Twisted Path (15 page)

Now he had been delivered from prison by the Shining Path, had risen like a vampire from his coffin, to torment her thoughts and bring disaster to her plans and her future.

Only a few hours after the first word about Blanski, Libertad had phoned for permission to bring the arms merchant to their secret encampment.

Alarm bells had trilled in her head, warning of the consequences to her if Blanski was brought to the hidden installation. Antonia had urged the governing council not to grant the request and not to let an outsider into their secure fortress. Unfortunately for her, she had been dismissed out of hand.

She was afraid she had run out of alternatives. It was she or Blanski.

Only one of them could live.

The irony of the situation struck her. If it hadn't been for the efforts of the Shining Path, Blanski would still be rot tiny in a bug-infested wormhole in Lima.

Now her confederates had brought the man to within a few miles.

Until the day Blanski had arrived in Peru, Antonia had never even heard his name. Now his very existence was driving her to desperate measures that she never could have contemplated if she had not been placed in a vise of pressure. Every minute that crawled tortoise-like along her watch face tightened the noose around her neck.

There was one escape from the trap. She would have to prevent Blanski from ever reaching the base. And there couldn't be any witnesses left to point the finger of accusation in her direction.

She couldn't do the job herself. In her present position, she couldn't leave the base even for a few minutes. It was too likely that her absence would be noticed, and that risk was unacceptable. The solution she had in mind would take care of any loose ends, yet not require her presence.

There were only two people in the base that she could rely on to carry out her instructions.

She had known Federico and Paulo since childhood. Unlike most of the Indians, they both liked her and obeyed her. And lusted after her, if the way that they watched her was any guide to their desires.

When one or both of them were in Lima, they conducted clandestine missions together, small and secretive things. They had planted bombs in elevators, gas stations, fancy stores. Where the bombs exploded or how much destruction they achieved was unimportant. All that mattered was that the authorities were surprised and that the citizens were fearful that the next place they visited might be the site of the next blast.

Fear was the object and the body count only a byproduct of their tactics.

The two Indians had fallen under her sway gradually and now looked to her for instruction and reward, as a well-trained dog looks to its mistress.

She took them to a deserted rest area where they would not be overheard. "Listen carefully," she began. "You must do something very, very important for me. I want you to kill an American."

The two men broke into smiles. Neither had killed an American before, at least not knowingly. This would be something to look forward to.

"He will be coming down the trail from the highway. You must kill him and make sure that the body is never found."

Antonia could not be sure that Libertad would take that route into the headquarters, since there were several entrances. However, she could only cover one way in, and that trail was the most likely choice for someone traveling by truck from Ayacucho.

"But there is one more thing. There can't be any witnesses. No one must be left alive to tell about you killing the American. Is that clear?" Apparently not, from the puzzled expressions.

"Who will these witnesses be?" Paulo asked.

"They are brothers, but they are traitors. I give you my word on it."

Both of the young men looked aghast. They had killed often, but never before their own men.

"Traitors?"

"Yes, they are." Antonia was exerting all her charisma to sway them and banish the doubt in their tiny minds. "But only I know it. You must not tell the others about this. Not now. Not ever. Do you promise?"

They both promised, although reluctantly.

Antonia decided that she had better watch them carefully until this particular incident had blown over. They had agreed for now, but she wasn't sure they could keep silent about the executions over the long run.

It was a terrible world when you couldn't trust anyone anymore, she reflected as she watched them walk toward the highway tunnel.

Later, she would have to kill them both.

The going was tough in the underground tunnel. Bolan crawled along on bruised hands and knees, a slow, tedious journey only faintly illuminated by a miner's helmet perched on Libertad's head.

The terrorist leader was far ahead, and at times Bolan was plunged into absolute blackness when the small lamp that was the only source of light disappeared around a corner of the twisting horizontal shaft.

The ground below him was hard and uneven.

At times a rock, invisible in the gloom, would score his face or limbs. The darkness was oppressive, as forbidding as midnight in a graveyard, the silence broken only by the labored breathing of the gang members in the thin air. There was a foul smell to the tunnel, wet and sickly, like the air trapped in a long-disused crypt. Occasionally something would crunch under his palm, a squashed bug dying stickily on his fingers. Sweat dripped into his eyes, already sore and strained from peering into the murk.

He had no way to estimate the length of time he had been traveling underground. His watch had disappeared long ago into the slippery hands of one of the policemen in Carrillo's office. He only knew that the monotonous motion had made his legs feel like lead bars and his arms like jelly.

At last a faint light shimmered an indeterminate distance in front, growing more distinct with every passing minute.

After another hundred yards of laborious creeping, the dirt passage ended. The warrior found, when he emerged from the shaft, that he was in an underground passageway six feet wide and eight feet high, edged with stone. Bolan noticed that the stones were so exactly cut that they fit together without mortar. The passage ran ruler-straight as far as he could see in both directions.

He began to stretch, working out the kinks that had numbed every muscle that hadn't been overworked to the point of collapse.

Bolan knew without a moment's hesitation that this superbly constructed passage hadn't been built by the Shining Path. An aura of age emanated from the walls, as nearly perfect as when the stones were carefully fitted together. He couldn't guess how long ago that had been.

"You see, American, that we Indians have not always been ignorant savages." Libertad was anxious to boast to him of the accomplishments of his forefathers. "Hundreds of years ago, maybe thousands, my ancestors built this. If it had not been for the coming of the European monsters, those savages who destroyed our homes and our civilization, who knows what heights we would have achieved! And one day, there will be a new Inca empire to amaze an admiring world. Yes, the Republic of New Democracy will provide a shining example of justice to the masses, a model of a new and better life."

"Yeah, a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here. All I know, amigo, is that you're going to need lots of guns to bring the other side around to your way of thinking. So how about getting us out of here so I can do some dealing? I don't like running around underground like some kind of South American gopher." That shut up Libertad, and the Peruvian stalked off, muttering to himself. A ferocious glare in the man's eye told Bolan how much Libertad was looking forward to executing him.

The labyrinth explained a lot to Bolan. It told him how the Path was able to operate with relative impunity in an area overrun with combat troops. Somehow, they had discovered a network of tunnels that might honeycomb the whole region, allowing them to come and go unseen. And as had just been demonstrated to Bolan, the shafts provided a ready escape route, allowing the revolutionaries to vanish when the pursuit got too hot. The terrorists had evidently dug a few crude exits from the ancient and more elaborate Inca passageways to give them some alternate escape routes.

When Libertad gave the light to an underling and set the small group on their way after a short rest, Bolan sought out Stone. They conversed in low voices as they walked down the straight corridor, their boot heels echoing on the granite floor.

"I'm surprised to find this here," Bolan began. "I would have thought that something this extensive would be well-known."

"It's not so astonishing as you might think," Stone explained. "The locals aren't very responsive to outsiders, as you may have guessed. And this area isn't really that well explored. The army is lazy and won't venture far from the highway or its base camps. So, if no one suspects these tunnels are here, then no one is going to look for them."

"What about archaeologists or treasure hunters?"

"In the first place, this is a big country, almost the size of Alaska, with about a quarter of it covered by the Andes. There are a lot of sights that are very well-known and easy to get to that have yet to be explored because of lack of funds. Most of the current work is going on near Cuzco, the Inca capital. And second, this has become a very dangerous place to work which you already know. Neither the army nor the Shining Path care much for gringos. And finally, if a treasure hunter had found this place, he wouldn't be too likely to tell anyone else. So, the terrorists are pretty safe."

One of the guards overheard them talking and came over to force them apart, leaving Bolan alone with his thoughts once again.

Bolan knew that Stone was probably right. The ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu had sat undiscovered on the top of a mountain until 1911. It was quite possible that other fortresses and refuges were yet to be found, particularly since it was rumored that the Incas had hidden huge amounts of gold and silver from the Spanish invaders. A large room had been filled from floor to ceiling with gold to ransom the last emperor's life before the Spaniards strangled him.

And yet that gold was said to represent only a fraction of the Inca hoard. What had happened to the bulk of the incalculable wealth, including a golden fish bigger than a man's arm and a gold-hung chain so heavy that two hundred men were needed to carry it, remained a mystery after more than four hundred years of patient searching.

The Incas were master builders and were certainly capable of undertaking a project as large as the tunnel system. The great citadel of Sacsahuaman in the imperial capital of Cuzco had required twenty thousand men toiling for ninety years to finish. Building these miles of rock-lined corridors would have seemed like an afternoon nap by comparison.

At various points in the long walk, they passed apertures in the walls, leading off to unknown destinations. Some might lead to storerooms, guardhouses or other exits. One might even lead to the fabled treasure of the Incas. It would take years of continuous searching to explore every side tunnel and blind alley in the complex. Bolan had been walking for more than two hours and had bypassed dozens of alternate routes, the rock walls marked in fading paint with some colorful identifying symbols.

The warrior wasn't much of a mole. He preferred his enemies aboveground, not burrowing in the middle of some anthill.

Right now, he was certainly glad to have a guide in the maze. Occasionally Libertad directed the lead man carrying the lamp left or right into a crossing corridor, seemingly identical to the one they had just traversed.

Even if the army found their way to the underground complex, the Path could hide undetected for months before an exploring soldier stumbled on them.

From time to time they circumvented ancient booby traps, pits dug in the floor to catch a careless enemy. They edged past on narrow ledges at the side. A defending force on the other side could hold up an attacker indefinitely, since only one person at a time could possibly slide past the pit.

Once, the terrorists stopped and clustered around something along the path, talking animatedly. When Bolan caught up, he found the Peruvians assembled around a shrunken and wrinkled body facedown on the stones. A dusty felt hat had rolled away from the corpse. Apparently a comrade who had lost his way.

The march resumed, after Libertad had stripped the desiccated body of anything of value.

After a very long period, which Bolan guessed was at least four hours of solid movement, he was fading into a haze. A powerful combination of days of monotony, exhaustion, poor food in minuscule quantities and lack of sleep were making the warrior almost dead on his feet. He placed one foot mechanically in front of the other, stumbling along followed by two of the terrorists, hardly conscious of himself or his surroundings.

Suddenly he came very much awake.

The Executioner's heart was pounding, blood flowing into adrenaline-energized muscles. His senses reached to a combat high as his body kicked almost instantaneously into a fighting mode.

His ears had detected a metallic noise that had sounded very familiar to his trained ear.

It was the harsh click of the safety popping on a gun.

Bolan was down and rolling even as a gunner stepped from a narrow rat hole that the Executioner had passed moments before. The intruder opened fire, blasting controlled 3-round bursts down the corridor. The orange muzzle-flame cast transient shadows, like the flare of a camera flash.

Screams answered the gunfire as the panicked terrorists began to run forward, trying to escape the hurtling lead.

The gunman placed a burst between the shoulder blades of the man who brought up the rear, and got lucky with the Indian immediately in front. Three rounds cored the Peruvian's head, splattering a red-and-grey pattern on the ancient walls.

The lead man raced for safety, legs pumping as he guided himself down the passage by the faint light of the one lamp the group possessed.

A darker shadow loomed from the blackness. The ambusher hurled the fleeing man into his own lightless void with a single shot that carved through the runner's heart.

The two machine gunners fired sporadically but methodically, a cross fire that picked victims carefully. Each bandit took refuge in a side corridor, poking his muzzle around the edge to reduce the possibility of being cored by friendly fire from his opposite number.

A couple of the armed terrorists replied with death streams of their own, but the bullets cascaded harmlessly from the sheltering rock corners.

Bolan's party wasn't as lucky, caught in the open. The terrorists' gunfire died away to a chorus of agonized shrieks, as the ambushers raked the Peruvians with a steady stream of hellfire.

Bolan remained where he lay spread-eagled, trying to blend into the shadows as he assessed his next move. His stomach and side were wet, as a thin stream of blood trickled his way from two corpses heaped three feet away.

The ambushers had the small party trapped in a narrow corridor with both ends sealed with hot lead, like beetles trapped in a jar, waiting for the sun to fry them. The only good thing about the precarious situation was that the attackers didn't have grenades.

Bolan's choices were limited.

If he stayed still, there was the chance that he'd catch a stray round. Flying metal was ricocheting from the hard stone, filling the air with tumbling rock chips.

After a while, when all movement ceased, the gunmen would probably move in to finish the job, put an insurance round through the head of everybody, moving or not.

Just to make sure the "dead" stayed dead.

That might be the Executioner's best opportunity, but it was a risky strategy.

A momentary silence fell, the stammering of the machine guns falling away in echoes reverberating down the long corridor.

Someone began screaming in Quechua, frantically calling to the hidden gunmen. The only answer was a swarm of stingers from both directions. The screaming faded to a soft gurgle, which collapsed into a faint wheeze and died away.

Someone besides Bolan had figured out that the assassins were members of the Path, ruthlessly killing their own comrades. No one else could have been waiting in the close confines of the passage.

The who and why would have to wait. Now the only important question was how to stay alive.

The only answer he could think of stood out like burning letters etched in his brain.

Move.

Bolan tensed, coiling his muscles. His target was only twenty-five feet away. He could do three hundred feet in just about thirteen seconds, so he should be able to reach the gunner in just over a second.

But a bullet from the barrel of the submachine gun could hit home before he'd taken his first step.

The Executioner didn't think about it. He was up and running.

The gunner didn't notice Bolan until the warrior was almost upon him. Whether he was slightly dazzled by the muzzle-flashes or had gotten too cocky imagining that no one would actually charge him, it didn't matter. The guy fired wild.

Bolan grunted as one round nicked his left ear. The others whistled away harmlessly above his shoulder, the wind of their passing fanning his cheek.

The Executioner clipped the gunner in the knee as he raced into the side passage, the shooter falling to the floor as Bolan slid headfirst into the wall. The warrior spun and flailed out in the darkness, catching the other guy a hard backhand in the jaw. Then he sprang, one knee coming down heavily on something soft and vital.

The Peruvian screamed and jerked up, trying to double over. Bolan grabbed the guy's head in both hands. One hand gripped under the chin and the other fisted his opponent's dark hair, propelling the head back with all his adrenaline-fired strength. The spine popped like a scrawny chicken's.

The body shuddered once and lay still.

Bolan wasn't wasting any time. He searched out the fallen gun in the blackness and pulled out the clip to check the weight. It wasn't quite empty.

He edged along the wall toward the other ambusher's position. The only light was a faint glow ahead from the fallen lamp.

Would the other guy make a break or hold out and try to finish the job alone? Bolan was betting on the shooter sticking around. If he was a member of the Shining Path, he would most likely be fanatical about a mission to the point of being suicidal.

The assassin was getting nervous. He had obviously heard the sound of the fight and knew that something was amiss. Several times the man called "Federico," hoping that his comrade would answer.