Don Pendleton - Blood Heat Zero

Bolan whirled. He was facing Bjornstrom, the wet suit still damply gleaming in the wan underground lighting. "How the hell did you get here?" Bolan demanded in a whisper.

"Swam around into the smallest cave and found a tunnel that led here directly. Very convenient and it does not seem to be patrolled."

"Great." Bolan glanced at the shaft. "Might as well leave my charge here, too. We won't have time to go back to the dock."

"There is a fissure that runs halfway around the shaft," the Icelander said. "If you push it in there, as well as destroying the mechanism we might also bring down some rock and wreck the shaft."

"Better still." Bolan was shoving the package as far into the crevice as it would go when they heard shouting in the distance followed by the insistent clamor of an alarm bell.

"I think they have found the dead guard," Bjornstrom said.

Shouted commands and the clump of booted feet drowned the sounds of the sea throughout the underground complex. The shrilling alarm bell punctuated orders rasping through speakers fixed to the rock walls at the corner of every passageway.

"We are lucky," Bolan panted, "that they didn't monitor the whole place with closed-circuit TV."

Bjornstrom had led him to an unlit opening on the far side of the elevator well, and they were hotfooting it back to the smallest cave.

"Whatever happens," Bolan insisted, "they mustn't know we penetrated as far as the mine shaft. They'll know we made the control room that's where they found the body. But I want them to think that was as far as we got; I want them to believe we only just made it to the cavern, that we were on our way in when the guy surprised us."

"How can we do that?" Bjornstrom demanded. The route was far shorter than the one Bolan had taken, and they were already approaching the cave.

Bolan stared across at the water swilling around the slipway. "We must get back to that stack of oil drums," he said, "and let them find us hiding there. Then we split. They have to think they surprised us at the start of a recon trip not the end of a sabotage mission. Otherwise they'll start poking around here and there to see where we went. And if they discover one of the charges..." He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

"Is there any way we could use the uniform you're wearing? Could we maybe fool them..." Bjornstrom began.

"Uh-uh." Bolan cut him short. "Don't forget we stripped the dead guard, so they'll be looking for someone wearing his uniform..." Bolan paused. He was gazing pensively at the slipway.

"Still... is an idea... maybe we can make use of it in a different way." Hastily he pulled off the boots and coverall and stuffed them into the neoprene sack that now contained nothing but his AutoMag and a spare clip of ammunition. He lowered himself into the water. The numbing shock of the sudden immersion was like a blow in the solar plexus, but he mastered the cramp and swam fast across to the slipway.

Clinging to the rowboat moored beside it, he unzippered the sack one-handed and laid boots and coverall along the Buckboards. Finally he removed the miner's helmet he was still wearing and placed it above the gray fatigues. In poor light, for a few seconds, it was just possible that a distant watcher might mistakenly believe a man was lying prone below the gunwales.

Very carefully, Bolan unhitched the painter, submerged himself and swam slowly out toward the center of the cavern, pushing the boat before him.

When it was framed in the rock arch between the two chambers, he gave it a final shove and then backed off. The tide was ebbing, and a slight current receding toward the fjord carried the craft in the direction of the smallest cave entrance. As he had hoped, the movement of the rowboat, as it floated through the shaft of light streaming in from the main cavern, was seen by someone.

There was an excited shout, followed by two more. The ringing of alarm bells stopped, and an amplified voice rapped orders through the speaker system.

Gunfire ripped out, reverberating around the linked caves like thunder in the mountains. Pale marks peppered the dark planking of the rowboat as heavy slugs splintered the wood. The vessel lurched slightly under the impacts and spun slowly around.

Boots clattered on the iron stairway.

A muttered conference distorted a dozen times by the sea-wet rock faces echoed sibilantly overhead. Then at last there was silence an eerie quiet broken only by the lap and suck of the water; a stillness continually contradicted by the ceaseless interplay of light reflected onto the crystalline roof by the movement of the tide.

The Russians were clearly planning some surprise move based on the belief that they had eliminated an intruder in the boat.

It was the diversion Bolan had hoped for. He motioned to the Icelander, and together they dived underwater and swam through the arch into the submarine pens beneath the gallery.

Bolan surfaced by the dockside.

Abruptly, from behind him, he heard a rush of footsteps along the quay they had just left in the smaller basin. The pursuers had raced through the network of passages in the hope of catching unawares whoever was connected with the boat. By now they would be wise to the fact that the craft itself was no more than a decoy.

More commands rapped out in Russian over the speakers. Followed by Bjornstrom, the Executioner hoisted himself onto the concrete dockside and together they sped silently up the spiral ladder to the stack of drums.

There were men on the far side of the gallery, but they were all concentrating their attention on the far cave. By the drums, Bolan made a brusque movement to catch their eyes.

Four out of the half dozen swung around at once.

Four SMG's roared a hymn of hate through the caves. Rock chips showered Bolan's side of the gallery; oil gushed from punctured drums.

The two saboteurs had ripped open their neoprene sacks in readiness.

Facedown below the gallery railing, they returned fire. Bjornstrom's compact sixteen-inch Ingram chattered out a stream of lethal skull busters, and the Executioner's AutoMag punctuated the death stream with individual shots that bellowed beneath the cavern roof.

Two of the Russians fell forward over the rail and dropped into the dock basin, where they floated lifelessly, trailing clouds of crimson in the dark water. A third was hurled back against the wall, his arm shattering on impact.

"Okay," Bolan yelled. "Now! We've been surprised and beaten back on the way in. Let's go!"

Vaulting over the rail, they dived into the basin and swam frantically underwater for the cave entrance. With luck the guards outside on the spur wouldn't know what the hell was going on; with luck they wouldn't be in direct contact with the speaker system; with luck Bolan and his companion could stay submerged long enough, once they were through the arch, to escape their attention.

With luck.

It was when he surfaced to catch his breath beneath the arch that Bolan heard, over the sporadic shots still being fired after them, the shouts from the inner cave that were followed by a woman's scream.

With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he realized that, in decoying the main body of the Russians into the second chamber, he had unwittingly delivered Erika Axelsson into the hands of the enemy.

"She is safe for another three hours," Bjornstrom said. "She does after all have the pill with her."

"The pill?" Bolan sounded incredulous. "You don't mean... Not the cyanide pills?"

"No, no. Nothing so... final. A kind of a sleeping pill, except that it acts instantly. It's a variety of chloral hydrate, your old-fashioned Mickey Finn, without the hangover. They can do nothing to her, she will hear nothing and feel nothing, until the effect wears off."