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.
A thin plume of smoke, almost white and vanishing no more than fifty feet in the air, was the only thing moving in the open space ahead.
Bolan shifted the rifle, spinning it to use the butt to push branches aside. He still couldn't see anything on the ground, and he strained his ears for the slightest sound. Behind him, its pulse nearly inaudible, he heard the jeep engine.
Ten yards from the edge of the trees, he saw the first evidence. The tents were gone, reduced to crumpled heaps, except for the one still burning. A thick black cloud hung almost motionless above it. Too low to be seen over the trees, the cloud spread out as if pressing against an invisible ceiling, trailing off to grey wisps at its edges.
Bolan shinnied up a tree, digging his toes into the rough bark. He could survey the whole camp from twenty feet in the air. Stinging ants scurried over his hands and down into his shirtsleeves, but he ignored them. The campsite, its grass long since trampled net and yellowed, looked like a moonscape. Craters, probably from aerial rockets and grenades, some interlocking into figure as scooped out of the dark soil, pitted the clearing.
The scene was littered with debris, and he could count more than two dozen bodies without even looking carefully. The bodies were in various states of dress, as if whatever had happened had happened early and quickly. From the looks of things, the people had been hit with no warning. They hadn't even had time to grab their weapons. Two tangles of stacked rifles, like broken Tinker-toys, lay in the center of the clearing.
Bolan slipped down the tree and sprinted the last thirty feet to the open ground. Moving cautiously, he scanned the edge of the jungle forty yards across the clearing. He spotted two jeeps that were almost hidden on the far side. One of them had to be Colgan's, but he couldn't explain the other. As he moved toward the center of the camp, he stared in disbelief at the carnage. Men, women and children lay sprawled in the undignified postures of sudden death. Bloodstained clothing, still only half on, trailed away from the bodies, and the buzzing of flies sawed at the air. As he neared a body, the flies would rise up for an instant, then settle back down like a glistening shroud.
He knelt beside the body of a child not more than four.
Naked, it lay facedown, a gaping exit wound almost dead center in its back. Bolan shook his head and reached for a tattered blanket lying halfway between the dead child and a woman, possibly the child's mother. A corner of the blanket was curled in her fist, and her hand and arm moved grotesquely as Bolan pulled it free then spread the blanket over the child's body.
Swallowing hard, he moved from body to body, looking for signs of life. Most of the wounds he saw were clearly fatal. The camp was deathly still and silent. The stench of voided bowels hung in the air, mingling with the sharp smell of burning cloth.
An engine exploded into life, and Bolan turned instantly toward the two jeeps. One lurched drunkenly for a second, then snarled toward him.
Its tires kicked up clots of mud as the jeep raced straight across the clearing. It bounced once over a broken body, and the driver, bent low behind the wheel, bore down on Bolan as if he wanted to run him over. Bolan swung the M-16 up and fired three quick shots. The jeep's windshield disappeared, but the driver's face was still there, just visible above the wheel, his knuckles white on the black plastic.
Bolan dove to the left, and the driver spun the wheel. He reached through the windshield frame, a .45 in one fist, and emptied the clip at Bolan's rolling body.
The jeep thundered past, and Bolan rolled over once more, bringing the M-16 around and cutting loose. He aimed low, just above ground level.
He wanted the bastard alive, if possible.
Somebody had to tell him what the hell had happened there. The left rear tire blew out, then the right, but the jeep churned on, dragged by its four-wheel drive and the good front tires. The clip emptied, and Bolan pulled the AutoMag as the jeep spun into the trees.
Getting to his feet, Bolan started after it when something caught his eyes against the green. Stark white, it hovered like a ghost just beyond the clearing, hovering among the trees. Bolan raced toward it, letting the image sharpen in his vision like a growing crystal. He already knew what it was, but he plunged on.
Bolan drew to within ten feet when he stopped.
He couldn't come any closer. He dropped to his knees. The apparition, all too real now, floated above him.
Five feet off the ground.
A rough board had been fixed to a tree at right angles. And there, on the makeshift cross, hung the body of a man, his hands pinned to the board by a pair of survival knives. His ankles and arms were bound to the wood with thick wire, one foot almost severed. Someone had crucified him, then used him for target practice. A glitter in the bright sun caught Bolan's eye. It took him a moment to realize what had been tugging so anxiously at his attention. It was the knife through the man's heart, its ivory inlay made even whiter by the sun.
There, like all would-be messiahs before him, his clothing scarlet and sagging with the weight of blood, hung Thomas Colgan.