"Yes. What is emblazoned on the flash of the Special Forces beret?"
The Extinguisher thought quickly. His mind raced.
"That's easy. A service knife between crossed arrows."
"No, that was the later flash. I refer to the original flash. Blaize Fury was one of the first Green Berets. He wore the flash before it was changed."
"I don't remember," the Extinguisher said. "It was a long time ago. I fought many battles since then."
"Jou lie! The flash was the Trojan Horse. Jou would know this if jou were truly El Extinguirador. But jou are not. Jou are too young. Jou are a fake, a fraud and, most damning of all, jou are really Subcomandante Verapaz. Now we know your secret. Jou are a renegade American."
"I am a citizen of the world. And I'm not Verapaz. "
"Jou have the blue eyes of Verapaz."
"Recheck your Intel, salsa breath. Verapaz has green eyes."
"A low trick. Jou wear colored eye lenses to make your blue eyes green for photo opportunities. We are chasing after a green-eyed man when all along they were blue. Your deceptions are exposed, and your life is at an end."
"You can't kill the Extinguisher. He will refuse to die."
A hard hand slapped out, rocking the Extinguisher's head.
He spit blood. "Do your worst, Mexican."
"I will do my worst. I find jou guilty of subversion, insurgency and treason and sentence jou to be stood up against a tree and shot dead for your sins and your crimes against the sovereign government of Mexico."
They hauled him over to a pine tree, slamming him against it. The rough bark bit into his back.
All of a sudden the situation looked grim.
"Look, it's not what it looks like," he said quickly. "I'm here to wax Verapaz. Just like you."
"A likely story."
"It's true."
"Who do jou work for, then?"
"The United Nations."
And the soldiers of Mexico laughed, the colonel most boisterously of all.
"That is not even a preposterous lie. It is unbelievable. UN soldiers are not allowed to shoot in combat. Not even in self-defense. Jou expect me to believe the blue helmets employ assassins?"
"It's the truth. I'm unofficial right now. On probation. But as soon as I nail Verapaz, I have a job."
"A yob? The Extinguisher does not require a yob. He fights for freedom and yustice everywhere. He takes no pay. Like how you say? El Lanero Solitario. "
"Never heard of him."
An aide whispered in the colonel's ear.
"Jou have never heard of the Lone Ranger?" the colonel said.
"Up yours, Tonto. Besides, that's in books. This is real life. I gotta do it the way I'm doing it."
"And jou will do it no more because now your miserable life is at an end."
The firing squad was assembled. Five men. Their rifles were a motley mixture of Belgian FALs and carbines. No last words were solicited, and they didn't even offer him a blindfold.
"Ready," said the colonel.
The rifles came up. "Aim."
The rifle barrels fell into line. Sweat oozed from the Extinguisher's forehead. This was it. This was real.
"Fire! " shouted the colonel at the top of his lungs.
His heart in his throat, the Extinguisher shut his blue eyes and hoped they all somehow missed.
After all, this was Mexico, and the FAL wasn't exactly the best rifle money could buy. Scuttlebutt was they were subject to wickedly fierce muzzle jump.
Chapter 20
The lush mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur lay enshrouded before them, unseen yet palpable, silently calling out in the old tongues, summoning back the scattered Zapotec and Mixtec nations to reclaim the land of their ancestors.
High Priest Rodrigo Lujan heard the mountains call to him, but if his ears heard the past, his eyes saw the future.
The future walked clothed in basalt flesh. The future was named Coatlicue, she who strode like a stone elephant, ponderous but beautiful. But she had changed.
Glints of gold and silver showed in her rude flesh. They had begun appearing after they had left the capital. Miraculously.
It was the third miracle. The first was the Reawakening.
The second Lujan had dubbed the Miracle of the Crosses.
This manifested itself as the followers of Coatlicue flung their pagan gold-and-silver crucifixes in her path, that she might crush them and banish the false religion from the land.
Coatlicue's clawed feet blindly pressed them into the asphalt, leaving deep cruciform impressions in the ground.
But when Lujan looked into these, the impressions were empty of metal. Every cross pressed into the holy soil left a distinct mark but mysteriously vanished.
That was when the glints began to appear. This miracle Rodrigo Lujan called the Absorption.
As Coatlicue strode tirelessly on, the gold and silver seemed to emerge from her skin like holy eruptions. At two points that he could see, actual crosses surfaced, proving forever his surmise that Coatlicue was reclaiming the very gold idols the Spanish pillaged and recast into their own religious icons. No more. The gold and silver was destined to return to its original purpose. High Priest Rodrigo Lujan vowed this.