Whipsaw te-144

by Don Pendleton

  Balancing on the railing, he could reach over the roof far enough to grab the inner side of the low brick wall and pull himself up and over.

  The roof was a wilderness of pipes and little stone walls, vents wearing coolie hats and black boxes lined with glass reflecting starlight through the rain-spotted dust. Quickly Bolan approached to within two roofs of the building that had so fascinated him. He remembered his last time in this part of Manila and the shadows flitting along the roofline.

  They had caught him by surprise that time, and if it hadn't been for Marisa, who knew how it would have ended. But this time the joke was on them.

  As he stopped carefully over another of the diminutive walls, lights flashed into the streets below. The sound of an idling engine drifted through the night, and Bolan picked up his pace. As he ducked behind the stubby chimney, he heard the faint scuffing of feet against the sandy tar ahead of him.

  He knelt to peer around the roughly mortared stone.

  Three men, strung across the parapet on their knees, trained rifles on the street below.

  The AK was the only solution.

  Bolan jerked the assault rifle off his shoulder and swung the muzzle around. The sound of the approaching jeep grew louder, echoing up from the narrow street and rambling across the roof.

  Its headlights splashed on the tops of the buildings across the street, and Bolan found himself wondering how the assassins knew to be there, but he didn't have to wonder long. It struck him with an almost physical force, like a blow in the chest. Harding was still one step ahead of him. He must have a tap on the phone. He must have guessed that Bolan, if he escaped the ambush in the cellar, might use the phone.

  But Bolan pushed the thought aside. At this point it really didn't matter how the hell they came to be there. What counted now was taking them out. The jeep in the street below stopped with a squeak of its brakes as Bolan started his move. He could see the nearest gunman tense, then lean forward a little farther. Bolan squeezed the AK's trigger and swept the muzzle in a vicious line, just about even with the top of the parapet. Any higher, and the stray slugs would rip into the buildings across the street.

  Any lower, and they wouldn't be lethal.

  The assassin on the left gave a startled "oohh" and tried to rise, then fell backward. His gun pitched forward over the wall, and Bolan heard it slam onto the pavement below as his deadly burst stretched along the wall, chipping at the concrete slab on its top and sparking in bright showers.

  The second gunman had started to turn as Bolan opened up, almost as if some instinct had heard something not yet audible. Clean as a straight razor, the AK sliced across his midsection just above the hips, and he fell over the wall.

  The third man had time to turn all the way around, his own rifle clutched in one hand. He started to roll, losing his grip on the gun and leaving it behind as he tumbled across the tar. The AK gouged the tar and chewed its way toward him faster than he could roll. One hand reached up and out toward Bolan as if the man wanted to ask him for a favor.

  But it was far too late for favors of any kind, and certainly for mercy. Bolan had seen too many lifeless bodies in the final insult of early and violent death. The third gunner's body twitched like a spastic puppet, his legs bouncing off the tar once or twice before he lay still.

  Bolan dashed to the wall and looked down into the street. Carlos and Marisa crouched behind the jeep, Carlos sweeping his M-16 back and forth, waiting for something to shoot at while Marisa clapped her hands over her ears. Her mouth was open as if she were shouting, but he heard nothing.

  In the dark street he could see little more than that and ducked away just as Carlos spotted him and snapped off a single shot. The concrete cracked, and a sliver sliced through Bolan's sleeve as he fell back out of the way. Crawling on his back for a few feet, he jumped up and sprinted back toward the fire escape.

  Not worrying about the noise anymore, he landed with a thud on the top landing, then half stepped and half slid down the two flights of iron stairs.

  Not bothering with the ladder, he dropped into the garden and leapt back over the wall into the alley.

  He reached the street in a half-dozen strides, skidded onto the pavement and raced to the corner.

  Shielding himself, he called out and saw Carlos turn to look toward him. He waved a hand, and Carlos brought his gun around but didn't fire. Cautiously Bolan stepped into the street. He heard Marisa whisper something, and Carlos muttered an answer before standing.

  Bolan waved him to the corner and he saw Carlos tug Marisa to her feet as he rushed past and down to the back alley. Bolan waited just long enough to see Carlos wheel around the corner, Marisa right behind him. He dashed to the rear of Harding's building and leapt the fence. Carlos helped Marisa over, then took her hand again and joined Bolan on the stairs.

  Bolan fired a short burst through the door, then ripped it open and pushed it aside for Carlos and Marisa. He followed them inside, leaving the door ajar. Taking the lead, he barged into the stairwell and down to the still brightly lit cellar.

  In the small of rice, he pulled the map from his pocket and spread it on the desk.

  "Look at this," he said.

  Carlos braced himself with a hand on either side of the map and leaned forward to get a closer look.

  Bolan stabbed a finger at one of the circles.

  "Where is this? What's there, what sort of building?"

  "The train station, Senor Belasko."

  "And here?"

  "I'm not sure. Some stores, a concert hall, a museum."

  "Here?"

  "The Supreme Court is on one side of the square, the south side. On the north, some government buildings, city government, mostly..."

  "Take this to Captain Roman Collazo, the Military Police building. Give it to him and tell him there could be a bomb at every one of those circles. I'm not sure which buildings, and I don't even know for sure whether they've been planted already or not. I only know that Harding has plans for those locations, and Cordero's probably been to half of them maybe the ones that have an 'It' on them. Tell him I'll be in touch."

  "What about Senora Colgan?"

  "She's coming with me. I need her help."

  "Where are you going, senor?"

  "Underground, Carlos. I have a feeling Mr. Harding is expecting me..."

  24

  "Marisa, you don't have to do this if you don't want to." Bolan watched her face closely, but she betrayed no hesitation.

  "Of course not, but I want to."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes... I... I know what you thought of my husband, Mr. Belasko, but I still think he was right. He stood for something. I have to see that Harding pays for that. For Thomas. If you can make that happen."

  Bolan nodded gravely. "All right, then, let's go. You know the tunnels. Where do you think Harding would be? Where would he feel the most secure?"

  "I can only guess."

  "That's all we've got, Marisa. And we don't have time to guess wrong."

  She nodded. "I'm ready." Bolan waited while she took a deep breath.

  She placed a hand on his forearm for a moment, and he moved toward the door. He stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and made sure his flashlight was working. He clicked it on and trained it into the darkness. The beam was steady and, unlike the smaller torch, its light was clear and white.

  "You'd better not use that."

  She was right, so he clicked the light off, tucked it into his pocket and stepped through the opening. Marisa squeezed past him to take the lead.

  In the darkness he could hear her fingers brushing the wall, and her steps were measured and slow, as if she were counting paces. It was so unlike his first passage through the underground, the breakneck pace even more incredible now that she moved so deliberately.

  In a hoarse whisper she said, "I'm sorry to be so slow, but I'm not as familiar with this tunnel as I am with some of the others. I don't quite know where we'll end up, but if Harding came this
way, we'll find him. There are just so many tunnels, just so many places he could be." Her whisper died away, its echo drifting back from far down the tunnel like the shame of soft paper in small hands. Bolan felt blind in the darkness, but they couldn't run the risk of a light. It was up to Marisa, and they both knew it.

  "Just do what you can," Bolan said softly. He didn't have high hopes for their success but didn't want to discourage her.

  Every step seemed to take a century as they groped through the tunnel. Neither of them spoke, and Bolan found himself wondering about Marisa. In some way he couldn't quite explain, she seemed different, more like an automaton than the fiercely independent woman she had been before her husband's death. She had changed, as if part of her strength had come from him.

  She seemed narrowed somehow, focused in a way he had seen before, had even sensed in himself on occasion. He recognized that part of Marisa had reduced the population of the planet to two people alone: herself and Charles Harding. To Bolan, it was a misplaced devotion to Thomas Colgan. But to Marisa, and he couldn't argue with her feelings, it was retribution mandated by a law she neither controlled nor understood. She was running on pure courage, with one thought in her mind: make the bastard pay.

  Bolan sensed something of that same fierce concentration in himself. He had seen the handiwork of the man and thought Charles Harding had a price to pay, exacted in the only currency that mattered. For Bolan, as for Marisa, an eye required an eye, a tooth demanded a tooth.

  Cordero, of course, was part of the mix, but Bolan considered him secondary, an implement more than a man, something that Harding would use and throw away. It was the age of disposables, in everything from paper plates to hypodermics. Why should an instrument of terror be any different?

  Take Harding down, and Cordero would wither, an unpicked fruit in an abandoned garden.

  Take Harding down, Bolan thought the only way to go. But first, he reminded himself, you had to find him.

  "Wait a minute," Marisa whispered, her voice almost reverent, as if she were in the nave of some gloomy cathedral instead of a catacomb under a city on the brink of annihilation. "It should be here." She let go of Bolan's arm, and he heard her feet shuffle on the damp stone underfoot, the faint splash of her shoe in the shallow stream coursing through the tunnel. "It has to be here."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "There is supposed to be an outlet here, on the right. Let me go a little farther."

  Her feet scraped on the stone again, scattering little splashing sounds as she moved. Her palm slapped against the damp stone, its sound swallowed after a single dull echo.

  "Where is it?" She sounded almost petulant, as though someone had found something she had hidden and thought secure. The palm slapped harder against the stone. Her voice tightened and rose in pitch, just a notch, but Bolan caught it.

  Don't lose it now, Marisa not now, he thought.

  "Maybe the light..."

  "No! I don't need light. It's here or it isn't." Bolan pulled the flashlight out of his pocket.

  Muffling the switch, he clicked it on and trained it on the wall. And it stared him in the face. She was right, there should have been an opening. There was, in fact a new section of wall, the mortar still bright, the surface of the stone almost free of lichens.

  "Forget about it. We'll have to find some other way." She shook her head angrily.

  "What do we do now?" Bolan asked.

  "We have to go out of our way, that's all."

  Bolan clicked the light off again. "Lead the way," he said.

  He heard Marisa move away. She no longer reached back for him; it was as though she was trying to separate herself from him, perhaps to prove something to him, or to herself. She was setting a faster pace, either because she knew they had some distance to cover or because she wanted to show that she, too, was aware of the urgency of their purpose.

  Bolan was glad to see that independent streak, an awareness of herself, an awareness that there was still more to her life than simple vengeance.

  The bricked-up wall bothered him. It gave Harding an elusive edge. By changing the ground rules, he was taking charge of the situation. It also meant that Harding might be leading them on, funneling them to some place where that advantage would do him the most good. But that awareness did not change anything. Bolan had no choice, and Harding knew it.

  It was a goading kind of challenge. It amounted to saying try to beat me with a stacked deck, big guy. I dare you.

  Every step brought them closer to the last hand, and Bolan only had a single edge: he knew Harding wasn't bluffing.

  Marisa had settled into a steady rhythm, and they were making good time. Bolan was relieved, at least, that the uncertainty was gone. He had been boarding the lion in his den, and the lion had finally been heard from. With that out of the way, there was simply the matter of staying alive. And he thought of the camp, the high-tech defences, and his blood went cold.

  "Marisa, stop!" he said urgently, then clicked on the light and aimed it far down the tunnel. Marisa flinched at the sudden glare, but said nothing. Bolan chewed on his lower lip, trying to sort things out. "I want you to stay here," he said at last.

  "But you need me to guide you..."

  "I'll do without."

  "You're crazy!"

  "Maybe. But I don't think so. I've just gotten a little insight into Harding."

  "What're you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking Harding has set this up so there's only one way we can go. Because he wants us some place in particular. I'm also thinking that he's counting on our using the darkness to cover our approach. Which means..."

  "Which means he may have boobytrapped the tunnels, right?"

  "Right. He's assuming we won't use the light. Just like at the camp he didn't post sentries because he assumed the electronics were enough. He was wrong and he knows it. But this time he's set us loose in a maze, there's only one way out, and that's over him. If we get that far, and he's betting we won't."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I can't, not completely. But it's typical of his arrogance. It's the kind of thing he would do. Sit back and smile while the rats walk right into the meat grinder."

  "Only we're not rats."

  "He doesn't see that difference."

  "And if you're wrong?"

  "Then at least you'll be able to help Carlos explain what's going on. Disarming whatever bombs have been planted is treating the symptom. But Harding's the disease. He has to be cut out, like a cancer."

  "And you're the surgeon, eh, Mr. Belasko?"

  "In a way."

  "I think you're wrong. Dead wrong."

  "No arguments, Marisa. Just do what I tell you."

  "Which is?"

  "Turn back..."

  "And if I say no?"

  Bolan didn't answer, only looked at her steadily. Marisa swayed on her feet a moment, as if her balance had been thrown momentarily out of kilter.

  Then, without a word she turned and started back the way they'd come. Bolan watched her go for a minute, her left hand lightly tracing the wall, her feet splashing softly in the water.

  Turning away, Bolan played the light down the tunnel until it fell away in a gloom too deep for it to plumb. The rippling water underfoot caught the light and splashed little slivers of white and silver on the wall.

  He started off quickly, but using the light to good advantage. He hadn't gone more than twenty yards before he found the first booby trap. A tiny strand of nylon, almost invisible even with the light, ran across the tunnel. He tracked it up the wall to a pair of claymores barely concealed in crevices in the tunnel roof. Either one would have been enough to kill him and bury him at the same time. The pair of them would have reduced his body to ground beef, then pressed the last drop of blood out of every ounce under the crushing weight of the collapsed ceiling.

  Bolan nodded grimly.

  Strike one, Charlie-boy, he thought.

  The tunnel made a sharp left, and Bolan re
alized he was heading toward the waterfront. The character of the passage changed, and the smooth stone gave way to rough brick. Water trickled down the walls from the storm drains above him, and there was a scurrying that preceded him, always just out of reach of the flashlight.

  He found the second trap about a hundred feet after the turn. Again it was a simple contrivance of nylon trip wire and a pair of claymores. He snipped the wire and left the mines in place.

  Disarming them was a problem for someone else.

  Bolan shut off the light for a minute and paused to listen. The gurgle of running water sounded almost peaceful. But another sound, one he couldn't identify, whispered out of the darkness far ahead of him.

  Faint, and echoing slightly in the tight confines of the passage, it was a hum with a rough edge, as if a million bees lurked at the end of the tunnel.

  He flipped the light back on and moved more swiftly. A slap behind him spun him around, and he swept the light around but could find nothing.

  With a shrug he turned back and pushed on. The floor of the passage canted slightly downhill to carry the runoff from Manila's heavy tropical rains.

  Judging by the walls, which were relatively clean almost halfway up, but then more thickly overgrown with pale green and grey lichens, the surge at flood must be fairly powerful. It seemed to have scoured the lower half and kept the floor almost free of litter. Without really thinking about it, he wondered for a moment when the rainy season started.

  He almost missed the third trap. His gaze was drawn a few paces ahead. Something about the floor that didn't look quite right. He approached it cautiously, dropping into a crouch and training the flashlight on a metal plate running the width of the floor.

  From ten feet away, the encrusted metal looked as if it had been there forever. A closer look revealed a few shiny scratches, bright metal where none should have been, that reflected the light, winking as the half inch of water ran over it, rippling a little as it passed over the thick lip of rusty steel. With a combat knife, he worked the plate up, taking care not to let it slip back. Obviously designed to respond to pressure, the device would be harmless unless he lost his grip and dropped the plate back into place.