Don Pendleton - Twisted Path

His adversary hadn't given up yet. Bolan could hear him breathing just inches away.

A fan of air brushed Bolan's right ear the killer was trying to kick Bolan off his precarious perch and send him for a long jump into nothingness.

The heavy boot sailed by Bolan's ear once more, but this time the warrior was ready. He shot his hand forward, gripping the ankle in a viselike grip, and yanked hard.

With an unintelligible curse, the overbalanced terrorist toppled into the pit. At the last second the guy made a desperate move, grabbing Bolan around the knees and holding on for dear life.

Bolan shook himself as hard as he dared. He rocked back and forth, trying to bang the guy into the wall or scrape him off against the side.

But the desperate man clung to Bolan like a barnacle attached to a ship. And the Executioner's arms were getting tired. Already his shoulders were screaming, the joints stretched by the double weight on the sockets. His ribs, injured only a few days ago, were sending jets of agony coursing through his body.

He couldn't swing a leg up as long as the terrified hitter below gripped them like a living rope. Carefully Bolan removed his right arm from the edge and powered a rocklike fist repeatedly onto the top of the Peruvian's head.

The gunner's death grip didn't loosen he completely ignored the hammer blows raining on him, too terrified to fight back or make any move to protect himself. Bolan's fist rocketed down once more.

One time too many. Bolan's arm slipped from the edge. His hands searched frantically for a crevice, for the smallest finger hold to halt his slide.

He fell into the pit.

Screeching, the Peruvian finally let go.

The two men tumbled through the blackness, heading for the bottom.

After he had listened to the pounding footsteps fade away in the distance, Libertad lifted himself carefully from the stone, assured that all danger was now passed.

"Up, you cowards," he shouted, moving to retrieve the fallen light.

Three men responded, two of his men and Stone, as he saw by shining the light in their faces.

Libertad began to examine the bodies crumpled on the red-pooled, sticky floor. Most of them were clearly dead, with massive injuries caused by the high-velocity rounds.

One was unconscious but still breathing, although with every breath bright red blood bubbled from a large hole in his right side, adding to the splotchy stain creeping over his shirt.

The terrorist leader called Stone over, but the American just shook his head and turned away.

Libertad grunted with frustration. This was hardly going to be the triumphant return that he had planned. Instead of bringing back a sizable force along with a useful Yankee, he would go creeping back with two men and Stone. What a plague of bad luck had befallen him.

He moved to where the assassin lay. He had heard the fight between Blanski and the hidden gunman, but had not interfered. What would have been the point? He would have only succeeded in getting himself shot.

Even now, either Blanski was alive, in which case he would be found wandering in the underground complex, or he was dead. Then he would be no further trouble. Either way, he wasn't worth worrying about right now. There were more pressing matters for Libertad's attention, such as figuring out who had planned to have him killed.

More specifically, what member of the Shining Path had sought to have him obliterated and left to be forgotten somewhere in the underground caverns?

He directed the light onto the twisted face of the assassin. The neck jutted at an odd angle, and the mouth was open in a final snarl, the tongue sticking out of one side. Libertad wasn't bothered by the sight; he had had too much combat experience to be disturbed by death.

He kicked the body in the side several times, the dead man sliding along the smooth stones with every impact. He stopped when his foot became sore, some of his anger vented on the unresisting corpse.

"Does anyone recognise him?" he demanded of his men.

Each shook his head in denial. "He looks slightly familiar, but I couldn't tell you his name," commented one man.

Useless offal, Libertad thought. There was only one way to find out who this creature had been. He reached for his knife.

The terrorists prepared to leave, gathering the weapons scattered among the bodies. At least now they had three lights, since each of the assassins had brought a powerful flashlight.

"What about the wounded man?" Stone asked as they prepared to leave.

"What about him?" Libertad answered.

"You're not going to leave him here, are you? He's still alive, you know."

"Yes, he's alive. But he will be dead soon, and we both know it. Should we carry him along? For what purpose should we tire ourselves, since he will either die as we travel or at our camp? When we arrive at our base, we would not expend any of our few and precious medicines on someone who will not recover. As it is, he is a brave martyour for our cause and will die a happy man."

Stone was astonished at the cold-blooded analysis of the value of the fallen man. "But... he is still alive!" Stone couldn't think of an argument to use, although he knew that Libertad must be wrong.

Libertad didn't answer immediately and appeared to be thinking. Abruptly he took two long steps to the injured man. With a swift motion, he unsheathed his knife and plunged it into the prone man's ribs below the heart. The body shuddered once and lay still.

Libertad wiped his knife on the dead man's pants and leathered the knife. "Now he's not. Are you satisfied? Let's go." Stone followed, casting a backward glance at the fallen men, already vanished in the shadows.

In a few minutes they came to a pit in the corridor floor. One of the men pointed to some drying red streaks at the edge of the hole.

The four men gathered at the edge of the vertical shaft, shining the lights far down the rock walls.

No bottom appeared in the beams.

"I don't think we will be seeing Blanski again," Libertad commented as each mentally reconstructed what must have happened here the unseen pit, a frantic last effort and a final fall. Very final.

"Why don't we throw this other American after him?" suggested one of the terrorists. "Let all Yankees rot in the darkness, I say."

Libertad shook his head, although the prospect was attractive. He was in a black mood, having lost the major prize, the reason why they had been brought from Lurigancho. He felt like killing something, and Stone would be a satisfying sacrifice.

But duty was more important than pleasure. And anyway, he might still have an opportunity to cut out Stone's heart at some later date.

"No. He may still have some value to us as a healer, untrained though he is. He does have some small skill with plants and herbs. We will keep him alive until we are told otherwise."

"And I hope that it is soon," said one, a dull-looking squat lump of a man, waving his knife under Stone's chin.

Stone suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia for Lurigancho.

That's when he realized how much he missed Blanski.

Bolan awoke. At least he thought he was awake. He couldn't see, even though his eyes were open.

Gradually, as though he were waking from a long and horrible dream, the past few hours came back to him. He remembered the fall, the Peruvian shrieking, the helpless fear of falling washing over him as he dropped in the absolute blackness.

Then he hit, landing directly onto the Peruvian's chest before rolling to the granite floor.

He must have smashed his head, for the hair on the left side of his scalp was matted and caked with dried blood.

As awareness returned, he felt racked with pain: his head hurt, his muscles ached as though he had had a close encounter with a steamroller, and his throat felt as if he had swallowed a sandbox.