Don Pendleton - Twisted Path

The tinkling came from a small drainage ditch, a narrow channel beside a broad corridor, as Bolan discovered when he put his foot into it. He dropped to his knees and cautiously sampled the water, relieved to find it sweet and pure.

The big man drank his fill and started on his way again, this time following the small rivulet upstream. He guessed that if he found the source of the water, he might very well find a way out of the labyrinth.

Bolan walked a seemingly endless distance, feet aching in his poorly constructed prison shoes.

He didn't notice any incline at all. The slope upward had to have been very shallow, with only a gradual rise to ground level.

Suddenly the stream dipped underground into a hole too narrow to accommodate more than Bolan's head, leaving him without a guide. The path forked at this point, as he determined by groping a narrow column of rock that divided the tunnel. He paced a short way up each corridor before trying his luck. The left trail appeared to climb, while the track to the right continued straight ahead.

After filling his water pouch Bolan chose the left fork, preferring to continue to climb. He wanted out as soon as possible, and the passageway to the right might continue for another hundred miles, for all he knew.

He began to regret his decision when the corridor began to shrink. Soon he was ducking his head to avoid a low ceiling, while the width had narrowed to the point where the sides brushed his shoulders.

A few minutes later, Bolan ran into another dead end. However, as he determined from feeling the area ahead of him, this was a very different tunnel end.

The other corridor had simply stopped, unfinished, as though the workmen had quit for the day once upon a time, and had never returned to complete their tasks. This path ended in a fiat, smooth-finished surface.

Bolan hammered a clenched fist on the wall.

The vibrations didn't feel as though there were solid rock ahead. He shoved, hard. Nothing happened.

He moved to the extreme left and tried again.

With a groan from a hinge that probably hadn't budged in five hundred years, the rock moved two inches, swinging back like a door. He could see a faint light through the crack, although to his dilated pupils it seemed so dazzling that he had to shut them. Another energised push opened the rock wall a foot more, and Bolan squeezed through.

He opened his eyes gradually, peering through narrow slits until he became accustomed to the light.

Bolan observed that he was in the lower level of some tall structure, with a large opening like an atrium extending far above him. A stairway angled upward, folding back and forth on itself as it headed for an opening above. A soft amber tinged light streamed down, catching motes of dust and small flying insects in its beam.

The ground was covered with pots of various sizes, some intact and some reduced to shards, which probably had contained gifts of some kind to the gods. Bolan tried to remember if the Incas had practiced human sacrifice the way the Aztecs to the north commonly had.

For a brief moment he imagined this as the site of an ancient and barbaric ritual, captives stretched on an altar at the top of the pyramid, while priests cut open the victims' chests and ripped out the still beating hearts. Possibly the hearts had rested in those decayed jars.

Bolan began to climb, anxious to reach the sunlight, careful of his footing on the disused stairway. He breathed deeply, savoring the fresh air after the stale and uncirculated air of the maze.

The stairs turned several times before Bolan reached the final landing, where he found himself in a small rectangular structure open on one long side.

Flaking paintings adorned each wall. He poked his head out cautiously.

He was on the top of a high temple in the middle of a ruined city. A steep set of stairs led to the ground, with the top step flanked by two snarling stone jaguar heads. Several hundred yards away, another pyramid faced him, almost completely hidden beneath a green mantle of vines and mold. A level area between the two large structures was dotted with fallen columns and altars. All around the temple, stone houses stood open to the sky, thatched roofs long since withered into dust.

Beyond the ruined village, a high ring of jagged hills encircled the valley. At one time, a road must have meandered over one of the clefts between the peaks, but the trail was invisible beneath the underbrush that had overgrown the site.

The sun was setting to his left, but the rays were still strong enough to show several men standing by a cave mouth half a mile away. Several more openings pockmarked the hills in the same vicinity.

Bolan had just found the lair of the Shining Path.

It wouldn't be long before the scorpions hiding among the rocks got a surprise visit from the Executioner.

It was going to be quite a party.

Libertad hurried from the interrogation chamber to report to the council on the latest information he had obtained from his victim. With the assistance of skilled torturers, he had been able to break Antonia's will.

He felt a momentary pang for Antonia. Like any woman, she had been vain about her beauty.

She had been the kind of woman who made heads turn, even among the brotherhood.

No one would ever call her beautiful again.

Marxist doctrine taught that torture was undignified both for the questioner, as well as the victim and that it should be done only as a last resort against the most unrepentant enemies of the people.

But Libertad had to admit that he enjoyed it, and that every scream reinforced his own sense of power and strength. The more helpless the victim, the more savage the punishment, the greater the terror and pain, the more pleasure he felt.

Antonia had given him immense satisfaction.

He wondered if he had finally found his true calling.

Libertad was ushered in immediately to see the council.

He had the impression that none of them ever moved, since each time he had made a progress report, they were seated exactly as he had left them the time before.

"Report," the chairman commanded.

"Comrade, she has broken completely. She has already confessed that the ambush was set up to prevent the American, Blanski, from informing us that she had murdered her employer, Carrillo. We have now learned the motive behind the murder." Libertad paused theatrically, waiting to be prompted. Instead the councillors simply stared at him. "She has stated that she has been in contact with a high government official General Arturo Palma, chief commander of the Peruvian Military Police!"

The council members exchanged puzzled glances.

It was known that Palma was an avowed enemy of the Shining Path. If Antonia had been passing secrets to him, why was this base still in operation?

"Has she explained why?" the chairman inquired.

"She claims that Palma's goals are the same as the Shining Path's in the short run. He wishes to destabilise the state so that he can seize power with a military coup. Only then will the General hunt us down. For now, he is content to aid our struggle through access to armaments and information."

"And how much has she told him about our operations? How much has she revealed?" Libertad shrugged.

"Nothing, she says. Supposedly the general was not interested in pumping her for information, since he had no intention of aiding his colleagues in smashing the movement."

"She was questioned thoroughly?" another member asked.

"Yes. Very thoroughly." Libertad smiled to himself at the memories.

"Question her some more," the chairman decided. "Do not hurry, but make sure that you learn everything there is to know. And if she is still alive when you are finished, then kill her. Slowly. The Shining Path has no room for traitors."