Blood Heat Zero (12 page)

"We invade the control room," Bjornstrom replied, "when everybody's back is turned."

"Yeah. It'll save time when the next whistle blows plus we can probably wise ourselves up on the eventual operations technique, which should save time when we place the charges."

As soon as the guard turned his back and leaned over the rail again, Bolan and Bjornstrom crawled out from behind the drums, sped noiselessly to the control room and slipped inside.

On the floor, out of sight below the glass windows, Bolan stifled a gasp of astonishment when he saw the complexity of equipment in the small room.

Neatly labeled in Cyrillic lettering he saw multiple banks of switch gear and levers to operate the gates and dams of the lock, controls for the shaft and elevator, the generator turbines and all the pithead mechanism.

Plus radar installations, monitor screens, a data-bank terminal, the console for a massive computer and a complete radio transmitting and receiving deck. Above the benches, the wall glittered with dials.

"No problem putting this gear out of commission," Bolan said. "Three well-placed sticks would wreck all of it. But how long is it going to take them to replace it? I think they could be back where they are today by next spring, fully operative by summer. And that just isn't good enough. What we need is some structural damage, something to damage the whole damned base so completely that it can't be repaired at all."

"You mean like blowing a hole in the bottom of the fjord and letting all the water out?" Bjornstrom joked.

"Something like that. Destroying the shaft for a start. And if we could sabotage the entrance in some way."

"But we could!" Bjornstrom was excited. "Have you noticed the state of the rock when we came in?"

"Yeah, it was weathered to hell. Dangerous too, some of it rotted enough to crumble away in your hand."

"Something else besides. There is two hundred feet of cliff above the main entrance. This is one big weight to press down on an arch that does not even have a keystone."

"You mean?.." Bolan in turn looked excited.

"I mean there is already a cracking and a partial subsidence. One big slab of granite has slipped and jammed itself across a chimney in the rock face. While it is there, all remains firm. But if it was not there..." Bjornstrom paused and shook his head.

"How much would come down?"

"I am not a professional quarryman, but I think maybe one thousand, two thousand tons."

"Right into the channel leading to the cavern? You mean it could block or at least partly block the minisubs' entry?"

The Icelander nodded.

Bolan was jubilant. "And that damage they could never repair. They could never clear the passage again because it couldn't be done secretly the whole world would see what they were doing! Can we get to this slab unseen? Have we enough plastic to dislodge it?"

"We need to fracture only one corner, then it would move. After that, the weight of the rock will do the rest. But to be sure we would require maybe ten or twelve sticks."

"Okay. We'll place the others more carefully. And the access?"

"It is not difficult," Bjornstrom said. "A crevice not far above the ledge where we came in is near enough to the slab for the explosive to work. But it must be done while everyone is in the shelter because the crevice is inside the arch and the man putting it there can be visible to any person on the quay or in the gallery."

"No sweat," Bolan said. "If necessary we'll create a diversion!"

"You know the technique," Bolan said. "For each charge you take a watch, pry out the glass and drill a small hole in it. Then break off the minute and second hands and scrape the luminous paint off the hour hand so that the naked metal is exposed." Demonstrating with his knife blade, he continued, "Snap the glass back in place with the hole above the numeral 11 or 12 and incorporate the watchcase in a circuit including a battery and detonator. Solder the free end of your copper wire to one of the steel drawing pins and insert it through the hole. All you have to do then is push the detonator into the plastic, wind the watch and set the hour hand as far back as you need. That gives you a delay of anything from one to eleven hours." Bjornstrom nodded. "The watch ticks away. When the hour hand touches the shank of the pin, the circuit is completed... and up she goes!"

They made a production line out of it. Erika removed the watch glasses and handed them to Bjornstrom, who drilled the holes. Bolan doctored the watch hands. Then, while the two men wired up each watchcase in series with a battery and detonator, she "soldered" the free end of each circuit to a pin with superglue.

Bolan had made a list, allocating where each of the thirty-six sticks of C4 should be placed triple bundles for the elevator mechanism at the foot of the shaft and each of the three generators; doubles for the transformer and lock gates; and single sticks for the switchboard, the sluice controls and the most vulnerable installations operated from the control room.

Finally each charge was taped into a neat package with the watch on top ready for winding and setting.

The twelve packages were divided between the two neoprene sacks Bolan had salvaged from the kayak and an oiled silk pouch provided by Erika.

The Norwegian woman herself insisted that she accompany them into the secret base and help place the charges. At first Bolan objected but he was overruled by Bjornstrom.

"I shall give the orders relating to her," he said firmly. "We work. We are a team. She is trained in this kind of operation. Besides, it is safer and more efficient and it will cut the time we have to be inside the caves by thirty percent."

This Bolan could not deny. They agreed, then, that Erika, wearing her rubber dry-suit with the oiled silk pouch strapped to her waist, would swim in via the smallest of the caves and remain in the second chamber, from which she would attend to the three generator turbines and their supply pipes plus the transformer and switchboard, which she could approach from the rear.

Wet-suited and carrying one neoprene sack each, Bolan and the Icelander would handle the rest.

Bjornstrom, because he was familiar with the local rock formations, was to place the big charge destined to block the entrance and then run through the gallery to sabotage the mine shaft.

Bolan reserved for himself the operating gear and electronics in the control room. He was also to place the vital charge that would damage the lock gates and, if it was successful, let water into the dry-dock and flood the construction chamber.

"And the time lag?" Bjornstrom asked.

Bolan fingered his jaw. "We have to wind and set the watches before we leave," he said slowly. "Allow a half hour to swim as far as the caves and another to make it inside. Then we'll need to wait out at least three work stoppages before we get the stuff in place. They start the first shift at seven. Suppose they're ready to blow their first charge on the rock face around eight. Could be we won't all be clear of the place before eleven. I'd say four o'clock in the afternoon would be a good time to blow."

"Four, three, two, one, twelve, eleven..." Bjornstrom counted off the hours on his fingers. "So if we wrap up all the preparations and leave here for the caves at 6:00 A.M., we should allow a ten-hour countdown?"

Bolan nodded. "That should give us plenty of time a big enough margin to leave the whole area before anyone starts asking awkward questions about foreigners."

"The pins are inserted between eleven and twelve on the watch faces," Erika said. "So working backward from there we must set the hour hands between one and two o'clock when we wind them?"

"That's my girl!" Bolan said without thinking. And intercepted a look from Erika of such frank approval that he felt embarrassed. "Just a manner of speaking," he mumbled with a smile.

She gazed straight into his eyes. "It could be a manner of action," she said.

Bolan shifted uncomfortably and shot a sideways glance at Bjornstrom.

"Gunner and I are not lovers," Erika said. "He has a wife and child in Eskifjordur, on the east coast."

Bjornstrom nodded and grinned. "We are just good friends," he agreed. "We work together."

Slightly unnerved by this Nordic frankness, Bolan sought refuge in another cliche, a military one this time, just to play safe. "I think it's time we synchronized our watches," he said gruffly.

They made the caves without incident, and Erika dived beneath the surface to swim in via the smallest opening. It was a cold morning, with mist still blanketing the cliff tops, but a bright halo glaring through the dun overcast suggested that the sun might break through later.

Bolan and the Icelander were obliged to keep a very low profile approaching the main cavern, because there were now four hitmen posted on the spur, two of them continually scanning the openings and the cliff face above. Finally, taking advantage of the fact that the mist lay thickest on the surface of the fjord, they floated facedown and allowed themselves to be carried through by the incoming tide.

After that it was a matter of waiting, half submerged, under the arch until the first whistle blew.

Once the work force had disappeared, they hauled themselves up onto the dock and made for the spiral stairway that led to the gallery and control room.

From the top of the stairs, Bolan looked through to the smaller chamber and saw Erika, shining in her black frogman gear, emerge from the water by the rowboat and hurry up the slipway.

She turned, saw him and gave a quick thumbs-up before vanishing through the opening that gave onto the powerhouse cave and the generators.

Bolan and his companion checked out the routes they would have to take to their separate targets and then returned to the empty control room.

Soon after the workers returned to the chamber, whistles blew again in the cavern outside.

Hastily they shamed themselves out of sight beneath the UHF radio bench.

"Straight down to the end of the gallery and up onto your rock site once they make the shelter," Bolan whispered.

They heard voices and the clang of feet on the iron stairs. A silence.

Then, over the loudspeakers in Russian, came, "What the hell have you been doing? Hurry, you fool! No, it's too late to forget the shelter you'll have to take cover in the control room."

Bolan and Bjornstrom froze. They wouldn't be able to place any charges during this stoppage! Heavy footsteps thumped along the gallery. A man hurried into the control room, panting. It was the guard who had been on the far side of the cavern. His boots gleamed six inches from Bolan's head.

Two muffed explosions heavier than any they had heard before shook the floor and rocked the bench above them.

Somewhere above the transmitter chassis, glass chattered momentarily.

They held their breath. A third report, and then the whistles again.

A cigarette butt dropped to the floor beside the bench and a heel swiveled to grind it out. The acrid odor of cheap tobacco and wet ash blew in under the bench.

Bjornstrom sneezed.

There was a startled exclamation as the guard bent down. Gray eyes stared unbelievingly at the two saboteurs.

Hands scrabbled for the pistol grip of the Skorpion.

Bolan reached out and grabbed the guard's ears, savagely jerking the man's head forward. At the same time Bjornstrom rolled out from beneath the bench, seized the boots and swept the Russian's feet from under him. The guard crashed facedown to the floor.

The noise was lost in the sounds of workers returning to the work project.

Bolan and the Icelander were on top of the guy before he could even cry out.

Bjornstrom pulled off his helmet and jammed it back to front over the man's head, masking his face. At the same time Bolan's hand clamped over his mouth and jaw. Desperately trying to drag in air, the guard succeeded only in plastering the suffocating rubber device more firmly against his nostrils.

He was a strong man, threshing wildly from side to side on the concrete, but now Bjornstrom was kneeling on his biceps, pinning both arms, and the Executioner had thrown the whole weight of his body across the legs, heaving up and down as the knees jerked spasmodically.

Bjornstrom's hands went around the guard's throat and squeezed. The muffed cries behind the neoprene mask lapsed into a gurgle that rapidly diminished.

It took less than a minute for oxygen deprivation to sap the energy from the strangled man's fluttering muscles, another fifty-five seconds before the frantic thumping of the heart was stilled.

They rolled the body under the bench.

Bolan rubbed a forearm across his brow.

He was sweating. "I hated to do that," he whispered, "but sometimes there's no other way."

It was almost an hour before the whistles sounded again.

Bolan in the meantime had stripped jackboots, combat fatigues and miner's helmet from the dead man, and pulled them on over his wet suit. Fortunately the guard had been as tall as the Executioner and much wider.

For those fifty-plus dry-throated and agonizing minutes, Bolan patrolled the gallery. As much of the time as he believably could, he spent near the control room, out of sight of the two overseers in their steel-shuttered cubbyhole.

When he did circle over the lock gates and make the far side, he kept his head turned away and down as if he was paying particular attention to the quays below. But his hands were clammy around the butt and barrel of the Skorpion machine pistol, the hairs pricked on the nape of his neck each time he passed near the shutters, and it was with a vast sigh of relief that he finally heard the signal to take shelter.

Heading for the entrance before the others came up the stairway, he ducked behind the stack of oil drums at the last minute and allowed them all to pass.

As soon as the dock was deserted, Bjornstrom was out of the control room and speeding along the gallery. He had vaulted the rail and clambered up along the weathered outcrops that were tiered above the opening to the cave before the first detonation.

Bolan was back in the control room, taping primed sticks of plastic among the operating levers, beneath the bench, in back of the computer console.

Screwing an inspection cover back in place, he saw through a window that Bjornstrom was spread-eagled over a slab of granite immediately above the channel leading in from the fjord. It was late morning now, and the sun must have dissipated the mist, because there was a bright glare on the water that reflected chevrons and crescents of light across the vaulted roof of the cavern.

From where he was, Bolan was unable to see clearly just what the Icelander was doing. He could not distinguish the slab of granite that had jammed across a gap and prevented the cliff from tumbling into the fjord the quartzite, shining with damp and alive with reflections, looked as solid as any mountain he had seen. Perhaps the fractures were more easily identifiable from outside.

Cautiously he emerged from the control room now the final charge for the dock gates.

Blast assaulted his eardrums. A puff of warm air followed the explosion, the loudest yet, and a shower of rock fragments clattered among the ironwork of the scaffolding. Splashes pitted the surface of the water below.

Several jagged pieces of quartzite whistled past the Executioner like tilde shrapnel.

He dodged momentarily behind the oil drums.

Bjornstrom appeared to be hard at work still. His left arm vanished into a crevice.

There was another, small explosion... and, almost at once, the whistles blew.

Bolan swore beneath his breath. The all-clear had taken him completely by surprise there had been far less time lag than usual. His fellow saboteur was crucified on the rock face. He couldn't possibly climb down and make the shelter of the drums before the Russians emerged from their refuge; not could it be safe to retreat the way they had come in the first time there were guards on the spur, and in any case he would be spotted from inside before he could edge out of sight around the corner of the arch.

Desperately Bolan glanced over his shoulder. He heard the sound of footsteps and voices coming from outside the doorway leading to the shelter. In a moment the workers would be flooding out and onto the stairway.

In the few seconds that remained there was only one thing for the Icelander to do and Bolan dared not raise his voice to suggest it.

But Bjornstrom realized the plight he was in. With a quick turn of the head to check that Bolan was still watching, he raised a hand in salute, let go his hold on the rock and dropped twenty feet into the water.

There was enough height to allow him to jackknife before he went in. His outstretched fingertips arrowed through the surface, and he disappeared with scarcely a splash to mark his passage.

By the time the Russians reached the gallery, his dark shape was lost among fronds of seaweed in the shadowy depths of the entrance, and the few ripples he had made on his way out were swallowed up in the interplay of light below the arch as the tide sucked and lapped its way into the basin.

For the second time Bolan sighed with relief. He lowered his head and shoulders behind the drums, waiting for work to resume before he continued his perilous impersonation.

Had Bjornstrom succeeded in placing his charge? Was the plastic in the best position for toppling the granite? There was no way he could tell. Bjornstrom would either have to swim back to the rocks where the raft was hidden or attempt to join Erika in the smaller cavern.

One thing was certain — the man who worked for the Norwegian secret service would not be able to sabotage the mine shaft and the elevator now.