Bolan realised his opponent had some unexplained advantage, and as that fact sank in, the cellar seemed to shrink around him, propelling him even closer to the gunman. The gun barked again, and the report was louder, as if the gunman had drawn closer. Bolan fired twice. One shot pinged off something metal, striking it obliquely then slapping into a solid obstacle far across the chamber. The second seemed to disappear without a trace. No sound of bullet on unyielding wood, stone or metal, no groan from wounded flesh, drifted back to him. It was as if the darkness had swallowed the bullet completely.

Bolan thought about that for a few seconds, and came to the only conclusion possible. Somewhere almost dead ahead of him, the chamber was open. Perhaps the room narrowed into a tunnel, like the one Marisa had taken him through, or maybe an open door let the bullet pass through and find something soft beyond it.

He started to back up, the Desert Eagle in his left hand, his nearly useless right stroking the cold wall. Quickly, he backtracked, stopping only when his butt slammed into the right-angled wall. He knew the stairwell was just to his left, and started inching toward it. As his right hand brushed against the free wall of the stairwell, he groped gingerly with his foot. A misstep might get him killed or, at the very least, alert the gunman to his whereabouts.

As the sole of his boot found the rough stone of the bottom step, all his care was rendered pointless. The cellar flooded with light. He dove straight ahead, just ahead of a hail of gunfire.

As he started up the stairs, he tripped and fell.

It saved his life.

A flurry of shots, this time not from any handgun, punched through the hollow cinder blocks, scattering fragments all over the stairs and raining sharp chips and dust down over his head and shoulders.

Bolan turned, lying on the stairs stiff as a board, his spine straddling three steps. He swung the Desert Eagle around in a two-handed grip and waited, breathing shallowly and ignoring the hard stone digging at his backbone. He heard them coming, their feet slapping the stone floor as they raced toward the stairs.

He didn't have to wait long. Two men, running flat out, jostled one another as they turned the corner and Bolan fired four shots. The Desert Eagle spat ferociously, and the lead man threw up his hands. His weapon, an AK-47, started up, then dropped straight down as it slipped from his grip. He fell backward, a brand new and very ugly hole just over his left eye. The remaining three shots had taken the second man in the right shoulder and in the throat. He, too, lost his weapon as his hand flew up to his neck and closed around the most serious wound. He only had strength for making a horrible rattling sound in his throat.

The lead man, who appeared to be Chinese, was considerably shorter than his companion, and his collapsing body slammed into his partner's knees.

The runner-up, a skinny Anglo built like a stork, all gawky limbs and sharp features, smacked his head on the wall behind as he fell with the weight of the Chinese added to his own. A sharp crack echoed up the stairwell as he hit, and his head sat at a funny angle as he slid the rest of the way to the floor. If the bullets hadn't killed him, the broken neck would have.

Bolan scrambled back a step or two, still lying on the stairs and bumping his vertebrae against the lip of the step as he pushed with his heels. It was suddenly silent in the cellar, and Bolan panted short, sharp breaths. In the confined stairwell, they sounded like sandpaper on soft stone.

He slowly gathered his legs under him before rising. He took one step down, then another.

It remained quiet, but the man with the silenced pistol hadn't been accounted for. The two men lying in an obscene heap in front of him both had automatic rifles.

Bending down, he tugged the AK up by its muzzle, then grabbed the handgrip and picked it up.

He made sure it was operable, and that the magazine was at least partially loaded. Muffling the click of the reinserted magazine, he leapt to the cellar floor and swept the muzzle of the AK in a semicircle, his finger on the trigger.

A man had been caught in the hail of 7.62 mm slugs. He looked at the rip in his stomach with surprise. His right hand dropped an ugly-looking Makarov, hung in the air for a moment, then fluttered toward the dark red stains across his blue cotton shirt. He glanced at Bolan as he fell back and slammed hard into the floor.

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

Behind him, across the stone floor, a door yawned darkly. It was the same one that had teen cracked open briefly. Bolan jerked the magazine from the second AK and started toward the open door.

As he drew close, he realized that yet another door was ajar at the far end of the chamber. It must have been the spot that had swallowed the missing shot. He would have to check it out, but first things first.

Poking into the first door, he swept a palm along the wall. A fluorescent light pinged and flashed on. At first Bolan thought it was nothing more than a simple office.

Then he saw the map.

23

Bolan stared at the map for a long moment, leaning closer and reaching out to touch it. Small red circles peppered the center of Manila. A quick count showed thirty-three. All but five had been crosshatched by a makeshift star or crude asterisk. None of the locations meant anything to Bolan, who did not have that comprehensive a knowledge of the city.

Pinned to a corkboard by a half-dozen pushpins, the map appeared to be standard issue. Nearly three feet long on each side, it was creased in several places, indicating a regular fold, almost like an American road map, but the segments were twice the size. Bolan jerked the pushpins free, one by one, then folded the map carefully. He backed out of the of flee and climbed the stairs to the first floor.

He dialed in a hurry, then waited for someone to pick up. The phone rang several times, and Bolan impatiently waited for Marisa to answer.

Finally the receiver on the other end rattled out of its cradle.

"Bring Carlos," he said, "quickly. You know where. I'll meet you out front." Bolan slammed the phone down and moved toward the front door. It was far too late to worry about caution. He stood in the front hall, pulling a plain cloth curtain aside and tucking it behind the doorknob so he could watch the street.

It was quiet out there, almost too quiet, but he couldn't afford to worry about that, either. He killed time by committing the ammo from both AK's into one magazine, then tossed the empty into a brown metal wastebasket next to a small utility table.

His arm was beginning to throb again, and he wished he had some painkillers. He squeezed the thickly bandaged wound, trying to shut out the stabbing ache. While he waited, he considered his options. They were few and unattractive. The first image of the map kept floating into his mind's eye like a dust mote and darting away every time he tried to stare at it directly.

Without a timetable, he had to assume the worst.

There was no doubt at all in his mind that the red circles were significant. If Cordero was in the picture, and Bolan was certain of that, he could guess just what that significance was. But it wasn't something he could handle by himself. Even if he, Carlos and Marisa split up, they had eleven sites each to cover. But where would they begin to look without quite knowing what to look for?

On a hunch, Bolan dashed back up to the third floor without using a light. Kneeling in front of the single window in the center of the front room, he eased the shade up a fraction of an inch, then leaned forward with his chin on the sill. Despite the darkness, the sky made a decent backdrop for the broken line of rooftops across the narrow street. The buildings lay hard up against one another, allowing a determined man to make his way the length of the block by way of the roofs.