Blood Heat Zero (14 page)

The security guards got Erika Axelsson to the pithead she was already under the effects of the pill. They took her to a room behind the chief overseer's office, ripped the latex dry-suit down around her ankles, hosed her with icy water and beat her naked body with rubber hoses. But though her breasts, belly and buttocks turned black and blue she showed no reaction.

She remained comatose when a 12-volt electric current from a hand-cranked generator was jolted through her body, and there was no muscular reflex when one of the guards stubbed out a cigarette on her wrist.

"It's no good," the station doctor told them. "It's pointless applying stimuli, useless to ask questions. She is genuinely, deeply unconscious."

The KGB colonel in charge of security was furious. "How long," he raged, "before the bitch will be in a fit state to be questioned?"

The doctor shrugged. "Difficult to say. Depends on the exact composition of the drug it's some kind of chloral hydrate compound. And of course on the amount in the pill. Clearly it will be fairly efficient, or she would not have been provided with it. I say several hours at least."

Colonel Dmitri Aleksandrevitch Antonin became increasingly frustrated as he pondered his present circumstances.

He had once been liaison between the KGB and GRU military intelligence. In that function he had been assistant to the infamous Major General Greb Strakhov of the KGB hierarchy. The Iceland posting was a demotion. It had come as a result of Antonin's failure to organize a worldwide Mafia confederation that was to have been backed with KGB money.

The man responsible for that failure, for provoking such internecine strife among the various Mob families that the idea had to be abandoned as impracticable, was Mack Bolan.

Not Colonel Antonin's favorite character, now or at any time.

It was bad enough that they had crossed swords not just that once but many times... and the American had always come out on top. The worst thing of all was that Bolan should have turned up right here, in Iceland, at the exact time Antonin hoped for a spectacular success that would reestablish him in the eyes of Moscow.

How had the bastard known?

The commercial attache from the Soviet embassy who happened to recognize him on the plane from Denmark had done well to signal Antonin at once. Yet the capitalist lackey had four times outwitted KGB assassins before he even arrived at the sinkhole in the glacier.

Since then there had been nothing but disasters.

The crews of two outposts on the river annihilated, a helicopter and its occupants destroyed at the pumping station near Grimsstadir by Bolan and some as yet unidentified accomplice, five men and a raft vanished without trace at the Fjallagfoss, a vehicle and another five operatives lost on the road near the lakehead. And Bolan, unscathed, was still advancing as remorselessly, as the tides that Antonin had made part of his own blueprint for success.

The man was not human.

Worst of all, he had somehow wormed out the secret of the caves and attempted for once, thank God, unsuccessfully to penetrate the base.

Now this unknown woman associated with the foreign terrorist and his companion had materialized. And even here Antonin was temporarily blocked from wringing the information he craved out of her.

No matter. She was in his hands. He had learned how to play the waiting game. The moment she regained consciousness she would be made to talk.

It would be a pleasure to assist at the ceremony. And then he would know precisely how much the mercenary, Bolan, had discovered... and how best to rid himself of the implacable Westerner who had so often too often proved a stumbling block in Antonin's own carefully prepared plans.

It never occurred to the wily Russian that the whole series of setbacks might derive from a simple coincidence. That if the attache had not been so overzealous Bolan might simply have continued his vacation and not noticed anything amiss. If the Executioner had not been pursued so doggedly by KGB killers, which made him so determined to find out what was going on, he might have shrugged the whole thing off as none of his business. But those who make a profession out of deceit are incapable of comprehending the truth themselves.

Antonin stalked across to the video display terminal. A naval enlisted man, cleared for top-secret work, sat at the VDT console. On the dark green fluorescent screen, multiple blips located units of the NATO and Soviet fleets operating in the area.

Russia's northern fleet, largest and strongest of four, was based well over one thousand miles away at Murmansk and other ports on the Kola Peninsula.

Yet the Soviet blips outnumbered the NATO units by more than ten to one.

There were eighty surface-combat vessels in the fleet, which included nine guided-missile cruisers, seven missile destroyers, two carriers and more than one hundred submarines. Most of them were steaming to a rendezvous sixty miles north of the Arctic Circle for an exercise designed to test their maneuverability in time of emergency and, incidentally, to probe NATO reaction to large-scale fleet maneuvers.

Most of them... except the submarines.

The naval authorities had considered it wasteful to employ more than half a dozen nuclear craft when soon enough the new SSK's to be clandestinely based on Iceland would so radically change the pattern of naval operations in the region.

Antonin turned to a wall hanger and pulled down a large-scale polar map of the North Atlantic, a projection that emphasized the too-often-ignored proximity of the Soviet Union and the United States across the ice cap.

And the vital strategic importance of Iceland in that context.

Anchored like a monumental aircraft carrier between Greenland and Norway, the country effectively controlled all three of the sea passages through which the Russians could move their fleet into offensive positions that would be menacing to the NATO forces the gaps between Iceland and Greenland, Iceland and the Farce Islands and between the Faroes and Scotland.

How much easier it would be to plan such movements when the SSK hunter-killer minisubs, themselves secretly operating from the bowels of an Icelandic glacier, could monitor and, if necessary, influence the concentrations of enemy shipping that blocked any Soviet advance!

How agreeable to reflect that responsibility for the existence of a base actually within the NATO bastion would largely be his!

Antonin saw himself at a Kremlin ceremony, the Order of Lenin being pinned to his chest. He saw himself in a vie office with a carpeted floor at Dzerzhinsky Square, the KGB headquarters in Moscow; in his own imported automobile; at a country dacha with servants.

He saw himself in total charge of all the KGB directorates, planning secret operations worldwide.

The Soviet admiral in overall charge of the real-life submarine pen project on which Antonin's hopes were founded had come into the room.

He was staring at the VDT screen, a replica of the one that would shortly become operative in the control room of the cavern more than two hundred feet below them.

"Much NATO activity?" he asked the navy man at the console.

"Very little, Comrade Colonel," the man replied. "Just the flotilla engaged on this so-called goodwill mission."

He pointed to a small cluster of blips at the left of the screen.

"There will be British submarines skulking around on the seabed someplace on the fringe of the exercise area," the admiral growled, "spying on our fleet and feeding the information into their damned computers in the hope of a printout that will allow them to extrapolate what we would do in any given situation." He turned to Antonin. "I shall call up the Ilyushins to make sure that we have eyes and ears underwater; we shall beat them at their own game." The Ilyushins converted long-range transport planes — sowed undersea sensors copied from captured American SOSUS detectors that could chart the course of a submarine wherever it went. The latest models were so sophisticated that they could identify individual submarines from the noise of their engine print."

"It will not be long, Comrade Admiral," Antonin said, "before such intricacies will become redundant. The short-range recon hunter-killers deployed from this base will provide quicker, better, more accurate information than any computed."

"If the base is ever finished," the admiral interrupted tartly. "We are already weeks behind schedule. It should have been in operation well before the long-night season. And provided its existence has not been splashed over every newspaper in Northern Europe." He looked coldly at Antonin. Neither the KGB nor the GRU were popular with the Soviet armed forces. "Your much-vaunted 'security' has not proved very secure, Comrade Colonel, has it? Our pipelines uncovered, our site penetrated, our outposts destroyed. Your professional en— forcers outwitted at every turn by a single amateur guerrilla. A man still at liberty moreover. And even the guards charged with the security of our fjord entries prove incapable of resisting this terrorist. It would seem that they themselves require guarding," the admiral said sarcastically. "You have in fact already lost three of them if I am not mistaken?"

Antonin's face was suffused with rage. A vein in his temple twitched uncontrollably. He had forgotten to include the men missing from the spur in his catalog of Bolan attacks.

"By nightfall the man will be in our hands and the affair terminated," he said in a choked voice.

He strode to his desk, snatched up the interphone and savagely punched buttons on the handset.

"Rodsky?" he snapped. "Prepare the woman for sharpened interrogation at once. I know she is not conscious, you dolt. Prepare her nevertheless. The interrogation is to commence as soon as she shows signs of consciousness."

For Mack Bolan and his Icelandic ally the most difficult part of the operation was getting back into the caves.

The sun, low in the sky but fiercely bright, flashed reflections from the binoculars wielded by four guards deployed around the spur. Two hundred feet higher, security men silhouetted against the skyline constantly scanned the fjord. And within the connecting caverns it was certain that special orders would have been given in case the impudent intruders of the morning were rash enough to try a second time.

The impudent intruders left Pvera in a beat-up Citroen that Bjornstrom had somehow acquired and raced across the bridge at the head of the fjord to take the highway leading to Akureyri.

Two miles farther on, Bjornstrom swung right onto a dirt road that looped up toward the Russian concession.

While the mine workings and the wall barring the entrance were still hidden on the far side of a swell in the landscape, he turned off the road and steered between scattered boulders across a depression that ended in a steepsided valley slanting down to the water.

Once out of sight of the road, he cut the engine and coasted. The noisy clatter of the air-cooled twin-cylinder engine died away, and they bumped across a slope of coarse moorland grass to halt in the shelter of a granite outcrop.

Below them the valley plunged toward a cascade that foamed into a creek leading off the fjord. And there, shielded by a wilderness of tumbled rocks, their Hypalon raft was concealed.

They clambered down and retrieved their wet suits from beneath the seats of the raft.

The one thing in their favor, the only factor that gave them a chance to make the caves unseen, was the fact that the concession was on the western side of the fjord.

Because of this, a combination of low afternoon sun and high cliffs threw a shadow across the water.

"Even so," Bolan said, "we shall have to make the whole distance underwater, with snorkels for both of us all the way."

"The bottom of the fjord is black basalt and marine vegetation grows below the cliffs," Bjornstrom pointed out. "There's no pale seabed sand for us to show up against. You don't think?"

"No way," Bolan insisted. "It's okay for minisubs they will be at some depth; no danger of them leaving a telltale wash. But even if we are invisible below, the moment we broke surface to gulp in a breath of air we'd risk making enough of a commotion to draw the attention of the goons on that spur. Or one of the guards above. They might take it for a fish after a fly the first time, but not the next. Anyway, they'd probably loose off a burst just in case."

"Whatever you say," Bjornstrom agreed.

He sloshed water around inside the eyepiece of his mask, pulled it down over his face and took the hard rubber breathing bit between his teeth.

Followed by the Executioner, he submerged and swam slowly out of the creek into the fjord.

Even with the snorkels they had to take it slowly. In the circumstances it was difficult to remain underwater for much more than a minute. And each time the head of a breathing tube with its caged ball valve periscoped above the surface there was a chance it might leave enough wake to alert a watcher.

Fortunately the tide was now rising.

The inward flow of seawater meeting the current of the Jokulsa a Fjollum created ripples on the shadowed side of the fjord and a constant, shifting glimmer of sunlight beyond.

Each of them was hampered in his movements, Bolan with the waterproof Heckler and Koch G-11 strapped across his chest, the Icelander by the neoprene sack protecting his Ingram and two handguns. In addition, each stroke had to be made cautiously, the breath drawn evenly and slowly when the U-shaped tube broke surface and the ball float dropped to let in air.

It was almost two o'clock before they arrived at the mouth of the smallest cave.

They surfaced still in the shelter of the low rock arch and trod water, staring into the lit interior of the small cavern.

The rowboat had been pulled out of the water and up to the top of the slipway. The only other difference from their previous visit was that now the entry to the generator cave and each of the passageways branching off the quay framed a guard with a Skorpion machine pistol.

Over the hum of turbines the two men could hear the familiar sounds of drills, compressors and concrete mixers. Work was evidently continuing on the rock faces around and behind the caisson.

From time to time an overseer shouted an order, but the noise was mainly mechanical. The guards did not patrol. They remained motionless at their posts.

Clinging to the rough walls just outside the pool of light, the roof of the arch low above their heads with the rising tide, the two freedom fighters waited for the whistle to blow. Would the KGB hardmen barring their way go to the shelter with the others?

No whistle.

Thirty-five minutes passed.

Bolan and his companion were numbed with cold, their circulation sluggish through lack of activity. Finally the Executioner touched Bjornstrom on the arm and jerked his head toward the entrance.

They submerged again, swam out below the cliff and dived in once more via the center arch, surfacing where the channel curved just before it joined the main cavern.

The scene was familiar workers swarming over the scaffolding above the construction site, overseers stalking this way and that, electric cables and compressor tubes snaking over the quays beneath the blazing arcs.

Six guards stood on the gallery.

Three men were posted on the far side, staring down into the water. One was in front of the control room, another by the stack of drums and the last outside the hut from which the blasting was controlled. The air was heavy with the stink of fuel oil spilled from drums punctured during the morning shoot-out.

And still no whistle blew.

Bolan floated to the far side of the tunnel, from where he could steal an upward glance at the hut.

Behind the steel shutters the brightly lit shack was empty.

He had been right no blasting this afternoon.

He flicked a glance at his watch. The luminous digits told him that it was a quarter to three.

Fifteen minutes before Erika came to, helpless in the hands of KGB torturers.

Bolan had no illusions about what would happen to her if he didn't get there first.

"Attention! Attention!" The amplified voice rasped around the caverns from the PA speakers in Russian. "Operation Crystal. Overseers and work force are to return to surface immediately for briefing on simulated mining activity in upper gallery. Brosolov, Rott, Shepelev, Brodsky, Korsun and Radin are to remain below on constant patrol. The remainder of the guards to the pithead."

"Wising them up on the routine to be followed when the prof and his college kids arrive," Bolan whispered. "This is our only chance."

With no more than six guards, and those continually on the move, he was confident that he could blast his way through to the shaft. Yeah, Brosolov, Rott and their fellow thugs were going to be real sorry they didn't make the surface with the others.

"We'll wait to see how they deploy," he murmured to Bjornstrom. "And take three each once they separate."

"We have very little time left." Bjornstrom's face was creased with anxiety. "Erika..."

"I know. But a slug doesn't waste time making it from muzzle to target," the warrior reassured him grimly.

The sounds of work ceased.

Compressors fell silent. When the workers and overseers had trooped away to the elevator, the guards left behind started to patrol. Two pairs of boots clattered down the iron stairway. One man remained up on the far side of the gallery. Bolan reckoned that the others must still be around the smaller basin in the other cave.

Beckoning Bjornstrom to follow, the Executioner swam quickly through into the dock. Pulling himself up onto the quayside, he shook drops of water from the streamlined casing of the G-11 and sprinted for the lock gates at the inner end of the basin. The Icelander sidled through the arch separating the two chambers.

Bolan had been seen. There was a shout from the gallery. He vaulted the nearest of the gates and crouched on the catwalk, crossing it as a fusillade ripped out from the gallery and splatted against the steel casing.

Bolan planted his elbows on the flange that topped the gate, then swung up the caseless assault rifle, squinted through the optical handle sight and triggered a 3-round 90 millisecond burst at the KGB goon before he could fire again.

The three reports coughed out as a single snarling bark.

A trio of pint-size death bringers cored through both of the Russian's hands, jerking the Skorpion upward before they slammed on to pierce his heart. Death tightened his trigger finger in the instant that he was hurled backward against the rock wall by the manic force of the tiny slugs, spraying the contents of the machine pistol's magazine roofward to shatter one of the batteries of arc lights.

Reflectors, fragments of aluminum casing and broken glass showered down into the water. At the same time Bolan heard two much heavier splashes from the direction of the inner basin.

Bjornstrom, now using a MAC suppressor on his Ingram, must have profited from the silencing facility to down two more of the opposition.

Three down, three up.

The pair who had thumped down the spiral stairway must by now have located Bolan the short burst from his G-11 had echoed from wall to wall of the cavern complex but there could be no doubt where it originated.

The warrior decided to draw their fire. He would give them something to shoot at. He raced to the far end of the catwalk and leaped up among the scaffolding above the caisson.

Slugs screamed off the metal stays and smashed into the rock beyond as first one Skorpion, then another, blazed out murderous volleys.

Bolan was ready. The muzzle-flashes had flickered from a patch of shadow beneath the arch separating the two basins. He fired from the hip, stitching together the two pools of light with hellfire thread.

The figure-eight death stream seamed the two guards.

They caromed off the wall and slumped sideways, one into each pool of light.

The far one, his chest burst open like a sausage under a grill, fell near the edge of the walkway linking the two caves. Blood bubbled out from beneath him, flowed over the stone lip and clouded the water below.

The second man, illuminated by the light in the main cavern, was still moving. An arm, perforated by splinters of bone, twitched. Splayed fingers reached for the fallen Skorpion.

The face, mouth open and eyes crazed, filled the eyepiece of Bolan's optical sight with hate. He coaxed another miniburst from the G-11 and transformed it into a gory pulp.

Where was the sixth man?

The sound of running footsteps pounded the gallery. The guy shot into view from one of the tunnels opening off the cave and dashed for the one that led to the shelter and the steel-shuttered hut from which the blasting was directed.

Bolan's field of fire was obscured by the scaffolding. From where he was he didn't have a hope of getting back up to the gallery in time.

"Gunner!" he yelled. "The radio, the phone! Stop him before he..." The words died in his mouth.

Bjornstrom had appeared in another of the rock openings. He took in the scene at a glance, raced halfway along the gallery... and stopped dead.

Through the slats of the shutters, he could see the guard grabbing a handset hooked to an instrument fixed on the wall. Whatever happened, the Norwegian knew that the Russians on the surface must not be warned that anything was wrong below.

Without the element of surprise their plan was useless and they would be dead before they got anywhere near Erika.

Bjornstrom had one of the handguns — it was Bolan's AutoMag in his fist. He took a snap sight and fired.

The report of the wildcat .44-caliber shell was deafening. And the force of the recoil took the Icelander off guard. He miscalculated the rise, and the slug caught the edge of a steel slat high up the window and whined off into the darkness of the roof. Glass tinkled to the floor.

The guard dropped the receiver and snatched his machine pistol from a desk beside the window. Before he raised the barrel, Bjornstrom fired again. This time his aim was better.

The 240 grain hollowpoint caught the man full in the throat.

For a heart-stopping moment, as the Russian's mouth opened in astonishment, a scarlet flower bloomed horribly against the whiteness of his skin. Then he toppled to the floor spewing blood, his head almost severed from his body.

Bolan and Bjornstrom arrived at the door of the hut at the same time. The Executioner saw that the telephone handset was still swinging at the end of its lead. He picked it up and hooked it gently back on its cradle.

The machine, one of the few outdated devices in the Russian base, was one of those with a hand-cranked generator, which rang a bell at the other end of the line like an army field telephone.

"Did you get him before he turned the handle?" Bolan asked urgently.

Bjornstrom nodded.

The warrior breathed a sigh of relief. No listening gear would have been alerted on the surface.

"There's no service stairway," he said lightly. "We'll take the elevator to the top floor'"