Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

"But you need me to guide you..."

"I'll do without."

"You're crazy!"

"Maybe. But I don't think so. I've just gotten a little insight into Harding."

"What're you thinking?"

"I'm thinking Harding has set this up so there's only one way we can go. Because he wants us some place in particular. I'm also thinking that he's counting on our using the darkness to cover our approach. Which means..."

"Which means he may have boobytrapped the tunnels, right?"

"Right. He's assuming we won't use the light. Just like at the camp he didn't post sentries because he assumed the electronics were enough. He was wrong and he knows it. But this time he's set us loose in a maze, there's only one way out, and that's over him. If we get that far, and he's betting we won't."

"How can you be sure?"

"I can't, not completely. But it's typical of his arrogance. It's the kind of thing he would do. Sit back and smile while the rats walk right into the meat grinder."

"Only we're not rats."

"He doesn't see that difference."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then at least you'll be able to help Carlos explain what's going on. Disarming whatever bombs have been planted is treating the symptom. But Harding's the disease. He has to be cut out, like a cancer."

"And you're the surgeon, eh, Mr. Belasko?"

"In a way."

"I think you're wrong. Dead wrong."

"No arguments, Marisa. Just do what I tell you."

"Which is?"

"Turn back..."

"And if I say no?"

Bolan didn't answer, only looked at her steadily. Marisa swayed on her feet a moment, as if her balance had been thrown momentarily out of kilter.

Then, without a word she turned and started back the way they'd come. Bolan watched her go for a minute, her left hand lightly tracing the wall, her feet splashing softly in the water.

Turning away, Bolan played the light down the tunnel until it fell away in a gloom too deep for it to plumb. The rippling water underfoot caught the light and splashed little slivers of white and silver on the wall.

He started off quickly, but using the light to good advantage. He hadn't gone more than twenty yards before he found the first booby trap. A tiny strand of nylon, almost invisible even with the light, ran across the tunnel. He tracked it up the wall to a pair of claymores barely concealed in crevices in the tunnel roof. Either one would have been enough to kill him and bury him at the same time. The pair of them would have reduced his body to ground beef, then pressed the last drop of blood out of every ounce under the crushing weight of the collapsed ceiling.

Bolan nodded grimly.

Strike one, Charlie-boy, he thought.

The tunnel made a sharp left, and Bolan realized he was heading toward the waterfront. The character of the passage changed, and the smooth stone gave way to rough brick. Water trickled down the walls from the storm drains above him, and there was a scurrying that preceded him, always just out of reach of the flashlight.

He found the second trap about a hundred feet after the turn. Again it was a simple contrivance of nylon trip wire and a pair of claymores. He snipped the wire and left the mines in place.

Disarming them was a problem for someone else.

Bolan shut off the light for a minute and paused to listen. The gurgle of running water sounded almost peaceful. But another sound, one he couldn't identify, whispered out of the darkness far ahead of him.

Faint, and echoing slightly in the tight confines of the passage, it was a hum with a rough edge, as if a million bees lurked at the end of the tunnel.

He flipped the light back on and moved more swiftly. A slap behind him spun him around, and he swept the light around but could find nothing.

With a shrug he turned back and pushed on. The floor of the passage canted slightly downhill to carry the runoff from Manila's heavy tropical rains.

Judging by the walls, which were relatively clean almost halfway up, but then more thickly overgrown with pale green and grey lichens, the surge at flood must be fairly powerful. It seemed to have scoured the lower half and kept the floor almost free of litter. Without really thinking about it, he wondered for a moment when the rainy season started.

He almost missed the third trap. His gaze was drawn a few paces ahead. Something about the floor that didn't look quite right. He approached it cautiously, dropping into a crouch and training the flashlight on a metal plate running the width of the floor.

From ten feet away, the encrusted metal looked as if it had been there forever. A closer look revealed a few shiny scratches, bright metal where none should have been, that reflected the light, winking as the half inch of water ran over it, rippling a little as it passed over the thick lip of rusty steel. With a combat knife, he worked the plate up, taking care not to let it slip back. Obviously designed to respond to pressure, the device would be harmless unless he lost his grip and dropped the plate back into place.

It was almost six feet long and eighteen inches wide. When it swung open, Bolan jerked it by one end, twisting the other back away from the crevice it concealed. Training the light into the smooth pool of water, he spotted a slab of C-4 plastique in a clear plastic container sealed with waterproof tape. The bomb nestled comfortably down among a cluster of pipes that ran through the floor and disappeared under the wall on either side. Three pressure detonators, sprouting wires running to the plastique, were held in place by a twist of copper wire bound to the topmost pipe.

Around each, a tight spring, resistant enough to support only the plate, waited for a careless foot to spurt electricity into the small detonator clearly visible through the transparent plastic. Had Bolan stepped on the plate in the dark, he'd have been quivering jelly oozing down the wall in nanoseconds.

Cordero's handiwork, Bolan thought.

He wondered what kind of nerve it took for a man to hunch down over that lethal package, knowing that a single mistake would blow him to pieces. But it was a peculiar courage that enabled one to take such risks, only to slaughter innocent people by the hundreds.

Carefully Bolan severed the gleaming copper holding each spring trigger in place and let all three sink into the water and out of sight. He stepped over the trench, looking back at it for a moment, then shaking his head. That one had been too close.

Harding had upped the ante. I must be getting close, Bolan thought.

Bolan knew he'd been lucky that time. And he knew a man had only so much luck. He'd long since exhausted his allotment, but at the moment it was his only ally.

The tunnel started a gentle curve to the right and sloped more sharply downward. His feet started to slip on the damp stone underfoot, and he braced himself against the wall with one hand. Holding the torch in his injured hand, he tried to keep his balance without losing the slender security of the light. The floor levered out after fifty yards or so, and he was grateful for the reprieve.

Carlos had given him his M-16, and he slipped it off his shoulder, carrying it with his finger through the trigger guard and the safety off. Every now and then the spare magazines in his pocket clicked together with a sharp snap, and he shifted one to the other side. He knew only too well that his situation was too precarious to let something like that make the difference between living and dying.

The character of the walls began to change now. In addition to the massive stonework, massive steel beams stabbed down into the ground on either side.

Others, just as sturdy, bridged the paired beams.

Bolan realised that the nature of the city above him had changed. Heavy weight, too heavy to rely just on stone and mortar, pressed down on the tunnel. He must have come nearly to the waterfront now, with its huge warehouses, some of them full of newly unloaded cargo and others, abandoned, lying empty and lifeless as bleached skulls on a desert floor.