"Twisted Path" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pendleton Don)

15

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.

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.