"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.