Backlash

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan caught a quick glimpse of four men huddled over something on the ground in front of them. One man was pointing at it while the other three watched the movement of a small beam. As the warrior eased through a particularly dense clump of undergrowth, the conference broke up. The men straightened and shook hands. One man, his face bathed in silver light, looked vaguely familiar, but the combination of sheen and shadow distorted his features just enough to prevent recognition. He moved away from the others, keeping to the side of the road. A moment later Bolan heard the rumble of a jeep. It moved away slowly, as if the driver wanted to keep the noise to a minimum.

  The voices were drifting away as the men moved freely without the impedance of the jungle. In the moonlight Bolan could make out the figures of three men. They were walking around the curve of the road, heading back toward the camp. Because of the angle, they were facing away from him. He picked up the pace, cutting at an acute angle to try to get in front of them without giving away his presence. It might just have been a few friends on a midnight stroll, but that didn't explain the fourth man, and it didn't explain the huddle.

  It seemed clear that they had wanted to meet away from the camp and probable that at least one of them wasn't even from the camp. But why? Bolan moved out onto the edge of the road as the men rounded the curve and pulled out of sight. As long as they didn't know he was there, there was no need to do anything but keep hidden. Back at the camp, he could see which tent they went into and narrow the field considerably.

  The men stopped abruptly, then dodged into the trees. He heard the footsteps behind him at the same moment and started to turn. Something nailed him high on the temple, and he went down without a sound. He lay there staring up at the clouds, only half conscious. He tried to get up, but his body wouldn't respond. As his last strength ebbed away, he fell back onto the ground, his cheek ripped by several thorns. The pain stabbed through him, and he reached up to wipe at his face when he heard the gunshot.

  Then he blacked out.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Hoffman hung back, watching Arledge's taillights in the distance. The man was heading south, and there was no other traffic on the road. Hoffman felt Arledge was telling him something that he already knew. There was something final about this midnight run, and Arledge was driving as if he knew it.

  Southwest of Miami, the population was sparse. Mangrove swamp and dark blue sky surrounded the two vehicles like a giant bowl. The stars were bright, and a piece of moon hung in the heavens like an inquisitive eye. Hoffman felt his nerves settle down. At last it was happening. This phase was about to close for both of them. After tonight neither man would be the same. One of them might even cease to be at all. But that was up to Arledge.

  It didn't seem like a flat-out flight. Arledge seemed to have some idea where he was going. Hoffman wished he could say the same about himself. They were on Florida 27, heading toward the Everglades. Hoffman had figured the Keys, and was uncertain about the choice.

  If Arledge wanted to disappear, this wasn't the best way to go about it. Unless he had a boat at Flamingo, it didn't make sense. The towns on the tip of the peninsula could be counted on the fingers of one hand. There were a few hamlets, clusters of shacks and that sort of thing, and the Miccosukee Indians had a few villages, some even the government didn't know about, sprinkled around the point, but that was about it.

  They had done some training in the Glades years ago, before the Bay of Pigs, and Arledge might know about one of the camps, but there seemed little point in hiding out in a swamp. What did he expect to accomplish by that?

  And how long could he stay there?

  He remembered Belasko's story about the freighter, and slowly a germ of an idea began to crystallize in the back of his mind. A chopper had chased Belasko, appearing out of the blue. He wondered whether Arledge might have a little something going down here. They weren't that far off the sea lanes, and it had never made sense for Pagan to attack his own house, or to take down one of his own shipments. But somebody had known, and that somebody had access to some heavy artillery.

  But before Hoffman had a chance to pursue his train of thought any further, the taillights up ahead winked out. He thought for a minute that Arledge might have decided to see who was pursuing him. He could stop, a sure sign that he had been following, or he could keep on going, doubling back if he had to. Hoffman slowed a bit as he debated. Finally, realizing that it was no better than a coin toss either way, he floored it again.

  Keeping his eyes peeled, Hoffman searched both sides of the road, looking for some sign that Arledge had simply pulled over, perhaps into a clump of trees. It was difficult to gauge the distance between himself and the point where the lights had vanished, but he knew Arledge couldn't have been more than a mile or so ahead of him.

  When the odometer showed that two miles had elapsed, Hoffman slowed the car and coasted to a halt. It was conceivable, but unlikely, that Arledge had simply turned off his lights and continued driving. The moonlight would have made it possible, although difficult, to stay on the road, but only at reduced speed. Hoffman knew he would surely have caught up to him by now.

  Heaving a sigh, he jerked his car into a K-turn and started back the way he had come, this time moving slowly. He knew he was exposing himself to an ambush. All Arledge needed to do was pull off the road far enough to conceal his vehicle. At Hoffman's reduced speed, he would have been a sitting duck for a gunman hiding in the reeds on the far side of the ditch that paralleled the road on either side.

  But Hoffman knew he had no choice. If he lost Arledge now, it was all over. Vince could go anywhere, and the odds against finding him again were astronomical. In the meantime he could sabotage the whole Nicaraguan operation. If there was any point in taking him at all, it had to be tonight. Tomorrow was no good; tomorrow was forever away.

  Then Hoffman got lucky. He spotted a dirt road he had missed the first time. It was little more than a pair of ruts in the marsh grass. A mound of dirt, weedless and muddy, obviously of fairly recent vintage, had filled the ditch, permitting a car to drive off the road and head cross-country. How far was an open question, and Hoffman was reluctant to trust the tricky marshland. If Arledge had turned in here — and there seemed little possibility he hadn't — he had the advantage of knowing where he was going. Hoffman couldn't say the same. He pulled onto the makeshift road just far enough to get his car off the highway and left it astride the double ruts. It might make a difference if Arledge tried to bull his way out.

  Hoffman shut off the engine and climbed out of the car. Walking to the trunk, he opened it and took out a web belt. In quick succession he attached a small first-aid kit, a couple of ammunition pouches, a couple of grenades and finally a canteen. He opened a leather case and removed an M-16, already fitted with an AN/PVS-2 Starlite scope. The rifle was bulky, but in these conditions the scope could be invaluable. With an eight-hundred yard range, he didn't have to get any closer to Arledge than he cared to. And with the lead Vince had, he might not get much closer than that in any case.

  He wasn't eager, but he was ready. Leaning on the rear fender of the car, he used the scope to check the road ahead. As far as he could tell, Arledge was far ahead of him. He spotted a couple of small deer, far out in the marsh, so he knew the scope was working properly, but there was no sign of his former comrade-in-arms. Sweeping the scope across the tree line far ahead, nearly a mile as far as he could tell, he again came up empty.

  Hoffman started down the road, his feet creating small pools of water with every step he made. He was glad he hadn't bothered to use the car. He'd have been hopelessly bogged down inside of fifty feet.

  He stopped every so often to look for evidence of Arledge's 4×4. There were tracks all right, but the ground was so spongy that he couldn't tell whether they were minutes, hours or even days old. Every depression in the ground immediately filled with water. The telltale tread of a heavy tire left a pattern of oblique wedges in the mud under the bent weeds. Every so
often he stuck by a particularly perfect impression that caught the slice of moon so precisely that it reflected it without a blemish on an absolutely calm, mirrorlike surface.

  Hoffman stopped to listen, but he heard no evidence of the presence of a human. The third time he stopped he heard an owl far off in the distance. Its hoot was so mournful that it made Hoffman second-guess his decision for an instant. The chill that had ran up his spine made him feel old and vulnerable. Years ago, when he was new at his business, such a noise was part of the thrill, one of the accoutrements of his profession. Now he felt differently. Now he knew the clichés were much more deeply rooted in real soil than he had imagined. And it made his spine tingle.

  Two hundred yards in he found the Ranger, nosed into a clump of bushes, its rear end blocking half of the road, Hoffman took a quick look inside without opening the door. For a second he thought he saw someone staring back at him from the back seat, then he realized it was his own reflection in the glass. He shook his head as if to clear it, then pushed on. He searched the grass for evidence of traffic, but as with the tires, the footprints could have been there for several days.

  Hoffman moved past the clump of bushes and dropped to one knee. He used the scope again to check out the road ahead. Straight as an arrow, it ran directly toward the tree line, now no more than a thousand yards ahead. Swampland was alien territory to him, but he guessed the trees might mark water of some kind, either a lake or perhaps a stream cutting through the marsh.

  He saw more than his share of nocturnal wildlife, but there was still no sign of Arledge. The sun would be coming up soon, and then the scope would no longer be an outside edge. He wished he'd thought to bring a daylight scope, but it was too late now. He started to double-time it, paying less attention to his feet and more to the approaching trees.

  He listened to the sound of his gear slapping against his body, its rhythm spastic and irregular as his legs pumped through the grass and fought with the soggy ground. His muscles started to burn, and his lungs felt as if they were on fire. He wasn't used to this stuff anymore, and he kept telling himself that it would soon be over. Promising himself fifty yards at a time, he managed to get within a hundred yards of the trees before he had to stop.

  He fell to his knees, struggling to keep his stomach under control. His chest felt as if it were ready to split open, and every breath burned his throat. His limbs trembled, and he knew he'd fall on his face if he tried to stand. The bennies were taking their toll. He'd been running on empty for too long. The chemicals could deceive him as long as he didn't try to push his body too hard, but the sprint for the trees was too big a lie. The truth spread along his neural circuits like flames tracing a network of gunpowder just under the skin. He tried to get his breathing back to normal. The pain in his chest subsided a bit, but his muscles were less cooperative. He had robbed them of stamina with the bennies, and they weren't about to be abused any further.

  Hoffman dropped on his butt, ignoring the water sopping through his pants. Slowly his equilibrium was restored, but he could still hear his heart pounding in his ears. He placed one hand flat on his chest, and he could feel the insistent drumming on his ribs, as if some angry beast were hurling itself against the bars of its cage.

  He looked stupidly at the rifle balanced precariously now on his lotused legs. With a shrug, and knowing that for the moment he was capable of nothing more strenuous, he raised the scope for one more look at the trees. He started at the left, about two hundred yards off the road. Slowly sweeping the Starlite, its objective scooping available light out of the darkness, he followed the irregular course of the trees. At a point directly in front of him he found a small break in the trees, but it was just one of several in the winding course he'd traced.

  Scoping out the right, he moved the Starlite more quickly, as if he didn't really expect to see anything, anyway. He scanned nearly three hundred yards to the southwest, then doubled back. A hundred yards back toward dead center he stopped. Moving the scope back, he pressed his eye to the rubber, trying to cut out the seepage of glare from the slightly graying sky.

  And there it was. At first he wasn't sure, but now he wondered how he'd overlooked it the first time. On the far side of the trees was a structure of some sort. Made of wood, its lines too regular, too sharply delineated, its edges too straight to be any natural growth, it was just discernible through the foliage. He wouldn't have spotted it at all if it hadn't been for the shifting branches. Whatever it was he was looking at, it didn't move when the wind blew, while everything else bent before the slight breeze.

  "Okay, Vince," he whispered. "Okay, I'm coming, buddy."

  Hoffman got wearily to his feet, levering himself erect with the help of the M-16. He moved much more cautiously now, keeping to the very edge of the road, almost flush with the reeds waving at shoulder height now that he had stepped off the slightly elevated road. He was reluctant to go any farther from the road. He'd heard things in the swamp on either side of him, and the marsh was full of sinkholes and alligator wallows. If one of the gators took a notion to run him down, it was all over. He was too far out of his element here.

  When he reached the trees, he found the road intersecting another following the tree line in both directions. Hoffman headed southwest toward the structure he'd seen, this time staying close to the trees, where the ground was more solid underfoot. He had to estimate the location because he was too close to the trees now for the scope to help him pick it out. Twice he thought he'd gone far enough and eased his way among the trees only to find nothing.

  He paused to listen. Still nothing.

  Then he saw the light.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Bolan opened his eyes slowly. Staring straight at the sky, he watched the moon slide in and out through a tangle of dark gray shapes. He knew it was the moon, but wasn't sure what the shapes were. As his vision cleared, he noticed another, more solid shape to his left. He sat up sharply, and everything began to spin.

  The hand on his shoulder pressed him back gently but firmly. "Stay down a minute," the voice ordered. Bolan vaguely recognized the speaker, but he was still disoriented.

  "Who's there?" he mumbled.

  "The old man," Rivera said. "Maybe not so old after all, eh?"

  "What happened?" Bolan sat up again, this time more slowly. Rivera let him move.

  "Somebody thought you saw something you shouldn't have," Rivera replied, a hard edge to his voice.

  Bolan shook his head to clear it.

  "If I were a suspicious man," Rivera said, "I might wonder what you were doing out here in the first place. I'm here, as you see, so perhaps I'm suspicious, eh? Maybe you would like to tell me what you saw."

  "I didn't see much," the warrior replied. "I couldn't sleep. I took a walk and I saw a light. When I got close enough to see, four men were talking, looking at something on the ground. I don't know what. When they were finished, one went back to the camp, the others went the other way. I was following the one back to camp when somebody slugged me. So there was at least one other man out here."

  "Don't worry about him. Did you get a look at any of the others?"

  "No. And I heard a shot after I got hit."

  "So you did. But it was my gun." Rivera shook Bolan's shoulder, then pointed. At first the warrior saw nothing but a fallen tree trunk. It took him a moment to realize the shadowy lump was the body of a man.

  "Who is it?" Bolan asked, getting to his knees. He was still groggy, but he had to move.

  "The man who attacked you. The man who was about to shoot you when I beat him to the draw." Rivera chuckled.

  "I guess I owe you."

  "I guess so," the general agreed. "So, what do you think we ought to do about this?"

  "If I had to guess what those men were looking at, I'd say it was a map, a diagram of some kind. Probably of the camp. One of your men was giving an update, or spotting targets for the others."

  "You think they plan to attack us, then?"

&nbs
p; "What do you think?"

  "I think we should assume the worst. I always do, and it's worked very well for me until now."

  "All right, what do you want to do?"

  "I'll tell you on the way back. We better hurry," Rivera said. The playful tone was gone. He was all business now, and Bolan was getting a glimpse of yet another Emiliano Rivera, the no-nonsense military commander. Somehow he wasn't surprised. He was starting to wonder, though, just how many men inhabited that one body.

  * * *

  Bolan moved into the first tent carefully, not wanting to risk getting shot by a nervous soldier, and woke the first man he came to after clamping a hand over his mouth. He spoke softly, assuring the man that there was nothing to fear. He told him what he wanted, and together they woke the rest of the men in the tent. Rivera joined them, explaining that he feared an attack was imminent. And he made it clear, with an emphasis that caused more than a few quizzical looks and raised eyebrows, that he wanted the advisers to be the last ones awakened.

  It took twenty minutes to rouse all the men. They were armed and edgy. As Rivera outlined his plans, the last traces of grogginess disappeared. This was what they had been waiting for, training for, grinding themselves into powder for. All the weeks of lousy food and insatiable bugs, the heat and the humidity, the isolation and the tedium were all about this one moment — combat.