Unite and Conquer td-102 Read online

  Remo made a snap-it-up motion.

  And Chiun turned the key the other way.

  If right was pain, then left was oblivion. The soldier made a disordered pile of khaki at the Master of Sinanju's feet.

  Padding back, Chiun made a show of displaying his bloodless nail, blowing on it the way a Western gunfighter blew gunsmoke from the muzzle of his Peacemakers.

  And that was the end of the grooming lesson intended for Remo's benefit.

  "Show-off," said Remo.

  "I merely demonstrated techniques that will cease to be practiced if the next Reigning Master continues on the path of stubbornness."

  The muttering light tank started up. It clanked toward them. The steel tracks rolled over the fallen, breaking their bones and shredding dead flesh.

  Remo and Chiun patiently watched their oncoming doom.

  At the last moment they casually stepped out of the way of the steel hulk, each going in a separate direction.

  The driver was not happy with this. Jockeying the vehicle, he attempted to follow the Master of Sinanju. Walking backward, Chiun led him toward the side of the road.

  Meanwhile, Remo slipped up to the back and gave one spinning track a hard kick.

  The tank rolled off its track, leaving it behind like a discarded serpent of segmented steel.

  After that the tank rolled in slow impotent circles.

  "Jou are under military arrest, senores!" the driver said angrily once he got his steed stopped. He was peering out from a crack in his half-opened hatch.

  "What's that?" Remo asked.

  "I said, 'Jou are under military arrest.'"

  "Can't hear you over the echo. You'll have to come out."

  The soldier eased the hatch higher to see up the road. The rest of his column had continued on, thinking he had the situation under control. Now they were too far away to help him out of his predicament.

  "I am not coming out," he said flatly.

  "You can't arrest us until you come out," Remo said firmly.

  "Jou are under arrest anyway."

  "Fine. We're under arrest. We'll see you later. Come on, Little Father. This guy is too chicken to arrest us."

  "I am not chicken! Jou come back here. At once!"

  "Make us," taunted Chiun.

  The tank driver popped his hatch all the way and came out clutching a Belgian-made FAL rifle.

  "See? I am not afraid of gringos. As I say, jou are under arrest."

  "Guess he's got the drop on us, Little Father."

  "We are captured." And Chiun shook his aged head in mock defeat.

  The soldier advanced, and Remo and Chiun awaited him, their hands loose-fingered by their sides.

  "Stand steel!"

  "I think that means stand-still," said Chiun.

  "Jou are under arrest."

  "You wouldn't know where we can find Subcomandante Verapaz?" asked Remo.

  "Jou are Juarezista?"

  "No. Verapaz owes us something."

  "What is that?"

  "His life."

  "Hah! I do not know where the masked one is. But jou are both under military arrest."

  "And you are under cardiac arrest," returned Remo.

  The soldier didn't see Remo's hand come up like a striking serpent that threw his rifle skyward. Nor did he feel the malletlike fist of the Master of Sinanju strike his rib cage over his wildly beating heart.

  The soldier felt the air go out of his lungs and his heart go into overdrive. Then he fell onto his back and lay there jittering until the heart muscle burst from the strain.

  "That is how the Thunder Dragon blow is properly delivered," Chiun said to Remo as they walked back to the waiting Humvee.

  "I'll take that over Fu Manchu fingernails any day."

  "The day will come when the lack of talons will be your undoing."

  "Not as long as I have you by my side, Little Father."

  "That day, too, is coming," Chiun said aridly.

  Remo said nothing. It was the truth. Nobody lived forever. Not even a Master of Sinanju.

  Chapter 16

  The president of the United States of Mexico had never seen such times. He had never heard of such times. His beloved Mexico had suffered much in times past. She had suffered incredibly. Sometimes, during the centuries since the conquest, it seemed that she was cursed to endure endless cycles of hope and desperation, desperation and hope. Every time the golden sun came within reach, she was cast down into perdition. Each time she had sunk into the lowermost depths of Hades, a ray of light would filter down to stir that cruel demon hope once again.

  The straining toward the sun would resume, and so would the casting down into torment.

  It was muy Mexican. It was quintessentially Mexican.

  The president of Mexico knew that condundrum now. He felt it keenly as he paced his ruined office in the National Palace, fielding the frantic telephone calls as he saw through the shattered windows the city that was his capital lying in ruins under an ashy shroud.

  It was a gray city now. Its whiteness was all gone. It was like the end of the world. Pompeii must have resembled this landscape. But Pompeii had never suffered so before being extinguished.

  Mexico City suffered interminably, and the boon of extinction refused to come over it.

  The initial earthquake had been the worst ever. Aftershocks ran as high as 6.9 on the Richter scale. This number was repeated over and over into his numbed ears. No one could say what that meant. Damage was extensive. Many of the same buildings that had been weakened in the 1985 convulsion were crushed once more. The dead were beyond counting.

  Then after the earth had settled down, Popocatepetl had erupted in warning, and the earth shook anew.

  Buildings that tottered precariously had fallen into rubble. The survivors, trapped but awaiting rescue, had been snuffed of all life. Fires not yet banked had roared anew.

  Then came the ash.

  Mercifully it had cooled somewhat while descending. It burned hair and blistered flesh, but did not consume. There were scattered fires as a result. But people could breathe the brown air if they held wet cloths to their faces. They could see if they blinked often enough.

  The shroud of gray covered everyone and everything.

  There was no escaping it for long because the aftershocks resumed soon after. People who had fled into their homes seeking shelter soon flowed back into the streets to brave the ashen rain rather than be crushed by stone and concrete and stucco.

  And the fear that clutched at every heart took the form of an unanswerable question: Will Mount Popo truly erupt this time, raining lava and fire and meteors of death?

  Meanwhile, the direct-line telephone to the National Center for the Prevention of Disaster kept ringing.

  "Excellency, we have no power in San Angel."

  "Excellency, there are looters in the Zona Rosa."

  "Excellency, what do we do?"

  To each of these pleas the president of Mexico could only offer soothing words of encouragement while inwardly cursing the cruel fate that had granted him the ultimate political power he had sought all of his adult life, only to precipitate the avalanches of NAFTA, devaluation, inflation, unemployment, rebellion and now earthquake upon his insufficient shoulders. It was more than his predecessor could have imagined. If only, he reflected, these things had transpired on the watch of the Bald One, now enjoying a comfortable but undeserved exile in the United States.

  Then came a call that seemed to be delirium given voice.

  "Excellency, this is General Alacran."

  "Yes, General."

  "Yes, it walks again."

  "What is this?"

  "The stone statue. From the museum. You will recall the rumors of her previous escape."

  The president did. Vaguely. There had been whispers that the great idol had disappeared from the Museum of Anthropology only to be found at Teotihuacan some time later, broken and shattered. It had been a national treasure in a nation in which the domi
nant culture and the subservient culture had been smelted together in a kind of schizophrenic amalgam.

  "The city lies is ruins and you talk to me of statuary? We will find it later-if there is a later."

  "She is not missing, Excellency. For I have found her."

  "Then what is the problem, Alacran?"

  "She is on the Pan American Highway. She is walking. She is leading a veritable army of indios. They walk half-naked and singing, casting their crucifixes under the feet of the idol."

  "The stone statue walks like a man?"

  "No, Excellency. Like a god. It is like nothing you can imagine. If my sainted mother, who was Aztec, could see it now, she would swear that the old gods of Teotihuacan had returned to this land."

  "You are drunk!" the president accused. "Are you drunk?"

  "Before God, I am not drunk. I have film. Cameras do not hallucinate."

  "If the earthquake has liberated the old gods, then that is beyond the scope of my duties. I preside over a nation of men and must see to their mortal needs. I will view this film another time. Thank you for your report."

  "There is more, Excellency."

  "Speak. I listen."

  "I ordered rocket attacks against this walking Coatlicue."

  "Why?"

  "Because I do not believe in the gods of old Mexico. Thus, I surmised it was something to be suppressed."

  "Pray continue."

  "The antitank rockets failed. The machine guns were to no avail, either."

  "How can this be?"

  "The indios threw themselves before this living Coatlicue with great abandon. They were slaughtered by the rockets and machine-gun bullets. You should have seen the blood. Madre! It is river. And the flesh and the bones. They litter the highway as if it were the road to a slaughterhouse."

  "Enough," said the president, sickened by the things his dark Mexican imagination brought before his eyes.

  "The indios worship Coatlicue. They will do anything for her. And they are thousands strong. This is a dire security threat. As even now the subversivo Verapaz is reported headed this way."

  "Yes, yes. I see. Tell me, General. What do the indios do at this moment?"

  "They feast."

  "Where do they find food on the highway?"

  "They find food among the slain," said the general, whose voice very suddenly sounded sickened, as well.

  "If they move, inform me."

  "And if they do not?"

  "If they do not, we will deal with them some other way than slaughter. There is death enough in our country this night."

  "I fear that death has only begun to dance across the face of Mexico, Excellency."

  Chapter 17

  By the time night had clamped down and the drunken Mexican moon had climbed into the night sky, the Extinguisher abandoned his borrowed vehicle and took to the jungle.

  He was in his element now. The jungle was his realm. Long ago the Extinguisher had experienced his baptism by fire in the war-torn jungles of Southeast Asia.

  Pausing by a pool, he blackened his angular face with camo paint until it no longer shone. His Hellfire supermachine pistol hung from a Whip-it sling under his right armpit. His backup pistol gleamed snug at the small of his back. A Randall survival knife was jammed into one boot.

  As he moved, he clinked. But that was okay. In the jungle it was good to clink. Clinking was not a jungle sound, but clinking would scare off predators. The Extinguisher had no quarrel with the natural predators, only the two-legged ones. He preferred to avoid the natural ones.

  Especially jaguars.

  Tucked into his war book was an article ripped from the library copy of the World Book Encyclopedia. It was all about jaguars. They were a cat to be respected. The Extinguisher had no interest in crossing fangs with any jaguar.

  And so he clinked with each step.

  As the night deepened, it grew cool, then cold. Spring was still weeks away. But this was the Lacandon jungle. The Extinguisher had expected warmth. His Intel said nothing about pine trees and damp, chilly jungle breezes.

  His nose began to go numb. And his ears.

  "Son of a bitch!" he hissed. "I'm freezing my tailbone off here."

  Reaching into a slash pocket of his black combat suit, he extracted the black balaclava that protected his identity when he was in full-Extinguisher combat mode. He drew this on. It muffled his entire head, except for a V-shaped slit that framed his icy blue eyes.

  Soon the warm wool absorbed his body heat, warming his cool skin in return.

  The Extinguisher moved on.

  There was a calculated risk to wearing the feared mask where the ski-masked forces of the insurgent Juarezistas were being hunted. But since the Extinguisher was one of the hunters, that shouldn't matter.

  Maybe he would stumble across one of the unlucky bastards, take him hostage and extract the whereabouts of Subcomandante Verapaz from his trembling body.

  The mission would go a lot more smoothly with better intelligence, he reflected. God knew there wasn't a lot of raw Intel to be found lying around in the jungle. It was worse than fucking Stomique.

  The night wore on, and the Extinguisher grew thirsty. Reconnoitering the area, he found a pool of water. He looked it over with the aid of a penlight. Not brackish. It didn't seem poisoned. He scooped up a cupful with a tin cup taken from his rucksack. Into this he dropped two haldozone tablets. He let the water sit awhile, then drank his fill.

  Then the Extinguisher moved on.

  After a while, he realized he had to take a whiz real, real bad. No problem. There were plenty of trees.

  The Extinguisher was in the act of relieving himself when the ominous click of a hammer drawing back reached his sensitive, battle-honed ears.

  Warily he looked right, then left.

  As the warm stream petered out against the base of a fluted mahogany tree, he saw why he had heard it with such distinctness.

  There was an FAL rifle pointed at his right temple and another pointed at his left. Behind them loomed two men in uniform.

  Hard words rattled at him. He froze. They were repeated. The language was Spanish but spoken so fast nothing registered. Nothing sounded like the phrases he had memorized from Wicked Spanish for the Traveler.

  He wondered what to do-zip up or raise his hands?

  He decided to zip up first. The Geneva Convention must cover this situation. Somewhere.

  It was the wrong move. A rifle swapped ends and slammed into the back of his skull. That was actually good. The wool balaclava protected his scalp.

  Unfortunately there was no protection for his abdomen, which took the full brunt of the follow-up blow.

  "Ooof!"

  The Extinguisher went down, hands scrambling for his Hellfire pistol.

  A hard boot stamped his wrist, pinning it to the ground. A hard knee leaned over two hundred pounds of soldado weight against his opposite elbow.

  "Bastard! Get off me! You want to break something?"

  A hand snatched away the balaclava, unmasking him.

  A light seared his eyes. He tried to turn away, but strong fingers seized his hair, yanking his head around. The light held steady.

  Beyond the light there were only man shadows.

  "You could have let me zip up, damn it!" he cursed.

  The men muttered something in Spanish.

  "Habla Espanol?" one asked.

  "No savvy," he said. "No comprendo."

  While the boots and knees held him to the cool ground, other hands reached in and stripped him of his gear.

  "Look, anybody savvy English?"

  Someone spit in his face.

  That was a mistake. No one spits in the Extinguisher's game face.

  Twisting, he angled one knee between the legs of his tormentor. He moved it a short distance, hard and swift.

  "Hijo de la chingada!" a man screamed, clutching himself.

  In any language the meaning was plain.

  The rifle stocks began raining down on his
head after that, and for the Extinguisher the night and the jungle and, most merciful of all, the thudding, pounding, relentless pain all went away.

  Chapter 18

  The first startling word reached Comandante Efrain Zaragoza in Chiapas Barracks by field telephone.

  "Sir! We have captured Subcomandante Verapaz."

  "Alive or dead?"

  "Alive."

  "How do you know he is Verapaz? Has he confessed?"

  "No, he is unconscious. But it is him. He has blue eyes."

  "Verapaz has green eyes."

  "So they say. But his Juarezistas are all indios. They possess brown eyes. Therefore, it stands to reason that this blue-eyed masked one is Verapaz himself, and not one of his insurgentistas. "

  It was typical Mexican logic. A triumph of desire over evidence. But it sounded logical to the zone commander, so he ordered the prisoner brought to Chiapas Barracks while he called the excellent tidings up the line until he reached the Interior Ministry General Jeronimo Alacran in the beleaguered Federal District.

  It was a miracle that the connection went through. It was a miracle whenever the connection went through on a good day, never mind on this night of turmoil when aftershocks could be felt all the way to Chiapas and the brownish haze in the evening air spoke of troubled winds from the north, carrying the cooling ash of Smoking Mountain.

  "You are certain of your facts?" General Alacran demanded.

  "He wears a ski mask and possesses blue eyes."

  "Verapaz's eyes are green," the general said stubbornly.

  "Do we know this for a fact?"

  "Our intelligence indicates this. And there are photos in magazines."

  "Photos in magazines show colors imperfectly," the zone commander pointed out in a reasonable voice. "Perhaps he wears colored contact lenses when he poses for the press. After all, what manner of man possesses eyes the exact hue of the quetzal bird's plumage?"

  "This is an excellent point. And you are very clever to offer this theory. My congratulations. Keep your prisoner safe, for I have already dispatched Colonel Primitivo to Chiapas to deal with this Verapaz."

  "This is unnecessary. I have Verapaz in my custody."