Uncle Sam.

El Lider's mouth dropped open in mid-word. "Copy-"

"You've been pirating my programs. I don't like that. I put a lot of sweat into those things." And with that, Uncle Sam Beasley took up a gavel and banged it twice on the banquet table.

From behind curtains came Mongo Mouse, Dingbat Duck, Screwball Squirrel, and a host of other fictitious characters. They took seats on either side of Uncle Sam, who then sat down.

"The Beasley Tribunal is in session," he snapped.

The President of Cuba blinked furiously. He had always understood the time might come when he would fall from power and be haled before a tribunal such as this. He looked at the jury again and thought, well, not exactly like this ....

He had practiced the speech he would give on this occasion. Every act of revolution he would defend fiercely, passionately, unassailably. He had dreamed of this moment. Looked forward to it almost confident that his sharp wits and silver tongue would vindicate him before the world.

But he had certainly never taken the charge of copyright piracy into account. And here he was, forced to defend himself before the bizarre representatives of the most ferocious defenders of copyright on earth.

Feeling his bull-like shoulders sag, the Maximum Leader threw out his chest in defiance. "I insist upon being tried by my own countrymen. Only they can properly yudge me. Not these running dogs! No offense to jou, Gumpy."

Gumpy Dog cocked his floppy-eared head in an injured manner.

"Tell you what," said Beasley. "I'll throw in a Cuban." He lifted his voice. "Dr. Revuelta. Would you kindly join us?"

From behind the curtain came a Cuban the Cuban president knew only too well.

"Jou! Jou terrorista!" he raged.

"Dr. Revuelta will be installed as interim president," said Uncle Sam. "Having one of their own as head of the government will keep the population pacified."

The Cuban President shook a big fist. "Him? Never! He is a mediocrity."

"Actually, he's a gynecologist," Uncle Sam pointed out with a smile.

Dr. Revuelta took a seat beside Wacky Wolf.

"I understand you were a lawyer before you turned revolutionary," Uncle Sam said mildly. "I'll allow you to act as your own counsel."

"Challenge accepted."

Uncle Sam chuckled. "I thought you'd say that, you big blowhard. Seems I recall an old adage that goes, 'A man who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client.' "

"Bah!"

"So how do you plead?"

The Maximum Leader of Cuba gazed at the bizarre tribunal seated before him. His quick mind went back to his first trial, back in the old days. He had coined a phrase then. One which he still liked very much. It had resounded in the courtroom then, and he had shouted it to las maws ever since. It had gotten him through every political and strategic mistake he'd ever committed. He repeated it now.

"My guilt or innocence is not for such as jou to say!" he bellowed, shaking an agitated finger in their faces. "History will absolve me!"

And then he launched into a speech, which he intended to go down in history as the longest of his bombastic career.

For the more he kept talking, the more likely it was that his loyal soldiers would come to succor him.

Chapter 29

The President of Cuba was appealing to Monongahela Mouse when his ears picked up the faint clattery rattle of helicopter blades. It was very near. He raised his bull voice to drown out the warning sounds. No doubt it was crack Cuban Marines of the Guevara Battalion, landing on the deck.

"Mongo, my brother," he said as he paced before the Beasley Tribunal. "I appeal to your renowned sense of fairness. Jou and I are mucho hombres. I am a man among men and jou, magnificent one, are a mouse among-how jou say?-mouses."

Mongo stared blankly, round-eared and roundeyed. It was impossible to tell if he was reaching the indefatigable rodent, so the Cuban kept talking.

"The children of Cuba love jou, as do I. How could I, their beloved Lider Maximo, deprive them of your adventures simply because our capitals do not have proper relations?"

The mouse cocked one ear to one side. The duck was nodding its orange beak imperceptibly. And best of all, Uncle Sam himself was growing sleepy of eye. It was working. They were becoming like silly putty in the grip of his oratorical might. Confident, he pressed on.

And the doors banged open.

Fidel turned, a broad grin splitting the bush that was his lower face.

"What took jou so-" He gulped, and swallowed his words.

A lone man stood framed in the salon entrance. He wore black. He was unarmed. Yet the expression on his face was one of utter confidence. "What the fuck!" snarled Uncle Sam.

"Jou again!" gasped Dr. Revuelta.

"Que?" gulped Fidel Castro.

"Que sera, sera," said Remo, showing off his newly acquired knowledge of Spanish.

The Maximum Leader of Cuba looked at the darkeyed Anglo with the high cheekbones and thick wrists, and spat out a harsh question in English.

"Who are jou, Yanqui?"

Remo smiled. "Yo soy soldado de los Americas."

And the Maximum Leader of Cuba did a slow burn that all but singed his curly beard. Who was this gringo, to claim the sacred mantle of the Latin American revolutionary?

Before he could voice the question, Uncle Sam Beasley thundered, "Somebody shoot that pain in the ass!"

It was an unfortunate order. Fully half the armed guards thought the pain in the ass was the Cuban leader. The others correctly took the command as directed toward the skinny guy in black.

"No! No! Not that pain in the ass! The other one!"

The soldiers who had been pointing their weapons at Remo redirected them at Fidel. Their opposite numbers executed the opposite maneuver.

Uncle Sam Beasley stood up, howling, "No! No! No! You're getting it all wrong! Listen to me, I'm the director here! Ten-hup! Right shoulder arms!"

Like marionettes, the soldiers clapped the AR-15s to their immaculate white shoulders. Their chins lifted at attention.

It was the perfect opportunity, so Remo swept in and grabbed the President of Cuba by his long gray beard. Without pausing, he gave a flick of one thick wrist, and suddenly the giant Cuban was whirling around Remo's head like a bull roarer. And emitting much the same howl.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" Beasley yelled. "The trial isn't over yet!"

Remo released the beard. And the howling man flew, polished hobnailed combat boots first, toward one line of soldiers. They collapsed in a heap of bruises and broken bones.

Uncle Sam was screaming inarticulate orders now.

Remo was moving between the dining tables, casually flinging them about like oversized frisbees. They lopped off heads, broke rifles, and made short work of the white-uniformed soldiers with the corn-fed faces still on their feet.

Not a single shot was gotten off.

Remo stepped up and reached into a pile of tangled white arms and legs, to pull out a kicking olive-drab figure.

"I'm not done with you yet, Bushy," he growled.

He dragged the moaning President of Cuba back to the long banquet table, where assorted copyright and trademark characters sat very, very still.

"That was nice work," said Uncle Sam in a too-calm voice.

"Thanks," Remo said absently. He slammed the President of Cuba into one of the few still standing chairs.

Sam Beasley stood up. "No, I mean it."

Remo refused to look in the man's direction. "Okay, you mean it. I'll get to you in a minute."

"Seriously, I'd like to shake your hand, my boy."

Remo hesitated.

"Come on, come on. I won't bite. I know when I'm licked. I'm big enough to admit it."

Remo looked at the hand. It was empty. His ears picked up the bellows sounds of the man's ancient lungs. There was no heartbeat, but a steady humming from deep within his chest.

"What the heck," Remo said, reaching out his hand. "I used to be one of your biggest fans."

"And now you're the biggest chump on earth," snarled Uncle Sam, as he began to squeeze Remo's outstretched hand with the constrictive force of a trash-compacter.

Remo was so shocked by the unexpectedness of what was happening to him, that he did something he had not done in years. He screamed in pain.

The Master of Sinanju heard the scream while he was making the soldiers of Ultima Hora hors de combat. These were not evil men, so he had been going among them dislocating their shoulders. He did this by the deceptively simple action of grasping them by their shoulders and separating the arm bones from their rotator cuffs as he dodged their ineffectual blows. The motion was as simple as removing the lens cap from a Kodak.

Although the soldiers did scream louder than a camera would.

The sound of Remo's scream was unmistakable and unforgettable. Chiun had dragged such complaints out of Remo during the early difficult phases of Remo's training in Sinanju, when he had stubbornly persisted in eating meat and breathing incorrectly.

He flung himself up from the lower holds, where Ultima Hora awaited the signal to emerge and take unprotected Havana, and flashed toward the sound of Remo's agony.

Remo Williams was unaccustomed to pain. On the one hand, his nerves had been trained to sublimate ordinary pain. On the other, his entire body had been raised to enormous levels of sensitivity to external stimuli. And he had been caught by surprise.

Excruciating agony made his highly refined nervous system explode into white noise. His senses shut down. Red sparks danced before his eyes. He could feel his finger bones and metacarpals grinding together under a handshake that he realized too late was composed not of ordinary flesh and bone but of some powerful hydraulic mechanism sheathed in a realistic-looking fleshlike covering.

Worst of all, he couldn't pull loose.

"Left my right hand in the freezer, as it were," a familiar voice chuckled. "But the animators gave me a new one. Like it?"

Waves of pain rolled through Remo's stunned brain. His training told him to lash out at the source of the agony, but his mind warned him that he would be killing Sam Beasley; Uncle Sam. The kindly old Uncle Sam who had told him stories way way back in another life, spent around an old staticky black-and-white TV set, watching cartoons with his fellow orphans.

And as he hesitated the pain redoubled, and Remo had lost his chance to strike. No longer in control of his body, he went down on one knee, his teeth clamping tight and a black cloud passing over his thoughts.

Then another voice came. High and commanding.

"Hold!" it said. Chiun!

Uncle Sam's voice turned icy with anger. "I'd like to know who the hell you two are."

"I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said in his most dramatic voice. "And that is my son you are harming. Release him at once!"

"My pink ass!"

And through the roaring in his ears, Remo heard the tiny gasp that came from Chiun's offended mouth.

"You are not Uncle Sam!"

"The hell I'm not!"

"Uncle Sam would never use such language."

"A lot you know. And who are you two clowns, CIA?"

The question was ignored. Chiun pitched his voice to Remo's roaring ears. "Remo. This man is an imposter. Smite him at once."

"I-I can't!" Remo gasped.

"Banish the pain," Chiun urged.

"It's not the freaking pain. This is Uncle Sam! The real one! I can't hurt him!"

"Nonsense."

"He's got an animatronic freaking heart!"

"Radio-animatronic," Uncle Sam corrected in his famous professorial tone. "Use the correct terminology, please."

"Radio?" It was the dazed voice of the President of Cuba.

The hand slackened its excruciating grip. Remo forced his eyes open. He looked up. Uncle Sam, dressed in the Stars and Stripes, loomed over him, grinning wickedly.

"Controlled and kept beating indefinitely by an outside signal. No need to change batteries, or replace defective parts. They say I've got another ninety years in me, at least."

"You are a machine," Chiun accused.

"I'm just as human as the next guy. I've only been augmented."

"Chiun," Remo gasped. "Don't just stand there debating. Do something!"

The Master of Sinanju's eyes became slits. Coldly, he intoned, "Remo, stand up. Do not shame me before this bearded ruffian of a tyrant. Show that you are worthy of the training bestowed upon you."

"I can't kill him! You know who he is!"

"You must!"

"Look, you do it!"

"Remo! I cannot have the children of Sinanju believing that I dispatched their favorite white in all the universe. You must do this yourself."

Remo started to rise. The hydraulic hand clamped down hard.

"Another move like that," Beasley warned, "and I'll squeeze his hand to bloody pulp."

"Another word like that, and my pupil will grind you into powdered bone meal," Chiun countered.

"I can't do it, Chiun!"

Across the room the Master of Sinanju stood his ground, his hands having retreated to their concealing sleeves. He looked to his pupil, humbled before the very eyes of Mongo Mouse and the others. It was unseemly.

He noticed the bearded tyrant. Castro struggled to his feet.

"Jou," he groaned, addressing Chiun. "I will give jou anything jou name if jou save me from this loco gringo."

"Have you gold?" asked Chiun, interest flavoring his voice.

"Si. Si. As much as jou wish."

"Five billion," Chiun said quickly.

"Que?"

"Five billion in gold. Will you pay?"

"No! It is a preposterous amount. Who do jou think jou are?"

"I am the Master of Sinanju," Chiun said haughtily, eyeing the tyrant to see what his reaction was.

"By the beard of Che! I have heard of you!"

Chiun smiled thinly. "I thought you would."

"Jou are a North Korean."

"Correct."

"The last of my trustworthy allies," the Cuban President said hollowly. "Have they strayed from the Socialist path, as well?"

"I am no tool of Pyongyang," Chiun spat.

"Then who do jou work for?"

"Your mortal enemy."

Castro groaned. "Then I am a dead man."

"Only if this is my wish," Chiun said dryly.

Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta had had enough of this charade. Every moment delayed his assuming the presidency of Cuba, his beloved island.

He stood up, saying, "Enough. It is time to yudge the tyrant. I say, 'Death to Castro!' " He turned his thumb downward. "What say jou, members of the yury?"

One by one, the others followed suit. Mongo turned his white-gloved thumb downward. Dingbat dropped a webbed hand. Wacky Wolf lowered his shortest claw.

The verdict was unanimous. Except for Uncle Sam Beasley. His thumb was occupied at the moment, as he continued to squeeze the white man's fist into submission.

"I say when we vote!" he snarled.

"We are wasting time," Revuelta complained. "We must launch our attack. My Ultima Hora jearn to liberate Cuba!"

"No," said Chiun. "They writhe and groan in the holds below. I have accepted their surrender."

"Bullshit!" said Beasley hotly. He squeezed his unfeeling hand in anger, producing a yelp from Remo.

"Look," Revuelta protested. "I am to be the new El Presidente!"

"Think again," snapped Beasley. "You're just a puppet. I'll pull the strings and you'll dance."

Revuelta looked horrified. "What are jou saying to me?"

"And if you get out of line," Beasley added, "I'll just have my Concepteers make an animatronic copy of you. One that won't get out of line."

"Jou are a fraud!" cried Revuelta, reaching for Beasley's throat. "Jou-"

Beasley was too quick. With his free hand, he whipped off his eye patch. Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta's face was less than a foot in front of the exposed electronic eye. When it exploded like the biggest flashbulb in the universe, he was looking directly at it.

Revuelta reeled back, howling and covering his eyes.

"Blind! I am blinded!"

He stumbled in the direction of the Master of Sinanju, who calmly tripped him and stepped on his writhing neck. A dull crunching came, and Revuelta was still after a moment's busy quivering.

Remo Williams drained the pain coming down his right wrist into the rest of his body, diffusing it, absorbing it. His teeth ground together. Sweat was coming off his brow. He was regaining control. With his free hand, he clutched the tablecloth. It slipped off the table.

And he happened to see a black box under the long banquet table. It looked like a boom box, except there was no speaker or tape deck. But there were lights and digital displays.

One continued to count off numbers sequentially until it got to 26. Then the indicator reset to zero, and started over.

A spectrographic indicator coursed up and down a calibrated scale. It matched exactly the humming vibration coming from the chest of Uncle Sam.

Through the receding pain, Remo Williams made a connection. Between the bar and the heart hum. Between the number twenty-six and the human heart.

He steeled himself for more agony. And reached under the table for the black box.

"What the hell are you doing down there?" Sam Beasley roared suddenly.

Remo's fingers touched something. Then the pain came slamming back, and he was being hoisted off his knees.

But not before he turned a dial.

Remo was lifted face-to-face with Sam Beasley. The man's stale breath was in his face, filling him with revulsion. But Remo had already made up his mind. He knew what he had to do.

This was not Uncle Sam. Not the Uncle Sam of his childhood. Maybe that Uncle Sam had never really existed. Maybe he was just as much a fantasy as Mongo Mouse. Whatever he was, he had to die. Even if the act would haunt Remo Williams for the rest of his life.

Remo's free hand formed the tip of a spear. He willed his fingers into absolute rigidity. There was no telling what they would have to penetrate-soft loose flesh or armor plate. He brought the hand up with deliberate control. He would have only one shot. It had to be good.

Uncle Sam Beasley snarled at him. Then, his face went pale. His mouth opened and closed spasmodically. His good eye rolled up into his head. The other, a machined steel orb with a pulsing red light in the center, began to dim.

"You bastard!" he hissed, and the red pinpoint pupil exploded in a laser burst designed to destroy the sight of anyone looking into it.

Remo, hearing a cybernetic relay click, shut his eyes a split-second ahead of the red-hot flash.

The light seared through his eyelids, and his vision became a very shocking pink color riddled with delicate red veinwork.

Sam Beasley emitted a strangled sound and began to wheeze like an accordion. His vise-like hand stopped squeezing Remo's hand, and he began to gasp and flail with his free hand. It reached up for his own throat.

And while he was doing that, Remo reached out blindly and pried the hydraulic fingers free of his own hand. One snapped off.

He stepped back, clutching his mangled fingers in a fist.

The Master of Sinanju rushed up to meet him. He grasped Remo's hand, turned it over and back, examining it critically.

"I do not think it is broken," he muttered.

"I can't tell," Remo gasped.

"There is one way to find out," said Chiun, suddenly unbending Remo's clenched fist.

Remo screamed louder than ever.

Chiun beamed back. "The bones work. It is fine."

Which was more than could be said for Uncle Sam Beasley. He lay on the ground, thrashing and gasping like a beached fish. His teeth chattered as if from cold. He was turning blue.

His assorted creations hovered around him, crying plaintively.

"Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam! Don't leave us! Not again! We need you, Uncle Sam!"

The Master of Sinanju swept into the middle of the creatures, scattering them and crying, "Begone, vermin!"

He looked down upon the face of Uncle Sam Beasley and, with an extended fingernail, imploded the electronic laser eye.

Uncle Sam paid the maiming no heed. He continued to writhe in his slow death-throes. His peg leg pounded the floor like a slow drumstick. His voice was a croak. "Maus . . . Maus . . . shield . . . mouse."

"What's he saying?" Remo asked.

"He is calling for someone," Chiun said slowly.

Remo listened. "Sounds like 'mouse.' Must mean Mongo. Where is he, anyway?"

The Master of Sinanju raked the demoralized jury with cold eyes. He pointed an accusing finger at Mongo Mouse.

"You! Remain where you are, if you value your scalp. I know how treacherous is your kind."

Mongo Mouse proffered open hands, in a clear gesture of compliance.

The President of Cuba cautiously approached. He pointed to the box. "That is what is keeping him alive. We must destroy it." And he lifted a combat boot.

The Master of Sinanju swept a hand out and found the sensitive back of the Cuban leader's knee. He used his fingernails to inflict maximum pain on the Maximum Leader.

And the Maximum Leader of Cuba hopped away, holding his leg and howling Spanish invective through his beard.

Remo looked down. "We can't let him die, can we?"

"No," said Chiun.

Remo knelt and examined the box. The digital readout was counting only up to 7 before resetting itself. Remo touched the dial he had hit before. He turned it one way. The number reset to 0, and Sam Beasley began to quiver and gasp for air.

"Oops!" Remo turned it the other way. The man began to breathe, jerkily but more regularly. The number cycle climbed to 15.

Remo experimented with the heart cycle until he had found a setting-19-that kept Beasley on his back and breathing, but still helpless.

He stood up. "I think that does it."

The President of Cuba limped up. His face was pale and incredulous.

"Jou have saved my Revolution," he whispered hoarsely. "This lunatic was going to try me for imaginary crimes."

Chiun eyed him coldly. "Speak to me not of your crimes, preempter of beauty."

"Que?"

"He means," Remo said dryly, "you knocked his favorite TV show off the air."

The Maximum Leader of Cuba blinked. "Are jou all mad? First this one complains that I am stealing his cartoons. Now jou are angry because I have interrupted a mere television program."

"Wrong thing to say, bushy," Remo warned.

The Master of Sinanju drew himself up haughtily. "Cheeta Ching is no mere television personality. She is all that is good and beautiful and pure in the universe."

"You are loco. I responded to aggression. No more."

The Master of Sinanju puffed out his cheeks.

"You admit your guilt, then!"