Blood Heat Zero (11 page)

What had once been an irregular underground basin had been widened and transformed into a rectangular dock bordered by concrete quays. Beyond this pool two giant lock gates with sluices blanked off a caisson crisscrossed with scaffolding on which an army of laborers worked. A drydock was evidently under construction.

Electric wires and compressor tubes tangled the quay nearest the two intruders, and in the far depths of the cave the shafts of rock drills and boring equipment gleamed. Above these a railed gallery circling three parts of the cavern led to a glassed-in box that was clearly some sort of control room.

Two men carrying submachine guns emerged from a passageway carved from the rock and began patrolling the gallery toward the entrance tunnel.

Bolan touched the Icelander on the arm. They submerged and began swimming back along the main channel leading to the fjord.

There was a lot more to check out but the Executioner had already seen enough to know that at last he held the final section of the puzzle in his mind.

This was no underground base for radio misinformation, no simple KGB disaffection headquarters what he had been looking at were bombproof Russian submarine pens.

The Russians were building a clandestine underwater naval station beneath the territory of a NATO country.

"For the new SSK-class minisubs," Bolan said. "There's space for two in that basin, and a third in the dry-dock."

"Minisubs?" Bjornstrom objected. "You mean those two-man undersea motorboats the Italians developed in the Second World War?"

"Hell, no. Mini in relation to the four— or five-thousand-ton nuclear maxis that are too easy to pinpoint with modern sonar and electronic detectors. The SSK's are 200-ton subs with a crew of only twelve, all-electric engines and a sea-to-sea strike capability of no more than half a dozen short-range nukes."

"Harder to detect, though, than the nuclear-powered ships?"

"Sure. They're silent, the heat emanation is minimal, they are fast and maneuverable as a pursuit plane."

"Better than these so-called factory ships then, for monitoring all the NATO and other Western shipping in the North Atlantic?"

"Uh-huh. Preying on them, too. Acting as a hidden strike force if the Soviets ever decide to unleash a hot war. But they do have one big disadvantage."

Bjornstrom nodded. "The batteries."

"Yeah. Prenuclear subs used electric engines for undersea work, diesels on the surface. The SSK's are too small to carry auxiliary engines and in any case it would louse up to their low profile, write them a bigger signature on the detector screens. But electric motors restrict them to a very short range each accumulator needs to be recharged every X miles or every so-many hours."

"So from Russian bases, Murmansk, Archangel or even the Baltic, an SSK North Atlantic patrol is not a proposition?"

"Right. It was a pretty smart idea, though, to use Iceland." Bolan shook his head in reluctant admiration. "Equidistant from Greenland, the Faroes, Spitsbergen and Norway. Smack in the center of the operations area! They could be in among any NATO concentration, anyplace, within a couple of hours. Even under the ice. And it saves them around a thousand miles each way!"

"But the entry to these caves?" Bjornstrom looked dubious. They were sitting in the rubber raft, hidden behind the rocks, waiting for the pale gloom of the sub-Arctic night to establish itself.

"A piece of cake," Bolan told him. "The fjord is long but it's also dark and deep, with a rock bottom and no sand to show up underwater craft in silhouette. An SSK could slip in from the open sea and make the whole journey submerged, including entry to the main cave through that drowned arch. It wouldn't need to surface until it was safely out of sight inside the basin."

"Then they should be building generators in there as well as maintenance and repair facilities?"

"Damn right, they should. Recharging those accumulators will be the most important part of the deal. My guess is that all the water-tapping you come across is not so much for the heating as for generator turbines. They won't want to siphon off too much current from the normal domestic power supply to the fake mine workings above. People might start to ask questions. So they aim to install their own hydroelectric plant below."

Bjornstrom was feeding shells into a clip destined for the magazine of his Ingram. "So what do we do?" he asked.

"I have kind of a personal stake in this," Bolan said grimly. "We wage a two-man war and destroy the place. Blow it clear to hell."

"We don't just report it to the government and let them handle it?"

"Uh-huh. Like you said, that makes it a diplomatic issue. You got an international incident, violation of sovereignty. Imagine what a help that would be with the next round of SALT talks coming up! Hell, it would make the East-West situation more unstable than ever and kill any chance at all the talks have of reducing the arms racer. Whereas a nice quiet little private raid..." He left the sentence unfinished.

Bjornstrom looked relieved. "I agree," he said. "If this base is destroyed anonymously, before it is complete, the Russians cannot complain because they are here building it illegally. And Iceland can say nothing because it will know nothing about it."

"Right," Bolan said. "Nobody kicks up hell if a place that doesn't officially exist is wiped out." He smiled. "So all we have to do now is find ourselves a stack of explosives. You got any quarries around here?"

"I do not think that will be necessary," the Icelander said. He held up his hand. "Listen."

Faintly, approaching from the direction of the village on the far side of the fjord, they could hear the creak of rowlocks.

Soon a small boat materialized out of the gloom. A single figure in a frogman suit stowed the oars as the dinghy glided in among the rocks. Then the new arrival leaped nimbly ashore with a canvas satchel. Even in the mist, Bolan could see it was the woman, Erika.

"I hope I have forgotten nothing," she said to Bjornstrom.

"I hope not," Bjornstrom said.

Shielding the beam from a pocket torch with one hand, he opened the satchel and laid out the. contents.

A handful of crimped detonators, three dozen sticks of C4 plastic explosive, twelve cheap wristwatches, one dozen four-and-a-half-volt flashlight batteries, a tube of super-glue, a small transparent plastic tube containing drawing pins, Scotch tape, copper wire on a cardboard spool and a pair of long-nose pliers with rubber-covered handles.

"Yes," he said. "All is here. Thank you, Erika."

"Okay," Bolan said firmly. "I've let you guys string me along long enough. You may have a cover job with the Icelandic Water Board, Bjornstrom, but don't give me any more of this curiosity-of-a-private-citizen crap. And don't tell me your girlfriend just happened to take all this stuff off the shelf in the local supermarket and walk out with it in a wire basket. Who the hell are you two?"

Bjornstrom and the girl looked at each other. Erika smiled at Bolan in the dusk. "We are working together, all of us. There is no reason why you should not know now," she said.

"I'm all ears," Bolan said.

"Gunner is an Icelandic citizen. He told you. But his family comes from Norway. I, too," she said simply.

Of course, Bolan thought. That fitted. In my country... we are not afraid... a manner of speaking.

"In Norway we are vulnerable, with much sea coast. And sometimes we like to know what is going on with our neighbors, even the friendly ones, especially in the ocean. Not to make a fuss but to find out quietly for ourselves, you know?"

"Are you saying," Bolan said, "that Bjornstrom's some kind of a mole, a sleeper? That both of you work for the Norwegian secret service?"

"Yes," Bjornstrom said.

"We go in twice," Bolan said. "Once to get an idea of the full layout, make a plan of the weak points and dope out guard routines; a second time to position the charges."

"Tonight?" Erika asked. "While there is still this fog?"

Bolan shook his head. "The fog helps us get close to the caves, but they stopped work already. No more whistles, no more blasting, no more compressors. I guess they don't dare work a graveyard shift in case it makes the locals curious. You wouldn't expect a normal prospecting crew, interested in mineral lodes, to work all night."

"But if nobody's there... Isn't this the best time to go in and?"

"No," Bolan cut in. "The place is too bright. There'll still be guards, in case strangers cruise in from the fjord. And intruders are easier to spot if there's nobody else around. Apart from that, the sentry we wasted will have been missed by now, so they'll be on double alert."

"But in that case..." Bjornstrom began.

"Look, when they're blasting, a whistle blows and the whole team make it to some kind of shelter, right? Between the signal and the blast there's a couple, sometimes three minutes, to allow everyone time to take cover. During that time we go in and find a place to hide. Next time they explode charges, we penetrate farther, make a preliminary recon. Same thing the following day when we place our own charges."

"It seems a big deal, wrecking the whole joint with the plastique we have," Bjornstrom said.

"Depends how we use it," the Executioner replied. "We got twelve detonators, a dozen timers and thirty-six sticks of C4. That means twelve charges of three sticks each, one charge of twenty-five sticks and eleven singles... or anything in between. We decide which once we've had a chance to size up the installations."

"We could arrange more but it would take time."

"Hell, no," Bolan said. "We'll make do with what we have. The important thing is to find the strategic places, where a relatively small charge will do the greatest damage. The judo technique."

Bjornstrom looked dubious.

"Turning your opponent's strength against himself," the Executioner explained. "Blow some moving part when the machinery is actually working, and it'll thresh about and do your work for you. A broken drive shaft can do a hell of a lot of damage far more than we could with a single stick."

"Okay," the Icelander said. "When do we go in, and how?"

"Tomorrow morning, early. And I reckon your traverse is the best way in for starters."

"But will there not be a guard or guards on that spur, like tonight?" Erika queried.

"Probably. Almost certainly. We'll have to neutralize them. That's why I want to use that way in first. The Russkies just might swallow one guy falling off a cliff and drowning, but not two or three. After that, you can bet they'd keep special watch on that particular chunk of rock. So our final visit will have to be underwater."

"In that case," Bjornstrom said, "let us hope the mist will not have lifted."

It was damp and cold at dawn. Patches of fog still lay across the calm surface of the fjord and veiled the cliff tops overhead.

The two guards on the spur had been carefully briefed.

"You must remember," the KGB colonel in charge of security had told them, "that this is not a military installation. We are on foreign ground. We have the right to keep people off this ridge. But a guard mounted army style is counterproductive it would raise suspicion locally. So you carry slug shotguns, not automatic weapons, and you are in plain clothes. You are examining the rocks, maybe looking for birds to shoot, not acting as sentries. Is that clear?"

Yuri Prokhorov had worked his way down almost to sea level. He had no wish to play soldier in this godforsaken hole anyway. He hated Iceland, he hated the cold, he hated guard duty, he hated the colonel and most of all he hated this specific mass of wet and chilly granite on this mother of a morning. If he was back home in the Georgian Republic of the U.S.S.R., on the marshes of the Rion Delta he really could be shooting birds. It would be warm and sunny, too, and the goddamn birds wouldn't need to migrate.

Suddenly a rowboat appeared out of the fog, nosing in to the spur. There were two big men in it, one blond and the other dark, wearing fishermen's sweaters, seaboots and peaked caps. The dark one stood and reached for a projecting ledge as the boat nudged the rock. He started to hoist himself ashore.

Prokhorov scrambled farther down toward the water level.

"You cannot land here," he said roughly. "This is private property."

"That's all right," the dark man said in Russian. "We won't do any damage. We only want to climb twenty feet or so, to that grassy shelf up there. It's a good place for the birds."

"You will be trespassing. You can't land here."

The stranger swung himself up easily until he stood beside the guard. His eyes were a piercing blue. "The ducks are flying south," he said, as if Prokhorov hadn't spoken. "We'll be all right here you can get a good shot across the water from this spur. They'll be coming in low today because of the fog."

"Get into your boat and go back!" the Russian shouted. "In any case the ducks don't..." He froze, staring down at the boat.

There were no guns in it.

He whirled, reaching for his own shotgun. An iron-hard fist slammed into his solar plexus, choking the breath from his lungs. He folded forward, his mouth open to shout a warning, but no sound forced its way past his savaged diaphragm. At the same time the dark man picked him up as easily as if he had been a child and dropped him over the edge into the fjord.

Bjornstrom was ready. The guard plunged into the water, arms flailing and throat gargling, six feet from the boat. Bjornstrom pushed off the rock face with two hands and slid the boat across the intervening space.

He was leaning over the gunwale as the Russian surfaced, still groaning for air. Bjornstrom placed both hands on the man's head and shoved him under again.

The rowboat rocked as the Russian submerged. Bolan stepped down into it and joined his companion.

Prokhorov came up for the second time. Before he could drag in a lungful of air, Bjornstrom leaned out once more and grabbed the back of his jacket. The Norwegian bunched the cloth in his fists and thrust hard down, holding the drowning man against the rowboat just beneath the surface.

The water swirled and frothed.

Bubbles burst. Bolan braced himself against the heaving boat as Bjornstrom rained the murderous pressure on the Russian's thrashing figure.

Gradually the frenzied struggles slackened. The bubbles ceased. For Yuri Prokhorov the marshes of the Rion Delta suddenly became very real. And the sun unbelievably bright.

On the far side of the spur, Mikhail Sujic heard the heavy splash when Prokhorov hit the water. He hurried around a shoulder of rock, unslinging his shotgun. The colonel had told them to be extra cautious. Andreyev's body had been found floating three miles away, and the colonel was not entirely convinced his death had been an accident. There were saboteurs around, and an American terrorist had been seen in the region.

Sujic jumped down onto a lower ledge.

And stopped dead.

A helmeted figure in a shining black dry-suit was facing him. He saw from the curves of breast and hip molded by the skintight rubber that it was a girl. She held a Beretta 93-R in her right hand. "Drop the gun," she said quietly.

Sujic dropped it.

Then he had second thoughts. He began walking toward her.

"Stop!" she warned. "Or I'll shoot."

He shook his head. "You dare not," he said. And of course he was right. "You'd have a half a dozen men with SMG's running down that cliff path before I hit the deck. Come on you give me your gun. I think we'll take you in for a little questioning." Still walking, he held out his hand.

"Come and get me," Erika Axelsson said.

Sujic had guts. He came. Backing his hunch that she would not shoot, he ran at her a heavy, thickset man with a bull neck and mean eyes.

Erika dropped the Beretta. Sujic didn't know exactly what happened after that. She reached up and grabbed the hand clawing out toward her, dipped one shoulder, jerked and then swiveled from the hips.

Sujic flew through the air. He dropped over the edge of the shelf, landed on his back on a steep slope with a sickening thump and slid off into the fjord.

Dipping an oar over the stern of the rowboat, Bjornstrom was beside him in a few strokes. They grasped his ankles and held his feet up in the air so that the upper half of his body was immersed. He died quickly, probably without regaining consciousness.

Ten minutes later, Erika was swallowed up in the mist, rowing the boat back to their hiding place, and the two men were perched on the shelf linking the spur with the cliff face above the caves.

"Those guys were probably on a four-hour watch," Bolan muttered. "Work in the cavern had already started when we arrived, but we should have plenty of time for our recon before they're missed." He tensed as whistles shrilled through the mist. "Okay, Gunnar, this is it!" he said.

Facing the cliff with arms outstretched and toes flexed, he led the way along the shelf toward the caves.

Despite the overhang formed by the roof of the arch, they found handholds and footholds in the weathered rock, ducked into the main cave and inched their way around the curve that hid the inner basin from any watcher on the fjord. By the time the sounds of voices and retreating footsteps had died away, they were clambering over the rail of the gallery that circled the dock.

Beside the control room on the far side of the gallery, a spiral stairway snaked down to the quay. Next to it, in a gray steel housing, was a main transformer flanked by a panel covered with complicated switch gear.

"That's target number one," Bolan whispered.

"And number two's not far away," the Icelander replied, pointing to a second chamber that opened off the dock. Fed by one of the smaller entrances from the fjord, this was evidently intended for small craft, for there was a shallow slipway leading up out of the dark water with bays on either side. A rowboat was moored in one of the bays.

And at the back of the slipway, pipes emerged from the rock to curl through a second opening beyond which the massive, humped shapes of generators were visible.

Bolan nodded, mentally noting other vulnerable points that he could see drain covers, junction boxes, parts of the sluice mechanism. "Anyone in the control room?" he murmured.

Bjornstrom, who was farther along the gallery, craned over the rail. He shook his head. "All in the shelter, I guess. But where is the place for the men who set the charges?"

Bolan indicated a doorway beyond the top of the spiral stairway. An arrow with the Russian characters for the word Shelter pointed to a warren of passageways, which he guessed must eventually connect with the mine shaft sunk from the pithead on the ridge far above them.

Inside this opening there was a glassed-in hutch with slatted steel shutters covering the windows through which they could make out the silhouettes of two men with their backs to the dock basin, looking down into the construction chamber.

One of the men raised his arm.

Abruptly a jet of brown smoke boiled up behind the scaffolding. A muffled explosion shook the fabric of the gallery and a shock wave assaulted the intruders' eardrums. Seconds later two more detonations filled the air beneath the arcs clustered below the roof with a fog of rock dust.

Bolan and the Icelander were racing around the gallery toward the control room. By the time the whistles blew for the workers to come out of the shelter, the two invaders were concealed behind a stack of forty-gallon oil drums between the stairway and the transformers.

Now, for the first time, they were able to study the opposition at close quarters.

The Russians working in the cavern fell into three categories. The majority perhaps twenty-five or thirty were evidently skilled construction men, hard-bitten, professional, experienced. They emerged from the shelter and fled at once down the stairway to restart work on the caisson, some operating compressors and pneumatic drills, others handling concrete mixers, but most of them around the rock face behind the lock gates.

Among them were half a dozen overseers. Equipped like the workers with steel mining helmets, they were distinguished by white oilskin slickers, white boots and black arm bands each with a red star.

The third party, again perhaps half a dozen men, were of an entirely different type tough, muscular, with bleak and ruthless expressions on their flat Slavic faces.

These were the guards. They wore jackboots over the same gray fatigues that Bolan knew so well, and each was armed with a Skorpion machine pistol.

They had nothing to do with the work in progress but maintained a constant patrol throughout the base.

Two went through to the smaller cave, another couple penetrated the maze of passageways between the basin and the mine shaft, one lounged on the quay, staring down at the laborers in the dry-dock. The last strode to the gallery on the far side from the control room.

"Low-grade KGB material," Bolan whispered. "Rank and file heavies, but dangerous and efficient. There'll be more of them up top."

The control room remained unoccupied. It was obviously designed to operate the whole complex when it was completed, but for the moment orders were transmitted through loudspeaker relays from the two guys in the armored hut at the entrance to the shelter.

For thirty minutes Bolan and the Icelander watched the activity on the rock face. The guard passed their hiding place three times, but he seemed more interested in the basin below than anything at gallery level.

When he reached the far side for the third time, Bolan raised his head cautiously and peered over the top of the nearest drum.

"The two dudes behind the steel shutter are looking the other way all the time," he said quietly. "Down into the chamber. The guard up here scrutinizes the cave with the slipway at the end of his promenade. Nobody uses the control room. What do those facts suggest to you?"