The second criminal made his move, clumsily trying to take Bolan in the side. The warrior danced out of the way easily and launched a power-packed kick that got the knifeman in the side.
The thug took a dive down the stairs, rolling over the smooth steps until he came to rest in an untidy heap.
Bolan didn't bother to check if the guy was dead. His mind was focused on reaching his prey.
Raimondo saved him the trouble of searching by casually stepping from his quarters, a thin cigar clenched between his teeth.
A snub-nosed .38 stared at Bolan.
The warrior halted, gauging the distance and considering his options. If he tried a rush, Raimondo would riddle him before he could make it five feet from where he stood. If he stayed where he was, he was a dead man. Forward, backward or stand where he was, Raimondo had him dead to rights.
Like hell he did.
"Congratulations, Blanski. I expected you would be dead long before this. But never mind. Now I shall have the pleasure myself."
"A gun, Raimondo? Hardly fair. Wouldn't you like to try this man to man? If you aren't too scared of me, that is."
The drug merchant laughed mirthlessly, although the gun never wavered from Bolan's chest. "Do not think that you can trick me into something as foolish as that. I will not fall prey to your amateur psychology. This is not your American West, and I am certainly not some John Wayne. I do not care how I win, as long as I win. This gun is a favor that I have had to pay the prison officials very dearly for. Now it will repay my investment. I have buried many other strong fools before you, and I shall crush many more. Now, go to hell, Blanski."
Bolan watched Raimondo's eyes for the faint tensing he knew would precede the tightening of the trigger finger. At that instant the Executioner dived forward.
A red-hot pencil traced a line along Bolan's back, as the bullet carved a groove through the hard flesh topping his ribs, but luckily missing bones and vital muscles.
Bolan hit the stone floor hard, rolling onto his shoulder. As he completed the roll, he flung the knife at Raimondo. Bolan mentally crossed his fingers, for if Raimondo were sharp, this might be his only chance.
The warrior finished his roll in a half crouch, tensed to dodge another shot. There was none.
Raimondo sprawled in the corridor, one eye staring at the ceiling. Bolan's knife lay buried to the hilt in his other ruined eye.
* * *
When Bolan emerged into the sunlight, he was engulfed by prisoners cautiously but hastily edging their way past him into the prison block. Each was in a frenzy to raid Raimondo's area, to loot what they could before the guards came and took what remained.
As he traced his way back across the yard, Bolan became aware of the new wound. He could feel his shirt sticking to his flesh, captured there by the congealing blood. Everything else hurt, too, and now that the adrenaline rush had worn off, Bolan thought that he could count every bruise on his body with his clothes still on.
Things were rotten, but at least they were starting to improve. Raimondo was out of the way, a minor annoyance settled, another savage who could never prey on anyone else.
One down, and how many million to go?
Bolan wrenched his mind away from the futile speculation. Sure, there would be someone else jockeying for the fallen drug lord's throne, but one down was better than nothing. One step at a time.
One less obstacle to keep him from his primary objective, his date with the Shining Path.
Stone was waiting, still reading, when Bolan returned to the cell block.
"Ally need a keeper, Blanski," the older man observed as he gingerly pulled the shirt from the clotted wound. "Not very pretty, but not deep, either. Another scar to add to your numerous collection. Lurigancho hasn't been very hospitable to you so fat, has it?"
"I'll live," Bolan replied between tightly clenched teeth, as Stone poured what seem like liquid fire along his back.
"I have no doubt about that. You're a survivor type and Raimondo wasn't. He was a weak man, as most bullies are, who ruled through fear."
"What's a survivor type?"
"That's easy. Survivors survive."
Bolan laughed in spite of himself, regretting it immediately as his aching body protested.
A few minutes later, they had a visitor.
Libertad stood in the doorway, looking grim.
Four of his men filled the corridor behind him.
"I did as you suggested, Blanski," Libertad spit. "We got the guns exactly as you said we would. But they are useless! The breechblocks are missing, so they might as well be scrap metal. Is this how you will deal with us? I want an explanation before I order my men to kill you, slowly."
Bolan acted unimpressed by the other man's anger. "Of course the breechblocks are missing. I wanted to demonstrate that I could deliver on the weapons, not to make you a gift with no guarantees from your people. Once we're out of here, you'll get your breechblocks, your rockets and your ammo. But you won't get a damn thing more until I can take you to it personally."
Bolan realised that he was taking a calculated risk. If the Path refused the bargain, then he didn't have any more chips to play with. He certainly wasn't about to deliver working weapons to the very people he had come here to destroy. And if he had to get out of here on his own... well, he might be spending more time here than he'd planned.
"Why shouldn't I just make you tell me where the weapons cache is," Libertad sneered at Bolan.
Bolan knew that he had won. The terrorist leader was acting a part now, as much for his own men as for Bolan. The moment of danger had passed. "In the first place, you need me, or someone like me, and we both know it. I've got what you want, and I'm prepared to deliver as soon as we get out of here and to keep on supplying your little war until you run out of targets. And in the second place, you couldn't make me talk if I didn't want to, and you know that, too." Bolan held Libertad's eyes until the terrorist turned back to his men, gesturing them away with a wave of his hand.
He paused in the doorway as he was leaving, and said, almost as an afterthought, "Be ready tomorrow. At sundown."
Bolan settled carefully facedown in his cot.
He'd be ready for the Shining Path, all right.
But would they be ready for him?
13
Antonia de Vincenzo paused outside the door leading into the Revolutionary Council chamber, rehearsing the answers to questions she was most likely to be asked.
She had left Lima two days ago for the mountain hideout near Ayacucho, high in the Andes. Her great beauty and apparent membership within the Peruvian upper strata had made her journey an easy one.
How strange that the very qualities the wealthy establishment admired in her were the ones that alienated her from her true people, the Indians.
Her arrival unannounced at the Shining Path's secret headquarters was bound to raise the suspicions of some of the party commissars. With a last deep breath she pushed into the meeting room.
The council members were ranged on hard-backed chairs around a simple trestle table. The aged and worn men looked more like farm workers discussing a harvest than the leaders of a secret terrorist movement.
"Tell us why you have returned, Antonia." How typical of the chairman. He didn't bother to waste time on pleasantries, and yet concealed a merciless ruthlessness behind a mild, almost fatherly manner.
Antonia was not fooled, having known the chairman since she was a child. Her father had been an academic along with Gonzalo when their glorious leader had only been a humble university professor, and had been one of the first to join the new movement. Her father was long dead, killed in an early skirmish, but the chairman had prospered.
"My employer was murdered by an American over some business matter. With the police conducting an investigation, it hardly seemed prudent to remain in Lima." She couldn't very well tell the council that she had been in secret communication with the notorious General Palma, the self-styled "Scourge of the Shining Path." Or that she had
fled for her life, fearing that his smooth compliments were meant to lull her while he arranged for her death. To admit knowing him would be to invite the council to flay her alive for information, a fate she preferred not to think about.
The council believed that their weapons were funneled through Carrillo because of an arrangement she had made after she discovered the extent of his contacts. She would let them remain ignorant of the true situation, now and forever.
"We hear, Antonia, that you and several of our comrades have been very busy. Many of the most spectacular bombings and shootings have been conducted by your small band, without our authority. Is that so?"
Antonia nodded, startled and suddenly frightened at the abrupt change of topic, searching her mind for clues as to who might have informed the council about her clandestine activities.
"It must stop!" The chairman suddenly flared into one of his violent rages. Antonia knew that they often terminated in the execution of the object of his volcanic wrath. "Do you have any idea how badly our people in this area have suffered? The government has stepped up its repression tenfold. Hundreds have been murdered at random in reprisal. The result has been that our forces find it more difficult to secure the cooperation of the peasants and more difficult to obtain the supplies we require. All as a consequence of your unparalleled stupidity. I order you to cease at once!"
Antonia's own anger lashed out at the chairman, stung beyond fear for her own safety.
"What do you mean stop? Violence and death are the road to freedom for our nation, the path to a new and wondrous utopian state. A river of blood will wash away the money grubbers and dictators and bring power to the people. The ever-increasing savagery of the government is the whole point of our actions! The more we kill, the more they kill in return. Every peasant they martyour is another nail in the coffin that the capitalists build for themselves. The wheel of violence spirals upward, coating the country with a carpet of dead until, finally, the masses will bear it no longer and tear away the chains of their oppressors. So Gonzalo teaches, and so I believe!"
"This will be a long war, not won in a single violent campaign. It is up to the council to determine the strategy, and every loyal member is required to obey." The chairman stressed the word loyal faintly, but it was more than sufficient to convey the required message. Disloyalty was punishable by death. "This is not a matter that is open to debate. The council has commanded you to cease. You may go."
The lovely redhead stormed to the door, her cheeks blazing.
The voice of the chairman arrested her, his tone cool once more. "It is only because Gonzalo has a certain affection for you that the council allows you to live. Do not give us cause to regret our decision."
Antonia slammed the door against the wall as she left.
* * *
"You can come if you want to, Stone."
Bolan and Stone sat by a window overlooking the prison yard. Neither had spoken for a long while, each occupied with his thoughts, images of happier times far away from the ugliness of prison life. Bolan had revealed his escape plan to the ex-professor, feeling a measure of gratitude for the care the older man had given.
"I've thought of nothing else but escaping from here for years now," Stone said thoughtfully. "And yet, now that I have the chance, I wonder if I can do it. I'm not as strong or as brave as you are. And, I admit, I'm more frightened of the Shining Path than I am of Lurigancho prison. But I'll do it. Thank you for the chance. And if I die, it will be for a purpose, not just because I'm tired of living anymore."
A faint smile disturbed the stillness of Bolan's face. Stone was learning what living large meant. It wasn't dying or not dying that mattered, but whether you really lived at all that counted. And living meant a lot more to Bolan than just breathing foul prison air.
* * *
Bolan and Stone entered the Path compound between two silent guards shortly before sundown the next day. There was no sign of any unusual activity among the inmates, who mostly sat stonily in corners or worked away at menial tasks. Libertad apparently had not yet informed his fellow prisoners of the impending breakout.
Libertad approached from inside the terrorist quarters, and did not appear happy to see Stone.
"Listen, Blanski, I will not endanger my men to protect Stone. He is of no value to us. Is that clear?"
"You're all heart, buddy. But don't worry. I'll take care of both of us."
Libertad grunted in reply and stalked off to brief his lieutenants.
"What happens now?" Stone asked nervously.
"Now we wait," Bolan replied.
It was clear that the Path would have to breach the wall somehow. Unless the prisoners had explosives, which seemed unlikely, there would have to be plenty of outside help. There were three guard towers along the southern wall, which formed one side of the small exercise yard in the Path compound. Two of them directly overlooked the prison yard used by the Shining Path, while the third was farther down the wall and dominated the main yard. Each of them contained several heavily armed guards and a searchlight, ready to pick off anyone who made a move to B over the wall.
The terrorists began to move inside the main quarters individually, called in by their commanders for instructions. When they emerged, they resumed their former activities, trying to look nonchalant. The only change was that no one was venturing near the south wall.
Libertad beckoned to the Americans from a doorway. When they entered, he instructed them to stay close to him and ignore everything else that happened.
He glanced repeatedly at his watch as they waited in silence.
"What will happen? What can we expect?" Stone's anxiety was getting the better of him.
The terrorist suppressed an urge to tell the man to shut up. It didn't matter now, and besides, Stone would be less likely to get anyone else killed if he could act on his own. The big American, Blanski, had already shown that he could look after himself very well.
"Last night our people planted dynamite along the wall. It will destroy the towers and blow a hole for our escape. There will be a party waiting to take us to safety. That is all you need to know."
"How much dynamite, and how soon?" Bolan asked.
"The dynamite?" Libertad shrugged expressively. "We will see. Perhaps too much, or maybe not enough. We will know in..." he paused briefly as he checked his black plastic watch, "...less than two minutes."
Several more terrorists drifted inside, seeking shelter, leaving a few to take their chances in the yard in order to lend an air of normalcy to the area.
Two minutes passed, then three. At the end of ten minutes of watching the shadows deepen slowly in the yard, the Americans were becoming impatient.
"I thought you said..." Stone began.
And then the ground shook, followed by the rushing sound of crumbling masonry as a part of the wall disintegrated.
The terrorists and Americans rushed outside, just as several prison sirens began to wail.
Bolan breathed in a double lungful of concrete dust as he sprinted for the shattered wall after Libertad. Stone was behind, followed by more of the Path.
Several of the terrorists were ahead, running interference.
A gap four feet wide had been blown in the base of the wall. There was no sign of the tower that had stood to the far left, while the tower in the middle of the wall had fallen into the Path's compound. To the right, the third guard post leaned drunkenly, but had not toppled.
The Path had taken casualties already. One torso lay in the middle of the yard, the head sheared away by flying masonry as completely as though struck by a cannonball. A second body was partly visible, only a pair of legs sticking from under the guard tower.
Bolan took a detour toward the ruined guard post that lay in the yard. Where there were watchmen there might still be usable weapons. It was worth a look.
There were two dead prison guards among the wreckage. One blood-covered body had been slashed a thousand times when he had fallen into the lens of the
searchlight. The second looked as though it had been dropped from a third-story window, with splinters of broken bones sticking through the lacerated flesh. Bolan found the sharpshooter's rifle when he rolled the dead guard over, and he unbuckled a holster that contained a .357 Colt Python. He strapped it on quickly before drawing the weapon.
The entire search had taken only thirty seconds, but he was already late for the party.
Stone, Libertad and several of the terrorists waited on top of the rubble that formed a gentle slope by the breached wall. "Souvenir hunting, Blanski?" Libertad sneered as Bolan approached at a run.
Bolan ignored the remark and cast a quick glance at the terrain outside the wall. The ground was flat and featureless up to a ragged tree line more than three hundred yards away. To the left, less than a third of that distance from their position, was a low barracks. Riot-equipped guards poured from the building to join a line of at least a dozen men forming in front of the squat building.
Three bodies sprawled between the wall and the trees, while several more terrorists raced for the safety of the trees beyond. Night was falling rapidly, but not quickly enough to cloak their escape. As Bolan watched, a rifle chattered briefly from the teetering tower, stitching a line of bullets in the dust before climbing the back of the man who brought up the rear.
"If those guards set up, we're dead. Let's move." Bolan followed his own advice and scrambled over the broken concrete, taking a short drop to ground level and rolling.
He had attracted the attention of the remaining tower guard, and rounds slammed into the dirt beside him. The warrior was up and running, zigzagging toward the tree line while the gunner tried to line him in his sight.
He hit the ground once more, rolling into a slight depression that he had spotted. The Executioner sighted his captured rifle and squeezed the trigger.
The first round gouged chips from the tower wall; the second penetrated an inch below the guard's hairline, flinging the top of his skull over the side of the tower as the body sunk out of sight.
Bolan gave the thumbs-up sign to the others, who were now crouched by the base of the wall. They made their break, quickly stringing into a line with Stone, the oldest and least fit puffing away at the rear.
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