"Chiun!" Remo warned.
"Four letters. It begins with a C and ends with an E."
"Damn! I know all the intelligence agencies by heart. Let's see. CANE? CORE?"
"You are getting warmer," Chiun prompted.
"Try CARE," said Remo. "If you're going to pester it out of us, it's CARE."
Winston frowned. "Isn't that a relief program?"
"That's the cover story," Remo said dryly.
Up ahead Assumpta was haggling with a fat man wearing a baseball cap that said "Frente Juarezista de Liberacion Nacional." She was out of earshot. They kept their voices low.
"We're never going to catch up to Verapaz hoofing it," Winston hissed.
"You got a better idea?" Remo asked.
"We need a helicopter."
"We need a helicopter pilot unless you're thinking of the kind that eats quarters and doesn't go anywhere."
"I'm rated for choppers."
Remo favored him with a skeptical eye. "That the truth?"
"Would I lie?"
Chiun sniffed. "Yes, repeatedly."
"Look, if we can find a chopper, I'll get us out of this jungle."
"There was a helicopter at the army post," Chiun said.
"Let's see if it's still there," said Remo.
Chapter 44
When the dawn of the first full day after the Great Mexico City Earthquake broke, it failed to break over a hundred-mile swatch from the Valley of Mexico to Oaxaca State.
The brown pall emanating from the unquiet volcano called Smoking Mountain since the days of the Aztecs extended far to the south, blotting out the rays of the rising sun.
The deep black of the night abated somewhat, but no bright blessings fell from Tonituah, the Sun God. The lowering sky refused to permit even the merest ray of sunshine to penetrate.
In the Zocalo of Oaxaca, the adherents of Coatlicue stirred to this phenomenon. They had fallen asleep around the splashing fountain. Now their eyes blinked at the ominous atmosphere.
"There is no sun!"
"The sun has gone out!"
"Call back the sun, Coatlicue. Make him shine."
But Coatlicue stood unhearing.
It fell to High Priest Rodrigo Lujan to bring meaning to the evil portent of a dawn without light. He disentangled himself from a knot of freshly deflowered Zapotec maidens.
"It is the will of Coatlicue that you do not see the sun on the first day of the new Zapotec empire," he shouted.
"What can we do? What must we do? Tell us?"
"Our Mother desires hearts. We must sacrifice fresh hearts to Coatlicue. That will call back the retreating sun."
The logical next question came. "Whose hearts?"
"I will choose the hearts that Coatlicue whispers are needed. Make lines."
They formed ranks, disorderly and uneasy, but no one ran as Rodrigo Lujan moved through them.
Scrutinizing the faces that shifted with downcast eyes as he came to them each in turn, he tapped the chosen ones on the tops of their heads with a heavy walnut scepter.
Jaguar soldiers seized each one, dragging them after the high priest whose long, rabbit-trimmed feather cloak swept the Zocalo flags in his wake.
When he had ten, these were thrown at Coatlicue's feet, and the obsidian blade came out, glittering dully in the weird postdawn twilight.
"Coatlicue, Mighty Mother. In your name I consecrate these hearts as an offering to your indifferent love."
Coatlicue looked down with her flat eyes. Her steelplated serpent heads were at rest, blunt snouts touching.
The blade slashed and split flesh and rib bone as the victims were opened up. Quick, sure strokes severed the aorta and other arteries.
The first extraction was very bloody, but as he moved along, Lujan learned where and how to slice so that the blood spurted away from his eager face.
Not that he minded blood. But the warm stuff in his eyes soon turned sticky and made vision difficult.
By the tenth and last victim, the blood was a fountain that washed Coatlicue's clawed feet and touched her high priest not at all.
Cheers went up. Only a few faces frowned. All Mixtec faces.
They had good reason to frown, Rodrigo knew. All ten offerings wore Mixtec faces. Mixtec hearts now lay at the feet of Coatlicue the uncaring.
And at a gesture, the dead Mixtec husks were thrown against Coatlicue's obdurate feet, only to be absorbed like liquid into two rude sponges. Even the blood flowed toward her, strengthening her power.
When the ceremony was concluded, all eyes turned to the heavens in anticipation of the returning sun. Instead, there came a distant rumble that was not echoed in the ground at their feet.
Thunder. Not an aftershock. Then it began to rain.