He repacked the poncho and put on the haversack. He picked up his gun and went to the trail. As he turned into it he glanced at his watch. A little past midnight. If he wanted to make the village by daylight he would have to run part of the way. Twenty minutes running, twenty minutes walking, he decided.
Bolan took a deep breath and set out on his journey.
Chapter 2
It was dawn, and the sun streaked the sky with faint rays.
Standing on a ridge and peering through field glasses, Bolan surveyed the village. Judging by the goings-on, it was breakfast time. Smoke rose from the homes, and turbaned Montagnard women were coming out of the doorways with buckets of pig feed. Bolan could hear the squeal of pigs fighting at the troughs.
The village lay in a terra-cotta valley, a couple of hundred huts scattered randomly in Montagnard fashion where the only rule was that no two doorways should face each other in case they attracted each other's spirits. The absence of any symmetry gave the place a decidedly primitive look.
Beyond, in low grassland blanketed by a ground mist, shaggy horses and cattle grazed. A solitary elephant wandered among them, the chain around its leg attached to a boulder. The Montagnards used elephants for logging.
Bolan scanned the village for a sign of Nark. But there was none. Nark could still be sleeping, Bolan thought; nothing new in a CIA agent snoozing.
As the day advanced, people began leaving the village. Some went to the slopes to work fields of rice, corn and tobacco. Women with bamboo water containers on their backs headed for a stream in the hills. A hunter with a musket rode away. A family set out for market, each member carrying a live chicken in a basket under each arm.