At the end of this hallway there was another door, which was ajar. The glow from a lantern filtered into the passageway. The floor of the hall was also covered with broken chunks of the roof.
Bolan padded along a pathway through the junk, taking great care not to set off a clatter, however slight.
As he had suspected, the hallway led to a main room at the front of the building. He stopped before he reached the door and flattened himself against the wall.
'You are a very stubborn woman,' a man's heavily accented voice snarled.
'And you're a murderer of women and children.'
Jill Desmond's voice was cold and flat and showed not a trace of the terror she must be feeling.
Bolan could not help but smile in the gloom.
Bullheaded she might be, but Jill Desmond, journalist, had guts.
'We can make things very unpleasant for you, Miss Desmond.' The accented voice continued.
Has to be the VC leader, Bolan thought.
'If you will only cooperate with us, things will go much easier for you.'
'Bullshit,' live-wire Desmond shot back. 'You'll do what you want anyway, no matter what I say. I won't give you the satisfaction of seeing me beg.'
'That is regrettable.' The VC sighed. 'I must therefore summon assistance in this interrogation.'
Jill was cold.
Tropical country or not, she was cold. Fear made her that way.
She didn't have to be told what cooperate meant.
If she gave in, she would be smuggled north to Hanoi and made to parrot their line of garbage.
And garbage was what it was.
She knew that now.
They called themselves freedom fighters and patriots. No way. They were murderers, rapists, cold-blooded ravagers of the weak and defenseless.
Who was there to stop them?
The VC grunted his frustration. He grabbed Jill's hair, lacing his dirty fingers through her chestnut strands, and pulled cruelly, bringing a gasp of pain from her lips.
Then he gave her head a rough shove and stepped toward the door to call the torturers. The real interrogators.
Jill sensed movement behind her. She twisted her head to see what awful thing was going to happen next.
A tall young American soldier with chips-of-ice eyes stalked into the room.
Recognition flared in Jill's brain.
Sergeant Bolan!
The rifle in Bolan's hands spit death.
The round from the M-16 caught the VC leader in the throat. The man's neck disintegrated as blood splattered all over the room. The dead man tumbled and sprawled into a corner.
Jill Desmond, her fatigues torn but not indecently, sat tied in a crude wooden chair.
One quick step put Bolan beside the chair where Jill sat. Her eyes were wide, stunned, shocked by the violence she had seen and experienced tonight. But she was coherent. Bolan unsheathed his knife and cut the cord that bound her.
'You okay?' Bolan asked in an urgent whisper.
She took a deep ragged breath, then nodded.
'How did you find...'
Bolan interrupted the question with a gesture. 'No time. Let's get out of here.'
He walked to the dead officer and bent down. He rolled the corpse over and stripped the uniform jacket from it.
'Here,' he snapped, and threw the garment to her.
Jill flinched from the jacket. It was specked with blood in places. But common sense and survival instinct prevailed over her revulsion.
She slipped into the jacket, knowing she would have to wear something over the torn fatigue tops or the jungle growth would flay her flesh to ribbons.
Bolan grasped the VC corpse and hauled it away from the door, shoving it against a wall where it would not be seen unless someone came all the way into the room. Then he extinguished the kerosene lantern that sat on a table.
In the last instant of light before the lantern went out, he saw Jill watching him. She was damned attractive, even after everything she had been through tonight.
He grasped her arm in the darkness.
'Come on.'
He guided her into the narrow corridor that led to the back of the building.
She stumbled several times over the rubble, but Bolan's firm grip kept her from falling.
They had to hurry.
Much as he might have liked to take it easier for Jill's sake, they could not afford that luxury.
They had to get out of Xan Lung before the VC leader's body was discovered.
A startled shout echoed down the hallway, then harsh yells.
The body had been discovered.
Within seconds the chase would be on.
Bolan jerked Jill Desmond into the room at the end of the corridor of the damaged munitions dump. He pushed her toward the back wall.
'I'll give you a boost,' he told her. 'Once you're over, head for the tree line.'
'What about you?' There was a genuine concern in her voice.
'I'll catch up to you,' Bolan grunted.
He stooped and grasped her around the hips. He hoisted her into position so she would grab the top of the wall.
She started to pull herself up and over to the outside. Bolan placed one hand behind on a nicely shaped rump and gave a purely strategic push.
Jill hauled herself to the top. A second later she disappeared over the wall.
Bolan was right behind her.
He paused at the top of the wall.
There were several sections of the old munitions depot roof that were intact, though drooping, especially near the edge of the roof.
Bolan moved out onto one of those sections for a better look at the uproar gripping the Xan Lung camp.
The VC were disorganized. But only for the moment. Already someone had thrown more wood on the fire so that it blazed and shed stronger illumination across the jungle surrounding the clearing.
Time for the play, grandstand and all.
Last chance, in fact.
The blitz artist tugged grenades off his belt, moving smooth and efficiently, pulling out the pins one by one. He tossed the bundles of death and hellfire into the VC camp.
One Cong saw things dropping from the sky and let out a startled yell.
The first grenade blew and ripped him apart, leaving a shallow hole in the clay and a mangled splotch where a heartbeat before a man had stood.
One after another the grenades exploded.
Some of the VC dived for cover, but many of them never had a chance. Shrapnel tore into them, shredding lives and limbs in a fireworks display of airborne body parts. The air was filled with high-pitched screams as men died.
