The terrorists were poised now on the lip of the last pass before they would enter the regional capital. The city was spread before them, the most notable feature being the spires of nearly thirty churches.

Their entry into the city would be the most difficult part of the journey thus far. Ayacucho was the center of the main movement of the Shining Path, and consequently the military was present in force. It was likely that the truck would be checked at a roadblock before they would be allowed to proceed, as it was known that the escaped terrorists would eventually make for their mountain stronghold.

Bolan and Stone were ordered into a small box welded just below the high bed of the truck and each was given a pair of cracked goggles to shield his eyes. Barely able to squeeze in, the two Americans almost choked from the dust kicked up from the roadway as they rumbled down the mountainside.

The Indians would be safe enough. There was nothing to link them to the prison breakout, and police methods were too unsophisticated for there to be much chance that they would be identified. However, the Americans would be conspicuous in an area visited by only a few white tourists, and might be shot on sight if they were captured.

Given the alternative, Bolan and Stone weren't about to complain too loudly about a little dust.

They were stopped for inspection at the foot of the slope, just before the main highway into the city divided.

The warrior saw heavy combat boots below jungle camouflage clothing circling the truck.

To Bolan's relief, the troopers didn't bother with a search, and only asked the driver a few routine questions in a bored and disinterested tone before waving them through.

"That was pretty lax," Bolan shouted to Stone above the grinding of the engine.

"These soldiers are strictly amateurs, uneducated farm kids given a uniform and a gun. They are also highly unpredictable, so any checkpoint is a danger even for innocent travelers. The troops don't really care about finding the Path. If they are determined to kill someone, it makes no difference whether they are terrorists, or whether there is any evidence to link them to the Shining Path. The army has become a worse menace than the guerrillas they are trying to suppress. We're a long way from Lima here in the mountains, and the army treats the area like its private hunting preserve."

Stone was bitter, having seen firsthand the destruction that the so-called protection forces had wrought among the native people he had come to like. In the years he had spent in prison, the situation had deteriorated considerably.

Violence by the left bred a more violent reaction by the right. Death squads from both sides roamed the hills, fighting for the hearts and minds of the ignorant villagers, and destroying everything in their path at the least suspicion of opposition or treachery.

The peasants were the losers no matter which way they turned. They either supported the Shining Path guerrillas in their demands for food and shelter, or they were killed. If they aided the guerrillas, then the army exacted a heavy price.

The escaped prisoners didn't linger in the city.

The place was crawling with the drab uniforms of army and police units, many wandering the streets aimlessly in search of some excitement to relieve the boredom of garrison duty.

Many others stood alert in front of public buildings, submachine guns ready for instant action.

They paused briefly in a working class district for Libertad to call his superiors with Bolan's request for a meeting while Bolan and Stone stretched cramped limbs in the shelter of a Shining Path safehouse.

The warrior stewed as he waited for news. He knew that his cache was hidden somewhere within the city limits, the address committed to memory before he had left Los Angeles. At least he expected that it would be here now. His unplanned stop at Lurigancho had prevented him from contacting the shipping company with alternate instructions, so that his standing order should have resulted in the arms being shipped to this mountain town.

He had the bait. Now it was only a matter of building the trap.

Bolan was forming his game plan as he went along. Delivering the arms right here would have been a possibility, but with this many men around there was a good chance that he would be eliminated as soon as the terrorists had their hands on the weapons.

By getting into Shining Path territory, he could take advantage of any slip on their part to do some eliminating of his own. If nothing favorable transpired, he was no worse off than he was right now.

Bolan felt more at ease when Libertad informed him that a meeting had been agreed to. Things were finally falling into place.

Outside of Ayacucho, the hills began a remorseless climb once again. A short way beyond the town, Bolan and Stone took their seats in the truck, a welcome change from the dust-clogged hiding place.

Every dip to a shallow valley led to a steeper ascent on the other side. They were gaining hundreds of feet of altitude every hour. Each climb brought back the symptoms of soroche with increased severity. The Peruvian Andes soared up to more than twenty-two thousand feet, nearly two thousand feet higher than the loftiest peak in North America. And at the moment, Bolan was feeling every inch.

Stone assured him that he would feel better in about twenty-four hours unless he was one of the unfortunate few that never adapted to the altitude. Bolan knew that this was not the case, having experienced high altitudes before. Still, the waiting time until he adapted was no more pleasant than it ever was.

After about five hours' travel, the engine started to emit a clunking noise, which was completely different from the wheezing growls they had become accustomed to. Ten minutes later, the engine died completely. The truck coasted to a stop on a roadside shoulder above a small town that was huddled around a tiny church nine hundred feet below.

They got out and began to walk.

A half hour later, the group of men came to a dirt track that led to a collection of hovels hunched between a towering peak and the narrow road.

Llamas roamed through the rough lanes of the village, cropping the rough puna grass. Outside one shanty, a boy played the haunting notes of the guena, a wooden flute whose origins could be traced to the days of the Inca empire.

The small mountain villages of the Andean altiplano represented the heartland of the Shining Path movement. Here the ancient Indian culture existed in an isolated community, remote, poor and primitive. Many of the Indians, inspired by the fantasies of the Shining Path, dreamed the irrational dream of a restored empire, of an ideal communism without want or exploitation.

Several of the decrepit huts still held washed-out remnants of the mark of the Path — the Communist red hammer and sickle with the slogan Shanghai Gang of Four scrawled below it, harking back to the most radical days of Red China, when the Red Guards idolized the peasants and declared the intellectuals their enemies.

But there were few friendly faces peering from the doorways of the scattered homes.

A movement that had been born of a will to freedom had turned into a vicious parody of the system that it proposed to overthrow. The road to freedom had become a twisted path to an early grave.

Support for the Shining Path was now achieved at the price of fear. Lack of cooperation was savagely punished, and the Path replaced local leaders with their own supporters, defying the traditional Indian respect for their elders. Children were frequently kidnapped for indoctrination.

And yet to many the terrorists were preferable to the random violence of the army.

As the small band straggled into town, the attitude of suspicion, pent-up oppression and fear was so strong that it was almost palpable to Bolan in the thin air of the small Andean community. There was no way to predict what might happen, or who might be friend or foe.