Twisted Path (14 page)

As the small band straggled into town, the attitude of suspicion, pent-up oppression and fear was so strong that it was almost palpable to Bolan in the thin air of the small Andean community. There was no way to predict what might happen, or who might be friend or foe.

Trust or treachery; it was impossible to tell what the reaction would be from the closed and cautious expressions on the faces of the few natives who had shown themselves.

The tense atmosphere didn't appear to bother Libertad.

He took center stage behind a hand-operated water pump in the minuscule square of the village. He rang a solid iron bell on a tripod repeatedly, the tocsin summoning the hidden villagers slowly. The terrorist leader called for attention.

"My people, my brothers in arms and in our struggle for justice and liberty, we have come to you in an hour of need knowing that you will not fail us.

"As we aid and protect you at all times from the oppression of the capitalists and the imperialists, you shall now be able to assist your liberators in the great struggle against the Spanish conquerors.

"Remember, without power all is illusion. We must wage war without quarter against the money-loving city dwellers. We are your sword and your shield, and together, comrades, we will strike our enemies dead.

"So listen and hear our plea, and answer from your heart."

From the stolid looks of the watching natives, Bolan guessed they weren't too impressed with the oratory. Fancy words and expressions of brotherhood sounded fine when the army was on the other side of the mountain. But everyone knew that the only reason why the soldiers didn't destroy the Shining Path was that they couldn't find them. Apart from the occasional hit-and-run attack, the Path avoided the well-armed troops.

When the army returned on their next patrol, they would exact their revenge if the villagers gave any assistance to the guerrilla band. And the Shining Path would by then be long gone.

A small man built like a fire hydrant spoke from the front of the crowd. His clothes were a bit better than those of the rest of the villagers, who all wore rough homespun and bright-hued cloth. Many of the men sported the chullo, a knitted cap with earflaps. Often a felt hat perched on top of the chullo.

"Do not try to fool us with your banal and false promises. We know by now that your words are lies, that they are traps for the unwary, as the crocodile lies in wait for the man who steps thoughtlessly into a strange river. Leave us now and seek out some ignorant and backward village where they have never seen evil and do not know you for who you are. You have the stench of death about you, and you offend our noses. Begone!"

From the number of nods Bolan observed, he could tell that the little man had his finger on the pulse of the community. His words had hit home in a way that Libertad had completely missed.

The terrorist looked carefully at every face in the crowd. Most turned away, but the spokesman held the hardman's gaze unflinchingly.

"You speak very bravely," Libertad remarked almost conversationally. "Who are you?"

"I am Ferdinand Haya de la Torre, mayor of the village of Andahuaylas," he answered proudly and pugnaciously. If the mayor was intimidated by the unwashed and savagelooking group that had invaded his small town, he certainly wasn't showing it.

Bolan could only admire the man's bravery without being in a position to render any assistance. The warrior had a bad feeling, looking at Libertad's closed and angry face, that the small man was going to need all the help he could get.

"PCP?" Libertad asked, naming the Peruvian Communist Party. The Shining Path had marched far to the left of the Communists, and the two groups had no love for each other.

The mayor nodded assent.

"And a Spaniard?"

"Yes, I have that honor. And a true friend to the people, not a bloodsucker who will cast them to the dogs at the first sign of trouble."

"Seize the traitor."

Two of Libertad's men responded, grabbing the small man and hauling him in front of the crowd.

None of the villagers ventured forth to intervene in the face of the intimidation of the Path.

De la Torre was temporarily struck dumb, realizing that he had overplayed his hand badly.

Bolan knew that a tragedy was about to unfold, one that he couldn't do anything to prevent.

The terrorist addressed the crowd. "Comrades, you have been duped unbecoming slaves of the unjust state. We will now stage a popular trial to probe the errors of your ways." He turned to the captive mayor. "I suppose you were elected?"

"Yes, by a free vote of these honest villagers," the mayor responded.

"Guilty! He is guilty of parliamentary cretinism," Libertad shouted to the impassive gathering. "He believes that a vote can determine the best interests of the people." Then he addressed de la Torre again. "I suppose you are an educated man?"

"I have finished high school in Ayacucho. I can read and write. Can you say the same?"

"I do not need to justify anything. I am a warrior of the Republic of New Democracy, the only true representatives of the people. What the great Gonzalo says is law, and I must carry out his work of crushing counterrevolution everywhere I find it." Libertad paused, examining the community.

They had subsided into sullen acceptance, knowing that their fate was to endure like the Andes, to suffer the shifting patterns of the unended war. "Don't think about tomorrow" had to be their watchword. "Just live through life one day at a time." The Incas, the conquistadores, parlia meets, juntas, dictatorships had all come and gone without making much impression on their way of life.

The Shining Path was only one more natural disaster, like an epidemic among the sheep.

Libertad read acquiescence in the crowd. "This man is guilty once again, this time of being an intellectual planted among you to lead you falsely from the road to the utopian Communist state. Where there is guilt, there must be punishment."

He moved slowly to the captive, drawing his knife. The late-afternoon sun caught the blade, sending shimmers of orange fire crawling along the steel.

The mayor didn't protest, mesmerised by the flashing weapon that would be his death.

The terrorist grabbed de la Torre roughly by the hair, pulling his head back. The mayor snapped out of his spell and began to pray feverishly.

Libertad silenced the pleas to heaven, drawing the sharp edge almost leisurely across the man's throat.

The terrorists holding the body let go, allowing the corpse to collapse face first onto the blood-drenched square.

"Now you will aid us," Libertad told the gathered peasants in a commanding voice.

No one disagreed this time.

The Path left the little community the next morning after they had fed themselves from the locals' meager supplies. They traveled in a small convoy of four old cars commandeered from the villagers.

An hour's drive ahead was a small pass, one that alternated direction on a daily basis.

Today they would be able to travel through it away from Ayacucho, which was the only reason the terrorists had remained overnight in the hostile town.

Bolan had been glad for the delay. Now he seemed to be over the worst of the soroche, although he still had a headache. However, he was careful not to let his well-being show. He didn't know what was coming and would rather save his renewed energy for a surprise.

Libertad paid Bolan no real attention, merely gesturing him to the third car in line, which was a battered Honda. The terrorist leader slid into the front passenger seat and stared stonily out the window, as did Bolan.

The Executioner could never hope to understand the terrorist mind. Their fanaticism was total, requiring a dedication that embraced their entire lives. They weren't in it for the money they were after power pure and simple. If they ever achieved it, Bolan suspected that the bloody purges of Joseph Stalin would seem like a spring cleaning in comparison.

They killed easily and without conscience or regret; Libertad had demonstrated that yesterday, if Bolan had had any doubts. For the Shining Path, the world was a simple place. It divided evenly along the lines of good and evil, the good being their supporters. Evil embraced everyone else.

In any situation there was only one course of action: do as their leader Gonzalo commanded through his writings, or die.

They were totally beyond rational thought. It was incredible to see how they had warped every perception around the distorted thoughts of some reclusive madman.

There was an ugly fascination in studying these men, much like watching cancer cells divide and multiply through the lens of a microscope.

The answer to their bizarre zealotry was equally clear to Bolan. He would crush the Shining Path and all they stood for at the first opportunity.

The convoy ran into trouble just as it left the ten-mile section of one-way road, no wider than one car, that crept along the edge of the deep mountain cleft. If the driver had sneezed and jogged the wheel, they would have dropped one mile into the swift mountain stream below.

The lead car eased around the first curve beyond the widening of the road and ran into a hornet's nest.

A line of troops was concealed behind a pair of tree trunks that had been toppled across the roadway. How the ambushers had known to expect the Path was a mystery. There might have been a radio hidden in the village, or possibly a peasant had trekked overland to the nearest government outpost.

Any way it happened, the infantrymen spelled disaster. They opened fire with an array of automatic weapons, peppering the thin skin of the car with high-velocity slugs.

The driver slumped forward over the wheel, his brains sprayed over the three passengers behind. As he collapsed, he rode the wheel to the left, sending the car speeding over the cliff The four terrified survivors screamed every second of the long drop, before the plunging vehicle hit the ground below with the force of a dynamite explosion.

The second driver slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt thirty yards from the roadblock. The gunman in the passenger seat, who was the only one armed with anything deadlier than a knife, provided covering fire from behind his door while the others made a break for the grassland and hills that edged the highway.

None of them made it to the edge of the grass before being chopped down by the flying parabellums.

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.

It was an effort to keep the strain from registering on her face. But any sign of nervousness would be sure to invite questions.

Questions that she would not like to answer.

Carrillo's former secretary waited at the Path base camp for word on the progress of Libertad and his men. They were bringing Michael Blanski with them.

She felt trapped, like a weary fox pursued by a pack to her last hiding place. And it wasn't her fault.

In spite of her long association with the movement, she had always felt like an outsider, as though she were tolerated rather than respected. The distrust from the other terrorists arose from a number of sources: her Spanish heritage, her intellect and education, her gender. Even her good looks were more of a hindrance than a help among the dour Indians. They recognised her value, but kept her in positions of little importance and no influence.

Maybe that was part of the reason why she had felt it necessary to strike in a new direction, to make a statement of her independent ideas and methods. She wanted to lead, to be responsible for turning the whole Shining Path onto a new and more violent course of action.

She wanted to make a difference in the movement.

Instead, she was in a more precarious position than ever. To her superiors, her political radicalism smacked of rebellion. And although the Path claimed to be egalitarian and open, a sign of internal revolt or factioning of the movement would be mercilessly crushed. She knew any further questioning of her loyalty or obedience could be fatal for her.

If Michael Blanski arrived, there would be all the more reason for her actions to be suspect.

If Blanski got here alive and saw her, he would start making damaging accusations. If her superiors believed his story, or even had a suspicion that he might be telling the truth, they would want to know the answers to the mystery behind Carrillo's murder.

And if they had any doubts about her honesty, they wouldn't stop at just asking polite questions.

Antonia had seen prisoners interrogated by the Shining Path before; she had helped ask the questions on occasion. The redheaded beauty would rather kill herself than face the ordeal.

News traveled slowly this far into the mountains.

It was only a day ago that she had learned of the breakout from Lurigancho prison, and had heard that a large-scale arms dealer had got out, as well.

That had to be Blanski.

Antonia was both surprised and chilled by the unexpected development. She had believed he would never make it from Lurigancho alive. If the other inmates didn't kill him, she'd been sure the foul, disease-ridden conditions would.