Don Pendleton - Blood Heat Zero

The second cataract was really a long and furious rapid class six; impossible.

In each case a portage was unavoidable, Bolan carrying his kayak and Bjornstrom humping the deflated Hypalon raft, with both men returning each time to fetch the outboard engine, which they maneuvered over the fissured rock between them.

Afloat again, and making good time toward Grimsstadir, they saw the same monoplane Bolan had twice before recognized, low beyond a bluff overlooking the river. But this ship came out of the thickening dusk in the north, not from the hilly ramparts buttressing the ancient crater.

"Keeping tabs," Bolan called to the Icelander. "My guess, once they've located us again, is some kind of surface attack at dawn, just before we pack it in for the day." Whatever else could be said about the killers, it had to be admitted they were punctual.

Their own rubber raft, Bolan guessed, must have been off-loaded upriver from a truck. It was a quieter, cleaner and closer method than another helicopter assault. Probably more efficient, too, in the long run.

It wouldn't have been too difficult for them, either, deciding where to make their launch. Between the reach where the spotter plane had last seen them and the Dettifoss Iceland's largest waterfall, a few miles downstream there was only one sector where two men and two boats could remain unseen during the daylight hours a long winding canyon where the river twisted through an extrusion of igneous rock that pierced the lava plateau.

Here frost and biting winds had hollowed huge caves from the cliffs, the rush of icy water below had sculpted granite and other rock that Bolan couldn't recognize into great curving overhangs that resembled petrified waves breaking.

Bolan and his companion were starting to stow their gear and settle down on the shingle beach at the far end of a lofty cavern when they heard the stutter of the Russians outboard.

There were five men aboard. Two of them carried Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols, another couple were armed with the latest model Uzi submachine guns. The helmsman, minding the engine, wore a webbing harness that supported a row of grenades and a holstered Stetchkin automatic.

Bolan saw them in the distance, veering from side to side of the canyon, checking out each hollow among the tumbled rocks with their weapons at the ready.

"Damn!" Bolan said. "We're finished if we stay here. We'll have to run for it now!"

Bjornstrom carried two spare clips for the Ingram's 3 round magazine. He slammed one in and pushed the inflatable raft back into the water. Bolan's two guns were already loaded. He eased himself into the kayak's cockpit and fastened the spray skirt.

"You want me to tow?" the Icelander asked. "While the river is smooth here I can maybe go faster."

Bolan shook his head. "If there are two of us and they go for both, it cuts their effective firepower by half; if they fix on one, the other will be free to the covering fire and enfilade them."

The Russians were between three and four hundred yards upstream.

Bjornstrom jerked the cord, and the Excelsior roared to life while the enemy craft was beached and a pair of hardmen were exploring a long, narrow cave between two slabs of lava that had broken away from the cliff and fallen into the river.

Bolan nosed the kayak into the stream and started paddling furiously; the Icelander also shoved out his raft and scrambled over the inflated side.

He lowered the outboard into the water and sat with the tiller in one hand.

The Ingram lay ready on the thwart beside him.

There was a shout from the Russians.

Bolan glanced over his shoulder and saw the two recon scouts running back to their craft. He paddled as fast as he could, his arms flailing the paddle in and out of the swirling water.

Bjornstrom chugged past, furrowing the surface with white. "There is fast water after the next bend," he shouted. "But I think we make it more quickly than them."

Bolan nodded. No point wasting energy with words.

The fast water was in fact a boiling rapid, where the river hurled itself down a slope interspersed with ragged tips of rock that threatened every second to slit the gray Hypalon of the raft and rip open the kayak's hull.

Bjornstrom cut the engine and tipped fuel tank, shaft and screw out of the racing water as he allowed himself to be carried on by the stream, parrying left and right with forceful strokes of a single concave paddle.

Bolan was wielding his two-blade like a crazy man, bracing every few yards with feet and knees straining against the supports, wrists aching from the leverage necessary to thrust the kayak against the force of the current.

Raft and kayak were more often than not three-quarters submerged among the whitecaps of the wild water as the two men gave everything they had to keep their craft away from the perilous crags.

In the last few yards before the Russians' raft was swept into the rapid, they opened fire.

But small craft half swamped in foam and bobbing like corks made tough targets at two hundred feet. At three hundred yards it was just a waste of ammunition. The rasp of the Uzis was lost in the river's roar; wherever the slugs went, it was nowhere near Bolan or the Icelander.

Beyond the rapid the river widened again and the canyon's rocky walls fell away to reveal a barren moonscape of black gravel and volcanic shale studded with vast blocks of primeval stone. And it was here, where the river ran wide and fairly shallow, that the death squad began gaining on the Executioner and his friend.

Spent slugs splashed just astern of the kayak. Bolan plowed grimly on, sweat streaking his face as he urged the lightweight canoe ever faster ahead of the streaming current. There was no point attempting to return the fire if the Uzis were out of range it would be senseless to lose ground while he wasted ammunition from his two shorter-range handguns.

Bjornstrom was using the outboard again. The rubber raft, stern squatting in the water, was forging ahead. Twin waves curled outward from the prop to wash up the banks of dark shingle on either side of the river.

Twice the Icelander turned around to loose off a short burst from the Ingram neither caused any damage to the pursuing raft or its occupants but most of his effort was concentrated on an island of rumbled stones surrounding a basalt outlier that divided the river into two sections a quarter of a mile ahead.

If he could beach his own boat and get among those rocks while the Russians were still afloat... if he could start shooting in earnest from the cover of those boulders while they were still vulnerable on their raft... if he could make the goddamn island before the bastards were near enough to get Bolan in their sights.

But the Executioner was tiring. He had been using every ounce of his formidable strength for more than two miles, and even he could not keep that up indefinitely.

The hunters were seventy yards away.

The stabbing roar of the Uzis and the harsher rasp of Skorpion machine pistols were audible over the sounds of the river. But from the moment their firepower was directed at Bjornstrom.

His raft was fifty yards short of the island... forty... thirty.

And then suddenly the engine sputtered and died. The craft listed heavily to starboard as the rubber gunwale on that side began to deflate.

The assassins' bullets, aimed first at the boat rather than the man, had struck home.

The raft spun slowly, deep in the water, moving sluggishly toward the channel, racing past the western side of the island.

Bolan's kayak, losing ground rapidly to the Russians, was on the far side of the river.

The killer craft was less than fifty yards away.

Bjornstrom leaped into the water.

Waist deep, he forced his way to shore and flung himself down behind the first group of boulders.