He let one arm dangle over the big machine gun as the jeep lurched into the road. Directly ahead, the sky was wall-to-wall red. Then, as if someone had changed a filter, it turned orange. By the time they had gone a hundred yards, the orange had faded to yellow.
Morning was getting started in earnest, and Bolan felt as if something had changed. The world was somehow a different place. Overnight the script had been rewritten, and he felt as if his part had been expanded. A warning tingled down his spine. Such a change could mean only one thing.
And he didn't want to think about what that might be.
The jungle came alive as they passed, and Bolan had the sense that he was being watched. On the opposite side of the jeep, he spotted a pair of wooden crates banded with galvanized metal strips. He reached around the gun, pulled the top crate off its companion and scraped it along the floor of the jeep.
Marisa turned toward the sound as though she wanted to know what he was doing. He was thankful she didn't seem to notice the belt of ammunition as he grabbed the end and tugged it free. He locked it down with a sharp click, and Marisa nodded as if she had heard the sound before. She turned back to the front without saying anything, her head tilted at that odd angle he had grown used to.
"Carlos," he shouted, "can you find the camp we visited the other day?"
Carlos nodded. "Si," he shouted. "I know where it is."
"Is there any place we can leave Mrs. Colgan?"
Carlos shook his head. "No, senor. No place..." Bolan let that sink in, watching Marisa to see what her reaction might be. She might as well have been made of stone for all the emotion she showed.
Bolan took the M-16 from a rack against the sidewall of the jeep and balanced it across his knees. The fire control lever was on full-auto, and he adjusted it to semi, then took off the safety. Four clips jutted out of a plastic canister suspended from the rack. He stuffed two of them into his shirt pocket and tucked the other pair into the back pocket of his pants.
Something told him he was going to need all the hardware he could carry before the day was out. He recognised the terrain. If memory served, they were only a mile or so from the turnoff to the NPA camp.
Bolan surveyed the tree line to the left, his eye drawn by something that had registered without really being seen. His ears perked up, and he heard the cry of frightened birds. Like a rolling wave, a cloud of parrots pulsed for a moment above the trees, then sank again. It must have been the birds he'd registered before. As he watched, it rose again, this time higher, then seemed to fracture. The birds fluttered like scraps of bright confetti, then sank down out of sight. As they disappeared, their excited cries swept across the canopy before dying away. And in the echo, he heard another, unnatural sound. Felt it, really, as the floorboard of the jeep picked up the throbbing, vibrating in sympathy.
The pulse grew stronger, and his body reacted to it. Automatically he draped an arm over the M-60. The pulse grew stronger, and he could hear it now, too. A deep throbbing, fading away then coming back even stronger, it seemed to gather more and more strength each time it ceased. And he didn't have to see its source to know what it was. A Huey, somewhere off to the left, had climbed above the trees and had started toward them.
It spelled trouble to Bolan.
The NPA camp had been almost Stone Age in its simplicity. Automatic weapons, yes. But there had been only two vehicles, both in desperate need of repair. They had little fuel to speak of. The idea that they commanded a chopper was unthinkable. Only two options suggested themselves. It was either a Philippine Army ship or it belonged to the Leyte Brigade.
The pulse fractured now, and he realized there were at least two birds. The strange inconsistency of the sound was created by the overlapping rhythm of the two engines, a rhythm that changed constantly as the ships changed speed and their respective distances from him changed along with it. One, from the sound of it, was moving away, heading south. The other seemed to be coming their way.
"Carlos," Bolan shouted, "pull off the road."
Carlos swiveled around. When he saw Bolan pointing at the sky, he nodded that he understood.
The jeep veered suddenly, jolting Marisa. She turned to Bolan. "What's happening?" she shouted. "Why are we leaving the road?"
"Helicopters," Bolan yelled in her ears. "At least two, maybe more. If they're army, they might take us for NPA, and if they're not..." He didn't have to tell Marisa what that would mean.
The chopper roared closer. It was still too far away to see, probably keeping low, just above the trees. Unlike in Vietnam, it had little to fear flying so dose to the ground here. The NPA had nothing much beyond small arms, and most of its widely scattered units were no match in firepower for a single Huey carrying the usual complement of guns and possibly rockets.
Carlos wrestled the jeep's steering wheel, struggling to get under the trees. If they were out of sight, they should be all right, since the chopper had no particular reason to be looking for them.
The bushes began to dose around the nose of the jeep just as the chopper appeared overhead, sudden as a wasp. It roared past, and Bolan thought for a moment they hadn't been seen, but the Huey slowed, banked in a tight circle and hovered over the middle of the road about four hundred yards past them.
"Get out," Bolan shouted. "They spotted us."
He pushed Marisa down to Carlos, who struggled through the dense undergrowth, hacking at it with a machete to cut a narrow swath for the two of them to slip through.
Carlos looked back and Bolan waved him on. "Keep going!"
The chopper pilot seemed to be debating what to do. The big bird hung there in the air. Its engine was a dull undercurrent under the steady whomping of the huge rotor blades. It was side-on, and Bolan spotted two men in the open door. A Browning M-3, a half-inch machine gun on a pintle, was starkly outlined against the bright sky through the open belly of the aircraft.
Bolan swung the M-60 around and made sure the safety was off. He didn't want to waste time on a fight, but it didn't look as if the chopper was going to give him a choice. As near as he could tell, the M-3 was the only armament, other than whatever small arms the crew and passengers might have.
Worse than an attack was the possibility that the chopper might dispatch a ground unit or call in additional support from the other chopper. Shaking his head, Bolan rubbed the sweat beading on his forehead with the back of his hand. The chopper suddenly rose straight in the air, climbing nearly five hundred feet before pivoting on its rotor shaft and swooping toward him at an acute downward angle.
The big bird roared overhead, not more than seventy feet above him, and immediately swung broadside. The door gunner cut loose, and a swarm of half-inch hornets ripped at the leaves just behind him. The gunner swiveled the muzzle down a little, and the pilot tried to steady the bird. Bolan opened up with the M-60, raking the side of the Huey with a short burst until the chopper climbed an invisible wire. It looked like a spider climbing a filament or some ghastly yo-yo abruptly called up to a hidden hand.
Bolan cut loose again with a short burst, but other than a few stray sparks from one strut, he did no damage. The door gunner seemed unused to his weapon and swept the muzzle too far around. His next hail ripped chunks of clay from the road surface, scattering Bolan and the jeep with blobs of soil as sticky as putty. They flattened against the windshield of the jeep, then fell away, leaving round blotches on the glass.
The pilot, realizing his gunner needed help, urged the chopper down, keeping it broadside for a moment, then pivoting again until just the barrel of the M-3 was visible in the open door. Bolan raked the nose and was rewarded with a spiral web of brilliant white cracks in the bubble. The glass was tough and refused to shatter.
Bolan dropped his aim and chewed at the undercarriage. One strut came loose and dangled from a single bolt. It flapped in the rotor wash, then began to swing in a strange circle as the chopper changed its tack again. A couple of men had joined the door gunner, and Bolan could see the barrels of two assault ri
fles braced against the floor of the chopper. The pilot angled his ship over, and all three guns opened up.
The distinctive pop of a rifle grenade sent Bolan diving over the tail of the jeep into the bushes. The grenade went off with a dull thud, and more dirt cascaded down over him. Bolan got to his feet and dodged into the trees, then cut back. He dove under the layer of bright green and wormed his way back, waiting for the chopper to sweep by, looking for him.
When the engine grew louder, then died away, he saw the antitorque rotor glinting in the sunlight as the Huey passed by. Slipping backward toward the jeep, Bolan hurled himself over the tailgate and swung the M-60 a hundred and eighty degrees. It was his only chance. If he didn't nail the bastard, he might not get another one.
Tugging a length of the ammo belt free to make sure there were no snags, he started hammering. The big 7.62 mm bucked in his hands. He could feel its chatter in his bones from his knees on the floorboard right up through the top of his head. The door gunner, caught by surprise by a burst from behind as the chopper hovered to regroup, pitched forward and out the open door.
Bolan watched the ungainly swan dive with grim satisfaction, then hacked away at the tail. The pilot suddenly realized what was happening and started to climb. Plumes of smoke, probably a ruptured oil line, spewed out a ragged line of holes in the fuselage. The antitorque rotor suddenly stuttered, one shattered blade arcing off like a shiny comet. The imbalance tore its companion to pieces with stability gone, the chopper began to spin. The pilot tried to adjust, but he was helpless.
The smoke suddenly spouted flame, and Bolan banged away at it, trying to widen the fissures in the fuselage. A moment more, and it was all gone.
A huge bright flower bloomed and died in seconds, leaving a black smudge on the blue sky and shattered pieces arcing away in every direction. The shiny metal flashed again and again as it tumbled down.
The orange light was gone. The junk had all landed.
Only a round black ball rolled away toward the ocean. Bolan was conscious of his breath scratching at his throat, and the pounding of his heart, like a huge drum, echoed in his ears.
One down.
Then the second bird swooped down, its engine masked by the rumble of the burning ship. Bolan braced for a second assault, but the new bird just roared off, following the highway. For one instant, in the open door, he glimpsed an uninterested onlooker. It was Charles Harding. And he was smiling.
19
Bolan called out to Carlos. His voice disappeared into the jungle. A few squawking parrots answered him, and then silence descended.
Bolan snatched the M-16 from the hood of the jeep and moved into the trees. He repeated the summons, and again his voice was swallowed by the trees.
Finally the response came. The call was distant, and Bolan turned to the left. Making a megaphone of his hands, he called a third time.
Carlos answered again, sounding a little closer.
Bolan waited impatiently until the young man's slender figure parted a stand of tall grass. Slipping through sideways, kicking up a swarm of black flies, the driver tugged Marisa after him. She stumbled, digging her heels in and trying to hold him back.
Bolan ran to them and gently got hold of her by the shoulders. As she crumpled like a baby, he noticed the blood on her arm.
Carlos nodded. "A stray bullet, senor, right away."
"Put me down," Marisa screamed. "I don't want to go."
"Stop acting like a child," Bolan snapped.
He let Carlos push the brush away and half carried the wounded woman to the jeep, where he set her in the passenger seat.
"First-aid kit?" he asked.
Carlos reached under the front seat for a small, blue plastic box. He fumbled with the latch, then spilled half its contents on the ground as the lid popped unexpectedly. Bolan turned back to Marisa while Carlos gathered the dropped supplies.
Tearing the sleeve up from the cuff, Bolan exposed the wound. It still oozed blood but didn't appear to be serious. "You're lucky," he said reassuringly. "It didn't hit an artery."
She started to pull her arm away, but Bolan held on while he rummaged in the box on the dash.
He poured an antiseptic liquid on the wound, and she inhaled sharply.
"Give me one those green packets, Carlos," Bolan said, spotting some plastic bags of sulfa powder. "Tear it open..." Carlos handed him the small packet, and Bolan dusted the wound, emptying the bag and handing it back.
Applying a pad of gauze, he held it in place with a thumb. Carlos gave him a roll of gauze ribbon, and he wound it around the arm several times.
He tore the end with his teeth, tucked it in and let go. Taking a roll of adhesive tape, he tore three long strips, wrapped them over the gauze and patted the ends tight.
Marisa gritted her teeth as Bolan worked, but she no longer struggled to pull her arm free. He looked in the box again, found a plastic bottle of ampicillin and tilted two capsules into his palm.
"Can you swallow pills without water?" he asked.
She nodded, and he gave her the capsules.
"One at a time," he warned. When she'd swallowed the antibiotic, Bolan closed the box and handed it back to Carlos. "Let's get going."
"Where, senor?"
"The same place we were going before." The young man looked unconvinced, and Bolan gave him a commanding look. "We have to find Dr. Colgan and help him if we can."
Carlos shook his head. "Leyte Brigade, senor. There is nothing we can do."
"We have to try." Carlos stared at him. His lips quivered, then he pointed to Marisa, shaking his head. Bolan understood, but pointed up the road. "Drive," he said.
Carlos shrugged. "Whatever you say."
The jeep was battered but still serviceable. It turned over immediately, and Carlos backed toward the road, the transmission snarling as the jeep lurched over the log then sank into the ditch. It stuttered back onto the road. The smooth surface was now pocked and pitted from the M-60, small craters in ragged strips running from side to side. Clots of damp clay lay scattered everywhere.
Carlos let the engine idle for a moment in neutral. "They have jeeps too, senor," he said, stabbing a finger into the air.
"Carlos, we don't have a choice."
The driver sighed as he reached for the gearshift. He looked over his shoulder silently, as if to give this crazy man one more chance to come to his senses. Bolan just nodded a forceful directive, and Carlos muscled the jeep into first and let the clutch out slowly. The jeep started to roll as Bolan popped the second box of M-60 ammo open.
Carlos was right, of course. The Leyte Brigade probably did have jeeps, and they might very well have attacked on the ground as well as from the air. It was a chance they'd have to take. There was no percentage sitting where they were, and going back to Colgan's compound would serve no purpose.
Carlos had warned them by radio, and they would have to take their chances. What else could they do, Bolan thought, but plunge straight ahead.
Bolan sat on the tail, the M-60 swiveled forward. With a foot he pulled the second ammo crate closer. Chewing his lower lip, he watched the road ahead. If they were going to get any warning, it would be visual. It was difficult to hear anything over the sound of their own engine. They had gone just two hundred yards when Carlos pointed.
Dead ahead, another hundred yards down the road, a bundle of rags lay across the center of the road. Even from this distance, Bolan caught the glint of sunlight on the bright red smear at the front edge of the bundle. Bolan swung the M-60 around, all ready for whatever happened.
But they had nothing to worry about. As they narrowed the distance, Bolan realized the bundle was neither a threat nor a trap. The door gunner, his body smashed and broken from the fall, could do them no harm.
Carlos edged around the corpse, glancing at it with an expressionless face. It was no more to him than a fallen tree, a stone in the road. Then the jeep slowed, and Carlos leaned over. Bolan thought for a moment it was just to get a
closer look. But Carlos bent way out over the running board and spat.
They were close now. Bolan scanned the left side of the road. He knew the white flag would no longer be there, but he hoped he could spot the camouflage netting. It couldn't be more than a half mile more. But the tree line was featureless and deceptive, teasing him with a familiar clump of trees, a dead trunk at an angle, then repeating the tease thirty yards beyond. The wall of the jungle started to look like a repeating pattern, as if it were no more than a flat wall artfully disguised with overlapping strips of patterned paper.
The jungle, in its infinite variety, was all of a piece. It looked the same in every direction.
Bolan was getting impatient. He was about to lean forward to ask Carlos something when he spotted the netting, ripped aside and hanging like an old rag from only one end. Carlos saw it a moment later and let the jeep roll to a halt.
"No helicopter did that, senor," he said, pointing.
"Go ahead, Carlos."
The driver reached down to the floor and pulled his own M-16 closer. Bolan saw him shiver, and felt the chill run down his own spine, too. The jeep started up again as Marisa groaned in her seat. She was only semiconscious, and Bolan debated the wisdom of leaving her at the entrance. But he realized she would be no safer there.
They rolled into the approach, Carlos letting the gears pulse a little, giving the engine just enough gas to keep from stalling.
Bolan could smell smoke, and it hung in the air like a fine haze. Nothing was visible over the trees, and it seemed odd, until he remembered the camp had very little to burn. A few tents had been the total shelter. The tang of burnt canvas grew sharper as they approached, but the air stayed relatively clear.
He hadn't seen a sign of life yet. They were fifty yards from the open when Bolan asked Carlos to stop.
"You stay here with Mrs. Colgan," Bolan said, jumping down.
"Shouldn't I come with you?"
"No. Turn the jeep around and get ready to make a run for it if anything happens."
Carlos waited for Bolan to slip into the trees, then struggled in the narrow alley to get the jeep turned. Bolan stayed just inside the first line of trees, where the undergrowth was thin enough for him to move without obstruction. It was hot, and the bugs swirled around him, small shiny flies like fiery jewels burning his skin when they landed, then darting away ahead of his slapping palm. As he drew closer, he ignored the burning sensation.
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