Pressure Point

As quickly as it had begun, the shooting stopped. An unnerving silence lingered in its wake. Rifles raised, Bolan and the woman crouched at opposite ends of the rock formation, covering themselves from as many angles as possible. Peering out into the brush, they waited, listening for advancing footsteps, the sound of a weapon being reloaded. Something. Anything.

“Come on!” Bahn whispered hotly. “Show yourselves, dammit!”

She was answered by more silence. Then, finally, several seconds later, there was renewed commotion in the brush. Footsteps and a snapping of twigs. The sounds were receding, however, not drawing closer. Whoever had fired at them was in retreat.

“Sounds like a loner,” Bolan murmured.

Bahn nodded. “He runs off after a couple warning shots? What’s up with that?”

“Could be he’s out of ammo,” Bolan said. “Or maybe he’s going to try to circle around and have another go at us.”

“Let him try,” Bahn said, clenching her rifle.

The sounds in the brush continued to fade. Whoever shot at them was headed back toward the far valley, away from the access road and storage facility. Bolan was deliberating their next move when his two-way radio crackled to life. It was Kissinger.

“What’s going on there? Over.”

Bolan grabbed the radio and quickly explained what had happened, then asked Kissinger, “Where are you? Over.”

“Sergeant Latek found a path up the mountain while we were scouting around,” Kissinger explained. “We’re up on the ridgeline, about a quarter mile from you. I got a glimpse of you up on the rock formation, but the shooting started before I could patch in. Over.”

“Whoever it is, they’re bound for the rain forest,” Bolan told him. “We’re going after them. Why don’t you head over and give us a little backup? Once you reach the rock formation, it should be easy to pick up our trail. Over.”

“We’re on our way. Out.”

Bolan clicked off, then rose to his feet. “Let’s go.”

He and Bahn split up and ventured into the brush. Bolan used the barrel of his rifle to clear his way through the bramble, but the thorns still managed to nick him constantly, sometimes piercing the material of his HAZMAT suit. Bahn, navigating the brush twenty yards to his right, was under similar attack, and without the protection of a suit the pricking took a harder toll, prompting a near-constant stream of epithets.

Finally Bolan reached a small clearing where a set of footprints came to a stop and then doubled back on themselves.

“Over here,” he called out softly.

When Bahn caught up with him, Bolan was holding a pair of bullet casings he’d found in the dirt. They were still warm and reeking of cordite.

“It’s a .22,” he said, holding out the shells for Bahn to see. “Revolver, probably.”

“Explains why he was so stingy with his shots,” Bahn guessed. She plucked a thorn from her forearm and rubbed at the faint smear of blood it had produced. “How about we skip the trailblazing and just stick to the path he made?”

Bolan nodded and led the way. They had followed the footprints another twenty yards, when Bahn suddenly reached past Bolan into the bramble, removing a few strands of black, curly hair glistening with blood.

“Methinks it’s the hair of his chinny chin chin,” she mused.

“Then we’re on the right track,” Bolan said. He started to move on, but she put a hand on his shoulder, motioning for him to stop.

“How about if I lead for a change?” Bahn proposed. “Nothing against that nice ass of yours, but I’d kinda like to see where we’re going. You’ll have an easier time looking over my shoulder than the other way around.”

“If you’re walking in front, what makes you think I’ll be looking at your shoulder?” Bolan replied, doing his best to keep a straight face.

“Ooh, naughty boy.” As she stepped past Bolan to take the lead, Bahn smiled up at him. “Try to be a gentleman, would you? At least until we can find a nice hotel room?”

They continued through the underbrush, doing their best to track their fleeing attacker. It was slow going. The grass and bramble grew thicker as they made their way along the slope, and several times they lost sight of the shooter’s footprints and had to scout for other signs as to which way he’d fled: snapped branches, bent wildflower stalks, more stray hairs or a scrap of cloth claimed by the thornbushes. At one point they thought they’d spotted someone up in the trees, but it turned out to be another of the orangutans, using strangler vines for support as it moved from limb to limb with deceptive ease.

“Maybe we should try that,” Bahn suggested, prying loose yet another thorn from her forearm. “You know, ‘Me Jayne, you Tarzan.’”

“I don’t think so,” Bolan said.

After a few more minutes of navigating through the unforgiving foliage, the two finally emerged into a clearing and found themselves on a broad, flat promontory, not unlike the one Grimaldi had blasted to create the landslide on the other side of the mountain. Before them lay the north valley. Bolan quickly dropped to his stomach and motioned for Bahn to do the same.

“We’re like sitting ducks out on this ledge,” he whispered.

“I’ll take my chances,” Bahn said. “Beats the hell out of having to pick those damn thorns out of my hide all the—”

Bolan squeezed her arm, silencing her, then pointed downhill. Bahn shifted her gaze, just in time to see a young, bearded man frantically making his way down the slope to the valley floor, where the foliage was even denser than up on the hill. One second the man was in clear sight, scrambling through knee-high ferns and wild rhododendrons; the next he’d vanished into the greenery without a trace.

“So much for heading him off at the pass,” Bolan said.

“We might as well wait for the others.”

As they waited, Bolan looked over the jungle. The valley was easily thirty miles wide and half that distance across, and every square inch of the land seemed veiled by a canopy of trees. The only exception was the foothills on the far side of the valley, where flames could be seen raging through a section of the forest, giving off a thick, dark column of smoke. Beyond the next rise, Bolan could see other, similar columns, all adding to the hazy shroud that stretched over them, blotting the afternoon sun so that it seemed nothing more than a dim bulb. Bolan could smell the smoke. It was so strong his eyes began to burn again. Once more he found himself fighting back a cough.

“It’s worse than smog during rush hour in L.A.,” Bahn said, stifling a cough of her own.

They continued their vigil atop the promontory for another ten minutes, but there was no further sign of their enemy. Finally they heard a crackling in the brush behind them, followed by a radio call from Kissinger telling them to hold their fire.

“It’s just us.”

“Stay put,” Bolan told him. “We’ll come to you.”

They retreated from the ledge and backtracked into the brush until they met up with Kissinger, Latek and two of the KOPASSUS commandos. They’d all long since shed their HAZMAT masks, and Bolan looked quickly into each man’s eyes for signs of treachery. Each of the commandos returned his gaze unflinchingly, then Latek and one of the others moved past Bolan and headed toward the promontory.

“Flyboy made it back to Samarinda in one piece,” Kissinger reported, “but apparently there’s a nick in the chopper’s fuel line, so it’ll be awhile before he can get it airborne again.”

“How about another chopper?” Bolan asked.

“He’s trying to roust one from the military over in Balikpapan,” Kissinger said, “but that’ll take time, too.”

“How’s the major holding up?”

“He’s under the knife at the city hospital,” Kissinger said. “They say it’s going to be a long surgery, and they don’t like his chances. That prisoner we took in is in the OR too, but his prognosis isn’t much better. The others got by with quick patch-ups. They’ve probably already been released.”

Bolan took Kissinger aside and whispered, “If they haven’t been, I think we should have Jack and Rock try to keep an eye on them.”

“Why’s that?”

Before Bolan could pass along his theory about a spy having tipped off the Lashkar about the raid, Latek returned from the promontory and called out, “I see some smoke.”

“That’s not exactly ‘Stop the presses,’” Bahn told him. “There’s smoke everywhere you look.”