Assumpta shouted, "Let him go, jou-jou CIA yanquis! He has told me all about you. You will never defeat Lord Verapaz!"
"Right now we have a bigger problem."
"What's that?" Winston growled.
"The monster. I need you to fly us to him."
"Monster? Don't be stupid. The Extinguisher doesn't fight monsters. Try Raymond Burr."
"He's dead, so you're elected." And Winston found himself placed in the chopper pilot seat like a baby dropped into his high chair.
The old Korean climbed into the cockpit and, crossing his legs, sat on his steamer trunk.
Winston looked to Remo standing in the rain. "What about you?"
"Just take off. I'll hitch a ride on the skid."
"That's how you did it!"
"And people say you're slow on the draw."
"I resent that!"
But he took off anyway.
Behind him the old Korean named Chiun prodded him on the right course with a pointing fingernail that Winston sometimes felt in the small of his back. It felt like a white-hot needle.
WHEN HE SAW the monster, Winston Smith changed his mind.
"Holy shit! Look at the size of that mother. Let's blow it up!"
"No," said Chiun. "I forbid it."
"But we've got antitank rockets and a Gatling gun. We can pulverize it in its tracks."
"No," Chiun repeated.
"Give me one reason why not."
"I will give you two."
"Yeah?"
"The first reason is that the monster cannot be defeated unless his brain is discovered and destroyed. Otherwise, the part of him that can assume other forms will take a new form. We must find the brain first."
"What's the other reason?"
"The other reason is that the lightning may do the work we cannot."
And as they flew closer, a sizzling bolt of eyesearing light slammed the monster in his tracks. It wavered, started to take a step, and a second bolt transfixed it. Green and gold sparks jumped.
When the noise dissipated, the monster was immobile.
"Now what?" Winston asked.
"Land this contraption near the monster," Chiun said. "At Once! Our time may be short."
"Sure you don't want me to strafe it first?"
As if in answer, a thick-wristed hand reached up from under the cockpit, grasped the side-mounted Gatling gun and, expending no obvious effort, twisted it off its mount, then flung it away.
Chapter 52
It was like marching into the face of cannon fire.
The detonations came again and again. They split the dull morning, making it bright. They rattled the sky. Their fury was very great. Fear showed on the faces of the Juarezistas who marched behind Alirio Antonio Arcila, their AKs and AR-15s trembling in their rain-wet hands.
Each time they quailed, he called back encouragement.
"See!" Alirio Antonio Arcila cried, holding up the TV so all could see. "Behold the monster! She is attracting the lightning. It strikes only at Coatlicue."
"The gods are just," a man murmured. But there was no enthusiasm. The relentless elements had beaten their courage down.
Antonio swallowed his sharp corrective words. He believed in no gods. Was he not believed to be godlike by these simple ones? He, the son of a coffee grower?
Soon the television was no longer necessary.
The cypress of Tule came into view.
Antonio had only heard of it. It was said to be some two thousand years old. From a distance it resembled the greatest weeping willow imaginable, its drooping branches weighed down with the imposing freight of its years. Its leaves trembled nervously under the unceasing rain. It was older than the Cross, and even though Antonio did not believe in the Cross, still the obvious age of the oldest living thing on the face of the earth took his breath.
A bolt forked down and blotted out the impressive sight.
In the afterimage imprinted on his retina, Antonio saw the tree as a negative film image, stark and threatening.
And when his blinded eyes cleared once more, he saw for the first time the Coatlicue monster in the flesh.
She was making for the cypress. The great tree dwarfed her, made her seem less formidable. From this distance, she might have been a clay figure beside an ordinary oak.
But she was not. She stood wider than three men, taller than five tall men.
And miracle of miracles, the lightning strikes continually sought her. But still she strove onward, ever onward, seeking the cypress that should have drawn the terrible bolts from the sky but did not.
Glancing back, Antonio caught his remaining Maya making the sign of the Cross. There were far fewer of them now. In his heart he forgave them. Coatlicue was an unnatural sight, but the way the lightning spurned the mighty tree for the smaller giant was more unnatural still. It suggested greater forces at work.
"Perhaps our work will be done for us," he told them. All thought of glory and gain fled his reeling brain. This was incredible. Impossible. Unbelievable.
And still the monster trudged on, the bolts slamming, breaking off the last remaining plates of her gleaming armor, knocking them away, until rude stone and a flexible marbled matter lay exposed.
Then came a bolt that ripped downward, exploded and blotted out the universe. The thunder sound was great. The resulting shock wave was greater still.
Antonio and his guerrilleros were thrown off their feet.
When their sight cleared, Coatlicue stood still. She did not move again.
"Come," Antonio said, climbing to his feet. "It is time to face this Azteca usurper."
They advanced cautiously. Now Antonio led a meager handful of men. The others had retreated. No matter. When the cause was won, they would return to the fold. Willingly or not.
RODRIGO LUJAN STARED up at the ominous heavens that had assaulted his Mother again and again. He saw a greenish white light, but no clouds no sky. When he closed his eyes, the light was still there.
He heard nothing. His ears were still full of booming thunder. His brain shook with reverberating shock.
"Mother. Can you hear me?"
But his Mother Coatlicue responded not.
Lying helpless beneath her, Lujan wept bitterly, his salty tears mingling with the rain that fell and fell and fell upon him without understanding or mercy.
ANTONIO APPROACHED ahead of the others. His head pounded. He felt fear yes, but he pushed it back. It was not that he was so brave but that there was no turning back. His future depended upon what transpired here in this place far from the Lacandon jungle.
Coatlicue, he saw, had almost made the shelter of the great cypress, whose bole was over one hundred feet in circumference. It seemed less like the trunk of a tree than some ancient petrified eruption from deep within the earth. The trunk was horny and rugose with age.
"Coatlicue," he said. "Greetings, creature of imagination. You almost made it to safety. But you did not. And now you are dead."
Coatlicue said nothing and moved not. Her ophidian eyes were looking at the tree.
Antonio walked around her still feet. One was poised in the act of taking a step forward. It seemed gargantuan beside him, but the cypress dwarfed it to insignificance.
Between the legs lay a nearly nude man.
Antonio knelt. "Who are you?"
The man looked in all directions with uncomprehending eyes. "I am blind. The lightning has taken my sight."
"You are fortunate. For you lie in the path of the monster. Her foot is lifted to take a step. If completed, she would have crushed you like a locust."
"I would gladly be crushed under the feet of my mother if only I could behold her one last time," the man said dully.
"Then sadness will be your eternal destiny, because that will never come to pass. Coatlicue has succumbed."
Weeping, the man crawled under the shelter of the half-lifted foot. On his back, he struggled up to kiss her heel but lacked all strength to complete the absurd action.