Warren Murphy - Unite and Conquer

"Where's Verapaz?"

"I know not."

"She is obviously lying," said Chiun, who had materialized at their side.

"I have said this," Primitivo said.

"You stay out of this," Remo said.

The Master of Sinanju drifted up to the girl, making his voice sympathetic. "Poor child. They give you the tools of death when you should be the bearer of life."

"I do not need your advice, even if you saved my life," she spit.

Remo said, "Look, we have no problem with you. We just want Verapaz."

"I would sooner die than surrender him to you. Go ahead. Shoot me if you must."

Turning away in disgust, Chiun said, "Go ahead, Remo. Shoot her. Her milk has been soured by war. She is spoiled for motherhood."

"I'm shooting nobody." Remo faced her. "There's an easy way and a hard way. Which do you want?"

"The third way. The way out of this nightmare. How dare you come into my land to seek my Lord Verapaz? This is no affair of gringos. "

"That's another story. Look, we have a job to do and then we're out of here. I don't want to hurt you."

"I am not afraid of you."

"Damn," said Remo. Turning to Chiun, he said, "Your turn, Little Father."

"I am no harmer of females. That is your job."

Sighing, Remo told the girl, "This is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you."

"Hurt her as much as you wish," said Colonel Primitivo, dark eyes flashing with anticipation.

Remo took her left earlobe, where a sensitive nerve was located, and pinched it. The guerrilla seemed to surge up out of her boots and squeezed her tearing eyes shut even as she gnashed her lower lip to a crimson rag.

"I do not know!" she wailed.

"She lies," spat the colonel.

"She's telling the truth," said Remo, releasing the girl's earlobe.

Gasping for air, she shrank back into her uniform, saying, "Kill me now if you must."

"The next person who touches her," a cold voice said from the jungle thickness, "eats angry subsonic rounds!"

Chapter 37

The commanding crack of a voice came from the west.

Remo's gaze veered toward the sound.

The ranks of trees were clustered tightly, and clotting darkness held sway between them. The gathering clouds above had almost swallowed the last fading starlight before the approach of dawn.

But there was enough starlight for Remo's eyes to capture and magnify.

Deep in the murk, a figure in black resolved itself out of the shadows. The head was muffled except for a slash surrounding the eyes, which were darkened with burned cork.

Remo saw the eyes. Blue.

"Bingo!" he said. "There's our man, Chiun."

"The eyes should be green."

"Blue-green. They're close enough for government work."

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Chiun called.

"Step away from the girl!" the crack of a voice said.

"Make us," taunted Chiun.

"I'll wax you all."

"You wax us and the girl dies, too," Remo pointed out.

"That's a chance I'll take."

The guerrilla stiffened and held her breath. Otherwise, she didn't look very worried.

Remo lifted his voice again. "Sorry. No sale. She doesn't think you'll do it, and neither do we."

"You are finished, Verapaz," the Mexican colonel called out.

"Shut up, tostada face. I'm not Verapaz."

"Then who are you?" Chiun demanded.

"Ask your colonel."

Remo eyed the colonel.

Primitivo shrugged. "He claims to be El Extinguirador. "

"Who?"

"You might know him as Blaize Fury."

"Yeah, I know who Blaize Fury is. How come you do, too?"

"Because I have read many of his pulse-pounding adventures in my carefree jouth. "

"Same here."

Primitivo showed smiling teeth. "Then we are allies."

"Blaize Fury wouldn't shoot unarmed civilians in the face and neither would I. Sorry. Consider your fan-club membership permanently revoked."

To Remo's surprise the colonel looked completely crestfallen.

The commanding voice sounded again, a distinct whiplash of a sound. "The Extinguisher doesn't say things twice."

"The Extinguisher is a sissy," Chiun called out.

"Who are you calling a sissy?"

"The Extinguisher. The sissy who extinguishes."

Remo called out. "Look, we're not backing down, so you better come out so we can straighten this out."

A long silence developed. Remo had his eye on the shape in the forest murk. Abruptly it moved to one side.

The Extinguisher thought he was being stealthy, but Remo tracked him easily. He saw that Chiun had him fixed in his sights, too.

At a nod from Remo, the Master of Sinanju faded back into the jungle, his emerald-and-ocher kimono blending in with the vegetation.

After that, Remo folded his arms and waited.

The Extinguisher moved in a semicircle, keeping them in sight at all times. When he reached a tree, he unhooked a small folding grapnel from his web belt and affixed it to a black nylon line. Swinging it up, he snared an overhanging branch. Then like a nimble black spider, he went up, hand over hand.

His grip was not what it should have been. He slid down twice.

Floating across the space came a soft curse or two.

Finally he reached the branch and started to grab for it.

Perched directly above, the Master of Sinanju calmly reached down and sawed the nylon line with one swift fingernail swipe.

The man in black landed in the dirt like a sack of sausage.

Remo was on top of him seconds later. Reaching down, he pulled off his gear and threw it every which way.

"You can't do this to the Extinguisher!"

"Watch me," said Remo, flinging away the web belt and reaching for the black leather shoulder sling supporting a machine pistol.

It broke under the strength of his hard yank, and Remo prepared to toss it away, too, when he noticed amid all the projecting clips a Lucite ammo drum.

"What the hell is this?"

"My Hellfire pistol. It's the only one of its kind."

Remo's eyes looked strange. Dropping the weapon, holster and all, he took hold of the ski mask and yanked it straight up.

The last of the starlight disappeared then. But Remo didn't need it.

The exposed face was young and angular, the short hair dirty blond. And to Remo's eyes it looked very familiar.

"Chiun, I think we have a problem."

"It is not my problem," Chiun said from the branch above. "For he is not my son, but yours."

Chapter 38

Remo dragged the man who called himself the Extinguisher to his feet.

The Master of Sinanju dropped from his branch, as light as a green parachute descending, to land beside them.

"This idiot isn't my son," Remo said in a disgusted voice.

"Hey, I resent that!"

"No son of mine would parade around tricked out like a walking Swiss army knife. Or pretend to be some phoney dime-novel superhero."

"The Extinguisher is a legend. How do you know he isn't real?"

"Because I have a working brain. Your name is Winston Smith. Until last year you were with the Navy. Now you're AWOL."

"No. Wait. Think about it. Everybody knows the Extinguisher's name. It might be a cover to con the bad guys thinking that they have nothing to be afraid of."

"They do not," Chiun retorted. "For we spied your clumsy clanking and clunking and ambushed you before you could unleash your ridiculous toy gun upon us."

"Hey, I have an excuse. I have the trots."

"What is this witless one talking about?" Chiun asked Remo.

Winston Smith lowered his voice. "The screaming shits to you."

Chiun sniffed the air delicately. "Is it you who has befouled the jungle?" he asked.

"Not my fault. I drank some bad water."

"This is Mexico," Remo said. "All the water is bad."

"Yeah, well, now I know. That doesn't change who I am."

"Kid, I was reading Blaize Fury when I was in Nam and your highest ambition was to crawl up a fallopian tube."