The 9 mm death bringers found their mark. Bolan heard a strangled cry followed by a loud splash. A moment later the stream swept something heavy and inert against his legs and then carried it away.
He moved cautiously to the far bank.
The killer might not have been alone.
He wasn't.
Bolan heard a voice raised in query.
He could even distinguish a slither of feet over the sounds of the river. A faint glimmer of a flashlight, a hand-held model, far less powerful than the one Bolan had destroyed, wavered someplace above the rock shelf, where the marksman had been located. The question was repeated.
Either the backup man must have been deafened by the sounds of the river, or he hadn't realized how far the engagement had gone. There were four rounds left in the Beretta's magazine.
Bolan set two of them free.
The 93-R bucked in his hand, choking out its lethal message. The walls of the cavern repeated it. The torchlight beam described an arc over the edge of the shelf and plummeted down toward the water, carrying its owner with it.
For an instant the illumination reappeared beneath the hurrying flow.
Then, lit from beneath, the surface froth turned pink, darkened to scarlet, clouded over and finally raced away into the blackness.
There was no more movement from the ledge above the water.
Bolan pulled himself out from the river, retrieved his own heavy flashlight and climbed to the ledge.
Empty cans of Icelandic beer, cigarette butts and husks of cheese, bread and fruit showed that the would-be murderers had been there some time. But the eye-opener for the Executioner was the surface of the shelf itself.
The spent shells glistening in the beam of his flashlight lay scattered on a level concrete platform that led back to an alcove hollowed from the cavern wall in which were stowed cartons of food and drink, an inflatable rubber raft and a sophisticated radio transceiver that sat on a wooden bench.
The killers had been lying in wait for him all right. But this was no hasty ambush set up following a report from the airplane that had overflown the ULM while Bolan was preparing his descent into the sinkhole.
What he was looking at was a lookout post that had clearly been in existence for some time.
Bolan switched off the light and sat down in the dark. The questions clamoring for an answer could be put off no longer.
Were these cavern killers, the guys piloting the unidentified airplane and the hardmen making the four previous attempts on his life part of the same team, working out of the same base?
It would be crazy to think otherwise.
Was there something, anything at all that he had noticed that could be a clue to their identity?
Negative.
Clearly, knowing Bolan's reputation and seeing him arrive in Iceland, they had mistakenly assumed he was on the track of some evil project that they were planning. Was there any indication what this could be?
Uh-uh.
Were the lethal methods of "dissuasion" they practiced angled specifically at Mack Bolan, or would they be contingency plans designed to stop anyone wising themselves up on the project?
Until now Bolan had assumed they were specific, but the ambush proved otherwise.
He was sitting in what was obviously a permanent lookout post; materials to fashion a concrete platform and install a two-way radio could hardly have been conveyed to a location deep inside the biggest glacier in Europe in a matter of hours or even days. The place had to have been in existence before he even knew himself that he would be boating past it.
The gunmen had been stationed there to block any caver or canoeist who figured he might like to make it along the underground headwaters of the Jokulsa a Fjollum.
Another thought occurred to Bolan the river must somehow during its course hold the secret these guys were so anxious to keep under wraps.
So what the hell could be so special about a river that rose in an inaccessible subterranean cave and then ran more than one hundred miles through some of the world's coldest, bleakest country?
He had to find out. Because one thing was now crystal clear.
Whatever he may have thought after the earlier attacks, the Executioner's own standpoint was now radically changed.
He decided to carry on with his planned itinerary; there was nothing else he could do. But the aim of the operation would be different. As of now.
To hell with the R and R. This was no longer a vacation trip. No way. The kayak voyage was now a fact-finding mission. Yeah, the unknowns had tried Mack Bolan's patience too far.
He would find out what was brewing along the course of the damned river and put a stop to it.
Or die in the attempt.
Bolan smiled grimly. It seemed he was back on a search-and-destroy kick after all. Despite all those innocent holiday plans. Just the way his unknown enemies had figured he was since the takeoff. They had talked him into it!
He rose and stretched. Suddenly aware that blood still dripped from his ear, he realized that he had completely forgotten that first shot, the very near-miss that had almost ended the Bolan legend.
Adrenaline was the answer. The stuff had been raging through his veins faster than the river ran, fast enough to momentarily make him forget that murderous initial attack until the threat had been mastered by the violence it unleashed.
Yet it was no more than an abrupt swirl in the stream, or maybe an unexpected roll of the kayak's hull, that had saved the warrior's life a deflection of one single inch in the wrong direction and the killer slug would have severed the carotid artery, wasting his lifeblood in less than two minutes. It would have been Bolan's body then that was washed anonymously away to rot in some backwash creek below the ice-cap mountain. A chilling thought.
He eased off the helmet with its dangling strap.
The wound was no more than a scratch, a raw furrow at the tip of the lobe.
He found a thin spray of icy water cascading from a cleft in the rock and bathed the wound alternately with this and the warm water from the river until the bleeding stopped.
Some you win... to Bolan said to himself. He smiled again. And froze.
Gutturally, from someplace behind, a deep voice had boomed in reply. And amid a stream of words incomprehensible among the hollow echoes of the cavern, he had caught the three syllables of his own name.
Mack Bolan.
It was a moment before he caught on; the voice came from the speaker of the radio stashed in the rock alcove.
Base called the lookouts to check whether or not the Executioner had showed. Not so strange.
What did jolt Bolan was the fact that the voice was speaking in Russian.
6
Bolan whistled softly. Pieces of the puzzle locked snugly into place. He remembered the Soviet factory ship at Akureyri, the seaman in the watch cap, snatches of conversation.
Stuff that bored him then had now, suddenly, become loaded with significance.
We buy our oil from the Soviets.
They got a right to put in here.
They started a mining concession.
The Russians are flying in heavy equipment through Husavik.
Right.
Husavik was not far from Jokulsa a Fjollum. From a bluff overlooking the river he was now navigating, Bolan had seen the mine workings during his drive from Akureyri to Egilsstadir.
It all fit. He figured the workings were no more than a cover for some illicit activity connected with the river. And the lookout post beneath the glacier maybe one of several along the river's course was just a fail-safe precaution to make sure nobody stumbled on the secret.
If that was so, it was no surprise the plotters had gotten nervous when the Executioner showed... and announced his intention to explore the Jokulsa a Fjollum!
And that would be reason enough for the chain of attempts by the death squads to write him off. Because they would have to get him out of the way, whether he was making the trip because he knew abo
ut the plot or just by coincidence.
And the hardmen he wasted could well have been Russians. Their MO, too especially the hypo-and-brandy ploy at the Reykjavik hotel was worthy of the KGB at that insidious organization's most devious.
But if a corner of the puzzle was now completed, the center remained blank.
Bolan knew who his enemies were and why they wanted him fixed. For good.
But he was no nearer uncovering the secret they were so anxious to protect.
What could the Russians be planning in Iceland? ICBM silos? Antimissile sites?
No way. With the ranges at their disposal firing from home, who needed Iceland?
Launching pads for cruise missiles or short-range nukes aimed, on the Cuban pattern, at NATO shipping or the more vulnerable countries belonging to the alliance?
Uh-uh. No mine workings could serve as a cover for that kind of stuff.
Practically every town in the country boasted an airstrip there would be far too many overflights by coast-guard choppers and private planes for surface projects of that nature to remain undetected. In any case the concession was officially leased; plant was being flown in openly; presumably the authorities enjoyed some kind of inspection facility.
It seemed obvious, too, that the whole deal was tied in with the river.
And the sailor in Akureyri had mentioned Red navy specialists.
Some kind of marine detection unit then? Some monitoring aid for those so-called factory ships in the North Atlantic? Something in any case that must, for Bolan's money, be located underground? Or underwater?
Whatever, he would find out the truth.
* * *
Bolan drank a can of beer, helped himself to some fruit that was left in the alcove and returned to the kayak.
The Russian voice on the radio was still querulously demanding news. Bolan switched on the light, pushed himself out into midstream and continued his journey.
The two snipers he had killed had used an inflatable raft to reach their lookout post. Even with rapids and an occasional waterfall, this had to mean that the river, from here on down to its exit from beneath the glacier, was largely navigable.
No class-six stretches of white water, no cascades dropping over unclimbable shelves, no tunnels with roofs too low to allow a canoeist to pass.
Bolan wondered if there would be other, more dangerous obstacles. A second lookout post, for instance, with more alert patrols?
He guessed not. There was no other entry to the subterranean watercourse; one post between the sinkhole and the exit would surely be enough.
That didn't rule out the possibility of an emplacement somewhere along the Vatnajokull's terminal moraine. That was where he would install a backup team himself, if he was determined to block all boating on the upper part of the river.
He guessed right on both counts.
But before he saw the sky again, there were natural hazards to overcome.
The river twisted through caverns no more than ten feet high, ran out across vast chambers whose roofs were lost in darkness far above the flashlight's range. At times it flowed fast and deep, then bubbled over rock steps, where there was scarcely enough draft to float the kayak.
Other times the waterway lost itself in underground lakes so wide it was hard to locate the main channel among the network of passages.
Bolan steered past chutes of freezing water, hot geysers that spewed mud through the surface of the stream, tributary falls that thundered in his ears and veiled the flashlight beam with mist.
He encountered only three major difficulties.
The first was a cataract where the river divided into tiny streams that ran for what seemed hundreds of yards over a slope of smooth pebbles and forced him to carry the kayak on his back while he maneuvered the light to show up treacherous bed beneath the shallow water.
The second could have buried him beneath the Vatnajokull for keeps.
He chose the wrong outlet on the far side of a deep, still lake and found himself being carried faster and faster by a strong current that flowed between narrowing walls and a roof so low that he could barely wield his paddle. Then, as he realized his mistake, the stream careered away at right angles and poured through an arch into a basin hollowed from the rock at a much lower level.
Desperately Bolan flexed his feet against the pegs, straining knees against the control bracings as he dug a blade hard in and leaned against the remorseless pull of the water to bring the kayak broadside onto the flow.
The vessel swung slowly, too slowly, around. The current jammed it fast across the opening. The fiberglass hull creaked as water roared past and down.
Bolan was thankful for the mishap.
The water was too deep to stand in; in any case the current would have swept him away through the narrow opening.
The pool into which it plunged was at least thirty feet below, judging by the sound of the fall. And even if he survived the drop, he could never get out alive.
Shakily he unfastened the spray skirt and half rose, reaching for the rock above the opening. He figured that if he was strong enough to maneuver the craft away from the arch and force it along the wall, against the current, until it was safe to swing around and use the paddle again, there was a risk the hull might be damaged against the abrasive basalt.
It was a risk he had to take.
Bolan was accustomed to them. And here he had no choice.
He was in good physical shape, but even with his immense strength and determination it was more than thirty minutes before he shoved the kayak out from the wall, grabbed the paddle in his raw, bleeding hands and used his remaining energy in a battle against the current.
The third difficulty was too damned close for comfort.
It happened as the river, wide now and flowing swiftly, rounded a sharp curve.
He was suddenly confronted by a single wave, four feet high and boiling above a rockfall, scouring a line of swirling suckholes from the riverbed beyond. And in the center of the flow, immediately ahead of the canoe, stood a jagged column that must have fallen from the roof too recently for water to have planed away the cruel edges.
If the kayak was dashed against that wicked rock, Bolan knew he could kiss the rest of the trip goodbye.
Maybe the rest of his life, too.
The maneuver was not all that difficult for an experienced canoeist.
It was the suddenness of the rock's appearance, whirling out of the dark only feet away from the flashlight, and the lightning speed with which he had to take evasive action that taxed Mack Bolan's honed reactions to their limits.
He plunged the paddle deep into the water, then shifted his weight and slalomed the kayak through 180 degrees to face upstream.
Then a single savage bite with the square-tipped blade thrust them aside into the primary channel.
After that there was no time for anything but prayer.
Sucked onward by the accelerating flood, the kayak surfed the wave stern first, barely missing the deadly rock.
The craft shuddered crazily, almost capsized in the wild water... and at last floated out into the center of a placid pool three hundred feet wide.
Bolan grasped the paddle and propelled the kayak toward the far side of the pool with swift, sure strokes.
Ten minutes later, the darkness thinned, dissolved, and the lightweight craft glided out between dirty gray ice crags into the open air.
* * *
The snipers were posted behind a group of boulders a mile downstream from where the river emerged.
There were, in fact, Bolan discovered, several streams flowing out from beneath the glacier. Some meandered through the conglomerate calf rocks, stones, mud and sand scoured from the earth's surface by the glacier and deposited around its outer fringe.
Some formed pools in which ice masses, broken off from the main flow, floated like miniature bergs. Some channeled straight through the moraine to join the main stream.
A dozen hit teams would have been nee
ded to cover all these exits. It was logical therefore, the Executioner reasoned, that the Russians would wait until all these watercourses joined to form one waterway and place a single patrol there.
But the theory had to be checked. He beached the kayak on a gravel spit where the last tributary flowed in and climbed a fifteen-foot bank of shale to make his initial recon.
It was late afternoon. Low cloud cover transformed the sky into a uniform gray. A chill wind blew over a bare rock plateau that stretched as far as he could see in every direction.
Crouched low so that he would not be silhouetted against the skyline, Bolan scanned the bleak terrain. The dun-colored plateau eroded remains of an age-old lava flow was marked with a darker, winding trail that charted the course of the river.
A quarter mile away, the channel gouged from the basalt looped into a wide oxbow. It was on the outside of this curve, Bolan guessed, that a backup team would most likely be posted.
He was right.
It was hard to see at first, because a camouflage tarp had been rigged above the emplacement to minimize detection from the air. But there was movement above a rockfall rampart, a dull glint of metal, maybe a reflection from a pair of binoculars, that attracted Bolan's attention.
He guessed there were two gunners beneath the tarp. Perhaps three. And he had to take them out before continuing his voyage, although, with every voice that failed to respond to radio queries from base, the vigilance of the Soviet HQ personnel would be sharpened and increased.
The snipers were alert, too.
Discreet as Bolan's movements had been, they were spotted by the lookouts. He saw rock chips fly and heard the screech of a ricochet before the crisp, sharp explosion of the rifle shot reached him.
The marksman fired twice more before Bolan dropped from sight, momentarily shaken. The gunner was a fair shot, considering the distance.
Bolan felt the hot wind of one slug above his hair; the other sliced a fragment of rock away moments before he was to grab it as a handhold. The soldier decided it was healthier down by the riverside!
Reinstalled in the kayak, the warrior allowed himself to drift downstream between the rocky banks, using the paddle only if the craft threatened to backtrack into an eddy or snag on an obstruction. He left the spray skirt stowed in the bow compartment the river ran smooth and fairly deep here, and he might have to spring out in a hurry.
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