Don Pendleton - Twisted Path

Screened behind the door, the surviving terrorist screamed in anger, loosing off the last rounds in his captured SMG. A lucky shot caught one of the crouching troopers in the bridge of his nose, turning the face into an unrecognisable red mass.

Three steps from the car, as he made his break, the gunner paid his own price, dancing an awkward two-step under the impact of a dozen bullets.

Bolan and the others saw the carnage up ahead.

The driver hesitated, slowing as though he were planning to stop. Bolan shouted instructions at him, telling him to veer to the right, up a low embankment and into the field beyond.

The driver looked at Libertad, who silently nodded.

There was a danger, of course a good commander might have mined the shoulder or stationed more troops in the dead ground beyond the slight incline. But Bolan was betting that whoever was on the other side wasn't very smart. Certainly the execution and placement of the ambush didn't show a very high level of training in the Peruvian army.

The terrorist floored the gas pedal, and the light car shot up the embankment and came down hard on the other side. There was the sound of tortured metal, and the car lost power. Bolan guessed that they had popped the differential. The men piled out, clutching what guns they had.

The car behind them climbed the slope at an angle, and flipped onto its side as it rocketed over under full power. It slid twenty feet through the high grass before coming to rest, the right fender buried in the dirt. The two doors on the exposed side sprang open and three men climbed out, including Stone. The others weren't going anywhere but to a graveyard.

The terrorists began to run for the hills, pushing their way through the stringy, pale grass. There weren't any other places to hide.

Bolan ran up to Libertad. "I want a gun," he demanded. The terrorist leader had taken the Colt Python as soon as they had reached safety after the breakout. It was holstered around his waist now.

Libertad glared at him. "I don't think you can be trusted."

"You know I can use it. Or would you prefer the army to catch you?"

Libertad made a quick decision and stopped in his tracks. He unbuckled the holster and dangled it in front of Bolan. "So glad that you have recovered from the soroche. All right. Use it. Hold them off, and we'll meet you up ahead. Stone will be with us."

Bolan grabbed the belt. He had heard the mocking challenge in Libertad's voice, as well as the implied threat: run away and Stone dies.

"Get the hell out of here. They're right behind."

Libertad ran off, leaving a trail as defined as though a herd of elephants had trampled through.

Bolan wasted no time. The warrior edged away from the trail and placed himself behind a scrawny tree thirty feet from the trail. From the shouts in the near distance, the Executioner knew he wouldn't have long to wait.

The Peruvian troops were advertising their presence by their poor discipline. The point man appeared, trotting slowly down the broad trail left by the fleeing terrorists. About twenty men were following single file, with an officer in the middle of the troops.

Bolan let the first man get twenty feet beyond the tree position before he began to fire as rapidly as he could. Given his limited amount of ammunition, he would have to hit hard and slip away before the soldiers could organize resistance. He was badly outnumbered and outgunned, and would be in grave danger in a protracted firelight.

The gun barked, and the point man toppled forward, a bullet lodged in the base of his skull. The second man, much too close to the leader, took a round in the upper spine and crashed onto the point's dirty boots.

The Executioner caught three more with hammer blows from the Python, the soldiers too stupid to take cover when the lead began to fly and men began to die.

He sighted on the lieutenant, who was madly blowing his whistle and trying to rally his squad. At this point most of his men had wisely dived into the high grass and were scurrying back to the road.

Bolan stopped the annoying whistle sounds with a .357 stinger that caught the oficer on the chin, crushing jaw and teeth before ripping into his larynx.

The lieutenant breathed his last, a red foam soaking his drab uniform.

The remaining troops scattered. They pounded through the pampas to the safety of their vehicles, where they could form a defense perimeter and would be safe from attack by what seemed like a superior force.

Bolan paused to reload the Python, using the last of the bullets on the gun belt. Then he set to the grim task of stripping the dead Peruvians of anything useful.

Rifling dead bodies wasn't a task that Bolan enjoyed, but he always did what was necessary to survive. In this case, he wanted to form a small-arms cache for later use. He had no real plan on how to put the hit on the Path at present, and it would be wise to accumulate a stash of weapons in case he found himself in the vicinity again.

Two of the crumpled bodies held Walther 9 mm MP-K submachine guns. The ugly little brutes looked like machine pistols with a light stock added and fed on 32-round box magazines. The other three had held 5.56 mm SG-541 assault rifles. The transparent magazines on each showed full.

Bolan was surprised at the quality of the weapons. The Peruvians had had good tools, but they hadn't known how to use them. The dead soldiers had served as an example of a theory of Bolan's, that there were very few dangerous weapons, but there were dangerous men. And such a man, even completely unarmed, was still a force to be feared.

The warrior placed the guns in a hollow tree trunk that he discovered rotting away some fifty yards from the trail. It wasn't the best hiding spot, but it was the only one that presented itself under the circumstances. With luck, the guns and extra ammo would remain undisturbed until he was able to get back to them.

Bolan started up the trail, taking his time. He was conserving his energy in the high altitude, still not one hundred percent after his bout of soroche. He was certainly in no hurry to rejoin the terrorists.

After a half hour walk he was nearly at the base of a jagged cliff, a sheer rock face that rose two hundred feet before giving way to scrubby grass and stunted trees. The ground underfoot was rough and broken, with patches of rock poking through the thin topsoil.

There was no sign of Stone or the terrorists.

Bolan retraced his steps, looking for a fork in the trail that he might have missed. He spent twenty minutes searching, going back to the last visible remnants of the trail and then casting outward. It was as though the terrorists had sprouted wings and flown off. They had vanished without a trace.

He took a seat on a flat rock for a moment to consider his next move. Then he went back to the area where the trail ended and searched once more, carefully examining every inch of dirt and each blade of the stringy grass. He spotted a three-inch rusted iron T-bar barely above ground level. He reached down and heaved. Nothing happened. Bolan walked around to the T-bar and tried again.

A section of grass covering a trapdoor swung back. He found himself staring into the barrel of Libertad's Walther.

"Good morning, Blanski. I wondered if I would see you again." From his tone, it was hard to tell if Libertad was disappointed or pleased that Bolan had made it back.

Bolan grimaced as Libertad motioned for him to climb down the rickety ladder that led to an underground tunnel system. The Path had taken a page from the Vietcong combat manual, going subsoil like moles, like rats in a sewer.

Bolan wasn't fond of tunnels.

Antonia de Vincenzo was slowly working herself into a frenzy, raw nerves rubbing on one another as every hour ticked slowly past.