Don Pendleton - Twisted Path

Raimondo held court on the opposite side of the compound. The kingpin had avoided Bolan for the past two days, carefully placing as much distance as possible between them. The occasional hate-filled glares Bolan intercepted told him that Raimondo certainly held a grudge.

The dealer's pride couldn't stomach being defeated, and Bolan guessed that he burned with anger when the other prisoners snickered at his bruised enforcers.

The soldier was way ahead of Raimondo on points, and everyone in the prison knew it. But Bolan read the guy as the kind who would always use a pawn to make the dangerous moves. The big man kept an eye on every move the other prisoners made, watched his back at all times. Except for Stone, Bolan distrusted the other inmates.

The warrior suspected there would be another confrontation soon, but in the meantime he was willing to lie low and not attract attention from the guards.

He didn't want to be particularly noticeable as he tried to figure a way out of the pen.

Stone was an enigma still. The old prisoner had refused to share his background. But Bolan noticed that in spite of his seeming weakness, the other prisoners treated the aging con with a courtesy that bordered on fear. This reaction was particularly noticeable in the Indians, who often refused even to look him in the eye.

Just then a man approached, giving the news that Libertad would see Bolan in an hour.

Bolan sat back to review his plans for the meeting, just as he would have checked his firepower before a hit. This might be his only chance to score some information from the Shining Path, and the only weapon he could use was his brain.

He had better make sure it was loaded.

Bolan strode between two brawny Indians, who stood, arms crossed, at the head of the corridor that led deep into the prison, into the pavilion controlled by the Shining Path. They pretended not to notice his passage. He marched down a corridor similar to those in the main section of the prison. However, here each of the cells held only a bare cot, a small chest, a desk and a lamp. None was screened, and all were empty. Several were scored with bullet holes.

The residents were gathered in an inner courtyard, facing toward a massive thirty-foot banner, which showed a bespectacled, round-faced man in a jacket and open shirt towering above a vast army of peasants carrying rifles and pitchforks. In his left hand he grasped a book written by Marx, while the right held a red banner inscribed with the Communist crossed hammer and sickle.

Below the banner a tall man with a hatchet nose conducted the other captured guerrillas in revolutionary songs.

"The masses roar, the Andes shake," burst from three dozen throats. "We will transform the dingy dungeons into shining trenches of combat."

Bolan noticed that there were no guards in sight.

Blackened walls pockmarked with hundreds of large and small craters in the stone confirmed that this area had seen some heavy combat.

He waited, watching the crowd as they shouted their slogans. There was no lack of fanaticism among these terrorists. Their eyes glowed with the burning light of true believers. In the name of twisted principles, these men justified every crime conceivable. For every objection, there was a ready answer to be found in the writings of their leader, Gonzalo.

These men no longer needed a conscience, no longer had room for one. Killing and dying had been reduced to a simple rule: follow orders for the greater good of the cause.

This fanaticism made them extremely dangerous. Killers hired for a paycheck would run if there was a way out. The Shining Path would embrace the chance to die as a noble sacrifice.

Bolan planned to give a lot of them that chance.

He had never understood this willingness to suspend thinking and judgment, to live by a formula. He lived large, and if he broke some of society's rules, well so be it. Bolan answered to no other man, and he had no need to be forgiven. He lived by a stiff moral code, but it was his own, not something that he had read in a book, or that someone else had told him to believe in.

The Executioner was prepared to kill or to die.

For his own reasons.

The chanting ended, and the leader hopped off the platform and walked across the hard-packed earth to Bolan. The followers dispersed in silence.

"I am Libertad. Why did you wish to see me?"

A hard man, Bolan judged, as he scrutinized the Peruvian. Libertad seemed accustomed to giving orders and not wasting time on small talk.

"I have something for the Shining Path. Weapons. Cases and cases of American arms."

"What concern are weapons to us here, inside this prison? I can do nothing about anything you might have for sale." Bolan recognised interest in the tall Indian by the way in which the other man stiffened slightly at the mention of the arms.

Bolan continued, adopting the manner he thought would be appropriate to a tough death dealer interested in profit alone. "I'm sure you have some means of communicating back and forth with your superiors outside. You can tell them that I can supply all their needs in future. The down payment is a load that another merchant called Carrillo was going to deliver. His plans have changed, and he won't be doing any further business with you. So I'll deliver in his place, and as a special introductory offer, it will only be half the normal price."

"That does not sound reasonable, a capitalist such as yourself taking a low price. What is this shipment? What do you have to gain?" Libertad was testing him, wary of entrapment.

"Your boss will know all about the delivery, and I'll bet he's already made plans for it. I'm sure there will be some disappointed faces if it doesn't turn up. And it won't without me." The soldier watched Libertad for any sign of reaction, but the man was inscrutable. "As for the price, let's just say I got the merchandise at a very big discount. Besides, there's one catch I haven't mentioned. You have to find some way to get me out of here. Either I deliver the arms personally or you don't get them at all." Bolan tried to look nonchalant as Libertad considered. This was the trickiest part of his sell job.

If the Shining Path balked at this, he was on his own, and no further ahead than he had been before.

Libertad had no intention of handing Bolan an easy victory. "Why should we deal with you at all? There must be hundreds of other possible suppliers anxious to sell us what we wish. Anyway, getting you out is impossible."

The warrior was sure he had the terrorist hooked. The only problem was to haggle over the price. "In case you think otherwise, you don't find black market arms dealers in the telephone book. Besides, you've already paid for part of the shipment in advance."

"Still, getting you out would be a service worth a reward."

"Now that you mention it, I'm prepared to agree. Two cases of SAW machine guns as a bonus."

"Ten. With ammunition."

Bolan rubbed his chin as though mulling over the terms. He was willing to promise anything, since he didn't intend to deliver a single bullet.

"Agreed." Bolan sighed.

Libertad still tried to sound as if he wasn't buying any of it. "How do I know that you have the weapons at all?"

"Simple," Bolan said, reaching for a piece of paper in his back pocket. "Go to this address and follow these instructions. In return you will get a case of M-16's. Besides, when I go with them to pick up the remainder, if I'm fooling you, then you can have me killed."

Bolan could imagine what Libertad was thinking.

A perfect opportunity to grab the guns without paying. No trouble. And no witnesses. Right now Bolan was hoping that Kline had followed his instructions to the letter. If he had, there would be a specially prepared case of M-16's waiting and everything would be cool. Otherwise.