Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

"See anything?"

"Nothin' at all, Tom. I was just getting ready to turn back around when we spotted you. Thought maybe she was right after all."

He laughed, but the laugh sounded forced to Bolan, who had taken an immediate dislike to the man.

"I guess maybe we'll go on up the road a ways. How far were you? Not visiting that camp again, were you?" When Colgan didn't answer, McRae continued. "Tommy, I don't know why in hell you keep going back there. Ain't nothing gonna change if you go a million times. Them people ain't gonna come back. Now you know that. And I know you know, 'cause I told you myself at least a thousand times."

Colgan looked off at the sky. In the quiet, Bolan could hear the wind in the canopy high above, the thick leaves slapping together like the flippers of trained seals.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd not be so cavalier, Don." Colgan sounded as if he were caught halfway between rage and sorrow. Another word would tip him one way or the other.

McRae nodded. "All right," he said, waving a hand in disgust, "have it your way."

Colgan turned sharply. "There is no other," he said.

McRae looked at Bolan as if to say the man's a lunatic, but Bolan gave him no sympathy. "Be back in a little while, Tom," he said, still staring at Bolan.

McRae started his engine and backed away from the other jeep, then gunned the engine and bounced onto the road. Bolan watched the jeep disappear without saying anything. Colgan seemed preoccupied, and Carlos tapped the wheel impatiently.

"Senor Colgan," Carlos said, gunning the engine sporadically, "we should go. If Senor McRae is right, we shouldn't be out here."

Colgan turned to look at the young driver, but he said nothing. He just stared as if he were looking right through the jeep, as if it weren't even there.

Bolan took Colgan by the shoulder, but the taller man spun wildly away. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me. I don't like it."

Bolan looked at Carlos, who just shrugged.

He didn't have to say anything. Bolan shook his head and walked toward the jeep. He climbed into the rear and clicked the safety off his M-16. The whole scene bothered him. Something wasn't right. He didn't know what, but couldn't shake the feeling he would soon find out.

Carlos pushed the jeep along in second gear.

Over the roaring engine, Bolan could barely hear himself think. He watched the forest on either side of the road, wondering just how perverse Colgan was prepared to be. He wanted to ask the man about Cordero. A sneaking suspicion crept across the back of his skull that Colgan knew more about Harding than he was letting on. And, by extension, that would mean he knew something about Cordero.

Whenever he closed his eyes, Bolan would see the bloody horror that had been made of Frank Henson. Somebody was going to pay for that, and Bolan was dangerously close to not giving a damn who. He would love to take Harding down, then nail Cordero to a tree and send it through a sawmill. But somehow that seemed too easy. It was almost too primitive. The temptation to respond to terror with action more terrible still was seductive, almost as tantalising as two fingers of Scotch in a clean glass would be to an alcoholic.

Revenge was a drug, and Bolan had succumbed more than once in his life. He was no vengeance junkie, but there was a balance of terror that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. It had to do with the ways in which human beings were prepared to rend the flesh of their fellows, or split open their bones and smile with the blood running down their chins like cannibals at a feast.

And in the end, it was always the helpless who suffered, who fell before the terrorist's onslaught like wheat to the thresher. It was old women, like those buried in the mound Colgan had shown him. It was children, too young to defend themselves from flies, let alone madmen with automatic rifles. It was the old men whose legs were too frail to walk in the fields, let alone run from the helicopters.

Maybe Colgan was right, Bolan thought.

Maybe death could be held at arm's length only by those who were prepared to inflict it on another.

But it seemed, not realism as Colgan characterised it, but anarchism. It was an invitation to every man on the planet to join in combat against every other man. In such a case, there were no winners, just people who hadn't yet lost.

Up ahead a cloud of parrots exploded, distracting Bolan for a moment. He stared at the trees below the horde of colorful birds. Why had they risen up so suddenly, he wondered. Then a glint caught his eye, lower down, among the trees.

It flashed once, then again. He shielded his eyes with one hand, then rapped Carlos on the shoulder. The young driver turned, and Bolan jabbed a finger toward the trees. "There's someone in there," he yelled.

Carlos leaned back, and Bolan repeated the warning. This time the driver heard him. He stomped on the pedal, then lifted into third as he gained speed. As they drew near the place where the birds had been, Bolan stared in among the trees. The flash hadn't recurred, but he was convinced someone lay hidden there.

Then, just ahead of them, a huge spout of earth rose straight up, as if a leafless tree had suddenly sprouted fully grown from the earth. As clods of dirt rained down around them, Carlos struggled with the wheel, trying to avoid a gaping hole in the road.

Bolan knew what an exploding mine looked like. He also knew what one could do to a jeep.

"Back it up, Carlos," he urged.

Colgan turned, as though in a daze, his features suddenly slack. The blue eyes were almost grey and seemed sunken into the skull as if they were retreating. His lips split wide open in a gruesome smile. He hefted his M-16 and jerked the fire control lever onto full-auto.

"Time for a little lesson in realism, Mr. Belasko," he shouted.

Bolan dropped to one knee and fired a short burst from his own rifle. The limitless jungle swallowed the deadly hail as easily as the ocean swallows a few drops of rain. A brief echo of the burst quickly died, and Carlos fought the wheel as the jeep ground its gears and finally allowed him to shift into reverse.

A second mine went off, sending another column of dark earth high into the air. It narrowly missed the jeep, and the concussion slammed into Bolan's body like an invisible fist. The thunderclap made his ears ring.

So far there had been no gunfire from the trees, but it wouldn't be long in coming. As the jeep wove crazily from side to side, Bolan thanked his stars they had been able to avoid the first mine. The plan obviously had been to immobilize them. Whoever was hidden in the dense undergrowth had been hasty, detonating the mine in front instead of behind the jeep.

They had blown it and had given their intended target a fighting chance.

Instead of panicking, Carlos used his head, backed off the roadway and slammed the tail of the jeep in between two trees. He jumped down, leaving the engine running. Bolan dove over the side just as the first wave of fire broke over the jeep.

Colgan ducked below the dash, then crawled out backward, keeping the jeep between him and the hidden gunmen.

"Can you raise McRae?" Bolan whispered.

Carlos bobbed his head eagerly.

"Do it."

"No," Colgan said, "not yet. We don't need any help."

"We will. And by then, it might be too late."

Carlos watched the two older men. He wanted to call for help, but he didn't want to risk offending Colgan. He seemed in thrall to the doctor, as if under his spell.

"Give me the damn radio," Bolan growled, grabbing for the small transceiver clutched in Carlos's hand. The shiny black box fell to the ground, and Carlos snatched at it, but Bolan was too quick.

"You win." Colgan sighed. "Give it to Carlos. He'll do it."