"That is up to you," he said smoothly.
The colonel nodded. He ripped out a sharp command, and the coffin was loaded into the back of the lead LAV. The rear door clanged shut.
Engines rumbling like drag racers before the checkered flag, the colonel's unit turned like a land dragon and vanished into the jungle night.
"Well, that is done," said Zaragoza, who would have felt much better about the end of the Verapaz matter had it not been for the regrettable lack of credit and the fact that word coming out of the capital bespoke a crisis far worse than the others of recent vintage.
They were saying in the capital that there had been no earthquake. Only a minor spewing of Mount Popocatepetl.
That was very bad to hear. When there was a crisis in the capital, the official line was invariably that were was no crisis. Denial mated with deniability. It was very Mexican.
Now they were saying there was no earthquake when news broadcasts clearly showed the damage and the dead and the unbelievable hellish anguish of it all.
Comandante Zaragoza shuddered at the thought that there might no more be a Mexican government after these calamitous events.
Chapter 19
The Extinguisher heard the raucous jungle sounds coming as if through a haze. He opened his eyes. They saw nothing. Only darkness.
Was he blind?
He felt confined. His head hurt. He moved it. It pounded. He moved it the other way, and although his eyes were open and he saw only darkness, the entire world of darkness spun and spun and spun until in his pain, he stopped biting his cheek and let out a wounded howl.
"What the hell is going on?"
He was in a box. It opened.
A lid clapped to one side, and he saw stars. Real stars. Shadowy heads intercepted the starlight, and dark eyes looked down on him without warmth or fear.
"Let me out of here," he said, grasping the box's edges so the lid couldn't drop back.
A rifle barrel was pressed to his chest. He subsided. He still lived. There was always opportunity to fight if he could find no other way. He made his voice flippant.
"What's shaking, compadres?"
"Subcomandante Verapaz," a man hissed. The Extinguisher recognized the silver stars of a Mexican colonel on his shoulder boards.
"I'm not Verapaz. I'm the Extinguisher."
"Que?"
Searching his mind, he recalled the nom de guerre he'd heard back in the city.
"El Extinguirador."
More heads came into view. Everyone wanted to see the dreaded Extinguisher now. That was good. It meant he had their attention. Soon he would have their fear. After that he would hold their miserable Third World lives in his capable hands.
Hands reached down to pull him out. He surrendered to them.
They stood him on his feet. He swayed. The fresh air made his skull hurt. He looked around.
The first thing he noticed was the long wooden box he had just occupied.
It was a coffin.
Cracking a smile, he said, "It'll take more than a pine box to keep the Extinguisher down."
The colonel stepped up to him while two others held him on his feet. "Jou call yourself the Extinguisher. Why?"
"That's who I am."
"Your true name, then."
"Blaize. Blaize Fury."
"Jou lie!"
"I am Blaize Fury, dillweed. Get used to it."
"Blaize Fury is a fancy. A hero in books."
"That's what I want my enemies to think."
The colonel looked him up and down. "Jou are a military man, senor?"
"I'm a warrior born, forged in hellfire and baptized with gun smoke."
"I have read many of the adventures of Blaize Fury when I was jounger. Jou are not Blaize Fury."
"Prove it."
"When I was jounger, Blaize Fury was my age. I am over forty now. Jou are jounger than twenty-five, if my eyes see not lies."
"Blaize Fury is ageless. He is eternal. The Extinguisher will fight evil as long as there are good fights to be fought."
"Senor Blaize Fury served in Vietnam," the colonel shot back. "With the Green Berets."
"So?"
"If jou are Blaize Fury, then jou were a Green Beret."
"I'm not saying I was or I wasn't."
"If jou are a Green Beret, Blaize Fury, what is-"
Brow furrowing, he consulted an aide in low Spanish.