Don Pendleton - Blood Heat Zero

"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.