Don Pendleton - Blood Heat Zero

With a heavy heart, Bjornstrom hurried on. Grimsstadir was five miles away, but he was well-known in the area. And well liked, which is all-important in thinly populated regions. He completed the last three and a half miles on a borrowed pony.

The little town was at the foot of two sheer bluffs facing each other across the Jokulsa a Fjollum valley.

Most of the houses set in neat garden plots between each row of streets were of the same style orderly white rectangles with dormer windows on the upper floors that projected from roofs colored red, green, terra-cotta or midnight blue.

Bjornstrom passed them all and went into an older building at one side of a square, a gray stone pile that housed the local commissariat of police.

The moment he had dumped the crippled kayak into the first part of an Eskimo roll, Bolan made what expert paddlemen called a "wet exit." He ripped off the spray skirt, released his helmet and dived out of the cockpit. He was at once seized by the current and rolled away from the capsized canoe.

Ten yards downstream there was a suckhole five feet across and probably half as deep again. Bolan was swept underwater toward this swirling funnel and held down beneath the surface by the hydraulic pressure of the stream.

It was surprisingly clear down there.

He could make out every detail of the freckled granite boulder submerged just below the surface, which created the miniwhirlpool; he could see the smooth, dark bedrock at the bottom of the river; he could see farther on the stone-layered face of a shelf that formed a rampart between him and the lip of the falls.

If he could make that rampart and stay submerged below it, there was a chance that he could work his way to the east bank of the river and get out.

And if not.

He had two alternatives, both lethal he would remain spinning in the suckhole and drown, or he would float above the level of the rampart and be swept instantly over the edge of the cataract.

Bolan knew that the only way to escape the deadly clutch of a suckhole was down. He knew there would be a wave above the rampart that would marginally reduce the strength of the current on that part of the river.

He jerked the quick-release toggle of his buoyancy vest and swam powerfully down under the vortex to the undercurrent. At once he was whirled away from the suckhole, his face inches from the rocky bed, and then shot to the surface like a cork.

He gasped a single lungful of air and dived again, thrusting deep with all his strength. He was perilously near that tall wave, and beyond it there was nothing but the lip, nothing to stop him being shot over into the seething maelstrom below.

He was above the rock rampart now, still shooting downstream.

An extra push of his legs... a desperate grab for a rough projection as he wedged the fingers of his other hand into a crevice splitting the chiseled face... and then slowly, against the manic force of the current, he hauled himself down until he was crouched on the riverbed in the shelter of the rampart.

He lay flat, pressing himself into the angle between rock and riverbed, and started to crawl toward the bank.

It was a difficult maneuver. He had to concentrate on forward movement, yet combine this with resistance to the lateral pull of the current that threatened every second to pluck him away from his underwater refuge and hurl him into oblivion.

The sounds of the river were drowned by the roaring of blood in his ears, the rattle of stones by the thump of his heart. He had no idea how far he had crawled or how far he had still to go.

He was running out of air; his lungs were bursting with the effort of moving in an oxygen-deprived situation.

Bolan forced himself onward. He had forgotten the purpose of his vacation trip, forgotten the mystery of the river, the Russians and Bjornstrom, forgotten even the risk of hurtling over the falls to his death. Every fiber of his being was centered on a single aim to reach the riverbank before his lungs gave out on him and he lost consciousness.

Or died.

For although Bolan was an athlete, a man with a husky body never less than one hundred percent in shape, he had always preferred to pit his agility, speed and muscular coordination, his strength and determination against the forces of nature rather than those of a human competitor.

"The only meaningful competition," he wrote once in his journal, "is against oneself. But perhaps competition is not the right word it is more that one pushes oneself to the ultimate limits of endurance, capacity and capability and, in coming back from these limits, learns a lesson more valuable than any to be gained besting another person." It was this ethos that had brought him to Iceland in the first place, this which urged him to continue his challenge even after the Russians had organized a manhunt placing his life in jeopardy.

And in the end it was Bolan's particular brand of steely determination that triumphed over adversity. But it was a near thing, a very near thing.

Into his dimming consciousness floated the idea that the face of the rock rampart was losing height, that the pull of the current had diminished, that the water was shallower.

With the last of his fading strength he dragged himself a final few yards... and let go.

He sat up on the bed of the river.

And his head was above water.

Bolan gulped in great drafts of air, breathing in ragged gasps until the hammering of his heart slowed down. He sat without moving, staring out across the swirling surface of the river, the crashing roar of the waterfall once more in his ears.

There was no sign of the Russians or their raft. The water flowed remorselessly onward, hurling itself over the lip of the cataract. He saw Bjornstrom running along the far bank, but for the moment he was too weak to call out. In any case his voice would have been lost in the thunder of the falls.

By the time he staggered to his feet and waded ashore, the Icelander was no longer in sight.

Bolan knew roughly how far he was from Grimsstadir. For direction, all he had to do was follow at a discreet distance, because the Russians would be back the course of the river. But right now the idea of a five-mile march across that bleak, inhospitable lava plain held little attraction for him.

He had been paddling all night and most of the previous day, when lack of suitable cover, plus the fight with the hoods in the chopper, had cheated him of his rest. He realized, and the heaviness of his overtaxed limbs confirmed it, that he had slept for only one four-hour stretch since he lowered himself into the sinkhole on the Vatnajokull glacier.

If he was to retain the cutting edge of his reactions, the split-second timing that his dangerous trade demanded, he must rest up. Soon.

Before he rolled the kayak, Bolan had stuffed the Beretta back in the waterproof pouch along with his AutoMag. This, with another neoprene sack, was still clipped to his belt.

Tightly wrapped in that second container were thermal inners and the skintight black-quit that had become the Executioner's trademark. There was also a folded, ultralightweight plastic sack that could be opened out to the size of a small suitcase.

Bolan stripped off his wet rubbers and exercised his lithe, muscular body in the chill northern air until his skin was dry. He dressed quickly in the cellular inners, pulled on the black-quit and packed the pouch containing his weapons, his holstered combat belt and the wet suit into the plastic case. It closed with a nylon zipper and sported reinforced handles.

Three hundred yards below the falls, a bluff rose on the eastern side of the river with boulders scattered along the foot of the rock face. Bolan found a sheltered crevice between two of these, lay down with his head resting on the plastic sack and slept.