Twisted Path (3 page)

The trail was clear for two hundred yards as Jones had blundered wildly through the field and bushes; clear, that is, to someone who knew how to read the signs. At one point a fresh gouge in the earth marked a spot where the drug dealer had missed his footing, coming down hard on a rock, which bore a drop of blood. A narrow, shallow stream put an end to the easy pursuit.

The possibilities ticked through Bolan's mind. Jones had three choices: one was to hide out and hope to remain undiscovered until the battle zone was clear; another was to cross the stream, strike out for the highway a half mile south and flag down a ride to the city; the last was to travel east or west along the stream, circle around back and try to make it to the car.

The last was clearly the most dangerous, since Jones had no way of knowing how strong the opposition might be. Someone might be lying in ambush just to prevent that possibility. But remaining in hiding was almost as dangerous. The most reasonable thing for the dealer to have done was to have continued south to the highway.

Bolan paused a moment to listen for the sound of splashing. Negative. Jones wasn't trying to fool him by following the stream. The warrior crossed the water, searching the banks for clues.

Twenty yards to the left, a wet heel mark on a rock was made visible by the NVD goggles. The Executioner was off and running again. With the advantage of the goggles and long practice in open-terrain pursuit, Bolan expected to run Jones to ground before the guy could make the highway.

Every hundred yards he paused to listen. His diligence compd off when he finally heard the faint sound of rubber on concrete in the distance. Jones was approaching the relative safety of the highway. A couple of stops later, ears cocked for the slightest unusual sound, he heard a muffled thump and a curse only a few yards ahead as Jones tripped over his own feet.

Bolan proceeded cautiously, knowing that Jones would be armed.

The warrior poked his head around a low palm and saw Jones on hands and knees, searching for something.

His night goggles showed him the butt of a pistol in the grass ten feet to Jones's left.

"Time's up, Jones." Bolan stepped into the open.

"I give up, man!" The drug lord scrambled to his feet and threw his arms over his head, all bravado gone, a sickly, supplicating smile etched into his face. His clothes were torn and dirty, and he was bleeding from multiple cuts and scratches sustained on his wild flight through the underbrush. Still, Jones tried to brazen it out, using tactics that had always worked before. "You want money? I got it, man. You walk away, you can name your price, any amount. A hundred thousand, a million, you just say the word. You just name your price. I've got gold, I've got diamonds. Whatever I've got, you can have if you just let me go."

"Jones, you've got nothing at all." The Beretta coughed a 3-round burst, stitching a bloody triangle into Jones's heart.

Bolan stood in the shower, enjoying the feeling of the water as it cascaded over his weary body. The warrior spent so much time wallowing in the gutters with the filth that made up the underworld that he sometimes felt he would never be able to get clean.

An insistent ringing pierced the sound of the pounding water. There were only two people who knew he was at this number: his brother, Johnny, and Hal Brognola. A call from either meant trouble.

Bolan climbed dripping from the shower and grabbed the phone. "Hello."

"Striker. How's it going down there?"

"You can read about it in the morning paper, Hal."

"That's good. Because I need you for something very special."

"What's the catch this time?"

"Striker, really." Brognola did his best to sound offended, but they both knew that the man from Justice never got in touch unless Bolan's involvement was strictly necessary. "Let's just say that this has an international flavor. When can you be here?"

"Is tomorrow soon enough?"

"You know I hate political games, Striker. They're usually worse than grubby most often they're just plain stupid." Hal Brognola paced restlessly around his Justice Department office, eyes skipping rapidly over the cluttered surface of his desk. He didn't like being told what to do, especially when it meant calling in a favor from a man who not long ago had had a heavy price on his head, put there by the same people who now were pressuring Brognola to ask the guy for help. "But maybe this time there just might be some sense in those lamebrains."

Mack Bolan waited patiently for Brognola to come to the point, maintaining a still silence that would have spooked anyone but the man from Justice.

"It seems the President got a call from one Alan Garcia, president of Peru. Now this rather pleased the Man, since these two haven't exactly been on speaking terms for the past while. You know why?" Brognola jabbed out the question with an index finger as he sank into the chair behind his file-covered desk.

He fixed Bolan with a flinty stare.

"Money."

"Give the man a cigar. Peru has been holding back payments on billions of dollars' worth of American loans. That has gotten a lot of people very hot under the collar."

Bolan knew it. A lot of people refused to see the evil that stood on nearly every street corner in the United States, a menace that was slowly making honest Americans prisoners in their own homes.

The worst of the ostriches were the few who could afford the life-style that insulated them from the realities of the street. But touch a dollar that belonged to them, and those same people would scream as though someone had shot the family dog.

Brognola was a little uncomfortable. He'd asked Bolan here for something that amounted to a politically motivated request. In spite of their long association, Bolan set his own priorities.

There was nothing to stop the big man from walking away for his own reasons. The Fed pushed ahead. "In a nutshell, Garcia hinted that Peru might rethink its position on the loans in return for one small favor. A favor that's a cry for help."

"So there's a catch, is there?" Bolan's tone was noncommittal. He had worked too closely with Brognola to believe that his friend would ever knowingly throw him a curve. Brognola had earned his respect and friendship long ago and had hung by Bolan when just knowing the Executioner was close to treason.

But even Brognola couldn't see through a brick wall, so Bolan had to decide for himself if someone at a higher level was trying to pin something on him.

There were people in every country on the planet who would pay a small fortune to read his obituary. Some of them lived right here in Washington.

"Don't worry, Striker, this is right down your alley. You know much about the Shining Path?"

Bolan had a file-card memory, with an entry for most of the terrorist organisations in the world. Put on paper, it would practically make an encyclopedia, but the answer sprang immediately to mind.

He knew the Shining Path all right, and his interest quickened as he spoke. "They're a fanatical left-wing terrorist group trying to destabilize the Peruvian government. They're aggressive, primitive and violent, extremely secretive. A real problem on the home front."

"Absolutely right, except for one point. Now they're no longer primitive. They used to be a pretty low-budget revolutionary group. They carried on their war with a few hundred captured weapons, mostly without ammunition, and about 300,000 sticks of dynamite. But now they've changed tactics. The Shining Path has been hitting banks and using the money to buy black market arms. And the death toll looks like it's going through the roof."

"And this is where I come in?"

"Exactly. The latest information shows that they have an American source. The same M-16's and M 60's our Army uses are ending up in the hands of the Shining Path."

Bolan felt his stomach do a flip as a sudden anger coursed through him. Somewhere an arms dealer was turning armament made to keep the peace into weapons of terror. Innocent people were dying because another "businessman" was intent on making a buck.

And every bullet was stamped Made in the U.S.A.

Bolan shifted in his seat, the sudden urge to action becoming almost a physical force. "Why me, Hal, instead of the CIA? And where would I start?"

Brognola leaned back in his chair as the sudden power of the man across from him showed in the contained, catlike movements and blazing eyes. The big Fed experienced a momentary desire to follow Bolan into the field, such was the strength that Bolan radiated. But it was only a brief fantasy. Brognola knew his limitations he'd be about as much use to the warrior as a rubber scalpel would be to a surgeon.

"Garcia is a little paranoid where the Agency is concerned. Having a bunch of spooks wandering around Peru would probably cause more problems than it would solve. As for the second question, you start out on the West Coast. The FBI has a lead that would be worth following. I hope it pans out, since right now it's the only one we've got. Officially the mission is to plug the arms pipeline from this end. If you find something that might send you on to the Peruvian connection, that's up to you. But I know that a lot of people would appreciate it. Unofficially, of course." Brognola fished among a thick pile of files weighing down a corner of his desk before dropping one in front of Bolan. "That's what we know about the Shining Path. It'll make for some interesting reading. There's also a plane ticket and the names of your contacts on the coast."

Bolan grabbed the manila folder and rose to leave. Now that he had a target there wasn't a moment to lose.

Brognola's voice stopped him with his hand on the doorknob. "One more thing, Striker. The FBI recently lost a good man on this arms-dealing case. They're taking this one kind of personally. You'll keep that in mind, won't you?"

With a grunt that could have been an agreement, an acknowledgment or a snort of disgust, the big man slipped through the doorway, leaving Brognola staring at a room that suddenly felt cold and empty.

He shook his head and grabbed another file.

Aboard a direct flight to San Francisco, Bolan flipped open the file and began to absorb details.

The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso as they were known locally, had first appeared in 1980 with political communiques tied to dogs hanged from lampposts in Lima.

Since then, a campaign of terror, including assassinations, small-town executions and blown-up railways and bridges, had taken more than ten thousand lives.

The founder was Abimael Guzman, an ex-professor of philosophy, a moon-faced idealist in his fifties who had a taste for classical music and violence.

An ardent Communist, Guzman had absorbed early Russian revolutionary writings and had kept marching to the left. Rejecting Russian Communism and Castroism, he had eventually settled on Chairman Mao as his model.

Sickened by the new quasi-capitalist China, he now believed that the only true representatives of Communist ideology had been Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse-tung. Calling himself "The Fourth Sword of Marxism," he changed his name to Gonzalo and proclaimed himself president of the Republic of New Democracy.

Leaving the Western-funded university where he taught, he then launched a revolutionary movement aimed at overthrowing the democratic government and achieving an agrarian-based Communist utopia, dominated by the Indian descendants of the Incas.

Concentrated in the highlands along the spine of the Andes, Guzman and his disciples had proved impossible to run to ground. Three provinces were under direct military rule to try to halt the spread of "Gonzalo's" terror. So far, there were no clear winners in the hard-fought contest only a lot of dead losers who would rather have remained on the sidelines.

The latest intelligence on Guzman was pure speculation. Some claimed that he had died of leukemia years before. No one outside the movement had seen the revolutionary leader for nearly ten years.

Dead or alive, Gonzalo had the ability to inspire a ruthless fanaticism in his followers.

Organized into rigid cells, the group was impenetrable. The members knew very little apart from the names of their cell mates, and seldom broke even under rigorous interrogation by the Peruvian police.

Bolan sighed. There was much more in the bulging file, mostly accounts of various atrocities committed by the Shining Path, along with government excesses in trying to suppress them. He didn't need to read any more. He'd seen the same story written in blood in dozens of different countries, and from time to time he had written the final chapter himself.

Bolan looked out the window, resting his eyes on the purity of the sun-streaked cumulus clouds below. The warrior had seen firsthand how badly most of the impoverished masses of South America lived. He understood the almost hypnotic appeal of a few ringing phrases spoken by a magnetic personality or preached to uneducated peasants almost like a religious cult.

So many people were looking for easy answers, especially when they meant a better life. Bolan couldn't always blame them, particularly when there appeared to be so few choices that might lead them out of their crushing misery.

But Bolan drew the line when it came to promoting social change from the barrel of a gun or with a stick of dynamite. Working for the betterment of his fellow man was something he'd been doing in his own way ever since he'd decided to make a stand for what was right.

Blowing someone apart because he disagreed with your politics was terrorism.

The Executioner knew that there was only one reply to those tactics, only one answer that the terrorists would understand. Force must be met with counterforce, strong medicine in a dose that would leave the Shining Path choking on their own violent prescription.

Brognola was right, he was the ideal man for the job.

Special Agent Roger Kline was not a happy man, and the person sitting in the visitor's chair across from him was doing nothing to improve his mood.

Kline spoke a little louder to try to conceal the growing sense of unease that had crept over him.

"Now, see here, Mr. Blanski, you aren't being very helpful."

Across the desk, Mack Bolan, traveling under his Michael Blanski alias, said nothing. It wasn't his job to be helpful to the FBI. Rather, it was up to the FBI to cooperate with him. Kline and he both knew it, and the special agent was clearly resentful. So far, this so-called briefing session had consisted of Kline trying to probe him for information on who his backers were. Bolan wasn't giving.

They were seated in a shabby second-floor walk-up in a run-down office building several blocks from the docks. The spacious, bare office had been transformed into a temporary mission headquarters for the duration. In a far corner, two other agents were poring over paperwork.

Bolan scrutinised the agent, eyes flickering from carefully sculptured hair to immaculate three-piece blue pinstriped suit to perfectly trimmed nails drumming sporadically on the desktop. Kline's gaze locked with Bolan's, then darted away.

"Cut the crap, Kline. I know you don't want me here, but you don't have a choice. Get on with what you're going to tell me."

The uncompromising growl jerked Kline's attention back to the big man. Blanski, a strong-jawed and solid-looking man who stood well over six feet, was dressed in a sport coat and casual trousers. Kline felt that there was something odd about the way his visitor was dressed. Not that there was anything wrong with the clothes themselves. It was more a sense that they were inappropriate to Blanski's whole being.

Sort of like a gorilla in a suit.

No, that was all wrong, Kline corrected himself.

This man looked capable of dining with the President and being perfectly at home. It was more like seeing John Wayne in a tuxedo, he decided. No matter how Blanski dressed, he gave off an aura that didn't square with offices and ties. A sense of danger clung to the man like a second skin.

Kline had an uncanny intuition about people that he relied on heavily. Its accuracy was one of the things that had propelled him this far up the ladder in his eleven-year career with the Bureau. He would guess this man as former military, maybe an ex-commando, probably a fairly high-ranking officer from his self-possessed air of command. The agent meant to find out what he was up against.

He would start by betting his pension that this guy's real name wasn't Michael Blanski.

The problem, as Kline saw it, was to use Blanski or whoever he was to advance the case. And at the same time, Kline's career.

The best way, he decided, was to appear to capitulate, but to still pull the strings. The special agent had had plenty of practice in being the puppet master. He'd have Blanski dancing his tune in no time.

"Well, getting an urgent message from the Justice Department telling me to cooperate with someone from outside the Bureau isn't something that happens every day. Especially when the case involves the murder of an FBI agent. But I'll be happy to keep you fully informed."

In a pig's eye, Bolan thought. This guy was suddenly a shade too affable to be believable.

Kline settled back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head, a pose he often adopted when he was in a lecturing mood. "Let me just run down what has happened so far. A young agent, Jake Sharp, infiltrated the operation of one Cameron McIntyre, a major arms manufacturer. We've had our suspicions about McIntyre for a while now, and Sharp was gathering evidence to nail him. Suddenly, ate-out a month ago, Sharp disappeared. A couple of vagrants found the body about two weeks later. It wasn't a pretty sight."

Kline forced away the image of the mangled, half-decayed body he'd had to identify at the county morgue. He'd been battling with the recurring nightmare vision every day since Sharp's body had been found hanging like a rejected haunch of beef.

"McIntyre denies everything." Kline nodded repeatedly for emphasis. "He has a pack of unimpeachable witnesses who swear that he had nothing to do with Sharp's death. There's no evidence to link Sharp and McIntyre together that night. End of case, so far. But we'll keep digging."

Bolan brooded momentarily, hands clasping the wooden arms of the well-padded executive chair.

It was a shame about Sharp, but that wasn't his concern.

If McIntyre was really dealing arms illegally, he was guilty of a lot worse than murder.

"Fill me in about McIntyre."

Kline had no trouble with that request. He made it a point to be on top of the facts of a case, a trait that impressed his superiors. "Cameron's grandfather founded the firm during World War 1. His father expanded it enormously and made a fair-size fortune during World War II. Business has been pretty steady since then. Cameron took over about five years ago and has been pushing the export side of arms dealing. All very legitimate, of course. He's made sure to get the proper end-use certificates from foreign governments. Without these as an assurance that the arms are going to U.S.-approved states, he isn't allowed to export a Bowie knife."

Without being told, Bolan knew that this was only part of the story. A terrorist group could often find a way around the export restrictions. Sometimes an end-use certificate could be forged. More often, a few properly placed bribes in some Third World nation assured that once the arms that had been purchased through normal channels arrived, they went out on the next boat to some clandestine destination. A third common trick was simply to playact a hijacking to divert some of the arms, with a little hard cash spread around to soothe guilty consciences.

"Why did you land on McIntyre's back? There must be dozens of equally likely suspects."

"More like hundreds, Blanski. But a little over a year ago McIntyre came to our attention when some Indian troops discovered an arms shipment en route to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. They were part of an order destined for Kenya that had never arrived. Another cargo was found when Spanish troops uncovered an arms cache belonging to Basque terrorists. That was a bit more than six months ago and prompted the current investigation. We've been following paper trails that end in brick walls ever since. Sharp thought that he was on to something, but..."

Bolan understood the problem. Following every trail, finding the necessary clues that would stand up in court was a difficult job, one that might require years of sorting, shuffling and examining boxcars of paper.

In the meantime, McIntyre and others like him would be free to conduct their arms-for-millions deals, profiting from the sorrow and suffering of victims in every corner of the globe.

"As for McIntyre himself, there's no doubt that he could use the money. He owns a lot of the stock, but he has a board of directors to make sure that he doesn't do anything too funny. Certainly he has a lot of expenses, with three greedy ex-wives and a string of girlfriends. Also, he likes to play high-stakes poker. Unfortunately he doesn't play very well."

If McIntyre was having money problems, the arms black market would be an easy solution.

Third World gangsters paid top dollar for reliable weapons, especially some of the more exotic ones suitable against military targets. And every dollar that McIntyre received would be tax free.

"That's it? That's all you've got?" Bolan figured that there was plenty more, but it suited him to play along.

Kline was more relaxed now, feeling that he was in control of the situation once again. "There are a lot of little details, of course." Kline rose and proceeded to a corner filing cabinet. Smiling to himself, he pulled a thick envelope from the third drawer. "These are transcripts of McIntyre's office phone calls for this month. This should keep you busy for a while."

Bolan understood that he was being diverted. Let Kline think that he had taken the bait.

Kline turned from the cabinet to find Bolan at his elbow. He hadn't even heard the chair creak.

"Then I'll just take that and be on my way."

As the door closed softly behind Blanski, Kline began to wonder if he had made a mistake. The man was either a lot smarter than the agent gave him credit for, or else not very bright at all. Kline wouldn't want to bet on the latter.

"Elwell! Get over here!" he shouted over his shoulder.

The junior agent rushed forward.

"See that chair? I want it dusted for prints. Any that aren't ours I want routed back for identification, pronto." Kline held up his hand to check a half-formed question. "I want an answer in an hour. Get to it."

Kline decided to take a hike to the corner coffee shop. Bad as it was, it was better than the motor oil that Elwell brewed. In an hour, he would have a handle on Blanski. Whoever he was.

Bolan steered away from the curb, uncertain as to what his next move should be. He did know that he wasn't about to waste precious hours skimming through phone logs. He doubted McIntyre would be foolish enough to say anything in the clear over the phone. However, there might be something of value buried in that filing cabinet back at the Bureau office.

The warrior had always had a difficult time when forced to work with the FBI. If he had to work with the law, it was easier dealing with the local police rather than the touchy Feds. The Bureau meant well, but they had such a snooty, elitist attitude that they tended to rub other lawmen the wrong way.

Kline was typical. Probably a lawyer or a chartered accountant, he adopted a paternalistic attitude at the drop of a pin. The agent equated the good of the FBI with the good of the country.

Kline liked to leave the dirty work to the street cops so that he wouldn't get his freshly pressed suit mussed.

Back in his hotel room, Bolan was fieldstripping his weapons when the telephone rang.

"Hello."

"Striker, I'm glad to hear you've been getting along so well with the FBI."

"Hal. What's up?" Bolan knew that Brognola wasn't calling just to shoot the breeze.

"For openers, I've got a note on my desk from none other than the director of the FBI himself. If it was any hotter, this office would be cinders by now."

Bolan smiled. Brognola was able to make any memopushing pea brain sorry that writing had ever been invented. Especially since he had the heavy artillery behind him. "Calm down, Hal. I know how you love to play fireman."

Brognola was exasperated. "Easy for you to say, Striker. The second thing is that Kline has been trying to put the make on Michael Blanski. Your fingerprints came in for identification. I was informed by a friend in that section."

Kline would get a surprise, but it didn't make Bolan think any better of him. "The standard package is going back?"

"No worries. What Kline gets will make you look like apple pie personified. I just thought you might like to know who your friends are. Or aren't, as the case may be."

"Thanks for the news, Hal."

"So tell, Striker. What did you do to those guys out there?"

"Nothing... yet."

Bolan made his move an hour after midnight. He was dressed in street clothes with the Beretta in its custom shoulder holster. He wasn't expecting a gunfight with the FBI, but he couldn't discount a bold mugger. A sport bag held assorted goodies he had collected during the afternoon.

The door to the old office building gave up almost as soon as Bolan touched a pick to the lock.

The second-floor office represented a bit more of a challenge. Even though it was only a temporary field office, Bolan expected that some sort of alarm would be in place.

A careful examination of the lock and doorframe failed to turn up any evidence. The picks went to work once more, and in seconds the door swung open.

The beam of a flashlight revealed a square metal frame an inch beyond the doorway. The right side held a three-by-six-inch control panel with a numeric keypad for code entry.

Bolan took an aerosol can of hair spray from the bag. Directing the mist between the metal uprights, he was able to see four detector beams spanning the artificial doorway. There wasn't enough space to safely squeeze between any two of the beams.

Undoubtedly an alarm would sound at some FBI post if he broke one of the beams, and he suspected there was a motion detector in the base that would do the same thing if he moved the frame away from the doorway. He didn't have the equipment to decipher the entry codes.

From a pouch inside the bag he withdrew a length of transparent, flexible cable, the same kind of fiber optics cable used to carry telephone messages in the more sophisticated networks. He quickly fixed one halfway over the transmission point of the lowest beam, then over the receptor. A moment of adjustment and the cable was in place, held by two suction cups. The lowest beam was now diverted through the cable, which rested partly on the ground, allowing plenty of room for Bolan to crawl through.

Once he was inside, the filing cabinet took only a moment to pop before he settled down to a leisurely examination.

Most of the files were worthless to him, including equipment receipts, expense statements, copies of weekly, monthly and quarterly reports and the other paperwork required by any large bureaucracy.

One folder held a manual on "The Guardian Model II The Latest in AntiIntruder Technology." Very little of the data was even remotely connected to case work.

However, there was one grain of gold among the slag. A slim file held a list of all long-distance calls for the past six months, obtained from the telephone companies. The agents hadn't bothered to identify the people or corporations that had received the calls.

The numbers ranged through several dozen area codes on almost every continent. Three pages into the file, two of the calls leaped off the page.

The numbers rang a phone somewhere in Lima, Peru. Bolan copied them and left the office.

Back at the hotel, he made an information call to Washington concerning the Peruvian number.