One of the guards overheard them talking and came over to force them apart, leaving Bolan alone with his thoughts once again.
Bolan knew that Stone was probably right. The ancient Inca city of Machu Picchu had sat undiscovered on the top of a mountain until 1911. It was quite possible that other fortresses and refuges were yet to be found, particularly since it was rumored that the Incas had hidden huge amounts of gold and silver from the Spanish invaders. A large room had been filled from floor to ceiling with gold to ransom the last emperor's life before the Spaniards strangled him.
And yet that gold was said to represent only a fraction of the Inca hoard. What had happened to the bulk of the incalculable wealth, including a golden fish bigger than a man's arm and a gold-hung chain so heavy that two hundred men were needed to carry it, remained a mystery after more than four hundred years of patient searching.
The Incas were master builders and were certainly capable of undertaking a project as large as the tunnel system. The great citadel of Sacsahuaman in the imperial capital of Cuzco had required twenty thousand men toiling for ninety years to finish. Building these miles of rock-lined corridors would have seemed like an afternoon nap by comparison.
At various points in the long walk, they passed apertures in the walls, leading off to unknown destinations. Some might lead to storerooms, guardhouses or other exits. One might even lead to the fabled treasure of the Incas. It would take years of continuous searching to explore every side tunnel and blind alley in the complex. Bolan had been walking for more than two hours and had bypassed dozens of alternate routes, the rock walls marked in fading paint with some colorful identifying symbols.
The warrior wasn't much of a mole. He preferred his enemies aboveground, not burrowing in the middle of some anthill.
Right now, he was certainly glad to have a guide in the maze. Occasionally Libertad directed the lead man carrying the lamp left or right into a crossing corridor, seemingly identical to the one they had just traversed.
Even if the army found their way to the underground complex, the Path could hide undetected for months before an exploring soldier stumbled on them.
From time to time they circumvented ancient booby traps, pits dug in the floor to catch a careless enemy. They edged past on narrow ledges at the side. A defending force on the other side could hold up an attacker indefinitely, since only one person at a time could possibly slide past the pit.
Once, the terrorists stopped and clustered around something along the path, talking animatedly. When Bolan caught up, he found the Peruvians assembled around a shrunken and wrinkled body facedown on the stones. A dusty felt hat had rolled away from the corpse. Apparently a comrade who had lost his way.
The march resumed, after Libertad had stripped the desiccated body of anything of value.
After a very long period, which Bolan guessed was at least four hours of solid movement, he was fading into a haze. A powerful combination of days of monotony, exhaustion, poor food in minuscule quantities and lack of sleep were making the warrior almost dead on his feet. He placed one foot mechanically in front of the other, stumbling along followed by two of the terrorists, hardly conscious of himself or his surroundings.
Suddenly he came very much awake.
The Executioner's heart was pounding, blood flowing into adrenaline-energized muscles. His senses reached to a combat high as his body kicked almost instantaneously into a fighting mode.
His ears had detected a metallic noise that had sounded very familiar to his trained ear.
It was the harsh click of the safety popping on a gun.
Bolan was down and rolling even as a gunner stepped from a narrow rat hole that the Executioner had passed moments before. The intruder opened fire, blasting controlled 3-round bursts down the corridor. The orange muzzle-flame cast transient shadows, like the flare of a camera flash.
Screams answered the gunfire as the panicked terrorists began to run forward, trying to escape the hurtling lead.
The gunman placed a burst between the shoulder blades of the man who brought up the rear, and got lucky with the Indian immediately in front. Three rounds cored the Peruvian's head, splattering a red-and-grey pattern on the ancient walls.
The lead man raced for safety, legs pumping as he guided himself down the passage by the faint light of the one lamp the group possessed.
A darker shadow loomed from the blackness. The ambusher hurled the fleeing man into his own lightless void with a single shot that carved through the runner's heart.
The two machine gunners fired sporadically but methodically, a cross fire that picked victims carefully. Each bandit took refuge in a side corridor, poking his muzzle around the edge to reduce the possibility of being cored by friendly fire from his opposite number.
A couple of the armed terrorists replied with death streams of their own, but the bullets cascaded harmlessly from the sheltering rock corners.
Bolan's party wasn't as lucky, caught in the open. The terrorists' gunfire died away to a chorus of agonized shrieks, as the ambushers raked the Peruvians with a steady stream of hellfire.
Bolan remained where he lay spread-eagled, trying to blend into the shadows as he assessed his next move. His stomach and side were wet, as a thin stream of blood trickled his way from two corpses heaped three feet away.
The ambushers had the small party trapped in a narrow corridor with both ends sealed with hot lead, like beetles trapped in a jar, waiting for the sun to fry them. The only good thing about the precarious situation was that the attackers didn't have grenades.
Bolan's choices were limited.
If he stayed still, there was the chance that he'd catch a stray round. Flying metal was ricocheting from the hard stone, filling the air with tumbling rock chips.
After a while, when all movement ceased, the gunmen would probably move in to finish the job, put an insurance round through the head of everybody, moving or not.
Just to make sure the "dead" stayed dead.
That might be the Executioner's best opportunity, but it was a risky strategy.
A momentary silence fell, the stammering of the machine guns falling away in echoes reverberating down the long corridor.
Someone began screaming in Quechua, frantically calling to the hidden gunmen. The only answer was a swarm of stingers from both directions. The screaming faded to a soft gurgle, which collapsed into a faint wheeze and died away.
Someone besides Bolan had figured out that the assassins were members of the Path, ruthlessly killing their own comrades. No one else could have been waiting in the close confines of the passage.
The who and why would have to wait. Now the only important question was how to stay alive.
The only answer he could think of stood out like burning letters etched in his brain.
Move.
Bolan tensed, coiling his muscles. His target was only twenty-five feet away. He could do three hundred feet in just about thirteen seconds, so he should be able to reach the gunner in just over a second.
But a bullet from the barrel of the submachine gun could hit home before he'd taken his first step.
The Executioner didn't think about it. He was up and running.
The gunner didn't notice Bolan until the warrior was almost upon him. Whether he was slightly dazzled by the muzzle-flashes or had gotten too cocky imagining that no one would actually charge him, it didn't matter. The guy fired wild.
Bolan grunted as one round nicked his left ear. The others whistled away harmlessly above his shoulder, the wind of their passing fanning his cheek.
The Executioner clipped the gunner in the knee as he raced into the side passage, the shooter falling to the floor as Bolan slid headfirst into the wall. The warrior spun and flailed out in the darkness, catching the other guy a hard backhand in the jaw. Then he sprang, one knee coming down heavily on something soft and vital.