Warren Murphy: Unite and Conquer

"You must protect me from him."

Jean-Erik stood up gravely. "I cannot. No one can. L'Eteigneur never fails."

"Then help me to learn more of him."

"For five thousand francs, I will compile a dossier."

Supreme Warlord Mahout Feroze Anin leaned forward and took the man's hand gratefully. "I will await your report."

"It will be a pleasure to read up on L'Eteigneur. The very thought fills me with nostalgia. I would not have entered the security business if it were not for his supreme inspiration."

Backing out from the office, Anin wore a troubled expression.

At another security office, he was laughed at.

"We do not fight bogeymen," Anin was told.

He could get no other explanation than that.

In the end Anin was reduced to doing what he had done in his early revolutionary days: recruiting street rabble. If only he had AK-47s and some khat for them to chew. His soldiers had been paid in the druglike plant. It had made them fearless. It had also made them foolhardy. If not given sufficient enemies to shoot from the backs of their rolling technical vehicles, they tended to machine-gun innocent Stomiquians in the streets.

It took nearly all day, but Anin assembled a formidable protective force-if sheer numbers and a dull willingness to murder for food were a measure of formidability.

"Preserve my life," he promised to them in the luxury of the Presidential Suite, "and I will make you all rich."

The new army looked about the suite. They already felt rich. Never had they seen such opulence. Inasmuch as they never expected to see such again, they fell to pocketing the soap and shampoo and other loose items.

Noticing the chocolate mint left on the pillow in his absence, Anin hurriedly claimed it. He liked chocolate. He popped it in his mouth. It was very good-until the third chew when his teeth encountered the unchewable. He spit the remainder into his palm with much violence.

There, he saw in horror, lay a half-melted slab of chocolate that had concealed a tiny plastic item. Fearing poison, he picked at the matter with a sterling toothpick.

The chocolate crumbled to reveal a tiny plastic fire extinguisher, somewhat mangled and pocked by his molars.

Anin sprang to his feet.

"He was here! That maudit Fury was here in this very room!"

Immediately the new army began attacking the furniture. They ripped open cushions with their knifes, stabbed cabinets and fired shots into the closets before opening them. Anin himself sank into the bed thinking that he would surely have to move after this unpleasant day.

Since this was Africa, the gunshots roused no special interest from the front desk. Visiting African heads of state often shot servants and ambitious relatives on state visits. It was usually the most convenient time and place for such toil.

That evening there was a knock at the door.

Anin barked, "See who it is."

A man moved to obey and, to Anin's horror, the stupid one ignored the peephole and flung wide the door.

"Shoot him! Shoot him!" Anin howled.

His militia, uncertain as to who was meant, shot both the door answerer and the man at the door.

Under a hail of bullets, the militiaman fell outward. The caller fell inward. Their heads bumped, rebounding with heavy, coconutlike sounds. For a brief moment they formed a loose, swaying human pyramid of sorts. The caller, being more heavy, won.

Both sprawled inside onto the royal purple rug, dyeing it with their mingling lifeblood.

"Quickly! Drag the bodies in!" Anin hissed. "And shut the door!"

This was done.

Anin himself rolled the new arrival over. He was white. He did not look terribly fearsome. In his hand was clutched a manila envelope.

Hastily Anin tore it open. Out slid a sheaf of papers.

The top sheet was headed: CONFIDENTIAL REPORT.

Appended to it was a bill from the Nairobi Security Company. Angrily Anin threw this into the trash.

As the bodies were deposited in the bathroom for want of a better place, he sat on the bed and read the report in an angry silence.

Blaize Fury Aka The Extinguisher

Subject US. citizen. Former Special Forces Green Beret. Three completed tours of duty, Vietnam. Fourth tour cut short by family tragedy. Entire family burned to death by suspected arsonists. Subject vowed vengeance on US. organized crime as a result and took the nom deguerre Extinguisher.

Began highly personal campaign against all Mafia enclaves in continental United States, later shifting to antiterroristic activity after "depersonalizing" entire Mafia infrastructure singlehandedly. Suspected high-level sanctioning of counterterrorist measures reaching into the Oval Office. Leaves black calling cards at scene of his campaigns. Sometimes tiny plastic fire extinguisher. MO includes military-style reconnaissance, search and destroy, harassment and interdiction, sniper ambush tactics, as well as elaborate and highly personalized kills.

Subject believed to take name from family tradition of joining fire department in hometown of Flint, Michigan, after completing traditional military service. Subject never formally joined fire department.

Height, weight undetermined.

Hair and eye color varies according to author.

"Author?" Anin muttered. "What do they mean by author?"

Glancing toward the bathroom, he realized it was too late to put that question to the messenger.

Reading on, Anin skimmed the rest. This Extinguisher seemed more phantom than man. He wore black, was proficient in all manner of fighting arts and was reputedly schooled in jungle guerrilla-survival tactics, psychological warfare and marksmanship.

The final statement at the end of the report was most puzzling of all: until the present time, the subject was widely believed to have been fictional.

"Fictional?" Anin picked up the telephone, calling the number on the letterhead.

"Put me through to Lofficier."

"Lofficier speaking."

"This is Anin. I have your report. What is meant by fictional?"

"Nonexistent."

"Nonexistent means nonexistent. Fictional means something else. Why do you say fictional?"

"That is the most apt word to use speaking of the terrible L'Eteigneur. "

"Explain."

"When you have paid your bill, I shall be pleased to explain in full."

"You will explain now, or I will refuse to pay your maudit bill," Anin snarled.

Lofficier sighed. "As you please. This Blaize Fury is alleged to be fictitious. The creation of a writer's imagination."

"I am not being stalked by a figment of someone's imagination! He has substance, palpability."

"According to the over two hundred Blaize Fury novels sold worldwide, you are."

"Novels! This demon Fury is a novelist?"

"No, this demon Fury is a fictional character. The writer is another man entirely. Now do you understand?"

"I understand that I have been hoodwinked by your agency," Anin raged. "You have sent me a dossier on a man who does not exist. But the Extinguisher who stalks me now does exist. He has left his card, his plastic icons, and I regret to inform you he has shot dead your messenger."

"Jean-Saul?"

"Cut down cruelly by the infallible one."

"Then you are next, monsieur."

"Not if your dossier is truthful," said Anin, slamming down the telephone.

Tossing the report into the same wastebasket that had collected the bill, Mahout Feroze Anin stood up.

"I am being hoaxed," he announced. "You must all leave at once."

The militia sat down on the rug with stiff expressions roosting like buzzards on their dull faces. Two cocked their semiautomatic pistols.

"When you are ready to, of course. In the meantime, shall I order room service?"

Smiles of anticipation grew on their dusky faces, and Mahout Feroze Anin decided that he would not move from the bed until morning lest one of these ragged beggars attempt to steal the mattress out from under him.