They killed easily and without conscience or regret; Libertad had demonstrated that yesterday, if Bolan had had any doubts. For the Shining Path, the world was a simple place. It divided evenly along the lines of good and evil, the good being their supporters. Evil embraced everyone else.

In any situation there was only one course of action: do as their leader Gonzalo commanded through his writings, or die.

They were totally beyond rational thought. It was incredible to see how they had warped every perception around the distorted thoughts of some reclusive madman.

There was an ugly fascination in studying these men, much like watching cancer cells divide and multiply through the lens of a microscope.

The answer to their bizarre zealotry was equally clear to Bolan. He would crush the Shining Path and all they stood for at the first opportunity.

The convoy ran into trouble just as it left the ten-mile section of one-way road, no wider than one car, that crept along the edge of the deep mountain cleft. If the driver had sneezed and jogged the wheel, they would have dropped one mile into the swift mountain stream below.

The lead car eased around the first curve beyond the widening of the road and ran into a hornet's nest.

A line of troops was concealed behind a pair of tree trunks that had been toppled across the roadway. How the ambushers had known to expect the Path was a mystery. There might have been a radio hidden in the village, or possibly a peasant had trekked overland to the nearest government outpost.

Any way it happened, the infantrymen spelled disaster. They opened fire with an array of automatic weapons, peppering the thin skin of the car with high-velocity slugs.

The driver slumped forward over the wheel, his brains sprayed over the three passengers behind. As he collapsed, he rode the wheel to the left, sending the car speeding over the cliff The four terrified survivors screamed every second of the long drop, before the plunging vehicle hit the ground below with the force of a dynamite explosion.

The second driver slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt thirty yards from the roadblock. The gunman in the passenger seat, who was the only one armed with anything deadlier than a knife, provided covering fire from behind his door while the others made a break for the grassland and hills that edged the highway.

None of them made it to the edge of the grass before being chopped down by the flying parabellums.

Screened behind the door, the surviving terrorist screamed in anger, loosing off the last rounds in his captured SMG. A lucky shot caught one of the crouching troopers in the bridge of his nose, turning the face into an unrecognisable red mass.

Three steps from the car, as he made his break, the gunner paid his own price, dancing an awkward two-step under the impact of a dozen bullets.

Bolan and the others saw the carnage up ahead.

The driver hesitated, slowing as though he were planning to stop. Bolan shouted instructions at him, telling him to veer to the right, up a low embankment and into the field beyond.

The driver looked at Libertad, who silently nodded.

There was a danger, of course a good commander might have mined the shoulder or stationed more troops in the dead ground beyond the slight incline. But Bolan was betting that whoever was on the other side wasn't very smart. Certainly the execution and placement of the ambush didn't show a very high level of training in the Peruvian army.

The terrorist floored the gas pedal, and the light car shot up the embankment and came down hard on the other side. There was the sound of tortured metal, and the car lost power. Bolan guessed that they had popped the differential. The men piled out, clutching what guns they had.

The car behind them climbed the slope at an angle, and flipped onto its side as it rocketed over under full power. It slid twenty feet through the high grass before coming to rest, the right fender buried in the dirt. The two doors on the exposed side sprang open and three men climbed out, including Stone. The others weren't going anywhere but to a graveyard.

The terrorists began to run for the hills, pushing their way through the stringy, pale grass. There weren't any other places to hide.

Bolan ran up to Libertad. "I want a gun," he demanded. The terrorist leader had taken the Colt Python as soon as they had reached safety after the breakout. It was holstered around his waist now.

Libertad glared at him. "I don't think you can be trusted."

"You know I can use it. Or would you prefer the army to catch you?"

Libertad made a quick decision and stopped in his tracks. He unbuckled the holster and dangled it in front of Bolan. "So glad that you have recovered from the soroche. All right. Use it. Hold them off, and we'll meet you up ahead. Stone will be with us."

Bolan grabbed the belt. He had heard the mocking challenge in Libertad's voice, as well as the implied threat: run away and Stone dies.

"Get the hell out of here. They're right behind."

Libertad ran off, leaving a trail as defined as though a herd of elephants had trampled through.

Bolan wasted no time. The warrior edged away from the trail and placed himself behind a scrawny tree thirty feet from the trail. From the shouts in the near distance, the Executioner knew he wouldn't have long to wait.

The Peruvian troops were advertising their presence by their poor discipline. The point man appeared, trotting slowly down the broad trail left by the fleeing terrorists. About twenty men were following single file, with an officer in the middle of the troops.

Bolan let the first man get twenty feet beyond the tree position before he began to fire as rapidly as he could. Given his limited amount of ammunition, he would have to hit hard and slip away before the soldiers could organize resistance. He was badly outnumbered and outgunned, and would be in grave danger in a protracted firelight.

The gun barked, and the point man toppled forward, a bullet lodged in the base of his skull. The second man, much too close to the leader, took a round in the upper spine and crashed onto the point's dirty boots.

The Executioner caught three more with hammer blows from the Python, the soldiers too stupid to take cover when the lead began to fly and men began to die.

He sighted on the lieutenant, who was madly blowing his whistle and trying to rally his squad. At this point most of his men had wisely dived into the high grass and were scurrying back to the road.

Bolan stopped the annoying whistle sounds with a .357 stinger that caught the oficer on the chin, crushing jaw and teeth before ripping into his larynx.

The lieutenant breathed his last, a red foam soaking his drab uniform.

The remaining troops scattered. They pounded through the pampas to the safety of their vehicles, where they could form a defense perimeter and would be safe from attack by what seemed like a superior force.

Bolan paused to reload the Python, using the last of the bullets on the gun belt. Then he set to the grim task of stripping the dead Peruvians of anything useful.

Rifling dead bodies wasn't a task that Bolan enjoyed, but he always did what was necessary to survive. In this case, he wanted to form a small-arms cache for later use. He had no real plan on how to put the hit on the Path at present, and it would be wise to accumulate a stash of weapons in case he found himself in the vicinity again.

Two of the crumpled bodies held Walther 9 mm MP-K submachine guns. The ugly little brutes looked like machine pistols with a light stock added and fed on 32-round box magazines. The other three had held 5.56 mm SG-541 assault rifles. The transparent magazines on each showed full.

Bolan was surprised at the quality of the weapons. The Peruvians had had good tools, but they hadn't known how to use them. The dead soldiers had served as an example of a theory of Bolan's, that there were very few dangerous weapons, but there were dangerous men. And such a man, even completely unarmed, was still a force to be feared.