Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

Bolan turned, lying on the stairs stiff as a board, his spine straddling three steps. He swung the Desert Eagle around in a two-handed grip and waited, breathing shallowly and ignoring the hard stone digging at his backbone. He heard them coming, their feet slapping the stone floor as they raced toward the stairs.

He didn't have to wait long. Two men, running flat out, jostled one another as they turned the corner and Bolan fired four shots. The Desert Eagle spat ferociously, and the lead man threw up his hands. His weapon, an AK-47, started up, then dropped straight down as it slipped from his grip. He fell backward, a brand new and very ugly hole just over his left eye. The remaining three shots had taken the second man in the right shoulder and in the throat. He, too, lost his weapon as his hand flew up to his neck and closed around the most serious wound. He only had strength for making a horrible rattling sound in his throat.

The lead man, who appeared to be Chinese, was considerably shorter than his companion, and his collapsing body slammed into his partner's knees.

The runner-up, a skinny Anglo built like a stork, all gawky limbs and sharp features, smacked his head on the wall behind as he fell with the weight of the Chinese added to his own. A sharp crack echoed up the stairwell as he hit, and his head sat at a funny angle as he slid the rest of the way to the floor. If the bullets hadn't killed him, the broken neck would have.

Bolan scrambled back a step or two, still lying on the stairs and bumping his vertebrae against the lip of the step as he pushed with his heels. It was suddenly silent in the cellar, and Bolan panted short, sharp breaths. In the confined stairwell, they sounded like sandpaper on soft stone.

He slowly gathered his legs under him before rising. He took one step down, then another.

It remained quiet, but the man with the silenced pistol hadn't been accounted for. The two men lying in an obscene heap in front of him both had automatic rifles.

Bending down, he tugged the AK up by its muzzle, then grabbed the handgrip and picked it up.

He made sure it was operable, and that the magazine was at least partially loaded. Muffling the click of the reinserted magazine, he leapt to the cellar floor and swept the muzzle of the AK in a semicircle, his finger on the trigger.

A man had been caught in the hail of 7.62 mm slugs. He looked at the rip in his stomach with surprise. His right hand dropped an ugly-looking Makarov, hung in the air for a moment, then fluttered toward the dark red stains across his blue cotton shirt. He glanced at Bolan as he fell back and slammed hard into the floor.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Behind him, across the stone floor, a door yawned darkly. It was the same one that had teen cracked open briefly. Bolan jerked the magazine from the second AK and started toward the open door.

As he drew close, he realized that yet another door was ajar at the far end of the chamber. It must have been the spot that had swallowed the missing shot. He would have to check it out, but first things first.

Poking into the first door, he swept a palm along the wall. A fluorescent light pinged and flashed on. At first Bolan thought it was nothing more than a simple office.

Then he saw the map.

Bolan stared at the map for a long moment, leaning closer and reaching out to touch it. Small red circles peppered the center of Manila. A quick count showed thirty-three. All but five had been crosshatched by a makeshift star or crude asterisk. None of the locations meant anything to Bolan, who did not have that comprehensive a knowledge of the city.

Pinned to a corkboard by a half-dozen pushpins, the map appeared to be standard issue. Nearly three feet long on each side, it was creased in several places, indicating a regular fold, almost like an American road map, but the segments were twice the size. Bolan jerked the pushpins free, one by one, then folded the map carefully. He backed out of the of flee and climbed the stairs to the first floor.

He dialed in a hurry, then waited for someone to pick up. The phone rang several times, and Bolan impatiently waited for Marisa to answer.

Finally the receiver on the other end rattled out of its cradle.

"Bring Carlos," he said, "quickly. You know where. I'll meet you out front." Bolan slammed the phone down and moved toward the front door. It was far too late to worry about caution. He stood in the front hall, pulling a plain cloth curtain aside and tucking it behind the doorknob so he could watch the street.

It was quiet out there, almost too quiet, but he couldn't afford to worry about that, either. He killed time by committing the ammo from both AK's into one magazine, then tossed the empty into a brown metal wastebasket next to a small utility table.

His arm was beginning to throb again, and he wished he had some painkillers. He squeezed the thickly bandaged wound, trying to shut out the stabbing ache. While he waited, he considered his options. They were few and unattractive. The first image of the map kept floating into his mind's eye like a dust mote and darting away every time he tried to stare at it directly.

Without a timetable, he had to assume the worst.

There was no doubt at all in his mind that the red circles were significant. If Cordero was in the picture, and Bolan was certain of that, he could guess just what that significance was. But it wasn't something he could handle by himself. Even if he, Carlos and Marisa split up, they had eleven sites each to cover. But where would they begin to look without quite knowing what to look for?

On a hunch, Bolan dashed back up to the third floor without using a light. Kneeling in front of the single window in the center of the front room, he eased the shade up a fraction of an inch, then leaned forward with his chin on the sill. Despite the darkness, the sky made a decent backdrop for the broken line of rooftops across the narrow street. The buildings lay hard up against one another, allowing a determined man to make his way the length of the block by way of the roofs.

Bolan started at the corner, twisting his neck to see the building all the way on the left. One by one, he checked each roof, letting his gaze linger a minute or so. He didn't know what he was looking for, or even if there was anything to see, but there was no point in being careless.

He'd checked the first eight buildings without noticing anything out of place. The ninth, too, was still. His eyes were adjusted to the gloom, and the slight blue cast of the sky seemed brighter behind the stark black of the shadowy buildings. The tenth was almost directly across the street, offset by half its width. Like the others, it had a low parapet extending the front wall a couple of feet above the roof. But it, too, seemed lifeless.

A bright glare off to the left distracted him, and light washed up and over the storefronts as a vehicle entered the street a block away. It was moving slowly, and he was still unable to see it when the light went out for a moment, then flashed back on. Bolan moved to the edge of the window, trying to get a fix on the vehicle, but it seemed to have stopped on the far side of the cross street. The lights went out, and a door slammed.

For three minutes he heard nothing more. He went back to scanning the roof across the street. His eyes had to readjust after the brightness of the headlights. He thought he saw something that hadn't been there before, but he wasn't sure. Blinking to wash away the lingering effect of the light, he squeezed his lids down tight and held them there for ten or fifteen seconds.

When he looked back, the thing he'd seen was gone, if it had ever been there. Checking his watch, he realized he only had ten minutes before Carlos and Marisa were due to arrive. He inspected the next building and the next, then darted his eyes back to the eleventh. Something had moved, he was certain of it.