Remo looked at Chiun, and the Master of Sinanju looked back.
"You don't think..." Remo started to say.
"It cannot be."
"What's the monster's name?" Remo asked Assumpta.
Back came the response, which needed no translation. "Coatlicue."
"Why would Verapaz go to fight a monster?" said Remo because he didn't want to follow the conversation to its logical conclusion.
"Because he is believed to be Lord Kukulcan and Lord Kukulcan is the mortal enemy of Coatlicue."
From a cantina, a frightened voice called out.
"He is saying that the monster has conquered Oaxaca itself," Assumpta explained. "The army has fled before her."
More rapid words came.
"But the monster has remained stopped for several hours now. She is not leaving. Chiapas may be safe."
"How does he know this?" asked Chiun.
"He watches it in the television, as does all of Mexico."
Remo said, "Come on, Little Father. Let's check this out."
They entered the cantina.
It was just like the restaurant in the last town they had visited, down to the semicircle of men in white Texas hats huddled around a flickering TV set. Except this set was in color.
On the screen stood the Coatlicue monster, immobile, armored like a steely beetle, as all around Indians danced and feasted.
"What are they eating?" Remo asked, noticing all the blood.
"Men. They are eating men," said Chiun.
"How long has this been going on?" Remo asked no one in particular.
"Since last afternoon," Assumpta told him.
Remo drew Chiun aside and lowered his voice. "This is either the longest monster movie ever made or we've got a serious problem here, Little Father."
Chiun's eyes squeezed down to glittering slits.
"It is Gordons."
"Who?" asked Winston Smith.
"Stay out of this!" snapped Remo.
"Up yours. Who do you think you are, my father?"
Remo opened his mouth to shoot back a retort. A flicker of strangeness crossed his face. He shut it.
"If that's Gordons, how'd he get so big?" Remo wondered.
"I will ask," said Assumpta.
Before Remo could say Don't waste your time, she did and received a short reply from a TV watcher.
"I am told the Coatlicue monster has been eating people since it marched from the capital to Oaxaca. As she ate, she grew."
"Can Gordons do that?" Remo asked.
Chiun regarded the screen, stony of face. "He has. That is plain to see."
"There is a phone around here?" Remo asked.
Someone pointed to an old wooden booth like the one Clark Kent favored very early in his career. It said TELEPHONO in faded black letters.
Remo tried getting a connection to the States and was told the cost would be four thousand dollars.
"Mexican or American?" he asked.
"American. Dollars are American. Mexican dollars are pesos, senor."
"That's highway robbery!" he exploded.
And the operator hung up.
Wearily Remo got a new operator and, when told the price had gone up to five thousand dollars American, read off his Discover card account number without complaint.
Once he had the connection to the States, he dialed Harold Smith by sticking his finger in the 1 hole and spinning the old-fashioned rotary dial over and over, hoping it would work.
It did. Harold Smith's lemony voice came on the line.
"Smith, what are you hearing out of Mexico?"
"It is a catastrophe."
"More than you think. What do you hear about a monster running amok in Oaxaca?"
"Nothing."
"Well, it's all over Mexican TV down here. And it looks like Mr. Gordons."
"What!"
"He's thirty feet tall this time, Smith. You really screwed up, you know that?"
"Gordons was deactivated. You assured me of that."
"Yeah. But we wanted to crush him to powder just to make sure."
"That was not practicable. The Coatlicue idol had been restored to the museum, inert and harmless. It was a Mexican national treasure. And your mission was accomplished."
"You could have let us finish the damn job."
"You said it was finished," Smith said hotly.
"Enough!" cried Chiun, slapping his long-nailed hands together.
Taking the phone from a startled Remo, the Master of Sinanju spoke into the receiver. "O Emperor, let us not revisit past errors. Instruct us. The rebel Verapaz has thus far eluded us, but we persevere. This new problem also calls our name. What is your wish?"
"Destroy them both. I want this mission completed by sundown, if possible."
"It shall be as you wish."
"Do what you have to," Smith said testily.
And Chiun hung up.
"Who were you talking to?" Winston asked when they rejoined them. Assumpta was at the door watching for soldiers.
"Never mind," said Remo.
"It wasn't my Uncle Harold, was it? Did he ask about me?"
"Your name didn't come up, and it was a private conversation."
"Fine. Take a hike. Assumpta and I will handle ourselves from here on. You don't need me. I won't need you."
"We're going to Oaxaca," said Remo.
"And I'm going to hook up with Subcomandante Verapaz."
"I mean all of us."
Winston whipped up his Hellfire supermachine pistol and pointed it in Remo's face. "This baby here says I go my way."
Remo looked at the weapon that seemed to point in every direction except back at its owner. "That thing still voice activated?"
"Get real. I took all that crap out."
"So if I take it away from you, I can shoot you with it if I want to?"
"Nice try. But I can still disable it with a voice command."
"That right?"
"Yeah. That's right. You make a play for it and all I have to say is 'Disengage.'"
"Disengage," the gun said in a mechanical voice, going dead.
"Damn you!" Winston snapped, reaching for a side-mounted button. The barrel lit up, and he trained it on Remo's face.
"Too slow," Winston said.
"Guess so," said Remo.
And while Winston Smith was grinning, Remo coolly said, "Disengage."
"Disengage," the gun repeated obligingly, and then shut down.
"But it wasn't supposed to do that!" Smith complained, a dumbfounded expression crossing his face.
He was still wearing it when Remo pried the weapon from his unresisting fingers.
"We're a team till this is done," Remo said.
"Give me back my piece."
"Behave yourself and maybe I will."
They left the cantina. Assumpta started off ahead of them, looking for transportation.
"The CIA, designed that gun," Winston said after a long silence.
Remo eyed him. "So?"
"It's programmed to recognize my voice. Only my voice."
"Maybe it needs a new chip. "
"But it recognized your voice. It did that last time, too."
Remo said nothing. He didn't like the way this conversation was going, either.
"You know what I think?"
"You do not think!" Chiun said unkindly.
"I think there's a logical explanation. And it means one thing."
"I'm not your father," Remo said hastily.
"It means you're CIA. Come on. Admit it."
"If you had a brain, you'd know a CIA agent doesn't admit anything."
"Gotcha! You just proved my point."
"Congratulations, but it's not true," Remo said dryly.
"But you are warm," Chiun said.
"Chiun!" Remo warned.
"Four letters. It begins with a C and ends with an E."
"Damn! I know all the intelligence agencies by heart. Let's see. CANE? CORE?"
"You are getting
warmer," Chiun prompted.
"Try CARE," said Remo. "If you're going to pester it out of us, it's CARE."
Winston frowned. "Isn't that a relief program?"
"That's the cover story," Remo said dryly.
Up ahead Assumpta was haggling with a fat man wearing a baseball cap that said "Frente Juarezista de Liberacion Nacional." She was out of earshot. They kept their voices low.
"We're never going to catch up to Verapaz hoofing it," Winston hissed.
"You got a better idea?" Remo asked.
"We need a helicopter."
"We need a helicopter pilot unless you're thinking of the kind that eats quarters and doesn't go anywhere."
"I'm rated for choppers."
Remo favored him with a skeptical eye. "That the truth?"
"Would I lie?"
Chiun sniffed. "Yes, repeatedly."
"Look, if we can find a chopper, I'll get us out of this jungle."
"There was a helicopter at the army post," Chiun said.
"Let's see if it's still there," said Remo.
Chapter 44
When the dawn of the first full day after the Great Mexico City Earthquake broke, it failed to break over a hundred-mile swatch from the Valley of Mexico to Oaxaca State.
The brown pall emanating from the unquiet volcano called Smoking Mountain since the days of the Aztecs extended far to the south, blotting out the rays of the rising sun.
The deep black of the night abated somewhat, but no bright blessings fell from Tonituah, the Sun God. The lowering sky refused to permit even the merest ray of sunshine to penetrate.
In the Zocalo of Oaxaca, the adherents of Coatlicue stirred to this phenomenon. They had fallen asleep around the splashing fountain. Now their eyes blinked at the ominous atmosphere.
"There is no sun!"
"The sun has gone out!"
"Call back the sun, Coatlicue. Make him shine."
But Coatlicue stood unhearing.
It fell to High Priest Rodrigo Lujan to bring meaning to the evil portent of a dawn without light. He disentangled himself from a knot of freshly deflowered Zapotec maidens.
"It is the will of Coatlicue that you do not see the sun on the first day of the new Zapotec empire," he shouted.
"What can we do? What must we do? Tell us?"
"Our Mother desires hearts. We must sacrifice fresh hearts to Coatlicue. That will call back the retreating sun."
The logical next question came. "Whose hearts?"
"I will choose the hearts that Coatlicue whispers are needed. Make lines."
They formed ranks, disorderly and uneasy, but no one ran as Rodrigo Lujan moved through them.
Scrutinizing the faces that shifted with downcast eyes as he came to them each in turn, he tapped the chosen ones on the tops of their heads with a heavy walnut scepter.
Jaguar soldiers seized each one, dragging them after the high priest whose long, rabbit-trimmed feather cloak swept the Zocalo flags in his wake.
When he had ten, these were thrown at Coatlicue's feet, and the obsidian blade came out, glittering dully in the weird postdawn twilight.
"Coatlicue, Mighty Mother. In your name I consecrate these hearts as an offering to your indifferent love."
Coatlicue looked down with her flat eyes. Her steelplated serpent heads were at rest, blunt snouts touching.
The blade slashed and split flesh and rib bone as the victims were opened up. Quick, sure strokes severed the aorta and other arteries.
The first extraction was very bloody, but as he moved along, Lujan learned where and how to slice so that the blood spurted away from his eager face.
Not that he minded blood. But the warm stuff in his eyes soon turned sticky and made vision difficult.
By the tenth and last victim, the blood was a fountain that washed Coatlicue's clawed feet and touched her high priest not at all.
Cheers went up. Only a few faces frowned. All Mixtec faces.
They had good reason to frown, Rodrigo knew. All ten offerings wore Mixtec faces. Mixtec hearts now lay at the feet of Coatlicue the uncaring.
And at a gesture, the dead Mixtec husks were thrown against Coatlicue's obdurate feet, only to be absorbed like liquid into two rude sponges. Even the blood flowed toward her, strengthening her power.
When the ceremony was concluded, all eyes turned to the heavens in anticipation of the returning sun. Instead, there came a distant rumble that was not echoed in the ground at their feet.
Thunder. Not an aftershock. Then it began to rain.
And the hearts of the followers of Coatlicue grew fearful, for the rain pelting from the very black heavens was itself black as the ink of an octopus.
Even Rodrigo Lujan, ruler priest of Oaxaca, felt a distinct chill as he watched the octopus ink rain streak his bare arms, his pristine finery and most terribly, his implacable Mother.
Chapter 45
Chiapas Barracks was deserted when they reached it less than an hour later. They piled out of the rented rust-bucket Impala that had cost Remo his Discover card. Let Smith worry about the bill.
The helicopter was still there. It was a utility chopper, crudely converted into a makeshift gunship by rocket pods and Gatling guns bolted to the body.
The bad news was that it seated two people-three if someone were willing to squeeze into the storage area behind the seats.
That option was rendered moot when the Master of Sinanju took his steamer trunk from Remo and carefully stowed it there.
"In case you haven't noticed, we don't have room for everybody," Winston Smith said, stowing his gear inside.
"The girl will stay behind," Chiun said.
"I'm not leaving Assumpta."
"Then you both may stay behind."
"Then who'll fly the chopper?" Remo and Smith said at the same time.
"I will," said Chiun.
No one thought that was a survivable option, and it showed on their faces.
"Let's see if she flies first," said Winston, climbing into the cockpit. Once seated, he laid his feet on the pedals and took hold of the collective stick. He snapped switches, and the rotor blades whined slowly to a whirling silvery disk. The chopper vibrated like an eager steed.
Winston called out, "Gas gauge says low. We're going to need a full tank and some spare cans."
Remo looked around. There was a Quonset but nearby and it smelled vaguely of gasoline. Handing the Hellfire pistol to Assumpta, he started for it. Remo got halfway there.
Behind him the helicopter reared upward. Remo whirled. Assumpta clung half in and half out of the cockpit. Winston leaned over to haul her in.
Chiun was shrieking over the rotor scream. And winning.
Remo went from zero to sixty from a standing start, but even as he closed with the lifting whirlybird, he knew his chances were slim.
Through the swirling dust and the Plexiglas of the cockpit, Winston Smith's grinning mouth formed a single word.
"Sucker!"
Chapter 46
"What is happening?" asked Coatlicue.
Lujan looked skyward. The skies were still brown, but a darker brown, as if thunderclouds loomed over the haze unseen.
"We have a saying in these times," he said. "Perhaps it is very old. I do not know. It goes, 'Crazy February, crazier March.'"
"Clarify meaning."
"We have our worst weather in the month of February, except for March."
"You have your worst weather in March, then."
"Precisely."
"Then why do you not say March?"
"That would not be very Mexican," laughed High Priest Rodrigo Lujan. "You must know this, Coatlicue. You should know this, for you are more Mexican than any of us."
Coatlicue said nothing to that. Why should she? Lujan had just stated the obvious.
It was raining furiously, a downpour. The Zocalo was drenched. The ground seemed to dance in a million places. It danced like angry obsidian imps, for the splashing rain was very, very black.
; The skies opened up in one of the wild elemental electrical storms that are famous from Mexico City to Acapulco. The rain was a wrath from above, presaging the threat of thunderbolts. There came a rumble of ominous thunder. It was quite distant. It might have been an aftershock, but the earth did not jump. Nor was it Mount Popo, which was too far away for his sound to carry.
A second rumble came.
"Hear the drums of our ancestors!" Rodrigo exulted. "They beat in the far distance! See the rain that falls-are they not like cleansing tears? Rejoice in the tears from above! Revel in the cleansing rain of this new age. "
Like a cannonade, a peal of thunder rumbled through the valley to end in a crash of sound like a bowling ball coursing to a nine-pin strike.
The revels ceased. Fear touched every blackstreaked face.
"Come, come! Why do you cower? You are masters of this valley once more. Dance! Sing! Make love in the rain! All is permitted. Your Mother on earth permits you to do as you will."
"There is danger, " Coatlicue said from above.
"What do you say, Mother?"
"Danger approaches."
Another long rumble ended in a crack of violent sound.
To the southwest, where the ancient Zapotec capital of Monte Alban brooded atop a mountain, a jagged line of electrical blue showed in sharp relief against the lowering sky.
The rain was drumming on the Zocalo, drowning the stone fountain's splashing.
"What danger?" Lujan asked his god.
"The electrical storm approaches."
"So? It is but lightning."
"Lightning is dangerous. My systems are not immune to a lightning strike."
"Systems?"
"I am electrical in nature, as are meat machines. If lightning should strike my present form, it could melt my circuits."
"Circuits?"
"I cannot remain here where I am the tallest object for miles around."
"Circuits?" Lujan repeated. "But jou are a god."
"I am a survival android."
"Jou are Coatlicue."
"I am in danger," Coatlicue said as all around them the adherents of High Priest Rodrigo Lujan and his Mother Goddess Coatlicue scattered for cover.
For the thunder was drawing closer, and bolts of lightning lashed the horizon in all directions. It was as if a storm had surrounded Oaxaca and was pressing in for the kill.
And deep in the pit of his stomach, Rodrigo Lujan knew a dim and growing fear.
The rumbles of thunder came more often. As he listened, Lujan noticed the intervals between the peals of thunder and the crash of the striking bolts came closer together. The echoes would no sooner finish bouncing off the mountain than lightning forked and more thunder crashed angrily.
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