"Did he speak English?"
"Fluently. Good job you got him. He would have told Tiger our entire plan." Nark looked at Bolan's head. "We'd better do something about that."
They found an outside tap, and Bolan washed the gash. Then they returned to the shack and Nark dressed the wound with a bandage from the first-aid kit Bolan carried in his haversack.
"We're getting to be quite a team," said Nark. "You pick locks to free me, I treat your wounds." He nodded at the first-aid kit. "You do come prepared, don't you?"
"When you've done as many missions as I have," said Bolan, "you don't forget to bring the essentials.''
"The odds are that blood will flow, right?"
"Pretty much," said Bolan. Nark looked at his watch. "Transmission time."
They went to the set and each took an earphone. From across fifteen thousand miles of ether crackling with static, there rose and fell a pattern of dits and dahs repeated over and over. Stony Man Farm was calling Lotus Seven.
April, thought Bolan. He could tell by the touch. An operator's mode of sending was as individual as a person's handwriting. Bolan tried to imagine her sitting by the transmitter in the radio room, a caring, vastly understanding woman who gave of her very best to Stony Men who were forever meeting other women in their wars.
The call signal ended and the message began. Bolan and Nark both wrote it down. That way if one missed, the other could fill in. With all the static it was easy to miss letters.
The message ended, and Nark sent a signal confirming receipt. Bangkok relayed it to Stony Man Farm, and a few minutes later April sent her love and Stony Man Farm went off the air.
Nark and Bolan decoded. The message informed them there would be an air drop in two nights' time and gave the air recognition signal. Tagged on to the message was a bit of news from Hal Brognola.
A new survey just published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed the number of Americans on drugs had passed the twenty-two million mark, of whom three-quarters were under twenty-one. Schools continue to be the centers of distribution of drugs.
Bolan stared at the message, a brooding look in his eyes. "A country's youth condemned to slavery," he said quietly.
The tiger gunship hovered like a bird of prey. In front of it was a forest, then a sea of high grass, then more woods. The crew was observing a trio of horses move through the grass in the distance. There were two riders and a packhorse. The riders were not aware of the helicopter. It was behind them, and the distance was too great to hear it.
In the front of the helicopter, the gunner was observing the riders through binoculars. "They are long noses, sir,'' he reported to the pilot behind him.
"That's them. Prepare to attack."
"Chain gun, sir?"
"No, rockets. I want to test the system. Nap-of-the-earth attack."
The helicopter shuddered as the gunner fired. The rocket streaked for the horses. Wisps of vapor trailed it. It flew over the heads of the riders and exploded in a cloud of white. The horses reared in fright.
"The trees!" shouted Bolan. He dug his heels into the horse's flanks, and they galloped for the nearest cover.
Once inside the woods they turned to look for their attacker. The rocket had come from the direction of a forest behind them, but there was nothing there.
"Could be someone in those trees," suggested Nark.
"No, it was an air attack," said Bolan. He could tell by the angle of elevation. "Hold my horse."
Bolan jumped to the ground and ran to the edge of a clearing. He brought out his field glasses and scanned the sky. It was empty. Nor was there any sound of aircraft.
"There! "Nark shouted.
Bolan zeroed in on a camouflage-painted helicopter rising from behind a stand of trees. A Hughes Apache. It was America's latest attack helicopter, except this one was not American or even Thai. On its tail was painted the sun of Nationalist China.
"Tiger!" Bolan shouted over his shoulder. He inspected the helicopter's armament: a chain gun and four rocket pods, but no missiles. The last was a blessing. With missiles — the Apache was normally armed with Hellfire missiles — they would not have stood a chance.
Nark ran to his side, and Bolan passed him the glasses. "An AH-64," said Bolan. "New kind of gun-ship. Flies between hills and trees, darts out to fire, then disappears."
They watched the helicopter turn to face them, the crew able to tell where Bolan and Nark were because the horses had left a swath in the grass. It hovered suspended at treetop level, silent, menacing.
Suddenly the helicopter shot sideways. The speed was amazing, a good fifty miles per hour. It flew in an arch from right to left and came to a stop above another group of trees. It hovered for a while, then dropped out of sight.
"Something tells me we're going to serve as target practice," said Bolan. "Let's tie up the horses."
"We're going to stay here?" asked Nark.
"It's our only chance," Bolan told him. "He'd get us long before we ever reached those hills. This way he won't know if we're dead or alive, and he'll come to investigate."
Just then the helicopter popped up. It fired a rocket, then dropped out of sight. Bolan and Nark hit the ground as the rocket swished through the treetops. They nearly lost their horses, which were sent rearing by the explosion. They managed to fight them down and get them tied to trees, spaced apart so one unlucky shot would not kill them all.
From his saddle Bolan took the RAW. "Lend me your rifle," he said to Nark.
"What are you going to do?"
"Not quite sure yet," grunted Bolan. "But as they say in the Boy Scouts, 'Be prepared.'"
They swapped guns, and Bolan attached the launcher with the rocket to the underside of the M-16.
"If I get hit before I can fire this," he said to Nark, "simply pull the safety pin from the launcher and fire a normal round. The gases from the round will activate the launch."
They went to the edge of the woods again, and Bolan knelt in the grass, awaiting the gunship with his puny rocket like David with his sling awaiting Goliath. He was sure the gunship would cease firing rockets and come looking for them. Not that it was short of rockets — in its four dispensers, Bolan knew, were seventy-six of those 2.75-inch folding fin toys — but Bolan also knew that a soldier had to account to a quartermaster. There was a limit to how many rockets the helicopter's crew could expend simply to flush out two men.
And Bolan guessed right. Two rockets later the Apache flew toward them. It came in low and slow, obviously figuring it had nothing to fear from the men below. After all, they were only armed with rifles, and an Apache was built to withstand even a .50-caliber machine gun.
The sky filled with the whap, whap, whap of blades. This is how the enemy must have felt in Vietnam, thought Bolan. To an American the sound of chopping blades was always good news in that war — extract, Medevac, fire support, reinforcements — but to the VC and the NVA it meant something completely different. Death riding the sky.
As the gunship approached, the long barrel of the 30mm chain gun protruding from its belly moved, the gunner trying out the controls. Then the muzzle began winking and the sky growled.
Bolan and Nark threw themselves to the ground as a small storm swept the woods. High explosive rounds. Behind them they could hear the horses neighing in fear.
"You'd better go and keep an eye on the horses," Bolan said to Nark.