Blood Heat Zero

Mack Bolan, exhausted by the firestorm that is his life, decides to take a well-deserved R and R. But instead of some tropical resort, the Executioner plans to challenge natures whims in the depths of an Icelandic glacier.

On a perilous trip beneath the polar ice cap, he makes a discovery to startling it is tantamount to an act of war.

And the innocent vacation becomes a hunt — with Bolan as the prey.

Mack Bolan was leaving a Danish restaurant in Reykjavik, Iceland, when a second attempt was made on his life. The first had been less than two hours before, as he stood waiting for a taxi outside the Icelandair terminal at Keflavik airport, on a windswept peninsula jutting into the ocean twenty miles southwest of the capital.

Bolan had flown in from Copenhagen on a short-haul flight, the kind still known locally as "internal." The Executioner preferred to use the smaller airfields on his own time, as he was now, away from the rigors of his missions, from suspicious eyes.

Lately the warrior had felt increasingly that he needed some R and R to purge the mind, the spirit and, yeah, the body. He knew that battle fatigue could bring a weary soldier down. And Bolan's commitment to his duty, his destiny, had never been halfhearted in any way. In his present mode he might as well give up the fight and let the cannibals continue their savage march on gentle civilizers.

No damn way.

Mack Bolan knew the fight could wait, but for a short time, while a mentally exhausted warrior cleared his mind.

For a short time.

And this was why Bolan had decided on a self-imposed vacation in Iceland, on top of the world. In a way he felt on top of the world already, because the decision was made on his own, and not by any gentle prodding from allies like Hal Brognola.

In Iceland the environment was pure, Bolan felt, primitive. And a man could pit his strength, his wits, against the elements, become one with nature, making him whole again.

So the Executioner had chosen Keflavik airfield, rather than the big international airport nearer the city.

These unimportant fields shared certain qualities that lent them an appearance of sameness a few incoming and outgoing flights each day, a minimum of formalities and personnel who treated passengers like humans instead of cattle.

The atmosphere at these smaller airfields was casual and relaxed.

You could exchange banter with customs and immigration officials if you had a mind to. And you could get past them with a .44 AutoMag or a Beretta more easily than at Kennedy or Heathrow. Which was a plus if you were a hunted man like Mack Bolan.

And if you happened to be carrying, as he was that day, a 93-R and an AutoMag.

Although the Executioner had no intentions of using his two favorite handguns, he felt that it didn't make sense to take unnecessary chances, especially when one was involved in a trade such as Bolan's.

And that trade was Death.

After all, he was Mack Bolan.

In Iceland, Bolan planned to make a river excursion, from source to mouth.

The river was called the Jokulsa a Fjollum. In Icelandic, the name meant "glacier-fed stream in the mountains." Its source was deep beneath the mighty Vatnajokull ice cap that covered one-twelfth of the country's surface.

At first it was channeled through subterranean tunnels melted through the base of the glacier by geothermal heat generated from volcanoes that erupted beneath the ice. Then the river emerged into a desolate landscape of ancient lava flows and twisted northward into the Arctic Ocean through 130 miles of precipitous gorges punctuated by violent rapids and four major waterfalls.

The trip effectively a coast-to-coast journey across the island had been attempted once before, Bolan had read somewhere, by a twelve-man expedition using kayaks and inflatable rafts backed up by a snowmobile and a ULM, a gas-powered, delta-wing aircraft equipped with floats. It had taken them six weeks.

Bolan figured that if he cut the time by half and made the crossing alone in a single kayak, that would prove a sufficient test for his guts and his initiative. He would use an ULM only to ferry him from Egilsstadir, the nearest airfield, to the vast sinkhole in the ice that was the only entry to the source of the underground river.

Because he had to supervise the unloading of the crated ULM from the hold of the old 727 that had brought him from Denmark, and check out papers with the Icelandic customs, he had missed the airport bus that would have taken him to the city center.

When he was through, he walked out of the superheated, cigar-smelling terminal and crossed a paved sidewalk toward the steel-and-glass canopy sheltering the taxi stand.

No cabs.

He looked around him. A veil of high-flying cirrus hid the sun. Below the barren promontory on which the airfield was located, gray waves crumbled into dirty white foam as the wind whipped the surface of the sea. On the far side of the inlet, he could see the snowcapped mountains behind Reykjavik.

Behind him, there was one vehicle in the parking lot a dark blue Ford into which the customs and immigration officers were climbing. The vehicle bumped across the lot, turned through the gates and took the highway leading to Reykjavik. He went back into the terminal.

There was no one around. A group of geology students who had been on the plane had taken the bus into the city.

The 727 had left on the last leg of its flight to Scotland, carrying with it the few transit passengers who had been thronging the duty-free store in search of cheap whiskey and Brennavin, the pungent Icelandic liquor. Through the PA speakers a lone unaccompanied alto saxophone lamented the loneliness of man.

But the ticket counter with its stack of blank forms was deserted, unlocked doors to the empty administration offices stood open, a steel grill blocked off the bar. The next plane was not due until dusk, and the airport personnel had gone back to town.

Bolan walked unchallenged past the immigration desk into the departure lounge. Through wide glass windows he stared at two Cessna executive jets parked on the apron. In the distance a lighthouse on the tip of the headland pointed a single finger at the cold sky.

Nearer, a tractor towing a string of baggage trailers trundled through the open doors of a maintenance hangar. A man in white coveralls rolled shut the hangar doors and left the field as deserted as the terminal.

Beyond the perimeter, a chain link fence enclosed a group of low yellow buildings marking the site of the US naval base built during the American occupation of Iceland in World War II.

The technicians stationed there now under a NATO agreement were part of a high-tech unit whose job was to monitor the movements toward the North Atlantic of Russian warships, nuclear submarines, trawlers and the huge fishing-factory ships that so often themselves were no more than covers for sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment.

Bolan hoped there were not too many spooks on detail there. He was, he knew, on the hit list not only of foreign agencies such as the KGB, the SDEC, and Britain's MI-6 but also of the CIA and the National Security Agency. It would sure cramp his style if any one of those guys knew he was in Iceland even if it was for a vacation.

He turned back into the waiting room.

It still smelled of cigar smoke and stale coffee. There was a copy of the country's biggest daily newspaper lying open on a bench. He picked it up and turned to the classified section. He found what he wanted on the second page an advertisement for a taxi service in the city. He went to a pay phone, dropped in a coin and dialed the number.

Half an hour, they told him. He returned to the lounge. The high, flat, vibratoless cadences of the taped alto explored a scale somewhere up among the stars. Out on the apron the stressed metal skin of the Cessnas was shivering in the wind.

Bolan was waiting outside the terminal ten minutes before his cab was due. He blew into his cupped hands, hunched against the icy breeze. To his surprise he saw the cab turning into the airport entrance almost at once.

The vehicle a Mercedes sedan with the light behind the for-hire sign extinguished swung around and headed for the taxi stand.

Bolan picked up his luggage, stepped out into the roadway and waited for the car to stop.

Instead the big sedan picked up speed as the driver slammed the lever into second and floored the pedal. The engine screamed as the wide Mercedes leaped for Bolan.

Only the Executioner's seasoned nerves, razor sharp through half a lifetime of combat in the world's hot spots, saved him from the hurtling vehicle. In the hundredth of a second's advantage given to him as the danger signal flashed from eyes to brain to muscles, he threw himself violently backward into the shelter.

The driver wrenched the wheel as Bolan fell. The Mercedes stewed sideways on the pavement, and the front fender missed him by a fraction of an inch as it plowed into a steel support halfway along the shelter. The support buckled and split; the shelter erupted in a fountain of glass and splintered wood.

Tires squealed. The sedan broadsided half across the roadway, snaked and then righted itself. Bolan was shouldering his way up and out of the wreckage, the Beretta in his right hand. He fired, shook glass fragments from his hair and fired again a three-shot group that starred the rear window of the Mercedes.

Once more the big car swerved. Then the exhausts bellowed and it powered toward the highway. Evidently the killers were not armed... or they didn't expect their intended victim to be toting iron and preferred not to trade shots with a professional.

Soon after, the taxi that Bolan had ordered arrived.

On the way into town he scarcely noticed the bleak, treeless coastline, the vivid green mosses that covered the black lava soil of the lowlands.

Too many questions were jockeying for position in his mind. Who were the would-be assassins? Why here, of all places, would anyone want to take him out?

He wasn't on any kind of mission; it wasn't even a recon trip. He'd never been to Iceland before. It was less than forty-eight hours since he had made up his mind, reserved his ticket and hired the kayak and the ULM.

Yet someone knew he was coming and they didn't like it.

If they hadn't known, he must have been recognized at the airport and hasty plans made to dispose of him.

In either case, one thing was clear whoever it was must believe that he was on a mission, some kind of search-and-destroy operation.

It followed that there were facts to find out, incriminating facts important enough to risk murder to keep quiet.

Some person or persons unknown had something going that the Executioner if he had really been working on it could have loused up. What could it be?

Drugs?

Prostitution? Some kind of Mafia racket?

Unlikely. A terrorist plot then?

In Iceland? He dismissed the thought.

Someone had done their best to eliminate him nevertheless. Of the two possibilities, he favored the second that he had by chance been recognized at the airport and the wrong conclusion drawn. The attempt to run him down showed all the signs of a hasty, spur-of-the-moment plan. Otherwise, if they knew anything about him, they would have been armed.

Bolan shrugged as he stared at the white houses with their multicolored roofs on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Okay, someone carrying a load of guilt was prepared to kill to protect his investment. But what the hell it had nothing to do with him; he was on vacation, dammit. The heat would presumably be off once they realized he was not on their trail.

That was before the second attempt.

Bolan planned to play the tourist for two days in Reykjavik. He would see enough of the Icelandic countryside on his self-imposed river trip. The kayak and the ULM were to be freighted to Egilsstadir, on the east coast of the island, and he would follow on a domestic flight two days later.

Right now he was tired and he was hungry. He checked into the Hotel Wotan, in the city center. It was a comfortable, old-fashioned place with creaking elevators and its central heating and hot water drawn as it was for every dwelling in Reykjavik from the thermal springs whose source Bolan himself would soon be exploring.

His third-floor room overlooked Austurvollur Square and the red-brick, steep-roofed Althing building where the parliament met. After a shave and a shower he went out to eat and take in the nightlife of the city though in this season nightlife was something of a misnomer it was weeks before the winter "darkening time," when the earth's Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun and the hours of darkness grew unbearably long, the incidence of alcoholism increased and the murder rate shot up.

Bolan almost smiled as he thought of his narrow escape earlier. These people were getting ahead of themselves.

He arrived at Nielsen's, which was recommended by the hotel's head porter.

It was a candlelit basement and the meal smorrebrod preceded by slices of smoked sturgeon followed by raw herring in a variety of sauces was excellent.

Thule, the Icelandic beer, was practically nonalcoholic, but the aquavit aperitif was strong and the afterdinner Brennivin more fiery still.

It was with a feeling of well-being but with combat instincts on alert that Bolan climbed the stone steps beneath the striped awning to regain the street.

His veteran's sixth sense saved him again. The gun was equipped with a sound suppressor, and there was a flash hider over the muzzle. But something indefinable in the gloom a darker patch of shadow that moved, a tiny scrape of metal, a rolled-down auto window that snared a gleam of light from a distant street lamp warned him of danger. He shoved the doorman violently down the steps and dropped to the sidewalk in a single fluid motion.

The shut of the gun was barely audible. The metal-jacketed death bringer spanged off the restaurant-area railings behind Bolan's head and screeched into the sky. The second shot flattened itself against the brickwork at the top of the steps, at the height Bolan's chest would have been an instant before.

Then a bus rumbled down the street with a string of cars behind it. A truck laden with barrels passed in the other direction. By the time the street was clear again, Bolan was facedown along the slant of the stairway, elbows resting on the sidewalk, the Beretta cradled in his two hands.

He held his breath, scanning the line of parked cars on the far side of the roadway. He figured the shots came from one of them. Or maybe from a marksman standing between two of the vehicles.