Blood Heat Zero (5 page)

Unpacking a powerful flashlight, he flicked it on, then swung right and left to examine the base from which his perilous journey would start.

The cavern was huge. The beam was not strong enough to illuminate its inner recesses. Channeled between smooth islands of rock, the underground river ran fast and deep toward the mouth of a tunnel. At the far end it would, Bolan knew, burst through the Vatnajokull's terminal moraine and emerge into the open air.

He intended to be with it.

Playing the beam from water to rock to ice, he marveled at the paradox of nature that permitted this age-old frozen massif to remain unmelted above active subterranean volcanoes spewing out molten lava and creating enough hot springs to provide half the country with domestic warmth.

Too bad the humans up top whose convictions ran to equally opposite extremes had not yet learned to compromise in the same way and exist together in peace.

Yeah, there was a lesson to be learned here if only animal man would check his downward rush long enough to pause and think.

Mack Bolan laid out the ground pad and sleeping bag on the driest part of the shelf he could find, ate a portion of his iron rations and turned in for the night. The pale disk of sky overhead had already darkened to what passed for night in this sub-Arctic summer, and he had to rely on an early start if he was to cross the underground section of his route and make good time through the headwaters of the Jokulsa a Fjollum tomorrow.

Four hours later he was lowering the kayak into the stream. Settled in the cockpit, he adjusted the black neoprene spray skirt around his waist and tightened the elastic draw-cord that fixed it in a watertight seal around the cockpit coaming.

The light filtering down from the sinkhole that was now his sole link with the outside world had already brightened. Bolan clipped the flashlight into its special harness, switched on, fisted his two-blade laminated hardwood paddle and headed with swift, precise strokes for the tunnel mouth.

The first ten minutes of the journey, before he had become accustomed to the speed of the river and the darkness outside of the flashlight beam, were hair-raising.

At first the channel remained smooth and deep, the water speeding almost soundlessly, the boater required only to dip an occasional blade in a brace that would push the kayak away from either of the rock walls rushing past.

Then the stream divided around a massive rock, divided again, and there was white water on every side.

The flashlight beam careened wildly out of line as the lightweight craft scythed through tows of two-foot high waves. Water washed over the deck and pummeled the spray skirt. Black fingers of rock reached threateningly through the foaming tide.

Bolan leaned expertly into the swirls of current, his paddle flashing left and right, forcing the kayak into the main channel that had been gouged by the racing river.

Beyond the rapid, the stream was wider and shallower. And now the spray-loaded darkness was loud once more with the sound of rushing water.

The vessel swept around a wide curve in the subterranean torrent, and Bolan was drenched in an icy cascade when the kayak shot through a shaft of freezing water thundering down from an opening in the glacier overhead.

Here near the river's source, the boiling flow from geothermal springs mixed with such icy spills to produce an average temperature of ninety-five degrees a little below blood heat. The layer of moisture inside Bolan's wet suit, acting as an insulator against eventual cold, had been raised the few degrees necessary to make up the difference. But the unexpected freezing spray penetrating the neoprene seals of the suit made the warrior temporarily catch his breath.

It was the subsequent warm flow of blood on supercooled skin plus a stinging sensation in the lobe of his left ear and the realization that the chin strap of his helmet had snapped that alerted him to the danger even before the sound of the shot echoed thunderously around the ice cavern.

Bolan's reactions were precise and immediate. He killed the light and stowed the paddle. Then he leaned inward, letting the kayak drift with the swift current, coaxing it toward a rock overhang bordering the outer margin of the river bend.

He felt the lightweight hull nudge the rock. The stern swung around, leaving the bow facing upstream in the dark.

Bolan reached above his head, feeling for a projection that might break the smooth curve of rock. The kayak's gunwale was scraping the water-sculptured rock surface. It could be heard over the ripple and bubble of the stream.

His fingers lodged in a crevice, held on, steadying the craft against the pull of the current.

There had been no second shot. No muzzle-flash had showed against the myriad reflections glinting from wet rock and water and the ice roofing the cavern. But Bolan figured the sniper must be on the far side of the bend in the river since that position would give a marksman the best view and the longest time to take aim at a target being swept downstream. Now he would be holding his fire, awaiting some give-away move on the part of the target.

In total darkness the Executioner held his breath, straining every sense to locate the invisible killer's fire point. With his free hand, Bolan released one side of the spray skirt from the coaming and groped stealthily inside for the waterproof satchel holding his two guns.

Right now the number-one priority was survival.

The AutoMag possessed greater stopping power, but in these conditions, with distances and deflections as yet unknown, the Beretta's longer range and marginally greater accuracy outweighed Big Thunder's skull-busting impact.

Thumbing open the clasps of the satchel, Bolan withdrew the Italian death bringer and eased off the safety.

He couldn't believe that the tiny click was audible over the roaring rush of water, but a blinding light blazed instantly to life, swung across the turbulent current and homed in on the kayak. The beam, more powerful than his own, had lanced out as he had guessed from the far side of the bend, exposing him against the rock in the light's pitiless glare.

The warrior could deal with one or more snipers, but not spotlit as vulnerably as an insect pinned to a board. He triggered off a 3-shot burst that smashed the light. At the same time he relaxed his grip on the rock and shoved the kayak violently out into midstream.

The assassin fired again, a hail of lead that chiseled splinters from the rock and stung Bolan's face as the craft spun once, twice, and then whirled away into the blackness.

Bolan knew now he was facing an assault rifle, fashioned for single shot or full-auto use.

He allowed the kayak to ground on the inside of the bend, downstream from the gunner now but still on the opposite bank. Snapping off the spray skirt, he wedged the boat between two boulders and heaved himself out of the cockpit.

He was waist deep in warm water, the 93-R held high.

His most vital objective was to keep the kayak and his own lamp undamaged.

Entombed beneath three thousand feet of solid ice, with God knew how many divergent channels and cataracts in the darkness ahead and no hope of finding the sinkhole and climbing out, he would be lost if the boat was punctured or there was no light to guide him.

He waded out toward the center of the flow.

Froth forming around his hips was visible. Or maybe some small unexpected noise, some subtle change in the myriad level of sound tipped the ambusher off.

Hellfire ripped out from the rocky bank.

A deadly hail splatted into the water as Bolan lifted his feet and thrust himself farther downstream.

But his gun hand was well above the surface... and this time there were muzzle-flashes to aim at.

Before the long burst of automatic fire was exhausted he touched down on the riverbed, steadied himself against the tug of the water and loosed off three triple bursts.

Livid flame flickered in turn from the Beretta, momentarily printing the image of the cavern against the dark as the rock walls hurled back the reports in shattering confusion, explosion drowning echo until the reverberations faded into the distance.

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.