Within moments, sounds of pursuit rustled in the distance behind them.
"Where did you learn to fire an assault rifle like that?" Bolan asked the woman.
"Back there," came the grim reply.
There was no trail through this part of the jungle, but they were heading in the general direction of the road from Three Click Fork.
Or so Bolan hoped.
His instincts proved right.
They stumbled out onto the rough surface of the road forty minutes later.
They would be better targets at the moment, if the VC managed to close in on them from behind, but they could move faster on the road.
The VC had not yet reached the road.
A shadow moved in front of them.
Bolan spun Jill away from him, splitting them up to make them harder targets. He brought up the reloaded M-16 and tracked the rifle on the moving spot.
His finger froze on the trigger a fraction of a second before sending a bullet into the night.
He heard the cry of a child.
A little boy, no more than four or five years old, stumbled into the road, tears running down his cheeks. His clothes were in tatters. There was blood on his face from a gash in his scalp.
He was alone.
Jill crouched on the other side of the road, her AK-47 up and ready. She saw the child, too, and moved back into the center of the road to join Bolan. He was already advancing toward the boy, more wary than ever of an enemy trap.
The child saw the two adults approaching and turned to run away.
Bolan caught the child's arm and stopped him.
Two still forms on the road nearby caught Bolan's attention. He took a closer look: the child's parents. Dead. Slaughtered.
"From that burned-out village, more than likely," Bolan grunted under his breath. "The VC caught them on their way out. This is no place for the little guy. Not tonight."
The soldier gathered the child up in his free arm and glanced at Jill.
She looked as if she needed to catch her breath, dangerous though the delay might be.
There was still no sign of Charlie.
Bolan let himself start to hope they might successfully escape.
"Take a minute," he told the woman. He looked at the boy and saw the terror on that young face. "It's okay, son. You'll be all right now." He patted the child.
The boy didn't understand the words, but Bolan's gestures reassured him. He stopped crying.
Jill watched the care and compassion with which Mack Bolan handled the Vietnamese youngster.
"Thank you," she said abruptly. "After everything I said to you earlier tonight, I don't know why you put your life on the line to save me."
"Orders," he said gruffly, grinning.
"I'm not so sure. I'm not sure about a lot of things I used to be very sure about."
"Like who the savages are?"
She grimaced.
"I think I was just introduced to them. What I saw… the atrocities they committed… that's what this war is all about, isn't it?"
"The families in that village were feeding us intel on VC movements," Bolan told her. "This war is about a lot of things, Jill. Some good, some bad, and all of it matters. I've learned a few things, too. I didn't figure anybody who felt like you do about this war could care enough to fight the way you just did. You are some lady, lady."
She met his eyes.
"I decided we were on the same side after all, soldier."
Bolan nodded.
Yeah, they were on the same side.
The side of humanity.
Bullets cracked past them.
The range was bad and so was the light, but the pursuing VC were peppering the night blindly from way back in the jungle as they closed in.
He and Jill jogged off beyond the tree line, away from approaching Vietcong.
At the sound of gunfire the child started squirming under Bolan's arm. He had seen home and family destroyed; innocent eyes witnessed what it was like when cannibals ran unchecked in the world.
A white-hot poker stabbed Bolan in the left leg.
He stumbled but did not go down. Not at first. Then the leg buckled, and he fell.
Bolan cradled the kid to prevent him from being hurt as he rolled over and got to one knee.
Jill stopped beside him, breathless from running.
He scanned the terrain behind them with combat-cold eyes, the M-16 ready. He handed the boy to Jill.
"Move!" he barked.
In the night their eyes met for a timeless moment. Then she ran off, clutching the little boy to her.
Bolan turned toward the direction of the pursuing VC.
Suddenly the jungle darkness blazed into brightness.
At first, Bolan did not see where it came from. There was no time to pinpoint the phosphorous flare that floated down from above.
He heard frantic scrambling noises close by. Squinting against the glare, he sent a long stream of hot lead into the wall of green made silver by the eerie glow of the flare.
Some of the scrambling and rustling sounds stopped. Some.
When the rifle's magazine ran dry, he barely paused in his firing to feed the M-16 a new clip so the mighty weapon could continue hammering, bucking in his steady grip.
It was then he realized the pounding wasn't in his veins but the rotor throb of an approaching chopper.
A big Huey gunship sailed into view overhead, its mounted machine guns raining death on the remaining VC.
Bolan got to his feet as the chopper settled down on the road. The heat of battle had made him forget the pain of his leg wound. Now it hurt like hell. His left leg was stiff from the gouge an enemy bullet had put there.
He looked around. Jill Desmond had stopped down the road a few hundred feet. He could make her out in the Huey's flight lights. She looked stunned.
Even the child was wide-eyed and quiet.
Blancanales called from the open door of the Huey.
"Move it, Sarge! We've got to get out of here before Charlie calls reinforcements."
The flare sputtered and died in the sky.
Jill Desmond ran over to Mack Bolan by the chopper.
Bolan took the kid from her and passed him up to Zitka's outstretched arms. He saw other members of Sniper Team Able inside the Huey.
"Must've read my mind," he said to them as he helped Jill into the gunship.
"You mean Colonel Crawford read your mind," Blancanales called above the rumble of the chopper's engine directly overhead. "The CO hit the ceiling when he found out you'd gone off on your own. Your butt is up for a chewing."
Bolan grinned as he climbed aboard.
"We'll see. Won't be the first time."
Gunsmoke was at the controls. "Still playing at Sergeant Mercy, huh, soldier?" he called over in his Old West twang. "God bless you, guy."
Jill Desmond looked sharply at Bolan.
"Sergeant Mercy?"
"Sure," Blancanales said when Bolan made no reply. "That's what all the Viet civilians call him. Didn't you know?"
"There's a lot of things I didn't know, soldier," the woman admitted, "until tonight."
The chopper's engine revved.
Bolan's hand found Jill's and squeezed. She returned the pressure. Feminine, yeah. Divinely so. But hard, too. The right stuff.
Bolan would be coming back.
Back to the job he did so well.
Back to the hellgrounds.
Sergeant Mercy.
The Executioner.
One man.
For now, though, that one man had earned a rest, however brief.
The chopper lifted off and banked up into the first light of a new day.
The future would take care of itself.
With a helping hand from Mack Bolan, as long as this soldier lived to fight the good fight.
Wherever it might take him.