Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

He stuck out an arm to brake Marisa to a halt, and they waited impatiently for the jeep to cover the last fifty feet. The driver braked and rolled to a stop right beside Bolan.

"Get in quickly," he said in an urgent, low tone.

Bolan boosted Marisa into the jeep and climbed into the back seat alongside of her. Kicking the bans into reverse, the driver backed into a tight K, and dropped into first. The gears whined and Bolan heard shouting from the thick brush.

"Step on it," he barked.

The driver floored it, and the jeep spurted forward, its tires slipping momentarily on the damp clay surface of the road. The driver shifted into second, and the engine roared until he popped the clutch. A burst of rifle fire spanged into the ass end of the jeep and whined off into the jungle on the far side of the road.

They rounded a curve just as another burst, this time from several weapons, raked the clay all around them. A moment later they were out of sight. The gunmen continued to fire, spraying the jungle in the vain hope that a lucky slug might take out a tire. Over the roaring of their engine, the gunfire faded away. Rounding a second curve, the driver clicked on his headlights and shifted into third.

The road wound ahead of them, twisting and turning, as if it were trying to evade the blinding glare of the headlights. The driver was good, but the slippery road made it tough to control the jeep on the tighter curves. Even the thick treads of the jeep's tires struggled to hang on.

The careering vehicle yawed wildly before the tires bit, then it lurched ahead, gaining speed until the driver braked into a skid at the next curve, fought to regain control, only to repeat the process in succession again.

"What's that up ahead?" Bolan shouted, tapping the driver on the shoulder.

The driver shouted something Bolan couldn't catch over the screaming engine. Two pairs of orange rectangles seemed to hover in the air about a quarter mile ahead. They were in a long straightaway, and the jeep was picking up speed.

Closing fast on the hovering lights, they were only a hundred yards away when Bolan realized it was a pair of jeeps, their parking lights lit, straddling the roadway.

A sudden explosion, like a meteor shower, lanced overhead. Bolan recognized the hammering of an M-60 immediately. The driver spun the wheel sharply, and the jeep skidded several feet broadside before its tires bit, then it plunged into the tall grass alongside the road. The M-60 stabbed at them again, tracers ripping the darkness as they homed in. Carlos had killed his lights and was barreling straight ahead. The jeep canted to one side as it rocked over the uneven ground beneath the grass.

Bolan swung his M-16 up and sprayed an entire clip, aiming just above the hoods of the two jeeps. He was rewarded by a cascade of shattering glass. The M-60 stopped instantly, and they plunged on past. Bolan jammed a second clip into the M-16 and cut loose again.

This time the others in the blockade fired back.

Their rifles ripped at the careering jeep in search of flesh. Bolan pulled the pin on one of his two grenades and tossed it backward. The deadly hook shot found the rim and dropped in between the two pairs of orange lights. It went off almost at once. In the sudden fireball, he could see one jeep upend while the other rocked over on two wheels, then settled back just as its gas tank blew.

An orange cloud mushroomed up into the night.

They were safe for the moment.

Bolan sat in the jeep, taking it all in. The camp was a model of efficiency. More than a dozen buildings, and not a single one could be seen from the air, so cleverly had they been woven in and around the rain forest. Even the clearing at its heart looked pristine.

It was beginning to brighten, and Bolan glanced at his watch. It was five-thirty, and the sun was due in just a few minutes. In another hour or two, the morning mist would burn off, and by midday, everyone alive in this part of Luzon would be counting the minutes until sundown. Bolan had seen similar places before, though none so economically designed. It was the precision that stunned him, and bothered him more than a little. Just this cursory examination convinced him that Marisa's group was not just a spontaneous movement of inexperienced peasants.

The camp had something of the textbook about it, something of the ideal that is seldom approached in field conditions. And never achieved.

And yet, here it was. Picture perfect.

Why? The question rattled around Bolan's brain like a runaway pinball. Who the hell were these people? And what did they really want? The most troublesome question was who was helping them to get it?

Marisa had promised that answers to his questions would be forthcoming. He doubted that more than most things, and Mack Bolan was a man who took very little on faith. As he sat there, the sky turned a milky white.

The sun must have risen above the mountains now, but the morning soup was still too thick for its color to come through.

The others had left him unattended, as though he posed no threat to them. They were either supremely confident of their position, or Marisa had been telling him the truth. Neither seemed too likely, and yet, there he was, alone in the middle of the Luzon jungle, in the very heart of the guerrilla camp, and no one seemed to give a damn.

He climbed down from the jeep to stretch his legs, reached over the bullet-scarred rear panel and snatched the canvas bag Marisa had left behind.

With nothing better to do, he decided to go through it.

Bolan dropped the bag on the hood and unbuckled the flaps. And there were his Beretta 93-R and his .44 AutoMag, each wrapped carefully in oiled cloth. It seemed that Marisa and her people even worried about rust.

Somewhere behind the semicircle of thatched huts, a rooster cut loose. Almost as if it had been a signal, Marisa reappeared in the doorway through which she had gone five minutes before. Behind her a tall man, a thatch of unruly red hair tumbling over sun-leathered skin, ducked under the lintel and followed her.

Bolan studied the man as he approached. About six three or four, he looked to weigh no more than a hundred and ninety, if that. He had an easy gait, a casual, almost jaunty walk that was as far from Charles Harding's ramrod strut as it could be. His shoulders were broad, and even under the camou shirt, Bolan could see the power of the man.

The tall man draped an arm over Marisa's shoulder, guiding her gently with pressure from his fingers. When they were three feet away, he let the arm fall and Marisa stopped. She held out a hand, and Bolan took it in his own. Then turning slightly and moving a step away, she allowed the tall man to take her place. He, too, held out a hand as Marisa said, "Mr. Belasko, this is Tom Colgan."

Bolan tried not to react. Marisa, of course, couldn't see him. Colgan himself, though, was another matter. Bolan could hear Frank Henson's voice in his head, saying "Colgan" over and over again. He noticed the man's eyes and wondered just how much they could see. Like two blue beacons, they burned with a dark light, set deep in the leathery skin. Bolan had the funny feeling that Colgan could look right through him, even see the bones buried deep inside him, as if looking at an X ray.

The eyes looked as though they had a life of their own. He'd seen eyes like them before, but not lately.

They were the eyes of a madman or, perhaps worse, a zealot.

The tall man clasped Bolan's hand in both of his own and shook it warmly.

"Tom is my husband," Marisa said.

"I see," Bolan replied.

She laughed. "I don't think you do." The laughter was genuine, as if some great pressure inside her had been mysteriously released or a weight lifted from her shoulders by an unseen hand.