Blood Heat Zero (15 page)

The elevator cage was wide enough to take three jeeps side by side. It was closed by a hand-operated latticework grille that ran noisily on rollers.

As it rose into the darkness from the brightly lit underground chamber, Bolan could imagine the big wheel at the pithead turning. Would there be guards alerted up there on the surface, waiting to move them down the moment they made ground level? Had any of the Russians noticed when they brought the cage creaking down five minutes ago?

The Executioner thought not.

It was no more than a hunch, but it was based on solid reasoning.

The relayed announcement had ordered the work force back to the surface for "briefing on simulated mining activity." The students were due in half an hour. It was likely, therefore, that all available personnel would be required at the briefing, to make sure they knew what they were supposed to do during the conducted tour. Also, it was unlikely during this period that anyone would return to the cavern; because of this, there was a good chance there would be nobody at the top of the shaft to check whether the elevator was up or down. Since the concession was protected on three sides by sheer cliffs, and on the fourth by a wall patrolled by armed men, there was no need to post a guard there.

But it was only a hunch. And there was a chance. In any case there was nothing else he could do. And a fighter should always be prepared to back his own hunches, right?

There were oil drums in back of the elevator cage. Replacements, maybe, for those punctured this morning, which nobody'd had time to shift?

Bolan and the Icelander squatted behind them. Bjornstrom held the silenced Ingram, Bolan the G-ll. Each carried one of the handguns from the neoprene pouch in waterproof shoulder rigs — Bolan this time with Big Thunder, Bjornstrom toting his Beretta.

The elevator jolted to a halt.

Light flooded through the grille. The two men crouched, weapons ready.

Inside the cage, only their quiet breathing broke the silence. Outside, sunlight glinted off a baggage trolley loaded with flat pans of yellowish ore, and from corrugated iron roofing.

But there were no KGB guards waiting on the packed earth surrounding the shaft. A row of huts in front appeared to be deserted, and the cars and trucks ranged behind in a lot excavated from the hillside were all empty. Bolan's hunch had paid off nobody had seen the elevator descend, then return.

He rose, stole quietly to the grille, held up his hand. They could hear a voice, amplified, speaking in Russian.

It seemed to come from the slope of hillside below the huts.

"It is essential," the speaker emphasized, "that what you are doing appears to be a routine, something you are used to doing. Groups A and D therefore will be sinking exploratory holes farther out on the headland; Group C will list analyzed samples of the cores they have brought up; Group E will be working the upper trial gallery and Group B will remain with myself and the Comrade Admiral, supervising and acting as interpreters."

Bolan frowned. The voice was familiar. It stirred an echo in, his memory. But like the face of the professor in the tavern, he could not place it. He eased up the catch of the grille. There was a heavy metallic click. Very slowly he began to drag back the iron gate. The wheels on their runway shrilled protestingly as the latticework shivered.

"Most vital of all is the shaft," the voice was saying. "We cannot hide the fact that we have sunk a shaft the pithead gear spells that out for everybody. We shall therefore make a point of showing them that shaft. But we shall conceal the details of its depth. So far as they are concerned it goes no deeper than the lower trial gallery. The elevator is on no account to drop below that level. There is enough there and above to convince them that we are doing what we claim to do. They must not know the full extent of the workings; the fact that we have established a connection between the shaft and the caves is to remain a total secret."

Bolan hauled the gate open another few inches. The opening was now wide enough to allow them through.

Cautiously he peered out. On the grassy slope below the huts, engineers, laborers, overseers and guards were drawn up in front of a raised wooden platform. On it stood a tall, lean man in the uniform of a Soviet admiral. Beside him, addressing the Russians through a bullhorn, was a heavyset man with a shaven skull.

Bolan caught his breath. "Now I've seen it all," he muttered.

"What is it?" Bjornstrom's voice was a whisper.

"That man. His name is Antonin. A KGB colonel. He was one of the top brass, ruthless and cruel. Comrade Antonin and I are old enemies. The fact that he's here makes it'll the more urgent to spring Erika."

"How do we know ?"

Bolan laid a finger to his lips. He was scanning the line of huts and the terrain immediately beyond. The huts were clearly sleeping quarters. Behind them rose taller structures sheds full of excavation equipment, a rock crusher, a glass-roofed mineralogical laboratory. Higher up the slope a wooden mess hall stood by what looked like a headquarters block.

And behind the gantry, half hidden by the shack housing the pithead machinery, a square brick building with the legend in Russian above the door Chief Overseer. A single guard with a Kalashnikov AKM stood outside at the top of a short flight of steps.

"That's where she is," Bolan murmured.

"Are you certain?"

"Damn right I am. They're putting on a show. Everyone's being told the role they have to play. Only one guy's left to block a doorway. Why would he be there if there wasn't a prisoner inside?"

Bjornstrom nodded. "Guess you're right." He looked at his watch. The minute hand was well past the hour. "She will be waking now."

Swiftly Bolan surveyed the terrain.

Antonin was still talking, turning the bullhorn this way and that across the ranks of men before him. The admiral gazed impassively ahead over his folded arms. They were both turned slightly toward the pithead. Beyond them the land dropped away toward the dark water of the fjord. The sunshine, pale but bright, would be directly in their eyes. If Bolan and his companion could steal out of the elevator without attracting their attention and make the shadow between the two nearest huts.

The Russian colonel droned on. But the briefing could stop at any minute and the workers disperse to their positions.

Bolan tiptoed toward the bar of shadow.

Bjornstrom followed him out into the sunshine.

The Executioner had estimated that the guard outside the overseer's of lice would be hidden from Antonin, the sightline blocked by the last hut in the row. From the shadow he saw that he was right.

Bjornstrom joined him between the two huts.

Bolan made his decision. He whispered instructions. Bent low, the two black-suited frogmen figures slipped around behind the huts and sped silently uphill toward the mess hall and the HQ block.

Behind the block they were invisible both to the guard and the assembly below. On a raveled apron in front of the entrance there was a black ZIL limo with diplomatic license plates and a consulate flag above one front fender.

Bolan crawled gingerly over the granite chips until he was level with the front wheels. He raised himself high enough to peer over the top of the hood. Around the corner of the overseer's office, the guard was just visible, perhaps seventy-five or eighty yards away.

At that range the assault rifle would be more accurate.

But Bjornstrom's Ingram was silenced.

Bolan beckoned the Icelander forward. He pointed to the guard and then drew his finger across his own throat. Bjornstrom nodded. He raised the compact SMG.

Erika Axelsson was spread-eagled naked on a scrubbed wooden table in the back room, her wrists and ankles strapped to the four table legs. She opened her eyes to see two expressionless heavies standing on either side of her. The blue-jowled, balding one held a cheap cigarette lighter in his hand. The blond with pale, red-rimmed eyes poised a surgeon's scalpel as if it was a pen he was about to write with.

There was a sheet of typescript in his other hand.

Blue Jowls slapped Erika's face heavily three times. She gasped and jerked away her head, striving to clear her mind from the effects of the drug. Her body ached all over, and there was a burning sensation in one wrist where the strap bit into a sore spot, but otherwise she was undamaged.

"At last," the blond goon grated. "You kept us waiting long enough. Now there's a list of questions you have to answer..." he held up the paper "...but first we are going to hurt you a little to show that we mean what we say, to give you a sample of what will happen to you if you fail to answer correctly."

The girl bit her lip. So this was it.

The pill had only brought her a respite. She hoped the zen training she had received would permit her to rise above the pain, the humiliation. She hoped she would be strong enough to resist using the second pill, the cyanide one that could be tongued out of a hollow tooth.

Blue Jowls was leaning over the table, his forearm resting between her spread thighs. "They tell me the singeing of hair is very much the fashion among Western beauty specialists," he said conversationally.

"It can be cut out by the roots," said the man with the scalpel.

"Yeah, but singeing is quicker," Blue Jowls said. He thumbed the lighter into flame.

Erika screamed.

The door burst open.

At first the Norwegian woman did not realize who the two helmeted, rubber-clad figures were. She screamed again when Bjornstrom's hand clamped down to extinguish the smoldering hair at her loins, thinking it some psychological twist in the tormentors' game.

Then she recognized the cold blue eyes and inflexible features of the Executioner.

Bolan sprang for the guy with the scalpel as Bjornstrom whirled to attack Blue Jowls.

The scalpel gleamed wickedly, scything through the air in search of flesh. Bolan dropped to one knee and whipped the commando knife from his boot. The scalpel blade, sharper than ten razors, ripped the sleeve of his wet suit from shoulder to wrist, opening a ten-inch gash in his forearm.

He pivoted on the knee, seizing the torturer's killer arm and pulling it over his shoulder before the guy could attempt a second sweep with the scalpel. The Russian fell forward across Bolan's body.

In the same fluid movement Bolan stabbed viciously upward with the knife. The broad, flat blade sliced through clothing and skin, penetrating the gut.

Bolan twisted and then ripped with all his force.

The Russian uttered a strangled scream and dropped facedown on the floor, the stomach and intestines spilling from his ruptured belly.

Bjornstrom had caught Blue Jowls with a roundhouse right to the side of the head as the hardman tried to pull a Stetchkin automatic from his waistband. Then, as the goon staggered off balance, he swung up the Ingram and jammed the grooved suppressor into his face. The snarling jowls opened to yell, and the fat barrel smashed through teeth to home on the Russian's palate.

Bjornstrom favored the trigger with an instant squeeze.

The triple shot, the splat of blood and brain tissue on the partition wall behind Blue Jowls's head and the smack of .45-caliber bullets tearing through the wood made a single sickly sound.

The torturer slid to the floor.

Bolan's knife was slashing the straps that bound Erika to the table.

"You're bleeding!" was all she could gasp as she sat up to rub circulation back into her cramped limbs.

"It's nothing," Bolan said. "A scratch; luckily it didn't go deep." He helped her to stand up, staring at the angry bruises covering her body. "We have to find clothes for you. Sure you're okay?"

"A little sore," she admitted. And then, contriving a grin, she added, "Luckily it didn't go deep."

In a closet in the outer office they found a suit of the nowfamiliar gray coveralls, a white slicker and a spare pair of boots.

"With your short hair you could pass for one of the overseers at a distance," Bolan said when she had dressed herself. He was binding the wound on his arm with strips torn from a shirt that had been hanging in the closet. "Maybe we could use you to fool them some, once we start shooting."

"Shooting? Are we not getting out?"

He explained the position to her.

"It's three-fifteen," he said, glancing again at his watch. "We have to raise hell for at least a quarter hour to make sure they send those kids away."

"But make sure also that we are not still around at four o'clock!" Bjornstrom said.

"Too right," Bolan agreed. "Come on, guys, let's go."

The body of the guard was lying crumpled by the steps outside. Bolan pulled the AKM out from under him.

"You know how to use one of these?" he asked the woman. And when she nodded, he simply handed her the gun and said, "Shoot straight, then."

Bjornstrom unclipped two plastic grenades from the man's belt. "These will come in useful also maybe," he said.

They made it to the shadow between the huts opposite the pithead. "We'll cross over behind the shack with the winding mechanism," Bolan decided. "We open up once we're on the far side of the motor pool. We shall be between them and the gates then.. With enough ground cover to keep them busy thirty minutes."

"And after that?"

"We'll work that out when we get to it," Bolan said.

Antonin had stopped speaking. The workers and overseers were preparing to disperse to their positions. The shooting would have to start soon, yeah, if it was to be effective enough to have the Russians refuse entry to the professor and his charges.

It started sooner than Bolan expected... and not the way he planned.

Bjornstrom had made it to the shack, and he was two-thirds of the way across the sunlit strip with Erika when he saw with horror that the elevator gate was still open.

Whatever else happened it was vital that nobody suspected they had been in the caverns, nobody discovered the dead guards below, nobody started any kind of investigation before those charges went off.

The open grille was a direct giveaway.

Bolan decided it was worth the risk.

He would close the grille as far as he could without actually engaging the noisy latch.

He turned to retrace his steps. As the ball of his foot swiveled, a pebble of quartzite crunched loudly.

Turning his ankle, he stumbled and to save himself falling, grabbed instinctively at Erika. His fingers closed around the wrist that had been burned while she was unconscious, and despite herself she gave a cry of pain.

Heads turned along the assembled ranks of Russians. Antonin jerked to attention and stared toward the pithead. For one frozen moment the actors in the drama formed a silent tableau the Russians astonished, Antonin with the loud-hailer halfway to his mouth, the woman and the helmeted, black-suited intruders, guns in hand, facing the elevator shaft.

The scene exploded into action.

Antonin shouted orders. The guards leaped for their machine pistols, stacked nearly at one side of the parade. Workers fanned out to give them a clear field of fire.

Bolan, figuring that his attitude could mislead the Russians into thinking he and his companions were making for the elevator instead of away from it, sprang back as though he had just opened the grille. And then whirled to race with the woman for the corner of the shack.

"Keep them away from the shaft!" Antonin roared through his bullhorn. "I want them alive if possible, but they're not to make that elevator."

First objective gained, Bolan thought. He dropped down behind a bank of loose dirt in back of the winding-gear shack and brought the Heckler and Koch assault rifle to his shoulder. Erika was kneeling in the shadow cast by the wooden shack, the Kalashnikov aimed toward the huts; Bjornstrom covered the open ground between the huts and the HQ building.

The guards opened fire. From between the huts, behind the baggage trolley, on either side of the platform, Skorpions spat flame. The 700 rpm death stream ripped wood splinters from the walls of the shack and whined off the massive iron spars of the gantry.

Bolan coaxed telling bursts from his G-11, hearing over the deadly rasp of the assault rifle's backfire the deeper reports of Erika's AKM.

A guard fell out from behind the trolley, rolled over in the dust and lay still. Another, caught in the open space between the platform and the huts, sat down abruptly with a hand clasped to his shoulder and blood bubbling between his fingers. The girl downed a man foolish enough to attempt a run between two of the huts.

Antonin and the admiral had disappeared.

The unarmed workers and their overseers were racing for the headquarters block. Each man dashed up the steps and reappeared almost at once with an AKM at port arms.

Bjornstrom dropped several with the silenced Ingram, but the intensity of fire from the guards allowed him only to take rapid snap shots and the final effect was minimal.

With military precision one group circled behind the overseer's office and the rest made for the brow of the hill. Evidently they had orders to outflank Bolan and his companions and attack from the rear.

Guards fired now from the windows of the sleeping quarters. The ironwork of the gantry reverberated with the impact of wasted rounds.

Bolan raked the facades with a lethal stream of the tiny G-11 projectiles. Over the clamor of broken glass he yelled at the Icelander, "Gunner, try one of the grenades!"

Bjornstrom nodded. His arm swung back. The plastic flesh-shredder arced over the hell ground between the shack and the HQ block to explode with a concussive flash beside the steps. Men fell left and right; a flaming bundle threshed screaming in the doorway.

But the full effect came milliseconds later three thirtykilo cylinders of propane gas, ranged outside the block to fuel cooking and heating plant, were blown away from their connecting hoses and erupted with a shattering roar. The explosion smashed a hole in the side of the building and set fire to the interior.

A huge fireball blazed upward, drawing after it a column of black smoke.

From behind the row of huts, Antonin's voice, shaking with fury, screamed through the bullhorn, "Azimov, Streletzin take the Swidnik and head off this damned geologist and his brats. Tell him there was a regrettable accident at the pithead. Tell him anything, but keep the fools away. After that fly back and help us liquidate these terrorists."

Bolan looked across at Bjornstrom and Erika. He held up a thumb. Second objective gained. Following orders keep the Russians occupied long enough to rule out any checkup of the underground base.

From behind the sheds housing the excavation machinery they heard the whine of a jet engine and then a whir of rotors. The chopper rose into sight, angled through the smoke and flames pouring through the roof of the HQ block and headed for the gates.

Bolan half rose, fired a short burst to discourage any snipers and dashed across to join Bjornstrom and Erika behind the shack. Conserving the remaining G-11 rounds for their eventual getaway, he unleathered Big Thunder. "What we do now..." he began.

Erika screamed a warning.

Bolan whirled. Antonin was standing in the open doorway of the shack. The KGB chief's features were twisted into a manic snarl that was half rage and half triumph. The Tokarev TT-33 in his right hand was aimed point-blank at the Executioner's chest.

Three shots hammered out in a single ragged detonation.

Bolan never knew whether or not it was deliberate, but Gunnar Bjornstrom, hurling himself forward with the Beretta, threw himself into Antonin's path and took the heavy bullets otherwise intended for Bolan.

At the same time Big Thunder blasted a fist-sized hole through the Russian's sternum, and a single round from Erika's AKM sent a 7.62 mm steeljacket to core his throat.

Antonin died on his feet. He collapsed backward, and the last spurts of his blood turned brown in the dust.

Bolan was bending over the fallen Icelander. "We've got to get him out," he rapped. "Help me carry him to the parking lot."

Behind the nearest vehicle Erika fell to her knees and held Bjornstrom's head in her hands.

"How bad is it?" Bolan asked, firing the AutoMag toward the gantry to keep Russian heads down.

"Bad. Below the right shoulder," she said. "it could be a lung." She held the punctured rubber away from the injured man's flesh. "The suit's filling with blood; I can't stop the flow."

Bolan unwound the makeshift bandage from his arm. The bleeding from the gash had stopped. "Make a pad of that and jam it inside the suit," he said.

Bjornstrom was trying to speak.

Bright bubbles of blood foamed at the corner of his mouth as his lips moved.

"No good," he whispered. "I cannot make it. Leave me here."

Bolan shook his head. "Take it easy, friend," he said. "We're getting you out of here. In a private ambulance, too!" He raked a glance along the line of parked vehicles.

With a single exception all of them Zastavas, Skodas, a Moskvitch limo and a Fiat were parked nose into the bank. The odd man out, an open, jeep-like Pobeda utility, faced the winding dirt road that snaked down the undulating landscape toward the gates.

Bolan vaulted into the driving seat as Erika lowered Bjornstrom as gently as she could into the rear.

No keys hung from the ignition; in fact, there was no ignition switch visible. Bolan glanced swiftly over the dials and tumblers. Nothing. He looked down and saw a push button on the floor behind the central shift lever. He jammed his thumb down on it.

The engine turned, almost caught, coughed... and died.

He tried again; once more the engine spun without firing.

"Push!" he yelled to the girl. "But let 'em have it first."

They were protected by the bank, but the Russians had come out into the open and were spreading out to enfilade them. She sprayed them with a blast from the Kalashnikov and they scattered.

Bolan was still leaning vainly on the starter button, but the cold engine obstinately refused to fire. As Erika leaned her shoulder against the Pobeda and rolled it into motion, he slammed it into gear. In a few yards the utility reached a Blood Heatandro 179 slope leading to the dirt road and began to gather speed under its own weight. Bolan flicked the lever into neutral and coasted.

Erika scrambled aboard and fired another burst.

Behind them now there was shooting no indiscriminate volleys but single, considered shots. A slug spanged off the Pobeda's body and screeched skyward. The windshield splintered and starred. One of the rear wheels began to thump jarringly as the tire deflated and ran off the rim. They could hear orders through the bullhorn. A truck roared to life.

Bolan clung grimly to the wheel, taking advantage of every irregularity in the track surface to increase their speed. It sounded as if whoever had taken over from Antonin had ordered his men to disable the utility rather than annihilate its occupants.

The final scenario would nevertheless work out as seek-and-destroy. Clearly they could not afford to have anyone at large who had heard the incriminating briefing broadcast by the KGB security chief.

The route, dipping sharply at first, flattened out and then rose to a small crest before it slanted eventually down to the gates. When they were on the steepest part, Bolan wrenched the stick into third gear with the clutch held out, then took his foot off the pedal with a jerk, hoping the engine might catch. There was a whine of gears as the momentum of the car battled against the engine compression... but still no cylinder fired.

The Executioner swore and thrust the lever back into neutral. The utility, which had slowed appreciably, began gathering speed once more. They were out of immediate range now, but there was a truck rocketing after them in a cloud of dust and long lines of men fanning out across the moorland on either side of the trail.

Bolan looked over his shoulder. The Icelander was slumped in a corner, vomiting blood. Erika's face was stricken. In answer to the Executioner's raised brows she shook her head.

Bolan bit his lip. The Pobeda leveled out, sped along the flat stretch and then gradually lost speed as it began the climb toward the crest. When they were still one hundred yards away, it became clear that they were not going to make it.

Cursing again, the warrior bounced in his seat, turning the wheel this way and that, trying to coax the machine further. Erika jumped out and heaved... but the car slowed inexorably, drew to a halt and then started to roll down the hill.

Bolan yanked up on the hand brake and jumped from the car himself.

Pausing with his hand on the top rail of the shattered windshield, he saw over the crest the final stretch of track with the closed gates shutting off the outside world... and mile beyond, far away down the loops of road leading to the highway, the helicopter grounded in front of an elderly bus. Antlike figures milled between the two transports, ancient and modern. And behind, among the huts on the headland, a column of black smoke still stood against the northern sky.

Antonin's emissaries were doing their thing warning off the kids and their mentor because of a regrettable accident at the mine!

Bolan breathed a sigh of relief. His most pressing problem was solved the innocent would be out of danger when the charges went off.

The two that remained were serious enough.

Like what was he going to do with Gunnar Bjornstrom? And how was he going to save the woman before the chopper returned to hose death on them from above?

As if he had read the Executioner's thoughts, Bjornstrom himself solved both of them.

Squelching sickeningly in his blood-filled rubber suit, the wounded man dragged himself upright on the seat. His eyes were bright with pain but his voice was firm. "Bolan," he said thickly. "No use. I'm finished and we all know it. Leave me here and I'll hold them off until..."

"No way," Bolan began. "We can't..."

"Please. You must. For Erika." The voice faded and then strengthened again. "Over the crest, there's... gully... a shallow ravine leads down to the valley... where the creek... our boat..." He stopped speaking, panting for breath.

"Even if we did leave you," Bolan said gently, "they'd get you. You know that. And they mustn't get any of us, dead or alive, because if they could tie in your country, or mine, with this..."

"That's why you must go, both of you," Bjornstrom croaked. "Need you to... carry on fight." He coughed blood. "Anyway I thought of that. They won't get me... to... identify." He stretched out his unwounded arm and unclenched the fingers of his hand.

Lying on his palm was the remaining plastic grenade.

Bolan hesitated. Militarily, it made sense. The truck had screeched to a halt at the foot of the hill, and armed men were running for the cover of boulders strewing the slope of moorland.

"Go," Bjornstrom urged. "Your only chance. You'd never make it... with me. And what's the use? I'm through."

Erika was crying.

"You can put... Ingram across the back of the seat," Bjornstrom said. His voice was weakening now. "Fire one-handed. Leave me one of the pistols. Keep them off for hours... might take a few with me, too." A ghastly smile cracked open his livid features. "Bit of luck for you two, maybe... mine ran out."

Bolan made up his mind. War called for tough decisions. But the mission was more important than individual members of the team, right? And the missions to come.