Unite and Conquer td-102

by Warren Murphy

  She spun the bird in a circle twice. The neck snapped on the second revolution.

  Examining the now-limp bird with satisfaction, she turned to reenter the home when Remo called out to her.

  "Excuse me. Is Boca Zotz near here?"

  "Boca Zotz is no more, senor. "

  "Damn. What happened to it?"

  "It has been renamed. It is now Chi Zotz, which means Bat's Mouth."

  "Boca Zotz is this place, right?"

  "No, this place is Chi Zotz. Boca Zotz is no more, senor. "

  With that, the women vanished into the shadows of her home.

  Remo drove on.

  The town looked deserted. No one was in the tiny town square or walked the dirt streets. Painted slogans marred almost every blank surface available. Remo didn't need to understand much Spanish to understand defiant phrases like Solidaridad! Libertad! and Viva Verapaz!

  "I caught you eyeing that fowl," Chiun said sharply.

  "I was just thinking I could go for some duck right about now."

  "I do not know what duck inhabits this land, but I would not eat it. Nor the fish. We will have rice, which is always safe to eat. Besides, chicken is unclean and unhealthful."

  "People eat chicken all the time."

  "Yes. Unknowingly."

  "What do you mean unknowingly?"

  "Chicken are incapable of urinating. This failure of hygiene fouls the fowl's tissues. To eat chicken is worse than consuming the flesh of pork."

  Remo parked outside a dingy Spanish colonial building that suggested a restaurant because it sported a painted oval sign that looked exactly like a beer label. It said CARTA BLANCA. Soft ranchera music floated out.

  When they entered, not a single glance came their way.

  All eyes were glued to a flickering black-and-white TV set in one corner of the room. Chairs had been pulled up in a semicircle around the flickering TV light, but many people also stood around.

  "Wonder what they're watching?" Remo asked Chiun.

  "I do not know, but the odor of fear rises from them."

  "Smells like chili and tacos to me," Remo grunted.

  As they watched, he noticed a man in a white Texas hat make the sign of the cross.

  "Could be coverage of the big earthquake," said Remo.

  "I will ask."

  Lifting his voice, the Master of Sinanju rattled off a rapid question in Spanish.

  "El Monstruoso, " a man called back, making the sign of the cross himself.

  "Did he say monster?" Remo asked.

  "He said monster."

  "You'd think with their capital in ruins, they would have better things to do than watch an old monster movie."

  "Ay! El Monstruoso esta estrujando el tanque," a man cried.

  "The monster has crushed a tank," Chiun translated.

  "El Monstruoso devora el tanque!"

  "The monster is eating the tank," Chiun said.

  A man began weeping. Others began weeping, too.

  "The special effects must be really something," Remo said.

  "They are saying that the monster is coming this way."

  "They sure take their movies seriously down here," said Remo, grabbing a chair. Chiun joined him.

  The waiter was nervous. He sweated. He handed them menus and asked them their preferences in Spanish.

  Remo pointed to an item of the menu. Cabro al cabron.

  "What's this?" he asked the Master of Sinanju.

  "Grilled goat."

  "How about pastas de tortuga?"

  "Turtle's feet."

  "You're making this up so I don't get any meat, aren't you?"

  "No," said Chiun, who then told the waiter, "Arroz. "

  "If that's rice, make that a double," said Remo in English.

  Chiun translated for the waiter, and within a few minutes bowls of steaming rice were laid before them.

  They ate quickly. Remo finished first.

  The commotion from the TV was distracting, so Remo wandered over and tried to see past the closeclustered heads of the TV viewers. The viewers in the back row were standing on stools. Even getting up on his toes didn't help much.

  Getting no cooperation, Remo flicked at the earlobe of a man ahead of him, causing him to glower at the man beside him.

  Remo caught a brief glimpse of the screen.

  "Huh!" he grunted.

  Returning to his table, he whispered to the Master of Sinanju. "Speak of the devil."

  "Verapaz?"

  "No. Gordons. I just saw him on TV."

  Chiun's hazel eyes widened.

  "What!"

  "Yeah," Remo said casually. "He's the monster." Chiun eyed his pupil stonily. Remo looked back, a poker expression on his face. Finally he let his face come apart, grinning from ear to ear. "Fooled you."

  "It was not Gordons?"

  "Well, it looked like him. Or like the form he last assimilated."

  "The ugly Aztec woman monster?"

  "Yeah. Curlicue or whatever the name was."

  "How do you know it is not Gordons returned to life?"

  "Three reasons," said Remo. "One, we shattered Gordons into loose rock while he was in that form. He's deactivated. Two, Smith made us leave the corpse after the Mexican authorities stuck him back in their big museum. If he's still there, the roof has fallen in on his head by now."

  "Those are not convincing reasons, Remo."

  "I was getting to number three. Three, the monster on the TV had to be twenty-five feet tall. Cordons isn't twenty-five feet tall. The statue was only eight."

  "Therefore, it is not Gordons."

  "Can't be."

  "Yes, you are right. Besides, how can it be Gordons when Gordons was vanquished by the Reigning Master of Sinanju?"

  "I helped, too."

  "I found his dense mechanical brain and broke it in his head."

  "And I delivered the coup de grace. "

  Chiun made a face. "You wasted a blow. He was already dead when you struck."

  "Could be. But I was making sure. He came back to haunt us too many times before."

  "But he is dead now. Long dead."

  "If he wasn't, he'd have come back long before. And in a form we wouldn't recognize."

  "I spit on his memory," Chiun said bitterly.

  When the bill came, it was for five-hundred pesos.

  "How much is that American?" Remo asked Chiun, who asked the waiter.

  "Only seventy-five dollars."

  "For two bowls of rice?" Remo complained.

  "Jou are forgetting the water. It is not free."

  Remo reached into his chinos. "I'm kinda low on cash. Discover card okay?"

  "There is a thirty percent surcharge for all major credit cards."

  "I'd get upset, but it goes on my expense account."

  The waiter smiled broadly. The smile seemed to say This is what we count on, senor.

  "By the way, we're looking for Subcomandante Verapaz."

  "He is not here."

  "I'm a reporter with Mother Jones magazine."

  "Another?"

  "You get a lot of reporters, I hear."

  "Si. But not a lot from Mother Yones. They only come once or twice a season now. I think they have a little circulation problem."

  "Subscriptions have been picking up. So, where can I find him?"

  The waiter made his face sad. "Jou cannot, senor. For he is like the wind, unseeable and unfindable unless he wishes otherwise."

  "How much?" Remo said wearily.

  The waiter's sad face brightened. "For fifty dollars cash I will point you in the correct direction."

  Remo counted out the money.

  "You go north along the Pan American Highway, senor. Drive to Mexico City."

  "Mexico City?"

  "Si. Subcomandante Verapaz even now leads a drive to wrest Mexico City from the oppressor. Jou will undoubtedly find him somewhere along the road, crushing his enemies and lighting joy in the hearts of Mexicans everywhere."

  "Th
anks. You're a big help."

  "May I sell you an authorized Subcomandante Verapaz doll, senores? An autographed picture? Get them now because if Verapaz either dies or succeeds, the price will surely double."

  "No, but you can tell us why you changed Boca Zotz to Chi Zotz."

  "That will be five additional dollars."

  "Forget it."

  "It is a very interesting story."

  "Tell me the story, and I'll pay you what I think it's worth," Remo countered.

  "Boca is Spanish. We live no longer under Spanish yoke. Boca becomes Chi so that now we will live in the Mouth of the Bat."

  "So what's Boca mean?"

  The waiter showed Remo his empty palm.

  Remo was thinking it over when the Master of Sinanju said, "It is Spanish for mouth."

  "You changed the name from Bat's Mouth to Bat's Mouth?"

  "No, we change it from Bat's Mouth to Mouth of the Bat. It is a very great difference to the people."

  "It is a very great pain in the boca to find this dump," said Remo on his way out the door.

  "The soldados all say this, too," the waiter said smugly, folding Remo's money into his pocket.

  Chapter 28

  "It is called the give-and-take palm," Assumpta was saying as she broke a wicked needlelike thorn off the weirdly barbed tree. "It is called that because to touch it improperly will cut you. But the bark of the give-and-take plant makes a wonderful bandage with which to bind the very wound it causes, or any wound."

  As the Extinguisher watched, she stripped off the bark on long, gauzy rolls almost like Ace bandages.

  The moonlight was spectral and it made her black hair shine. Her body was as supple as bamboo. She smelled faintly of coconut.

  With sure movements she bound the knife wound and, using one of the long, tough thorns, speared the loose end, cinching it tight.

  "The father of my father taught this to me. He was a H'men, which is the same to you as a doctor, but one who uses the plants and herbs of the forest to heal the sick."

  The Extinguisher grunted his thanks. It would be something to remember.

  They moved on. As they picked their way, she taught him how to recognize the trees of the Lacandon rain forest, which was a weird conglomeration of semitropical vegetation coexisting with oak and pine trees.

  "The red-bark one was known as the turista tree, because it sheds its bark the way a sunburned gringo sheds his skin," she explained. "That is the ceiba. And that the Manzanillo."

  "Speaking of the turistas," he said. "Give me a minute, will you?"

  She waited patiently as the Extinguisher did what had to be done, thinking that this having to drop one's pants every two miles was one hell of a way to win the trust of an enemy.

  Rejoining her, he discovered her hacking a gnarled vine in two. She drank from it as if it were a garden hose. They continued on.

  He said little, so she filled in the silences.

  Her full name was Assumpta Kaax. She had been raised Catholic in the village called Escuintla, which meant Place of Dogs.

  "It was a well-named place, Senor Fury. The dogs, who need little to sustain themselves, did well. The Maya did not."

  She was thirteen when Subcomandante Verapaz had come to the village with his knowledge and his medicines and his wise words. He politicized the village, and politicized Assumpta, too. When she came of age; she had two choices. Marry a village boy she did not like, much less love. Or join the Juarezistas.

  "Not that this last was a choice," she added hastily. "I ran away from my village to do this. I ran from poverty to a new life. Now I am Lieutenant Balam-which means jaguar-a true follower of Lord Kukulcan."

  "Who?"

  "It is the name by which some Maya call Subcomandante Verapaz. Kukulcan was our god many baktuns ago. He came bringing corn seeds, writing and other knowledges that uplifted the Maya of that cycle."

  "Are you trying to tell me Verapaz is a god?"

  "This is what many believe."

  "What do you believe?"

  She was quiet for a long, pensive period. The only sounds were the peeping of tree toads and the soft rustle of their own bodies bruising foliage.

  "My heart is torn two ways," she admitted finally. "The knowledge he brings has caused me to cast off the saints of the priests of the oppressors, as well as the demons of my ancestors. Yet Subcomandante Verapaz is godlike in his way. Like Kukulcan, he has uplifted us, politicized us, opened our minds. Now he leads us to our certain destiny."

  "That's not an answer."

  "The only answer I can truthfully give is that my heart is torn, but my mind is clear. I would die for my lord Verapaz."

  "I understand," the Extinguisher said. And he did. Because his heart was torn, too. He was falling in love with this jungle she-jaguar .. ..

  And unwittingly she was leading the Extinguisher to an inescapable rendezvous with betrayal.

  Chapter 29

  "It is twenty-five feet tall!" the voice shouted into the ears of the president of the Mexican United States. It was the defense minister.

  "What is twenty-five feet tall?" asked the president, holding on to his desk as yet another stomachchurning aftershock rolled through.

  "Coatlicue. She is growing!"

  "Do not call it a she. It is a statue. Imaginary. Sexless."

  "She grows by the hour. And the indios pour from the villages to follow her. They flow behind her, a river of humanity."

  "She-I mean it-is heading south?"

  "South, si."

  "With no objective in mind?"

  "None that we can discern, Excellency. She follows the Pan American Highway without deviation."

  "Perhaps she will walk into the sea."

  "Why would she do that?" the defense minister wondered aloud.

  "Because if there is a true God in heaven, that is what He will compel her do," said the president. "Otherwise, I do not know what will happen. I can spare no units. I would not know what orders to give if I could. Coatlicue is a national treasure, a symbol of our joined mestizo heritage. If she were to be destroyed, we would have total revolt. I would sooner slap the pope in the face with my own hand."

  "There is one hope," the defense minister said in a slightly calmer voice.

  "And what is that?" asked the president, holding his deskblotter over his head to keep the falling plaster out of his hair.

  "If Coatlicue continues as she does, she will inescapably reach Chiapas State."

  "This could be good or this could be bad," the president mused.

  "Subcomandante Verapaz virtually controls Chiapas. Perhaps she will become his problem."

  "If there is any way to urge Coatlicue to do this, I will not complain about the result. For if only one irritation cancels out the other, it would be a boon."

  "Yes, Excellency."

  Chapter 30

  The Extinguisher called a halt.

  "We gotta give it a rest," he told Assumpta.

  "Que? What do you mean?"

  "I'm beat."

  "That is no way for a guerrillero to talk. We will never be beaten. Our spirits are indomitable."

  "My knees are weak. I think that last time under a sapodilla tree I dumped my balls with the rest of my load."

  "Ah, you are weak from sickness, not fear."

  "The Extinguisher doesn't know fear."

  "Perhaps. But he knows sickness and requires rest like any other man. Come. There is a village near here. They will take us in."

  "No. I can't afford to be seen."

  "Then we will go no closer than it is necessary and I will obtain food from the village and bring it back to you."

  "All right. But be careful."

  "I return soon, El Extinguirador."

  "Call me Blaize."

  The Extinguisher watched her go. She moved like a jungle cat, slipping between trees until she was only a shadow, then a shape, then one with the eternal jungle night.

  He unlimbered his pack, picking through it caref
ully. The way things were going, he'd have to jettison extra gear if he was to make it to his destination-wherever that was.

  Digging into his pack, he discovered something important was missing.

  There was only one Extinguisher novel. He had brought two. Worst of all, the missing one was the one he hadn't finished.

  "Damn it. Musta left it behind last time I took a dump."

  Repacking his gear, he left the surviving book out.

  It was too dangerous to sleep. Time enough for sleep when Assumpta returned.

  Breaking out his waterproof poncho, he tented it over his head, making sure the skirts came all the way to the ground. Clicking on a flashlight, he began reading

  The Extinguisher #221, Hell on Wheels.

  Massachusetts State Trooper Edward X. MacIlwraith thought he'd seen everything in his twenty-eight years cruising Bay State highways until the day he pulled over the cherry red Eldorado and found himself looking into the bore of a .50-caliber Browning gutripper .. . .

  The Extinguisher grinned happily. "Looks like a good one ...."

  Chapter 31

  Colonel Mauricio Primitivo was not accustomed to the jungle.

  He knew enough to stay away from the Manzanillo tree, whose easily bruised bark leaked a thick, milky sap that made the skin erupt in ferocious rashes and boils.

  The give-and-take palm was also to be avoided, although it was not as vicious as the Manzanillo.

  The night wore on. The darkness was both impenetrable and absolute. The wild calls of unseen things abroad in the forest were disturbing. Colonel Primitive clutched his Heckler submachine gun more tightly.

  The dark plots of bean and cornfields that had been scorched black to prepare the land for the spring planting gave off an odor that called to him.

  It meant a village. In Chiapas a village meant indios. Indios meant Juarezista sympathizers. And sympathizers inescapably suggested a safe haven where the Masked One might go to lick his wounds.

  Releasing the safety on his H Mauricio Primitivo picked up his pace. His thick mustache quirked upward in a slow anticipatory smile.

  He would find what he sought or there would be a slaughter this night.

  Perhaps a slaughter might transpire even if he found his quarry. All things were possible in lawless Chiapas.

  Chapter 32

  "We're getting nowhere," Remo said, pulling over to the side of the road.