Warren Murphy - Unite and Conquer

"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."