around its trunk. He swung precariously to one side, extending his right foot until it came to rest on another of the trees directly below him. It felt as if the tree would support him, so Bolan took a chance and eased his grip on the overhead limb, freeing one hand. With considerable difficulty, he wriggled his hand free of his HAZMAT glove, then switched arms and did the same with the other. The tree’s bark bit sharply into his bare palms, but his grip was now more secure than it had been with the gloves.
Spread-eagled against the face of the cliff, Bolan glanced to his right. Major Salim, Sergeant Latek and the other commandos had managed to pull themselves back up to the roadway. Salim and one of the others were still crouched near the railing, trading shots with enemy gunmen up in the mountains. Between shots, the major looked Bolan’s way, then started toward him.
“Hang on!” he shouted, his cry muffled by his gas mask. Once he reached the spot where Bolan had gone over the side, he lay flat against the edge of the roadway and reached down. Even with his arm fully extended, however, Salim’s outstretched fingers remained well beyond Bolan’s reach.
“Your belt!” Bolan called up to him. “Try your belt!”
The Indonesian nodded. He rose to his knees and was unfastening his gear belt when yet another explosion sounded, this time from the roadway.
“The truck!” Salim shouted to Bolan through his mask. “The driver must’ve set off some kind of explosive device!”
Salim’s voice was silenced in midsentence. He went limp, and his arm dangled uselessly over the edge of the precipice. Bolan could still hear gunfire and assumed the major had been hit by a sniper.
Seconds passed. No one came to Salim’s aid. Bolan was stranded. The trees were holding up under his weight, but he had nowhere to go. He was trapped, and as the patter of gunfire increased up above him, he wondered if the commandos were being overrun by their ambushers. If that was the case, any second now he could expect to see one of the jihad gunners standing over him. Pinned to the side of the precipice, he’d be an easy target.
Shifting more of his weight onto his feet, Bolan freed his right hand and unzipped his HAZMAT suit. He reached inside the suit, drawing his .44 Desert Eagle from its web holster. He thumbed off the safety and pointed the pistol at the roadway, waiting for the enemy to show himself.
Moments later, an adversary appeared, but it wasn’t a member of the Lashkar Jihad or the United Islamic Front. It wasn’t even human. Instead, Bolan found himself staring at a roiling, slow-moving cloud the color of pea soup. Bolan knew the cloud had likely been unleashed by the explosion of the Bio-Tain truck. His mind flashed on the briefing papers he’d read on the way to Samarinda: an entire work crew killed in seconds by mingling pesticide vapors.
Bolan shoved his .44 back in its holster but didn’t bother to zip up his HAZMAT suit. Without the gas mask he’d yanked off while on the bus, the suit wasn’t going to do him any good.
Trapped, all Bolan could do was watch as the cloud spilled over the side of the precipice and crept toward him. It looked almost alive, like some deadly creature on its way to claim some woesome prey that had fallen into its web.
CHAPTER FOUR
As the toxic cloud drew nearer, Bolan quickly deliberated his chances of surviving a fall into the river below. Even if he managed to elude the boulders, it seemed unlikely the river was deep enough to keep him from slamming into the bottom. No. Like it or not, his best chance was to stay where he was and hope the poisonous vapors wouldn’t be as deadly as those that had killed the IMA workers. It was a faint hope. Already he could smell the cloud’s noxious fumes, and his eyes were starting to burn.
This is it, he thought. At long last, his number had come up.
The cloud was almost upon him when two shifting shadows began to sweep across the face of the precipice. When he heard the familiar, throaty drone of four 1600 horsepower turboshaft engines, Bolan felt a sudden stirring of hope.
The Black Hawks.
Bolan glanced up and saw one of the gunships bank slightly as it drifted close to him, so close that he could see the pilot, an olive-skinned Indonesian. The pilot brought the chopper to within twenty feet of the precipice and then hovered in place, its rotors whirring within a few yards of Bolan’s head. The vibration of the rotor wash nearly wrested him from the cliff, and for a moment he wondered if perhaps the Lashkar Jihad had somehow managed to seize the gunship. Then, as he glanced up, he realized that the updraft of the rotor wash was diverting the toxic cloud away from him. The cloud itself was dissipating, as well.
After a few seconds, the Black Hawk pulled away, its mission accomplished. Bolan’s eyes still burned, but the cloud had all but vanished.
The chopper drifted up over the roadway, directing its mounted guns at the sniper positions in the mountains. The second gunship came into view and hovered directly above Bolan, the sound of its rotors echoing off the cliff walls. As the soldier watched, a rope ladder began to inch out the side door. Once the ladder was fully extended, a figure emerged and began to slowly lower himself down the rungs. The man was dressed head-to-toe in HAZMAT gear and carried an extra mask similar to the one Bolan had shed.
The strength in Bolan’s arms was fading. When he tried putting more weight on the tree below him, the trunk began to snap, forcing him to hold tighter to the limb above. His fingers were going numb. He was running out of time.
“Hang tight, Striker!”
Bolan looked up. The man dangling at the bottom of the rope ladder, arm extended toward him, was his longtime colleague John Kissinger. Though officially on the Stony Man payroll as its resident weaponsmith, Kissinger was no stranger to the battlefield. He’d fought at Bolan’s side several times and had been on assignment in Islamabad with Bolan and Grimaldi when they’d received the directive to fly to Indonesia.
“How about a lift?” he shouted to Bolan above the din of the rotors.
“If you insist,” Bolan shouted back.
Once Kissinger was within reach, Bolan freed one hand and quickly transferred his grip to the other man’s wrist. Kissinger responded in kind. When the tree below finally gave way, Kissinger quickly pulled his comrade toward him. With his other hand, Bolan snatched at the ladder. Once his fingers closed around one of the rungs, he swung his right leg up, groping for a foothold.
“Almost there,” Kissinger assured him.
Bolan finally planted his foot on the bottom rung. He let go of Kissinger and grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands. On Kissinger’s signal, the chopper began to pull away from the precipice.
“Nice timing,” Bolan told him once he’d caught his breath.
“Always glad to lend a hand,” Kissinger responded. “But in the future maybe you might want to leave the wall-climbing to Spider-Man.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Jack Grimaldi was already pulling the Black Hawk out of the ravine by the time Bolan followed Kissinger into the passenger compartment. He called out a quick greeting without taking his eyes off the controls, then added, “Looks like somebody tipped off the Lashkar about the surprise party, eh?”
“Something like that,” Bolan replied, coughing slightly. His eyes were
