Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

"Carlos," he shouted, "can you find the camp we visited the other day?"

Carlos nodded. "Si," he shouted. "I know where it is."

"Is there any place we can leave Mrs. Colgan?"

Carlos shook his head. "No, senor. No place..." Bolan let that sink in, watching Marisa to see what her reaction might be. She might as well have been made of stone for all the emotion she showed.

Bolan took the M-16 from a rack against the sidewall of the jeep and balanced it across his knees. The fire control lever was on full-auto, and he adjusted it to semi, then took off the safety. Four clips jutted out of a plastic canister suspended from the rack. He stuffed two of them into his shirt pocket and tucked the other pair into the back pocket of his pants.

Something told him he was going to need all the hardware he could carry before the day was out. He recognised the terrain. If memory served, they were only a mile or so from the turnoff to the NPA camp.

Bolan surveyed the tree line to the left, his eye drawn by something that had registered without really being seen. His ears perked up, and he heard the cry of frightened birds. Like a rolling wave, a cloud of parrots pulsed for a moment above the trees, then sank again. It must have been the birds he'd registered before. As he watched, it rose again, this time higher, then seemed to fracture. The birds fluttered like scraps of bright confetti, then sank down out of sight. As they disappeared, their excited cries swept across the canopy before dying away. And in the echo, he heard another, unnatural sound. Felt it, really, as the floorboard of the jeep picked up the throbbing, vibrating in sympathy.

The pulse grew stronger, and his body reacted to it. Automatically he draped an arm over the M-60. The pulse grew stronger, and he could hear it now, too. A deep throbbing, fading away then coming back even stronger, it seemed to gather more and more strength each time it ceased. And he didn't have to see its source to know what it was. A Huey, somewhere off to the left, had climbed above the trees and had started toward them.

It spelled trouble to Bolan.

The NPA camp had been almost Stone Age in its simplicity. Automatic weapons, yes. But there had been only two vehicles, both in desperate need of repair. They had little fuel to speak of. The idea that they commanded a chopper was unthinkable. Only two options suggested themselves. It was either a Philippine Army ship or it belonged to the Leyte Brigade.

The pulse fractured now, and he realized there were at least two birds. The strange inconsistency of the sound was created by the overlapping rhythm of the two engines, a rhythm that changed constantly as the ships changed speed and their respective distances from him changed along with it. One, from the sound of it, was moving away, heading south. The other seemed to be coming their way.

"Carlos," Bolan shouted, "pull off the road."

Carlos swiveled around. When he saw Bolan pointing at the sky, he nodded that he understood.

The jeep veered suddenly, jolting Marisa. She turned to Bolan. "What's happening?" she shouted. "Why are we leaving the road?"

"Helicopters," Bolan yelled in her ears. "At least two, maybe more. If they're army, they might take us for NPA, and if they're not..." He didn't have to tell Marisa what that would mean.

The chopper roared closer. It was still too far away to see, probably keeping low, just above the trees. Unlike in Vietnam, it had little to fear flying so dose to the ground here. The NPA had nothing much beyond small arms, and most of its widely scattered units were no match in firepower for a single Huey carrying the usual complement of guns and possibly rockets.

Carlos wrestled the jeep's steering wheel, struggling to get under the trees. If they were out of sight, they should be all right, since the chopper had no particular reason to be looking for them.

The bushes began to dose around the nose of the jeep just as the chopper appeared overhead, sudden as a wasp. It roared past, and Bolan thought for a moment they hadn't been seen, but the Huey slowed, banked in a tight circle and hovered over the middle of the road about four hundred yards past them.

"Get out," Bolan shouted. "They spotted us."

He pushed Marisa down to Carlos, who struggled through the dense undergrowth, hacking at it with a machete to cut a narrow swath for the two of them to slip through.

Carlos looked back and Bolan waved him on. "Keep going!"

The chopper pilot seemed to be debating what to do. The big bird hung there in the air. Its engine was a dull undercurrent under the steady whomping of the huge rotor blades. It was side-on, and Bolan spotted two men in the open door. A Browning M-3, a half-inch machine gun on a pintle, was starkly outlined against the bright sky through the open belly of the aircraft.

Bolan swung the M-60 around and made sure the safety was off. He didn't want to waste time on a fight, but it didn't look as if the chopper was going to give him a choice. As near as he could tell, the M-3 was the only armament, other than whatever small arms the crew and passengers might have.

Worse than an attack was the possibility that the chopper might dispatch a ground unit or call in additional support from the other chopper. Shaking his head, Bolan rubbed the sweat beading on his forehead with the back of his hand. The chopper suddenly rose straight in the air, climbing nearly five hundred feet before pivoting on its rotor shaft and swooping toward him at an acute downward angle.

The big bird roared overhead, not more than seventy feet above him, and immediately swung broadside. The door gunner cut loose, and a swarm of half-inch hornets ripped at the leaves just behind him. The gunner swiveled the muzzle down a little, and the pilot tried to steady the bird. Bolan opened up with the M-60, raking the side of the Huey with a short burst until the chopper climbed an invisible wire. It looked like a spider climbing a filament or some ghastly yo-yo abruptly called up to a hidden hand.

Bolan cut loose again with a short burst, but other than a few stray sparks from one strut, he did no damage. The door gunner seemed unused to his weapon and swept the muzzle too far around. His next hail ripped chunks of clay from the road surface, scattering Bolan and the jeep with blobs of soil as sticky as putty. They flattened against the windshield of the jeep, then fell away, leaving round blotches on the glass.

The pilot, realizing his gunner needed help, urged the chopper down, keeping it broadside for a moment, then pivoting again until just the barrel of the M-3 was visible in the open door. Bolan raked the nose and was rewarded with a spiral web of brilliant white cracks in the bubble. The glass was tough and refused to shatter.

Bolan dropped his aim and chewed at the undercarriage. One strut came loose and dangled from a single bolt. It flapped in the rotor wash, then began to swing in a strange circle as the chopper changed its tack again. A couple of men had joined the door gunner, and Bolan could see the barrels of two assault rifles braced against the floor of the chopper. The pilot angled his ship over, and all three guns opened up.

The distinctive pop of a rifle grenade sent Bolan diving over the tail of the jeep into the bushes. The grenade went off with a dull thud, and more dirt cascaded down over him. Bolan got to his feet and dodged into the trees, then cut back. He dove under the layer of bright green and wormed his way back, waiting for the chopper to sweep by, looking for him.

When the engine grew louder, then died away, he saw the antitorque rotor glinting in the sunlight as the Huey passed by. Slipping backward toward the jeep, Bolan hurled himself over the tailgate and swung the M-60 a hundred and eighty degrees. It was his only chance. If he didn't nail the bastard, he might not get another one.