Unite and Conquer

The old Korean climbed into the cockpit and, crossing his legs, sat on his steamer trunk.

Winston looked to Remo standing in the rain. "What about you?"

"Just take off. I'll hitch a ride on the skid."

"That's how you did it!"

"And people say you're slow on the draw."

"I resent that!"

But he took off anyway.

Behind him the old Korean named Chiun prodded him on the right course with a pointing fingernail that Winston sometimes felt in the small of his back. It felt like a white-hot needle.

WHEN HE SAW the monster, Winston Smith changed his mind.

"Holy shit! Look at the size of that mother. Let's blow it up!"

"No," said Chiun. "I forbid it."

"But we've got antitank rockets and a Gatling gun. We can pulverize it in its tracks."

"No," Chiun repeated.

"Give me one reason why not."

"I will give you two."

"Yeah?"

"The first reason is that the monster cannot be defeated unless his brain is discovered and destroyed. Otherwise, the part of him that can assume other forms will take a new form. We must find the brain first."

"What's the other reason?"

"The other reason is that the lightning may do the work we cannot."

And as they flew closer, a sizzling bolt of eyesearing light slammed the monster in his tracks. It wavered, started to take a step, and a second bolt transfixed it. Green and gold sparks jumped.

When the noise dissipated, the monster was immobile.

"Now what?" Winston asked.

"Land this contraption near the monster," Chiun said. "At Once! Our time may be short."

"Sure you don't want me to strafe it first?"

As if in answer, a thick-wristed hand reached up from under the cockpit, grasped the side-mounted Gatling gun and, expending no obvious effort, twisted it off its mount, then flung it away.

Chapter 52

It was like marching into the face of cannon fire.

The detonations came again and again. They split the dull morning, making it bright. They rattled the sky. Their fury was very great. Fear showed on the faces of the Juarezistas who marched behind Alirio Antonio Arcila, their AKs and AR-15s trembling in their rain-wet hands.

Each time they quailed, he called back encouragement.

"See!" Alirio Antonio Arcila cried, holding up the TV so all could see. "Behold the monster! She is attracting the lightning. It strikes only at Coatlicue."

"The gods are just," a man murmured. But there was no enthusiasm. The relentless elements had beaten their courage down.

Antonio swallowed his sharp corrective words. He believed in no gods. Was he not believed to be godlike by these simple ones? He, the son of a coffee grower?

Soon the television was no longer necessary.

The cypress of Tule came into view.

Antonio had only heard of it. It was said to be some two thousand years old. From a distance it resembled the greatest weeping willow imaginable, its drooping branches weighed down with the imposing freight of its years. Its leaves trembled nervously under the unceasing rain. It was older than the Cross, and even though Antonio did not believe in the Cross, still the obvious age of the oldest living thing on the face of the earth took his breath.

A bolt forked down and blotted out the impressive sight.

In the afterimage imprinted on his retina, Antonio saw the tree as a negative film image, stark and threatening.

And when his blinded eyes cleared once more, he saw for the first time the Coatlicue monster in the flesh.

She was making for the cypress. The great tree dwarfed her, made her seem less formidable. From this distance, she might have been a clay figure beside an ordinary oak.

But she was not. She stood wider than three men, taller than five tall men.

And miracle of miracles, the lightning strikes continually sought her. But still she strove onward, ever onward, seeking the cypress that should have drawn the terrible bolts from the sky but did not.

Glancing back, Antonio caught his remaining Maya making the sign of the Cross. There were far fewer of them now. In his heart he forgave them. Coatlicue was an unnatural sight, but the way the lightning spurned the mighty tree for the smaller giant was more unnatural still. It suggested greater forces at work.

"Perhaps our work will be done for us," he told them. All thought of glory and gain fled his reeling brain. This was incredible. Impossible. Unbelievable.

And still the monster trudged on, the bolts slamming, breaking off the last remaining plates of her gleaming armor, knocking them away, until rude stone and a flexible marbled matter lay exposed.

Then came a bolt that ripped downward, exploded and blotted out the universe. The thunder sound was great. The resulting shock wave was greater still.

Antonio and his guerrilleros were thrown off their feet.

When their sight cleared, Coatlicue stood still. She did not move again.

"Come," Antonio said, climbing to his feet. "It is time to face this Azteca usurper."

They advanced cautiously. Now Antonio led a meager handful of men. The others had retreated. No matter. When the cause was won, they would return to the fold. Willingly or not.

RODRIGO LUJAN STARED up at the ominous heavens that had assaulted his Mother again and again. He saw a greenish white light, but no clouds no sky. When he closed his eyes, the light was still there.

He heard nothing. His ears were still full of booming thunder. His brain shook with reverberating shock.

"Mother. Can you hear me?"

But his Mother Coatlicue responded not.

Lying helpless beneath her, Lujan wept bitterly, his salty tears mingling with the rain that fell and fell and fell upon him without understanding or mercy.

ANTONIO APPROACHED ahead of the others. His head pounded. He felt fear yes, but he pushed it back. It was not that he was so brave but that there was no turning back. His future depended upon what transpired here in this place far from the Lacandon jungle.

Coatlicue, he saw, had almost made the shelter of the great cypress, whose bole was over one hundred feet in circumference. It seemed less like the trunk of a tree than some ancient petrified eruption from deep within the earth. The trunk was horny and rugose with age.

"Coatlicue," he said. "Greetings, creature of imagination. You almost made it to safety. But you did not. And now you are dead."

Coatlicue said nothing and moved not. Her ophidian eyes were looking at the tree.

Antonio walked around her still feet. One was poised in the act of taking a step forward. It seemed gargantuan beside him, but the cypress dwarfed it to insignificance.

Between the legs lay a nearly nude man.

Antonio knelt. "Who are you?"

The man looked in all directions with uncomprehending eyes. "I am blind. The lightning has taken my sight."

"You are fortunate. For you lie in the path of the monster. Her foot is lifted to take a step. If completed, she would have crushed you like a locust."

"I would gladly be crushed under the feet of my mother if only I could behold her one last time," the man said dully.

"Then sadness will be your eternal destiny, because that will never come to pass. Coatlicue has succumbed."

Weeping, the man crawled under the shelter of the half-lifted foot. On his back, he struggled up to kiss her heel but lacked all strength to complete the absurd action.

Antonio let him be. He was not important. As he scanned the skies, he saw that helicopters circled above, braving the rain. Strangely the lightning had ceased its dramatic striking, as if considering its job accomplished. The choppers drew closer.

They were even now broadcasting this sight to all Mexico. Well, Antonio would give them a sight to remember the rest of their days. He faced his loyal cohorts.

"My Juarezistas, approach with me. The Azteca revolution is over. Their idol walks no more. We are in command now. Let us demonstrate this to a fearful Mexico."

The Maya approached, walking as if on eggshells.

"We must topple this usurper so that she breaks into many pieces," Antonio explained. "It will be a political statement that will prove for all time the righteousness of our cause."

"How?" asked Kix. "It is so big."

"See how the monster balances on one foot? Let us push her in one direction, all of us, so that she loses her imperfect balance."

The Maya shrank from the fearful task. "Show us, Lord Verapaz. Guide our hands that we may do this."

Laying down his AK, Antonio placed both hands on the lifted elephantine foot of the Coatlicue monster. Why not? Was it not dead?

The foot was not cold as he expected. Nor was it hard. In fact, it felt weirdly fleshy to the touch. Instantly his hands recoiled.

His Maya recoiled, too.

"What is wrong?" Kix hissed.

Antonio rubbed his fingers together. They felt wet and clammy, as if they had come in contact with the cold clay of a great dead corpse. "You do it. For as a true indio, it is your honor to topple the rival god."

"But you are Kukulcan. "

"And as Kukulcan, I offer the honor to you."

Kix looked doubtful but, urged on by the others, he approached the inert thing. He laid hands upon the upraised foot. To judge by the expression that came over his face, the sensation of moist, dead flesh was very distasteful. But nothing happened to him.

Emboldened, Kix said, "Help me, O brothers."

Others gathered around. They got behind the fat ankle and attempted to push this way or that way. But the bulk of the creature was too vast, too obdurate to move. Her eyes regarded the Maya as if they were but ants at her feet.

While they considered the situation, an army utility helicopter dropped out of the sky to land at the roadside. As it drew closer, a man dangling off one skid released his grip so as not to be crushed.

REMO CALCULATED THE DROP, let go of the skid and rolled out of the way of the landing chopper.

When it settled, he opened the door. Winston Smith, Assumpta and Chiun started to get out. Remo pushed Winston back in.

"Look, let me handle this. Okay?"

Winston eyed the monster dubiously. "What's to handle? Looks like the party ended before we got here."

"You don't know what's going on."

"I can see what's going on. Nothing. That hulk is just standing there, collecting raindrops."

"Just leave this to the experts, okay? Chiun, watch them. I don't want any more problems with these two. If something goes wrong, take off."

Chiun nodded. "Be careful, my son. Take no chances."

Winston blinked. "He's your son?"

"In spirit."

And the Master of Sinanju put his face to the cockpit bubble, the better to watch his pupil.

REMO APPROACHED. The rain was still coming down. There was an adobe church beside the drooping cypress. Its white facade was streaked blackish gray with precipitated volcano ash.

From inside, a priest emerged. He carried a cross of gold. He, too, approached the monster.

Remo intercepted him. "You'd better stay clear, Padre. This isn't over."

"God has struck the monster blind and dumb, but it falls to his children to exorcise the demon that motivated it."

"Just the same, leave this to the professional monster slayers."

The priest fell in behind Remo. Considering the circumstances, he didn't seem very frightened.

A handful of Juarezistas blocked the way. Remo knew they were Juarezistas because in their brown polyester uniforms and black ski masks, they looked like the Serbian Olympic ski team.

"Come no closer," one of them commanded in good English. "We are about to blow up the demon Coatlicue for all the world to see."

"Over my dead body. He's mine."

"This is our monster. We have vanquished him. And it is a she, by the way."

The speaker was taller than the others. A shortstemmed pipe was clenched in his teeth. He also had green eyes.

"You Verapaz?" asked Remo.

"I am Subcomandante Verapaz. Who are you?"

"Monster extinguisher," Remo said.

"What nonsense is this?"

"This is my monster. I saw him first. Just step away and let me handle it."

Verapaz snapped impatient fingers. "Over my dead body."

"Thanks for the invitation," said Remo, who began disarming Juarezistas in a novel fashion.

Two opened fire on him. Remo moved in as if to meet the bullets halfway. That was how it seemed to the men behind the triggers and the priest who dropped to the ground and covered his head with his hands.

In fact, Remo's blurred hands pushed the rifles straight up so the bullets discharged harmlessly into the lowering sky. Then he stepped back, folded his lean arms and waited.

While the guerrillas were bringing their weapons back in line for follow-up bursts, the bullets reached the apex of their climb, where they seemed poised momentarily. Gravity brought them back down.

They perforated the tops of several skulls, and when the bodies crumpled, other Juarezistas moved in to replace them.

"Can you say 'blunt trauma'?" Remo said.

Remo moved in on them. He didn't have a lot of time, so he just grabbed two by the hair, masks and all, and spun in place.

Whirling combat boots collided with the incoming troops, knocking them down. Remo released the hapless pair whose scalps were inexorably separating from sagittal crests. They skidded some five hundred feet in opposite directions before coming to rest in the form of brown polyester sacks filled with bones.

Subcomandante Verapaz had his AK up to his shoulder and was looking down the barrel at Remo.

"Come no closer, yanqui. "

Remo kept walking.

"I mean business!"

Remo watched the middle knuckle of Subcomandante Verapaz's trigger finger until it went white. He stepped out of the path of the bullet stream. One burst. Then two. He didn't have to count the bullets. So many AKs had been fired at him over the years he could instinctively gauge when the clip had run dry.

Knowing that, Remo was able to walk right up to the smoking barrel without fear and twist the muzzle out of shape.

Verapaz stepped back, his green eyes widening in his mask. His pipe dropped from his mouth.

"What manner of man are you?"

"Can you say 'out-of-body experience'?" Remo asked.

"Yes. But why would I?"

Remo looked over his shoulder. In the resting helicopter Winston Smith and Assumpta sat placidly, their faces unreadable through the falling rain. His orders were to make Subcomandante Verapaz's death look like natural causes. For that story to wash, there had to be no witnesses.

"Never mind," Remo said. "Just hang around until I figure out what to do with you."

Verapaz jammed his pipe back into his mouth. "You cannot order me about. I am a Mexican revolutionary hero. Men fear me. Women adore me. I am in all the magazines. I am the future of Mexico. Politically I cannot be killed, so I will never die."

Remo was about to deactivate the subcomandante's nervous system when he heard low muttering in what sounded like Latin behind him.

Turning, Remo saw the priest hovering by the foot of Coatlicue. He held his gold cross high and was intoning some kind of prayer. It sounded to Remo like an exorcism was in progress.

"Padre, I asked you to stay back."

At that moment the priest laid the gold cross against the thick ankle. It clinked against the stone.

All at once the crucifix was taken into the stone as if dropped into a placid brown puddle.

And with a low groan Coatlicue lurched forward.

Chapter 53

The behemoth of stone and flesh took one halting step, and during that jerky movement Remo had faded back three hundred yards. He had the priest tucked under his arm. Now he let him go.

The priest ran for his church.

Remo stood his ground, ready to retreat or attack as the situation warranted. Having fought various man-size versions of Mr. Gordons through the years, he had a healthy respect for its inhuman destructive power.

Nothing in his Sinanju training covered thirty-foot high giants. But as he watched, he sized up the possibilities. Gordons had started off balance. The poised foot came down, making contact with the earth. A distinct mushy crackle Remo recognized as a human body being crushed floated over the monotonous drum of falling rain.

Remo looked around. Verapaz was hanging back. It wasn't him. He looked back.

At that moment the landing foot lost its traction. Whatever-or whoever-it had crushed must have made a slippery smear because, like a man stepping on a banana peel, Gordons froze, throwing up his stiff, blunt arms.

It was too late. The foot slid forward, tilting the stone giant backward. Compensating, Gordons tried to lunge forward, toward his objective. The sheltering cypress of Tule.

He almost made it. But the gap was too great. The flat, square head fell into the hanging mass of branches. A few broke into kindling. The rest sprang back into place, dripping water.

When Gordons crashed facedown on the ground, he made a thud that felt like a huge aftershock and lay still.

The black rain beat down on him relentlessly.

Remo noticed a distinct blob at the bottom of the foot that had stumbled. It looked like a giant wad of chewing gum, except it was the color of strawberries.

Gordons showed no sign of moving again, so Remo approached.

"Damn," Remo said. "Wonder who that was."

"No one important," said Subcomandante Verapaz, who was sneaking up on the inert hulk, too.

Looking over the situation, Remo saw that Gordons had cracked apart in falling. The head was no longer attached. That was a good sign. Last time the brain was in the head.

"Uh-oh," he said, noticing one stony shoulder had gouged a gnarled, exposed tree root when it fell.

"What is wrong?" Verapaz asked. "It has fallen, therefore it is dead again."

"It's touching a tree root."

"So?"

"Whatever it touches, it assimilates."

"So?"

"So it might be the tree now."

"How can it be a tree when it is still there?" Verapaz wondered aloud.

Remo studied the way the stone shoulder and the tree root were meshed.

"Damn, damn, damn. Now we're going to have to cut down the whole tree to make sure."

"Hah! You can no more cut down the cypress of Tule than you can break the moon with your naked fist."

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.

His deadly nails retreating into the slaves of his kimono, the Master of Sinanju turned to address his pupil. "Your way would not have worked. He would have taken you as his next form."

"How do you know what my way was going to-"

Chiun smiled tightly. "Persons of correct fingernail length know all."

Remo knelt by the mash of metal. It was not moving. It didn't look like anything so much as sliced and mashed slag.

"I think he's down for the count."

"Of course. Nothing can withstand the Knives of Eternity."

"But I won't be satisfied until nothing is left. There's gotta be a way to make sure." And while they were thinking it through, a groan sounded behind them.

Winston Smith lay on the rain-soaked ground, his face buried in one arm. He pounded the ground again and again and again with his fist, and he only stopped when Remo came over and knelt down.

"This is the way the business goes sometimes," Remo told him in a quiet voice.

They stood over him until he had cried himself out and was ready to pick up the shattered remnants of his life.

The rain stopped before he did.

WOODENLY Winston Smith set his feet on the pedals and took the blood-sticky collective in his hands. They had wiped the inside of the cockpit with rags until the red was only pink. He could see enough to fly. That was sufficient. Nothing else mattered.

They flew north. Remo sat in the passenger seat, his face grim. In his lap he held a mass of metal.

In the back the Master of Sinanju sat on his steamer trunk, legs folded modestly under the flowing skirts of his kimono.

Beside him, wrapped in a shroud made of parachute silk, was a long red bundle. Winston didn't look at it. He couldn't. He just looked ahead, where a plume of smoke hung on the mountainous horizon.

Mount Popocatepetl still smoked. The smoke was grayish now. The crater smoldered red and angry as the chopper neared.

"Make a pass over it," said Remo.

Winston nodded. He had the bird near its operating ceiling.

Remo opened the cockpit door and held the metallic lump out. As they crossed over the crater, he let go.

The lump dropped straight down, and through the thin gray haze there came a distinct flare as it splashed into the simmering bowl of lava.

"Go around again," said Remo.

Winston brought the clattering ship around while the Master of Sinanju tenderly passed the silkwrapped bundle to Remo. He refused to look at it.

The cockpit door was still open. Remo held the bundle in his lap until it was time. The blistering heat of the crater came up to fill the cockpit interior, drying everything that was wet.

Then Remo dropped it down.

Tumbling, it fluttered like a bird. At the last second before it struck, the silk pulled away, showing the only recognizable part of what was left of Assumpta Kaax of the Benito Juarez Liberation Front. Her long, lustrous black hair.

Winston gripped the controls tightly and closed his eyes.

"Sorry, kid," Remo said. "Sometimes the book ends this way."

Winston nodded stiffly. "One last thing."

"What's that?"

Winston tossed his Hellfire pistol into Remo's lap. Around it was wrapped the black ski mask of the Extinguisher.

"Get rid of that stupid thing."

"Whatever you say," said Remo, giving the ungainly weapon a casual toss. It zoomed out, then down, landing with striking precision into the crater.

Winston choked back a sob. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Make for the border," said Remo.

"What's up there that I should care about?"

"Your future-if you want one."

Winston pushed on the collective, and the chopper put Smoking Mountain and Mexico behind it forever.

Chapter 54

Sunny Joe Roam heard the helicopter in the distance. He came out of his hogan, his windburned face tense.

He called out to his Sun On Jo braves, who were pitching pennies against a giant saguaro cactus.

"Anybody expecting company?"

No one did. So he set his white Stetson on his head and loped up to the settling chopper on his long, denim-clad legs.

A man stepped out of the cockpit. He was young and blond, and there was something familiar about his eyes, but Sunny Joe couldn't place him.

On the other hand, the two other figures were very familiar. A warmth broke over the sandstone lines of his face.

He raised his booming voice. "Remo! Chief! What brings you two back to the reservation?"

Remo waved without much spirit. Their smiles did not light in return. Frowning, Sunny Joe quickened his pace.

"What's wrong?"' he asked as the rotor finished winding down.

Remo shook his hand. "It's a long story. I have a favor to ask."

"Ask away."

Remo set a hand on the shoulder of the young blond man. "This is Winston Smith."

"Howdy."

The boy frowned with all of his face. "Don't call me Smith. It's not my real name."

"This is my son," said Remo.

The boy looked uncomfortable. "I won't fight it if you won't," he muttered to Remo.

"No one's exactly in a hurry to match up DNA, so we're operating on pure rumor," Remo explained.

Sunny Joe's sunsquint eyes blinked several time. "Damned if you don't have your grandmother's eyes."

Winston asked, "Who?"

"My wife. Long gone now."

"Who are you?"

Sunny Joe eyed Remo. "You didn't tell him, Remo?"

"Tell me what?" Winston demanded.

"If you're his son, I'm your grandfather," said Sunny Joe Roam.

"You? You're an Indian!"

"Got news for you," said Remo. "So are you. Get used to it."

"I can't be an Indian."

"Let me talk to you alone for a minute," Remo told Sunny Joe. They walked off together.

As they did, Winston Smith looked at the Master of Sinanju. "That big guy looks kinda familiar."

"He is a very famous actor."

"He is?"

"Yes."

"Looks like a big Indian to me."

"He is that, too," Chiun said.

REMO FINISHED TELLING his story. "I have no right to ask this, but the kid's been through a rough time. He was raised to think his parents were dead. He's only starting to get an idea who he really is. He's confused, needs a home and someone to steer him along until he figures out where his life is going."

"You want me to take him off your hands, is that it?"

"I know this is kinda sudden," Remo said sheepishly.

"That's a rabbity way to put it."

"All he's ever known is military schools and the navy, war and violence. I won't want him to take the path I did. Teach him the ways of peace, Sunny Joe. He needs a lot of peace right about now."

"Think he'll go for it?"

Remo looked back at the Master of Sinanju and Winston silhouetted against the Gila Mountains of the Sonoran Desert. They were talking animatedly.

"I don't see he has much choice."

"Well, the way I see it, Remo, I never did exactly right by you. I guess I kinda owe you an upbringing. Since it's a mite late for that where you're concerned, I guess I can pay the debt to the next generation."

"Thanks, Sunny Joe."

"Don't mention it, son."

They walked back.

REMO PUT THE OPTION to Winston Smith.

"No one will find you here. You won't have to worry about the navy or Harold Smith or any of it."

Winston scratched his head. "I don't know.... This is sort of weird. What kind of Indian am I supposed to be?"

"A Korean one," said Chiun.

"Sun On Jo," said Sunny Joe.

"Never heard of them. I was hoping I was a Cheyenne or at least a Sioux."

"We're not warriors," Sunny Joe explained. "Fighting isn't our way."

"I've seen my share of fighting. I want to do something different." Winston's ice blue eyes scoured the vast, arid expanse of the Sun On Jo Reservation. "Where's the chief?"

"Dead. I'm the Sunny Joe of the tribe. It's sort of a protector. The name's Bill Roam."

"Roam. Roam. I know that name ...."'

Sunny Joe grunted. "I did a little acting in my time."

"Hey, I know you now! You're Muck Man! I saw every one of those pictures."

"That's right. But my Muck Man days are behind me now."

Remo spoke up. "So what it's going to be?"

Winston Smith looked around. "I could give it a shot, I guess. You got horses here?"

"Can you ride?" asked Sunny Joe.

"No. But I can learn."

"I'll teach you, then."

"Not so fast. Got TV?"

"All you want. But I have to warn you in advance-no squaws. You start hankering to take a wife, you'll have to look beyond these parts."

"I'm in no rush in that department," Winston said quietly.

"Good. It's settled." Sunny Joe put a big arm around Winston's shoulder. "So what do I call you?"

"Big Chief Pain in the Butt, if you ask me," said Remo.

Winston gave a thumb's-up sign. "Call me Winner. I'll come up with a last name later."

"Well, come on, Winner. Let's get you settled in." Sunny Joe looked to Remo and Chiun. "What about you two? Planning on staying a spell?"

"Can't," said Remo. "Gotta get back."

"We will stay long enough to pay our respects," inserted Chiun. "Important work calls us. But we will not be rude."

"We'll catch up," said Remo. "I left something in the chopper."

"Suit yourself. Come on, Winner, let me tell you some tall tales of my wild and wooly days in Hollywood."

Winston held back. His eyes met Remo's. They were full of pain and questioning. Deep behind these stormy emotions was a shine of gratitude.

"Thanks. I can't thank you enough," he said awkwardly.

"Don't mention it," said Remo.

They started walking away. Then Sunny Joe remembered something. "Hey, Remo."

Remo turned. "Yeah?"

"Got any more offspring I should know about?"

Eyeing Winston, Remo said, "Tell you about that some other time."

Winston looked startled. "What's that supposed to mean? Don't tell me I have a brother! Do I have a brother? What's his name. Does he look like me?"

"Later," said Remo. To Sunny Joe, he said, "Swap you a used helicopter for a lift into town?"

"I might see my way clear to that."

THAT EVENING, Remo was loading Chiun's lacquered trunk with the lapis lazuli phoenixes into the back of a Mazda Navajo jeep. The moon rose over the sandstone hump called Red Ghost Butte, washing the Sonoran Desert in a silvery wash of light.

"Well, that's that. Gordons will never bother us again, Verapaz is a bad memory and, according to the news, Mexico is picking up the pieces. And the kid has a good home. There's only one last thing."

Chiun lifted a thin eyebrow. "And that is?"

"What's in this freaking trunk?"

Chiun lifted his bearded chin resolutely. "That is for me to know and you to find out."

"In other words, I'm doomed to lug this thing around for you until I break down and shit-can my nail clippers?"

Chiun smiled. "Yes."

"Never happen."

"When the suspense becomes unendurable, we speak of this matter again."

"Until then, do me a favor?"

"What is that, my son?"

"Next Father's Day, remind me to send Sunny Joe a card."

"If you fail to send one to me, who is your father in spirit, great will be your shame."

"Count on it." They climbed into the jeep. "Hey!" Remo said. "I wonder if I'll get one, too."

"You should live so long," sniffed the Master of Sinanju.