"Listen, Raimondo. If I have any trouble, I'll see you about it. Personally."
With a last glare, Raimondo turned away and led his shrunken party back to their quarters. As they moved off, the transvestite looked back and winked at Bolan.
Stone approached Bolan, his admiration showing on his face. "Well, Blanski, I'm glad to see that you're still alive. You certainly have a remarkable way with people. I bet you took that course 'How to win friends and influence people'!"
Bolan chuckled, and he and Stone wandered off to explore the rest of the prison. Two guards arrived to remove the remains of the con, like a dead gladiator being dragged from the arena. Neither paid Bolan any attention.
One area that Stone pointed out interested Bolan a great deal. It was a set of barracks around a second small yard, almost a separate wing, which Stone explained held prisoners associated with the Shining Path. At present there were about three dozen of the terrorists in the compound.
"They keep to themselves almost exclusively," Stone explained, "maintaining an almost monastic kind of existence. They spend the days in silence, except for what are like prayer meetings when they sing revolutionary songs and chant political slogans. The guards leave them pretty much alone. In 1986 there were about 125 of them before they staged a mutiny. The government attacked with rockets and antitank missiles and killed every one. That was a very bad time. The prison ran with blood."
An idea popped into Bolan's head, a way of getting out and yet accomplishing what he had set out to do. "Do you have any contacts among them?"
"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do. But they are very secretive and have little to do with anyone who is not a member of their group, so I wouldn't expect much."
"Do what you can to arrange a meeting between me and their headman, will you?"
Stone considered the matter. He had only known this man for a few hours, but something in Blanski's gruff but straightforward manner had impressed him.
Blanski was the sort of man who inspired confidence, a natural leader. He appeared to be one of the strong silent types that Stone had admired in the movies, another Gary Cooper or Clint Eastwood. He was falling under the big man's spell.
"Sure thing, Blanski. I'll see what I can do."
The next two days passed slowly as Bolan waited for a response from the leader of the Shining Path, an Indian who called himself Libertad.
Bolan pressed Stone to find out what was happening, and why there was a delay. Stone urged Bolan to leave matters to their own time. Any further inquiries would only arouse the suspicions of the terrorists, never a very trusting group at the best of times.
Steeling himself to wait, Bolan examined the possible avenues of escape. The direct route over the wall didn't seem very promising. Eight towers perched atop a thirty-foot wall, each manned with two alert guards with machine guns.
Razor wire ran along the wall between the towers.
At night, spotlights traversed the yard, while lights illuminated the walls. It would require a full-scale assault to break out against heavy opposition. For one man alone, an attempt to go over the wall would probably be suicidal.
A second possibility would be to get out the main-door. As a start, that would mean getting into the administrative area from the prison compound. There was only one way in, down a long corridor heavily guarded at both ends. Except for unusual circumstances, only the older and more trusted prisoners went in there to work as servants to the guards and in areas such as the laundry. It would be a long time, if ever, before Bolan received that "privilege." An honor that Bolan would gladly do without.
There were variations on the plans that involved more subtle approaches a little sleight of hand, a few heavily greased palms, a sudden break under lucky circumstances. All of those possibilities involved more time, luck and money than he had available.
The heat of midday had ended the soccer game temporarily as prisoners scrambled to find a small patch of cool earth. Bolan and Stone had taken a choice spot in a corner of the prison yard. Other prisoners moved away at the big man's advance. As the two prisoners discussed methods of escape, Stone was pessimistic about the outcome. Bribery was out. One prisoner had escaped seven years ago by paying off several of the guards. In the aftermath, those who had been directly involved found themselves prisoners in other jails.
Many of the remaining guards had been fired.
No one at Lurigancho was anxious for a repeat performance.
"What about feigning death and being smuggled out as a corpse?" Bolan was willing to consider any option at this point.
"Impossible." Stone shook his head in discouragement. "Some clever prisoner tried that years ago. Now they make sure that a corpse is really dead by cutting off its head before they bury it outside the prison. No one tries to escape that way any longer."
Bolan was beginning to regret not trying a break earlier, before he arrived at the prison. It looked as if he was in for a longer stay than he had anticipated. The whole Peruvian mission was turning into a disaster. Someone had been a step ahead of him every inch of the way.
The warrior was going to find out who the mystery person was. As soon as he got out of this hole.
Raimondo held court on the opposite side of the compound. The kingpin had avoided Bolan for the past two days, carefully placing as much distance as possible between them. The occasional hate-filled glares Bolan intercepted told him that Raimondo certainly held a grudge.
The dealer's pride couldn't stomach being defeated, and Bolan guessed that he burned with anger when the other prisoners snickered at his bruised enforcers.
The soldier was way ahead of Raimondo on points, and everyone in the prison knew it. But Bolan read the guy as the kind who would always use a pawn to make the dangerous moves. The big man kept an eye on every move the other prisoners made, watched his back at all times. Except for Stone, Bolan distrusted the other inmates.
The warrior suspected there would be another confrontation soon, but in the meantime he was willing to lie low and not attract attention from the guards.
He didn't want to be particularly noticeable as he tried to figure a way out of the pen.
Stone was an enigma still. The old prisoner had refused to share his background. But Bolan noticed that in spite of his seeming weakness, the other prisoners treated the aging con with a courtesy that bordered on fear. This reaction was particularly noticeable in the Indians, who often refused even to look him in the eye.
Just then a man approached, giving the news that Libertad would see Bolan in an hour.
Bolan sat back to review his plans for the meeting, just as he would have checked his firepower before a hit. This might be his only chance to score some information from the Shining Path, and the only weapon he could use was his brain.
He had better make sure it was loaded.
Bolan strode between two brawny Indians, who stood, arms crossed, at the head of the corridor that led deep into the prison, into the pavilion controlled by the Shining Path. They pretended not to notice his passage. He marched down a corridor similar to those in the main section of the prison. However, here each of the cells held only a bare cot, a small chest, a desk and a lamp. None was screened, and all were empty. Several were scored with bullet holes.
The residents were gathered in an inner courtyard, facing toward a massive thirty-foot banner, which showed a bespectacled, round-faced man in a jacket and open shirt towering above a vast army of peasants carrying rifles and pitchforks. In his left hand he grasped a book written by Marx, while the right held a red banner inscribed with the Communist crossed hammer and sickle.
Below the banner a tall man with a hatchet nose conducted the other captured guerrillas in revolutionary songs.