Blood Heat Zero (8 page)

His name was Gunnar Bjornstrom. He was an Icelandic citizen, Bolan learned, but his family came from Norway.

Before that, there was a brief interrogation.

"You are Mack Bolan, the man known as the Executioner?"

Bolan did not deny it.

"More recently known as Colonel John Phoenix, of Stony Man Farm, in Virginia?"

"Recently? It seems a long time ago," Bolan said.

"You have waged what they call a one-man war against, first, the Mafia, and then terrorists all over the world?"

"What of it?"

"And lately it is against the KGB especially that you have been fighting?"

"You are well informed."

"It is important that I know who you are," the Icelander said.

"Look, you've got the drop on me with that;" the soldier nodded toward the SMG. "So what do you intend to do?" Even as he spoke the warrior sensed that this man was not the enemy.

"So what do you do in Iceland, Mr. Bolan?" Bjornstrom asked in turn, ignoring Bolan's question.

"I'm on vacation," Bolan said.

"A vacation? And you shoot always on vacation some Russians maybe? In caverns and along the river at night? You are on a hunting trip perhaps hunting for men?"

"I planned to make a source-to-mouth trip along this river. Some guys tried to kill me for no apparent reason. So I killed them."

Bjornstrom smiled. Strong teeth flashed white against the tan of his face. "I am coming upriver myself when you fight. So I halt myself to see what happen."

"Thanks for your help!" Bolan said dryly.

"You do not understand. First, I have to know where you fight. I mean on which side."

"So it is a fight, is it?"

Bjornstrom shrugged. "A fight. An investigation. A curiosity to satisfy. Call it what you want."

"Okay, so who are you working for?"

"I am very inquisitive man," Bjornstrom said evasively. "When I see strangers making much secret work in my country strangers who pretend they operate only a mining concession I ask myself why. I ask myself why they wish nobody along the river, why they have gunmen beneath Vatnajokull when the concession is more than one hundred miles away. I ask myself but there is no answer. So I try to find out myself."

"You won't believe this, but I am asking myself exactly the same questions," Bolan said.

"But you, too, no answers?"

"Not yet, my friend. But I will get answers."

Bjornstrom lowered the Ingram and held out his hand. "Is good. Is very good. Maybe we better can work together then?"

"Suits me," Bolan said, taking the man's powerful grasp. The soldier remained skeptical about the story of a private citizen's fact-finding crusade. But the truth could wait, instinctively he trusted this big man, and the Executioner always backed his own hunches. "But I have to tell you," he added, "I found out nothing so far. You do any better, working upstream?"

"A little." Bjornstrom shrugged again. "They are using the hot water from beneath the ice; they tap the supply in their own pipes and again from the installation here."

"Here?" Bolan stared at the pump house. It was about twice the size of a beach cabin, a flat-roofed, windowless rectangle with a louvered metal door secured by a padlock and chain. From inside, he could hear a mechanical whine over the roar of tumbling water. "How come?" he asked.

"I show you." Bjornstrom led the way around the catwalk to the rear of the building. Three pipes emerged from a rocky bank to pierce the wall below the catwalk. Two of them were large-bore aluminum-based tubes eighteen inches in diameter; the third, half hidden beneath them, was much smaller. "That one, the plastic, the Russians have placed." Bjornstrom indicated the smaller pipe. "She stays with the others all the way to the booster station at Grimsstadir. Then they take her in a different direction, toward the estuary."

"You're saying they secretly laid down?.." Bolan shook his head. "I don't get it. Surely this installation is government property."

Bjornstrom nodded.

"Well, don't they check it out? Don't they make inspections from time to time? I mean won't someone get wise to that third pipe?"

"There is nothing to check," the Icelander said. "The turbines are water driven. The pipe does not show from the air. Maybe once in two years someone comes past; but maybe that man is paid by the Russians not to see that third pipe. Unless a fault operates some warning light at the center there is no reason for an inspection."

Bolan looked dubious. "You mean they pipe hot water all that way? Over one hundred miles? That's crazy. I mean the heat loss..." He shook his head again.

"The Icelanders are ingenious," Bjornstrom said, smiling. "There are many volcanoes beneath the ground, not just at Vatnajokull; many geysers, many hot springs. All the time they are adding more. To keep up the temperature, for the towns and villages. You know?"

"Why would the Russians need it?"

"Like us, to keep warm maybe. To save putting in expensive plant, to save oil. We are almost at Arctic Circle. It is very cold where they work below sea."

"Below sea?"

"But yes. Well, below the water in the fjord anyway."

"They have underwater workings on that mining concession?"

"Yes. But I do not think it is just for mining."

"Right," Bolan said. "I figure the mining routine strictly for a front. But a front for what?"

"This is what I wish to find out."

"You got any ideas?"

"Not so far. From the water there is only cliffs to see, and it is not possible to get inside the concession. They have guards and a wire fence. Also only Russians work there; there are no local laborers employed. In any case, I think the real work will not be showing above ground."

"I guess not. Everything on this deal centers around water the glacier, the river, this goddamn pipe. And now you say the workings are below sea level, too. What the hell can they be doing?"

Bjornstrom was about to reply when suddenly he held up a hand in warning.

In the distance, over the roar of water they could hear the rotor whine of a jet helicopter. "I think maybe it would be good if we are hiding just now," he said.

Bolan was moving before Bjornstrom finished speaking.

They vaulted the rail and flattened themselves against the wall beneath the catwalk.

The chopper was flying very low. It was a WSK Swidnik recon helicopter. The sliding panel on the port side of the Plexiglas bubble was locked back. A gunner cradling a SMG stood braced in the opening, scanning the terrain below.

Beyond him, they could see the pilot hunched over his controls. Both wore anonymous gray combat fatigues, like the hardcases who had previously tried to eliminate the Executioner.

The engine roar crescendoed and then began to fade as the Swidnik passed overhead, following the course of the river.

"I guess they will fly as far as the outpost you smashed," Bjornstrom said, "and then return, trying to locate the man who did that."

"Could be." Bolan nodded. "They'll certainly be wise to the fact it's a no-go situation up there. The radio's dead. But, like you say, they'll probably check there first."

They were both wrong.

Beneath the catwalk they were hidden from a plane approaching from the north, and invisible when it was overhead. But the platform was not wide enough to hide them from a southern approach or from anyone heading south who looked back over his shoulder.

The Russian with the subgun looked over his shoulder.

His head ducked back inside the Plexiglas blister. The chopper hung on its blades in a tight U-turn and flew back downstream.

Bolan was already waist deep in water beneath the ledge, groping inside the kayak for his weapons.

Bjornstrom dodged around the corner of the pump house. The helicopter sideslipped to keep him in view, lost height, then hovered to allow the guy with the SMG to line up on the Icelander below.

That was the pilot's mistake.

The gunner sprayed hot lead. Chips of concrete flew from the pump-house wall. The slugs gouged long splinters of wood from the planking above Bjornstrom's head. White water jetted high into the air as one of the pipes was drilled. But Bjornstrom, standing unafraid among the death hail, had already raised the muzzle of his Ingram.

Gritting his teeth, he held the jackhammering machine pistol on full-auto until the 30-round magazine emptied itself.

He did not aim at the Russian, but at the rotors above him, allowing the natural muzzle climb of the gun's incredible 1200 rpm firing rate to rake the entire diameter of the whirling arc.

Encountering a relentless stream of 9 mm parabellums, the effect was as if the rotors had slammed into a solid iron bar. The blades sheared, sending fragments spinning all over the sky.

The drive shaft, freed of load, screamed up the scale. The helicopter lurched onto its side and fell.

Spilled from the open-cabin, the guy with the gun hurtled out of the aircraft. He landed on a rock in the middle of the rapid, his body split open like a slaughtered animal.

White water whisked his gun away.

On the far bank, the Swidnik hit the ground with a shattering crash, bursting instantly into a blazing fireball as fuel spilled over the hot jet engine.

From the flame-tinged smoke that billowed upward, astonishingly, the figure of the pilot emerged. He was staggering. Blood streamed from a cut above his eye. But the eye itself malevolently glaring was fixed steadily on the pump house across the river. And the Tokarev pistol in his hand was aimed directly at Bjornstrom.

With an empty magazine and no refill, the Icelander was helpless, a perfect target against the white wall below the catwalk.

"Dive!" Bolan yelled, thrusting his way through the water, speeding toward the center of the stream.

Bjornstrom flattened himself below the railing as the pilot fired.

Coppergacketed scorchers screamed across the rapid and ricocheted off the platform. In the same movement the Russian swung the Tokarev toward Bolan.

But Big Thunder was already spitting flame. Braced against the stream in a crouched professional stance, the huge cannon bucking in his two-handed grasp, Bolan triggered a series of Magnum exit passes the pilot's way.

The roar of the shots echoed thunderously off the rocky banks. The first of the punishing 240-grain boattails smashed the pistol from the Russian's grip and cored his wrist like a red-hot wire. The second, third and fourth lashed across his chest steel whips reducing liver, lungs and heart to a bloody pulp in less than a second.

The guy was dead before his gun hit the water. The body, flung backward by the colossal impact of the .44's slugs, punched out at 1640 feet per second, slammed against a granite slope on the riverbank, then slid into the foaming water. It vanished into a suckhole on the far wide of the waves, reappeared bobbing on the surface fifty yards downstream and was then swept away.

The wreck of the chopper was still blazing fiercely.

Bolan waded out of the water and rejoined Bjornstrom below the catwalk.

"Daylight or no daylight," he said soberly, "we have to get out of here fast." He nodded toward the roiling black column leaning away from the wind above the wreck. "Those guys will have friends... and it won't take an Indian brave to read that smoke signal."

The Icelander nodded in turn. He made no mention of the death they had so narrowly avoided. A strong man, Bolan noted, and one to be relied on in a tight spot.

Still, there were many questions left unanswered. A regular Icelandic civilian who just happened to be satisfying his curiosity? Who happened to own an Ingram? And who happened to be courageous enough to stand up and use it under fire?

But the mystery of Bjornstrom's real identity was a problem that could wait. It was enough for now that he was a friend. A friend in need, at that, Bolan reflected.

"From here," Bjornstrom told him, "we can safely continue even in daylight for maybe twenty miles. After the next bend there is a cascade, and then from high ground to the west a country road overlooks the river. Also there is an airstrip by Herdubreid."

"Say again?"

"The crater of an old volcano. It is at 5500 feet. There may be tourists at this time of year. They could overlook, too. The Russians will not dare attack on that section."

"Uh-huh. The only thing is..." Bolan paused. "Well, the kayak is strictly one-man transport. Especially in this kind of water."

"That is not a problem. I have my own boat."

"That's great. But where?"

"Below the waterfall. Maybe two hundred yards. It is in a cave, quite hidden."

"You're suggesting we continue in convoy?"

"Yes, if you wish it. I know the river well from a long time. With me you can make it more quickly. When it becomes dangerous again we shall hide and continue by night."

"Sure. That was my plan anyway."

"Then, after Grimsstadir and the lake... we make our own secrets, okay? We disappear until we can make the fjord and discover theirs!"

Bolan punched the Icelander lightly on the shoulder. "We're on our way...."

The boat was a powered rubber raft with a 25 hp Excelsior outboard tilted up over the stern. There was more than enough room for two, even with Bolan's supplies and the spare fuel jerricans.

But the Executioner preferred to stick with the patched-up kayak partly because he had no wish to be dependent on Bjornstrom, although the enigmatic Icelander had so far proved a reliable ally, but mainly because he was determined as long as possible to keep up the fiction of his self-imposed vacation task Bolan's priority was still to learn the identity of the guys who had decided to eliminate him. But to keep faith with himself was damned near as important. Mack Bolan was not the kind of man who would be content to leave a job unfinished.

There was, too, the matter of logistics. Two crafts would be more difficult for their enemies to destroy than one. Twice as difficult in fact.

With two they would have more freedom of movement, and that extra mobility could mean the difference between life and death.

Again, if one was destroyed and the supplies had been equally divided between them, they would not be left with nothing.

It did not even occur to Bolan that both might be destroyed.

As Bjornstrom had said, the twenty miles passed without incident. The river wound its way through narrow defiles, between high banks of volcanic shingle, at the foot of gorges channeled from the rock. They passed black sandbanks, mudflats bubbling with miniature geysers and tributaries of hot water, where the steam blew from the surface like spray on a stormy day.

Herds of wild ponies and an occasional pair of giant crows, riding the wind above the desolate landscape, were the only forms of life they saw until late in the afternoon. Then, far away on a track that climbed a huge mountain slope, they saw the antlike form of some vehicle laboring toward the crest.

Later, hang gliders, a trio of light aircraft and even a solitary ULM passed overhead, all of them presumably from the strip at the foot of the volcanic crater.

Before their ghostly journey through the gloom of the sub-Arctic night they were twice halted by what the tourist guides called "major waterfalls." Bjornstrom proved his worth once more on the first of these, where the widening river slid over a rock shelf to plunge forty feet or more into a foaming pool.

For two miles before the fall, the current flowed smoothly between vertical cliffs of crumbling basalt that towered higher every hundred yards. If the Icelander had not known intimately that reach of the Jokulsa a Fjollum and urged Bolan to disembark the moment the rocky banks closed in, the Executioner would have had to waste precious time backing up, because the eroded lava faces were completely unclimbable.

The second cataract was really a long and furious rapid class six; impossible.

In each case a portage was unavoidable, Bolan carrying his kayak and Bjornstrom humping the deflated Hypalon raft, with both men returning each time to fetch the outboard engine, which they maneuvered over the fissured rock between them.

Afloat again, and making good time toward Grimsstadir, they saw the same monoplane Bolan had twice before recognized, low beyond a bluff overlooking the river. But this ship came out of the thickening dusk in the north, not from the hilly ramparts buttressing the ancient crater.

"Keeping tabs," Bolan called to the Icelander. "My guess, once they've located us again, is some kind of surface attack at dawn, just before we pack it in for the day." Whatever else could be said about the killers, it had to be admitted they were punctual.

Their own rubber raft, Bolan guessed, must have been off-loaded upriver from a truck. It was a quieter, cleaner and closer method than another helicopter assault. Probably more efficient, too, in the long run.

It wouldn't have been too difficult for them, either, deciding where to make their launch. Between the reach where the spotter plane had last seen them and the Dettifoss Iceland's largest waterfall, a few miles downstream there was only one sector where two men and two boats could remain unseen during the daylight hours a long winding canyon where the river twisted through an extrusion of igneous rock that pierced the lava plateau.

Here frost and biting winds had hollowed huge caves from the cliffs, the rush of icy water below had sculpted granite and other rock that Bolan couldn't recognize into great curving overhangs that resembled petrified waves breaking.

Bolan and his companion were starting to stow their gear and settle down on the shingle beach at the far end of a lofty cavern when they heard the stutter of the Russians outboard.

There were five men aboard. Two of them carried Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols, another couple were armed with the latest model Uzi submachine guns. The helmsman, minding the engine, wore a webbing harness that supported a row of grenades and a holstered Stetchkin automatic.

Bolan saw them in the distance, veering from side to side of the canyon, checking out each hollow among the tumbled rocks with their weapons at the ready.

"Damn!" Bolan said. "We're finished if we stay here. We'll have to run for it now!"

Bjornstrom carried two spare clips for the Ingram's 3 round magazine. He slammed one in and pushed the inflatable raft back into the water. Bolan's two guns were already loaded. He eased himself into the kayak's cockpit and fastened the spray skirt.

"You want me to tow?" the Icelander asked. "While the river is smooth here I can maybe go faster."

Bolan shook his head. "If there are two of us and they go for both, it cuts their effective firepower by half; if they fix on one, the other will be free to the covering fire and enfilade them."

The Russians were between three and four hundred yards upstream.

Bjornstrom jerked the cord, and the Excelsior roared to life while the enemy craft was beached and a pair of hardmen were exploring a long, narrow cave between two slabs of lava that had broken away from the cliff and fallen into the river.

Bolan nosed the kayak into the stream and started paddling furiously; the Icelander also shoved out his raft and scrambled over the inflated side.

He lowered the outboard into the water and sat with the tiller in one hand.

The Ingram lay ready on the thwart beside him.

There was a shout from the Russians.

Bolan glanced over his shoulder and saw the two recon scouts running back to their craft. He paddled as fast as he could, his arms flailing the paddle in and out of the swirling water.

Bjornstrom chugged past, furrowing the surface with white. "There is fast water after the next bend," he shouted. "But I think we make it more quickly than them."

Bolan nodded. No point wasting energy with words.

The fast water was in fact a boiling rapid, where the river hurled itself down a slope interspersed with ragged tips of rock that threatened every second to slit the gray Hypalon of the raft and rip open the kayak's hull.

Bjornstrom cut the engine and tipped fuel tank, shaft and screw out of the racing water as he allowed himself to be carried on by the stream, parrying left and right with forceful strokes of a single concave paddle.

Bolan was wielding his two-blade like a crazy man, bracing every few yards with feet and knees straining against the supports, wrists aching from the leverage necessary to thrust the kayak against the force of the current.

Raft and kayak were more often than not three-quarters submerged among the whitecaps of the wild water as the two men gave everything they had to keep their craft away from the perilous crags.

In the last few yards before the Russians' raft was swept into the rapid, they opened fire.

But small craft half swamped in foam and bobbing like corks made tough targets at two hundred feet. At three hundred yards it was just a waste of ammunition. The rasp of the Uzis was lost in the river's roar; wherever the slugs went, it was nowhere near Bolan or the Icelander.

Beyond the rapid the river widened again and the canyon's rocky walls fell away to reveal a barren moonscape of black gravel and volcanic shale studded with vast blocks of primeval stone. And it was here, where the river ran wide and fairly shallow, that the death squad began gaining on the Executioner and his friend.

Spent slugs splashed just astern of the kayak. Bolan plowed grimly on, sweat streaking his face as he urged the lightweight canoe ever faster ahead of the streaming current. There was no point attempting to return the fire if the Uzis were out of range it would be senseless to lose ground while he wasted ammunition from his two shorter-range handguns.

Bjornstrom was using the outboard again. The rubber raft, stern squatting in the water, was forging ahead. Twin waves curled outward from the prop to wash up the banks of dark shingle on either side of the river.

Twice the Icelander turned around to loose off a short burst from the Ingram neither caused any damage to the pursuing raft or its occupants but most of his effort was concentrated on an island of rumbled stones surrounding a basalt outlier that divided the river into two sections a quarter of a mile ahead.

If he could beach his own boat and get among those rocks while the Russians were still afloat... if he could start shooting in earnest from the cover of those boulders while they were still vulnerable on their raft... if he could make the goddamn island before the bastards were near enough to get Bolan in their sights.

But the Executioner was tiring. He had been using every ounce of his formidable strength for more than two miles, and even he could not keep that up indefinitely.

The hunters were seventy yards away.

The stabbing roar of the Uzis and the harsher rasp of Skorpion machine pistols were audible over the sounds of the river. But from the moment their firepower was directed at Bjornstrom.

His raft was fifty yards short of the island... forty... thirty.

And then suddenly the engine sputtered and died. The craft listed heavily to starboard as the rubber gunwale on that side began to deflate.

The assassins' bullets, aimed first at the boat rather than the man, had struck home.

The raft spun slowly, deep in the water, moving sluggishly toward the channel, racing past the western side of the island.

Bolan's kayak, losing ground rapidly to the Russians, was on the far side of the river.

The killer craft was less than fifty yards away.

Bjornstrom leaped into the water.

Waist deep, he forced his way to shore and flung himself down behind the first group of boulders.

From between two humps of granite he triggered a long burst from the MAC-11, the shots cracking out so fast one after the other that they resembled a continuous deadly drumroll.

One of the Russians dropped his Uzi into the river and folded forward over the inflated gunwale with a flood of crimson spurting from his savaged chest. Blood oozed out between his clenched fingers. But the other SMG was still shooting at the island.

Bjornstrom was forced to duck to avoid a hail of lead splatting off the rocks on either side.

The men with the Skorpions were both firing at Bolan now. A squad of steel jacketed skull busters struck one of the paddle blades and sheared it off as easily as a wire passing through cheese; a second group drilled through the kayak's hull on the waterline.

Bolan felt one slice off the heel of his boot as water jetted into the cockpit.

But now suddenly, entering a narrowing channel on the east side of the island, where the current was far stronger, the kayak was seized by the speeding river and whirled away, faster than Bolan could have paddled, toward another wide bend in the river.

In the grip of the same accelerating flow, the pursuers' craft began to spin. The wounded helmsman was unable to hold it straight with his undamaged hand. Following the kayak, it was whisked past the island.

Bjornstrom stood up, scrambled to the top of the central rock pile and discharged the Ingram's magazine. He crouched there, a powerful figure amidst a thin blue haze of gun smoke and the glint of ejected brass shell cases, coolly aiming at the receding Russians.

Bolan was also firing now. Allowing the kayak to chart its own course, he slipped one hand beneath the spray skirt and came up with the Beretta.

One after the other, he mailed a succession of triple death wishes the enemy's way, special delivery.

There was confusion on the Russian raft. The remaining Uzi was shooting rearward at Bjornstrom. One of the Skorpions was attempting to change places with the injured helmsman; the other, spraying death Bolan's way, looked over his shoulder and started to shout, pointing now frenziedly downstream. The raft rocked dangerously.

Swinging around the bend in the river, Bolan looked up from the Beretta... and saw why the guy was frantic, why the current was speeding up so much. They were fast approaching the Dettifoss.

Centered on a vast plain of naked lava, the waterfall was shaped like a miniature Niagara.

The wide river slid smoothly ova a U-shaped shelf in a roaring curtain of white to plummet into a boiling caldron of foam from which the spray rose above the cascade in a misty cloud that veiled the sky.

No man, with or without life jacket or flotation vest, could survive in that hellhole of stormy water, even if by some miracle he survived the dizzying drop.

Bolan dug the half paddle that remained to him feverishly into the current, striving to turn the kayak and face back upstream. But the little craft was becoming waterlogged. Low in the water, it was difficult to maneuver.

And now that the Russians had outdistanced Bjornstrom, all their firepower was concentrated on the canoe.

The chatter of the outboard rose to a crescendo as the new helmsman pulled out maximum power to combat the manic force of the river sucking him toward the murderous cataract. The most he could do was steady the raft while the two gunners, one Uzi and one Skorpion, spat hate in Bolan's direction. Even so, slowly but relentlessly, they were being drawn back toward the fall.

Bjornstrom's swamped and half-deflated raft swept past and disappeared over the edge of the cataract.

Bolan was in the worst position. With half a paddle, he was no match for the mighty force of the rushing water.