Unite and Conquer td-102

by Warren Murphy

  A squeaky voice from behind them said, "We will do what we must to defeat the monster, Gordons. "

  "Coatlicue," Verapaz corrected. "Her name is Coatlicue."

  Remo turned. "Chiun, I thought I told you to stay with the chopper."

  "I did. Now I am here. For my skills are more needed here than elsewhere." And shaking back his kimono sleeves, the Master of Sinanju bared pipestem arms that ended in ten long nails of fierce strength and wickedness.

  Chiun floated up to the prostrate idol of stone.

  He examined it critically.

  "Hello is all right?" Chiun said.

  Nothing happened except the spit of raindrops off stone.

  Chiun knocked on the stone tentatively.

  "Hello is all right," he said again. It was Gordons's mechanical greeting. Somewhere he had been told that was a typical greeting, and never learned to leave off the last three words.

  "Could be playing possum," Remo said guardedly.

  Setting himself, Chiun brought the edge of his palm against a corner of the hard stone shoulder. It broke off. The Master of Sinanju looked at the separated piece, saw that it seemed solid and stamped it once with his sandaled foot.

  It powdered under the force of his stroke. There was nothing metallic in the gritty pile, his sandaled toe determined.

  Attacking again, Chiun dislodged another chunk. It fell, came under the heel of his sandals and a larger pile of rock dust was made.

  Having created a line of attack, Chiun next closed his fist until only the index finger stuck out.

  Then, with swift, sure strokes he began sectioning the shoulder by slicing off wedges of stone. They piled up swiftly.

  "Need help?" Remo asked.

  Chiun did not look back. "Why is the green-eyed one still breathing?"

  "Because."

  "That is no answer."

  "Look, it's supposed to look like natural causes, and we have witnesses."

  "The Thunder Dragon blow was meant for situations such as this."

  "Are you speaking of me?" asked Subcomandante Verapaz.

  "No," Remo and Chiun said together.

  And under Remo's watchful eyes, the Master of Sinanju continued sectioning the great stone idol, exposing the gashed tree root until it was no longer in contact with any part of Mr. Gordons.

  "This is too easy," Remo said. "Sure you don't want my help?"

  "What I do not want is for you to hog the credit for the man-machine's defeat."

  "I didn't defeat him. He slipped on a Mexican or something. Before that, all those lightning strikes must have fried his circuits."

  "Pah. Mere incidentals. It will be written in the Book of Sinanju that Chiun the Great finally defeated the Colossus of Mexico."

  "You can't write that!"

  "I am Reigning Master," Chiun said, going to work on the torso. "The truth is whatever my goose quill inscribes."

  "I still say this is too easy," Remo said, deciding the job would go more quickly if he started in on the legs.

  ALIRIO ANTONIO ARCILA, being no fool, began backing away. He did not know who these two were, but they obviously possessed fearsome powers and an utter disregard for his cause. And the way they regarded him filled him with a chilly unease.

  Their helicopter idled nearby. He could not pilot a helicopter himself, but through the rain he seemed to see a pilot just sitting there with nothing to do. Perhaps he was a fan. In fact, given that it was a Mexican army helicopter, the odds of this were very great.

  On the way to the helicopter, his heel struck a thick tree root. Stumbling, he threw one arm back to catch himself.

  And to his everlasting astonishment, the root snaked up and caught Antonio instead. It whipped around his chest, pinning him to the ground and, like a python, began squeezing the air from his lungs. Antonio discovered a terrible fact then. With all the air out and none coming in, screaming for help was impossible. He barked once weakly, and that ineffectual Chihuahua sound took away the last of his lung power.

  As he lay there, his jungle green eyes growing wide with horror, the thick root insinuated itself into his open and gasping mouth and dropped something down his gullet.

  Going down, it felt cold and metallic. It was very much like a steel baseball as it slid down a throat painfully not large enough to handle it, making his inability to inhale utterly moot.

  By the time it dropped heavily into his belly, Antonio no longer cared about his lack of oxygen or anything else in the universe. He was brain-dead.

  REMO PAUSED in his labors.

  "This is going to take all day," he complained.

  "Not if you cease interrupting me," Chiun snapped as he stamped a loose stone heart to grit.

  Chiun was working, furiously. The thick slices of Coatlicue were coming off the knees now-or where the knees should be. They were piling up like home fries.

  Not all of it was stone, either. Some was distinctly organic. A few times actual blood flowed.

  It was grisly work, but Chiun refused to let it faze him. Each time a section came away, they checked it for any sign of Gordons's electronic brain. It was the small, irreducible heart of the assimilator. Every time they had crushed a Gordons form, the assimilator always found a way to another host, animal, vegetable or mineral, and rebuilt itself. Only by obliterating the brain could they ever be sure he would never return to haunt them again.

  The trouble was, they had no idea what it looked like. Only that it was very small.

  Remo was hacking away at the other leg now. The first lay shattered and unrecognizable now. His technique was different. He felt along the rough outer skin until his sensitive fingers found a weak spot. Making a fist, he hammered away.

  Cracks formed. Rock dust squirted. Liquid squirted, too. The stone fell into large sections that in turn crumbled because they had been disrupted on the molecular level.

  "It's not fighting back or reacting," Remo said hopefully.

  "Therefore, it is dead," said Chiun.

  "So where is the brain?"

  "Talk will not find it," said Chiun, face tight, not looking away from his task. "Only force."

  It took a while, but in the end the Coatlicue statue lay in heaps like a rock pile after the chain gang had finished. They stamped these into grit and mush.

  "No brain," said Remo, looking around.

  "No brain, no gain," said Chiun, eyeing the heavy-branched cypress tree with wary concern.

  Remo frowned. "This is bigger than the both of us."

  "No tree can defeat a Master of Sinanju, much less two."

  "No argument there, but I think we have better ways to pass the next year." Remo looked around.

  He was wondering how many antitank rockets it would take to blow apart a two-thousand-year-old tree when his gaze fell on the helicopter where Winston Smith and Assumpta waited for them with remarkable patience.

  Subcomandante Verapaz was calmly walking toward it. He walked with very jerky steps and was taking great care how he placed his feet on the rainslick ground.

  "Damn," Remo said. "Verapaz is trying to escape."

  "Do not worry. I disabled the craft so it cannot fly-"

  "How?"

  "By disabling the pilot's ability to fly."

  WINSTON SMITH WAS FUMING. His feet were on the chopper's pedals and he couldn't work them. His hands hung limp at his side, like spaghetti.

  In the passenger seat, Assumpta was just as helpless. Her eyes kept looking toward him. Every time their gazes met, he had to look away. They were like a knife in his gut. It was a sickening feeling. He wanted to fly her away. He wanted to find some place where they could just live. Screw Verapaz. Screw the UN. Screw everyone. It wasn't worth it. Assumpta was worth it. He saw that clearly now.

  The rain beat down on the cockpit bubble, obscuring his view of his surroundings. All he could do was wait.

  A figure approached. He wore a black ski mask from which a pipe jutted.

  Then abruptly the door opened and a strange voice
said, "Hello is all right."

  It was a crazy thing to say. Then Winston remembered what the old Korean, Chuin, had told him just before he squeezed their spines, rendering them helpless in their seats: I go now. But I will return. Remember this. Trust no one who may greet you with the words 'Hello is all right.'

  It had made no sense, but now someone was saying exactly that. Smith said nothing. His jaw was locked up tight by whatever had stolen his motor control.

  "Do you understand English? Are you deaf?" the unaccented voice asked.

  When Smith failed to reply, a cool hand began feeling about his neck. With a sudden chiropractic crack of vertebrae, feeling flowed back into his limbs.

  "Thanks," Winston said, grabbing the controls.

  "I require transportation."

  "You got it. Just help my friend the way you helped me."

  "Certainly."

  The masked man went around to the other side and relieved Assumpta of her paralysis, too. Winston saw then that his eyes were a very distinct green.

  Assumpta squealed with joy, "Lord Verapaz! I greet you in the name of the people of Escuintla."

  "It is imperative that I escape this area."

  "Hop in," Winston said. "There's room in the back."

  Assumpta crawled back, saying, "You may have my seat."

  Subcomandante Verapaz got in. The chopper settled heavily when he did. He obviously weighed more than his size suggested.

  Snapping switches, Winston got the rotor spinning and the ship into the air. The chopper was even more sluggish than before. It rose ponderously, spun once as the lift fought against whatever was weighing it down.

  "Damn. We're too heavy!"

  "Fire the rockets," Verapaz said.

  "What?"

  "My enemies approach. We are too heavy, and they will be upon us in under sixty seconds. Fire the rockets at them. This will solve both problems simultaneously."

  Winston peered through the rain. Remo and Chiun were closing fast. He hesitated. Once they got within reach, that was it. He could kiss escape goodbye. Assumpta, too.

  The words that came out of his mouth surprised even him. "Nothing doing."

  "It is our only chance."

  At his ear he could feel Assumpta's hot breath. "Do this, Weener."

  "No."

  "You are El Extinguirador. You yourself have said those two are CIA killers. You must destroy them to save us."

  Winston set his teeth. "I can't."

  "Then I will do it for you," said Subcomandante Verapaz in his strangely uninflected voice.

  Grasping the collective, he jockeyed the ship around. His strength was incredible. Even with both hands, Winston couldn't get it away from him. The chopper began spinning.

  With his free hand Verapaz armed the rocket pod.

  "Let go, damn it!"

  "Weener, do not fight him. He is our Lord Verapaz.

  "I said let go, damn it!"

  The helicopter stopped its lazy spin.

  Through the swimming Plexiglas, Winston Smith saw the fleet figures moving in on them. They seemed to be floating, almost in slow motion. But they were covering the distance to the chopper with breathtaking speed.

  A hand arrowed for the firing button, and Winston Smith reached down for his supermachine pistol. Thumbing the safety, he brought it up.

  A projecting clip hung up on something. He yanked it free, and in the back Assumpta let out a shrill shriek.

  "Weener-no!"

  Smith whipped the barrel in line, placing it against Subcomandante Verapaz's masked forehead.

  "Don't make me do this," he begged.

  "You cannot hurt me with that," Verapaz said.

  "This is the machine pistol to end all machine pistols. It will empty every drum and clip in one continuous bullet stream. All 250 rounds. Hollowpoints, Black Talons, Hydra-Shoks, everything. Your head will completely disappear."

  "That will not matter."

  "Yeah. Why not?"

  "My brain is not in my head."

  The words were surreal in their casualness. Winston Smith had his eye on the finger hovering over the rocket launcher. If it moved, he would fire. Every sense was concentrated on that finger.

  And so he failed to see two tapered hands come up from behind him to grab for his gun wrist.

  In that instant three things happened.

  He squeezed the Hellfire trigger. The finger hit the rocket switch.

  And the two hands pulled the Hellfire away from the Subcomandante's head. Pulled back. Back so the muzzle pointed into the rear of the ship. Where Assumpta sat.

  The gun made an earsplitting noise in the tiny cockpit. Its sound lifted over the blade scream. Powder smoke filled the air.

  As the rain beat down on the outside of the Plexiglas bubble, the inside was spattered with a livid red.

  "Noooo!"

  Winston Smith didn't hear the whoosh of rockets over his own scream of pain and rage. He didn't realize the weapon in his hands was still discharging. He could only see the blood. And it kept raining inside the cockpit and out.

  When the clutching hands released his wrist, the gun was empty and the masked face of Subcomandante Verapaz regarded him with emotionless green eyes.

  "I will remove the body now," he said. "It will resolve our lifting problem."

  The flat words hung like a cold mist in the cockpit.

  "You bastard!" With that, Winston went for the subcomandante's throat.

  All his strength poured through his arms and into his fingers. He found the Adam's apple and tried to crush it with his thumb. It felt like a hard piece of horn.

  And the soulful green eyes were looking at him with absolutely no fear or anger whatsoever.

  The hand reaching up to his throat was also hard. It squeezed once, and the blood seemed to fill his eyeballs. Smith saw red. Everywhere was red. His mind's eye was even red. And the red was the exact color of Assumpta Kaax's bright blood.

  Winston Smith never felt the rain on the back of his head as the door opened behind him. Something pried the hand off his throat and pulled him out into the rain. He landed on his back.

  After that, he lost it. Consciousness, hope, everything.

  REMO WILLIAMS PRIED the steely hand off Winston Smith's throat and yanked Smith out of the cockpit. The chopper had settled on its skids. The rotor still spun, but it wasn't going anywhere.

  Now it wouldn't have time.

  In his seat Gordons, still inhabiting the body of Verapaz, looked at him coolly. "Hello is all right. I am a friend."

  "Can you say 'sudden catastrophic failure'?" Remo said.

  "Why would I say that?" asked Mr. Gordons without blinking.

  "Because that's your destiny," Remo told him.

  Remo's fist lashed out. Gordons blocked it with a forearm. The forearm, being made of flesh and blood strengthened with assimilated materials like crude wood and metal, simply snapped and hung loosely. Gordons looked at it as if not yet comprehending.

  "Where is it this time?" Remo asked savagely. "In your nose?" And he flatted the nose with the heel of his hand. "In your knees?" And he pulled the kneecap off like taking the cap off a gas tank. "In your eyes?" He speared two forked fingers into the green eyes that became empty sockets.

  In the close confines, Mr. Gordons had no maneuvering room. He obviously wasn't up to his full potential, either. His reflexes were fast for a human but slow for an android. Remo removed the jutting pipe. Bridgework came out with it. Then he pulled him out bodily.

  Gordons found his feet and dug in his heels. Remo let go.

  "You missed," he told the android.

  "What is your survival secret?" Gordons asked mushily.

  "Never say die."

  Gordons's surviving arm threw a blind punch. Remo caught the fist, and the hand came off at the wrist, trailing a vein-and-wire mixture. He threw it over his shoulder.

  "Can you say 'undescended testicles'?" Remo spat.

  And his foot kicked up and shattered Gordons's
groin. The caricature of a man jumped up in place, reeling upon landing.

  "How about 'spinal dislocation'?" And he spun the bewildered android around, reached in and removed the spine whole.

  The spinal column thrashed in his hand like an articulated snake. Remo began taking it apart, looking for the brain.

  Not finding it, he dropped the loose bones and sent the head flying off the shoulder with a sudden swipe.

  The head jumped, bounced and Remo stamped it flat.

  That left the trunk weaving on two wobbly legs. The neck ended in a raw stump in which the bronchial tubes pulsed spasmodically.

  Behind him the Master of Sinanju offered a suggestion. "My ancestors believed that the soul resides in the stomach."

  Remo hadn't tried the stomach yet, so he gave it a shot. "Can you say 'esophageal reflux'?"

  And taking Gordons by his shoulders, he drove one hard knee into the pit of the creature's stomach.

  The result was better than Remo expected. The exposed windpipe in the neck stump went whoof, and up popped something that resembled a ball bearing except it was the size of a baseball.

  It shot a dozen feet into the air and hung there for a horrible moment. Gordons's central processor. No question.

  In that moment a thousand possibilities raced through Remo's mind. If he touched it, anything could happen. It might insinuate itself into his own body, taking it over. If it struck the ground, it could burrow like a gopher until it found something new to assimilate.

  In that pause in eternity, Remo decided to bring his two palms together in midair, flattening the brain housing so fast it had no time to think, react or assimilate again. Remo hoped.

  He never got the chance.

  The Master of Sinanju stepped in, index finger leading, and as the shiny ball fell to the level of his wizened, expectant face, he sliced it back and forth so many times Remo lost count.

  When the pieces hit the ground, they landed like a steel apple that had been run through a chopper. They sat formless, still holding some of the shape of a sphere but with the sections slipping every which way.

  They watched it as the black rain discolored it.

  "It's not moving," Remo said.

  Then the Master of Sinanju stepped up and drove a heel into the pile of sliced metal.

  They made a satisfying crunk as they were mashed into a lump.