The Last Dragon

Skip King noticed the pair suddenly. "Hey!" he yelled. "Who are you two!"

"That idiot!" Nancy muttered. "That colossal fool."

From the campfire, the action unit of the Congress for a Green Africa leapt to their feet and stared through the sparks and fragrant monkey smoke with incredulous faces.

"What is this!" Malu demanded.

"This," cried the old Oriental in a high, squeaky voice, "is the House of Sinanju come to scatter you to the winds."

"I don't know what he's talking about," King wailed. "Don't shoot us!"

The blacks scrambled for their weapons. They brought them up, and unleashed an incredible amount of noise, fire, smoke, and fury toward the crouching prisoners.

Horrified, Nancy was forced to look away. The Skorpions chattered percussively. She heard screams, and visions of a blood massacre transpired before her mind's eye.

Then came a scream so loud and anguished she was forced to look.

It was Skip King. He was trying to get to his feet but his legs were asleep. He was hitting his knees with both fists as if to wake them up.

King was looking toward the campfire.

Commander Malu and his adherents were walking backward as they fired. Incredibly, their weapons were having no effect.

The pair-the thick-wristed Caucasian and the flitting Asian-had separated and were running at right angles to one another, trying to draw the fire.

Behind them, Old Jack slumbered like a great slowbeating orange heart. Nancy's eyes fixed on his mottled hide, fearing to see eruptions. Again, it was a miracle. There were none. Yet.

Then the tiny Oriental disappeared. The terrorists turned their fire on the thick-wristed man. He bobbed, seemingly in two directions at once, and was suddenly gone.

There was a short interval of silence. Then a high scream. It sounded like a lion or a monkey.

Sailing down from the high branches of a tree like black bats pouncing on prey, they came. The white man who reminded Nancy of a black moth and the delicate butterflylike Asian.

They landed in the middle of the paralyzed Congress for a Green Africa.

Stiff fingers lashed out. The crack of breaking vertebrae was distinct and unmistakable in the night.

Two green-bereted men fell like dominos, and the rest ran, spraying their backtrail with automatic weapons fire.

"Don't chase them!" Nancy screamed. "Let them go! They could hurt the dinosaur."

The thick-wristed man froze, as if hesitating. The expression on his high-cheekboned face said that he wanted to chase the others down more than anything else in the world.

The butterfly of an Asian spoke up then.

"Remo, she speaks wisdom," he said, his voice a grim squeak. "Let those worthless ones flee like the dogs that they are."

"If you say so," the other said in a reluctant tone.

And as they turned back, Skip King pounced on a dropped machine pistol and pointed it in the direction of the fleeing hijackers.

Before anyone could stop him, he emptied the clip, saying, "And don't come back, you disenfranchised rabble!"

Everyone looked toward the departing Congress for a Green Africa, expecting to see some fall wounded. They ran until the bush swallowed them.

"You," the man named Remo told King, "have got to be the world's worst shot."

"What do you want? It's dark out."

"You're welcome," Remo said.

Nancy stumbled out of the thorn brush and said,

"You'll have to excuse him. He watched too many Tarzan pictures as a boy."

"Big talk from someone who hid in the bushes while the men were doing all the fighting," King sneered, plucking out a clip and trying to jam in a second.

"I put her there," Remo said. "I should have stashed you and kept her."

King struggled with the stubborn clip. Not realizing he had been attempting to insert it backward, he threw it into the dirt. "Who asked you to butt in, anyway?" he snapped.

"Uncle Sam."

"The United States?"

"You're American citizens, aren't you? Who did you expect? The Royal Canadian Mounted Police?"

"Actually, I was hoping the Burger Berets would have shown up by now," said King, looking up into the fabulous starfield of the Gondwanaland night sky.

"The who?"

The sound of helicopters in the distance was like the rubbing together of horny wings, busy and insectlike. It grew to a clatter then swelled to a louder, fuller locust sound.

And suddenly the night sky above them was full of helicopters which sent down roving beams of lights.

In the moving patterns of light, snaky lines were dropped and men in midnight blue uniforms began rappeling down.

"Everyone stand clear!" an authoritative voice bellowed. "We're the Burger Berets!"

The man named Remo undertoned to Nancy, "The what Berets?"

"Burger."

"As in hamburger?"

Nancy sighed. "I'm afraid so."

She watched as men in midnight blue nylon jumpsuits hit the ground on ivory white boots. Disengaging themselves from the lines, they brought up AR-15 assault rifles.

King was storming about. "What took you so long!"

A man in a purple beret with a gold crown stitched in the front stepped up and executed a crisp salute. He was a colonel. The gold eagles that constituted his uniform insignia told that-although eagles didn't normally clutch a cheeseburger and a bag of french fries in each talon, Nancy realized.

The man in the purple beret executed a brisk salute. "Mr. King, sir. Colonel Mustard reporting."

"Mustard?" Remo said blankly.

"Code name. We're operating on foreign soil, as you know."

"That's no excuse for blowing the mission," King said bitterly.

The colonel looked at a wrist chronometer whose hands resembled french fries. "It's exactly 0400 hours. According to the timetable, we're mission positive."

"Well, you're too late anyway. They got away."

"Is the animal safe?"

"Yeah. No thanks to you." King looked up. The helicopters held their overhead positions. "Are they filming this?"

"Of course, sir."

"Tell them to stop. It's a debacle. The bastards got away. We were rescued by damn civilians."

"The Gondwanaland president gave us personal assurances that he'd keep his people on stand down, Mr. King," Colonel Mustard said stiffly.

Skip King stabbed an accusatory finger at Remo and Chiun. "Look, tell that to them. I'm just an exhostage." He took hold of his black hair as if to tear it out in chunks, but it was too short and greasy. It slipped through his fingers. "This is a mess. A total mess."

"What's he complaining about?" Remo wondered. "He's free, isn't he?"

"A major PR extravaganza went south when you two showed up," Nancy explained.

Remo shrugged. "That's the biz."

"Believe me, I couldn't be happier. If those corporate clowns had gotten here first, none of us would have survived." Nancy noticed the old Oriental. He was examining the Apatosaur, his head going from side to side like a curious cat's.

King also noticed. He stopped trying to uproot his scalp, and screamed, "Hey! You get away from there. That dinosaur is corporate property!"

The old Oriental ignored King's heated words.

"Didn't you hear me?" King howled.

"I see trouble coming," Nancy warned. "You better tell your friend to step away from old Old Jack."

"He has a name?" Remo said.

"You sound surprised."

The man named Remo shrugged. "It beats Wing Wang Wo."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Skip it."

King was shouting now, "Colonel Mustard. You remove that man right now."

"Yes, sir."

Nancy looked to Remo, who with a bored expression watched his friend about to be surrounded by four bulky mercenaries.

"Don't you think you should step in?" she asked.

"I don't care what happens to a bunch of guys in funny berets."

Nancy blinked. Her attention went back to the old Oriental. He was walking toward the small serpentine head now, his hands tucked in his voluminous sleeves.

Colonel Mustard of the Burger Berets attempted to restrain him with a firm hand on his frail shoulder. The hand descended. The colonel must have had an incredibly tenacious grip, because although he failed to arrest the old Oriental one whit, he was dragged along with him.

King shrieked, "What's the matter with you? He's got to be as old as Methuselah!"

"I-I can't seem to get him to stop," Colonel Mustard said in a voice that seemed to doubt reality.

"Try asking nicely," Remo called.

"Bull. Trip him," spat King.

The suggestion was executed with breathtaking speed. King had barely got the words out when the old Oriental paused, pivoted, and one sandaled foot caught Colonel Mustard across his unprotected kneecaps.

The colonel went down clutching them both, curled in a fetal position and rocking on his spine.

"Not you!" King screamed. "I meant for him to trip you!"

The old Oriental's voice floated back thinly. "Then you should have chosen your words with greater care."

"I want that man stopped now!" King caught himself and began pointing. "I mean, I want you-the Burger Berets-to stop him, whatever his name his."

"His name is Chiun," Remo offered.

"Stop Chiun," King cried.

The Burger Berets started forward.

"He's the Master of Sinanju," Remo added, apparently to see what would happen.

The train engineer was a Gondwanalandian national. He had been crouching off to one side, poking at the abandoned white-nosed monkey stew. He perked up.

"The Master of Sinanju!"

"Yup," said Remo.

The engineer ran and threw himself in front of the old Oriental named Chiun.

"I cannot let you do this," he told the advancing Berets.

"Stand aside. We're not going to kill him."

"No, but he might kill you."

"What are they talking about?" Nancy asked Remo.

"Search me," Remo said in a bored tone.

Nancy watched with frowning wonder creeping into her expression.

Chiun stepped out from behind the sheltering engineer and said, "I cannot let you sacrifice yourself for me, child of Gondwanaland." He threw up his hands, his long wide sleeves slipping from his pipestem arms. "I surrender."

The Burger Berets stepped up to seize him by the wrists-and became airborne. There were four of them. And they flew in four different directions. One human missile rammed Skip King in the stomach with his head and they both went down. The others became human paperweights that flattened assorted brush.

The rest of the Burger Berets withdrew to a safe distance, bearing the still-curled Colonel Mustard like a piece of driftwood that moaned to itself.

Then the old man padded up to Nancy. She swallowed. His face was stiff, his hazel eyes cold as agates.

"You are obviously in charge here," he said.

"Thank you. How did you know?"

"You are the only one not yelling. Yelling is a sign of weakness."

"My name is Nancy Derringer and I'm responsible for the animal you helped save."

"Are you then responsible for this display of ingratitude?"

"No."

"Then you are the one from whom all gratitude flows?"

"Excuse me?"

"He wants to know if you're grateful," Remo offered. "He's very sensitive about these things."

"Yes, of course," Nancy told the little man named Chiun.

The stern face softened, wrinkled in pleasure. A twinkle came into the steely eyes. His voice became a curious purr.

"How grateful?"

"How...?"

"Careful," Remo warned. "It's a trick question."

"I don't think I understand," Nancy said slowly.

The little man, who looked frail but was anything but, pointed toward the Apatosaur stretched on the flatcar and said, "You possess a great treasure in that slumbering dragon."

"Dragon?"

"He thinks it's a dragon," Remo explained.

"Should I humor him?"

"Normally, yes. In this case, no."

Nancy addressed the little old man in a firm voice. "It's not a dragon. It's a dinosaur."

The old Oriental looked to Remo and his face hardened. "You have been whispering lies in this naive woman's ear. Shame on you, Remo."

Remo threw up his hands defensively. "Hey, the word dinosaur hasn't passed my lips since we got here. Honest."

"I am sure the company that financed this expedition will offer you a suitable reward," Nancy said quickly.

"I will settle for ten percent."

"Sounds reasonable," said Nancy. Then a thought struck her. "Ten percent of what?"

The old Oriental beamed. His eyes lit up in the darkness, like cat's eyes. "Of the dragon, naturally. A hind leg might be acceptable, provided the thigh bone is intact."

Nancy's eyes went wide.

"He means it," said Remo.

"Not on your life!" Nancy exploded.

"Ingrate!" And the old Oriental flounced about and returned to examining the Apatosaur, which pulsed slowly like a dying organ.

Chapter 12

It took until dawn was creeping over the bush before they could get the train under way.

There were the unconscious Burger Berets to revive, and the logs to remove from the tracks. Skip King declined to help clear the railbed. He lay on the ground, moaning and holding his stomach and complaining of a hernia instead.

"Grow up," Nancy told hire.

"Grow up? I can't even get up."

"Then I'll help you."

King scuttled off. "Don't! Do you want to kill me?"

"Right now, I'd be willing to stand aside and watch a herd of bull elephants pound you into pudding," said Nancy yanking him to his feet. King walked about in wavering circles on wobbly legs.

"What's his problem?" Remo asked Nancy.

"No one's quite sure, but any dollar is on undescended testicles."

Remo grunted, and Nancy took it for a laugh.

The engineer was leaning out of the cab, and he shouted; "I am ready when you are, Missy Nancy."

Skip King stopped walking in circles. "Hey! You're supposed to say that native boy stuff to me."

He was ignored.

"You and your friend are free to ride with us," Nancy told Remo.

'We have a Land Rover parked down the trail," Remo said. "And if you want a bit of free advice, you'd better ride with us."

"Why?"

Remo indicated the old Asian with a surreptitious finger. "I want to take another shot at explaining dinosaurs to him, and I need backup."

"Will it persuade him away from his hankering for a drumstick?"

"That's the idea."

"Deal," said Nancy. And they shook on it. Remo's grip felt like something cut from fossilized bone, Nancy thought. And as she looked up into his deepset eyes, she felt her heart leap into her throat for no reason that she could think of.

Remo turned. The Master of Sinanju was hovering about the dinosaur like a fussy little hen. "Come on, Little Father. We're driving escort."

Stepping away from flatcar, the old Korean followed them, padding silently a few paces behind.

"That is the ugliest dragon I have ever beheld," he said in an unhappy voice.

"And exactly how many dragons have you seen?" Nancy wanted to know.

"That is my first."

"It isn't even that. It's a dinosaur."

"Pah! It is a dragon. An African dragon. And it has been cruelly abused."

"No, we just tranquilized it for the trip back to America."

"How are you getting it back?" Remo asked, interest detectable in his voice for the first time.

"You got me there. B'wana King has worked out all the details. I'm just the glorified babysitter."

Chiun caught up with them and asked, "Where are its wings?"

"Wings?"

"I did not see wings. Or stumps where they would be attached."

"It doesn't have wings."

"But it does breathe fire?"

"Not that anyone ever noticed," Nancy said patiently. "Maybe his pilot light went out," Remo said dryly.

Chiun made a face. Nancy frowned at Remo. But inside she smiled. He was funny in a flat sort of way.

They came to the Land Rover. It was parked down the line, sitting between the rails as if that were a perfectly natural place for it to be.

"You didn't drive it up like that?" Nancy blurted out.

"The shocks are pretty good," Remo said. "Or were."

"So how are you going to get it turned around?"

"Little Father."

The two didn't speak a word. They just deployed on either end of the Land Rover. Remo took the front, and the little man named Chiun the back. They grabbed the bumpers, bent, and Remo said, "One."

They straightened their spines. The Land Rover came up with them, its tires hanging low on loose shocks.

"Two," said Remo in a voice devoid of strain.

They walked in a half-circle until the Land Rover was turned around. They stopped. "Three," said Remo. And they bent down, setting the vehicle back on its wheels.

"How did you do that?" Nancy asked in a shocked-thin voice.

Remo grinned good-naturedly. "Practice. We can actually bench press three Land Rovers each, but we don't like to show off."

"What I just saw was impossible," murmured Nancy, circling the vehicle.

"Then you didn't see it," Remo told her, waving her into the Land Rover. She got in back. Remo took the wheel, the old Oriental beside him.

Remo got the motor started and they began bumping along.

Every bone in Nancy's slim body rattled. She began wishing she'd packed a jogging bra and folded her arms under her chest. That helped. By the time they got up to a reasonable speed, Nancy found it tolerable. If she kept her teeth clenched tightly.

Keeping her mouth closed proved impossible. The Old Asian was talking in a high squeaky voice. Not talking so much as complaining.

"Perhaps we should speak to the King of Gondwanaland," he was saying.

"About what?" Nancy asked, puzzled.

"Proper respect."

"He means gratitude, as in reward," Remo called over his shoulder.

"Excuse me," Nancy said. "But why on earth do you want a leg off an Apatosaur?"

"A what?" Remo and Chiun said simultaneously.

"Apatosaur. That is the scientific name for the species."

"Lady, I had every plastic dinosaur toy ever made. That's a Brontosaurus back there."

"You should get current. Modern paleontologists call it a Apatosaurus."

"What's that mean?"

"Deceptive reptile."

Remo made a face. "I like Thunder Lizard better. Sounds more dinosaurian. Like Pterodactyl. That was another neat dinosaur I used to collect."

"Pterodactyls were not dinosaurs, I'm sorry to inform you."

"The hell they weren't."

"Listen, I don't know where you went to school-"

"St. Theresa's Orphanage. Never mind where it is. Or was."

"Fine. But knowledge about dinosaurs has changed dramatically over the last decade or so. You see, what you used to know as the Brontosaur never really existed. That is, its bones were confused with another sauropod. We now call it Apatosaur."

"It's still the biggest dinosaur that ever was, right?"

"No, there are bigger. Supersaurus. And Ultrasaurus. All sauropods like Apatosaurus. And let's not overlook Seismosaurus, the biggest known sauropod. You'd have liked him, Remo. He was known as Earthshaker Reptile."

"Your Greek is abominable," Chiun said disdainfully. "I cannot understand half of what you say."

"Dinosaurs are classified into orders, such as saurischia, which are lizardlike, suborders like sauropoda, the four-footed herbivores like our own Old Jack-"

"Can I explain this to him?" Remo asked plaintively.

Nancy leaned back in her seat. "If you can."

"Chiun, try to follow this. Back before there were humans, dinosaurs ruled the world. They were giant reptiles."

"Not all of them." Nancy said quickly. "Some were birds. "

"Like Pterodactyls, right?"

"Wrong. Like Triceratops."

Remo hit the brakes. Nancy almost landed in the front seat with them.

"Triceratops!" Remo exploded.

"Yes."

"Triceratops with the three horns? Built kinda like a rhino?"

"Yes."

"A bird?"

"Yes!"

"Since when?"

"Since they came on the evolutionary scene during the Late Cretaceous period. We now know they were Ornithischia, bird-hipped."

"They're birds because of their freaking hips?"

"Simplified for the twelve-year-old mind, yes."

"Bulldookey," said Remo. "Birds don't grow horns and run around goring other animals."

"The modern ostrich does."

"That's the bird that hides its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble? Right?"

"True," Nancy admitted.

"Then I rest my case. No way a Triceratops would hide its head if a Stegosaur trotted by. He'd bite the other guy's head off, and hide that."

"For your information, a modern ostrich can kill a full-grown lion."

"With what? His fluffy tailfeathers?"

"No, by pecking the lion into submission with his beak. Ostriches are fierce and mean-tempered, and if you place an ostrich skeleton beside an Iguanadon skeleton, you'd see what I'm talking about."

"I'd see squat, because one's a reptile and the other is a goofy bird. End of story. Where did you get this crap, anyway?"

"You can look this up in any modern encyclopedia."

"Wanna bet?"

"Certainly. Let's say ten thousand dollars, shall we?"

Nancy offered her hand to shake on it. Remo hesitated.

"Too rich for your blood?" Nancy asked sweetly.

"I have to think this through," Remo muttered.

"I thought so."

"Thought what?"

"All talk and balk, that's you."

Remo frowned. "Little Father, what do you think?"

"Only a fool would wager against a woman who owns a dragon," the Master of Sinanju said thinly.

Behind them, the train was rattling along, getting closer. The steam whistle blew one long blast when it rounded a shallow turn and the engineer sighted them.

"Unless you're looking forward to abandoning ship," Nancy suggested, "I suggest you start us rattling along again."

Fuming, Remo got the Land Rover going. He was silent a while, then he asked, "Triceratops didn't have feathers, did they?"

"No."

"Good."

Nancy couldn't resist. "But you know, Pterodactyls had hair," she said in a bright voice.

"They did not!"

"Sorry to pop your bubble, but you should really read up on these things."

"You are both talking nonsense," snapped Chiun.

"Why would we do that?" Nancy wanted to know.

"To dissuade me from living to the fullest span of my years."

Nancy frowned. "Say again?"

"I'll tell it," Remo said. "One of his ancestors had a close encounter of the dragon kind a few centuries ago, and made off with a whole skeleton."

Nancy perked up. "Do you still have it, Mr. Chiun?"

"The proper form of address is Master, and no, Yong consumed it to the last finger bone and wing rib," Chiun said flatly.

"Your ancestor ate a fossil skeleton?"

"No, he drank it."

"Chiun's ancestor supposedly slew a dragon," Remo explained.

"A true Chinese dragon," Chiun sniffed. "Not like your ugly thing."

"Thank you," said Nancy.

"And he ground up the bones to make some kind of medicine, so he could live forever, or something," Remo added.

"In the East, dinosaur bones are sometimes ground up and mixed in philters," Nancy said thoughtfully. "They are believed to be very beneficial. How far along did your ancestor get, Master Chiun?"

"He squandered one hundred forty-eight winters," said Chiun.

"Squandered?"

"Chiun thinks he should have saved a few bones for his descendants," Remo added.

"Oh. "

They drove along in silence. The sun was climbing the sky, turning it the color of brass. The jungle birds were screeching and calling. Somewhere a hippo bellowed. And Nancy began to sweat profusely.

She noticed that Remo and the old Oriental named Chiun were not sweating and wondered why.

"We don't sweat," Remo said unconcernedly.

"Nonsense. All mammals sweat. Or pant."

"We don't pant either."

"What is a mammal?" asked Chiun.

"A dinosaur is a reptile and we're mammals," Remo explained.

"Does that mean monkey?"

"A monkey is a mammal, just like us," Nancy said.

"Just like you. I am Korean."

"What does that mean?" Nancy asked Remo.

"I am not like whites," Chiun said stiffly, "who believe they are the offspring of monkeys."

"That's a fallacy," said Nancy.

Chiun indicated Remo with a long-nailed finger. "Tell this baboon."

"Hey! I resent that."

"Humans are descended from a monkeylike primate ancestor, not a monkey per se."

"Some have not descended very far," Chiun sniffed.

"Chiun's people think they're descended from the Great Bear that came down from the sky, or something," Remo explained.

"Bears are mammals, too," Nancy said. "But that still doesn't explain why neither of you are sweating in this heat."

"Chiun can explain it better than me."

"We do not sweat because we understand that we do not have to sweat," Chiun said flatly.

"You have to sweat."

"Enemies can smell sweat. To sweat is to die."

"That's a very mammalian sentiment," Nancy said dryly, "but that doesn't change the basic fact that you have to sweat in order to cool your body."

"We sweat when we wish to," Chiun allowed. "In private."

"Sweating is optional," Remo added.

"Are you saying you can stay cool without having to sweat?"

"That's about the size of it," Remo said.

"What you are describing is supermammalian physiology," Nancy said slowly.

In the front seat, Remo and Chiun looked at one another, lifted doubtful eyebrows, and said nothing.

"That would be an amazing adaptive response," Nancy went on.

Remo shrugged. "Hey, what do you expect? We mammals outlived the dinosaurs, didn't we?"

"An accident."

"My foot. Dinosaurs died out for two reasons. They were too slow and too stupid."

"Wrong."

Remo snapped his fingers. "Oh yeah, right. Three reasons. It got too cold. They were cold-blooded. So they couldn't stay warm when the ice age came."

"Wrong again."

"Okay," Remo said sourly, "let's hear your theory."

"It's not my theory. But never mind that. It boils down to an asteriod or comet strike. It threw up dust particles that blocked out the sunlight, killing off the plants that the herbivores subsisted on, and when the carnivores that ate the herbivores had no food source, they died out, too."

"Prove it."

"Geologists have discovered a worldwide layer of iridium deposited in the earth's soil about sixty-five million years ago, coinciding with the end of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs began dying off. Iridium is rare on earth, and could only have gotten into the soil from an extraterrestrial object striking the planet and dispersing the particles in the atmosphere. There's a 110-mile crater down in the Yucatan Penninsula called Chicxulub, which is the probable impact point. If you don't believe me, you can look it all up."

"Anything else I should know while my childhood memories are burning to the ground?" Remo said glumly.

Nancy smiled. "Let me see. We now think dinosaurs were smarter than previously believed. And faster. Much faster."

"That thing back there obviously excepted."

"Well, we haven't seen it gallop, but it is possible."

Remo snorted. "Give me a break. It's too fat to gallop."

"You are out of date, aren't you? Apatosaurus is much more agile than the old Brontosaur was thought to be. According to tendon scars found on their fossil skeletons, they could rear up on their hind legs to reach food in the tall conifers and ginkgo trees of the Upper Jurassic."

"Crap. Crap and double crap. That thing would have trouble getting out of bed. It's the original 'I've fallen down and I can't get up' dinosaur. That's why there are no more dinosaurs. They were slow and dumb. Mammals beat them at the evolution game."

"Wrong again. Dinosaurs may have been superior to mammals. At their height, they occupied every ecological niche above the size of a chicken. If not for a cosmic accident, they would still be dominant."

"I don't believe it."

"I don't believe you," Nancy shot back. "You're a grown man and you have the belief system of an eleven-year-old boy."

"I do not believe either of you two," Chiun sniffed. "You are both carrying on like two children, and making less sense. And I do not understand half the words you are speaking."

"Well," Remo said defensively, "any way you slice it, it's not a dragon."

"In that," Nancy said, "you and I are in rare agreement."

"It is an African dragon," said Chiun. "There are Chinese dragons, and English dragons, and African dragons. The meat that sheathes its mighty bones is not important. Only the bones themselves."

"And you may not have one," Nancy said quickly. "Get that through your sweet little skull, please."

"Ingrate."

"What about the one whose name I can never remember," Remo said suddenly. "The lizard with the sail on his back."'

"Dimetrodon?"

"That's him. He was a lizard, right?"

"Oh, I wish you hadn't brought Dimetrodon up."

"Why not?"'

"He's not even considered a dinosaur anymore."

"What was he-blackballed for biting?"

"No, he was an early mammal-like reptile."

"Next, you're going to tell me Tyrannosaurus Rex was a kangaroo," Remo said sourly.

"A woman who would deny a dragon its proud heritage is capable of anything," Chiun said in a bitter tone.

Chapter 13

Word travels fast in the bush.

By the time the train rattled toward the shantytowns that lay scattered outside of Port Chuma, the rails were lined with curious Gondwanalanders.

They cheered the locomotive's chugging approach. Cheers of delight, awe, and surprise attended the sighting of the great flatcar and its saurian cargo.

At each point, the Master of Sinanju waved to the admiring crowds. They waved back with enthusiasm.

"It is good to find a land that appreciates us," Chiun told Remo. They were seated in the passenger car now. Nancy sat in a facing seat.

"I think they're excited about the dinosaur," Remo told him.

"Pah!"

"Of course, I could be wrong," Remo admitted.

"We will know when we reach the capital. Where no doubt the king waits to greet me."

"Gondwanaland is ruled by a president, not a king," Nancy pointed out.

"When he is seen in my company," Chiun sniffed, "his subjects will demand that he be crowned, for it is well known in these lands that he who befriends the Master of Sinanju sleeps serene in his castle."

Nancy leaned forward and whispered to Remo. "Have you given thought to committing him?"

"Only if I want to watch men in white coats being dismembered before my eyes."

Nancy, remembering how Chiun had made short work of Colonel Mustard, said, "I assume he knows some kind of exotic martial art."

Remo nodded. "Bruce Lee taught him everything he knows."

Chiun spat noisily out the open window.

"What brought that on?" Nancy asked Remo.

"Ritual purging. I'll explain later."

"Don't bother."

Skip King came back from consulting with his Burger Berets, who had decided to ride on the roof when Chiun came on board at a water stop. He clutched his walkie-talkie, and his face was worried.

"I've been in touch with Port Chuma. Word's already reached the capital."

"Is that good or bad?" Nancy asked.

"Not good. The rabble are demanding that Old Jack stay in Africa. We're going to have to run the train straight to the docks and load him aboard the ship."

"What kind of a ship hauls dinosaurs?" Remo asked.

"A fabulous one. If there's time, we might let you see it."

"Gee, can we?"

"Ingrate," sniffed Chiun.

"What's his problem?" King asked Remo. "We let the two of you hitch a ride with us after your shocks died-even though you screwed things up."

"He likes grateful people," Remo said of Chiun.

"Who doesn't?"

"Especially grateful people who are free with their gold."

"No chance. The board would have paid him to stay away. Do you realize the archival footage we lost?"

"I keep thinking of the blood that wasn't spilled." Nancy said dryly.

"Women don't understand these things."

"King, there are problems taking Old Jack to America," Nancy said.

King grinned. "And I solved every one of them."

"I doubt it. What about the long ocean crossing?"

"It won't be long. Less than twelve hours. He'll probably sleep through the whole thing."

"What kind of a ship can cross the Atlantic in twelve hours?" Remo asked.

"A fabulous one," King said.

"Like the one that brought King Kong to New York?" Remo asked.

King made a disdainful face. "This is the nineties. We don't do boats in the nineties. But we have to be ready to move fast. There are cranes waiting to make the transfer. We'll do the press conference with that as a backdrop."

"Press conference?" Remo asked. "What happened to moving as fast as possible?"

King looked injured. "I said fast, not panicked. This is a great opportunity for the Gondwanaland people. We're going to open up Burger Triumph franchises all over this backwater as a gesture of the corporation's eternal gratitude for the president's help."

"Selling what?" Nancy asked dryly. "White-nosed monkey burgers?"

King started to frame a comeback. His fox face froze, and his beady eyes took on an inward look.

"You okay?" Remo asked suddenly.

"Not if what I think is happening is," Nancy said.

"Huh?"

"B'wana King is wondering if the board will go for the monkey burger idea."

By the time they clicked into the dock turnaround area, the cranes were swinging into place.

A reviewing stand was set up, covered in purple-and-orange bunting-the Gondwanaland national colors, chosen by throwing darts at a paper rainbow. And attired in a purple-and-orange general's uniform and cocked leopard-skin hat was president of the twentieth century, Oburu Sese Kuku Nebendu wa za Banga.

The train nudged the rotting kapok-wood bumper that marked the terminus of Gondwanaland's only national rail line, and stopped. The engineer blew a long last whistle blast.

And Skip King leaped from his seat and said, "Okay, let's go! Camera crew-do your stuff. Half of you record the transfer. The other half have ceremony duty."

"I'd better check the ship," Nancy said. "It has to be a suitable environment, or I must veto the transfer."

King scowled. "I need you at the ceremony."

"And Old Jack needs me to look out for his welfare."

Skip King drew himself up to his full five-foot-six-inch height. "We're in civilization, now," he said levelly. "Where there is a natural pecking order and men run things. I let you get a little out of bounds back in the bush, but all that's over with now. I won't speak of it if you don't."

"I intend to submit a fully detailed report of your pompous behavior to the board once we're in the States. And if you don't want to have to explain a dead Apatosaurus, I suggest you keep your pecking order-not to mention your pecker-out of my project responsibilities."

King's neck turned red. The color crept up to his face. He bared his teeth in something that was not a smile.

Then Remo said, "Or you can go a few rounds with Chiun and me."

The red went out of Skip King's face so fast someone might have turned on a spigot.

"Okay," he said grudgingly. "Do your check. But I want you up on that podium when the president gives his speech."

"Thank you," Nancy said frostily.

A Captain Relish escorted them down to the docks. He was very polite and kept a respectful distance.

Nancy had expected a large freighter, possibly a container ship or even a small oil tanker.

There were ships tied up along the wharfs. But nothing large enough to float a forty-foot dinosaur.

Sitting just off the beach in the calm tidal water was a gleaming white shape that looked like a crashed 747. It resembled an airliner, but the wings were snubbed off close to the wing roots. There were no engine nacelles. But mounted high in front of the swept-back tail were two large propellers set on a single shaft.

The spine of the craft lay open to the blazing sun in two sections, and lines from great cranes dangled into them.

Remo asked. "What is that?"

"It is obvious," sniffed Chiun. "A crashed plane."

"No," said Captain Relish. "It's an ekranoplane."

They looked at him.

"It's a wingship, a wing-in-ground craft, or ekranoplane as the Russians call it."

"What do the Russians have to do with this?" Remo asked.

"They devised this baby for landing troops on foreign soil. It flies like a hovercraft, but much faster and with a bigger payload. The way it works is the tail props start her moving along the water like a boat, then those two Kuznetsov turbofans mounted on the nose ahead of the wing there blast air under the wingroots, creating lift. She skims along the deck slick as you please. Isn't that great?"

They all stared at him some more. And Remo asked, "Wouldn't it be simpler to fly like a plane?"

"Not because of the ground effect," said Captain Relish. "You see, when a plane flies high, wingtip vortices are created, producing drag. Slows the craft down. Remove the ends of the wings and fly close to the ground, and the problem is solved. When the Soviet Union went belly up, they decided to rent the monster out. This model is called Orlyonok, or Little Eagle."

"Let me see if I have this straight," Remo said. "You cut the wings off so it will fly better?"

"You got it," said Captain Relish, grinning proudly.

Remo turned to Nancy. "You should get together with him."

"Why?"

"Because you two obviously have a lot in common. What he said makes about as much sense as feathers on a Triceratops."

Nancy made her voice firm. "I am not-repeat not-authorizing that we fly Old Jack to America," she told Captain Relish. "And that's final."

"Dr. Derringer, you don't understand-"

"I understand plenty. You tell that jerk King that's my decision. And it's final."

"Uh-oh. Too late."

Nancy looked where Remo was pointing.

Two cranes were at work, carefully hoisting the dinosaur off the flatcar. The body lifted quivering, the head and tail hanging limp as if dead. The forked tongue protruded.

"Those idiots! They haven't secured the head and tail."

"I guess they're in a rush," said Captain Relish. "I hear the natives are restless."

Working in unison, the crane bore the great Halloween bulk closer and closer.

Nancy turned to Remo and Chiun.

"I need your help."

"Name it," said Remo.

"Yes," added Chiun. "Name it and a price will be determined later."

Remo winked as if to say, "Don't worry about it."

"Deal. I need you two to guide the head down safely. I know you can do amazing things, can you handle that?"

"Sure," said Remo.

"For a price to be determined later," Chiun said blandly.

"We'll worry about that then," said Nancy.

Captain Relish escorted them to an inflatable pontoon bridge that carried them over the shallow water to an open passenger door in the side of the anchored craft.

"The cargo bay is aft," he said, leading them through an interior that very much resembled a truncated passenger jet. A door in the rear gave into the cargo area. It lay open to the dazzling African sun.

Nancy gave the area a quick once-over. She turned to Captain Relish. "I think you'd better leave. Captain. That's ten tons of reptile meat about to come down in a relatively confined space."

The captain ducked out.

The cranes' operators brought the beast over to the waiting cargo hold of the ekranoplane. They were good. They got it into exact position without unnecessary jockeying. It blocked the sun.

Slowly, the cables began paying out.

"Okay," Nancy said nervously, as the creature's shadow grew. "We shouldn't have to worry about the tail. But if the head folds under the body, it could be crushed. At the very least, the windpipe could be constricted."

"Just grab the head and keep it from the body, right?" asked Remo.

"Right. You can do that?"

"Sure."

Nancy withdrew to a safe distance, where she made white-knuckled fists on and off during the remaining part of the fifteen-minute operation.

She saw it all, and questioned none of it.

The whiplike tip of the tail touched first and began coiling like a serpent dropping into a box. It was the other end she was worried about.

The undersized head, mouth slightly open and eyes closed, inched closer and closer to the stainless steel of the bulkhead floor.

Remo and Chiun took up positions under it. Small as it was in comparison to the thick neck, the head dwarfed them both. Like construction workers guiding a girder into position, they took hold of the snout and chin and with a nod to each other, walked it away as the body continued down.

The head was heavy enough, Nancy knew. But the greater weight lay in the tremendous pumpkin-striped neck.

Somehow, the pair knew exactly what to do. They moved left when the neck began to kink right and vice versa. They seemed to have an instinct for the way the reptile's weight was redistributing itself. It was as if, Nancy thought, they used the creature's own inert muscles against itself. That, more than their eerily effortless strength, impressed her most.

When the great padded feet touched the floor, they had the neck almost fully elongated. This was the crucial part.

Then it was over. Suddenly, effortlessly. The legs folded up on either side of the great bulk of the body and the wrinkled underside touched the floor. The ship hardly jarred.

And the neck, fully elongated now, lay flat, with the head resting on its chin.

Nancy came up and looked the beast over without saying a word.

The Master of Sinanju watched her and said to his pupil, "She is not very effusive in her gratitude."

"Give her a minute," Remo said. "She has to check everything out. Like you, when we fly."

"I am not flying in this maimed air vehicle. It has no wings."

"I don't get it, either."

Nancy let out a yelp of annoyance.

They ran to meet her.

"Damn Damn Damn Damn!" she was saying.

"What?" asked Remo.

"I forgot to sex the beast."

"Oh," said Remo.

Chiun took Remo aside and whispered, "What manner of female wishes to mate with a dragon?"

"She doesn't mean it that way."

"What way does she mean it?"

"She's trying to figure out what sex it is."

"It is a female," Chiun called.

Nancy looked up. "How can you tell?"

"Male dragons have larger heads. Females but tiny ones, because they have smaller brains. Just as with human females."

"Thank you for that illuminating bit of information," Nancy said thinly.

Chiun wrinkled up his tiny nose. "She does not sound grateful."

"Give her time," said Remo.

"I am willing to be patient as long as I receive my dragon bone," Chiun allowed.

"Nobody said anything about her being that grateful."

"A toe bone then. Until the beast dies a proper death. Then I may claim the leg bone of my choice."

"Do they even have toes?" Remo asked.

"True dragons do."

"But this is art African dragon. You never know about them. Maybe you should check."

His whole face wrinkling now, the Master of Sinanju floated up to the animal's rear right leg. He bent to examine tire fleshy pad. Nancy noticed this and asked, "Looking for thorns, by chance?"

"I am seeking a toe."

"Why?"

"To see if this monstrosity has one."

"Well, it does. Several of them. Happy now?"

The Master of Sinanju straightened. He looked into Nancy's faintly humorous eyes.

"I will be as soon as the largest toe is removed and given to me."

"Are we back to that?"

"I have never left," snapped Chiun.

Outside the craft, a great roar went up. At first, it sounded like a cheer. But the sound went on and on and grew angry. Nancy didn't understand a word of it. But anger, she understood.

"I'd better see what that is," she said.

"It is the king, appearing before his subjects," said Chiun.

"You understand what they're saying?"

"No, I understand the sound that is made by subjects of a strong king."

"Sounds more like a lynching in progress, if you ask me," Remo said.

"That's why I'm looking into this," said Nancy. "Will you two watch Old Jack?"

"Fear not," said Chiun in a loud voice. "No harm will befall this noble animal while the Master of Sinanju is his protector."

"And I'll stick around in case Chiun gets carried away playing 'this little piggy,' " said Remo.

"Pah!" said Chiun.

Nancy rushed for the forward exit hatch.

Chapter 14

Skip King sat in the VIP row behind the podium at which the president of the Republic of Gondwanaland was shaking his thick-fingered fist at the growing crowd.

The crowd was shaking its fists back. Both sides looked angry, but who could tell? This was the Third World, where shaking fists might be the local equivalent of a Hitler salute, or merely wild applause. King had taken dozens of corporate seminars, where he was taught that in Great Britain tabling a proposal meant the opposite of what it did in the U.S., that the deeper you bowed to a Japanese counterpart the more respect you showed-and lost-and that when an Arab sheikh took your hand while walking, it didn't mean he had fallen in love with you. Necessarily.

King had taken a crash course in Gondwanalandian customs, but his mind had been so overloaded with the visions of what this project would do to his career he could hardly pay attention, never mind take actual notes. He knew he'd spend most of his time in the jungle, anyway. Who cared which side of the road people drove on?

So he sat listening to the back-and-forth shouting in an incomprehensible language and hoped against hope this was an example of enthusiastic support and not the first stages of rioting.

Placards and signs were going up now. King sat up in his wooden folding chair, between the sweating war minister and the sweltering cultural minister, both of whom looked like they had been submerged in a fryo-lator until brown, and craned to see them.

Some of the placards were in Swahili, but most were in crude, semiliterate English.

King saw one that read, KEEP AFRICAN BRONTOSAUR IN AFRICA.

Another proclaimed, ENDANGERED AFRICAN SPECIES ARE AFRICAN-NOT AMERICAN!

"Oh-oh, this could get real ugly real fast," said King, looking around. "Where the hell is that bossy blonde? Maybe a good look at her knockers will settle these clowns down."

At that point, President Oburu switched to English for the benefit of the Burger Triumph archival camera crew.

"In recognition of the hospitality of our poor nation to the people from the Burger Triumph company," the president was saying, "the Americans have agreed to set up Burger Triumph franchises in both our major cities. These wonderful franchises will be available through my first cousin, the minister of commerce."

King smiled. Maybe that would do it. People who ate monkey meat should be damn grateful for a taste of good old Americana microwaved and slapped between halves of a bleached-flour bun.

Instead, the crowd turned uglier.

"We do not want the white man's cheap meats!" they shouted.

"We want our Brontosaurus! It will bring Gondwanaland many tourist dollars!"

"Yes. We want our Brontosaur!"

The crowd took up the chant. The placards began to lift and dip in time with the angry refrain.

"We want our Brontosaur! We want our Brontosaur! Keep Brontosaurus in Gondwanaland!"

President Oburu turned away from the microphone and looked to King with the expression of a bulldog faced with an unclimbable fence.

"You wish to try?" he mouthed.

King got up. Straightening his tie, he strode purposefully up to the President of Gondwanaland and, keeping his distance from the microphone, made a show of shaking the president's big fat-with-gold-rings hand in both of his.

"I got it covered," King said confidently.

The president turned away, palming a sweaty wellfolded envelope crammed with U.S. dollars, and took his seat.

King addressed the microphone. He had taken endless Burger Triumph seminars in public speaking. He knew all the tricks. He raised both arms and waited for the shouting to die down. His arms got very tired and his face hurt from smiling.

But he wore them down. The dull roar soon settled into an angry muttering. And King lowered his arms and began speaking.

"People, don't think of this as a dead loss. Think of it as a net gain."

The angry mutter swelled.

"I mean, you're not losing a lumbering slow-witted dinosaur. You're gaining a fast-growing slice of the American dream. Burger Triumph fries are the best on the planet. Our nondairy shakes come in six different flavors. And we only use the finest Hungarian steer beef in our Bongo Burgers. Shipped directly to Port Chuma from Warsaw-or whatever the capital of Hungary is these days."

He was booed. A thousand fists shook at him.

Through it all, Skip King kept his corporate smile fixed as the bars on a prison door. He raised his arms for silence. This time, the crowd won.

"Keep Brontosaur in Africa! Keep Brontosaur African!"

Then Nancy Derringer slipped to the empty chair at the end of the VIP row.

"Wait a minute," King shouted. "Here's somebody you have to hear." The roar continued unabated. King found the volume control, set it to max, and said, "May I present the foremost authority on dinosaurs in the universe, the lovely Nancy Derringer!"

While the crowd was covering its ears, he waved Nancy over.

"Come on, baby," he hissed. "Save the corporation's bacon here."

Nancy stepped up to the microphone as if walking on glass.

"What do I say?" she asked, eyes uncertain.

King kept his hand on the mike. "Anything. Quiet them down. We gotta get out of here before they stampede." He took his hand off the mike and said, "And here she is, as talented as she is built: Nancy Derringer!" Then King beat a hasty retreat to his seat.

Blushing, Nancy addressed the mob.

"I know how you must feel . . ." she began.

The crowd booed.

"But in the interest of science, this is the best way."

They hissed.

"We have facilities in America to humanely house the animal."

They hooted.

"And it's my hope that the Apatosaur will be returned to the wild after a suitable interval of study."

At that, the crowd laughed in derision.

Someone took off their sneaker and threw it. It bounced off the podium. Nancy kept it from toppling with both hands.

"Really, you must try to understand. This is for the animal's welfare."

"Boo!" someone shouted. "You are going to slaughter it and feed rich Americans the meat."

"Oh, be serious. Who told you that?"

"I have read this in the International Enquirer."

"Oh, come on."

A rock sailed up and landed on the tiny bald spot at the top of Skip King's head.

"Oww!" he cried, jumping up with both hands covering his head.

The skies rained hard objects.

King turned to President Oburu. "Do something!"

The president turned to his nephew, the minister of the interior, and spoke rapidly. The minister of the interior leaned over to his son, the deputy minister, who then consulted briefly with his half brother, the chief of the secret police, who stood up and lifted a silver whistle hanging from a gold chain about his thick neck and blew into it.

The Gondwanaland authorities had obviously prepared for this eventuality. On signal, pepper gas grenades popped and fell into the crowd. Military vehicles rumbled into view and water cannon began knocking down the audience closest to the stage. People began running, but the ground was a river. They slipped and slid and all was bedlam.

In the confusion, King shouted to his camera crew, "Cut film! Don't record this! Everybody understand that?"

Then he was at Nancy Derringer's side saying, "Don't sweat it, Nance. I'll protect you."

"You! This is all your fault!" She raised her hand to slap him in the face, but King covered his face in time.

"Now, now, you're just hysterical with fear. Come on!"

The sound of tear gas shells brought Remo to the side door of the ekranoplane. He threw it open and immediately the sting of pepper gas drove him back.

"Remo, what is it?" Chiun asked.

Remo coughed his lungs clear. "Trouble."

"I am charged with guarding this fine animal," Chiun said imperiously. "You may quell the troubles if you wish."

"I counted every toe," Remo warned. "Twenty. There better be twenty when I get back, too."

"Tattletale!"

Remo charged his lungs and plunged out of the Orlyonok. A wave of Gondwanalanders pounded toward him, holding handkerchiefs or sleeves and other bits of clothing in front of their mouths and noses. Their eyes were red and teary. And they were in no mood to give way.

Remo, blowing a slow but steady stream of carbon dioxide through both nostrils to keep the pepper gas from entering his lungs, ran directly at them.

He veered, looking for an opening. He found one, zipped through, and immediately changed direction. It was like running against a tide that was also running. Remo sensed the flow of bodies around him, drew their motion into his own, and avoided every stumbling form and groping, outstretched hand.

But there came a point where there was no more space in the crush of bodies. He changed tactics in midrun, leaping suddenly into the air. One foot came down on the head of a man. The man felt only a slight scuff that disturbed his springy peppercorn hair, and the foot was gone. Remo's other foot touched another head and impelled him along.

He ran over the ground, so fast that people brushed at their hair and looked over their shoulders in time to see a white man seemingly running on air.

Technically, Remo was running on hair, but no one understood that. They were too busy fleeing to imagined safety.

He reached the stage, where the speakers were crouched down, trying not to breathe the noxious onion-flavored fumes.

Remo found Nancy struggling with Skip King to get off the podium.

"Time to go," Remo called.

"How?" Nancy coughed back. "Everything is blocked. We're trapped."

"Leave that to me. Let's go."

Remo offered Nancy his hand. Immediately, King pulled her away.

"Butt out! This is my rescue. Stick with me, Nancy."

"Remo, I would appreciate any help that separates me from this toady," Nancy said tightly.

"You got it," Remo said. He reached out and took King by the throat, squeezed, and King came to his feet with his teeth clenched and an obedient expression in his sharp face. Even his eyes looked clenched.

"Whatever you want me to do," he croaked. "I'll do it."

"That's a smart attitude, because your spine feels unusually brittle today."

"I thought so, too," King said unhappily.

"Just stay with me," Remo said, guiding them along.

"My camera crew!" King said, stopping. "We can't leave them!"

"Since when did he become a humanitarian?" Remo asked Nancy.

"Since he entrusted the videotapes of the expedition to the camera people."

"Oh," said Remo.

"This way! This way!" King yelled, waving his arms to get the crew's attention.

The video team was dispersed about the stage and below. They pushed their way to King's side.

"Everybody all right?" Nancy asked.

"Never mind that!" King snapped. "Are the packages safe?"

"Yes, Skip," said the chief of PR.

"Call me Mr. King when the cameras are off! Got that?"

Remo led them to the side of the stage, through a loosely packed part of the crowd. The tear gas was beginning to thin, but the water cannon were hosing everything in sight. The ground was wet and muddy. The security police were laughing and knocking down anyone still on their feet, the high-pressure streams pushing them into shacks and other immovable objects.

Remo brought them to one of the giant cranes. He climbed it and took the edge of his hand to the base of the framework. Metal snapped and parted. Slowly, the crane began to lean drunkenly.

As if looking through a surveyor's transit, Remo sighted through the skeletal framework. He gauged where the derrick might fall, pounded in the lattice at one side, and took another sighting.

Satisfied, he gave a hard, two-handed push.

With a squeaking screech, the derrick began to fall.

Remo yelled, "Timber!"

But it was the sound of the derrick's tortured framework that made everyone in its shadow look up and break in all directions like ants in an earthquake.

The derrick crushed two water trucks that happened to be in the way, forming a bridge to the waiting wingship.

Remo helped Nancy up onto girderwork. King scrambled up, on his own. The video crew took up the rear.

They worked their way along and dropped off at the end. That put them within sprinting distance of the pontoon bridge to the wingship. The crowd, chased by security police, were busy fleeing in both directions along the waterfront, leaving the area clear.

"How's that for service!" Remo asked.

"Wonderful," Nancy said. She turned. King had managed to ingest a mouthful of pepper gas. He was coughing uncontrollably and squinting blindly through his pain.

"Here, let me help you," she said sympathetically.

"Are you crazy! What if there are government cameras running! How will it look-Skip King being helped by a girl?"

"Stumble along on your own, then," Nancy snapped, stepping onto the pontoon bridge.

They reached the side hatch and King ducked into the rest room. The strenuous sound of his retching and heaving came for several noisy minutes.

Captain Relish took command.

"Everyone to their assigned seats," he announced. "The pilot is getting ready to launch this bird."

"I'm staying with Old Jack," Nancy said.

"Not a good idea," Captain Relish said.

"Maybe not, but it's my idea." She started aft.

"I'll help you count toes," Remo said.

Captain Relish got in Remo's way. "Sorry, sir. You're not part of the team. I can't let you aboard without authorization."

"Think again. I just saved everyone's butt."

"Mr. King will have to authorize this." The sound of running water abruptly stopped in the rest room. "Throw him off the plane!" King shouted. Then heaved some more.

"Try and make me," Remo told Captain Relish.

At that moment, the Master of Sinanju appeared in the doorway through which Nancy was heading.

"Remo, I am not staying on this vehicle, which cannot possibly fly," he said coldly.

"Damn."

"Nor will I continue to consort with these ingrates."

"You win this round," Remo told Captain Relish.

Nancy looked to Remo. "Look me up in the States?"

"Maybe," said Remo.

The engines started to whine. The Master of Sinanju slipped from the wingship. Remo ducked out after him, his face a storm cloud. The pontoon bridge was cast off and the hatch was slammed unceremoniously shut.

Remo and Chiun stood on the beach to watch.

The great dorsal cargo doors were settling into place. At the tail, the two props began turning, each in the opposite direction. They built up speed and the craft inched forward.

Remo turned to Chiun.

"What's the idea? We could have hitched a ride home."

"Hush. I must watch. It is possible the craft will sink and an entire thigh bone will be mine for the taking."

Remo folded his arms. The prop backwash was beating the remaining pepper gas away from the patch of sand where they stood.

The Orlyonok was moving now. The two props pulled it into the harbor. Fishing boats got out of the way.

There were two giant turbofan exhausts set on either side of the nose. They began roaring and blowing, angling forced air under the wingroots.

The wingship leaped ahead and was suddenly floating above the waves. It skimmed out to sea at a steady speed.

"Guess it works after all," Remo muttered, watching it. "And you can kiss that thigh bone sayonara."

Chiun narrowed his hazel eyes at the departing tail.

"Come, Remo." And the Master of Sinanju leapt toward the water.

He lifted his skirts and soon was splashing into the surf. Then, as if finding submerged steps, he was racing across the waves, employing the same technique Remo had used to run atop human heads without breaking human necks.

Remo plunged after him. His feet found the water's natural buoyancy and he used this to propel himself forward.

The ekranoplane was still building up air speed. They overhauled it after a five-minute run, and first Chiun, then Remo caught up with the starboard wingroot and leapt onto its shiny surface.

There they lay flat, adhering like stubborn starfish as the slipstream buffeted them.

The Orlyonok skimmed out into the Atlantic.

No one noticed that it carried two extra passengers. Until Skip King happened to look out a starboard window hours later and imagined he saw the aged Korean calmly sitting on the trailing edge of the wing, his back to the slipstream, which pressed his clothing so flat king could almost count the bumps along his spine.

King blinked. Imagination. It had to be. Without telling anyone, he took a seat on the opposite side of the wingship.

There, he thought he saw the other one-Remo stretched out on the wing, sunning himself as if on a huge aluminum lawn chair.

Some sixth sense caused Remo to become aware of King's eyes on him. Abruptly, Remo sat up and gave a little wave. King lifted his hand to wave back, then had a sudden change in priority.

The sound of his heaving and wretching floated out of the washroom for the next hour. Intermittently.

Chapter 15

The ekranoplane Orlyonok thundered across the Atlantic Ocean in exactly eleven hours, twenty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds.

Her nose engines began to throttle down, and Remo, who had passed the trip stretched out on the port wing, sat up. The reduced slipstream threw his dark hair around, and he kept his face turned away from the blasting air.

Shore breezes brought a conglomeration of smells to his sensitive nostrils-smog, food odors, car exhaust. Civilization. The ekranoplane was nearing land. It was night. The moon outlined a shelf of pale sand. A beach.

Then the nose engines cut out and the wingship settled into the water, her tail propellers pulling her toward shore.

Remo stood up. It was possible to stand up now. Over the prop roar, he called, "Hey, Little Father. Ready to make landfall?"

"The tardy cook dinner," Chiun squeaked back.

And Remo jumped off the leading edge of the blunt wing. His feet carried him in front of the wingship. Once past the gleaming white nose, he spotted the Master of Sinanju, pipestem arms pumping, legs flying under his broad kimono skirts, keeping pace.

Remo pushed himself harder. The wavelets under his feet felt like slippery elusive pebbles that tried to repel footing. But Remo's flashing feet moved on so quickly that they found purchase enough to keep him moving ahead, but not enough to break the surface tension of the water.

Then there was a chunking of hard-packed beach sand under his shoe leather.

"I win!" said Remo, turning toward the water.

Chiun was nowhere to be seen. Remo saw the big wingship coming in, but out on the water there was no Master of Sinanju.

"Oh man," said Remo, starting back. He had just set both shoes into the cold water when behind him, Chiun's squeaky voice said, "You were slower than usual."

Remo whirled. There was Chiun, standing there, pointing to Remo's sopping shoes.

"And you have wet your feet."

"They're wet because I thought you'd fallen in."

"Anyone who would think that deserves to walk about with his shoes full of seawater."

Remo walked back, his shoes simultaneously squishing and making gritty sounds.

"I didn't see you overtake me," he said.

"And if you do not learn to see with both eyes, you will never see the hand that strikes you dead," retorted Chiun, a faint light of triumph in his hazel eyes. "We will have fish tonight," he added blandly.

"Maybe there's a good restaurant around here, wherever here is."

They looked around. The beach and docks looked unfamilar. The wingship continued gliding toward the empty beach. Tugboats were chugging to meet it. The Orlyonok settled into a slow glide and the tugs bumped at its wings, stopped it, then backed off as other tugs began nudging the wings from behind.

Slowly, they guided it toward the beach. The craft nosed onto the gritty sand, crushing sea shells and driftwood, and its hull made an extended grating sound before it came to a dead stop.

"Let's pretend we're a welcoming party," Remo suggested.

"I will welcome a toe bone and nothing less."

They circled around to wait patiently by the hatch while it was unlocked and thrown open.

Colonel Mustard poked his head out.

"Greetings," said Chiun.

"Miss us?" asked Remo.

Colonel Mustard grew round of eye and mouth and pulled the hatch back with both hands.

Remo caught the door edge. Mustard pulled harder. Remo gave a casual yank and the colonel landed in the sand, face first.

Skip King barged up to the door, demanding, "What is going on here?"

"Welcome wagon," Remo sang out.

King let out a shriek and stumbled back into the craft.

Nancy Derringer showed up next. "How on earth did you two-" She saw the purple-bereted figure sprawled on the beach and changed her question. "What is he supposed to be?"

"Colonel Mustard, in the sand, with egg on his face," Remo said.

"Funny."

"How's the Bronto?"

"Apatosaur. And he's sleeping like a little lamb."

"Some lamb."

Nancy looked around. "That's odd."

"What is?"

"I don't see any press."

"I wouldn't complain," Remo said.

"I'm not. It's just that I've come to expect the glare of hot lights every time I turn around."

"No press," King shouted from within the craft. His voice held a nervous tremble. "We're in a press blackout."

"Why?" Remo called back.

"We don't want the public to see Old Jack until we're ready to unveil him."

"Where are we anyway?" Remo asked Nancy.

"Dover, Delaware, home of the globe-girdling Burger Triumph Corporation." She looked to the beached ekranoplane. "This is the part that worries me most. Offloading Old Jack and transporting him through the city. We've already subjected him to enough strain as it is."

Remo noticed two barge-mounted cranes standing off in the harbor.

"Here we go again."

"Yes, and I'm worried those cranes aren't up to the job."

"Excuse us a minute," Remo said, motioning Chiun away. The two consulted for some moments and returned.

"We have an idea," announced Remo.

"Yes?"

"But it's not likely to make too many people happy."

"Will it insure Old Jack's survival?"

"Guaranteed."

"Then I don't care. Just tell me what I have to do."

"Take a short nap," said Remo.

"Excuse me?"

But before Nancy could hear the reply, steely fingers had her by the neck and squeezed down on her spine. She heard a faint click, and when she woke up an unknown period of time later, she was sitting in one of the comfortable ekranoplane passenger seats, surrounded by other expedition members, who snored and grunted in their chairs.

Except Skip King, who for some reason was on his knees with his face jammed under his seat flotation cushion.

Nancy felt very sleepy and her memory was hazy.

Then the howl of metal under stress caused her to jump bolt upright. It seemed to be coming from the cargo bay. Nancy leapt to the door. It was closed, dogged shut. She tried to undog it. The wheel seemed to have been welded immobile.

Rushing back, she jumped to the main exit door.

The locking lever refused to budge, and from the rear of the plane came more howls of metallic complaint.

The wingship had a double deck, like a jumbo jet. She raced up the spiral steps to the observation deck. The pilot and copilot were asleep in the cockpit, but aft of it was an observation bubble. Nancy mounted the short carpeted steps and stared out.

"Oh God!"

The tail of the plane was off. It had fallen backward and was canted to one side. Between the dismembered tail and the passenger and wing area, there was no plane. Just hull plates and the exposed ribs of the mainframe, which had fallen away from the naked keel.

The Apatosaur was slumbering on the open air platform that had been the enclosed cargo bay floor, its black-andorange skin shining in the moonlight. It seemed undamaged by the incredible explosion-for what else could it be?-that had blown open the cargo hold.

Then an airframe rib moved and fell into the sand. Nancy shifted position to see what had brought it down.

And there was Remo, casually placing a foot on the next rib. He set his weight on it. Nancy judged he couldn't weigh much more that one hundred fifty-five pounds, but the rib snapped off like a dry branch.

Remo looked up, happened to see her, and gave her a thumbs-up sign.

Nancy waggled fingers back. Weakly.

Then she sat down and had herself a good shake.

"This isn't happening," she told herself.

Not long after, the main hatch was ripped free and Nancy pounded down the steps and out.

"Check it out," Remo said, face calm.

She ran past him and to the rear. The Apatosaur was still in a drug-induced stupor. She found no marks on his leathery orange hide and breathed a long sign of relief.

Chiun appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. "Do not worry, it has all its toes."

"I don't know how you did it, but-"

Something rumbled up on the high ground. A horn honked. It sounded like a diesel truck, and they all looked toward the high end of the beach.

Monster headlights appeared first, shooting rays into the night sky. Then as the great forward tires eased down into the soft sand, they dipped, blinding them.

"What on earth is that?" Nancy breathed.

"At a guess, the official Brontomobile," Remo said.

With a hiss of air brakes, the lumbering multiwheeled vehicle came to a stop. The headlights were doused, and they were able to see again.

"Looks like a missile carrier," Remo ventured.

"Leave it to King to buy the biggest toys," Nancy sighed.

"And we'll leave it to you to get the Bronto onto that thing safely, okay?"

"Where are you going?"

"Our work is done. So this is where we cut out."

Nancy grinned. "Didn't the Lone Ranger say that once?"

Chiun lifted his chin. "I am not leaving without proper compensation."

"You have your castle," Remo said. "So what's the beef?"

"Castle?" Nancy asked.

"Long story. Catch you around sometime."

Remo started away. On impulse, Nancy reached out and snagged his lean arm. It felt as strong as it should-given the fact that he had just disassembled a giant aircraft without resorting to tools.

"I owe you a lot," Nancy said simply. "Care to swap phone numbers?"

Remo hesitated. Reluctantly, Nancy let go of his arm, her brow furrowing. "I know I crushed your childhood fantasies, but-"

"We do not have a telephone," Chiun said.

"We don't even have furniture yet," Remo added. "Tell you what, give me your number."

Nancy handed him a business card.

Remo looked at it. "Cryptozoology?"

Nancy smiled. "Call me sometime. I'll explain it to you. Deal?"

"Deal."

And then they were gone.

Nancy's eyes went to the crew scampering down from the dinosaur hauler, back to the Apatosaur sleeping peacefully in the exploded hull of the ekranoplane, and she mumbled to herself, "I don't know how I'm going to explain all this." Then she shrugged mentally and added, "Then again, why should I? This is B'wana King's responsibility. Let him explain it."

She smiled as she ran to meet the carrier crew.

Chapter 16

Remo and Chiun had to walk two miles before they found a roadside payphone.

"Well, I feel good," Remo was saying. "I did my good deed for the week."

"May you feel so elated at my funeral," Chiun said bitterly.

Remo frowned, "Look. One, I don't believe that crap about dragon bones being the fountain of youth. And two it wasn't a dragon. And saving it was our mission. Smith will be happy."

"Not when he learns that he is doomed to a too-short life due to your inflexibility."

"Got news for you," Remo said, fishing into his pockets for a quarter, "I don't think Smith will buy into that fable, either."

The Master of Sinanju turned his back on his pupil. Remo thumbed the one button down until the automated dialing system brought him Harold Smith's lemony voice.

"Remo. Where are you?"

"The wilds of Delaware. Mission accomplished. The Bronto is on the beach. They should be loading him onto the carrier about now. And best of all, we have the eternal gratitude of a Dr. Nancy Derringer, who gave me her card. It says she's a cryptozoologist, whatever that is."

"It is one who searches for creatures who may or may not exist," said Smith, showing no surprise at learning the dinosaur was real. "I am pleased all went well. And I have interesting news for you."

"Yeah?"

"You will remember Roy Shortsleeve, the death row inmate you believe is innocent?"

"Yeah?"

"I have looked into his background. Shortsleeve and two other men went on a camping trip in August 1977. The murdered man was found shot with Shortsleeve's rifle. Shortsleeve has steadfastly maintained his innocence from the trial to now. He claimed the third man on the trip, a coworker named Doyce Deek actually committed the murder. But Deek insisted it was Shortsleeve."

"One man's word against the other, huh?"

"The evidence against Shortsleeve was otherwise circumstantial," Smith admitted. "If Deek did it, he might be persuaded to confess."

"Got a line on Deek?"

"He is now living in Gillette, Wyoming. No visible means of support."

"Wyoming. I'm on my way."

"I am not going with you," Chiun called out. "My days are growing short and I wish to savor every precious hour."

"What is Master Chiun saying?" Smith asked.

Remo sighed. "He took a fancy to the Bronto."

"I am not surprised. It is a remarkable find. I would like to see it myself."

"Chiun is disappointed he didn't come away with a souvenir. Like a big toe."

"A big toe?"

"Seems dinosaur bones are the main ingredient to some witch's brew that makes Masters of Sinanju live to ripe old ages."

"Great longevity can be yours, too, Emperor Smith," Chiun called out. "Just speak the words that will speed me on my way."

"Tell Master Chiun I have no wish to live beyond my allotted span," Smith told Remo.

"Not only great longevity, but virility belongs to he who partakes of the bones of the dragon," Chiun proclaimed.

"Er, I am virile enough, thank you," said Smith.

"Don't tell me, tell him," Remo said sourly. He put his hand over his mouthpiece. "Nice try Chiun, but Mrs. Smith is built like an overstuffed sofa. I think Smith could care less about his virility."

"He does not know what he is missing."

Remo took his hand off the mouthpiece. "Okay, Smitty. I'll bundle Chiun on the next magic carpet to Castle Sinanju and get on my way to deal with this Deek character."

When Remo had replaced the receiver, he found the Master of Sinanju looking up to the night sky, his face forlorn.

"I am unappreciated."

"You are not. You own a brand spanking new castle. "

"I am unappreciated in a foreign land and a castle will no longer console me, for I do not know how long I will have to enjoy it." He shut his eyes.

"I knew this wouldn't last," Remo said. "Come on. Let's find some transportation. Smith has an assignment for me."

Chiun eyed Remo suspiciously. "You are trying to get out of cooking dinner."

"I'll buy you dinner at the airport, okay?"

"I am being abandoned at an airport. I never thought you would stoop this low, Remo."

"Stoop to what?"

"Parent dumping. I have seen this terrible practice on television. Cheeta Ching decries it often. Now it is my turn. I am being dumped."

"You are not being dumped!"

Chiun bowed his aged head. "I am being fed a farewell meal and left to fend for myself."

"Oh, cut it out."

At the airport, the Master of Sinanju announced that he was not hungry.

"You sure?" asked Remo, suspiciously.

"I am sure that I am being abandoned."

"Bulldookey."

"But do not think simply because I am being abandoned by you," Chiun said in the loud, attention-getting voice. "that you no longer owe me a final meal."

"Keep it down, will you?"

A passing stewardess stopped, set down her folding baggage cart, and asked, "Is there a problem here?"

She directed her question at Chiun not Remo.

"No, no problem," Remo said quickly.

"I am being abandoned by my adopted son," Chiun said plaintively, lifting a corner of his kimono sleeve to one eye.

The stewardess glared at Remo, "You should be ashamed of yourself. This poor old man."

"Look, I have to get him on the next flight to Boston."

"Do you live in Boston, sir?" This to Chiun.

"No." Chiun gave Remo a cold stare.

The stewardess glared at Remo again.

"He lives outside Boston," Remo said. "And I just want to get him home. Look, I brought him his ticket and everything. All I have to do is get him on the freaking plane."

"I am forced to travel on an empty stomach," Chiun complained, snatching the ticket from Remo's hand.

The stewardess patted Chiun's frail-looking hand, saying, "There, there. Don't fret. Let me take you to travelers' aid. Are you hungry?"

"My appetite seems to be returning now that I am in your caring hands," Chiun said.

"I'll be happy to treat you to a nice meal. You look as if you haven't eaten in weeks."

"I am in the mood for fish."

They started off together.

"Fine," Remo called after the stewardess. "Feed him. But whatever you do don't let him con you into loaning him any money. He's as rich as King Midas."

"My ancestors were rich," Chiun told the stewardess. "For they were secure in their families. But I am in my twilight years and have no sons to call my own. Therefore, I am poor."

"You know," the stewardess said. "Cheeta Ching did a special report on this only last month. It's called granny dumping."

"A gross name for a gross practice. Did I mention that I am a personal friend of Cheeta Ching?"

"Really? She's my hero. Especially for having a baby at forty. She's so . . . so Murphy Brown!"

"She could not have done it without me. Did you know that?"

"I think her husband had a little something to do with it. He's a gynecologist, you know. Talk about having it all!"

Remo went to his gate, and talked his way into an earlier flight to Wyoming. He was looking forward to having a conversation with Doyce Deek, who had let a man rot on death row for a crime he never committed.

Remo knew exactly how that felt. He planned on explaining how it was to Deek-in excruciating detail.

Chapter 17

As the converted missile carrier lumbered through the night, Nancy Derringer was amazed at how smoothly the transfer had gone.

There had been some rough spots before the big cranes had hoisted Old Jack from the remnants of the wingship, true. But those had been confined to Skip King's tantrums and carrying on when he found the Orlyonok, for which he was directly responsible, a broken derelict.

"How am I going to explain this to the board?" he moaned as the wingship crew compared notes. They had all remembered waking up in their seats to find the ship destroyed. No one remembered falling asleep. No one remembered anything.

"Simple," Nancy had suggested. "We beached, there was an accident, and the ship broke apart. We were all knocked unconscious."

"That's it! Pilot error. Why not? It works for the F.A.A."

"It was no pilot error. It was an accident."

"You don't understand. This is corporate politics we're talking about. There has to be a scapegoat. It's the way the game is played, and you're my backup."

"I am not your backup. Get clear on that point."

"Forget about me ever mentoring you."

They had to beach the barge, but it worked out better that way. A beached barge could not capsize. The cranes toiled briefly, under the watchful eyes of the Burger Berets, swinging the limp creature onto the padded carrier.

Everyone pitched in at that point, guiding the dinosaur's head to a safe landing. One of the cranes was needed to drape the thick tail onto the carrier. The beast was secured with heavy cable.

"Perfect." King said. "We're ready to roll."

The moon had become lost in a storm front. The darkness was absolute. Even so, transporting a ten-ton reptile up the lonely Delaware coast was not about to come off smoothly.

Yet, it did. The roads were virtually deserted.

"I can't believe our luck," Nancy said, riding in a company car with King. They were directly behind the brontohauler, as King called it. Three cars loaded with crack Burger Berets rode point.

"Don't," King said flatly. "The board had the roads blocked off."

"The board has that kind of clout?"

"The board has that much money to throw around," King retorted.

"Somehow I don't much care for the way the board throws money at problems instead of reasoning them through."

"In our league, baby, things move so smoothly that thinking is optional."

"That, I believe."

King frowned in the darkness. "That didn't come out right."

"Oh, yes it did."

They were barreling along a stretch of wooded road. The carrier, on twelve fat tires, each the size of their own car, dragged them along in the steady suction of its passing.

"I'll be glad when we get where we're going," Nancy breathed. "I feel like I personally carried Old Jack all the way from Africa on my shoulders."

"Me, I feel great. I'm Skip King, the man who brought the last living Brontosaur back from Africa alive. I wonder if I'll make the cover of Time?"

"Probably not," Nancy said in a cool voice.

"Why not?"

"I think they'll put Jack's picture on the cover, if anyone's."

"Damn, that's right. Those bastards probably will. Damn. Maybe I can get into the picture, somehow."

"Maybe if you put your head into his mouth."

King blinked. "Brontos don't eat people, do they?"

"Of course not."

"Maybe it's worth a shot then." King reached over and chucked Nancy under the chin. "Thanks, kid. You're all right."

Nancy rolled her eyes.

The walkie-talkie on the dash crackled.

"Mustard to Mogul. Mustard to Mogul. Acknowledge."

"Mogul is my code name," King said proudly. Into the walkie-talkie, he said, "Go ahead, Mustard."

"We have some vehicles blocking the road up ahead. "

"Roadblock?"

"Looks like."

"Must be state troopers securing the road," King muttered. "Go on ahead and get them to clear the way for us. Fast. We don't want the carrier to have to brake unless we have to. That thing is a juggernaut."

"Roger. Out."

Through the steady rhythm of the carrier they heard the lead cars accelerate. Several moments passed: Then, unmistakably, there came the rattle and pop pop pop of small arms fire.

"That can't be gunfire!" Nancy said.

Abruptly, the red brake lights-all sixteen of them-flared along the carrier's rear end. Massive brakes engaged and the giant wheels kicked up acrid rubber smoke as momentum pushed the locked tires along.

The brontohauler began slewing.

Nancy moaned, "Oh no. It's going to jacknife!"

The carrier didn't jacknife. But it was a near thing.

Knuckles white, King swerved to avoid a collision.

He ended up on the soft shoulder of the road. He popped the door and lifted his head up to see.

The carrier was sliding on locked tires to a sloppy halt. There was another silence. Then the gunfire broke the stillness, louder and more spiteful this time.

King grabbed up his walkie-talkie. "Mogul to Mustard. What's happening?"

"You won't believe this, Mr. King," Colonel Mustard panted, pausing to snap off a shot. "We're under attack!"

"Not again!" Nancy said.

"Can you make out who it is?" King asked in a heated voice.

"No, sir, they're wearing camos and ski masks. But there is something you should know."

"What?"

"They're wearing green berets."

"It can't be! We left those third world do-gooders back in Africa."

"I can't say it's them, but they have the same haberdasher. We're returning fire. "

"Return fire, hell! Wipe 'em out!"

Nancy hissed at him in the dark. "Are you crazy, King? A firefight is insane."

King looked at her incredulously. "What do you want-to let them just steal the animal?"

"If I have a choice between a dead dinosaur and a kidnapped one," Nancy bit back. "I'll take the latter. Gladly."

"The board didn't spend millions just to lose out on the product tie-in of the century."

Nancy jumped out of the car. "Use your head. Where could they possibly take Jack? Back to Africa? Order your goons to retreat."

"I'm giving the orders around here." King hissed into the walkie-talkie, "Burger Berets! Do your duty! Sing out!"

And from the near distance, repeated in the walkie-talkie, came a crackling battlecry.

"Have it your way!"

Then the percussive chatter of automatic weapons fire cannonading through the night like a crackling intermittent rain.

Listening to it, King pounded on the car roof. "Damn, I wish I had a gun!"

"So do I," Nancy said bitterly. "And you in my sights. "

"You're just overwrought."

Then, the most blood-chilling sound Nancy Derringer had ever heard in her life lifted over the unremitting small arms fire.

Harruuunkk?

King grinned fiercely. "They must have nailed one of the bastards!"

"That was Jack!" Nancy cried.

"Old Jack?"

But Nancy was rushing to the brontohauler. Skip King froze. If he pulled her back, she might be eternally grateful. On the other hand, she'd been threatening to write him up to the board.

"Maybe I should leave this to Kismet," he said, ducking back into the car to wait out the mortal storm.

Nancy Derringer heard the sound a second time. The black tip of the Apatosaur's whiplike tail was twitching.

"Oh God, the tranks are wearing off!- Not now! Not now! Please not now!"

The pumpkin bulk still lay flat on the hauler body. Nancy circled around to the front. The head lay flat like that of a stunned serpent. The eyes were half open, the square, goaty pupils hooded. The orbs were filmed and cloudy. It was not aware of its surroundings. And obviously too weak to stand. A minor blessing.

Nancy gave the rough leathery hide a reassuring pat. "Don't you worry, Punkin. Mama's going to get you out of this. Somehow . . ."

She stopped under the oversized cab. Both doors were open. The drivers had joined the firefight, which seemed to be all around her now. Tracers zipped through the dark woods just ahead.

Nancy had started climbing the aluminum ladder to the driver's compartment when out of the shadows a masked man emerged.

Nancy saw him and yelled, "Put that weapon down! Do you want to kill the poor creature?"

"Get down from that thing," warned a gruff voice. A stocking mask covered all but the mouth and a thin circle around the eyes. The man's skin was black. No question. And he wore the signature forest green beret of a member of the Congress for a Green Africa.

"All right," Nancy said tightly, "but watch where you point that thing, please."

She clambered down.

The masked man approached. "Hands up."

Nancy obeyed. She tried to keep her face blank. Inside, she was boiling.

The masked man in the green beret approached. He carried his Skorpion machine pistol carelessly, waving it about.

Nancy tried to reason with him. "You don't expect to just steal a ten-ton dinosaur, do you?"

"If we can't," the man said casually, "then we'll just kill it."

It was the wrong thing to say. Nancy felt her mind go as blank as her face. She hadn't planned it. She hadn't planned anything. But her toe was in the man's groin before she knew she had kicked up and out.

Her opponent went, "Ooof!"

And his Skorpion hit the ground. Nancy leapt for it. Her hand touched the still-hot barrel. "Ouch!" She fumbled for the stock and brought the weapon around. She pointed it at her attacker.

The terrorist was holding himself and walking bentlegged.

"Settle down," Nancy warned, getting the feel of the unfamiliar weapon.

"Bitch! You kicked me!" His voice was very high.

"I'm as surprised as you are about it. Now stand still."

The man stopped. He stood in a bowlegged stance, holding his crotch, his teeth bared in pain.

"You gonna pay for that, bitch."

"Fine. Just so long as you stay exactly where you are, and don't let go of your organs of thought."

"Got no choice," the man grunted.

Nancy noticed his voice then. His accent was not what she had expected. There was none of the EuroAfrican gumbo flavor of the previous attackers. It sounded more American somehow.

"Who are you, anyway? You couldn't have beat us back to the States."

"That for you to figure out, bitch."

"You are an American."

"Congress for a Green Africa be international."

"Hmmm."

Clicking footsteps behind her caused Nancy to whirl. She pointed the Skorpion at the approaching figure.

"Halt!"

"Nancy-what are you doing?"

Nancy almost shot the familiar voice in her surprise. "King?"

Then she was jumped from behind. They struggled for the weapon. The terrorist was stronger. Inexorably, he was using the extended weapon as a lever to force her to her knees. He was winning.

And in her ears, Skip King was saying, "For God's sake, Nancy! That man is a professional killer. Don't fight him. You can't win."

Maybe it was her anger at King. Maybe it was a sudden and terrifying awareness that the muzzle was pointing directly at the slumbering Apatosaur. But something gave Nancy Derringer the strength to resist as she tried to bring her heel down on his instep.

His feet kept shifting. It was no good. Her breath came in hot sobs.

"King-" she grunted. "Help-me."

Then her opponent's thumb found the trigger guard and the gun started erupting fire and stuttering noise.

Nancy forced the muzzle down, praying she wasn't too late. The weapon was spitting at a cluster of oversized tires and then at the ground. Abruptly, it was emptied.

Nancy let go and stepped back, her face white and shocked. And a fist connected with the point of her chin. She kept her feet, her eyes blinking furiously.

Dark shadows were moving all around her, but she barely comprehended what they meant. She was out on her feet.

When her head cleared, Nancy was sitting up against the big hauler tires and Skip King was bending over her, shining a flashlight on her modest cleavage.

"What happened?" she asked in a thick voice.

"I saved you," King said smugly. "You owe me your life."

"You did?"

"Absolutely. Ahem, I hope you'll keep that in mind when it comes time to write your expedition report."

Nancy pulled herself to her feet. She looked around. It was still dark. The air was heavy with the smell of gunsmoke.

There were clots of Burger Berets moving around sweeping through the roadside trees.

"What happened?" Nancy repeated.

"The Berets beat off the bad guys. What else?"

Eyes clearing suddenly, Nancy whirled. "Punkin!"

"Who?"

"Old Jack! Is he hurt?"

"Not that I can see," King said, sweeping the dappled brute's bulk with his flashlight.

Nancy took it away from him. "Give me that!" She climbed onto the cab, using the light to illuminate every square inch of wrinkled hide. There were no visible cuts or wounds.

"A miracle," she breathed, coming down off the cab.

"You could throw a little gratitude around," King said sourly.

"I could. But I won't."

"That's cold."

Nancy speared the light in his eyes. "Yes, cold. Exactly how you'd feel if you woke up and found your top blouse buttons unbuttoned. And don't try to deny it, either!"

King's lean lips grew pouty. "I was checking for wounds. In case you needed a medic."

"How many dead?" Nancy demanded.

"None."

Nancy blinked. "None! After all that shooting?"

"You sound disappointed."

"Confused is more like it. What happened to the one I nailed?"

"You mean the one who conked you over the head?"

"Whatever. Answer the question, please."

"He got away. I would have nailed him myself, but I was too busy-"

"Sexually assaulting me."

Skip King lifted placating hands. "Don't say that. Please don't say that. The board is very down on sexual harassment this quarter. I don't know what got into them. But please don't call it that."

Colonel Mustard came up at that point. "Mr. King, we've finished our sweep. It's all clear. We can move out now."

A serpentlike head lifted in the darkness and from it came a low harrooo of a sound. Nancy held her breath. The head settled back into place and the eyes fell closed.

"We'd better get a move on, or baby is going to make our other troubles seem tame," King said uneasily.

"We'll settle this later," Nancy spat. "This time I'm riding on the carrier."

"Suit yourself," said King, stomping away.

As the Berets got into the cars and the transport team clambered into the cab, Nancy gave the hauler a quick once-over.

The tires were whole, she found. The body hadn't a single bullet pock. Nor the ground.

"Strange," she muttered.

Then she noticed a long black streak on the fender above the tire she had shot. She ran her hand along it. The fingertip came away black. Smudged.

"Gunpowder burn," she said. "But where are the bullet holes?"

Her flash picked out a sprinkling of spent cartridges. She picked up one. It was still warm.

Then the hauler's diesel engine was rumbling and she doused the light and climbed aboard, a worried notch appearing between her eyes that stayed there the rest of the trip.

She was looking at the ragged, powder-burned tip of the cartridge.

Chapter 18

Doyce Deck liked nothing more than to kill.

The kick of a Marlin .444 lever-action rifle against his shoulder was sweet music to his ears. The eruption of blood from a fresh wound was a too-brief painting, the smell of gore wafting on the breeze, metallic and tangy, were more pleasing than the scent of flowers after a spring rain.

Right now, in the sagebrush hills north of Gillette, Wyoming, with the Devil's Tower national monument thrusting up against the endless sky, Doyce Deek laid the crosshairs of his Tasco scope on the bronze flank of a pronghorned antelope.

The antelope was poised on a rise. It look around, white tail switching, as if scenting danger. Deek took his time. He ran the crosshairs down from the flank to the big tawny hindquarters. He could shatter that hip and still split the narrow skull before the animal could hit the dust.

Then again, head shots were pretty spectacular. He shifted his sight to the head. He got the left eye, big and black as the heart of a bull's eye, centered in the crosshairs. There was a lot to say for a clean head shot. The crack of the skull, the splash of hot brains. True, you didn't get as much of a pump of gore from the head as from the flank. But the satisfaction of looking into the kill's eyes in the instant before death all but gave him hard-on.

So, with the morning sun climbing the brass bowl of the clear Wyoming sky, Doyce Deck lingered over his kill.

The trouble was, Doyce Deck really, really preferred other game. Human game. Antelope were fine. Their eyes had that hunted look that people got when they found themselves staring into the end of a hunting rifle. But antelope never understood what hit them. The crack of the bullet might stir their eardrums in the final moments of life, but they wouldn't hear it. The brain was usually dead by the time the sound got to the target.

It was different with human prey. But Doyce Deck couldn't afford to hunt human prey anymore. Not after that time in Utah when he stalked two men through the desert for two days. He killed one. The other had gotten away. Deck might have hunted him down, but since everyone at work knew that the three of them had gone camping together, it would look suspicious if only Doyce Deck came out of the desert alive.

Deck had started back to civilization after planting his rifle where the third man, Roy Shortsleeve, had left his abandoned belongings. Then he fingered Shortsleeve for the murder. It had been that simple.

The Utah State Police never did a background check, never learned that in other states where he had lived Doyce Deck had a habit of inviting friends and coworkers on camping trips and coming back alone. And never figured out that Roy Shortsleeve had been condemned to die for something he didn't do.

Doyce had testified against Roy those many years ago. He had kept in touch with the prison, as each postponement came. And when the time came, he planned to be a witness when they injected Roy Shortsleeve with liquid death.

He was looking forward to it, in fact. In a way, Deck liked to think, it was going to be his thumb on the plunger. He only wished it could be. Doyce really, really liked to kill people. No special reason. He just liked it.

In the meantime, he had to settle for antelope.

But this specimen in particular seemed skittish. Its head swept away and back. It had a scent. Not Deek's. He was upwind. Cayote, maybe.

Doyce Deck had decided to go for the head shot when, abruptly, the antelope bolted.

"Damn." Deck laid his rifle down.

It sprinted a good fifty yards and came to a nervous stop, its white tail bristling. He brought the scope up. Its nostrils pulsed with agitation.

Deck let it calm down, then drew a bead on the wary left eye.

He began squeezing down on the trigger and held his breath.

"Damn!"

Savagely, Doyce Deck stood up. The antelope was leaping along now, cutting through the sage.

"What is with you!" he snarled. Could it be psychic? Deck had never heard of a psychic antelope before. This one seemed to know exactly when to hightail it.

Deck started down off the rise. What the hell? Stalking was half the fun, anyway. And the day was just starting. Maybe he'd get lucky and a light plane would fly too low. Now that would be a kick. Bodies raining from the sky like milkweeds.

From a crook in a tree, Remo Williams watched the man with the hunter's rifle come down into the valley.

Once, he could have identified the make of the rifle. Now it was just a carved stick with a pipe shoved through it, as far as Remo was concerned. That was how far the Master of Sinanju had elevated him from the world of guns and mechanical things.

Way back in his Vietnam days, when he was a Marine sharpshooter, Remo appreciated firearms, their grace and raw power. His ability with an M-1 had earned him a nickname. "The Rifleman." Long ago. Now he saw them in a different light. Crude machines. All noise and smoke and as subtle as a baseball bat with a railroad spike driven through the thick end.

His weapons were his hands, his feet, and most of all, his mind. He was a Master of Sinanju. He was the human animal raised to the pinnacle of perfection. In his way, he was the most ferocious killing machine since Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It made a grim smile come to his thin lips to think that. Remo Williams, Human Tyrannosaur. He hoped they were still lizards.

Remo had killed many men in his life as America's secret assassin. In the beginning, in those long-ago days, he enjoyed it, enjoyed the awesome power he wielded. Later, after that cruel joy had been pummeled out of him by the Master of Sinanju, it cooled to pure professional pride.

Today, he was not going to kill a man. He was going to right a wrong. But that didn't mean he couldn't get a kick out of it.

The man with the unimportant rifle found a clump of sagebrush and carefully lay down in it. He slipped the barrel through the clump until the muzzle was pointed at the skittish antelope.

Remo had a fistful of small round pellets. He thumbed one into his free hand, set it so that it perched on his hard thumbnail, held in place by his crooked forefinger.

He watched the man. He wasn't moving now. But his coarse woolen shirt expanded with each breath. The cloth would fall still in the instant before he pulled the trigger on his prey, Remo knew.

Remo used to daydream about hunting big game. He never had. And in the years that separated his old life from the being he was now, that idle daydream had faded into insignificance.

He had come to understand killing in a new way. He no longer ate meat, and since there could be no joy in the work of the assassin, hunting animals for sport seemed beyond cruel to him. It was senseless.

People feeding their egos at the expense of innocent animals.

The shirt stopped moving. And Remo flicked the pellet.

This time, he waited until the last possible second. Whistling, the pellet struck the antelope on its hindquarters and it sprang away.

The rifle bullet sliced through the air exactly where the antelope's head had been, to kick up an eddy of dust yards beyond.

The man with the insignificant rifle cursed and jumped to his feet.

Remo slid off the tree branch to commiserate with the poor hunter who was having a bad day.

"That bastard of a buck did that on purpose!" Doyce Deek was raging. He wanted to break his rifle over his own knees. He wanted to kick a cactus. There were no cactus in this part of Wyoming. It was cattle country. Always had been.

The antelope was running in a ragged, bullet-eluding zigzag. It would be in the next county before long.

"Hell, there's other pronghorns," he said.

"Not for you," a confident voice said.

"Huh?" Doyce Deek brought his rifle down and around until he found the source of the voice.

It was a man. Coming from the south. He was not dressed for hunting. He wore tan chinos and a black T-shirt.

"Who in blazes are you?" Deek demanded, not lowering his weapon.

"The spirit of the hunt."

"Ha. You look more like the spirit of the pool hall."

"That's my night job," said the man. His eyes were set so deep in his head that the climbing sun threw them into skull-like shadow. He walked with an easy, confident lope. His wrists were freakish, like cartoon water mains about to burst under pressure.

"Did you see that buck! Consarned thing up and lit out on me!"

"Thunderation," said the man, coming on despite the threat of the Marlin rifle. His voice was thin, his accent eastern. His "thunderation" might have been an understated taunt.

On reflection, Doyce Deek decided it was a taunt. He decided that the moment he realized he was all alone out here with the man. The obviously unarmed man.

He grinned wolfishly. He brought his rifle up a hair.

"I don't cotton much to easterners," he said.

And he fired.

The shot was clean, sweet. The bullet should have gone exactly where the man's smile was. Maybe it did. Because the man didn't move, other than to keep approaching real casual-like.

Levering another shell into the chamber, Deek fired again.

He blinked. The powdersmoke was in his eyes. And the man was still coming on, like he had all the time in the world.

"You ain't really the spirit of the woods, are you?" he muttered in a weak, reedy voice.

"Nah," said the man who seemed impervious to bullets.

"Then I'm gonna keep shootin' you 'til you lay down and die!" snapped Doyce Deek, bringing his weapon up once more. This time, he saw something he hadn't before. He forced his scope eye to stay wide and not blink like before. He held his breath and fired. The bullet moved too fast for him to see where it did go, but the skinny easterner seemed to see it coming. He shifted his shoulders as if to let the bullet blow on past; it straightened again with such eye-defying speed that the action was a kind of after-image blur.

He was fast. Not magic. Just fast.

So Doyce Deek tried for a sucking chest wound. That always put the fear of God in a man.

He laid the scope to his cheek, sighted along the barrel-and nothing!

He switched the rifle's field of fire. The man was gone!

Doyce Deek never felt the rifle leave his hands. He didn't feel the bore jamming up his rectum, either, the gunsight ripping his dormant hemorrhoids til they bled.

But suddenly he was squatting on the ground, with the stock dangling between his legs and the skinny easterner was taking Doyce's own hands, helpless as a child, and making him take a good strong grip on the rifle. He forced Deek's own thumb into the trigger guard and held it there.

"I'm going to give you a choice, pardner."

"What kind of a consarn choice involves having a Marlin .444 jammed up my own ass?"

"A hard one."

"Uh-oh. "

"Option one," said the confident voice of the easterner. "You pull the trigger and kiss your butt hasta la vista."

"I'm kinda leaning toward option two."

"Confess to the murder that Roy Shortsleeve is doing time for."

"That ain't exactly a healthy option, either."

"Think you can handle the trigger by yourself-or do you want help?"

"I got a car phone in the pickup. Think you could fetch it here? I'd like to call Utah about a little misunderstanding."

"That's the option I was hoping for."

"Yeah, but it could have gone the other way."

"Never happened yet."

Doyce Deek made his eyes round. He squinted with the left one.

"You done this before?"

"This? I do this stuff all the time."

"I mighta guessed, on account of you done it all slicklike from the git-go."

Remo carried the man under his arm two solid miles through the open sagebrush wilderness to the waiting pickup. The dangling rifle bounced with every step, and with each bounce Doyce Deek made a funny little noise deep in his throat.

At the pickup, Remo set him carefully on the ground so the rifle wouldn't accidentally discharge. He dialed, waited for the ring, and held the phone receiver to Doyce Deck's unhappy face while he confessed in excruciating detail.

After he had hung up, Doyce Deck had a simple request.

"Separate me from this rifle, won't you?"

"Nope."

"I done what you said."

"So? Everybody does. I don't give points for cooperation."

"Oh."

And a hand-not a fist, but a hand-came up in Doyce Deek's long face and took consciousness away from him.

Remo left him in the pickup and walked back to Gillette, whistling. Satisfaction. There was no substitute for it.

Harold Smith received the report without comment. "Chalk up one for the good guys," Remo said. "Now how about Dr. Gregorian?"

"Perhaps later. I am still compiling information on him."

"How much information do you need to understand the guy is on a quasilegal killing spree?"

"Enough to be certain."

"I'm certain."

"I may need you for something else," said Smith.

"Yeah?"

"Last night, there was an incident involving the Apatosaur."

"Bronto," snapped Remo. "Get it right."

"My understanding is-"

"Look, which sounds more like a dinosaur? Apato or Bronto?"

"I will admit that I prefer the latter, but-"

"But nothing. Go with tradition. It's Brontosaur. So what happened?"

"I gained access to the Burger Triumph electronic mail system, which is buzzing about the creature's arrival," Smith said. "Information is sketchy. The corporation has evidently clamped a lid of secrecy on the entire incident, but it appears some terrorist organization attempted to hijack the animal en route to their corporate headquarters."

"It can't be the Congress for a Green Africa," Remo muttered.

"Why would it be or not be them?" Smith asked in a puzzled voice.

"Chiun and I chased them off back in Gondwanaland. They were upset about endangered species or something."

"Please hold, Remo." And through the earpiece the hollow, plasticky click of Harold Smith's long fingers working his computer keyboard came like castanets in spastic hands.

"The Congress for a Green Africa," Smith murmured. "A little-known African ecoterrorist group. Formerly known as the Congress for a Brown Africa in its nationalistic phase, and the Congress for a Black Africa in an earlier black power incarnation. It was founded in the late 1960s as the Congress for a Red Africa."

"Red?"

"Their funding originated in Havana."

Remo grunted. "From the way they cut and ran from Chiun and me, they should call themselves the Congress for a Yellow Africa. But I don't see them following the Bronto all the way to the U.S. Unless they have branches all over the world."

"Unknown. Perhaps you might reestablish contact with Dr. Derringer, inasmuch as you have her confidence."

"Is this an official assignment all of a sudden?" Remo asked. "I thought the idea was to appease Chiun, and rescue the expedition."

"Remo," said Smith, "a sovereign African government has allowed an American corporation to take possession of a native animal of incalculable value to the world scientific community. When the dinosaur's existence is confirmed, the eyes of the entire world will be focused on how the animal is treated. U.S. prestige could be at stake here."

"Gotcha," said Remo. "Does Chiun know about this?"

"I have not been in touch with Master Chiun."

"Maybe we should leave him out of this."

"Do what you think is best, Remo."

"Always," said Remo, hanging up.

Chapter 19

Nancy Derringer had to admit it. She was impressed. The sauropod habitat was perfect. A sunken bowl covered with hard-packed dirt and jungled with fronds, trees, and tough, edible lianas. There were even hard rocks scattered about as potential gizzard stones. True, there was no jungle chocolate or orange toadstools, but they could be flown in. Why not? A company that could build a dinosaur habitat in the basement of its world headquarters could afford to run fresh food between Port Chuma and Dover, Delaware as often as necessary.

Old Jack, Nancy was pleased to see, had woken up. He had not yet levered his great body up from the dirt, but his head was up and swinging about. To look at the head alone, the creature brought to mind a massive python, sleepy and even a little stupid.

The goat-pupiled eyes regarded her with no trace of comprehension.

"How's the boy? If you are a boy, that is."

The creature seemed to recognize her voice. It made a low noise-a curious sound, not threatening at all.

Nancy took a fragment of toadstool she had pocketed in Gondwanaland and speared it on a thin branch she had broken off in an examination of the habitat before Old Jack had come around.

Leaning over the stainless steel rail, she offered the morsel.

The curious sound came again. The head lifted, the heavy lids lifted, too. The eyes cleared, grew interested.

"Come on, Punkin. Come on."

The creature moved its massive legs, pushing its wrinkled knees downward. But muscular strength was not there. The body trembled and surrendered to weakness. It eased its great belly to the dirt floor in defeat.

Swaying, Old Jack brought his small head as high as he could. His neck was not long enough to close the gap between his snout and the aromatic food.

Nancy knelt and shoved the stick downward through the lowest rail.

The creature hesitated, the morsel was only inches away.

"Go ahead, Punkin. You can do it. Come on."

The mouth yawned, exposing peglike teeth and the head crept forward, serpentlike.

Nancy steeled herself. If necessary, she would drop the stick. Those teeth, though blunted by chewing hardwood branches, could take her hand off at the wrist with a casual snap.

But the movements of the Apatosaur were so languid they disarmed her. Nancy relaxed. The forked tongue licked out heavily to caress the toadstool. Liking what it found, the mouth crossed the last inch and Nancy let go as the stick was taken in the firm grip of many teeth.

She stood up and watched it gulp the toadstool, branch and all, into its long gullet.

"Good boy. Or girl."

The click of footsteps on parquet flooring brought Nancy around. Her face, soft with pleasure, abruptly fell into tight lines.

"King."

Skip King saw the hovering orange head and brightened. "He's awake?"

"Obviously."

King gripped the rail, grinning. "Great! The board is on the way down."

"They are?"

"Are you kidding? They couldn't wait."

"I wish they would. I don't want to disturb Punkin."

"Old Jack. Unless the board decides different. Which I think they will."

"Why should they?"

"Because they'll want maximum name appeal when the thing goes on tour."

"Tour!"

"Hey! Settle down. That's why I came ahead. I don't want you to go all hormonal in front of the big guys. The board wants to set up a twelve-city tour, to tie in with our new monster burger promotion."

"Promotion, my butt! Our agreement expressly stipulates that there would be no such circus. This is the last surviving dinosaur, as far as anyone knows. We can't subject it to lines of gaping primates poking it with sticks and throwing french fries at it."

"Please. No french fry slurs in front of the board. They're sensitive about the fry perception thing ever since it came out that our fries are cooked in lard."

"I object in the strongest terms to a tour," Nancy said firmly.

"Hey, don't get upset with me. Take it up with upper management. I'm merely a corporate servant, just like you. And try not to forget it. Without Burger Triumph, this big brute would be languishing in Darkest Africa, unloved and unexploited."

"Which is where I'm beginning to wish I'd left him."

"Sour grapes make sorry wine," King sniffed, leaning over the rail. "Hey, big Jack. Remember me!"

Harrooo!

The head came up with unexpected speed. King leaped back, startled. Saurian eyes regarded him coldly.

"What's with him?"

"Maybe he remembers you shooting him," Nancy suggested.

"Dinosaurs aren't that smart. That's why they're extinct."

"A common misapprehension," Nancy said. "Let me suggest you keep your distance."

"Doesn't matter. I don't need a pet. Not when this bag of meat is my ticket up the corporate ladder."

The ping of an arriving elevator floated across the wide, well-lit basement area.

King straightened his coat and said, "That's the big guys. Remember. Play it cool, and everything will work out for the best."

Nancy made her face placid as she watched the board of directors of the Burger Triumph Corporation cross the polished floor. There were six of them, all well fed and prosperous. And probably none of them so much as sniffed their own product, never mind ate it. They looked like stuffed-lobster types.

King made formal introductions. "Gentlemen, I don't believe you've met Miss Derringer. Better known as Nancy, the greatest dinosaur-minder in the world."

"It's Dr. Derringer," Nancy said, mustering her composure.

"She prefers to be called Nancy," King said.

Nancy bit her tongue and shook a half-dozen cool hands. A minute after she had repeated their names aloud to commit them to memory, she had forgotten them. They were that faceless.

And beside them, King was waving to the floating Apatosaur head, saying proudly, "Now meet the most colossal contribution to U.S. culture since the invention of onion rings. Heh heh."

His laugh was a solitary sound in the great basement.

The six members of the board leaned over the rail and stared at the unhuman face regarding them. One puffed on a cigar. The others wore no particular expression. They might have been looking at a stack of freeze-dried hamburger patties and not a living thing.

"What do you think?" King asked anxiously.

"Kind of ugly for a corporate symbol, King."

Skip King's face fell. He swallowed hard. "When I was a kid, there was a gas company that had one as its logo."

"I remember it," another board member said slowly.

King brightened. "See?"

"Didn't they go out of business?" asked another.

King's face fell some more. He was paling by degrees.

"The coloring says Halloween," a fourth board member murmured. "Not appropriate for a summer tour. "

"We can paint it to match the season," King said instantly.

"We will not!" Nancy flared.

"Nancy," King hissed. Clearing his throat, he said to no one in particular, "Anything the board wants, it gets. Heh heh."

"'That's it!" Nancy said, getting between them and the reptile. "I must object in the strongest terms to the whole concept of a tour. The animal hasn't been stabilized. We have no idea how-or even if-he will acclimate to captivity. And the strain of transport could be catastrophic."

King snorted. "Crap! We brought him from Africa to America. We proved it can be done. A tour is doable."

Nancy looked to the board members. They stared back with noncommittal expressions. They might have been thinking. A moment later, it was clear they had not been.

King said, "Miss Derringer has been under a lot of strain. You'll have to forgive her."

"Strain?"

"It's all covered in my report," King said.

"Report!" Nancy exploded.

"I stayed up all night writing it," King said defensively. "No grass grows under my feet."

"And butter doesn't exactly melt in your mouth, I see."

"We have read Mr. King's report," the man with the cigar said. "You have done an excellent job, Miss Derringer. Why don't you take a month off? With pay, of course."

"A month! And who will tend to the animal?"

"I have that covered," King said hastily.

"I refuse."

"I'll have her removed from the building," King offered.

Nancy blinked furiously. Her eyes went from King's eager-to-please expression to the six faces of the board of directors, whose own expressions were unreadable. When none of them objected to the suggestion, King motioned to a pair of Burger Berets stationed at the elevators.

"Escort Miss Derringer to the door," he said.

Nancy froze. Her fingers became fists. Then, all the tension drained out of her.

"I can walk out under my own power, thank you."

And she did. Flanked by two guards.

Echoing in her ears was Skip King's self-satisfied voice, saying, "I have the entire tour itinerary worked out, if you gentlemen care to see it . . . ."

Skip King waited until the two Burger Beret guards had returned. He had set up a pair of easels in front of the dinosaur terrarium.

"Why don't you two take twenty?" he said. "Out of the building."

The pair went away without a word. And King faced the board of directors.

"Now that we're alone," he said, grinning, "would you gentlemen care to see the projections I've worked up for Operation Bronto Burger?"

The man with the cigar nodded.

"We are now entering phase two," King said, extending a telescoping pointer. He tapped red points on a map of the nation. "Phase two envisions a six-month, twelve-city tour of our Brontosaurus. During which time we anticipate moving over six million units on our all-beef monster burger tie-in promotion."

King removed the map placard and exposed one showing graphs and cost projections.

"Once that target volume has been achieved, our subject dinosaur will be returned here and phase three will begin."

He removed the graph placard. The next one showed an Apatosaur, with its body separated into segments, each segment indicating its gross weight.

"After the beast is discreetly but humanely euthanized, the carcass will be rendered and the meat frozen for a one-year period of bereavement. After that, phase four.

"My office will then issue press releases announcing that the meat has been preserved in the interest of science and has been scientifically determined to be edible. Everybody with me so far? Good."

King shifted to the other easel, removing a blank placard. Under it was a mockup of a billboard showing a man sitting on the fender of a Ferrari, a blonde in a silvery evening dress draped over him. Both were trying to take a bite out of the same hamburger.

"We will market our deluxe Bronto Burger as a special one-time-only offer at five thousand dollars and ninety-nine cents per quarter-pound burger," King said. "Soft drinks and fries extra."

The board nodded in unison. King went to the next placard, which showed a family picnic. The adults were wearing Burger Triumph crowns and the children played with plastic dinosaurs. Everyone had a hamburger.

"For the downscale market, bronto-meat-flavored extract will be laced into our regular monster burgers at ten ninety-nine per unit. We will play up the unique taste, the novelty, and the once-in-a-lifetime offer. Only one burger to a customer. And toys for the kiddies, of course. Our estimated gross is seventy million."

"Sounds doable so far, King. But how does the Bronto Burger taste?"

"We don't know. Yet."

"What if the public won't go for it?"

"What if it tastes like snake meat?"

King grinned broadly. "Remember our unofficial motto, 'The public's curiosity is stronger than its stomach.' Just in case, a no-refunds policy will be strictly enforced."

"The animal looks mighty sick. How do you know he'll survive the tour?"

"I've got that covered," King said, collapsing his pointer. "Unless she's quit in a huff, Nancy Derringer will keep him healthy if she has to donate her own blood to do it. Best of all, she doesn't suspect us. In fact, no one will ever suspect us, because of the fake attacks we arranged. After they're through serving as an honor guard, the Burger Berets will be quietly disbanded. And the so-called African environmentalists will catch all the flak. In short, the operation is foolproof."

The man with the cigar exhaled a slow, thoughtful cloud of aromatic smoke. "King my boy, proceed with confidence. The board is behind you."

"You don't know what that means to me, sir. Ever since kindergarten, I've ached for a shot at the big time."

The board filed out. After the elevator had closed on them, Skip King, beaming like an altar boy at his first communion, turned to the Apatosaur and blew it a kiss.

"See you later, you gorgeous seventy-million-dollar rack of reptile!"

As King walked off, a forlorn harrooo followed him. And the Apatosaur's head settled to the ground, eyes slowly closing.

Chapter 20

Nancy Derringer had called everyone she knew. Her lawyer. Her friends at the International Colloquium of Cryptozoologists. Everyone. Her lawyer had been blunt.

"If I sue Burger Triumph, they'll have me for lunch. Sorry."

Her colleagues were more sympathetic.

"We'll picket."

"We'll help you kidnap the dinosaur."

"We'll do anything!"

In other words, long on enthusiasm, but short on practicality. That was typical cryptozoologist thinking. Since the Colloquium was not so much an organization as a loose interdisciplinary alliance, there was no muscle behind their expressions of support.

In her furnished apartment provided by Burger Triumph for the duration of her term of service, Nancy fumed and fought back hot tears.

"How could I have been such a fool?" she said bitterly.

A rapping at the door brought her off the sofa.

"Who is it?" she called through the door.

"Remo."

Nancy threw open the door. And there he was. Lean and casual in a crisp white T-shirt, but somehow as exciting as if he wore Navy dress whites.

"You don't know what it means for me to see a friendly face right now," she said with relief. "Come in, please."

"Nice place," Remo said, looking around.

"It's bought and paid for-just like me," Nancy said ruefully. She shut the door and clapped her hands once softly. "So--what brings you back into my life so soon?"

"I hear the bronto was attacked after we left you."

"How did you know that? As far as I know, the company was able to keep a tight lid on it."

"Let's just say that somebody told somebody who told me."

"Have it your way. It was the Congress for a Green Africa again. The Berets beat them back. Old Jack must be the luckiest reptile on earth. He came out without a scratch." Nancy folded her arms and dropped onto the sofa, her face clouding over. "I wish I could say the same." Her voice was a hair from cracking.

Remo's face grew concerned. "You okay?"

"I wasn't fired, but let's say I've been put in ice. Now I'm trying to figure out how to worm my way back into the board's good graces before Old Jack goes the way of his ancestors. He needs hour-by-hour monitoring, and there's no one on staff who's qualified."

"Why do I smell gunpowder?" Remo said suddenly.

Nancy looked up. "Do you?"

"Definitely. Burned gunpowder."

Nancy sniffed, frowning. "I don't smell anything."

Remo followed his nose around the room until he came to a small purse lying on a chair cushion. He picked it up.

"Be my guest," Nancy said tartly. "I enjoy having my personal belongings rummaged through by men I dimly know."

Her mouth parted in surprise when Remo's hand came up holding a spent rifle shell.

"What are you doing with this?" Remo asked.

"I forgot all about that," said Nancy, coming out of her chair to join him. "I picked it up during the attack on the hauler. It struck me as strange, but I wasn't sure why."

"It's a blank."

"How can you tell?"

"I used to fire blanks for practice when I was a Marine," Remo explained. "They pour the powder into the cartridge and crimp the open end shut. When the bullet is fired, the crimping is blown open just like this."

"My God! That explains why no one was hurt during all that shooting. They were firing blanks!"'

"Who were?"

Nancy stopped, blinking like a moth fluttering at a lightbulb. "Well, take your pick. Either the Congress for a Green Africa or the Burger Berets. What on earth is going on?"

"Let's check out the place where you were attacked."

Less than a hour later, Remo pulled a rented car over to the side of a piney wooded road south of Dover. They got out.

"I'm sure this is the spot," Nancy was saying. "It was dark, but I recognize that big boulder over there. Yes, here's where the hauler went off the road. See the tire gouges?"

"Look for spent shells," Remo said.

Nancy paced, her eyes on the ground. "I don't see any now, but the ground was littered with them before."

"They must have sent back a cleanup team."

"Who did?"

Remo bent and lifted a dirty brass shell casing from the furrows of tire tracks.

"Bingo!"

Nancy peered at it closely. "It looks just like the other one, except for the color. What does that prove?"

"The Berets were armed with American assault rifles, right?"

"True."

"Remember what the other guys had for weapons?" "The same vicious little machine pistols they had in Africa."

"Yeah. Firing short rounds. Nine millimeter. Like this one. Let's see your shell."

They compared shells. Nancy's was distinctly longer and made of steel, not brass. But it had the same burned, ragged end as the other.

"That's a .223 cartridge you got there," Remo pointed out. "That means both sides were firing blanks. Might explain why no one got hurt in Africa, too."

"Oh, that can't be!"

"Why not?"

"It just can't." Nancy's frowning face fell into slack lines. "One moment. There was something off about one of last night's terrorists."

"Never met a terrorist who was on," Remo said dryly.

"No, this one spoke black English. American style. I had the feeling he wasn't part of the African unit that hijacked the train."

"A terrorist is a terrorist-unless they're shooting blanks."

"What is going on here?" Nancy breathed in an incredulous voice.

"Simple. It's some kind of publicity stunt."

"Staged for whose benefit? There was no press."

"Search me. But we gotta get you back in the saddle."

"How?"

Remo made an unhappy face. "I hate to do this."

"Do what?"

"But I don't think there's any other way."

"I hope this isn't what I think it is," Nancy said, her tone matching Remo's.

Remo nodded grimly. "I gotta call Chiun back into this."

"Wonderful. But what good will he be?"

"Chiun just happens to be a close personal friend of Cheeta Ching."

"The TV anchor?"

"I'll bet a Brontosaur to an Apatosaur she jumps on your story like a Tyrannosaur on a Dimetrodon. Literally. "

Nancy smiled grimly. "I'll take that action."

It turned out to be easier than Remo had thought. Back at Nancy's apartment, he picked up the telephone to call the Master of Sinanju. Then his face went slack.

"What is it?" Nancy gasped.

"I just remembered. We don't have a phone."

"Oh, no."

"Maybe the guy who put me on to this can help."

"And who might that be?"

"Don't ask."

"I won't," Nancy said, lifting an arch eyebrow.

As Nancy watched, Remo blocked the phone with his body and touched a key. She didn't see which. But he held it down without dialing further.

A moment later, he was speaking in low tones. Nancy caught only cryptic snatches of the conversation.

"Think you can help?" Remo finished. He listened a few minutes and said, "Great."

He hung up grinning. "The new phone is supposed to be installed today. He's going to put an expedite on it. Could be hooked up within the hour."

"Whoever he is, he must have a lot of clout if he's plugged into Burger Triumph's grapevine and AT

Remo's grin turned tentative. "So, what do you want to do to kill time?"

"Care to hear some dinosaur stories?"

"Is there a second option?"

"Unfortunately, no."

Remo's face fell. He dropped into a chair and folded his arms defensively. "Okay, but be gentle. I don't want all my illusions shattered."

The phone rang as Remo was trying to grapple with the concept of dinosaurs being neither warm-blooded nor coldblooded, but capable of shunting between metabolic options.

"I liked the dinosaurs we had when I was a kid better than these new ones," Remo muttered unhappily. "You knew where you stood with them."

Laughing, Nancy put the receiver to her ear and said, "Hello?" then jerked the earpiece away as if it was hot.

"Chiun, right?" said Remo.

"He seems more than a little upset."

Remo accepted the handset and said, "What's up, Little Father?"

Out of the receiver came a horrendous squeak.

"Remo, Remo, a calamity has happened!"

"I know, but with your help, I think we can get Nancy reinstated."

Chiun's voice grew annoyed. "What are you babbling about?"

"Nancy got the old heave-ho. What are you talking about?"

"I am speaking of my terrible encounter while exploring the streets near my castle."

"Mugger?"

"Worse," Chiun spat. "I encountered a Vietnamese."

"Uh-oh."

"The neighborhood is rife with Vietnamese. I also saw a woman I took to be Chinese. Or possibly a Filipina. "

"But no Japanese, right?"

"I am afraid to find out. Oh, Remo this is impossible. I cannot dwell among lowly Vietnamese. What would my ancestors say?"

"Lock the castle door every night?"

Chiun grew so angry he hissed.

"Okay, okay, you're pissed. Smith got you again. Why don't you take it up with him? He gave you this number, right?"

"I was so beside myself. I did not know what to say. I have accepted his castle and signed his contract. I am bound by these things, Remo."

"So we move. I can live with that. But skip it for now. Listen, Nancy needs your help."

Chiun's voice grew cool. "The woman knows my price."

"Forget dinosaur toes for a minute. We're on Smith's clock now. No perks."

"Pah! I am too distraught to think properly."

"We need to ring Cheeta Ching in on this," Remo said.

Immediately, the Master of Sinanju's voice grew softer.

"Cheeta. Smith wishes me to contact beauteous Cheeta?"

"Right away. Here's what you tell her ...."

The first thing Cheeta Ching wanted to know when she heard the familiar voice of the Master of Sinanju was, "Is Ringo with you, Grandfather?"

"Ringo?"

"That hunk with the wrists."

"No," Chiun said shortly.

"Oh. Next time you bump into him, could you tell him for me Cheeta has been thinking of him?"

"Perhaps. But I am calling for another reason. It is about a woman whose plight you should know . . . ."

Skip King was in an upscale singles bar in Dover, trying to hit on two blondes at once when a familiar voice came from the big-screen TV.

"You say you were let go by a vice president of Burger Triumph, who was sexually harassing you?"

King grunted. "Hasn't she dropped that kid yet?"

Then to his horror, the crisp voice of Nancy Derringer answered Cheeta Ching's pointed question.

"I wasn't let go. I was shunted aside by a gloryseeking Neanderthal named Skip King. I brought the dinosaur project to him and the minute he got the animal to this country, he pushed me out the door."

"This is about power, isn't it?" Cheeta asked.

"Isn't it always?" Nancy said.

"Dinosaurs and sexual repression,'' Cheeta said in a shrill voice. "Is modern man less evolved than modern woman? For a different perspective, here is science correspondent Frank Feldmeyer."

"Oh God." King said, gaping at the screen. "I'm toast."

"They're waiting for you," the head of security told Skip King when he burst breathless and panting into the lobby of the company headquarters.

"Are they mad?"

"You know the board. It's hard to say."

"Did-did they say anything about me? Anything bad?"

"Not to me. But they're in the boardroom and they've been there a solid hour."

Sweating, Skip King took the elevator to the top floor. "An hour. I've cost the board of directors an hour, and it's after business hours. An hour times six. Oh God! I'm costing the board six hours of their personal time. I'm burnt toast."

The board of directors looked up in unison when Skip King pushed open the glass doors. The CEO was seated at the far end, in a leather chair that had a tall, thronelike back. His cigar smoked in his fattish fist.

Along the sides, the others sat in similar oversized chairs.

"I came as soon as I heard," King croaked, reaching for the chair at his end of the long conference table.

The CEO gestured with his cigar.

"Don't bother. You won't be staying."

King gulped. "You-you're not-firing-me?"

"We think you should take some reflection time, King. Let things sort themselves out."

"But I can't. I'm ramrodding the Bronto project."

"We have that covered."

"Covered? What are you going to do when the press starts pounding on the doors for interviews? That Derringer dame just told Cheeta Ching we've got a fullgrown Brontosaurus Rex in our basement. And I'm the guy who captured it. The media will be howling for my story."

"Right now," came a cool voice from the highbacked seat directly in front of him, "the media is howling for your head."

Eyes wide, Skip King peered over the chair. Looking back at him were Nancy Derringer's upside down blue eyes. They were not friendly.

"Dr. Derringer has agreed to come back on board during the transition," explained the CEO.

"I thought it was the least I could do," said Nancy dryly.

"Look, I won't stand for this. I won't be cheated of my moment of glory."

"Skip," a senior VP said. "You wouldn't buck the board, now would you?"

"I-I might. Anything is possible when the corporate ladder breaks under your feet. I might even write a tell-all book. You never know with a corporate comer spurned."

The board regarded him with unblinking, unreadable eyes.

The CEO gestured to the door with his cigar. "Give us a moment, would you King? We need to confer."

King paced the rug outside the boardroom for twenty minutes. His jacket grew heavy with perspiration.

"This isn't happening," he muttered. "This isn't happening. I'm Skip King. I'm headed for the top."

When he was called back in, he found the board sitting placidly. Nancy looked unhappy. That was a good sign. He forced himself to breathe normally.

"We've decided you can stay with the project," the CEO said bluntly.

"Great. You won't regret-"

"Under Dr. Derringer."

King scowled. "A woman. I can't work under a woman."

"I suggest we take Mr. King at his word," Nancy said coolly.

"On second thought," King said hastily, "I can give it a shot. Why not? I'm a people person."

"Excellent. Take a seat, Dr. Derringer is making recommendations."

King sat. He folded his hands on the table until he realized how it looked. Then he hid them under the table so no one could see them tremble.

Nancy cleared her throat and said, "I have just examined the animal. It is clearly depressed."

"That's the most ridic-" King started to say. He shut up.

"And not adapting to the habitat. It's too early to tell what the problem is. I'd like to do a blood workup, toxicology tests, but of immediate concern is to move Punkin-"

"What happened to Old Jack?"

"Punkin is a more customer-friendly name," the CEO murmured.

King shut up again. The woman was smooth. She had them eating out of her hand. His eyes went around the room, wondering which one of them she was sleeping with.

"As I was saying," Nancy resumed, "Punkin must be moved as soon as possible. To a more suitable environment. Also, a more secret one since the press has been flooding the switchboard with inquiries."

"Now whose fault is that?" King snapped.

The CEO stood up abruptly. "King, help Dr. Derringer with all the arrangements."

"Yes, sir," King said unhappily.

On their way out, the board of directors stopped to give Nancy their compliments. King was ignored. That hurt most of all.

After the board had gone home, King stood up stiffly. "I guess I'll have to make the best of this. Where are we moving him?"

"That's classified," Nancy snapped, gathering up her files.

"Not from me."

"Especially from you."

"Then how can I help if I don't know where we're taking Old Jack?"

"Because B'wana is going home for the evening."

"You can't order me home."

"Would you rather I ask the board to do that?"

"You play a hard game of ball for a girl without any. "

"Try not to slam the door on your way out," Nancy said. "It's made of glass. Like your ego."

After King had left, Nancy went to her new office. Skip King's name was still on the door. By morning, that would be changed. At her new desk, she dialed her home number.

"Remo? Nancy. It's all set. We're moving Punkin tonight."

"Need any help? Chiun should be here in an hour or two."

"No. No time. Better wait for him. And stick by the phone. I'll call if I need you."

"Let's hope not. I'm in no mood to stand between Chiun and the wishbone of his choice all freaking night."

Chapter 21

Burger Triumph World Headquarters was a forty-story office tower surrounded by low satellite buildings. A golden crown surmounted the tower, making the lower buildings seem like kneeling subjects before a monolithic emperor. The park was accessible by a single service road and surrounded by a security fence.

The press was kept outside the fence. The security guard at the gate was under explicit instructions. If questioned about a dinosaur, laugh in their faces.

He did. And as the night wore on and the phone calls to the corporate building went unreturned, the press gave it up.

By three o'clock in the morning, the coast was clear.

Nancy Derringer was giving the Apatosaur's a last once-over. It regarded her with sleepy eyes. It had shifted position since she had last been here. It was a good sign. It should be strong enough for the transfer.

She lifted the walkie-talkie in her hand and said, "Open the gate."

At the opposite end of the sunken habitat a steel door lifted like a guillotine blade being raised into cutting position. A dim tunnel was exposed.

From within, a fan began blowing, carrying a fruity scent to the Apatosaur nostrils. It stirred, craning its long neck around.

"There you go, Punkin. Food."

The reptile sniffed audibly.

"You can do it," Nancy encouraged. "You're hungry, aren't you?"

The creature found its feet with ponderous dignity. It backed up, turned, and sent its long drooping neck into the tunnel.

Nancy had her fingers crossed. "Keep going."

The shoulder disappeared as the creature followed its nose. When the sound of noisy eating came, only the tail was visible.

This went on for twenty some minutes and tailed off. Then it stopped all together.

A voice crackled from the walkie-talkie. "He's gulped down every last avocado, Dr. Derringer."

"I'm on my way," Nancy said. "It shouldn't be long now. "

The great basement gave a long shudder and there was silence except for the slow slapping of the reptile's tail against the ground.

Nancy climbed down and slipped into the tunnel.

Captain Relish met her in the narrow square tunnel. The dinosaur hauler had been backed into the sloping tunnel, so that its bed lay flush with the floor.

The Apatosaur had collapsed peacefully in the confined space, ready for transport.

"The sedatives worked perfectly, Dr. Derringer," said Relish. "Care to do the honors?"

Reluctantly, Nancy tranked the creature herself, hating every pull of the rifle trigger. Only a half dozen shots were required to insure an extended sleep.

Nancy handed the rifle back to Relish. "All right, secure him and we'll be going."

Nancy watched the Burger Berets cable the Apatosaur down.

When they were done, they went out a side door and around a concrete tunnel where the cab of the brontohauler lay outside the other end of the basement tunnel.

"I'm driving," Relish said.

"Fine." Nancy took a seat in the middle of the oversized cab. The backup driver took the outside passenger seat. Relish got the diesels started and the hauler lurched forward.

Nancy was looking out the back window as the rest of the hauler emerged, bearing its cargo of sleeping Apatosaur.

"Ingenious, isn't it?" Relish grunted.

"Anything that avoids stressing the animal has my heartfelt appreciation," Nancy said distantly.

"Is something wrong?"

"No," Nancy said hastily. "We should be fine once we reach our destination."

"Which is?"

"Classified until you need to know. Just take Highway 13. North."

"You're the boss."

A huge overhead door rolled up and they rumbled out of Burger Triumph World Headquarters and into the night. Soon, they were out of the office park and traveling north.

Nancy settled down for what she hoped would be a short uneventful ride. She didn't like sitting between two Burger Berets-not understanding how they fit into the apparent charade with the Congress for a Green Africa. But once the creature was in neutral territory, it should be possible to wrest control of it from the corporation. If not with lawyers, then with the help of Remo and Chiun-whoever they really were.

On a quiet stretch of Route 13, not thirty minutes later, a small van roared up behind them and tried to squeeze past the hauler.

Relish eyed them in his side mirror. "Are they crazy? Trying to pass us? We own the damn road."

"Must be press," the other Beret muttered.

Engine racing, the van strained to pull past the lumbering vehicle. Captain Relish gave the wheel a nudge to the left. The hauler responded. Forced to swerve, the van ran up on the soft shoulder of the road, almost wiped out, and pulled ahead. Its red tail lights dwindled, then flared.

Far ahead, the van screeched to a halt, blocking the road. Its headlights were in their eyes, blinding them.

"Hit the brakes!" Nancy cried.

The hauler slid to a long, slow stop, its side doors sliding open with a harsh squeal.

And out came shadowy figures who stepped into the headlights. A quartet of masked men in camos and wearing jaunty green berets. Short-barreled weapons gleamed.

"Not again!" Relish snapped.

"It's a bluff!" Nancy shouted. "Drive through them!" Then she thought, Why I am telling them? They know who's been firing blanks all along.

At that moment the Skorpion machine pistols came up, smoking and shaking and chattering.

The windshield spiderwebbed before Nancy Derringer's shocked blue eyes, and on either side, a Burger Beret was slammed back into his seat with his face a ruin of blood and brain and bone.

My God! Nancy thought. The bullets are real!

Then the masked men were knocking in the glass of the cab doors.

Chapter 22

The Master of Sinanju was beside himself. "Oh, Remo, what can I do?" he squeaked plaintively.

Remo was sprawled on Nancy Derringer's couch watching a nighttime talk show hostess attempting to coax a group of adults dressed in disposable diapers to talk about their sex lives. "Simple," he told Chiun. "We move."

"I cannot move. It is the first castle Emperor Smith has bestowed upon me. To move would be an insult."

"So? Smith can stand it. He might not even care."

"And I have bargained dearly for it."

"Ah-hah. The real reason emerges."

The Master of Sinanju ceased his fussy pacing and settled on the center of the rug. "I am a prisoner in my own castle of hostile Vietnamese and I am fated to die soon. No Master of Sinanju has ended his days so bitterly since Hung."

While Remo was trying to remember the lesson of Hung, the phone rang. Remo picked it up, saying, "Sinanju Dragon Rendering Service. You find 'em, we'll grind 'em."

"Remo," a voice croaked.

"Smitty? What's wrong? You sound awful."

"Two Burger Triumph Berets were found on a deserted stretch of Delaware highway within the last twenty minutes."

"Yeah?"

"According to my monitoring of Burger Triumph interoffice electronic mail, the two dead men were the driver and his relief."

"What about Nancy?"

"There is no word on her fate," Smith said

"Damn. And we've been cooling our heels waiting for her call."

"Remo," Smith said, tight-voiced. "I want that Apatosaur found."

"Just point us in a direction, Smitty. I guarantee results."

"I have been unable to make sense of your report of staged firefights between the Burger Berets and the Congress for a Green Africa. But someone at the company must know something. Find that person and shake the truth from him. Work your way up the corporate ladder if you have to."

"My pleasure." Remo hung up. "Come on, Chiun. Let's go calling."

Skip King was walking the halls of Burger Triumph headquarters aimlessly. The board was in seclusion. No one was talking. Especially, no one was talking to Skip King, the company leper.

And worst of all, he no longer had an office. He had been locked out of his own. So with no desk to call his own, King was reduced to walking the halls, loitering at water coolers, trying to find out what was happening.

"This is fiendish," King confided in a middle-level clerk.

"Actually, this is how the CIA treats field operatives who screw up," the clerk said cheerfully. "They recall them to Langley and make them roam the halls, trying to look busy."

"You're a lot of help," King snarled, crumpling up his paper cup and throwing into a basket. He stormed over to the elevators. Maybe there would be more information on the next floor. If not, at least he still had his key to the executive washroom. Maybe he would set up an impromptu office there.

The elevator doors slid open and King started in. He noticed the lift was occupied. Then he noticed by whom.

King started to retreat but a hand connected to an extraordinarily thick wrist grabbed his power red tie and used it to yank him back. The doors closed on his yelp of surprise.

"Going up?" Remo asked casually.

"Actually, I was going down," King said glumly.

"Looks like you ride with us. Funny, we were looking for you, too. Let's have a private talk in your office."

"I don't have an office. They gave it to Nancy."

"Okay, let's have a talk in Nancy's office."

"I don't have the key."

"You won't need one."

The elevators settled at the top floor and Skip King stepped off, with Remo and Chiun a pace behind him. He knew better than to run.

At the office door, King said sheepishly, "Here it is."

The little Korean stepped up to the pebbled glass and used one long fingernail to score the glass. The sound hurt King's ears. Remo gave the circle a tap. The glass popped in, and he reached inside to turn the doorknob.

"In you go," said Remo.

King stepped in. "You know I'm not impressed."

"No?"

"Anyone can slip a glass cutter under their fingernail."

"Maybe. But not us. Where's Nancy?" Remo asked, without wasting any more time.

"I don't know. I heard she was riding shotgun when the brontohauler was hit."

"Hit by who?"

"Search me."

"He is lying, Remo," said Chiun in a cold voice. "His sweat reeks of falsehoods."

"That's ridiculous," King snapped.

And suddenly Skip King felt a viselike pressure around his ankles. The rest was a blur of sound and noise and motion-and once the blood rushing to his head cleared his vision, he realized he was being dangled out his former office window by his ankles.

"Let me go!"

"You don't want that. You want to be pulled back in safely. Right?"

"Pull me back in to safety-fast," King screamed, his tie slapping his face.

"First some truth. Who hijacked the hauler?"

"It must have been those Africans."

"Try again. We know the Africans were shooting blanks. So were the Berets. What's the story?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"He is lying, Remo," came the squeaky voice of Chiun. "His voice shrieks his perfidy."

"I don't like being lied to," Remo said, an edge in his voice now.

"I don't blame you!"

"Ever heard of the melon drop?"

"No."

"It's an old Korean custom. Someone lies to you and so you dangle him by both ankles and play melon drop. Guess whose head substitutes for the melon?"

King guessed. "No! Please!"

"Ready for the one, two, three, splat part of the ritual?"

"Okay! Okay! I'll talk."

"You're already talking. Talk truth."

"The board must be behind this! It's gotta be them."

"Why?" Remo asked.

King let the words come out of him in a spray. "This whole Bronto thing is part of a marketing plan. We're putting Old Jack on tour. When it's done, we're going to euthanize him."

Chiun's wrinkled features grew perplexed. "Euthanize?"

"Dino dumping," said Remo grimly.

"The fiends."

"That's right," King agreed. "They're fiends. The idea is to sell Bronto Burgers at rare-art prices. The board expects to clean up. They must have moved the timetable up without telling me."

"What do you think, Chiun?"

"I think there is no limit to the barbarism of this land, where Vietnamese are allowed to live in the finer provinces and people would eat dragons."

"As opposed to skinning them for the magic bones?"

"One buries a dragon after it has breathed its last. It is the only proper thing to do."

"Why?"

"So a new dragon will grow from the organs, of course."

"I give up," said Remo, hauling King back into the room. King staggered over to the wastepaper basket and, getting down on hands and knees, began heaving into it.

"Let us hie to this board of evil, Remo, and remove their scheming heads."

"Not without checking in first."

The Master of Sinanju indicated Skip King, his head in the steel basket.

"That one has ears."

"I'll fix that," said Remo as he reached into the basket and squeezed a place near King's spine. He went limp and the bubbling sound of him exhaling into his own vomit came.

Remo got Smith on the phone.

"Smith, forget everything you heard about African environmentalists. This is a Burger Triumph scam all the way."

"What?"

"They have it all worked out. A promo tour, an accidental death. Guess what happens next?"

"I cannot imagine."

"Every yuppie in the universe getting in line for a once-in-a-lifetime taste sensation."

Smith's gasp was a dry, shocked sound. "You don't mean-"

"It'll be bigger than cabbage patch dolls, except you can eat Bronto Burgers."

"Have you traced the animal?"

"No. But we scared the truth out of King. He says the board has moved up the timetable."

"Interrogate the board."

"Just wanted you to know before we did it."

"Try to do this delicately. Burger Triumph represents a significant slice of the American economy."

"They don't lie, they don't die. How's that?"

"Satisfactory," said Smith.

Skip King was still bubbling away when Remo hung up. On the way out the door, the Master of Sinanju kicked the basket over. King fell with it and began breathing normally.

The board of directors of the Burger Triumph corporation wasn't sure what to make of the thick-wristed man and his colorful companion.

They tried to bluff their way through the intrusion on their emergency board meeting.

"Are you employed here?" asked the CEO.

"No. We're dissatisfied customers."

"Dissatisfied?"

"We like our Brontosaurs on the hoof and not between slices of stale bun."

"I do not follow."

"They are temporizing, Remo," the old one warned the other.

"Must be expecting help," said the one called Remo.

He walked around the table, running his fingers along the polished cherrywood top. He stopped when he came to the right-hand corner at the CEO's elbow, reached under, and yanked a push button out by its wiring.

He dangled it in the CEO's face. "Who'd you call?"

"Security. And I suggest you two plan to leave quietly or charges will be filed. Federal charges."

"Lordy me," said Remo.

The Burger Berets burst in a moment later. There were four of them and they toted AR-15 assault rifles. Captain Mustard led them. He paled at the sight of Remo and Chiun. He started to back out of the room, but his team was in the way.

"Nice guns," said Remo.

"Please put your hands up," Mustard ordered in a quaking voice.

Remo's confident smile didn't involve his eyes. "Remember to load them this time around?"

Captain Mustard and his Berets hesitated, looked momentarily blank, and various uncomfortable expressions crawled over their faces.

Remo looked to the CEO and said, "You know, I think they forgot their bullets again."

The CEO stood up and shook an angry fist. "Shoot them! They've threatened the board and by implication all your jobs!"

The Burger Berets made a valiant attempt. Their lack of ammunition was a serious handicap, but it probably saved their lives. As the weapons filled the boardroom with noise and flame and gunsmoke and not much else, Remo and Chiun moved among them, using their jaunty purple berets to gag them-after first relieving them of the weapons and all limb volition with hard fingerstrokes to shoulder and hip joints.

They made a pile in one corner, and Remo addressed the board. The Master of Sinanju stood behind him like an emerald-and-gold genie, his hands tucked in his sleeves.

"The scam is out in the open," said Remo, his voice clipped. "So tell us where the bronto is and maybe you won't have to end up like Skip King."

"How-how did Skip King end up?" a man quavered.

"Breathing his own puke."

The board of directors looked queasy and the CEO said, "We have no idea what has happened to the poor animal. We agreed to allow Dr. Nancy Derringer to transport it to a secure place, and the hauler did not arrive. We were just discussing what it could mean when you two barged in."

"You aren't trying to tell me this hasn't anything to do with Bronto Burgers?" Remo said skeptically.

"Obviously Dr. Derringer has tricked us."

Remo started to scoff when the Master of Sinanju said thinly, "He is speaking the truth, Remo."

"I can smell their sweat," said Remo.

"As can I. But it smells of truth."

Remo looked dubious. He lowered his tone. "Their pulses are racing. That means they're lying, right?"

Chiun shook his head coldly. "It means that they are frightened. If they lied, their pulses would jitter."

Remo looked from the Master of Sinanju to the board and back again. "So who hijacked the Bronto? It sure wasn't Nancy."

"There is only one person left," Chiun intoned.

"Can't be Colonel Mustard. He's in a pile with his beret in his mouth." Then it hit him. Remo snapped his fingers. "King?"

Chiun nodded firmly. "King."

"Damn." Remo slipped from the room, calling back, "Anyone who interferes is hamburger. Literally."

Chiun hung back a moment. "I have spared you your miserable lives," he told the trembling board. "I will expect your gratitude to be without measure."

Then he was gone.

"I move we all submit our resignations," the CEO said stonily.

When no one answered right away, he added, "On the condition that the severance packages are commensurate with our contributions."

The motion was seconded, voted on, and passed unanimously. That left only the dicey question of to whom to tender their resignations.

Skip King was gone when Remo and Chiun reached his former office. They followed the trail of partial footprints to the elevator bank. King had stepped in his own vomit and tracked it along the carpet.

The head of security in the lobby confirmed that King had left the building.

"What kind of car does he drive?" asked Remo.

"Why should I answer that question?" the guard wanted to know. "Did you two sign in? I don't remember buzzing you in."

"We do our own buzzing. Watch."

The man had a computer terminal at his station and Remo laid a hand on it. He described a quick circle and reversed it.

The guard noticed that the data on his screen was breaking up. An electronic beeping came from the system. It sounded panicky. "How are you doing that?" he gulped.

"This?" Remo said. "This is nothing. Watch this." And Remo ran his hand back and forth along the side. The glass cracked and the broken screen hissed in the guard's face like an upset alley cat.

The guard spat out information in quick bursts. "Red. Infiniti. License plate says KING 1."

"Let's go, Little Father. It's time to crown the king."

They floated out of the building.

Chapter 23

Skip King had climbed the corporate ladder the hard way.

He had started working the drive-in window of a Burger Triumph in Timonium, Maryland, was soon catapulted to store manager, then regional supervisor, and by the tender age of twenty-eight he was working out of the corporate headquarters.

There was one and only one reason for his success. He saw himself as a cog in the corporate machinery. On the franchise level, that meant maximizing the profit even if it meant returning to work after hours and salvaging the unsold burger meat and stale fries and bringing them in the next morning before the day crew arrived.

He saved the company twenty thousand dollars in his first six months as manager. As regional supervisor, he saved six figures by shuttling leftovers between stores. The board never questioned his methods. They only saw the bottom line and the bottom line was what they cared about.

And what Burger Triumph, Inc. cared about, Skip King cared about. He had no social life, acquired no friends, and didn't care.

When he had been promoted into the heady, button-down atmosphere of the main office, at first Skip King didn't think he could make it. There was no spoilage to salvage. He wasn't going anywhere as a junior product researcher until he requested what was thought to be the dead end of all dead ends. A transfer to the company cafeteria. As manager.

Within three months, the subsidized cafeteria actually showed an unheard-of profit. The board didn't care that the plastic utensils were being cleaned in Skip King's apartment sink every night for reuse and only the cheapest army surplus food was being served to lower echelon staff. The board ate in their private clubs and fine restaurants, so they didn't hear the complaints of staff. They only saw the bottom line. And they only cared about the bottom line.

One gleaming rung at a time, Skip King scaled the shiny ladder of success. It had not been easy. His lack of business education had caused many doors to slam shut in his glowering face. Middle management looked more and more like Skip King's destiny.

Until the night he slipped an updated resume into his employee file, listing himself as a graduate of Wharton Business School. Magna cum laude. Because he had never heard of summa cum laude.

It was a potentially dangerous move, but King, noticing the high turnover in Burger Triumph personnel-even at its corporate headquarters-figured he was even money to get away with it.

The next time he put in for a vacant position higher up in the company, he talked up his degree in business administration-and found himself in the marketing division. From that day on, Skip King was a Wharton man. And he made sure everyone-from the secretaries to the janitorial staff-knew it.

His fellow employees found him insufferable about it, but not one called him on it. They preferred to change the subject, or duck into a men's room stall when they saw him coming.

Five years after first entering the building, Skip King was made VP of marketing and found himself sitting with the big boys in marketing meetings.

He adapted well. He learned to read the board. To sense when it was safe to agree or disagree. He was one of them. A comer. The organization man. There was no limit to the heights he might reach.

Until the Bronto Burger project unraveled.

It had been a bitter pill to swallow. Demoted overnight. And on the verge of his greatest fame. It had been Skip King's idea from start to finish. It had been Skip King who had stood before the board and vowed to fall on his sword if anything went wrong. With an agreed-upon golden parachute in place if he was forced to resign to preserve the company's good name.

Demotion wasn't honorable. Demotion was not something Skip King had bargained for. And working for a woman who'd never seen the inside of Wharton was intolerable.

Briefly, Skip King had contemplated suicide. For what was life without the reassuring steel rungs of the corporate ladder under one's climbing feet?

Then he got angry. Angry at the board of directors who would humiliate him, Skip King, who dared go into the heart of deepest Africa to make their bottom line the greatest in fast-food history.

It was in that cauldron of righteous anger that Skip King decided to get even. And as long as he was in the getting-even business, he thought, no sense in not getting rich in the process.

It had been the easiest thing in the world to set up. Everyone was in place. Like chess pieces. It was just a matter of getting them to jump in a new direction, and not just diagonally. Skip King had never been good at chess. There were too many rules, too many invisible barriers to victory.

As he drove through the Delaware night, wiping his own vomit off his lean wolfish face, Skip King knew there would be no more rules for him.

Not after tonight.

Nancy Derringer awoke with a start.

Her eyes were slow to focus. Her head hurt. There was a funny smell in her nose and a bitter taste in her mouth. The taste was from the dry sponge someone had jammed between her teeth before gagging her with a length of cloth.

Then she remembered the Burger Berets' faces turning to raw meat and the men in the ski masks pulling the bodies from the hauler and taking their place.

They took the bloodied seats and one got the hauler moving while the other pushed Nancy's face to the floorboards and pressed a cold, wet cloth to her face, holding it there until she had passed out. Ether. That was the smell clogging her nostrils.

Nancy looked around. It was dark. The air smelled stale. She was lying in dead, musty hay. There was a nimbus of white light ahead of her. She crawled to it. Boards creaked under her weight.

Gradually, a vista came into view.

She was in an old barn. In the hayloft. The white light made the barnboards look like weathered old tombstones.

In the center of the barn, parked in the hot glow of hanging trouble lights, was the hauler. And stretched out on its bed was the Apatosaur, looking like some prized mutant pumpkin awaiting judging. It looked dead. If it was breathing, Nancy couldn't see it.

There were men moving around the hauler. They wore camouflage utilities, but their faces were bare. Black men. She watched their faces carefully. Five minutes of study confirmed what Nancy had suspected. None matched the faces of the African members of the Congress for a Green Africa.

One of them was speaking now.

"This is one big mother, ain't it?"

"I wouldn't get too close. It might wake up and snap off your fool head."

"It eats heads?"

"Relax," a third voice put in. "It's a vegetarian. A few groats and he's happy."

The accents were American. All of them. They were Americans. But what did it mean?

Nancy crept back from the edge of the loft so she wouldn't be seen. She tried breathing steadily to clear the ether stink from her nostrils. Maybe it would clear her head, too. None of this made any sense and she desperately wanted it to make sense.

Most of all she wanted Old Jack to survive the night.

The honking of a car horn brought her crawling back to the edge. She watched the black men go to a side door, weapons at the ready. They looked nervous.

"Who is it?" one hissed.

A man was looking through a knothole in the barnboard.

"It's King!"

"King?" Nancy murmured.

"Let him in," a man said.

And Skip King, looking nervous and flustered, stepped in through the unlocked door.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"It just be growling in its sleep, is all."

King went the Apatosaur. He walked around the hauler. "I think it's starting to come around."

"Are we in trouble?"

"You got it cabled down tight?"

"Yeah. But how tight does it need to be? That's the question."

King said, "That bossy blonde knows the answer to that question. I'd better ask her. Where is she?"

One of the hijackers used his thumb to indicate the hayloft. "We stuck her up in the loft."

Nancy wriggled back out of sight before King's gaze could lift in her direction. He was talking again.

"Get ready to make the call. We may have to put the arm on the board sooner than I thought."

"This had better work, King," another voice growled. "If this gets out, we're top of the list of perps."

"Don't sweat it. I know how business works. The board will pay the ransom just to hush things up. The last thing they want is for it to get out that they were planning to sell ground Brontosaurus to the American public."

In the musty gloom, Nancy Derringer blinked her eyes rapidly. She heard the words, but they rang in her ears like some discordant gonging. What did he mean?

Then King was climbing a creaky ladder and his fox face was silhouetted against the back glow of lights.

There was no point in pretending, so Nancy sat up and glared at his approaching figure.

"I see you're awake," King said smugly.

Nancy made an angry noise in her throat. It came out of her nose, buzzing.

"Simmer down," King spat. "Let me get this thing off you." He untied the gag, and reached cold fingers into her mouth for the gag. Nancy spat out the bitter sponge taste then followed it with sharp words.

"You bastard! What are you up to?"

"Call it a sting."

"Sting?"

"The board stung me. I'm stinging them back. If they want Old Jack in one piece, they have to pay me. A cool five million. That's enough to retire on."

"But why?"

"You saw how the board humiliated me. And you're asking why?"

"Yes, I'm asking why. Two men are dead and the last Apatosaur on earth is at risk because your scrotum is as swelled as your head?"

"Since when are you such a big board booster?"

"Since you went off the deep end."

King smiled in the twilight. More than ever, his smile struck Nancy as foxy. "You wouldn't think so much of those stiffs if you knew what I know," he said.

"I'm listening."

"They never intended to find a good home for Old Jack, you know. All along, they were planning to run his carcass through the grinder and make Bronto Burgers."

"I don't believe it."

"Too audacious, huh?"

"Too stupid. Only a cretin like you could imagine such a thing."

"As a matter of fact," King said in an injured voice. "It was my idea from the very beginning."

And Nancy knew he had been speaking the truth. The realization caused a coldness to settle into her marrow. She wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in her stomach to regurgitate. She settled for staring at King as if he were a ghoul that had stumbled out of a fresh grave.

King asked, "Listen, those cables? Will they hold him down if he wakes up?"

"I have no idea. I tranked him for a two-hour ride, with an hour safety margin. He could come around any time now."

"Uh-oh. What do we do?"

"You call the authorities before you get in any deeper," Nancy snapped.

King stood up. "Like you said, two men are dead. It doesn't get any deeper than that."

King walked to the edge of the loft. He cupped his hands before his mouth and shouted down. "Check the hauler. Maybe there's a trank gun on board."

Nancy was considering rolling into the back of King's calves and knocking him off his perch when one of the hijackers came through the side door.

"There's a car coming!" he hissed.

"Douse the damn lights!" King yelled.

The lights were connected to a single portable battery. Someone disconnected it and the barn became a great black space in which there was no sense of orientation.

Then in the blackness, a sound. Low, mournful, but blood-chilling in its implications.

Harrooo.

Chapter 24

The sound came again, louder, freezing the blood of everyone on the old barn's dark confines.

Harrooo.

Then something snapped with a metallic twang. Great suspension springs groaned as the hauler shifted on its huge tires.

"Is that what I think it is?" a wary voice croaked.

"The lights!" King cried. "Turn the lights back on!"

"Something's moving down here. Something big."

Another voice said shrilly, "The groats! Whose got the damn groats?"

Nancy Derringer strained to see through the inky dark. It was impossible to see more than doubtful shadows.

"Don't shoot! Whatever you do, don't shoot!" she pleaded.

"Shoot if you have to!" King howled. "Don't let it get away. It's worth five million, dead or alive."

Harrooo.

Remo popped out of his rented car. A moment before, the decrepit old barn had been leaking light from chinks and knotholes and a corner of the roof like a gray old jack-o'-lantern fallen into ruin.

Every fragment of light went out at once.

"Must have a sentry posted," Remo muttered.

The Master of Sinanju said coldly, "It does not matter. We have the fiends where they cannot escape our wrath."

"Yeah, well they're probably not firing blanks now. We gotta do this so Nancy and the Bronto aren't hurt."

Then they heard the sound.

Harrooo.

"Damn," said Remo. "Now we really have problems." He turned to Chiun. "Listen, I gotta have your word that no matter how this goes, the Bronto comes out of it in one piece."

"That is our assignment," Chiun said in a thin voice.

"Keep that in mind. No accidents, no taking advantage of opportunities. Got me?"

The Master of Sinanju screwed up his tiny face into an amber knot of wrinkles. "I know my emperor's wishes."

"Okay. Now let's take them."

They split up, attacking the barn from opposite approaches.

And the foghorn sound of the Apatosaurus came again-and with it the unmistakable complaints of heavy cables straining and snapping.

The blat of automatic weapons fire was followed by barnboards being knocked off their frame supports.

Abandoning stealth, Remo moved in for the side door, his face angry.

Below the hayloft. Skorpion machine pistols were spitting long tongues of yellow fire, throwing intermittent shadows about the huge barn interior.

The freakish light illuminated the Apatosaur throwing off its chains. Its goat eyes were coursing about the room, searching, frightened. A rear leg unbent itself and found momentary purchase on the right rear set of oversized tires. The rubber burst under the weight and the Apatosaur's leg slid off. The barn shuddered and shook when the padded leg touched the floor.

The hauler suspension wasn't equal to the stress. It snapped. The opposite tires broke like thick-skinned balloons. The entire rear end fell and the great pumpkinlike rump of the Apatosaur slowly slid to the haystrewn floor.

It was screaming now, its mouth open and set like a frightened snake.

"Don't shoot!" Nancy screeched. "It won't hurt you if you leave it alone."

"Do what you gotta," King yelled.

Bound hand and foot, Nancy rolled toward King's standing form. That does it. You're going over the edge if I have to go with you, she thought fiercely.

Then the side door came off its hinges, jumped six feet, and brought down a man who was trying to draw a bead on the Apatosaur's small, questing head.

Simultaneously, a cluster of boards at the back splintered and fell and a high, squeaky voice filled the shot-with-gunfire darkness.

"Surrender, minions of the hamburger king. For your doom is surely upon you."

Recognizing the voice, Nancy stopped rolling.

"Remo!" she yelled.

"Yeah?"

"I'm up here in the loft. With King. A prisoner!"

"I'm a little busy right now," Remo said, and men were screaming.

"What's got me? What's got me?" one shrieked.

"I do," said Remo, and the sound of human bones snapping came with a finality that was undeniable.

"What's going on down there?" King yelled.

A man yelled back. "Something is down here! And it ain't the damn dinosaur!"

Then a gurgle came from the vicinity of the yelling man, and when King called back to him, there was no answer.

"Somebody hit the light!" King screamed.

In the darkness, Skip King became aware of a shape looming in the black empty space before him. It was a long shadow amid patterns of shadow, and he sensed eyes on him even though he couldn't see an inch past his sharp nose.

Came a low, interested sound: Harrooo.

And a noxious cloud swept over Skip King. It smelled disagreeably of raw mushrooms.

Remo was moving through a twilight that only his eyes and those of Chiun's could discern. To everyone else, the barn interior was pitch dark, except when someone expended a clip of ammo.

Those flashes were growing infrequent now.

Remo came up behind a man, tapped him on his shoulder, and the nervous man brought his weapon around in a chattering semicircle.

Before the bullet track could cross Remo's chest, Remo drove two fingers into the back of the unprotected skull, just under his green beret. They came out clean. The two holes squirted blood and thick matter, but Remo had already moved on.

The Master of Sinanju took hold of a neck in one bird claw hand. He squeezed. The flesh surrendered and then he was holding the hard bones of a man's spine. The bones proved no more resistant than the flesh, and the man struggled briefly then hung limp in the Master of Sinanju's grasp.

Chiun dropped him onto the growing pile of bodies and turned to another foe. This one was walking blindly in the darkness, his eyes so wide they threatened to pop from his fear-struck skull. He was sweeping his weapon around, prepared to execute shadows.

Except that he could not even see shadows.

So the Master of Sinanju gave him a voice to shoot at.

"I know something you don't know," he taunted.

The weapon muzzle shifted and erupted in angry challenge.

But the Master of Sinanju had already stepped behind the man, saying, "You missed. As I knew you would."

The man whirled. His bullets peppered the walls and shook hay down from the rafters.

"Damn!" he cursed, removing an ammunition clip and replacing it with a fresh one. He had drawn close to the great tail that lay uncoiled the length of the floor, unawares.

"You may try again, blind one," Chiun squeaked.

This time the man stopped in his tracks and pivoted, firing.

The Master of Sinanju effortlessly dipped under the stream of crude metal. He came to his full height once more, his voice a strident bell.

"You are defenseless now."

"Says you." And the gunman got off a final shot. One bullet. The round struck the hauler, ricocheted twice, and struck the Apatosaur in the thick meaty part of the tail.

The tail twitched in the darkness, and blood oozed.

Seeing this, the Master of Sinanju gave a cry of anger.

"Aiieee!"

His sandled feet left the ground floor in a leaping kick. One foot caught the gunman in the head, imploding his blind, fear-strained face. The Master of Sinanju landed gently on the body as it struck the floor.

Then he stepped off the quivering hulk to examine the injury done to the ugly African dragon whose bones meant long life.

Skip King was staring into a darkness that seemed to be staring back at him. His mouth felt dry.

"Somebody," he croaked. "Anybody. Turn on the lights. "

Somebody did. The hauler's headlights blazed suddenly. They made the back of the barn a cauldron of white light and tall shadows.

Skip King stood on the edge of the loft, blinking into the cold reptilian gaze of a backlit serpentine head.

"Oh shit," he said.

Nancy called out, "Remo! Are you all right?"

"Who do you think turned on the lights?"

"Thank God."

"Somebody tell this thing to stop looking at me like that." King said in a voice that was unnaturally low. "He's all right. Thank God he's all right," Nancy sobbed.

"Uh-oh," said Remo.

Nancy started. "What?"

"Old Jack caught one in the tail."

"Bad?"

"Looks like a scale wound, or something. It doesn't seem to be bothering him. It's just standing here."

"It's looking at King."

"I don't like the way it's looking at me," King said. "It's creepy."

"You'd better get back," Nancy warned.

"Why?"

"Because it's been shot in the tail. It could go berserk at any time."

"Wouldn't it already be berserk?" asked King in a dazed voice. He was just standing there, like a jumper on a ledge.

"The Apatosaurus is so long that nerve impulses have to be relayed along the spinal column through an organic relay near the tail," Nancy said. "Like a booster station."

"What does that mean?"

"It's been hit in the tail. But doesn't know it yet. When the pain reaches the brain, there's no telling what will happen."

"Oh," said King, talking a step backward. He took another.

Then the placid goat eyes staring at him flared. The Apatosaur suddenly acted as if it had whiplash. It reared up, a titan of black-and-orange flesh, on its rear legs. The forefeet hanging before it, it thrashed its long neck about the barn, banging its head and snout against the rafters like a snake in a box. Wood splintered and showered down.

Harrdunk. Harruuunkk. Harruunkk.

"Oh shit," said King.

The fit of pain was over quickly. Still balanced on its rear legs, the head righted itself, and eyes questing, its crazed gaze fell on one figure.

The head dipped, looming closer, every tooth in its yawning mouth exposed.

Nancy tried to roll out of the way. King stumbled back.

"Don't hurt me! Don't hurt me!" he was screaming, waving the orange snout away.

His heels encountered an obstacle. He looked back and saw Nancy, lying there, all but helpless.

Skip King knew opportunity when he saw it. He pulled Nancy to her feet and got her in front of him, trying to use her as a shield.

"King! Let go, you jerk!"

King cowered behind his prisoner. "Don't let it get me, Mommy! Don't let it get me!"

The head snaked down, a splash of orange with blazing eyes.

Frantic, Nancy brought her heels down on King's feet. They dodged. In her ears was King's voice screaming-inarticulately now.

The scream was cut off as if by a blow. The snap of great teeth coming together sounded over her head.

King's grip suddenly went away, and Nancy knew to duck.

Looking up, she beheld Skip King, arms and legs jittering, being carried away. His head was in the Apatosaur's mouth and it had closed. The rest of him dangled like so much clothed meat.

As she watched, the creature threw its head back, upending it. And Skip King went down the long gullet like so much cabbage.

Nancy watched in blue-eyed horror, then turned her head away at the sight of King's tasseled loafers slipping from sight.

Remo was at her side a moment later, his strong fingers shredding her bonds.

"You okay?" he was asking.

"What about Jack?" Nancy asked in a shaken voice.

"I was hoping you had some ideas."

The Apatosaur was gyrating its long neck, trying to get the too-large morsel down. It wasn't succeeding. It moved its rear legs clumsily, trying to hold on to its precarious balance.

"It's going to choke! Can't we do something?"

Remo called down. "Chiun-any suggestions?"

Chiun's voice floated up. "Do not fear."

And the Master of Sinanju was suddenly a fluttery shape on the creature's great dappled back. He leaped onto the neck with the agility of a monkey seizing a coconut tree bole. And like a monkey, he climbed to a point just under the jaw hinge.

There, Chiun took hold of either side of the reptile's muscular throat and gave a hard twist. The crack of vetebra was audible.

"No!" Nancy screamed.

"Damn," said Remo.

The serpent's head came down, dropped its uneaten meal, and raced it to the floor.

Every rafter and roof shake shook off dust and grit when the monster slammed into the floor.

The Master of Sinanju leaped off the collapsed carcass to land on the floor. He paused, inserted his fingers into the sleeves of his kimono, and regarded the two pairs of horror-struck eyes-Remo's and Nancy's-with unconcern.

"It is done," he intoned. "The beast has been quelled. I await my deserved reward."

Chapter 25

"It is not dead," intoned the Master of Sinanju when they climbed down to join him at the Apatosaur's side.

Nancy's eyes, hot with tears of anger, went to the creature's head. She placed a hand in front of its nostrils. They grew instantly moist and warm.

Then she buried her head in its orange forehead and sobbed in immense relief.

"It was only a realigning of the spine, producing unconsciousness," Chiun announced.

Remo blinked. "Chiropractic?"

"Did I ever tell you, Remo, how a Master of Sinanju, penniless and stranded far from his village, divulged certain secrets of Sinanju to a foreigner in return for passage home, and centuries later, a new breed of charlatan became as numerous as cockroaches in Europe?"

"Never mind," said Remo. He examined the hauler. The back was ruined. It looked as if Godzilla had sat on it hard.

"I don't know about you, but I'm not up to moving this thing again," he said to no one in particular. "Never mind where we could put it."

Nancy came up, wiping at red eyes.

"I was taking Punkin to the Zoological Gardens in Philadelphia. I have a friend there. Burger Triumph would have to sue to get it back."

"Good plan. Too bad you didn't make it."

Nancy walked around the beast, which was limned by the hauler headlights. She stood near the back, the belly of the Apatosaur was clearly exposed.

"It's a bull!" she gasped.

The Master of Sinanju looked to his pupil. "The strain is obviously too much for this woman, Remo. She now believes this hideous dragon is a bull."

"I think she means it's a bull Bronto, as in a male."

Frowning, the Master of Sinanju floated over to where Nancy was kneeling to satisfy his curiosity. He returned almost at once, his wrinkled face crimson with embarassment.

"It is definitely male. And that woman is leering at its maleness in a disgusting way."

"Nancy's allowed. She's a cryptozoologist."

The side door opened and Remo and Chiun dropped into tense crouches, ready to attack or defend as the circumstance warranted. A rustic-looking man with an odd fringe of a beard and a quaint round-brimmed hat poked his head in, saw them, and said in a Germanic voice, "Who is in my barn at this hour making such noises?"

"This your barn?" asked Remo.

"Ja."

"We want to rent it for a few days," Remo said.

"Why should I rent you English my barn?"

"Or we can just leave this bull Brontosaurus for you to clean up?" Remo said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.

The man looked past Remo for the first time, eyes going round as the brim of his hat.

"How many dollars per day vill you pay?" he asked.

"As many as you want if you leave us alone," Remo replied.

"I do this. Danke. " He clapped the door shut behind him.

"Who was that?" Nancy asked, coming around to see.

"Some Amish guy," said Remo.

"Amish?"

"We're in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Didn't you know?"

"No. My God! That poor man. What will he tell his family?"

"If he's smart, nothing." Remo was looking at Skip King's broken body lying in the hay. "I thought you said they ate only vegetables."

Nancy refused to look at the body. "They do. Old Jack wasn't trying to eat King, just to punish him. I guess he recognized King from Africa. He was probably the first human being he ever saw."

"Well, he's a used doggy chew-bone now," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju strode up to Nancy and fixed her with his stern hazel eyes.

"I have twice rescued this ugly beast," he said, his wispy chin held high.

"That's true," said Nancy.

"I claim my reward."

"Little Father-" Remo began.

The Master of Sinanju cut him off with a curt chop of his hand. "When this noble creature expires at the end of its natural span, its bones are mine."

Nancy had been holding her breath. She let it out in surprise. "If I have anything to say about it, it's a deal."

The Master of Sinanju bowed, and with a last forlorn look at the slumbering dragon of Africa, he padded from the barn.

"Remo, you will give this woman our secret telephone number."

"Secret?" Nancy said.

"Actually, this is a 'don't call us, we'll call you' situation."

Nancy followed Remo to the barn door, "You're not leaving me alone to work this out, are you?"

"Don't sweat it. I'll make a call and I guarantee you the Army or Air Force or someone will show up by sunrise."

Nancy followed Remo out into the Pennsylvania night, but the sight of clumps of curious Amish farmers converging on the barn forced her to double back.

"Damn!" she muttered. "I hope I don't have to explain the entire Mesozoic to those people."