Blood Heat Zero (13 page)

So how best to use his own remaining charge? Bolan weighed the pros and cons. The lock gates or the elevator shaft?

He decided on the shaft. The odds against a successful attack on the gates increased with every second the dead guard could be missed at any time and that would put the entire place on general alert; to cripple the gates, it would be necessary to lodge the plastic explosive among the hinge mechanism or actually between them, and in either case that involved an underwater operation; if he was to dive, Bolan must discard the guard's uniform and that would hasten the chances of discovery; finally it was possible that the work force might break for lunch soon, and that meant no more whistle-stops.

This time he did not have to wait so long.

Checking that the two overseers in the hutch were still facing the dry-dock, he followed the last of the Russians through the doorway... instead of heading for the shelter, he dropped to his hands and knees, crawled past the steel shutters below window level and then ran for the warren of passageways beyond.

He chose the one leading directly away from the basin. It rose steeply upward and ended in a circular chamber from which several tunnels led off.

The highest and widest which had evidently been used for the transportation of plant from the elevator to the submarine pens was roughly hewed from the rock, supported every few yards by pit props and cross beams and dimly lit by low-power electric lamps. A current of cool air blew along it, which the warrior guessed must originate at the foot of the shaft.

He hurried along the tunnel, turned a corner and was faced with a T-junction.

Licking one finger and holding it up, he found that the draft came from the left. As he set off in that direction there was a dull concussion somewhere behind him, and his ears cracked momentarily as the pressure in the passageway altered.

A few yards farther on a second blast, a series of small detonations dimmed the lights.

Bolan figured he must still be almost two hundred yards from the mine shaft.

Before he was halfway there, he heard the faint shrilling of whistles. He would have to pull out all the stops if he was to plant his explosive before the risk of encountering one of the guards became unacceptable.

The elevator cage was at the pithead a diminutive plug blocking the light at the top of a vertical shaft stretching far up into the dark. The winching equipment, the huge counterweight and the arrangement of wire hawsers in the circular rock well at the bottom of the shaft could have been designed to operate a passenger elevator in some prehistoric subway station, Bolan thought with a smile.

But there was nothing prehistoric about the footsteps he could hear advancing far away in the maze of passageways near the dock basin.

Reaching into the neoprene pouch, he drew out the remaining two-stick delayed-action charge, checked that the watch was ticking and correctly set, and jumped lightly down into the elevator well.

Ten seconds later, he pulled his hand back from the underside of an inspection hatch with an exclamation of astonishment.

There was already a charge in place there time-fused, neatly bundled and taped securely in place.

Before he had time to think, a voice said softly behind him, "There is a saying in your country, I believe, that great minds think alike. It is good to find that this is true!"

Bolan whirled. He was facing Bjornstrom, the wet suit still damply gleaming in the wan underground lighting. "How the hell did you get here?" Bolan demanded in a whisper.

"Swam around into the smallest cave and found a tunnel that led here directly. Very convenient and it does not seem to be patrolled."

"Great." Bolan glanced at the shaft. "Might as well leave my charge here, too. We won't have time to go back to the dock."

"There is a fissure that runs halfway around the shaft," the Icelander said. "If you push it in there, as well as destroying the mechanism we might also bring down some rock and wreck the shaft."

"Better still." Bolan was shoving the package as far into the crevice as it would go when they heard shouting in the distance followed by the insistent clamor of an alarm bell.

"I think they have found the dead guard," Bjornstrom said.

Shouted commands and the clump of booted feet drowned the sounds of the sea throughout the underground complex. The shrilling alarm bell punctuated orders rasping through speakers fixed to the rock walls at the corner of every passageway.

"We are lucky," Bolan panted, "that they didn't monitor the whole place with closed-circuit TV."

Bjornstrom had led him to an unlit opening on the far side of the elevator well, and they were hotfooting it back to the smallest cave.

"Whatever happens," Bolan insisted, "they mustn't know we penetrated as far as the mine shaft. They'll know we made the control room that's where they found the body. But I want them to think that was as far as we got; I want them to believe we only just made it to the cavern, that we were on our way in when the guy surprised us."

"How can we do that?" Bjornstrom demanded. The route was far shorter than the one Bolan had taken, and they were already approaching the cave.

Bolan stared across at the water swilling around the slipway. "We must get back to that stack of oil drums," he said, "and let them find us hiding there. Then we split. They have to think they surprised us at the start of a recon trip not the end of a sabotage mission. Otherwise they'll start poking around here and there to see where we went. And if they discover one of the charges..." He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"Is there any way we could use the uniform you're wearing? Could we maybe fool them..." Bjornstrom began.

"Uh-uh." Bolan cut him short. "Don't forget we stripped the dead guard, so they'll be looking for someone wearing his uniform..." Bolan paused. He was gazing pensively at the slipway.

"Still... is an idea... maybe we can make use of it in a different way." Hastily he pulled off the boots and coverall and stuffed them into the neoprene sack that now contained nothing but his AutoMag and a spare clip of ammunition. He lowered himself into the water. The numbing shock of the sudden immersion was like a blow in the solar plexus, but he mastered the cramp and swam fast across to the slipway.

Clinging to the rowboat moored beside it, he unzippered the sack one-handed and laid boots and coverall along the Buckboards. Finally he removed the miner's helmet he was still wearing and placed it above the gray fatigues. In poor light, for a few seconds, it was just possible that a distant watcher might mistakenly believe a man was lying prone below the gunwales.

Very carefully, Bolan unhitched the painter, submerged himself and swam slowly out toward the center of the cavern, pushing the boat before him.

When it was framed in the rock arch between the two chambers, he gave it a final shove and then backed off. The tide was ebbing, and a slight current receding toward the fjord carried the craft in the direction of the smallest cave entrance. As he had hoped, the movement of the rowboat, as it floated through the shaft of light streaming in from the main cavern, was seen by someone.

There was an excited shout, followed by two more. The ringing of alarm bells stopped, and an amplified voice rapped orders through the speaker system.

Gunfire ripped out, reverberating around the linked caves like thunder in the mountains. Pale marks peppered the dark planking of the rowboat as heavy slugs splintered the wood. The vessel lurched slightly under the impacts and spun slowly around.

Boots clattered on the iron stairway.

A muttered conference distorted a dozen times by the sea-wet rock faces echoed sibilantly overhead. Then at last there was silence an eerie quiet broken only by the lap and suck of the water; a stillness continually contradicted by the ceaseless interplay of light reflected onto the crystalline roof by the movement of the tide.

The Russians were clearly planning some surprise move based on the belief that they had eliminated an intruder in the boat.

It was the diversion Bolan had hoped for. He motioned to the Icelander, and together they dived underwater and swam through the arch into the submarine pens beneath the gallery.

Bolan surfaced by the dockside.

Abruptly, from behind him, he heard a rush of footsteps along the quay they had just left in the smaller basin. The pursuers had raced through the network of passages in the hope of catching unawares whoever was connected with the boat. By now they would be wise to the fact that the craft itself was no more than a decoy.

More commands rapped out in Russian over the speakers. Followed by Bjornstrom, the Executioner hoisted himself onto the concrete dockside and together they sped silently up the spiral ladder to the stack of drums.

There were men on the far side of the gallery, but they were all concentrating their attention on the far cave. By the drums, Bolan made a brusque movement to catch their eyes.

Four out of the half dozen swung around at once.

Four SMG's roared a hymn of hate through the caves. Rock chips showered Bolan's side of the gallery; oil gushed from punctured drums.

The two saboteurs had ripped open their neoprene sacks in readiness.

Facedown below the gallery railing, they returned fire. Bjornstrom's compact sixteen-inch Ingram chattered out a stream of lethal skull busters, and the Executioner's AutoMag punctuated the death stream with individual shots that bellowed beneath the cavern roof.

Two of the Russians fell forward over the rail and dropped into the dock basin, where they floated lifelessly, trailing clouds of crimson in the dark water. A third was hurled back against the wall, his arm shattering on impact.

"Okay," Bolan yelled. "Now! We've been surprised and beaten back on the way in. Let's go!"

Vaulting over the rail, they dived into the basin and swam frantically underwater for the cave entrance. With luck the guards outside on the spur wouldn't know what the hell was going on; with luck they wouldn't be in direct contact with the speaker system; with luck Bolan and his companion could stay submerged long enough, once they were through the arch, to escape their attention.

With luck.

It was when he surfaced to catch his breath beneath the arch that Bolan heard, over the sporadic shots still being fired after them, the shouts from the inner cave that were followed by a woman's scream.

With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realized that, in decoying the main body of the Russians into the second chamber, he had unwittingly delivered Erika Axelsson into the hands of the enemy.

"She is safe for another three hours," Bjornstrom said. "She does after all have the pill with her."

"The pill?" Bolan sounded incredulous. "You don't mean... Not the cyanide pills?"

"No, no. Nothing so... final. A kind of a sleeping pill, except that it acts instantly. It's a variety of chloral hydrate, your old-fashioned Mickey Finn, without the hangover. They can do nothing to her, she will hear nothing and feel nothing, until the effect wears off."

"You said three hours?"

"Four from the time she bit down on it. They give them to us in our service it leaves time to attempt a rescue before they start to torture a prisoner. There is no point administering electric shocks to someone who is how do you say? out for the count."

"But three hours from now?"

It was not quite midday. Bolan and the Icelander were holding a conference of war over glasses of Brennevin and weak local beer in a tavern on the outskirts of Pvera, on the far side of the fjord from the Russian concession.

"That means we have to bust into the place and get her out by three o'clock this afternoon, right?"

"I think so," Bjornstrom said soberly.

The mission is more important than individual members of the team this was the hard lesson Bolan had to learn in Nam, in the Mafia wars and during his subsequent anti terrorist campaign. It was a truism for military men the world over. But that didn't mean you wouldn't do your damnedest to get back a fellow fighter in enemy hands... before that operation could compromise the mission.

In any case this one was a self-imposed mission. Even if the time element had not been in favor of a quick rescue attempt, no alternative entered the Executioner's mind; no other line of action would have occurred to him. Erika was a comrade in arms. She had been captured; she must be released. As quickly as possible. It was that simple.

"How are we going to do it?" Bjornstrom said.

Before Bolan could reply, a tall, elderly man with white hair and thick-lensed glasses detached himself from a group of young people and advanced on Bolan. He held out his hand.

"Good to see you again," he said affably. "I guess you made your run down to Jokulsa after all?"

Astonished, Bolan automatically took the hand, thinking: who the hell is this? The face was vaguely familiar but he could not place it; neither the voice nor the presence stirred any connection in his memory.

"The plane," the old-timer reminded him. "The flight from Copenhagen."

Of course. Bolan remembered. So much had happened since then that he had completely forgotten the conversation with the passenger sitting next to him on the Icelandair 727.

But then an ugly doubt surfaced in his mind. Could this man be the contact who had tipped off the Russians that a guy known as the Executioner was on his way?

Uh-uh. Looking beyond the white-haired guy to the group he had left, he recalled the rest of it. They were college kids. Boys and girls. He remembered them leaving Keflavik field while he was checking out his freight, bound for the capital on a bus.

Geology students, and the old man was their professor.

"Yeah," he said in answer to the professor's question. "I finally made it. A fairly... eventful... journey. I hope your own expedition has been successful," he added politely, wondering how he could get rid of the elderly academic.

"Not as interesting as yours, I'm afraid," the professor replied. "We can't all cross the lava fields in kayaks! However, this afternoon should prove stimulating. The Russians leasing the promontory on the far side of the fjord have kindly offered to show us over the trial bores they are sinking among the igneous intrusions."

Bolan caught his breath. "The Russians?" he echoed.

"That's right. It seems there are uncharacteristic pegmatites among the amphiboles and plagioclase zones they encountered in their search for tin lodes. They promise to let us explore the upper galleries."

"What time?" Bolan asked urgently. "What time this afternoon?"

The professor raised his brows, surprised at the Executioner's tone of voice. "Three-thirty, actually," he said. "We are required to make a punctual appearance at the main gate. It seems they are rather hot on security, and we have to be escorted to the pithead."

Bolan excused himself as quickly as he could and rejoined Bjornstrom. This time he was really shaken. Not only was Erika in the hands of the Russians, a party of college kids were being shown over the upper section of the mine workings at the very time the charges they had so carefully timed were due to explode.

Somehow, within the next three hours, they had to spirit the girl away and save the students from almost certain death.

"We must go back in and alter the timing," Bjornstrom said. "Push the hour hands right back again so the charges will not go off until late this evening."

"No way." Bolan shook his head. "There are twelve of them. Each one has to be located, unwrapped, retimed, taped back in position and then concealed again. That takes a lot more time than just shoving a prepared package in among the machinery. We'd never make it; there wouldn't be enough work stoppages for one thing."

"But if we concentrated first on those nearest the shaft, the charges putting the kids in most danger?"

"We might not be able to concentrate on any. For all we know they may not be blasting at all this afternoon. Especially if they have a conducted tour planned."

"Then?.." The Icelander looked crushed.

"We'll play it another way. We'll go back in all right. But we won't touch the charges; we won't go near them. We'll simply use the caves as an entry to the surface workings."

"You're crazy."

Like a fox, Gunnar. We'll have to play it damned dose to the chest, but it can be done. We have three objectives — destroy the base, rescue Erika and save the kids, right?"

"So?"

"So what's wrong with making all three in a single operation?"

"I cannot see how it is possible," Bjornstrom said.

"I'll tell you," Bolan told him. "If we leave the charges the way they are we achieve objective number one, anyway. So all that remains is to get Erika out and stop the students going in."

"This is where I come in, Bolan. How the hell ?"

"Listen. All we have to do is get to that elevator. If they are still blasting, we do it while they're in the shelter; if not, we'll blast our own way in there. With lead. Once we make the cage, we take it to the top and come out shooting. We locate Erika... and then we stage the biggest, boldest, most ear-shattering battle the Russians have seen for a long time."

"After we have Erika? Why don't we just get out? If that is not just a pipe dream anyway?"

"You don't understand. The Sovs are obviously asking these Danish kids and their instructor around as a PR exercise. They won't allow them anyplace near the submarine pens. But it consolidates their position, strengthens their cover if independent witnesses actually see them doing their mining number. If we raise enough hell, on the other hand, the Russians themselves will find some way to stop the kids coming in. The last thing they'll want is an audience if the place is humming with live rounds from Ingrams and Kalashnikovs!"

Bjornstrom passed a hand over his face. "Well," he said, "it might work." He sighed heavily. "I suppose."

"It's got to work," the Executioner said.