Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

" 'Hued'?"

"That's the technical term for it. Invented it myself."

"Little Father, do you see what I see up ahead?"

"I see clown soldiers wearing lead masks under their red fezzes."

"If we can get one or two of them, we're all set."

"If you wear masks without eyes, how can you fight?" demanded Dominique.

"We don't need eyes to fight with," said Remo.

"Yes," added Chiun. "We fight with our hands and our feet, not our eyes."

"You can be our eyes," said Rod.

"I will be no one's eyes," Dominique swore.

And suddenly, several 35- and 50-caliber machine guns pivoted in their direction, tipped downward, lining them up for slaughter.

Dominique Parillaud stopped dead in her tracks. Rod bumped into her and bounced back. Before the fear could overtake her, the two American agents surged forward.

They started walking calmly forward. Suddenly they shot ahead, leaping onto the main tank and breaking the machine guns with short, hard chops that looked ineffectual but caused steel gun barrels to snap and roll clanking off the armored side of the tank.

The Zouaves, seeing this, began recoiling in surprise and dug into their colorful sashes for black objects that looked to Dominique's eyes like TV remote-control clickers.

Before their weapons cleared, hands reached out to relieve them of their masks, which they were trying to simultaneously pull down over their eyes.

MARL MOISE WAS STANDING not six yards away when the strange pair appeared atop the main blocking tank. The way they broke the machine guns was awful to behold.

But the way they avoided being hued was incredible.

His Zouaves followed orders exactly. At the first sign of trouble, they simultaneously reached up for their lead masks and into their sashes for their clippedon hypercolor lasers.

They got the weapons out in time to fire short bursts of pacifying pink.

The trouble was the Zouaves were quicker on the trigger than they were on the masks. Or perhaps it wasn't their fault, after all.

Zouave hands that reached up to their foreheads encountered only warm flesh, not cold lead shields.

When their first pink bursts came, the lead masks were firmly in place-over the eyes of the attackers.

The Zouaves reacted to the pink flashes in an entirely unexpected manner, although Marc understood it after the third burst.

Smiling, they brought their lasers up to their expectant faces, pinking themselves happily.

" Let de good times roll!" they murmured in Creole.

The pink reached Marc's brain through his open eyes-he had been so stunned by what he had witnessed that he had forgotten to yank down his own lead mask-relaxing him instantly.

Marc unclipped his laser, dialed up pink and hued himself in quarter-second bursts.

When the strange pair ran past him, he didn't care anymore. And why should he? He had been offered up as cannon fodder, and Sam Beasley didn't pay dick.

Chapter 30

"We have a penetration, Director."

Uncle Sam Beasley turned to face the man who had spoken. Bob Beasley sat at the grid of video screens that monitored Euro Beasley.

"Are those damn Cajuns pinking themselves?" Uncle Sam barked.

"It seems so, Director."

"Damn. They're supposed to be our trip wire. They're no good to us now. Get the Florida regiment out there."

"Yes, Director."

Uncle Sam Beasley turned his attention back to the damaged control board where a Beasley technician was laboring.

"Aren't we back on-line yet?" he asked gruffly.

"The Hotpink button is enabled."

"I need offensive colors, damn it. What if the fucking Foreign Legion come parachuting back in?"

"Hotpink had the least damage."

"When I want excuses, I'll ask a vice president. Now, get to work."

"Yes, Director."

Bob Beasley spoke up. "Director, we have intruders on Main Street, U S.A."

Uncle Sam Beasley moved to the screen in question. He saw two men walking calmly down the cobbled street, one white, the other Asian. Both wore lead masks over their eyes that didn't seem to slow them down.

"Those are the ones!" he howled.

"The ones who interfered at Third Crater?"

"Third Crater, my pink ass. They interfered at Second Bay of Pigs! Must work for the government. Order them empurpled."

"Uncle Sam-"

"Call me Director when we're on an operation."

"Director, you know how risky empurpling a subject can be. Purple combines the effects of red and blue. Anything could happen, especially with opponents as dangerous as them."

"Empurple their asses!"

"At once, Director." And snapping a switch, Bob Beasley leaned into a console mike and said, "Two intruders in Zone 12. Empurple them. Repeat, empurple them. And don't forget to mask first."

REMO WILLIAMS RAN THROUGH a world of darkness. Although his sight was blocked by a lead shield, he was not by any means blind.

His nose detected scent molecules too faint for the ordinary human nose, his hearing picked up the steady pounding of the Master of Sinanju's heartbeat and pumping lungs beside him and his bare skin received a multiplicity of sensations-nearby body heat, draft eddies and the negative pressure of large, stationary buildings.

All of which combined to make Remo a running radar dish.

A wall of heartbeats converged on the unseen road ahead of him.

"Masks down, men!" a voice shouted.

"Here we go, Little Father."

And as they raced forward, their sensitive ears detected the tiny closing clicks of relays signifying hypercolor lasers were being brought to bear upon them.

Fixing the position of the forest of heartbeats, Remo calculated angles of attack. He went for the rotator cuffs, jamming them with stiffened fingers, puncturing flesh and muscle.

Men howled and gave way. The plastic clatter of hypercolor laser units dropping to the cobbles came distinctly. Remo and Chiun crushed them underfoot wherever they could.

The first wave of attackers fell back.

"THE FLORIDA SUNSHINE Guerrillas have been thrown back, Director," Bob Beasley shouted.

"Those pansies!" Uncle Sam Beasley scowled. "What's wrong with them?"

"Well, they are blind."

"So are those two pains-in-the-rear!"

"Being blind doesn't seem to bother them."

"Look at them turn tail like scared little mice. I expect more from my employees."

"They were complaining about the pay a while back."

"Don't they know they work for Sam Beasley, the greatest private company ever to export good old American fun?"

"We pound it into them at the monthly pep drills, but I don't think it motivates them as much as better wages would."

"Greedy bastards. Okay, turn out my elite musketeers."

"Director, as long as those two have their eyes shielded, we can't stop them with extraordinary means."

"Then shoot them!"

"We didn't bring any guns. Couldn't risk them not getting through French customs."

Uncle Sam Beasley stared up at the screen and saw the two people he most hated in the world approach the Sorcerer's Chateau, blind yet unchallenged and seemingly unstoppable. His exposed eye scrunched up like an agate in a fist.

"There's gotta be some way to kill 'em," he snarled.

"We could lead them into a trap."

"What traps do we have here?"

"Not much. All Beasley offensive capability is topside. We never planned for a Utilicanard penetration."

"Don't call it that. God, I hate these sissy French words. Where did they dredge them up?"

"Same place we did. From the Latin."

"I want solutions, you sycophant. Not language lessons."

"There is the LOX chamber."

"We have a deli down here?"

"Not that kind of LOX. Liquid Oxygen. We use it to create faux steam clouds for the Mesozoic Park volcanoes. It's nasty, subfreezing stuff. A cloud of it will cause your skin to crack off in sheets."