Don Pendleton - Blood Heat Zero

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.