When Coco de Merde and his men came in range, Vinnie slid the mincemeat pie across the deck. It opened up like a package and a machine grew out of it and unfolded into a turret gun. How such a massive machine gun fit inside the pie, or how Hats was able to carry all that weight on his head, Earl had no idea. He plugged his youngest daughter’s ears as it opened fire.
“Now,” Vinnie yelled.
As the turret gun pie oscillated from side to side, emptying bullets into the French clowns, Earl and his daughters took off running in the opposite direction. Hats and Vinnie soon followed.
“Stop them!” Coco yelled to his men, but they were busy diving for cover or getting torn up by the blitzkrieg of bullets.
Coco did not jump for cover. He raised his hands into the air, moving them up and down, then side to side.
Earl looked back and saw the French clown’s movements. “What’s he doing?”
Bullets fired directly at Coco, but they didn’t hit him. They bounced off what appeared to be an invisible barrier.
Hats held on to his mini cowboy hat as he looked back at Coco. “He’s miming!”
“Just keep moving,” Vinnie said.
Coco de Merde continued miming the invisible wall until the turret gun ran out of bullets. Then he stepped forward, kicked the pie gun out of his way, and mimed something else with his hands.
“What’s he doing now?” Earl asked.
Hats cried, “He’s miming a machine gun!”
Bullets poured out of the invisible gun as Coco stepped toward them. Although there was no sound coming from the gun in his hands, they could hear the bullets as they whistled through the air and tore through the deck. Earl couldn’t move fast enough with his daughters. They had to duck for cover behind a cargo crate.
The French clown laughed. “I presume Don Bozo is still alive, no? His death was all a ruse?” Earl recognized his voice as the man he’d spoken with on the phone. This was definitely the guy who kidnapped his family. “Well, it’s no problem. I’m happy to settle for killing you, Mr. Blue Nose—street boss of the Bozo Family.”
While Coco was busy speaking, Vinnie stood from cover and fired two laughing bullets directly into the clown’s chest. Coco staggered back, looked down, then wiped the flattened slugs away. They hadn’t broken his skin. Vinnie aimed for Coco’s face and pulled the trigger, but the gun only clicked. He was out of ammo.
“Good thing I already mimed a bulletproof vest.” Coco fired his invisible gun until Vinnie returned to his hiding spot. “That’s one of many reasons why Le Mystère is superior to you Bozos. You can’t mime, you have no acrobatic talent, you lack imagination and wonder. All you do is throw your pies and honk your noses.”
Vinnie double-checked his pockets, but he didn’t have any more laughing bullets.
“I’m out of ammo,” he said, as Coco fired more rounds at them. “What have you two got?”
Earl held up his balloon knife. “I only have this.” The second he held it out, a gust of wind blew it out of his hands. They all watched it as it rose up into the air. “Never mind…I’ve got nothing.”
“I got my squirt gun.” Hats handed the weapon to Vinnie.
Vinnie tilted it up, inspecting the fluid tank. “What’s it filled with?”
Hats smiled. “Toxic waste.”
“That’s not going to kill him very quickly.”
“Yeah, I prefer dealing a long, painful death to my enemies. Get hit with a splash of this, and it can take weeks or months to die.”
Hats smiled proudly at his sadistic yet completely ineffective weapon.
“It’s useless,” Vinnie said.
As they spoke, Coco de Merde continued firing at them, stepping casually across the deck. The invisible gun seemed to have limitless ammo. All Coco had to do to was mime a longer ammunition belt to feed into the weapon and he’d be able to fire it all day long.
Coco said, “Little Bigtop doesn’t need you Bozos anymore. You’re old, outdated. The future of clowning belongs to Le Mystère.”
“What about pies?” Earl pointed at the miniature cowboy hat on Hats’s head. “Do you have another pie under that?”
Rizzo removed his final hat to reveal a mini white-frosted cupcake beneath.
“What’s that?” Earl asked.
Hats took a bite out of it. “It’s coconut.”
“Coconut?”
“It’s delicious.” Coconut frosting coated Hats’s nose after he took a second bite.
“Mr. Blue Nose, they say you’re the luckiest clown in Little Bigtop,” said the French clown as he reached their hiding spot. “And that nobody’s ever been able to beat you in a game of poker.”
Vinnie had no other choice but to use the squirt gun. He nodded at Hats and Earl, telling them to get ready to run.
“But it looks like your luck has finally run out,” Coco said. “Your full house is a good hand, but it does not beat my royal flush.”
Vinnie stood up. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Then he sprayed the toxic waste into the Frenchman’s eyes.
The clown shrieked, dropping his invisible machine gun. The toxic chemicals burned through his retinas.
“Poker is a game of skill,” Vinnie said. “Luck has nothing to do with it.”
As his eyes melted down his face, Coco mimed a .50-caliber Gatling gun large enough to be mounted on a helicopter. “Goddamn filthy clown!”
But before Coco could open fire, the wind changed direction.
He never saw it coming. It floated delicately on the breeze, like a leaf drifting through a stream, but when the yellow knife-shaped balloon hit Coco in the back it pierced through his chest and poked out the front of his rib cage as if it were a steel sword. The Frenchmen fell to his knees and coughed blood onto the deck.
“I guess he was right,” Hats said to Blue Nose. “You really are one lucky son of a bitch.”
“It wasn’t me.” Vinnie put his hand on Earl’s shoulder. “It was the vet’s knife that killed him.”
Hats licked frosting from his round nose. “Thanks, Doc. You saved our asses.”
But as blood pooled beneath him, Coco de Merde moved his hands around an invisible box in front of him.
“What’s he miming now, Daddy?” Mandy asked.
The smile fell from Hats’s face when he saw the invisible box. “It’s a bomb!”
They picked up the girls and ran as fast as they could. When the bomb went off, the blast was just as invisible as the device. They could hear the ship breaking apart and feel the force of the explosion as they were thrown off their feet, but they saw nothing. Even the flames were invisible as the ship caught fire.