Don Pendleton - Whipsaw

He had been surprised not to have encountered an intersection, and grateful, too. Surprised because such tunnels usually snaked and interlaced in mazelike tangles, and grateful because this particular one did not. And he realized, too, that it was by design. Harding must have deliberately chosen a building giving access to a tunnel he could seal and control without attracting attention. That could only mean that Harding himself lay in wait at the end of this damp, murky passage.

Bolan shut off his light and stood still. The humming was much louder, but he still wasn't able to identify it. Turning on the light once more, he moved more quickly, watching the floor for another trap, but saw nothing. Then a heavy slam resounded through the tunnel, and shouting voices echoed off the clammy walls.

Bolan skidded to a halt and clicked off the light again. The noise intensified, as if a door had been opened somewhere on a room full of heavy machinery. Then, as suddenly as the first clap of thunder had come, the humming died, not fading away, but abruptly and completely cut off, as if something had been shut down.

A dim glow filtered to him now, but he could see nothing directly. He had to get closer, and he had to do it in the dark. Again relying on the wall to guide him, he inched forward, tensing his muscles, prepared to stop at the first sign of resistance to a poised foot. The voices continued to reverberate through the tunnel, and a spear of light slashed along the far wall from around a tight bend.

Heavy feet splashed in the water, and the light bounced up and down. Bolan flattened himself behind one of the steel pillars and pulled his Beretta out. He set it on single shot and held his breath.

From the sound of things, two or three men were in the tunnel and headed his way. He eased around the pillar and skipped to the next, just before the bend in the passage. The voices sharpened, and Bolan caught a scrap of conversation as he leaned into the wall.

"Son of a bitch is probably dead. Old Juano doesn't fuck around with them traps. One of the three should have worked. Bet we find a few hunks of raw meat and a pile of rock."

"No way. We would have heard something, man."

"Not necessarily. You can't hear shit with that fucking conveyor going."

"When's it going down, anyway?"

"The witching hour, babe. In the midnight hour. Cordero blows half the city in two hours, or some shit, and then we do our thing."

They were talking about him.

And they were in for a surprise.

Bolan held the flashlight in one hand, the Beretta in the other. He aimed the flashlight along the barrel of the deadly weapon and trained both on the bend in the tunnel, his thumb poised on the light switch.

The flashlight came into view first, but Bolan waited to get a look at the odds. Behind the man with the light, in the reflected backwash, he saw two more. All three were armed with AK-47's. None of them seemed overly concerned they might not be alone in the tunnel.

Bolan aimed carefully and fired once, taking the last man out first. The Beretta spat, an ugly little cough, and the slug plowed through flesh with a wet smack and broke bone with a sharp crack. The tail stumbled, his arms just shadows flailing at his chest, then he fell over, cracking his skull against the stone wall.

His companions didn't react at first, but the man with the light seemed to have sensed something. He swiveled back and swung the light around. The second man bumped into him and nearly tripped.

"Hey, Randy. What's with you?" The man with the light seemed confused. Bolan took his companion out with his second shot. The man staggered back under the impact of the 9 mm slug. He dropped to one knee, waving his arm wildly and trying to raise his rifle to shoot something he couldn't see.

The man with the light found Randy in his beam, and Bolan saw the bright blood smeared on the shirt front.

"What the?.." Then the light went out. Bolan heard footsteps, and he stepped away from the wall, clicking on his light at the same time. He picked out the running man instantly and fired just as the man started to shout. The slug slammed his skull forward, and an eerie geyser of blood and brain tissue spattered the far wall of the tunnel as the body fell away from under the gory cloud.

Bolan started forward, cautiously damping the light against his hip. He heard nothing but his own footsteps. Letting a little light seep out, he stopped beside Randy to snatch his AK and a spare clip. Bolan ignored the remaining two bodies, stepping over the dead man with the flashlight. The light had gone on when he fell, and it lay in the water, its broken lens flecked with blood, turning the water a pale ruby color until the tube filled and the light died out.

"Strike two, Mr. Harding," Bolan said grimly as he headed toward the pale well of light up ahead.

The huge block of bright light floated above him like a square sun. Bolan heard several voices, all echoing down through the opening from some cavernous building nearly twenty feet overhead. The tunnel itself took the jumble of sound and garbled it still further. He looked at his watch, and read the dimly lit numerals 11:00. He had an hour.

Starting up the steel ladder, he held the Kalashnikov in his right hand, holding on to the rungs above him with one hand. Halfway up, shadow spilled down into the tunnel for a moment, and he froze as someone in fatigues stood almost on the lip of the entrance, his back to the hole.

The man bellowed at someone, then moved away, and Bolan let his breath out with a soft sigh. It was like climbing up from the bowels of the earth to an unknown place he'd never been. Every step brought him closer to the light. Every step brought him closer to Charles Harding.

Or to sudden death.

Near the top, he crouched to bring his feet up another rung. The AK cracked against the ladder, but the deafening din above swallowed the tolling of the metal strut. Leaning back, he could see the top of a corrugated sheet metal wall. The ceiling looked to be nearly fifty feet overhead.

Craning his neck, he looked in the opposite direction, but that wall was too far away for him to see.

Bolan poked his head up over the floor. The warehouse was a jungle of steel shelving. A conveyor snaked through it like a stainless steel river, winding in and out among the shelves. Crates, easily recognizable as rifles and ammunition, sat in twos and threes on the silent, motionless conveyor, and pairs of men raced back and forth, lugging the crates to the open tailgates of a half-dozen trucks smeared in rippling camouflage patterns of greens, browns and black.

Waiting for the opportune moment, Bolan tested the spring in his legs and, when no one was looking, vaulted up onto the concrete floor. He ducked behind a stack of empty wooden crates, then wormed his way back away from the conveyor. It was almost impossible to gauge the number of men in the building. He needed a better vantage point.

High on the wall and about ten feet below the roof, a catwalk circled the building, and two others stretched from wall to wall, dividing the building into thirds. Another, made of the same metal slats, ran across the building at a right angle. At the center of each of the walls, a ladder climbed up to the catwalk. It was a hell of a choice, but there was no other.

Ducking under a branch of the serpentine conveyor, he moved through tall stacks of cartons and crates. He bent to crawl through a section of shelving bolted to the concrete floor, and crouched behind some crates stacked in an aisle. As near as he could tell, there must have been twenty men working the floor, and the vigilant top kick bellowing unintelligibly made twenty-one. So far, there was no sign of Harding or Cordero.

And unless they were there, it was pointless to take on a small army. The men scurrying around the floor were wheels going nowhere without the engine of Charles Harding to drive them. Bolan reached the far wall, which was draped in shadows from the towering stockpile and unlit by the fluorescent fixtures dangling directly overhead. Bolan moved along the wall, darting from stack to pile to stack.