Chiun sniffed the air. "Perhaps there may yet be Aztec gold lying about, awaiting rescue."
"The only thing yellow I smell is burnt corncobs."
"Close your nostrils to its siren call," said Chiun. "Once you start on the path of corn eating, next you will be drinking its intoxicating juices. The path to slothfulness and ruin is paved with corn and pared fingernails."
"I'd settle for cold rice," Remo said dryly.
A road sign appeared, saying Chi Zotz. There was no milage or direction indicated.
Remo pulled out a map. "Boca Zotz is supposed to be around here, but it's not on this map."
"Perhaps it is near Chi Zotz," Chiun said. "We will stop at the next village and inquire."
"Suits me. Let's hope we can get a line on Verapaz while we're at it. It's a big jungle."
"Bristling with all manner of high dangers and low corn," added the Master of Sinanju sagely.
Chapter 22
When the harsh rattle of autofire came, it sounded amazingly far away.
Maybe it was the terrible sound itself that contributed to the momentary amazement that seized the wild-haired warrior's helpless body.
Always in the past, the Extinguisher had been in situations that would break a lesser man. Many were the traps, ambushes and deaths engineered for him. Yes, he fell into a good many of these. No warrior is perfect. But always and invariably the Extinguisher mustered his jungle-honed combat skills and saved the day-not to mention his battle-hardened butt.
The percussive sound of autofire meant that this was one time that wasn't going to happen.
In the brief moments before the bullets ripped into his steely muscled form with their hot, fatal kisses, the Extinguisher said a silent combat prayer to the red god of battle. This was not the way he had ever imagined it ending. Not here. Not now. Not so soon, with so many battles to be fought and the enemy in this campaign as yet unvanquished.
But war is hell, even a wild-haired warrior's private war.
His prayer done, he tensed. If it was quick, good. If not, then he would spit out a final curse against the foes who had robbed a troubled world of its one pure protector. That would be good, too. Not as good as living, true, but-
A low moan ascended to the low-hanging moon.
The rustle and thud of a body falling into vegetation came next. Then another. More moans, followed by a confused rustling and thudding.
A final burst of autofire cut off a muffled curse.
The Extinguisher froze, not knowing what to do. He heard it all. The moans. The sounds of sudden death. The dropping bodies.
But none were his own. He still stood erect against the execution tree.
A slow, measured rustle came from the west, and he sensed a nearing presence, soft and stealthy.
Popping open one eye, he saw the firing squad curled up in the high grass like insects whose bodies had been doused with gasoline and set aflame.
A slow movement caught his eye.
Approaching was a cautious figure wearing a brown uniform, a black ski mask muffling the head. It was a very large head, bloated, almost pulpy, as if it concealed a monstrously deformed skull.
"Shh," the figure hissed. The eyes were luminous in the dark, like black opals.
A knife came out. His bonds were sliced apart.
"Thanks," he hissed, rubbing his wrists.
"Shh. Vamos!"
That last word he understood. It meant come on. Grabbing his gear, the Extinguisher followed the wary figure, casting frequent glances over his backtrail in case pursuit materialized.
None did.
The Extinguisher would live to fight another day.
And if this was one time he hadn't saved himself, what the hell? Breathing was breathing. Besides, there was only one witness, and he wore the guerrilla garb that marked him as a Juarezista.
Once in the clear, it would be child's play to turn the tables on this jungle revolutionary and have his way with him.
It was unfair-cold turnabout. But this was war. And the first thing tossed out the window in war was gratitude.
Chapter 23
Coatlicue and her worshipful train were on the move once more.
With each thunderous step, they grew stronger. The earth, still racked by aftershocks, seemed to quake in sympathy with the goddess's mighty tread. And out of the villages and farms, they poured.
Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Chocho, all united in one mystic purpose.
"We go to liberate Oaxaca, seat of the Zapotec empire," High Priest Rodrigo Lujan proclaimed to one and all. "We go to cast off the chilango yoke. Join us, become one with us, partake of the bounty of your reclaimed homelands. Shrug off your false saints. Tear down your crosses, your churches, your hollow religion that offers you breads and wines with transparent lies that you eat the blood and flesh of your dead god. That falseness is no more. Coatlicue offers no such things. When you follow Coatlicue, you eat real meat, you drink true blood and, in doing this, become one with your forefathers."
They came, they followed and some who heard that all they need do was lay their heavy bodies on the road before the lumbering one and be absorbed into her did that, too.
Coatlicue crushed them in her brutal mercy, without regard to sex or age or other of the so-called civilized niceties.
As they approached the town of Acatlan, she stood ten feet tall.
Once through it, having emptied the town of indio and mestizo alike, she topped twelve feet.
By the time she lumbered on through Huajuapan de Leon, her wary serpent heads straining to reach fifteen feet in height, the rude stone had softened to a warm brown that suggested flesh marbled with fat.
Striding alongside, Rodrigo Lujan reached out to touch her writhing skirt of serpents. It felt pleasantly warm. It was night now. The sun was down. Radiating heat could not explain away the sensation of warmth, nor the sinuousness with which the stone flowed as Coatlicue walked onward.
When he took his finger away, he had to pull hard.
And when he looked at it, Lujan saw he had left behind his entire fingerprint, as men who lived in subzero climates sometimes did when they stupidly touched their moist flesh to cold metal.