Blood Heat Zero te-90

by Don Pendleton

  The unarmed workers and their overseers were racing for the headquarters block. Each man dashed up the steps and reappeared almost at once with an AKM at port arms.

  Bjornstrom dropped several with the silenced Ingram, but the intensity of fire from the guards allowed him only to take rapid snap shots and the final effect was minimal.

  With military precision one group circled behind the overseer's office and the rest made for the brow of the hill. Evidently they had orders to outflank Bolan and his companions and attack from the rear.

  Guards fired now from the windows of the sleeping quarters. The ironwork of the gantry reverberated with the impact of wasted rounds.

  Bolan raked the facades with a lethal stream of the tiny G-11 projectiles. Over the clamor of broken glass he yelled at the Icelander, "Gunner, try one of the grenades!"

  Bjornstrom nodded. His arm swung back. The plastic flesh-shredder arced over the hell ground between the shack and the HQ block to explode with a concussive flash beside the steps. Men fell left and right; a flaming bundle threshed screaming in the doorway.

  But the full effect came milliseconds later three thirtykilo cylinders of propane gas, ranged outside the block to fuel cooking and heating plant, were blown away from their connecting hoses and erupted with a shattering roar. The explosion smashed a hole in the side of the building and set fire to the interior.

  A huge fireball blazed upward, drawing after it a column of black smoke.

  From behind the row of huts, Antonin's voice, shaking with fury, screamed through the bullhorn, "Azimov, Streletzin take the Swidnik and head off this damned geologist and his brats. Tell him there was a regrettable accident at the pithead. Tell him anything, but keep the fools away. After that fly back and help us liquidate these terrorists."

  Bolan looked across at Bjornstrom and Erika. He held up a thumb. Second objective gained. Following orders keep the Russians occupied long enough to rule out any checkup of the underground base.

  From behind the sheds housing the excavation machinery they heard the whine of a jet engine and then a whir of rotors. The chopper rose into sight, angled through the smoke and flames pouring through the roof of the HQ block and headed for the gates.

  Bolan half rose, fired a short burst to discourage any snipers and dashed across to join Bjornstrom and Erika behind the shack. Conserving the remaining G-11 rounds for their eventual getaway, he unleathered Big Thunder. "What we do now..." he began.

  Erika screamed a warning.

  Bolan whirled. Antonin was standing in the open doorway of the shack. The KGB chief's features were twisted into a manic snarl that was half rage and half triumph. The Tokarev TT-33 in his right hand was aimed point-blank at the Executioner's chest.

  Three shots hammered out in a single ragged detonation.

  Bolan never knew whether or not it was deliberate, but Gunnar Bjornstrom, hurling himself forward with the Beretta, threw himself into Antonin's path and took the heavy bullets otherwise intended for Bolan.

  At the same time Big Thunder blasted a fist-sized hole through the Russian's sternum, and a single round from Erika's AKM sent a 7.62 mm steeljacket to core his throat.

  Antonin died on his feet. He collapsed backward, and the last spurts of his blood turned brown in the dust.

  Bolan was bending over the fallen Icelander. "We've got to get him out," he rapped. "Help me carry him to the parking lot."

  Behind the nearest vehicle Erika fell to her knees and held Bjornstrom's head in her hands.

  "How bad is it?" Bolan asked, firing the AutoMag toward the gantry to keep Russian heads down.

  "Bad. Below the right shoulder," she said. "it could be a lung." She held the punctured rubber away from the injured man's flesh. "The suit's filling with blood; I can't stop the flow."

  Bolan unwound the makeshift bandage from his arm. The bleeding from the gash had stopped. "Make a pad of that and jam it inside the suit," he said.

  Bjornstrom was trying to speak.

  Bright bubbles of blood foamed at the corner of his mouth as his lips moved.

  "No good," he whispered. "I cannot make it. Leave me here."

  Bolan shook his head. "Take it easy, friend," he said. "We're getting you out of here. In a private ambulance, too!" He raked a glance along the line of parked vehicles.

  With a single exception all of them Zastavas, Skodas, a Moskvitch limo and a Fiat were parked nose into the bank. The odd man out, an open, jeep-like Pobeda utility, faced the winding dirt road that snaked down the undulating landscape toward the gates.

  Bolan vaulted into the driving seat as Erika lowered Bjornstrom as gently as she could into the rear.

  No keys hung from the ignition; in fact, there was no ignition switch visible. Bolan glanced swiftly over the dials and tumblers. Nothing. He looked down and saw a push button on the floor behind the central shift lever. He jammed his thumb down on it.

  The engine turned, almost caught, coughed... and died.

  He tried again; once more the engine spun without firing.

  "Push!" he yelled to the girl. "But let 'em have it first."

  They were protected by the bank, but the Russians had come out into the open and were spreading out to enfilade them. She sprayed them with a blast from the Kalashnikov and they scattered.

  Bolan was still leaning vainly on the starter button, but the cold engine obstinately refused to fire. As Erika leaned her shoulder against the Pobeda and rolled it into motion, he slammed it into gear. In a few yards the utility reached a Blood Heatandro 179 slope leading to the dirt road and began to gather speed under its own weight. Bolan flicked the lever into neutral and coasted.

  Erika scrambled aboard and fired another burst.

  Behind them now there was shooting no indiscriminate volleys but single, considered shots. A slug spanged off the Pobeda's body and screeched skyward. The windshield splintered and starred. One of the rear wheels began to thump jarringly as the tire deflated and ran off the rim. They could hear orders through the bullhorn. A truck roared to life.

  Bolan clung grimly to the wheel, taking advantage of every irregularity in the track surface to increase their speed. It sounded as if whoever had taken over from Antonin had ordered his men to disable the utility rather than annihilate its occupants.

  The final scenario would nevertheless work out as seek-and-destroy. Clearly they could not afford to have anyone at large who had heard the incriminating briefing broadcast by the KGB security chief.

  The route, dipping sharply at first, flattened out and then rose to a small crest before it slanted eventually down to the gates. When they were on the steepest part, Bolan wrenched the stick into third gear with the clutch held out, then took his foot off the pedal with a jerk, hoping the engine might catch. There was a whine of gears as the momentum of the car battled against the engine compression... but still no cylinder fired.

  The Executioner swore and thrust the lever back into neutral. The utility, which had slowed appreciably, began gathering speed once more. They were out of immediate range now, but there was a truck rocketing after them in a cloud of dust and long lines of men fanning out across the moorland on either side of the trail.

  Bolan looked over his shoulder. The Icelander was slumped in a corner, vomiting blood. Erika's face was stricken. In answer to the Executioner's raised brows she shook her head.

  Bolan bit his lip. The Pobeda leveled out, sped along the flat stretch and then gradually lost speed as it began the climb toward the crest. When they were still one hundred yards away, it became clear that they were not going to make it.

  Cursing again, the warrior bounced in his seat, turning the wheel this way and that, trying to coax the machine further. Erika jumped out and heaved... but the car slowed inexorably, drew to a halt and then started to roll down the hill.

  Bolan yanked up on the hand brake and jumped from the car himself.

  Pausing with his hand on the top rail of the shattered windshield, he saw over the crest the final stretc
h of track with the closed gates shutting off the outside world... and mile beyond, far away down the loops of road leading to the highway, the helicopter grounded in front of an elderly bus. Antlike figures milled between the two transports, ancient and modern. And behind, among the huts on the headland, a column of black smoke still stood against the northern sky.

  Antonin's emissaries were doing their thing warning off the kids and their mentor because of a regrettable accident at the mine!

  Bolan breathed a sigh of relief. His most pressing problem was solved the innocent would be out of danger when the charges went off.

  The two that remained were serious enough.

  Like what was he going to do with Gunnar Bjornstrom? And how was he going to save the woman before the chopper returned to hose death on them from above?

  As if he had read the Executioner's thoughts, Bjornstrom himself solved both of them.

  Squelching sickeningly in his blood-filled rubber suit, the wounded man dragged himself upright on the seat. His eyes were bright with pain but his voice was firm. "Bolan," he said thickly. "No use. I'm finished and we all know it. Leave me here and I'll hold them off until..."

  "No way," Bolan began. "We can't..."

  "Please. You must. For Erika." The voice faded and then strengthened again. "Over the crest, there's... gully... a shallow ravine leads down to the valley... where the creek... our boat..." He stopped speaking, panting for breath.

  "Even if we did leave you," Bolan said gently, "they'd get you. You know that. And they mustn't get any of us, dead or alive, because if they could tie in your country, or mine, with this..."

  "That's why you must go, both of you," Bjornstrom croaked. "Need you to... carry on fight." He coughed blood. "Anyway I thought of that. They won't get me... to... identify." He stretched out his unwounded arm and unclenched the fingers of his hand.

  Lying on his palm was the remaining plastic grenade.

  Bolan hesitated. Militarily, it made sense. The truck had screeched to a halt at the foot of the hill, and armed men were running for the cover of boulders strewing the slope of moorland.

  "Go," Bjornstrom urged. "Your only chance. You'd never make it... with me. And what's the use? I'm through."

  Erika was crying.

  "You can put... Ingram across the back of the seat," Bjornstrom said. His voice was weakening now. "Fire one-handed. Leave me one of the pistols. Keep them off for hours... might take a few with me, too." A ghastly smile cracked open his livid features. "Bit of luck for you two, maybe... mine ran out."

  Bolan made up his mind. War called for tough decisions. But the mission was more important than individual members of the team, right? And the missions to come.

  Besides the guy was right. He was on the way out. It was useless to sacrifice two others for no valid reason.

  "Okay," he said crisply, "we'll do that. But take this instead of the Ingram there should be around fifty rounds left and your own magazine's almost exhausted." He laid the Heckler and Koch assault rifle across the back of the seat and picked up the MAC-11.

  Erika slammed a fresh clip into the Beretta and laid it beside the bigger gun. She leaned down to brush her lips against Bjornstrom's forehead and turned away. Her shoulders were shaking.

  Bolan held out his hand. "It was a good fight, soldier," he said huskily. "You will be remembered."

  The last they saw of the Icelander, before they scrambled up a shallow bank bordering the trail and dropped down on the far side of the crest, he was propped up in the corner of the seat in the sunshine, staring down the dusty road toward the puffs of smoke blossoming from behind the boulders at the foot of the hill. His good hand was curled around the pistol grip of the assault rifle. Erika swore later that he was smiling.

  The Russians opened fire on the fugitives as they wormed their way toward Bjornstrom's gully. But there were slabs of granite among the tussocks of coarse grass along the ridge to give them cover.

  The Executioner loosed off short bursts from between the rocks until the Ingram's magazine was exhausted. But after that the gunfire from below became sporadic, and only an occasional bullet ricocheted from the outcrops above their heads. Bolan guessed that the KGB killers were advancing up the hill toward the stalled utility.

  The warrior and the woman had made the steep, scrubcovered gulch before they heard the first rasp of the Heckler and Koch G-11.

  As Bjornstrom had said, the gulch fed into the ravine above the creek, bypassing the edge of the concession.

  "We have to make that raft pretty damn quick and get it out in the open, in the middle of the fjord," Bolan told her. "They won't dare attack us outside the concession, not even with the chopper, if the boat can be seen from Pvera."

  The gully was slippery as well as steep; it would have been impossible to go slowly even if they wanted to.

  They tumbled, slid and skated down the moss-covered rock bed of the rivulet that ran between its banks until they could see the sunlit waters of the fjord through the thorny branches below them.

  It was then that they heard the assault-rifle fire for the second time one very long burst and then, immediate afterward, a much shorter one. This was followed by an irregular series of lighter shots punctuating the distant reports of the Russian guns.

  "Used up all the rounds in the G-11," Bolan muttered. They counted the automatic-pistol shots. Four bursts of three, five single shots, a final triple blast.

  And then, shocking in its impact, a savage, cracking detonation that sent echoes clattering from side to side of the ravine and startled flocks of seabirds squawking from the rocks above.

  Gunnar Bjornstrom had bowed out the way he wanted it.

  The Executioner put an arm around the sobbing woman's shoulders. "Keep going," he said. "He trusted us to take advantage of his courage. If we don't get the hell out of here and carry on the fight — we're letting him down."

  The raft was in the middle of a fleet of blue-and-white fishing boats, the bus was on its way back to the bridge at the head of the fjord and the helicopter after a couple of impotent passes over the ravine had flown back toward the pithead when the first spasm shivered the calm surface of the water.

  A mushroom of smoke and dust bellied out from the cliff above the cave mouths, and a huge explosion rolled across the fjord. Before the reverberations of the blast had died away, it was followed by the rumbling roar of thousands of tons of rock collapsing into the water.

  The boats rocked crazily as shock waves raced across the surface. One after the other, Bolan sensed rather than heard the muffled minor blasts that would wreck the installations of the secret base now sealed off forever behind the rockfall barring the entrance.

  And then, silhouetted against the clear northern sky, the gantry carrying the pithead wheel folded inward and collapsed as a gigantic tongue of flame smashed through the elevator and the shaft erupted in thunderous fury.

  When the last rumble had died away and the fishing boats had scattered to take a closer look at the landslide that had tumbled into their fjord, Bolan smiled wearily.

  "At least they'll be safe for quite some time from Soviet submarines," he said.

  Erika smiled at him, the wide mouth tempting. "And now?" she inquired. "I think you said you were on vacation? I'd be happy, very happy to act as your guide and point out some of the more... positive... pleasures of this country."

  Regretfully, he shook his head. The past few days had made the point vacations were not for him. Not yet. Not while animal man ran wild.

  "There will be other bases," he said. "Other submarines. Other fishermen who have the right to live their lives free of fear."

  She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. Then she said, "Another time... maybe?"

  "Maybe," the Executioner said.

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