"What about the wounded man?" Stone asked as they prepared to leave.
"What about him?" Libertad answered.
"You're not going to leave him here, are you? He's still alive, you know."
"Yes, he's alive. But he will be dead soon, and we both know it. Should we carry him along? For what purpose should we tire ourselves, since he will either die as we travel or at our camp? When we arrive at our base, we would not expend any of our few and precious medicines on someone who will not recover. As it is, he is a brave martyour for our cause and will die a happy man."
Stone was astonished at the cold-blooded analysis of the value of the fallen man. "But... he is still alive!" Stone couldn't think of an argument to use, although he knew that Libertad must be wrong.
Libertad didn't answer immediately and appeared to be thinking. Abruptly he took two long steps to the injured man. With a swift motion, he unsheathed his knife and plunged it into the prone man's ribs below the heart. The body shuddered once and lay still.
Libertad wiped his knife on the dead man's pants and leathered the knife. "Now he's not. Are you satisfied? Let's go." Stone followed, casting a backward glance at the fallen men, already vanished in the shadows.
In a few minutes they came to a pit in the corridor floor. One of the men pointed to some drying red streaks at the edge of the hole.
The four men gathered at the edge of the vertical shaft, shining the lights far down the rock walls.
No bottom appeared in the beams.
"I don't think we will be seeing Blanski again," Libertad commented as each mentally reconstructed what must have happened here the unseen pit, a frantic last effort and a final fall. Very final.
"Why don't we throw this other American after him?" suggested one of the terrorists. "Let all Yankees rot in the darkness, I say."
Libertad shook his head, although the prospect was attractive. He was in a black mood, having lost the major prize, the reason why they had been brought from Lurigancho. He felt like killing something, and Stone would be a satisfying sacrifice.
But duty was more important than pleasure. And anyway, he might still have an opportunity to cut out Stone's heart at some later date.
"No. He may still have some value to us as a healer, untrained though he is. He does have some small skill with plants and herbs. We will keep him alive until we are told otherwise."
"And I hope that it is soon," said one, a dull-looking squat lump of a man, waving his knife under Stone's chin.
Stone suddenly felt a wave of nostalgia for Lurigancho.
That's when he realized how much he missed Blanski.
Bolan awoke. At least he thought he was awake. He couldn't see, even though his eyes were open.
Gradually, as though he were waking from a long and horrible dream, the past few hours came back to him. He remembered the fall, the Peruvian shrieking, the helpless fear of falling washing over him as he dropped in the absolute blackness.
Then he hit, landing directly onto the Peruvian's chest before rolling to the granite floor.
He must have smashed his head, for the hair on the left side of his scalp was matted and caked with dried blood.
As awareness returned, he felt racked with pain: his head hurt, his muscles ached as though he had had a close encounter with a steamroller, and his throat felt as if he had swallowed a sandbox.
And to top it off, he was stuck in the middle of a stone Chinese puzzle, left to himself to wander around in the dark without any food or water until he somehow found his way out of this trap. Or died of thirst or starvation first.
He was beginning to hate Peru.
Well, no point in putting it off. It was time to get moving. He began by feeling around on all fours for the Peruvian, ignoring the insistent protests of bruised muscles. At least nothing felt cracked or broken, so he had better consider himself fortunate.
He found the body after a few moments of groping.
The chest was a funny concave shape; Bolan could almost discern the impression his knees had made when he had dropped on the already smashed corpse of the gunner. Lucky for Bolan that they hadn't fallen in the opposite order.
What a run of tremendously good luck he was having, he thought ironically.
The body was warm but cooling. He didn't know how to estimate the time of death, but guessed that it had been no more than an hour ago.
He continued to explore the body by touch, not knowing what to expect. He discovered a pouch, the string wrapped around the dead man's neck.
Bolan reached in to see if there was anything edible and found several smaller pouches inside. By the smell, one contained tobacco. He couldn't identify the contents of the rest of the pouches. He opened one of them, placed a small amount of its contents on his right forefinger and tasted it. A ball of fire formed on his tongue and burned a trail down his throat. It was some fierce spice, like chili pepper or hot curry, and it seared his mouth like a branding iron.
He threw the small pouch somewhere into the darkness, and decided not to experiment anymore.
Bolan ran his hands over the corpse again, searching for a water flask. No sign of one, although he did find a knife in a sheath, which he added to the pouch of foodstuffs.
He searched around the body with fading hope, but at last his hands encountered a tough hide pouch that sloshed faintly.
He found the top and drank deeply before he caught control of himself. There was no way of telling how long this tiny water supply might have to last, so he decided to drink no more now.
He had no reason to remain where he was any longer. He began to walk, going right because it rhymed with light there was no rational basis for choosing a direction, since he had no way of judging even where north or south were.
Bolan proceeded cautiously. With one hand on a wall, he slid his feet forward slowly in case he came upon another pit in the floor. It was a tiring and slow way to cover ground. Whenever he came to a side tunnel, he bypassed it, preferring to keep going in a straight line, if possible. He had no idea where he would end up, but he figured if he went far enough in one direction, he would finally arrive somewhere. At least he hoped so.
The experience was disorienting, like being placed in a sensory deprivation tank. Bolan could move and hear the sound of his own voice and steps, but there was no stimulus apart from what he produced for himself. When he stopped, there was complete silence other than the sounds of his own body.
His eyes were sore, strained from the effort of trying to see when vision was impossible. His legs were tired, his arms protesting from reaching out to the wall. He couldn't tell if his limbs were revolting because he had been walking for hours or because he ached from the combination of falls, fights and fevers he had endured over the past few days.
He tried counting paces, but found his mind drifting. He lost the numbers so often that he gave up the effort. He was too weary to keep on walking. It was obvious that he needed rest.
The big man lay down on the cold stone and slept.
Libertad was angry as he approached the base camp, a righteous feeling directed at whoever had tried to kill him. He was more than a little nervous, too, since it could have been anyone in the complex who had known that he was coming. Who would want him dead? And why?
He was going to get the answers, for leaving the puzzle unsolved might mean his eventual death.
It wasn't a pleasant feeling, returning to a place he had always thought of as a refuge and finding a worm in the apple. Actually the feeling was more like finding a poisonous snake in one's bed. If there was a traitor to the organization planning his demise, he must be found and eliminated before he could do any more damage.
But only after he had been made to tell everything he knew.
A minor commissar greeted Libertad when he arrived, and tried to send him off to the dormitory for rest. Libertad would have none of it.