"No, you do not," returned General Alacran. "You never had Verapaz."
"But I have him now. He sleeps off the blow that brought him to heel."
"I will repeat myself. You do not have Verapaz. You never had Verapaz. And when Colonel Primitivo arrives, you will surrender this prisoner you do not have and never had."
"But," Comandante Zaragoza sputtered, "what about my credit?"
"You may have the credit if you wish to accept the blame for what follows," the general said coolly.
"What blame?" asked Zaragoza.
"If you would know the blame, you must accept the consequences that attend this knowledge."
"I prefer no blame and no credit, if that is okay with the general," the zone commander said hastily.
"The general finds you a wise man. One who understands that we never had this conversation."
"What conversation?" said the zone commander, realizing even as he terminated the connection to Mexico City that there were worse things in life than losing credit for a duty fulfilled.
Among them, losing one's life, which was shortly to be the fate of Subcomandante Verapaz, the mysterious one of the chilling blue eyes.
COLONEL PRIMITIVO HEARD the excellent news over his field telephone.
He drove the lead LAV. He always took point. He prided himself on taking point. He would not lead men where he would not go himself first.
And in the pursuit of his duty, Colonel Primitivo would enter Hell itself. Not just any hell. Not the hell of his Spanish forebears, but the awful Aztec hell called Mictlan, where the dead had their bones sucked of their sweet marrow by demons.
Colonel Primitivo was unafraid to enter that hell.
So he did not shrink from tearing along the highway that wound through the Lacandon forest that was, although considered Mexican soil, nevertheless enemy territory.
THE PRISONER WAS LOADED into a wooden coffin.
This made perfect sense. He was soon to die, and since the prisoner in Chiapas Barracks was destined to become henceforth a state secret, what better way to conceal the still-living but certainly short-lived body than to load it into a coffin?
Colonel Primitivo blew into the barracks at the head of an armored column. He trailed a choking cloud that this night was more ash than road dust.
The air was becoming difficult to inhale comfortably. Much like the air of Mexico City on a humid summer's night.
Colonel Primitivo snapped a salute. "You have something for me?"
His mouth tight, Comandante Zaragoza motioned to the waiting coffin lying on the ground.
"Dead?"
"That is up to you," he said smoothly.
The colonel nodded. He ripped out a sharp command, and the coffin was loaded into the back of the lead LAV. The rear door clanged shut.
Engines rumbling like drag racers before the checkered flag, the colonel's unit turned like a land dragon and vanished into the jungle night.
"Well, that is done," said Zaragoza, who would have felt much better about the end of the Verapaz matter had it not been for the regrettable lack of credit and the fact that word coming out of the capital bespoke a crisis far worse than the others of recent vintage.
They were saying in the capital that there had been no earthquake. Only a minor spewing of Mount Popocatepetl.
That was very bad to hear. When there was a crisis in the capital, the official line was invariably that were was no crisis. Denial mated with deniability. It was very Mexican.
Now they were saying there was no earthquake when news broadcasts clearly showed the damage and the dead and the unbelievable hellish anguish of it all.
Comandante Zaragoza shuddered at the thought that there might no more be a Mexican government after these calamitous events.
Chapter 19
The Extinguisher heard the raucous jungle sounds coming as if through a haze. He opened his eyes. They saw nothing. Only darkness.
Was he blind?
He felt confined. His head hurt. He moved it. It pounded. He moved it the other way, and although his eyes were open and he saw only darkness, the entire world of darkness spun and spun and spun until in his pain, he stopped biting his cheek and let out a wounded howl.
"What the hell is going on?"
He was in a box. It opened.
A lid clapped to one side, and he saw stars. Real stars. Shadowy heads intercepted the starlight, and dark eyes looked down on him without warmth or fear.
"Let me out of here," he said, grasping the box's edges so the lid couldn't drop back.
A rifle barrel was pressed to his chest. He subsided. He still lived. There was always opportunity to fight if he could find no other way. He made his voice flippant.
"What's shaking, compadres?"
"Subcomandante Verapaz," a man hissed. The Extinguisher recognized the silver stars of a Mexican colonel on his shoulder boards.
"I'm not Verapaz. I'm the Extinguisher."
"Que?"
Searching his mind, he recalled the nom de guerre he'd heard back in the city.
"El Extinguirador."
More heads came into view. Everyone wanted to see the dreaded Extinguisher now. That was good. It meant he had their attention. Soon he would have their fear. After that he would hold their miserable Third World lives in his capable hands.
Hands reached down to pull him out. He surrendered to them.
They stood him on his feet. He swayed. The fresh air made his skull hurt. He looked around.
The first thing he noticed was the long wooden box he had just occupied.
It was a coffin.
Cracking a smile, he said, "It'll take more than a pine box to keep the Extinguisher down."
The colonel stepped up to him while two others held him on his feet. "Jou call yourself the Extinguisher. Why?"
"That's who I am."
"Your true name, then."
"Blaize. Blaize Fury."
"Jou lie!"
"I am Blaize Fury, dillweed. Get used to it."
"Blaize Fury is a fancy. A hero in books."
"That's what I want my enemies to think."
The colonel looked him up and down. "Jou are a military man, senor?"
"I'm a warrior born, forged in hellfire and baptized with gun smoke."
"I have read many of the adventures of Blaize Fury when I was jounger. Jou are not Blaize Fury."
"Prove it."
"When I was jounger, Blaize Fury was my age. I am over forty now. Jou are jounger than twenty-five, if my eyes see not lies."
"Blaize Fury is ageless. He is eternal. The Extinguisher will fight evil as long as there are good fights to be fought."
"Senor Blaize Fury served in Vietnam," the colonel shot back. "With the Green Berets."
"So?"
"If jou are Blaize Fury, then jou were a Green Beret."
"I'm not saying I was or I wasn't."
"If jou are a Green Beret, Blaize Fury, what is-"
Brow furrowing, he consulted an aide in low Spanish.
"Emblazoned," the aide whispered in English.
"Yes. What is emblazoned on the flash of the Special Forces beret?"
The Extinguisher thought quickly. His mind raced.
"That's easy. A service knife between crossed arrows."
"No, that was the later flash. I refer to the original flash. Blaize Fury was one of the first Green Berets. He wore the flash before it was changed."
"I don't remember," the Extinguisher said. "It was a long time ago. I fought many battles since then."
"Jou lie! The flash was the Trojan Horse. Jou would know this if jou were truly El Extinguirador. But jou are not. Jou are too young. Jou are a fake, a fraud and, most damning of all, jou are really Subcomandante Verapaz. Now we know your secret. Jou are a renegade American."
"I am a citizen of the world. And I'm not Verapaz. "
"Jou have the blue eyes of Verapaz."
"Recheck your Intel, salsa breath. Verapaz has green eyes."
"A l
ow trick. Jou wear colored eye lenses to make your blue eyes green for photo opportunities. We are chasing after a green-eyed man when all along they were blue. Your deceptions are exposed, and your life is at an end."
"You can't kill the Extinguisher. He will refuse to die."
A hard hand slapped out, rocking the Extinguisher's head.
He spit blood. "Do your worst, Mexican."
"I will do my worst. I find jou guilty of subversion, insurgency and treason and sentence jou to be stood up against a tree and shot dead for your sins and your crimes against the sovereign government of Mexico."
They hauled him over to a pine tree, slamming him against it. The rough bark bit into his back.
All of a sudden the situation looked grim.
"Look, it's not what it looks like," he said quickly. "I'm here to wax Verapaz. Just like you."
"A likely story."
"It's true."
"Who do jou work for, then?"
"The United Nations."
And the soldiers of Mexico laughed, the colonel most boisterously of all.
"That is not even a preposterous lie. It is unbelievable. UN soldiers are not allowed to shoot in combat. Not even in self-defense. Jou expect me to believe the blue helmets employ assassins?"
"It's the truth. I'm unofficial right now. On probation. But as soon as I nail Verapaz, I have a job."
"A yob? The Extinguisher does not require a yob. He fights for freedom and yustice everywhere. He takes no pay. Like how you say? El Lanero Solitario. "
"Never heard of him."
An aide whispered in the colonel's ear.
"Jou have never heard of the Lone Ranger?" the colonel said.
"Up yours, Tonto. Besides, that's in books. This is real life. I gotta do it the way I'm doing it."
"And jou will do it no more because now your miserable life is at an end."
The firing squad was assembled. Five men. Their rifles were a motley mixture of Belgian FALs and carbines. No last words were solicited, and they didn't even offer him a blindfold.
"Ready," said the colonel.
The rifles came up. "Aim."
The rifle barrels fell into line. Sweat oozed from the Extinguisher's forehead. This was it. This was real.
"Fire! " shouted the colonel at the top of his lungs.
His heart in his throat, the Extinguisher shut his blue eyes and hoped they all somehow missed.
After all, this was Mexico, and the FAL wasn't exactly the best rifle money could buy. Scuttlebutt was they were subject to wickedly fierce muzzle jump.
Chapter 20
The lush mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur lay enshrouded before them, unseen yet palpable, silently calling out in the old tongues, summoning back the scattered Zapotec and Mixtec nations to reclaim the land of their ancestors.
High Priest Rodrigo Lujan heard the mountains call to him, but if his ears heard the past, his eyes saw the future.
The future walked clothed in basalt flesh. The future was named Coatlicue, she who strode like a stone elephant, ponderous but beautiful. But she had changed.
Glints of gold and silver showed in her rude flesh. They had begun appearing after they had left the capital. Miraculously.
It was the third miracle. The first was the Reawakening.
The second Lujan had dubbed the Miracle of the Crosses.
This manifested itself as the followers of Coatlicue flung their pagan gold-and-silver crucifixes in her path, that she might crush them and banish the false religion from the land.
Coatlicue's clawed feet blindly pressed them into the asphalt, leaving deep cruciform impressions in the ground.
But when Lujan looked into these, the impressions were empty of metal. Every cross pressed into the holy soil left a distinct mark but mysteriously vanished.
That was when the glints began to appear. This miracle Rodrigo Lujan called the Absorption.
As Coatlicue strode tirelessly on, the gold and silver seemed to emerge from her skin like holy eruptions. At two points that he could see, actual crosses surfaced, proving forever his surmise that Coatlicue was reclaiming the very gold idols the Spanish pillaged and recast into their own religious icons. No more. The gold and silver was destined to return to its original purpose. High Priest Rodrigo Lujan vowed this.
Now, as she rested from her inexorable walk so that her followers could eat, Coatlicue had a question.
"Why do you consume your fellow meat machines?"
"It is the way of old Mexico," Rodrigo Lujan explained, picking a shred of calf meat from his teeth. "In the old days war parties raided rival cities, taking hostages. Often of royal blood. These were sacrificed to keep the universe in motion, after which the flesh and tasty organs were eaten."
"The universe is a dynamic construct of electromagnetic forces, cosmic dust and the nuclear furnaces called suns if they are near and stars if they are not. Killing insignificant meat machines can have no direct effect upon its workings."
"But this is our most sacred belief. The flesh of enemies gives us power."
"Consuming animal flesh does fuel the body and impart the stored nutrients of the consumed," Coatlicue admitted. "Although given the long gestation and childhood periods of human meat machines, this is an inefficient allocation of resources.
The proteins absorbed by this practice are more easily obtained from four footed meat machines and plants. If humans cannibalized other humans on a steady basis, in time the population would be depleted until humans were forced to eat other things or die off as a species."
"Perhaps this is what did in the Toltecs," Lujan said thoughtfully.
They were in Oaxaca State now. The drab helicopters buzzed the horizon, but no longer approached to do harm. All they did was record the earth-shattering migration with their cameras. This was good. It would communicate fear and dread to the doomed civilized cities now reeling under their own unsupportable weight.
"Coatlicue, I tell you as a man who has never eaten human flesh before this day, I am reborn. My Zapotec spirit soars. My muscles quiver with delight. I feel a strength greater than any since human meat has passed into me."
"This is not explainable by the mere consumption of human flesh whose proteins are inferior to those of lower animals."
"I say it is true. I feel invincible!"
"Your heart rate and respiration show a 7.2 percent increase in efficiency therefore I must accept your claim. "
"Good. Good."
"And because I believe you, I will do the same. For I will need all resources obtainable to survive the present situation."
Rodrigo Lujan took an involuntary step backward. He bumped into a prostrate man. The man was on hands and knees, bowing in the direction of the stone golem that spoke a language he did not understand, but had the shape of a Mexican goddess.
Lujan reached down and, taking the man by the hair, exposed his reverent face.
"You look Chichimec," he said.
"I am Chichimec. My name is Pol. "
"Chichimec, your Mother desires to know you better."
"I thrill to serve her."
"Let me instruct you that you may best serve her. Place your fine skull at those formidable feet that she may test your faith."
The man scuttled forward on all fours.
"Coatlicue, I worship you," he said in his native tongue.
"He is saying you must eat him," Rodrigo told Coatlicue in English, a tongue not understood by the Chichimecs.
The ophidian heads angled down to fix upon the willing victim like the twin bores of a double-barreled shotgun.
"Crush his skull like a coconut, for the brains are especially delectable," Lujan said.
And lifting one foot, Coatlicue brought it down like a massive nutcracker.
The face was jammed into the dirt. The head actually turned into an oblong under the incredible pressure and when it split, blood and curdlike brain matter gushed from nose, mouth and ears.
When Coatlicue took the dead one,
it was all the further proof Rodrigo Lujan required to accept her divinity.
Her mouths did not approach. A blunt elephantine foot pressed down, and as a thousand incredulous eyes watched, the body was taken into the stone like liquid being drawn up a straw.
The foot, an admixture of basalt and precious metals, suddenly marbled with human fat.
"More, " said Coatlicue. "I will have more meat. "
Chapter 21
"There's one bright spot to being in Mexico," Remo was saying as he piloted the Humvee down the winding road north of San Cristobal de las Casas. Night was falling. The smells of the Lacandon jungle night were coming to the fore, among them the sharp tang of allspice and pine straw, and another odor that made him think of burnt corncobs. It made Remo remember he hadn't eaten since breakfast.
"And what is that?" asked Chiun.
"We're not in Mexico City."
"Mexico City is a terrible place," agreed Chiun. "The air is foul."
"That's on a good day," said Remo.
"I do not like to think about that place," said Chiun. "It holds terrible memories."
"Yeah. Last time we inhaled so much polluted air we were thrown completely off our game. And we had to fight Gordons."
"Another hateful name," said Chiun. "But that is not why the memories are so terrible."
"No. Then what?"
"It was there that I learned of the wonderful Aztec empire."
"Yeah, it was a great. If you like human sacrifice and kings who drank blood."
"I was not thinking of that. I was thinking of all the gold that was denied the House, for we knew nothing of the Aztecs."
"And they were only what, a four- or five-year sail from Korea?"
"It matters not how long one journeys from one's village, only the weights of gold that one bears upon him on his return," Chiun said aridly, flicking a gnat off one silken knee.
"That's easy for you to say. You weren't Wang or Yang or any of those early Masters who had to walk a few thousand dusty miles in their sandals just to reach India."
"India was a magnificent empire. We carried away much Indian gold. As well as Egyptian and Persian gold. These empires were most worthy in that wise. But of Aztec gold, we had none."
"Alas and alack," Remo clucked.
Chiun sniffed the air. "Perhaps there may yet be Aztec gold lying about, awaiting rescue."
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